The idea that each of us owns our physical selves is one that has largely failed to achieve prominence in contemporary political theory, despite its sound philosophical basis, largely due to its association with a strong formulation of right-wing libertarianism best expressed in the work of Robert Nozick. In this thesis I argue that the idea as expressed in Nozick's most infamous work, Anarchy, State and Utopia, is not taken to its full conclusion and that there is in fact a way of unpacking self-ownership, necessary under proper consideration of its underlying premises, that would imply far less of a connection with right-libertarianism. Fundamentally, Nozick considered self-ownership as a base value in itself, informing all of his subsequent political and ethical values. Through analysis of various important contemporary attempts to improve on and undermine self-ownership, points made respectively by libertarians who wish to modify it and non-libertarians who wish to do away with it, I argue that self-ownership must in fact be a structure which is itself derivative of a more basic and fundamental value. Conceding the argument held in common by all of the major theorists proposing modifications to self-ownership, that self-ownership is a self-defeating theory when we consider the operability and usefulness of the rights it bestows upon those who have no original resources to trade, I seek to enquire exactly what it is about rights-holders that self-ownership rights were designed to protect and promote, using evidence gleaned from the work of Nozick. I conclude from this that the basic value of agency must underlie the Nozickian supposition of self-ownership. Making agency the primary value subsequently means that self-ownership needs a further derivative principle, something approximating a redistributive system which enables all agents to have self-ownership rights which are of comparably equal usefulness to them.

This thesis aims at giving a plausible account of education from the perspective of John Rawls’ theory of political liberalism. Despite the fact that an immense amount of literature has been written on both Rawls’ work in general and political liberal theory in particular, this still seems to be a worthwhile task, for two reasons. The first reason is that the current discussion of liberal neutrality in the philosophy of education frequently engages with Rawlsian liberalism, despite the actual lack of an adequately refined Rawlsian account of liberal education. The second reason is that political liberal theory itself leans more toward the side of ideal political theory, provoking the question whether it has any application value for real politics. A sufficiently developed account of political liberal education would demonstrate that practical guidelines can indeed be generated from political liberal principles. After providing a comprehensive overview over the few explicit claims about education Rawls made himself, and over the parts of his theory indicating further educational requirements for citizens of a liberal society, the thesis splits into two parts. The first part analyses the relation between core concepts of political liberalism (political virtues, autonomy, and rights) and education. Next to engaging with objections against neutrality-based restrictions in the context of education, this part also highlights the shortcomings of political liberalism when faced with the concrete requirements of education and proposes suitable revisions. The second part of the thesis picks out a number of concrete topics of education that are discussed in contemporary liberal theory. It analyses the questions to what extent religious beliefs entitle parents to determine the education of their children, to what degree same-sex relations should be part of a liberal sex-education curriculum, and what challenges migration might pose for political liberal education. For each case, the account of political liberal education presented here can provide guidelines based on the insights gained in the first part of this thesis. Together, the mainly theoretical first and the more practical second part shape the outlines for a political liberal account of education which, albeit sketchy, provides a useful contribution to the current debates about liberalism and education in a way which has not been done in the literature on political liberalism so far.

This thesis explores the relationship between rights-based moral systems and climate change. It argues that supporters of rights-based moralities must give the realisation of rights priority over non-rights-based moral concerns. It further contends that future persons cannot possess rights that would place current persons under correlative duties towards them before their conception. The thesis then highlights that climate change will need to be combatted through programmes of adaptation and mitigation. Unfortunately, the majority of those protected by such programmes will be future persons. It is therefore argued that rights-based moralities struggle to endorse – and might even actively oppose – the imposition by states of extensive programmes of adaptation and mitigation. Such programmes actively and directly restrict the realisation of the rights of many current persons. Even if this were not the case, supporters of rights are unable to justify the kind of spending that would be needed to finance those aspects of adaptation and mitigation which aim to benefit future persons while the fundamental rights of a great many current persons go unmet due to a lack of funds. As a result, rights-based moralities must justify climate burdens solely through reference to current persons. It is argued that, in the case of Interest- and Choice-based theories of rights, this would encourage an increase in emissions through the implication that pollution was permissible provided adaptation burdens were met. Alternatively, support for a rights-based morality akin to that put forward by Robert Nozick would enable us to implement mitigation, but the system’s disavowal of positive rights would simultaneously cause excessive harm to the wellbeing of many. The inability of rights-based moralities to deal with climate change in an effective and ethical manner leads us to question their legitimacy more generally.

