Justice

A person’s childhood years are the most formative of her life. In Independence for Children, Matthew Clayton offers a novel argument for why we should protect these years from the arbitrary influence of adults who might try to impose their worldviews, religious doctrines, and conceptions of the good. Children are rightly owed a certain kind of parenting, one which respects that they are their own persons. These are powerful ideas. Nonetheless, this paper argues that childhood independence is neither a practicable (...) ideal nor a sufficiently evaluatively rich ideal to guide parenting. The paper outlines two possible interpretations of Clayton’s anti-perfectionist position: a weaker interpretation focused on parents’ intentions and a stronger interpretation focused on parents’ performance. The weaker account relies on the often illusory distinction between intentions and foreseen results. It also risks being self-defeating. The stronger account faces several challenges, first, that it is impossible for most parents to reconcile a duty to parent in an anti-perfectionist way with their own adherence to a comprehensive worldview. Second, a fortiori it is impossible for parents to be parents without radically shaping their children’s view of the world and how to live in it. Finally, even if parents could provide an anti-perfectionist upbringing for their children, such an upbringing would embrace an overly parsimonious vision of what, and who, matters morally. Ethical independence may be a sensible norm to govern our conduct with other adults, but not our conduct toward children. (shrink)

I develop a novel contractualist defense of a limited moral equality of combatants thesis, on which just and unjust combatants enjoy equal moral status in some wars. This possibility reveals overlooked conceptual space for intermediary positions between orthodox just war theory and revisionism. I argue that following a limited moral equality of combatants thesis foreseeably protects both civilians’ and combatants’ strong interests in survival more robustly than alternative pacifist and revisionist principles. So such a thesis cannot be reasonably rejected. Contractualism (...) therefore entails a limited moral equality of combatants thesis. In defending this thesis, I also address the concern that contractualism cannot be applied to just war theory due to the massive noncompliance inherent to warfare. I conclude by contrasting my contractualist approach with the recent contractarian one by Yitzhak Benbaji and Daniel Statman. I demonstrate that the contractualist approach avoids several counterexamples that plague Benbaji and Statman’s contractarian account. (shrink)

When, if ever, are we justified in relying on another’s moral judgment? On the one hand, Pessimists about moral testimony think there is something wrong, suspicious, or illegitimate about deferring to moral testimony. On the other hand, Optimists suggest that when the speaker is knowledgeable and trustworthy, their moral testimony can provide us with a reason to believe and make use of that moral proposition. In this paper, I show why we should be optimistic about the permissibility of a subclass (...) of moral deference, “experiential deference,” where the testifier is better positioned, by virtue of her socially-situated standpoint, to recognize and assess harms pertaining to her own marginalization. -/- I argue that socially situated experience can confer a domain-specific and epistemically grounded authority to track and articulate thick harms, such as dismissal, disrespect, and marginalization. Because such harms are at once descriptive and evaluative, recognizing a testifier’s empirical authority in a domain is, in part, to recognize a corresponding, domain-limited moral authority. Drawing on the assurance theory of testimonial justification, I argue that experiential testimony is often high-stakes, in that its dismissal can perpetuate injustice, and thus generates not only epistemic but moral demands on receivers to defer as a condition of appropriate uptake. Experiential assurances generate both a pro tanto epistemic reason for belief and a pro tanto normative reason to accord the testifier the respect her experiential authority warrants. Finally, I argue that experiential deference is especially well justified and avoids the standard objections to moral deference. (shrink)

Building on a recent article that identifies a “dancing ecofeminist logic” in Australian logician Val Plumwood and pairs it with Australian sociologist Ariel Salleh’s “ethics of holding,” the present article further elaborates this logical ethics into a transgender ethics of “holding green commons” in Indian philosopher of science and ecological activist Vandana Shiva’s Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development (2016). I then bolster this ethics by partnering it with Spirit/Dance (a reconstruction of global spiritual practices of the poor) to highlight (...) these spiritual practitioners as “spirit-lanterned guardians,” inspired by the heroic protestors of the Chipko land rights movement in India, who channeled Hindu spirits and carried lanterns in the daylight, to symbolize their silvicultural wisdom defending the forest. Finally, I identify five such guardians in the Global North today: three fictional “spirits” (Peter Pan, Green Lantern, and Robin Hood) and two present-day ecofeminist activists, namely martyred “Cop City” protestor and forest defender Tortuguita Terán and the interdisciplinary movement artist jill sigman/thinkdance. (shrink)

