scholarly journals Reading bedtime stories to compatriots: Reconciling global equality of opportunity and self-determination

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-386
Author(s):  
Ayelet Banai ◽  
Eszter Kollar

AbstractIn this article, we propose a reconciliation between global equality of opportunity and self-determination, two central and seemingly conflicting principles in the contemporary theory of global justice. Our conception of reconciliation draws on the family-people analogy, following the account of familial relationship goods, developed by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, on permissible parental partiality and domestic equality of opportunity. We argue, first, that a plausible conception of global equality of opportunity must be able to distinguish morally arbitrary aspects of nationality that require mitigation from morally permissible ones. Second, we argue that a plausible criterion for the distinction integrates a person’s normative interests over a lifetime: (i) the interests of a child born into societal circumstances that impact her life prospects; and (ii) the interests of an adult citizen in collective self-determination. Third, we outline an account of ‘people relationship goods’, as a principled way to circumscribe the permissible scope of self-determination. Fair global equality of opportunity requires mitigating nationality-tracking inequalities, except those that fall within the permissible scope of collective self-determination.

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 325-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles R Beitz

“The Moral Standing of States” is the title of an essay Michael Walzer wrote in response to four critics of the theory of nonintervention defended in Just and Unjust Wars. It states a theme to which he has returned in subsequent work. I offer four sets of comments. First, by way of introduction, I describe the controversy between Walzer and his critics and try to identify the central point of contention. Second, I make some observations about the wider conception of global justice suggested by Walzer's remarks, emphasizing the extent of the difference between this conception and the traditional view of a “society of states” to which it stands as an alternative. The central value in Walzer's conception is collective self-determination, so I comment about its meaning and importance. Finally, I consider whether and how concerns about the moral standing of states bear on the kinds of cases of humanitarian intervention that the world community has actually faced since the book and article were written, particularly since the end of the cold war.


Author(s):  
Harry Brighouse ◽  
Adam Swift

This chapter sets out the various kinds of conflict between the value of equality and the value of those parent–child relationships that constitute the family. It offers two reasons not to pursue fair equality of opportunity all the way. On the one hand, we must be prepared for children of similar talent and ability raised by different parents to enjoy somewhat unfairly unequal prospects of achieving the rewards attached to different jobs, since the alternative would cost too much in terms of familial relationship goods. On the other hand, some unfairness in the distribution of those prospects could be beneficial for those who have unfairly less. In both cases, then, there are conflicts between fair equality of opportunity and other values.


2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-541
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz

AbstractThis essay replies to three critics of my book Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration. First, in response to Kit Wellman, I defend the claim that states sometimes have a right against external interference even when their decisions depart from the requirements of social justice. This “right to do wrong” is grounded in respect for a legitimate procedure of collective self-determination, in which the state's members have an important interest. Second, I reply to Michael Blake's concern that there is an inconsistency in my treatment of people's actual wills in politics. I clarify that my view places weight on the actual wills only of “cooperators” (a technical term), and that cooperators’ actual wills matter because they have claims against alien rule. There is no inconsistency in treating political annexation differently from immigration since immigrants rarely threaten to impose alien rule on cooperators. Finally, I address Adom Getachew's concerns about the imperial dimensions of the states system, arguing that my book contains resources for theorizing remedial claims to land in settler colonial societies and other reparative duties of global justice.


Author(s):  
Anna Stilz

This book offers a qualified defense of a territorial states system. It argues that three core values—occupancy, basic justice, and collective self-determination—are served by an international system made up of self-governing, spatially defined political units. The defense is qualified because the book does not actually justify all of the sovereignty rights states currently claim and that are recognized in international law. Instead, the book proposes important changes to states’ sovereign prerogatives, particularly with respect to internal autonomy for political minorities, immigration, and natural resources. Part I of the book argues for a right of occupancy, holding that a legitimate function of the international system is to specify and protect people’s preinstitutional claims to specific geographical places. Part II turns to the question of how a state might acquire legitimate jurisdiction over a population of occupants. It argues that the state will have a right to rule a population and its territory if it satisfies conditions of basic justice and facilitates its people’s collective self-determination. Finally, Parts III and IV of this book argue that the exclusionary sovereignty rights to control over borders and natural resources that can plausibly be justified on the basis of the three core values are more limited than has traditionally been thought.


2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Clayton ◽  
David Stevens

This paper takes issue with Swift’s argument for the claim that parents who affirm equality of opportunity can justifiably buy advantageous private schooling if it is necessary to ensure educational adequacy for their children. We advance a number of reasons of justice and morality that support the view that egalitarian parents ought to accept a degree of educational inadequacy: parents have a pro tanto reason to share the burdens of injustice; it is not obvious that the legitimacy of parental partiality is as extensive in unjust circumstances as it is under just arrangements; we have some duty of justice to accept inadequacy for our children in the fight for the realization of educational justice; and we might be morally required to accept more than a fair share of the burden of establishing just educational institutions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 64-73
Author(s):  
Valery Ilyich Tarlavsky ◽  
◽  
Marina Viktorovna Shakurova ◽  

