Alexander Kaufman

Welfare in the Kantian state

Abbreviations and Note on Translations Acknowledgements Preface 1. Kant and Welfare 2. Happiness and Welfare 3. Teleology, Rational Faith, and Context Dependence 4. Systematicity and Political Salience 5. Political Judgement 6. A Kantian Model for Social Welfare Theory Bibliography Index

Policy Experiments and Poverty Politics

Policy making has increasingly turned to controlled analysis, in the form of demonstration projects and experiments, to test social policies before they are legislated nationwide. Reviewing the history of three hallmark welfare experiments, we examine how controlled analysis became a “shadow institution” — an alternative to more visible and highly contested legislative channels for policy conflict. Applying a political‐institutional lens, we explore what kind of channel this is and how it structures conflicts over poverty policy. We find that controlled analysis may be more apt to reiterate than to challenge conventional wisdom about poverty and the poor.

Choice, Responsibility and Equality

Should responsibility for disadvantage constitute a matter of fundamental concern for egalitarians? An important strand of contemporary egalitarian thought – a strand that Elizabeth Anderson calls ‘luck equality’ – argues that responsibility for disadvantage should constitute a decisive concern for any acceptable egalitarian theory. Luck equality therefore requires a defensible account of responsibility; and disagreements regarding the nature and extent of responsibility for disadvantage have become central in the egalitarian literature. Anderson argues that luck equalitys focus on responsibility reflects a misunderstanding of the point of equality. If persuasive, her argument would establish that egalitarian thought may do without a defensible account of responsibility. Although she fails to establish this claim, she does argue persuasively that luck equality employs the notion of responsibility overly strenuously. Her critique suggests that egalitarians must qualify their acceptance of the precept that ‘genuine choice excuses otherwise unacceptable inequalities’.

Reason, Self-Legislation and Legitimacy: Conceptions of Freedom in the Political Thought of Rousseau and Kant

Rousseau and Kant both argue for contractarian theories of justice. In spite of their common contractarianism, however, Rousseau and Kant argue for conceptions of legitimacy which differ markedly. The substantive differences between their accounts of legitimacy, I suggest, illustrate the political implications of disagreement regarding the status of practical reason. Rousseau, in assigning reason to a merely instrumental status, anticipates both postmodern and empiricist skepticism regarding the power of reason to ground the choice of ends. Kant is the forerunner of contemporary accounts of justice which reject such skeptical views of practical reason. Rousseaus skepticism about practical reason ties his criterion of legitimacy directly to the actual preferences of individuals. Kants more robust conception of practical reason (1) allows him to argue for a criterion of great generality and flexibility, but (2) ties the plausibility of his account of legitimacy directly to the soundness of his conception of practical reason.

Hegel and the Ontological Critique of Liberalism

Contemporary communitarians argue that a proper consideration of ontological questions of identity and community forecloses deontological liberalism as a viable option, since deontological liberalism cannot ground a sufficiently strong form of immediate identification with the ethical life of the community. Hegels ethical theory constitutes perhaps the most fully realized account of such identification. Yet, I argue, Hegels ethics does not require the strong form of immediate identification required by communitarians. My analysis emphasizes the strands in Hegels account which suggest that a weaker form of identification, reconcilable with deontological liberalism, can plausibly ground a stable form of civil society. In particular, Hegels notion of patriotic trust is designed to ground both a direct and a reflective relation between individuals and their ethical and political tradition. Hegels analysis anticipates and offers insights to supplement recent accounts of trust as a form of social capital.

Distributive justice and access to advantage : G.A. Cohen's egalitarianism

Introduction Alexander Kaufman Part I. Justice and Justification: 1. The fundamental disagreement between luck egalitarians and relational egalitarians Elizabeth Anderson 2. Justice, interpersonal morality, and luck egalitarianism Peter Vallentyne 3. The egalitarian ethos as a social mechanism Joseph H. Carens 4. Justice and the crooked wood of human nature Adam Cureton 5. Facts, principles, and the Third Man Lea Ypi Part II. Justice and Equality: 6. Equality and freedom: Cohens critique of Sen Alexander Kaufman 7. The incoherence of luck egalitarianism David Miller 8. What is the point of egalitarian social relationships? Patrick Tomlin 9. Basic equality and the currency of egalitarian justice Gabriel Wollner Part III. Equality and Society: 10. Why not capitalism? Richard J. Arneson 11. The labor theory of justice Chandran Kukathas 12. Rescuing justice and equality from libertarianism Serena Olsaretti.

A SATISFACTORY MINIMUM CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE: RECONSIDERING RAWLS'S MAXIMIN ARGUMENT

John Rawls argues that it is possible to describe a suitably defined initial situation from which to form reliable judgements about justice. In this initial situation, rational persons are deprived of information that is ‘irrelevant from the standpoint of justice’. It is rational, Rawls argues, for persons choosing principles of justice from this standpoint to be guided by the maximin rule. Critics, however, argue that (i) the maximin rule is not the appropriate decision rule for Rawlss choice position; (ii) the maximin argument relies upon an imprecise account of the satisfactory minimum to be secured under the maximin rule; or that (iii) Rawls relies upon unrealistic assumptions about diminishing marginal value. These critics, I will suggest, argue from a number of assumptions that are confused or false. The satisfactory minimum that choosers in the original position – employing the maximin rule – seek to achieve is not a minimum level of primary goods, nor is the satisfactory minimum sought under the maximin rule supplied by the difference principle. I will argue that the maximin argument is more robust than has generally been recognized and that this argument performs a number of important functions in clarifying the nature and implications of Rawlss argument for justice as fairness.

Stability, Fit, and Consensus

In Political Liberalism, Rawls develops a distinct account of the stability of a conception of justice. According to this account, a conception of justice is stable if it is possible for the holders of diverse reasonable views about the good to affirm the conception on due reflection. A number of commentators, however, argue that Rawlss approach secures affirmation by limiting the scope of political deliberation or removing controversial issues from democratic debate. I argue that these objections mischaracterize Rawlss theory. Rawlss account of stability, I argue, is designed neither to restrict debate nor to socialize the participants in that debate.

Rawls's Practical Conception of Justice: Opinion, Tradition and Objectivity in Political Liberalism

In Political Liberalism, Rawls emphasizes the practical character and aims of his conception of justice. Justice as fairness is to provide the basis of a reasoned, informed and willing political agreement by locating grounds for consensus in the fundamental ideas and values of the political culture. Critics urge, however, that such a politically liberal conception of justice will be designed merely to ensure the stability of political institutions by appealing to the currently-held opinions of actual citizens. In order to evaluate this concern, I suggest, it is necessary to focus on the normative character of Rawlss analysis. Rawls argues that justice as fairness is the conception of justice that citizens of modern democratic cultures should choose in reflective equilibrium, after reflecting fully upon their considered judgments regarding justice. Since judgments in reflective equilibrium are grounded in considered judgment, rather than situated opinions, I argue that the criticism fails.

Political Liberalism, Constructivism, and Global Justice

In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls develops a theory of global justice whose scope and ambitions are quite modest. Far from justifying a global resource distribution principle modeled on the difference principle, Rawls’s theory does not argue for significant redistribution among peoples. This paper focuses on Rawls’s claim that the character and scope of his account of global justice are determined by the constructivist method that he employs to extend political liberalism’s project from the domestic to the global sphere. The principles of an acceptable law of peoples, he argues, are simply those principles that would be selected by rational representatives of peoples from the standpoint of a suitably characterized fair choice position. This paper argues that Rawls’s constructivist method in fact provides support for an account of global justice of greater scope and ambition than Rawls’s Law of Peoples.