Samuel Scheffler

Choice, circumstance, and the value of equality

Many recent political philosophers have attempted to demonstrate that choice and responsibility can be incorporated into the framework of an egalitarian theory of distributive justice. This article argues, however, that the project of developing a responsibility-based conception of egalitarian justice is misconceived. The project represents an attempt to defuse conservative criticism of the welfare state and of egalitarian liberalism more generally. But by mimicking the conservative’s emphasis on choice and responsibility, advocates of responsibility-based egalitarianism unwittingly inherit the conservative’s unsustainable justificatory ambitions, unattractive moralism, and questionable metaphysical commitments. More importantly, they misrepresent the nature of our concern with equality as a value.

Conceptions of Cosmopolitanism

Lately there has been a renewal of interest among political philosophers and theorists in the idea of cosmopolitanism. However, there is little consensus among contemporary theorists about the precise content of a cosmopolitan position. This article calls attention to two different strands in recent thinking about cosmopolitanism. One strand presents it primarily as a doctrine about justice. The other presents it primarily as a doctrine about culture and the self. Although both forms of cosmopolitanism have some appeal, each is sometimes interpreted in ways that render it untenable. This article attempts to distinguish between the more and the less plausible versions of each form of cosmopolitanism. In each case, the distinction turns on how the normative status of particular interpersonal relationships and group affiliations is understood.

The Appeal of Political Liberalism

The appeal of liberalism derives to a considerable extent from its commitment to tolerating diverse ways of life and schemes of value. Yet this same commitment is also responsible for much of what is puzzling about liberalism. For what is the basis of liberal toleration? One answer rests the case for toleration on a pluralistic understanding of the nature of human value, on a conviction that the realm of value is irreducibly heterogeneous. Diverse ways of life should be tolerated, on this view, because they are routes to the realization of diverse human goods. A very different answer rests the case for tolerance on a general skepticism about value, on a conviction that there is no good sense to be made of the idea of objective value or the notion of a good life. On this view, diverse ways of life should be tolerated because there is nothing to the thought that some ways of life are better than others, and so there is no legitimate basis for intolerance. If the case for liberal toleration rests on some pluralistic thesis about the nature of human values, then both the depth of such toleration and the extent of its appeal seem called into question. For, inevitably, the pluralistic thesis will itself be controversial. Thus, on this interpretation, liberalisms professed toleration of differing conceptions of value turns out to depend on a more fundamental commitment to a particular conception of value, a conception which will be uncongenial or even abhorrent to some of the very evaluative outlooks that liberalism purports to tolerate, and which will not, therefore, serve to recommend liberal institutions to people who share those outlooks. Much the same will be true, it seems, if toleration is seen as the outgrowth of skepticism rather

Individual Responsibility in a Global Age

As the twentieth century begins to draw to a close, Europe is undergoing a process of political transformation whose outcome cannot be predicted with confidence, in part because the process is being driven by two powerful but conflicting tendencies. The first is the movement toward greater economic and political union among the countries of Western Europe. The second is the pressure, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, for the countries of Eastern Europe to fragment along ethnic and communal lines.

Doing and Allowing

Many philosophers have said, though some consequentialists have denied, that people have a greater responsibility, in general, for what they do than for what they merely allow or fail to prevent. There is little doubt that some idea of this sort has an important role to play in ordinary moral thought. I say “some idea of this sort” because there is considerable disagreement about how best to characterize the distinction on which the idea rests. Many philosophers have tried to make the idea more precise and have put forward alternative formulations that revolve around different but overlapping distinctions. Among the candidate distinctions that have been discussed are the distinctions between doing and allowing, between doing and failing to prevent, between doing and letting happen, between doing and not doing, between action and inaction, between acts and omissions, between positive agency and negative agency, between what one does to another person directly and what merely happens to that person as a result of what one does, and so on. I will not attempt in this article to adjudicate among these different candidate distinctions. What I will instead try to show is that,

Justice and Desert in Liberal Theory

Contemporary liberal theory appears to attach relatively little importance to the concept of desert. John Rawlss A Theory of Justice is exemplary in this respect. Rawls explicitly argues that desert has only a derivative role to play in an adequate account of distributive justice, and he is frequently interpreted as advocating a purely institutional theory of desert, according to which peoples deserts are in general to be identified with their legitimate institutional expectations. This threatens to deprive the concept of desert of its critical, normative force. Yet Rawls explicitly suggests that desert has a more substantial role to play in retributive than in distributive justice. Even in the case of distributive justice, moreover, he stops short of endorsing a purely institutional theory of desert. This Essay reexamines the idea that there is an asymmetry between distributive and retributive justice with respect to the role of desert. It calls attention to a neglected rationale for that idea and, in so doing, it suggests that egalitarian liberals like Rawls need not endorse the kind of wholesale skepticism about desert that has sometimes been attributed to them.