This chapter reconstructs G.A. Cohen’s influential critique of John Rawls’s theory of justice, focusing on Cohen’s claim that Rawls construed the scope of justice too narrowly. While Rawls held that the principles of justice apply to the basic structure of society—its fundamental social, political, and economic institutions—Cohen argued that these principles must also govern the personal decisions individuals make under those institutions. On Cohen’s view, everyday choices must be guided by an egalitarian ethos of justice. The chapter considers two key (...) responses to this challenge: that Cohen’s view is overly demanding, and that Rawls’s own theory, properly interpreted, already entails such an ethos. In tracing this debate, the chapter highlights Cohen’s departure from Marxist orthodoxy, the moralist dimension of his account of distributive justice, and an underappreciated relational egalitarian strand in his political philosophy. Ultimately, it suggests that the gap between Rawls and Cohen may be narrower than is often assumed, raising broader questions about the relationship between liberalism and socialism in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

The trolley problem has been analyzed as a synchronic problem since Foot (1967): one agent, one moment, one switch. Thomson (1976, 1985) distinguishes the driver — who has, in her own words, “previously directed the trolley” — from the bystander, who has not, and treats this prior positional difference as load-bearing; her 2008 reversal (“Turning the Trolley,” Philosophy & Public Af airs 36:4) goes further, concluding the bystander may not do what the driver may. Kamm’s most systematic treatment of the (...) field (The Trolley Problem Mysteries, Oxford, 2020) organizes its opening lecture around exactly this question: “Who Turned the Trolley?” The literature has therefore always tracked who stands at the switch and what prior relationship they had to the emergency. It has never analyzed a case in which that prior relationship is not causal or positional but constitutive — a case in which the same psychological mechanism required to operate the switch is the mechanism that generated the asymmetric track layout in the first place. This paper argues that the Longevity Asymmetry Corpus (Huynh 2026a–u) describes exactly this case, and that no existing position in the trolley literature — Foot’s doctrine of double effect, Thomson’s doing/allowing distinction, Kamm’s principle of permissible harm, or utilitarian aggregation — locates it, because all four analyze the moment at the switch, not the window before the track was laid. The corpus’s F2 window (Huynh 2026a, 2026d) is that earlier window: the period during which governance actors could still have redesigned the track layout, before the Grief–Attribution–Legitimation–Concentration sequence (Huynh 2026a, 2026f) reaches a Concentration stage the corpus’s five paradoxes (Huynh 2026a, 2026i) establish is structurally resistant to redesign. The Governance Paradox (Huynh 2026e, 2026o) specifies why the governance actors positioned to redesign the track during the F2 window could not do so impartially: A5 — the neurological standing charge of constitutive attachment documented in Huynh (2026k, 2026l) — is the same mechanism driving both the demand that produced the asymmetric track layout and, later, the political pressure at the switch itself. The agent asked to pull the lever is not a neutral bystander, and is not simply “the driver” in Thomson’s causal sense. The agent is a co-architect of the track, present at both ends of the causal chain by the same psychological mechanism. The paper’s philosophical contribution is locating this case relative to the existing literature rather than inventing new vocabulary for it. Iris Marion Young’s social connection model of responsibility (2006, 2011) already supplies the correct general form: responsibility for structural injustice is forward-looking rather than backward-looking; it does not isolate a single perpetrator; it judges background conditions rather than isolated acts; and it attaches to all who contribute to the structural process, not only to whoever stands at the switch when harm materializes. Young’s model has never been applied to the trolley tradition specifically, and it does not, on its own, supply a mechanism -/- explaining why forward-looking responsibility becomes most urgent at one dateable point rather than continuously. The corpus’s Symmetric Wound and F2 window supply exactly this: a formally specified window at which backward-looking liability-model analysis stops being adequate and Young’s forward-looking model becomes the only coherent frame. This paper’s contribution is narrow and specific: it extends the social connection model into the trolley tradition, using the corpus’s F2/A5/Governance Paradox architecture to give that model the temporal precision — a dateable window, a specific mechanism, a specific reason redesign became impossible after Concentration — that Young’s original, more general formulation does not supply. (shrink)

Este trabajo explora las convergencias teóricas entre dos pensadoras de contextos diferentes, pero con una visión crítica común sobre los regímenes totalitarios y la deshumanización. Arendt, figura clave en la teoría del totalitarismo, y Montseny, anarquista y exiliada, ofrecen reflexiones profundas sobre la opresión y la justicia. Aunque no se conocieron ni leyeron, ambas compartieron una crítica convergente hacia la deshumanización fascista. Arendt trabajó dentro de un marco académico, mientras que Montseny estuvo al margen de los círculos filosóficos oficiales, siendo (...) su obra con frecuencia relegada al feminismo o la militancia política. Este análisis invita a cuestionar cómo la filosofía ha sido limitada a lo largo de la historia, y cómo voces marginales como la de Montseny enriquecen nuestra comprensión ética y política de la humanidad. (shrink)

