Hope, Solidarity, and Justice

This article defends an account of collective hope that arises through solidarity in the pursuit of justice. I begin by reviewing recent literature on the nature of hope. I then explore the relationship between hope and solidarity to demonstrate the ways in which solidarity can give rise to hope. I suggest that the hope born of solidarity is collective when it is shared by at least some others, when it is caused or strengthened by activity in a collective action setting, and when the reciprocal hopeful expressions of individual group members result in an emotional atmosphere of hope that extends across the group. In the context of social movements, collective hope emerges alongside the collective intentions and actions of the solidarity group; namely, in the pursuit of a form of social justice that inspires the movement. I then suggest that the object of collective hope born of solidarity is the guiding ideal of justice and reflect on what it might mean to hope well for justice.

Quasi-Psychologism about Collective Intention

This paper argues that a class of popular views of collective intention, which I call “quasi-psychologism”, faces a problem explaining common intuitions about collective action. Views in this class hold that collective intentions are realized in or constituted by individual, mental, participatory intentions. I argue that this metaphysical commitment entails persistence conditions that are in tension with a purported obligation to notify co-actors before leaving a collective action attested to by participants in experimental research about the interpersonal normativity of collective action. I then explore the possibilities open to quasi-psychologists for responding to this research.

Why Spirituality Matters for Law: An Explanation

In this article, I explore potential connections between law and spirituality as well as some of the legal implications of these connections. After arguing that spirituality is conceptually autonomous from religion and morality, I explain why the spiritual triad of love, communion, and gift is deeply interconnected with the legal triad of justice, agreement, and right. I also make clear why individual and collective intentions and cultural values are the main channels of interaction between law and spirituality. In the second part of the article, I argue that legal systems evolve through spiritualization, among other ways, promoting the dematerialization of the legal system, encouraging the limitation of domination, inspiring the reduction of coercion, stimulating communion and consensus in society, or increasing respect for the law and the legal systems. Spiritualization demands a recognition of the higher dimension of the law and, therefore, helps rethink, reorient, renew, reform, and reimagine law and legal systems. Finally, I sketch a pattern of five levels to measure the degree of spiritualization of concrete legal systems. This pattern can also be applied to legal actors and institutions.

Institutional Externalism

Many philosophers regard collective behavior and attitudes as the ground of the whole of social reality. According to this popular view, society is composed basically of collective intentions and cooperative behaviors; this is so both for informal contexts involving small groups and for complex institutional structures. In this article, I challenge this view, and propose an alternative approach, which I term institutional externalism. I argue that institutions are characterized by the tendency to defer to elements that are external to the content of collective intentions—such as laws, declarations, and contracts. According to institutional externalism, those elements are the grounds of institutional statutes, rights, and duties.

Understanding institutions: replies to Aoki, Binmore, Hodgson, Searle, Smith, and Sugden

Our goal is to develop a theory that combines the best insights of philosophical and scientific theories of institutions. We are not committed a priori to save the commonsense notion of institution, or the thesis of human exceptionalism. We think that human cognition is important, but we do not claim that common knowledge or collective intentions are necessary for coordination. Like most of our commentators, we believe that there is continuity between simple rules of precedence and sophisticated institutions like property, marriage, or money. Finally, we argue that a satisfactory account of institutions must be compatible with different theories of normativity, specifying the social and psychological mechanisms that make it possible to override selfish desires.