Gary Chartier

Non-human animals and process theodicy

I argue that that the suffering of non-human animals poses some potentially knotty difficulties for process theodicy. To respond satisfactorily to the problem of evil as it involves animals, process theists will, I argue, need either to defend some form of consequentialism or make a number of potentially plausible but certainly contestable empirical claims. I begin this internal critique by explaining the nature of the process response to the problem of evil. I explain how process thought can respond with reasonable effectiveness to the general problem of the suffering of non-human animals while highlighting the special difficulty predation might be thought to pose for the process thinker. Then, I elaborate alternative consequentialist and non-consequentialist process accounts of divine goodness in the face of the harm to non-human animals caused by predation. After summarizing my analyses in the conclusion, I underscore the costs associated with these alternatives. Process philosophers and theologians have advanced a response to the problem of evil that is arguably less open to challenge on its own terms than any available alternative. And a number of process theists have been especially vocal philosophical and theological defenders of the interests of non-human animals.1 I argue here that that the harms undergone by non-human animals deserve greater attention than they have heretofore received from process philosophers and theologians concerned with the problem of evil, and that the suffering of non-human animals poses some knotty difficulties for process theodicy.2 To respond satisfactorily to the problem of evil as it involves animals, process theists will, I argue, need either to defend some form of consequentialism -which process philosophers themselves have criticized and which is, in any case, subject to serious objections - or to make a number of potentially plausible but certainly contestable empirical claims. I begin this internal critique by explaining the nature of the process response to the problem of evil. I proceed to explain how process thought can respond with reasonable effectiveness to the general problem of the suffering of

Friendship, Identity, and Solidarity. An Approach to Rights in Plant Closing Cases

My focus is on the problem of plant closings, which have become increas- ingly common as the deindustrialization of America has proceeded since the early 1980s. In a well-known article, Joseph William Singer proposed that workers who sued to keep a plant open in the face of a planned closure might appropriately be regarded as possessing a reliance-based interest in the plant that merited some pro- tection. I seek to extend this sort of argument in two ways. In the first half of the paper, I point to the way in which tacit obligation emerges in friendship between persons in the absence of explicit commitments. Employers and employees are of course not as such friends. But I argue that the development of tacit obligations binding friends provides a useful analogy for understanding the growth of similar tacit obligations binding plant owners to workers and local communities. In the second half, I draw on Margaret Radins work on property and identity to ground a related argument. I suggest that the potential contribution of plants—and the tra- ditions and networks of relationships they help to create and sustain—to the iden- tities of workers and communities provides reason for at least some legal protection of employee and community interests.

Augustin Thierry, “The Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie” (1853)

Thierry, a historian, chronicles a 600-year struggle for emancipation of the “inferior and oppressed classes” into a free and independent bourgeoisie, literally the inhabitants of the free towns and cities of Europe. Two forces were at work. One from the north was the Gallo-Frankish system of municipal, communal government; the other from the south was the Roman notion of city governance by consuls within a Roman legal framework of natural law. The two combined and created a unique system of city governance which acknowledged the right of resistance to unjust rule, equality under the law for all inhabitants of the city, and the dignity of labor. Out of the city charters evolved the idea of constitutions which limited the power of the rulers and guaranteed the rights of the citizens.

Autonomy, Fulfillment, and Expression

There are multiple reasons for state and private actors to respect people’s autonomy. Respecting expressive activity is a way of respecting the personal autonomy of those who engage in this kind of activity and those who receive their communications, and so of facilitating the flourishing of both.

Roderick T. Long, “Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class” (1998)

There are libertarian movements that can be seen as socialist, capitalist, and populist. All of these groups can profit from an understanding of class in which political differences are viewed as foundational vis-a-vis economic ones. Such an understanding of class, Smithian in nature, is superior to Marx’s. The ruling class should be seen as including both state actors and economic actors outside the state, with each of these subgroups jockeying for power with the other.

Expression on Government Land, by Government Workers, and in Non-Governmental Associations

The use of publicly accessible government land, expressive activity by government workers, and expressive acts within and on behalf of non-governmental associations all raise distinctive problems, but the principles elaborated in previous chapters show how these problems can be satisfactorily addressed.

Murray N. Rothbard, “The Anatomy of the State” (1965)

The state is not beneficial, Rothbard emphasizes, but exploitative. It is not the expression of the will or the servant of the interests of the people (though majoritarianism is itself unjust) but an instrument of class domination. The state attempts to secure and maintain control over the use of force in order to exploit its subjects. Democratic rhetoric, for instance, like that of the divine right of kings, serves to mask the character of the state as an instrument of class rule and to mobilize support for state policies. The state seeks self-preservation and self-expansion, notably through war.

Ludwig von Mises, “On Castes, Classes, and Group Interests” (1945)

The classical liberal economist Mises was reluctant to use the word “class” because he thought it was a thoroughly Marxist term. Instead he used alternative words to express the same idea, speaking, for instance, of the “clash of group interests” and the emergence of a “new caste system.” He fits into the classical liberal tradition of thinking about class because the key aspect in his mind was a group’s use of its access to state power as a means of acquiring privileges at the expense of others. In his words, vested interests “can be welded together into a group with solidarity of interests (a class) only when (political) privilege intervenes.” In the mid-twentieth century that “group with solidarity of interests” was made up of industrial producers who controlled state policy in most western countries.

William Leggett, “The Lordlings of the Paper Dynasty” (1834)

The Jacksonian democrat Leggett mocked the “scrip nobility” and “chartered libertines” who had emerged in America after the War of 1812 and lived by seeking government monopoly bank charters, loans and deals to launch canal projects, and interest earned from government loans and debt. He objected to their opposition to ordinary working people, those who worked with their own hands, forming associations and joining political parties to protect their own interests. He reminded them that there was no hereditary nobility in America and that they might well end up as poor as the ordinary working people they now disdained.

Richard Cobden, “England Is a Perfect Paradise for the Aristocracy” (1845–49)

The English cotton manufacturer and politician Cobden brilliantly used class analysis to get the protectionist corn laws repealed in 1846. He argued that tariffs and restrictions on imported grain benefited the class of aristocratic land owners at the expense of the class of middle and industrious English people and used his rhetorical skills to rip away “the transparent veil of mystification” which hid how this was accomplished. He also was able to split the landowning class and use threats of further political upheavals to intimidate those who refused to reform the unequal system of taxation, whom he mockingly called “the Noodles and Doodles of the aristocracy.”