¿Qué y quién decide los nombres y problemas que forman parte del canon de la historia de la filosofía? Aunque parezca una pregunta historiográfica, los criterios por los que se rige tienen (y han tenido) profundas consecuencias para la comprensión de la disciplina, pues afecta a lo que se enseña, se cita, se legitima y, sobre todo, a lo que se deja al margen. -/- Este volumen supone una respuesta colectiva a esta pregunta. Estructurado en diez capítulos, investigadoras e investigadores (...) de diferentes ramas filosóficas analizan los mecanismos de exclusión del canon filosófico occidental y exploran metodologías alternativas para narrar la historia de la filosofía desde sus márgenes. Las diversas contribuciones recorren temáticas como la crítica epistemológica feminista y los enfoques contextualistas o la reivindicación de figuras concretas del pensamiento, como fueron Marie de Gournay, las pragmatistas invisibilizadas, Federica Montseny y Elena Ferrante, entre otras, para poder así reconfigurar el espacio filosófico. -/- La pretensión de este libro va más allá de señalar o nombrar las ausencias del canon filosófico, pues incide en los condicionantes tanto históricos, institucionales, epistemológicos como ideológicos que han dado pie a la exclusión o marginalización de estas autoras; a la vez que desarrolla las herramientas necesarias para integrarlas de forma orgánica en los debates filosóficos actuales. Esta obra mira a la vez hacia el pasado, para corregir las omisiones, y hacia el futuro, para establecer nuevas formas de hacer y comunicar la filosofía. -/- En resumen, los textos aquí recopilados invitan a analizar los márgenes como territorios de elaboración crítica desde los que poder (re)pensar la tradición filosófica y sus protagonistas. (shrink)

Historically, domestic violence has been dismissed as a personal matter and standardly understood as beyond public concern. What happened within the home was seen as under the authority of the head of the household rather than the state. More recently, activists and scholars have argued that the state should protect the civil liberties of private citizens, even when those civil liberties are violated within the family. As a consequence, domestic violence is increasingly recognized as a legitimate public concern and as (...) a serious wrong meriting public condemnation and intervention. Even so, what is recognized as “domestic violence,” any explanation of why domestic violence is wrong, and the appropriate means of intervention remain contested. Clarifying the nature of and appropriate responses to domestic violence therefore remains an ethically, socially, and politically important challenge. (shrink)

In _Identity Politics: Left and Right_, Nils Holtug brings remarkable clarity to a “particularly slippery” set of phenomena. Whether you embrace the banner of identity politics or reject it, you’ll find much to excite and challenge you in this wonderful work. With chapters dedicated to the demarcation, justification, and downstream consequences of identity politics (chaps. 1, 2, 3, and 9) and to specific topics including affirmative action (chap. 4), cultural appropriation (chap. 5), cancel culture (chap. 6), deplatforming and statue removal (...) (chap. 7), and even white supremacy (chap. 8), this comprehensive, careful, and insightful text should be required reading for anyone hoping to learn more about, or weigh in on, this vexed collection of issues. (shrink)

Recent advances in machine learning have made it feasible to deploy AI systems in many different contexts. When machines act without human input, they expose people to risks. Within business ethics, the dominant framework for addressing such risks has been the moral machine thesis: the idea that autonomous systems should emulate what is morally right in human interpersonal decision-making. Recently, it has been suggested that this approach should also guide regulation. Moral machine regulation is the view that the right regulatory (...) approach to AI is to determine the correct choice in individual situations and craft regulation from these judgements. This paper argues that this view is mistaken. What is right in an individual case is not necessarily right when aggregated into a system of regulation, and what is right can depend on the regulatory framework itself. Instead, we argue for practice-dependent governance of AI. On this view, regulation of AI systems should aim to ensure that the practices in which they are deployed are just and justifiable to those affected, in light of the values and purposes those practices are meant to serve. (shrink)

This paper proposes a minimal theoretical framework for understanding individuality, selection, and equality through the concept of feedback boundaries. The central claim is that individuality is not a fixed substance but a boundary generated by the density, reciprocity, and continuity of connection. When systems remain outside a shared individual boundary, their differences cannot be internally coordinated. Difference is then more likely to be resolved through competition, exclusion, domination, or selection. When systems become sufficiently connected, however, they no longer function merely (...) as separate external individuals. Their relations may generate a higher-order individual. Within this shared boundary, difference is not primarily resolved by selection, but by coordination, adjustment, and integration. Equality, in this sense, is not merely a moral demand but a structural tendency internal to sufficiently integrated individuality. The paper therefore distinguishes two regimes of difference: selection outside the individual and equality within the individual. It does not claim that every conflict or inequality is caused by insufficient connection alone. Rather, it argues that the boundary of individuality determines whether difference is mainly externalized as selection or internalized as coordination. The formal notation used in the paper is intended as a heuristic clarification of the argument, not as a complete empirical model. (shrink)

