Should the state undertake the task of promoting the good life? Perfectionism is the idea that the state should promote the good life. Many philosophers have answered in the negative to the above question, so they reject perfectionism. This thesis aims to develop a moderate version of perfectionism, and seeks to defend it against several influential anti-perfectionist arguments, in particular the argument from public reason liberalism. I begin by examining public reason liberalism. John Rawls, Gerald Gaus, Martha Nussbaum, and many other political philosophers endorse public reason liberalism. They believe that state coercion should be publicly justified, and that perfectionism cannot meet the requirements of public reason. I argue that public reason is the object of reasonable rejection, so it cannot be realised in actual politics through state intervention in a publicly justified way. In addition, I argue that respect for persons is not a reliable basis for public reason. Thus we have good reason to reject public reason liberalism. Then I develop a moderate version of perfectionism. I contend that the state should promote the good life through supporting a wide variety of perfectionist goods, and that it should do so by using moderate measures and by appealing to perfectionist judgements of a moderate kind. Some anti-perfectionists consider that perfectionism would be unnecessary when a fair distribution of resources is realised. Yet a fair distribution of resources is not foreseeable. I propose several kinds of moderate perfectionist policies that are of great importance for any neo-liberal society where the distribution of resources is far from fair, and these policies are ultimately important for the good life, not only for remedying unfairness. Contrary to the positions of many liberal philosophers including Ronald Dworkin and Jeremy Waldron, I argue that moderate perfectionism should not be rejected on grounds of paternalism and unfairness to different conceptions of the good.

Orientador: Ricardo Monteagudo / Banca: José Benedito de Almeida Junior / Banca: Ana Maria Portich / Resumo: A figura do Legislador na obra Do Contrato Social de Jean-Jacques Rousseau surge em meio a uma forma de legislação popular, sendo o povo o próprio Soberano e encarregado, por meio da vontade geral, de legislar para o próprio povo. Para tanto, este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar a definição que o autor dá ao Legislador, seus exemplos e a necessidade real para a existência deste Legislador. Posteriormente, analisaremos a utilidade para esta função recorrente na filosofia rousseauniana. / Abstract: The figure of the Legislator in The Social Contract work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau comes amid a popular form of legislation, being the Sovereign own people and charge through the general will, to legislate for the people themselves. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the definition that the author gives to the legislator, his examples and the real need for the existence of this Legislator. Later, we will examine the usefulness for this recurring role in Rousseau's philosophy. / Mestre

This thesis sets out an interpretation of the value of community that I call communal reciprocity. It charts the history of that ideal, analyses its use in the work of an important academic proponent, G.A. Cohen, and develops a more comprehensive account of its main features. It also discusses the implications of communal reciprocity, including whether or not it conflicts with certain freedom-based concerns and its application, including in the assessment of market economies.

This thesis applies T.M. Scanlon's version of contractualism to the problem of future generations. I begin by analyzing Rawls' contractarian account of just savings and find that there is no plausible composition of the original position that can deal with the inclusion of future people. I then examine Scanlon's contractualism and some objections to it before moving on to applying it to future people. I argue that the disanalogies between the intra- and inter-generational contexts do not preclude including future people in the contractualist framework, and that the theory avoids the non-identity problem. Part II of the thesis applies contractualism to three intergenerational topics and develops principles governing them: resource conservation, procreation, and population size. To conclude, I address how to deal with the fact that, in the case of future generations, we often have imperfect knowledge of what they will need, how our actions will affect them, and how many of them there will be.

African Cinema is an entity as diverse as the various countries, languages and cultures on this continent. The entertainment value of Cinema has been more popular than the study of its ideological significance, but nevertheless in a contemporary Africa where politics affect the social, cultural and economical survival of its citizens, Cinema can be used as a valuable asset and a powerful means of communication that can conscientize and educate African audiences. Thomas Hobbes’s leadership model and political theory of sovereignty, though a XVIIth century framework, can theoretically contribute in the analysis of the representation of African leadership styles in Cinema. This article analyzes four fiction films representing four different political leaders in, respectively, South Africa, Uganda, Cameroon and Nigeria. A film content analysis will explore the different representation of leadership styles, the personality of each leader, the power struggles in each society and how this may suggest value judgments about African leadership to the films’ various target audiences.