Cosmopolitanism, justice & institutions

Daedalus Summer 2008 ‘Cosmopolitanism’ is not–or not yet –the name of a determinate political philosophy. Although many contemporary theorists have put forward views that they describe as cosmopolitan, there is little agreement among them about the central elements of a cosmopolitan position. Almost nobody advocates the development of the kind of global state that would give the idea of ‘world citizenship’ literal application. Instead, disparate views have been advanced under the heading of cosmopolitanism, and these views share little more than an organizing conviction that any adequate political outlook for our time must in some way comprehend the world as a whole. To some people cosmopolitanism is primarily a view about sovereignty. To others it is primarily a view about culture and identity. To many philosophers, however, it is primarily a view about justice, and in recent years there has been an increasing flow of books and articles devoted to the subject of ‘global justice.’ In part, the focus on justice reflects the continuing influence of John Rawls, who insisted that “[j]ustice is the 1⁄2rst virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.”1 In so doing, Rawls elevated the concept of justice above other important political ideas such as liberty, law, equality, power, rights, obligation, security, democracy, and the state, and gave it a privileged place on the agenda of contemporary political philosophy. It is testimony to Rawls’s influence that justice–especially ‘distributive,’ or economic, justice– has remained a central preoccupation of political philosophers ever since.

Precis of Human Morality@@@Human Morality.

In Human Morality, I attempt to do two things. The first is to distinguish carefully among questions concerning moralitys scope, content, authority, and deliberative role, and to emphasize the importance of addressing all four of these topics if we are to understand the relation between morality and the point of view of the individual agent. The second is to explore each of these topics myself, and, in so doing, to sketch one interpretation of the place of moral concerns in human life. With respect to the question of scope, I argue that morality should be seen as pervasive, in the sense that no voluntary human action is immune to moral assessment. Although some philosophers have suggested that certain types of action may be beyond the scope of morality, I argue against this position, and try to show that some of the concerns that underlie it can be better accommodated in other ways. With respect to the issue of content, I argue that morality should be seen as moderate rather than stringent. This means that although morality and selfinterest can conflict, and although morality sometimes demands great sacrifices, moral requirements are less systematically demanding than some philosophers have believed, and than some moral theories imply. Thus, the idea that morality is moderate represents an intermediate position, which stands midway between the view that morality is stringent and the view that morality and self-interest coincide. My position on the authority of morality is less straightforward. The focal point for my discussion is the traditional claim that morality is overriding, which means that it can never be rational knowingly to do what morality forbids. I do not argue against this claim and, indeed, I criticize certain arguments against it that others have offered. Nevertheless, I express doubts about the claim of overridingness, and the bulk of my discussion is devoted to arguing that moralitys authority is less dependent on the truth of this claim than has often been supposed. For, even if the claim were true, morality would still have less authority than some people would like; and, even if the claim

Reply to Darwall

Darwall says that I have given no argument for thinking of morality as founded on ideals of the person. If I understand him correctly, he thinks that it may well be possible, as a matter of fact, to provide a persuasive argument of this sort. But, he believes, any such argument would also turn out to be an argument for a particular ideal of the person an ideal which would be recognizably Kantian and would support Kantian moral principles. As a result, Darwall feels, I am confronted with a dilemma. So long as I fail to provide an argument for the view that morality is founded on ideals of the person, I am simply begging the question against those utilitarian moral views whose rejection, Darwall feels, is the inevitable result of thinking of morality as rooted in a conception of the person. But, on the other hand, I cannot afford to avail myself of such arguments as there may be for the view that morality is based on ideals of the person, for such arguments would also turn out to support a single ideal of the person and a single set of moral principles, and Dar-