Drawing from Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death", this chapter explores the idea that a great deal of human behavior is motivated by the need to overcome our awareness of mortality. Becker argued that people pursue 'immortality projects' -- or sources of meaning, identity, or forms of recognition that allow them to feel connected to something larger than themselves. These projects typically manifest into constructive and socially admired forms: starting a family, pursuing a career, writing a book, painting your masterpiece, (...) etc. However, what's less discussed, is how they also have the capacity to emerge in destructive forms when a person lacks the ability, resources, or support to pursue legitimate avenues but still has the same desire to feel significant as everyone else. By connecting Becker's insights to questions of identity, alienation, and criminality, this chapter argues that the search for meaning is not just a philosophical concern but an intensely powerful force which shapes both social order and social deviance. -/- Chapter 3, The Things We Leave Behind - The Fractured Self. (shrink)

This text is the result of academic research aimed at finding viable ways to reduce social inequalities in the Brazilian context through education. Our main focus was the search for ways to reduce violence through education and the ways in which education can promote human development and security in general. To achieve this goal with clarity and consistency, I address both theoretical and practical issues. The theoretical part clarifies essential concepts and establishes the background for the rest of the work. (...) The practical part is an application of these concepts in the Brazilian educational setting. (shrink)

When public officials act in ways that unjustly harm or otherwise burden someone, how may we, as ordinary citizens, respond? This essay contrasts familiar philosophical answers (which focus either on the political outcomes our response achieves, or on procedural values of civility, democracy, etc.) with an overlooked alternative concerned with what this chapter calls “justice in the administration of justice.” Making, enforcing, being subject to, or resisting political decisions gives rise to benefits and burdens, both on those who make political (...) decisions and on those who are subject to these decisions. Who should, as a matter of fairness, bear the burdens of this process—especially when it misfires, and gives rise to unjust laws, verdicts, and so on—is an important, yet largely neglected, question in political ethics. The chapter distinguishes two different approaches to the matter: one focused on who performs the unjust act, the other on whose interests justify and guide the practice of which the unjust act is a part. It shows that they have importantly different implications for two practical questions raised by official injustice: what we may do to the officials who commit the injustice, and what we may do to the citizens of the community for whom the official acts. Along the way, the chapter sketches an account of public officials as servants (or fiduciaries) of the citizens, which explains why, in certain (quite demanding) circumstances, citizens rather than officials should bear the burdens associated with preventing or correcting unjust political decisions. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s service conception of legitimacy says citizens must obey the state when its directives allow them to comply with reason better than they would by deciding independently. Yet citizens’ capacity to decide for themselves is endogenous to state authority: the more they defer, the less competent they might become. Consequently, a state might secure its legitimacy through a self-fulfilling dynamic whereby citizens need state authority only because they have grown dependent upon it. This article diagnoses the problem and explains (...) how the service conception can guard against it. Besides Raz's account, its argument applies to any theory of legitimacy with a “service” component. (shrink)

Climate justice demands polluters to take responsibility for both present and future harm caused by past GHG emissions and for future harm caused by future GHG emissions. One problem with this is double climate taxation: people living in historical polluting countries must both shoulder the burden of an effective and inclusive climate transition and repay the climate debt incurred by their predecessors. Although double climate taxation might be defensible on normative grounds, it risks making climate justice politically infeasible. I therefore (...) maintain that global climate justice should focus on future, rather than past, climate harms. The forward-looking polluter pays principle (FL-PPP) can ensure both a cost-effective climate transition and a fair distribution of the climate burden, provided it is applied as follows: i) each country must introduce a carbon price calibrated to the global social cost of carbon; ii) each country must transfer part of carbon revenues collected at the country level to an international fund; iii) global carbon revenues must be redistributed on the basis of the country-level social cost of carbon. The FL-PPP burden can be made more progressive, moreover, if the formula for allocating global carbon revenues is adjusted through two coefficients, one consumption-based and one priority-sensitive. (shrink)

Written in the tradition of the epistolary essay, and inspired by Oriana Fallaci’s Lettera a una bambina mai nata, this monograph addresses two children from whom the author has been separated by family estrangement. Through memoir, reflection, and moral testimony, the work explores memory, family narratives, dementia, social performance, abandonment, authenticity, and the ethical obligations that bind generations together. It argues that human relationships are ultimately sustained not by status, inheritance, or public performance, but by presence, sacrifice, and acts of (...) care that endure beyond institutional and familial erasure. Combining autobiographical narrative with philosophical reflection, the work examines how memory is preserved when family histories become contested and how testimony can function as a form of resistance against social and personal disappearance. (shrink)

This paper proposes a fundamental reconceptualisation of the relationship between autistic individuals and animals. Moving beyond therapeutic and companion based frameworks, it argues that animals often function as Sovereign Co Regulators whose presence provides the temporal, emotional, and existential scaffolding through which autistic lives are organised. Drawing on the lived histories of Pollon and Vesuvio, the paper develops four theoretical concepts: Phenomenological Attendance, Sovereign Co Regulation, Vertical Time, and Architectural Grief. It argues that interspecies relationships of this depth cannot be (...) adequately understood through existing clinical or philosophical models and proposes a new framework for understanding animal human bonds within neurodivergent experience. By treating animals as biological peers and co authors of a life rather than companions or therapeutic tools, the paper contributes to phenomenology, disability studies, autism research, and the philosophy of care. (shrink)