What is the nature of our society? What kinds of power regimes shape our existence? What forms of emancipatory resistance might chart the way towards a better future that responds to the dangers, injustices, and pathologies marking the present? These are just some of the questions my dissertation aims to answer through the help of the conceptual resources that Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault provide us with. Accordingly, whereas the few attempts that have been made been to compare their works remain inadequate, partial, or simply out-dated, my thesis offers a detailed and comprehensive appraisal of both the explanatory and reconstructive potential of Adorno’s and Foucault’s common project of developing a critico-theoretical account of modern Western society, with a view also to showing the often-neglected compatibility of their respective approaches. At issue, is not only the scholarly reconstruction of a possible dialogue beyond their differences, but also, and more importantly, the analysis of the continued relevance of their works for our understanding of the world we inhabit. To this end, Chapters 1 and 2 start with an examination of the historical conditions Adorno and Foucault see at the root of the dangers and pathologies ailing our age. More specifically, Chapter 1 starts with a review of Adorno’s conception of late modern society as a reified totality ruled by the logic of capitalist exchange. I then confront Adorno’s account of social domination with Foucault’s early analytics of power and illustrate the similarities between their pictures of the disciplinary mechanisms at the basis of the constitution of modern individuals. The chapter concludes by presenting their critique of the scientific discourses and ideological procedures that have supported these power mechanisms. After examining the connection they establish between the development of capitalism and modern biopower, Chapter 2 compares Foucault’s and Adorno’s portraits of the political culture of liberalism. Whereas the relevance of Adorno’s insights is manly confined to the processes of socialization characterizing the welfare states in the first half of the 20th century, I argue that Foucault’s later inquiries shed an instructive light on the reconfiguration determined by the rise of neoliberalism in the contemporary technologies of government, whereby the latter are no longer based on the rigid mechanisms of disciplinary power, but rather on the fabrication of the subject as a free and responsible entrepreneur through more indirect and flexible forms of control operating on the social environment. Chapters 3 to 5 explore the anticipatory-utopian dimension of Adorno’s and Foucault’s enterprises. Chapter 3 engages in a largely unprecedented comparison of their critical approaches. Despite their different targets and narratives, I contend that they converge in the project of a critical problematization of the present, which seeks to modify their addressees’ sensibility and experience not only to show the historical contingency of the present, but also to encourage its radical transformation. Contrary to the popular view that they lack normative theorizing, Chapter 4 reviews Adorno’s and Foucault’s accounts of the normativity of critique, while pointing to their common attempt at giving new impetus to the emancipatory thrust of Enlightenment modernity. Chapter 5 elaborates a much overdue evaluation of their responses to the ethico-political challenges of the present through a juxtaposition of Adorno’s minimal ethics of resistance with Foucault’s late ethical reflections on the ancient practices of care of the self, which lie at the source of his more ambitious politics of the governed. The chapter closes by proposing a possible way of integrating Foucault’s call for creative resistance with Adorno’s politics of suffering. In conclusion, my dissertation assesses Adorno’s and Foucault’s merits in the construction of a critical “ontology of the present” that stands opposed to the neo-Idealist turn of much of contemporary critical theory with its separation of normative and empirical claims from the material forms of power shaping individuals’ subjectivity, cultural patterns, and institutional structures, while eventually arguing that Foucault gives us a more effective toolbox not only to comprehend who we are, but also to imagine ourselves otherwise.