The article considers the need for a broad view on the technologization of career guidance practices, the importance of which is increasing due to the spread of early professionalization in modern society. The purpose of the article is to identify and substantiate the semantic foundations for the technologization of vocational guidance practices, determined taking into account the process of forming a personal-professional position in the conditions of early professionalization. Research methodology: systemic personality-developing, subjective and technological approaches; methods of theoretical research (analysis, synthesis, generalization, analogy, interpretation, concretization). Attention is drawn to the essential features of personal-professional positioning, the focus is on the attitude to work, profession, personal and professional self-determination. Semantic supports for the design of vocational guidance technologies are identified and justified: the differentiating basis of the stage of life activity; immersion in accessible roles in the field of professional and labor activity and the formation of a value attitude to them; attention to work, the pattern of work of any profession, the formed attitude to work as a value; professional and labor traditions of the family, related features of family identity and family socio-professional trajectory; definition and implementation of personal and professional prospects; preservation and strengthening of personal-professional position.


2004 ◽  
pp. 159-178
Author(s):  
Gordana Kovacek-Stanic

In the jubilee year 2004, Serbia marks the 200th anniversary of The First Serbian Uprising, structuring of modern Serbian state and its legal system comparatively speaking, France marks the 200th anniversary of passing the French Civil Code, one of the most significant civil codifications in the 19th century. It was an occasion to study certain institutions of family law through history and today. The used approach is modern, we studied the ways how the principle of self-determination influenced the family-legal solutions today, and we investigated if one could talk about the effect of this principle in the historical sense, too. The principle of self-determination implies the possibility for the subjects of family-legal relations to arrange their own relations themselves ? both the partner and parent relations. However, this principle undergoes significant limitations in the family law because the family relations are personal relations by character, as well as because of the need to protect the weaker participant, both the weaker partner or a child who needs protection stemming from his/her very status. Within marriage law, the principle of self-determination of the spouses (extramarital partners) is, among other things, made concrete through the possibility for an agreement about the effects of marriage (extramarital union), then through the possibility of agreed divorce, while the procedure of mediation in the marriage litigation contributes to the realization of the mentioned principle. As for the effects of marriage (extramarital union), the paper particularly discusses property relations, that is the marriage property contract, because it is at the moment a current issue in our domestic law. Within the relations between parents and children, the concretization of the principle of self-determination in parental care is significant, particularly in the situations when the relations between the parents were disturbed and resulted in a separation or a divorce with the joint parental care (application of the parental right). All institutions are analyzed in the positive law, in the historical context (solutions from the Serbian Civil Code the former Hungarian Law), and viewed comparatively in the European legal systems of the east and west European countries.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-217
Author(s):  
Will Schrimshaw

In The Soundscape, R. Murray Schafer describes a tone of ‘prime unity’, a tonal centre conditioning an international sonic unconscious. Diverging from the bucolic image of nature readily associated with Schafer’s ethics and aesthetics, this tone is found in the ubiquitous hum of electrical infrastructure and appliances. A utopian potential is ascribed to this tone in Schafer’s writing whereby it constitutes the conditions for a unified international acoustic community of listening subjects.This article outlines Schafer’s anomalous concept of the tone of prime unity and interrogates the contradictions it introduces into Schafer’s project of utopian soundscape design. Discussion of the correspondence between Schafer and Marshall McLuhan contextualises and identifies the source of Schafer’s concept of the tone of prime unity. Of particular interest is the processes of unconscious auditory influence this concept entails and its problematic relation to the politics of sonic warfare. Through discussion of contemporary artistic practices that engage with these problems, it is argued that the tone of prime unity nonetheless presents an opportunity to shift the focus of Schafer’s project from a telos of divine harmony towards collective self-determination through participatory intervention in the world around us.


Author(s):  
Lucia M. Rafanelli

This book develops a theory of the ethics of “reform intervention,” a category that includes any attempt to promote justice in a society other than one’s own. It identifies several dimensions along which reform interventions can vary (the degree of control interveners exercise over recipients, the urgency of interveners’ objectives, the costs an intervention poses to recipients, and how interveners interact with recipients’ existing political institutions) and examines how these variations affect the moral permissibility of reform intervention. The book argues that, once one acknowledges the variety of forms reform intervention can take, it becomes clear that not all of them are vulnerable to the objections usually leveled against intervention. In particular, not all reform interventions treat recipients with intolerance, disrespect recipients’ legitimate institutions, or undermine recipients’ collective self-determination. Combining philosophical analysis and discussion of several real-world cases, the book investigates which kinds of reform intervention are or are not vulnerable to these objections. In so doing, it also develops new understandings of the roles toleration, legitimacy, and collective self-determination should play in global politics. After developing principles to specify when different kinds of reform interventions are morally permissible, the book investigates how these principles could be applied in the real world. Ultimately, it argues that some reform interventions are, all things considered, morally permissible and that sometimes reform intervention is morally required. It argues we should reconceive the ordinary boundaries of political activity and begin to see the pursuit of justice via political contestation as humanity’s collective project.


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