This paper develops a phenomenological, neurological, and comparative sociological account of life within the combined presentation of Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AuDHD). Drawing upon lived experience, contemporary neuroscience, disability theory, and institutional analysis, it examines the gap between external observation and internal experience in neurodivergent cognition. -/- The paper introduces the concepts of Closure Dependency, Loop Architecture, Delayed Collapse, Institutional Open Loops, Masking Debt, and AuDHD Temporal Asymmetry. It argues that many difficulties commonly attributed to personal (...) weakness or poor self regulation are more accurately understood as consequences of distinct neurological architectures interacting with institutional systems designed around neurotypical assumptions. -/- By integrating phenomenology, cognitive science, disability studies, and social theory, the paper proposes a new framework for understanding neurodivergent experience, institutional accessibility, and the relationship between cognitive architecture and procedural environments. The work aims to provide both a theoretical contribution to neurodiversity scholarship and a practical framework for families, clinicians, educators, policymakers, and institutions. (shrink)

现代政治理论常常将合法政府等同于程序性民主——竞争性选举、多党制和形式权利。本文认为，亚里士多德的古典类型学提供了一个更根本的标准：一个政体是好的，当它为共同利益而统治，无论多少人掌握政府权力。利用全 球民调数据（显示世界各地的公民主要根据福利、公平和保护而非仅凭程序来定义民主），我提出一个关于合法性的结构性标准：显明型制度的四个条件——可见性、对称性、可争辩性和可修复性。任何政体——民主制、君主立 宪制或一党制——只要满足这些条件，就获得了被统治者的同意而统治，因为被统治者能够看到后果、挑战决策并期望修复。当代中国的一个具体例子（“蓝风铃”恢复性司法项目）说明了一党制如何能够实例化显明型制度并产 生真正的同意。本文的结论是：亚里士多德是正确的——政治的目的是繁荣，而非程序；君主制（或任何政体）的可辩护性不在于世袭或传统，而在于其显明型架构。本文对比较政治理论和当代中国治理辩论具有直接的启示意义 。 .

This paper examines the ivory tower as a derisive term for academic institutions that appear detached from the secular world. The establishment of the ivory tower is grounded in the harmful superficiality of the secular world. In particular, it squanders and maintains authority, such as the achievements of past greats and academics. This malfunctions academics and causes significant damage not only to scholars but also to society. Due to the ivory tower, there are many invalid arguments that ignore the secular (...) world, such as goodness, ethics, justice, diversity, power gradients, and the majority. This stems from a disregard for logical thinking, which is the foundation of academics. First and foremost, it should be thoroughly enforced. (shrink)

In a recent article, Alexander Motchoulski offers a novel relational egalitarian view of reparations for historical injustice. Motchoulski argues that we ought to prefer the relational egalitarian view to available harm and inheritance theories because it avoids epistemic uncertainty. I argue that Motchoulski’s theory involves ambiguity that limits it in avoiding this epistemic uncertainty. I offer an amendment to Motchoulski’s theory that insulates it from this ambiguity and epistemic uncertainty.

The Two Solitudes introduces a new socio anthropological distinction between two fundamentally different forms of human isolation: vertical solitude and horizontal solitude. Vertical solitude refers to the historically recognised isolation of leaders, commanders, visionaries, and elevated figures whose displacement from ordinary social experience occurs through hierarchy, responsibility, or power. Horizontal solitude, by contrast, refers to the dimensional isolation experienced by neurodivergent and cognitively divergent individuals whose cognitive architecture processes reality at a resolution incompatible with the surrounding social order. Drawing upon (...) auto ethnographic field notes, neurodivergence theory, social anthropology, situated epistemology, and comparative historical analysis, the work develops a new theoretical framework for understanding horizontal solitude, vertical time cognition, translated and untranslated selves, and the sanctuary of low symbolic friction. The monograph argues that many institutional and social systems pathologise dimensional incompatibility as personal dysfunction rather than recognising it as architectural mismatch. (shrink)

This monograph examines how elite institutions convert inequality into procedural architecture through administrative processing systems rather than explicit exclusion. Drawing on institutional sociology, disability studies, legal analysis, and empirical institutional documentation, the work introduces the Turing Theory of institutional cognition and the concept of institutional bifurcation, describing how intellectual evaluation and administrative processing operate as structurally separated subsystems. Using admissions data, policy analysis, and documented institutional interaction, the book argues that modern meritocratic institutions optimise for processing efficiency rather than epistemic (...) truth, producing systematic exclusion of non standard cognitive profiles despite intellectual recognition within scholarly domains. The work integrates sociological theory, equality law analysis, and reflexive institutional observation to propose a structural diagnostic framework applicable across higher education governance and computational decision systems. This Zenodo deposit establishes a timestamped scholarly record prior to formal academic submission. (shrink)

