What do we owe to each other in civil society? And what do we owe to each other specifically in the aftermath of a large-scale moral transgression that implicates or impacts a large portion of the population? This dissertation, which takes place at the intersection of political and moral philosophy, begins with this question. I argue that in order to make sense of our social and political obligations under the circumstances of so-called transitional justice, we must first interrogate the moral grounding of those obligations — an activity that is all too easy to overlook or engage in non-reflectively. I argue that while a consequentialist approach to ethical value underlies our intuitions in transitional justice as presently practiced, a contractualist approach offers a promising alternative. On my account, a contract-based approach is especially well-suited to transitional moments, not only because it conveys the collaborative nature of the transitional project, but because it reifies the agency and autonomy of previously victimized individuals.
Chapter I draws out the distinction between transitional justice as an array of formal mechanisms and practices (‘formal transitional justice’) and transitional justice as a collection of intuitions about response to grievous wrongdoing (‘ideal transitional justice’). Our ideas about transitional justice influence and shape the form it ultimately takes on the world stage, and those ideas are informed in large part by our moral intuitions. To that end, I introduce the notion of ‘transitional ethics’ as a complement to transitional justice.
In Chapter II, I make the case that a thorough exploration of transitional ethics requires us to investigate the suitability of various ethical approaches for the transitional moment. While virtue ethical and deontological approaches fail to resonate robustly with the unique demands of the transitional moment, consequentialist and contractualist approaches succeed. Indeed, the former is already implicitly present in most scholarly theorizing about transitional justice, but the latter deserves increased attention.
It is with this consideration that the remainder of the dissertation is concerned. Chapter III considers the impact of a contractualist transitional ethic on victim experiences, and makes the case that the contractualist emphasis on relationships lends itself particularly well to the reification of their moral worth and dignity. Chapter IV turns towards perpetrators, particularly to cases of ‘complex’ perpetrators who themselves may also be victims in some sense or another. Chapter V engages with the final puzzle: how can we hold wrongdoers retributively accountable (if indeed such a thing is desirable) when we orient our approach to transitional justice around the recognition of personal dignity? I argue that the recognition of personal dignity, which contractualism emphasizes, is not incompatible with accountability. Rather, conceiving of perpetrators as signatories to the social contract protects their fundamental rights while emphasizing their civil responsibilities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/45268 |
| Date | 26 October 2022 |
| Creators | Leiby, Rebeccah |
| Contributors | Dahlstrom, Daniel |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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