Norwegian Univ. of Science and Technology, Diss--Trondheim, 2008.

A common conceptual framework depicts morality as an alien force commanding us from on high; in contrast, this dissertation presents a picture of morality that is deeply social. It is not an abstract morality that commands us, but we who place demands on each other. On this picture, we are equal participants in morality, rather than mere subjects of morality. This participation has fundamentally important implications for the shape and structure of morality; or so this dissertation argues. By way of introducing the work as a whole, I will here note some of the key facets of the social nature of morality that the dissertation develops. Our participation is primarily as enforcers, rather than followers, of morality. We hold people accountable to moral requirements through emotional responses like resentment, as well as actions and relations that follow from that attitude. As I argue, these emotions carry an important representational content, displaying the other person as having shown ill will. This ill will can be best understood as a disregard for relevant moral considerations that are available to the resented agent. Despite the negative tone of resentment, it is an aspect of being in community with each other. Someone who can be resented is a co-member of a community with us upon whom we can make demands and who can make demands upon us. We may not share community with some people regarding some issues, such as across religious divides, while still seeing them as people with whom we share at least some form of community, as within the system of basic liberal rights. There are people, as I discuss, who fail to be eligible for responsibility to even basic demands. With such people we have no community; they are to us like forces of nature, and the most dangerous of them are for us monsters. Though many endorse conceptions of community focused on shared experiences or values, I argue that such a notion of community is not appropriate for modern, diverse societies. In modern, particularly liberal, societies, we cannot expect to share religion, occupation, views of the good life, or the like, so these cannot constitute community among the members of society. A shared moral framework, however, provides a promising conception of community for diverse societies like our own. Our shared morality may thus be among the most important forms of community we can have on the large scale of modern society. That same diversity, however, raises problems for a shared morality. As I argue, our interpersonal moral demands will have to be justified to each other, given our different perspectives, and such justification may be difficult. I address both the nature of this interpersonal justification, as well as the difficulties of achieving it, within this dissertation. This dissertation shows that morality is social in yet another way. Focusing on justice, as a central part of the morality, I argue that the content of the principles to which we hold each other accountable itself emerges from our social institutions as those develop over time through our interactions. The diverse members of society must be able to share an understanding of their mutual expectations, but such members tend to disagree about how to interpret and apply moral values and principles. Social institutions, such as legal systems with courts to interpret law, can provide a common interpretation of expectations. If the rules that emerge from these institutions are justified to the members, then those rules may constitute justice within that society. This dissertation, then, presents a picture of morality that is social through and through. Morality is constructed within our social institutions, enforced interpersonally, restricted to what is mutually justified to society’s members, and ultimately constitutes one of our primary forms of community.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

Severe poverty and ethnic-conflicts are the two most devastating problems of the contemporary world. Eighteen million persons die every year from causes related to poverty and a vast amount of developing countries suffer from tremendous processes of destabilization –frequently involving highly violent actions– associated to the relations between majority and minority groups. In both cases, the intervention of international powers and institutions has not been helpful enough to make a difference, and this present reality projects itself as a distressing scene for the future. Human rights and minority rights are the most powerful international tools in trying to change this sad global scenario. However, there is an extensive debate on the nature of these rights in a theory of international justice. This is often characterized as a debate between “minimalist” who seek to reduce the currently –recognized list of human rights to a bare minimum in order to accommodate non-liberal societies, and more expansive liberal approaches, which seek to expand the list of human rights to include the full set of civil and political rights characteristic of modern liberal-democracies. In this thesis, I will argue in favour of a third position. In line with some of the more minimalist approaches, I will argue that constraints of legitimacy rule out attempts to include full civil and political rights into our list of human rights. However, I will argue that these same constraints of legitimacy advocates for expanding the currently-recognized list of human rights in at least two key respects: the recognition of certain basic social and economic rights; and the recognition of certain minority rights. In short, we should be minimalist on some issues, while more expansive in others. In developing this argument, I will relay on the framework provided by The Law of Peoples of John Rawls. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-05 10:41:44.771

No description available.

This thesis reconstructs John Rawl's Original Position in order to show that within a liberal democratic culture, the institution of punishment ought to conform to the Moral Education Theory of Punishment, put forth by Jean Hampton. According to Hampton, punishment should facilitate a medium where the state educates the criminal on the moral implications of her wrongdoing. I argue that citizens would select the Moral Education Theory of Punishment in the Original Position, since it offers the best opportunity to redress two calamities related to the criminal's wrongdoing---namely, that it threatens the moral status of the victim, and that it results from the wrongdoer's deficient moral sensibility. Upon consideration, the representatives in the Original Position recognize that redressing either of the two calamities necessitates redressing the other; thus, both objectives reinforce one another. Consequently, the representatives would unanimously select the principles of punishment manifest in the Moral Education Theory.

John Rawls' Political Liberalism is addressed to the problem of stability in democratic societies in light of the fact of religious diversity. In this thesis I argue that Political Liberalism in fact establishes the conditions for the sorts of instability with which it is concerned. It does so in at least two ways: First, it encapsulates the need for a regulative political conception of justice within the bounds of the territorially-defined state, a move seemingly at odds with the transnational character of religious identity, as expressed by transnational practices of legitimacy and dialogue. Second, it does not consider the ways in which the terms of citizenship in a liberal society are transformative for religious groups, and specifically the implications of this transformative character for Rawls' account of stability, as minority groups tend to be concerned with the integrity of their particular religious traditions.

This thesis examines the relation between two contrasting approaches to justice: the constructive and reconstructive projects of Rawls and Habermas on the one hand, and the deconstructive projects of Levinas and Derrida on the other. First, I identify the central difference between the two projects, reconstructing each account of justice as it develops in relation to Kant??s practical philosophy. I then argue that the two projects are complementary. [New Paragraph] Whilst Rawls and Habermas emphasise the possibility of objectively realising Kant??s idea of an impartial standpoint among autonomous persons, Levinas and Derrida defend the impossibility of determining the content of justice. Rawls and Habermas subscribe to the ??art of the possible??, rendering Kant??s impartial standpoint by means of the ??original position?? (Rawls) or the ??procedures of discourse ethics?? (Habermas). By contrast, Levinas argues for justice??s failure, discovering, in Kant??s moral law, a principle of responsibility for the particular other which conflicts with impartiality. Distinguishing himself from both the reconstructive tradition and Levinas, Derrida affirms, in part through his readings of Kant, the ??undecidability?? of the critical function of justice. Committed to the possibility of justice, Derrida also acknowledges its impossibility: no local determination can reconcile responsibility before the other with impartiality among all. [New Paragraph] Having identified the central difference between the two traditions, I then defend their complementarity. ??Reasonable faith?? in the possibility of justice must be supplemented by the acknowledgment of its impossibility. Conversely, attesting to justice??s failure is unsatisfactory without commitment to the possibility of constructing just social forms. Distancing myself from the liberal critique whereby deconstruction withdraws from the political (Fraser, McCarthy, Benhabib, Gutmann), I instead add my voice to a dissenting group (Young, Cornell, Mouffe, Honig, Honneth, Patton, Thomassen) which affirms that deconstruction can productively engage with the constructive tradition. Deconstruction is at home in Rawls?? view that ??the ideal of a just constitution is always something to be worked toward??.

Zugl.: Olten, Hochsch. für Soziale Arbeit, Diplomarbeit, 2006

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 104). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.