This paper analyzes modern power not only in terms of what it prohibits, but in terms of what it repeatedly requires human beings to prove. To this end, it proposes the concept of existential interrogation. Existential interrogation refers to a form of power that emerges when not merely a specific action or role, but one’s survival, recognition, speech, and possibility of failure as a whole are subordinated to repetitive, asymmetrical, and humiliating conditions. This paper builds on existing discussions of the (...) commodification of survival conditions, bureaucracy, administrative burden, micro-power, recognition, capital, decommodification, substantive freedom, and structural violence, while reconstructing them as a structure in which the eligibility of human existence is repeatedly required to be proven. In modern society, housing, healthcare, labor, administration, academia, creation, and publishing are not merely institutional domains. They may function as interrogative apparatuses that ask human beings: “Are you allowed to be here?”, “Are you allowed to speak?”, and “Are you allowed to fail?” In this process, survival becomes not a right, but a permission that must be repeatedly renewed, and human beings are placed in the position of applicants rather than citizens. However, this paper does not reject all forms of interrogation or verification. Human society cannot be maintained without responsibility interrogation and power interrogation. The problem lies not in interrogation itself, but in the fact that interrogation is concentrated primarily on the survival, speech, and possibility of failure of the vulnerable, while it is not directed sufficiently toward the force of power and its demands for sacrifice. In particular, this paper does not understand privilege simply as the possession of more resources. Privilege is the condition in which one has to explain one’s existence and eligibility less often, for less time, and in less humiliating ways. In other words, privilege has the structure of exemption from explanation. Conversely, poverty is not merely a lack of resources, but an increase in the demand for explanation. The poor must repeatedly explain why they need support, why they failed, why they have not yet become stable, and why their speech and attempts deserve recognition. These repeated demands for proof generate cognitive, emotional, and temporal exhaustion, which this paper conceptualizes as proof fatigue. Furthermore, the sense that one must continuously explain the legitimacy of one’s own existence produces ontological fatigue. This paper also focuses on the fact that the possibility of failure is not socially distributed equally. Although it appears that all human beings can fail, the conditions under which survival, recognition, relationships, and future possibilities are not withdrawn after failure are distributed by class. The failure of those who possess assets, housing, parental support, belonging, citizenship, reputation, or institutional trust may be interpreted as experience or growth. By contrast, the failure of those who lack such buffers may lead directly to exclusion, debt, threats to livelihood, insecurity of residence, and the reduction of the possibility of speech. Therefore, freedom is not merely a state in which options are available. It must also include the conditions under which one’s existence does not immediately collapse after failure. This paper calls this the license to fail. In conclusion, this paper reconstructs the central problem of modern power not as “what does power prohibit human beings from doing?”, but as “what does power continuously require human beings to prove?” In a society where survival becomes permission, privilege is the condition of being less interrogated, and poverty is the condition of having to explain one’s existence more often. Yet a free society is not a society where no one is interrogated. A free society is one in which the basic survival, speech, and possibility of failure of human beings are interrogated less humiliatingly, while the power that conditions the survival of others is interrogated more strictly. The direction of interrogation must change. Human beings should not have to endlessly prove why they may live. Power must prove why it may condition life. (shrink)