I examine a key shift in Michel Foucault's political philosophy from a position in which he was a staunch anti-humanist, to a final position in which he advocated not only the ability of the subject to influence his political condition, but also the individual freedoms assured by a democratic form of government. I begin by summarizing his overall critique of the post-Enlightenment West, and then explain how his observation of the Iranian Revolution served as a key turning point concerning his attitude towards the subject. Next, I elaborate on the direction of Foucault's late writings and examine how his new conceptualization of the subject leads him to embrace a democratic political system albeit free from Enlightenment philosophical foundations. I conclude by critiquing Foucault's foundationless democratic theory on the basis that it would ultimately undermine the individual freedoms and aesthetic development that he seeks to protect.

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This dissertation presents a critique of modern, technical culture. It focuses on the value of convenience, and argues that this value underlies, to a great extent, modern attitudes toward technology, especially attitudes toward the consumption of technology. In a sense, the dissertation is meant to be a complement to that line of thought which identified the domination of nature as the value which guided the development of science and technology. While the domination of nature may be the value which underlies the activity of those who develop and produce technology, the value of convenience is the value which guides those who consume the various technological apparatuses which are produced by the modern economy. Ultimately, the claim of the dissertation is that the modern prominence of the value of convenience reveals something not only about modern attitudes toward technology, but more importantly, it reveals something about current attitudes toward the human body, mortality, and necessity. The pursuit of the value of convenience is interpreted as an attempt to overcome the body and the various limits which are imposed by man's embodiment. The evidence which is used to support this claim covers a wide range. Shifts in religious ideas and doctrines are examined, and the decline of Christianity in modernity is presented as one factor which has helped to establish the prominence of the value of convenience. Material conditions in the United States are also accorded an important role in the emergence of this value as a dominating force in modernity. Along the way, several competing perspectives on the consumption of technology are criticized. Among these perspectives are those of several contemporary Marxists, as well that of Hannah Arendt. The objective of the dissertation is to foster a critical revaluation of modernity's attitudes toward technology, in the hope that such a revaluation may help to prepare the way for the emergence of a new attitude toward the body and the earth.

In this work I argue on the one hand that the modern family of the west deserves criticism for its role in the persistence of unmet need, of hurtful and unnecessary inequality, and of a harmful management, denial and denigration of difference. On the other hand, I also argue that the modern family deserves some defending, both for its role in creating us as people for whom the legitimacy of our order can be an issue, and because it is a locus of much that people experience as worthwhile. I am concerned in this work not only with the ambiguity of the modern family, but also with the general problem posed by ambiguity and affirmation. I approach this issue from the point of view on an "ontology of discordance." By this view, each way of constructing a self (and so any possible way of forming society) necessarily involves exclusion and loss, and perhaps means denial and denigration as well. I do not think, however, that this fact is necessarily any cause for "pessimism," as there are still grounds on which to defend social order as an achievement. In particular the fact of discordance calls on us to create forms of order which acknowledge their own impositional quality. This means that we must create greater institutional space for unmanaged difference. Along these lines, I affirm the importance, in modern conditions, of maintaining a category of "family," but by this term I mean only a relation whereby child care and household are accorded some distance from the state and from the "public" realm. The point is that we should avoid detailing what constitutes a "family" and instead provide vastly increased across the board support for multiple forms of householding. In particular we need to support all the individuals who care for and protect children. My conclusion is that under modern conditions this kind of minimalist defense of family best serves the causes of equality for women, space for difference, and the end of the imposition of social class.

The objective of this study has been to establish the level of significance that Gustavo Gutierrez and Juan Luis Segundo attribute to politics in their contributions to liberation theology and to extract the relevant consequences for political theory. A systematic analysis of the theory of history in the works of these two authors indicates a higher level of integration between Christianity and politics that is usual in Christian political thought. Liberation is equated with salvation and political liberation is seen as one of its components. This brings politics to a position of privilege. When at the service of justice it occupies, for our authors, a high rank among Christian concerns and when devoted to oppression it requires diligent response from every Christian. This understanding of politics is valuable in that it accentuates the political aspect of the Christian theory of history, an element frequently underestimated. Certain tensions remain, however, in the theory as a result of this emphasis: between the moral improvement expected from the involvement in political activities conducive to justice and the moral ambiguity of political structures emerging from such activity; and between the use of the concept of class struggle and notions of conversion and reconciliation. Finally, there is the danger of reducing the critical ability of Christians regarding a particular political project by identifying it with the concept of eschatology.