The counterfactual assertion that the United States is economically victimized by its trade relationship with Canada rests on three serious compounding errors. The first is conceptual: "deficit" is a fiscal term properly applied to budgets or stock depletion. The attempt to apply it to voluntary exchange instantly results in a category error equally incoherent regardless as to whether the exchange in question is international or domestic, as all trades are—inherently and by definition—voluntary exchanges of equal value for mutual benefit, in (...) which two parties voluntarily and intentionally choose to exchange value in the form of that which they have for equal value in the form of that which they seek. Products are paid for with products. Every producer is a consumer. Economic exchange is anti-symmetric by construction and allows each party to provide a beneficial service to the other from which both parties gain. Were one side to be losing anything in a trade, or were one to believe that more or better of the same product could be found elsewhere, that side would simply decline to trade. Regardless of bilateral aggregate total imports vs exports, every single product was paid for upon purchase and delivered as per agreement. The second is statistical: aggregate bilateral flows are directly compared across economies differing by greater than a factor of eight in population and greater than thirteen in economy size and combined purchasing power (GDP). The third is arithmetical: the deficit figure of 200 billion dollars widely cited in public political discourse is dishonestly inflated by a factor of 5.6 even relative to official U.S. government statistics. We formally establish that bilateral balances are antisymmetric by construction and carry no welfare content. Applying a per-capita bilateral trade intensity measure to 2024 data, Canadians spend almost 11,000 American dollars per person on U.S. goods and services versus only about 1,400 dollars per American spent on Canadian output — a ratio exceeding 8:1, with Canada's intensity exceeding Mexico's by 3.5×, Japan's by 13.7×, and China's by 88×. Excluding energy, the U.S. runs a bilateral surplus exceeding 63 billion dollars with Canada. A two-country Armington–CES model calibrated to the actual tiered tariff regime (0% USMCA-compliant, 10% energy, 25–35% other non-USMCA) yields a total annual cost to the United States of approximately 41 billion dollars— welfare losses, deadweight destruction, and export revenue lost to Canadian retaliation — attributable entirely to a bilateral imbalance equal to 0.12% of U.S. GDP. We document the fabrications animating the tariff regime: the 200 billion dollar deficit claim; the fentanyl emergency declaration, during which under 0.2% of all seized fentanyl crossed the Canadian border per CBP's own data; and the Section 301 forced-labor investigations launched March 2026 to replace IEEPA tariffs struck down 6–3 by the Supreme Court in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (607 U.S. ___, 2026) — investigations that named Canada despite its 2023 enactment of legislation prohibiting forced labor imports. These findings are situated within an ~60-year bipartisan record of American presidential testimony on the bilateral relationship, from Kennedy's declaration in the Canadian House of Commons in 1961 that choosing Canada's prime minister to be the first of the leaders of other lands to be invited to call upon his council "an act of faith—faith in your country, in your leaders", through Reagan's warning against "demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends," to Obama's final address to Parliament in 2016 in which he warned the parliament and people of Canada directly, in all but name, about Trump and the coming threat to international cooperation that the rising swell of Trump-aligned ideological fear-mongering and epistemic echo-chamber grooming then potentially represented, and now represents. Given the wild misalignment between mathematical fact and Trump's claimed justifications to wage economic warfare, disrespect, betray and threaten—the real reasons that a sitting president would fabricate such desperate and obviously unfair, made up and manipulated arguments just in order to abuse their relationship with their own people's biggest customers and most committed allies—and paid for by the American taxpayer—themselves deserve to be questioned, analyzed more deeply and identified in future work because they confer no obvious benefit to any party save Putin and the have led to the likely intentional estrangement of the alliance and subversion of NATO solidarity. The intensive use of outright fabricated and conflated economics concepts, empirical data and mathematical method, along with the innumerable other outright lies, we well as attempts to use international cooperation as manipulation, are alarming especially in the fact they come with no logically or empirically valid benefit for anyone, including Trump himself, unless something almost unthinkably nefarious lies below the surface of the public facing mask of Donald Trump and his administration. The resultant unanimous conclusions of the specific analyses demonstrated in this work are specifically that the claim of U.S. victimhood in its economic relationship with Canada is false and fabricated on every factual and analytical level, and that the conduct it entailed toward America's most commercially committed bilateral partner and its closest, most voluntarily integrated and heavily invested democratic ally represents a repudiation of everything the United States has formally declared across more than half a century about what that relationship means. (shrink)

We contribute to the scientific debate by studying the storylines, discourses and related normative judgments in parliamentary motions by private members of the Swedish parliament from the time period 2010–2019. The paper makes use of an ecofeminist theoretical framework to problematize these storylines, discourses and normative judgments. We conclude that the focus in the material is on economic and technical issues, while issues of justice play a marginal role. None of the important dimensions of energy justice are adequately considered and (...) many of the dominant storylines and discourses are based on the implicit assumption that issues of justice are insignificant. (shrink)

This paper argues that a structural critique developed in disability ethics generalizes beyond reproductive selection. The wrong is not forecasting as such, but projectedvalue authorization (PVA): the conditioning of basic standing on a forecast of future contribution. The paper distinguishes PVA from legitimate competence-based selection, places PVA on a configurativeness scale across institutional domains, and examines immigration, hiring, welfare eligibility, university admissions, and platform governance. It then develops a presumption-and-protect alternative grounded in disability-rights legal architecture: standing is presumed, support is (...) calibrated, and defeasance is narrow, decision-specific, and revisable. The central claim is that institutions may forecast, but forecasts must not determine basic standing. (shrink)

This article analyzes the floods that occurred in Rio Grande do Sul as politically produced events situated within dispositifs of power that articulate territory, population, and risk management. The analysis mobilizes the concepts of biopolitics and State racism, as formulated by Michel Foucault, and of thanatopolitics, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben, advancing the thesis that neoliberal rationality structures specific modes of governing life and death. In this context, a systematic differentiation is observed between protected forms of existence and lives exposed (...) to precarity, abandonment, and avoidable death. The article examines the ethical and social conditions through which this governmental rationality contributes to the reproduction of environmental injustice and the deepening of social inequalities. Methodologically, the study adopts a theoretical-conceptual approach proper to political philosophy, in which empirical data related to the May 2024 floods are mobilized with a hermeneutic function, operating as a limit-case for rendering contemporary biopolitical dynamics intelligible. It is argued that the persistent absence of structural policies aimed at addressing inequalities, together with disinvestment in public infrastructure, does not constitute mere administrative failure but rather expresses a logic of government that subordinates the protection of life to economic and political criteria. The article concludes that the necessary reconstruction exceeds the material level, requiring an ethical and political response capable of breaking with the thanatopolitics directed at the most vulnerable populations. (shrink)

The contemporary debate between ideal theory and nonideal theories of justice (largely) centers on the extent to which political methodologies should be influenced by social and political practices. Whereas ideal theorists most often ground their principles of justice in an ahistorical and transcendent methodology, nonideal theorists methodologically determine the principles of justice in light of (1) the institutions and practices which condition the possibilities of political agents and/or (2) historical injustices and the conditions that manifest them. My dissertation engages in (...) this debate by criticizing the presupposed relationship between theory and practice within each camp. By demonstrating the extent to which (i) all ideals and principles of justice are conditioned by social and political practices, and that (ii) their practice-conditioned normativity depends on the presupposition that these ideals and principles must extend beyond these same social and political practices, I argue that the normative nature of political philosophy is simultaneously situated and utopian. This means that we ought to understand the relationship between theory and practice as dialectically constituted. (shrink)

This chapter examines what is the criteria for just AI. It is divided into three parts. In the first part, the concept of justice is examined for the purpose of finding a working definition with universal reach. The second part uses the proposed definition to identify what constitutes a just AI system. The third part evaluates the conceptualization by examining its embodiment in the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act.

While ‘regions’ continue to generate discussion in fields such as international relations as well as playing a role in practical politics, political philosophers have shown little interest. Common theories of political philosophy fail to include reasoning about regions normatively, despite collaborations amongst neighbouring states being key to pool resources and build capacity, and raise several questions pertaining to sovereignty. I set out to formulate pro tanto regional obligations, understood as valid claims of states for assistance from other states in their (...) region. The article is limited to the special conditions of large-scale disasters which transform the normative expectations between democracies. (shrink)

This Element provides an opinionated survey of the ideal and non-ideal theory debate in political philosophy. It adopts a minimal conception of ideal theory as “theorizing that aims to characterize ideal or perfect justice” and then investigates four major questions. First, does ideal theory provide a benchmark for evaluating what is more just than what? Second, does it provide a target for long-term reform? Third, does it provide a gauge of appropriate or permissible responses to injustice? Fourth, to what extent (...) should we do ideal theory? The core message is that ideal theory is not uniquely or especially well suited to serving these roles, and deserves no pride of place in the discipline. Nevertheless, ideal theory is somewhat valuable and it should remain one active research program among many. Connections to related debates beyond political philosophy are briefly explored. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Linguistic justice is about institutions distributing material and symbolic resources fairly when they are faced with linguistic diversity. However, no theory of linguistic justice has developed a systematic and comprehensive account of the moral dilemmas that take place in interpersonal linguistic relationships, in particular the power dynamics leading to (linguistic) domination. The aim of this article is to start building a general theory of linguistic domination, one that offers new conceptual tools for both empirical and normative analyses of linguistically diverse (...) societies. Using the republican tradition of thought, I argue that there is linguistic domination whenever someone is subject to the uncontrolled capacity for interference over their linguistic uses, ideology and acquisition by another agent. This article tests under what conditions this phenomenon takes place and the parties involved in it (both in terms of individuals and political institutions). (shrink)

The idea that democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people entails that there is no government by the people if inclusion is taken out of the equation. This poses a significant challenge to the capacity democracies have to govern beyond the temporal scope of the current demos, as members of the people in the past and the future are today voiceless and biteless. This chapter offers a solution to this difficulty by emphasizing that democratic (...) governance is multitemporal insofar as the ‘of-by-for’ tryptic involves different timescapes: ‘of the people’ refers to a cross-temporal dimension of the collective political body that outlasts its individual members; ‘by the people’ refers to the practice of self-determination, which is mostly presentist; and ‘for the people’ refers to all those individuals who are likely to be affected by a democratic decision, and is mostly future-oriented. (shrink)

Is mercy merely compatible with institutional justice, or is it partly constitutive of it? I defend the constitutive justice thesis that a legal system instantiates institutional justice only if it includes an authorised, internal corrective capacity for exceptional cases, properly characterised as mercy. This position opposes formalist conceptions that identify institutional justice with impartial ruleapplication alone. The argument proceeds by motivating the need for an authorised, internal, corrective capacity for corrective judgement in exceptional cases. It is then argued that when (...) such correction operates in punitive and remedial contexts, it is properly characterised as mercy. Sophocles’ Antigone is then employed as a diagnostic case to show that a legal system which excludes this corrective capacity forfeits its claim to justice altogether. It is thereby shown that a conception of justice which excludes mercy risks collapsing into an inhuman and ultimately selfundermining form of legality. (shrink)

Streszczenie: Kwestia praw zwierząt stanowi współczesny problem natury etycznej i natury politycznej. Niniejsza praca bada kontekst historyczno-etyczno-polityczny praw zwierząt na podstawie książki Sue Donaldson i Will Kymlicka „Zoopolis. Teoria polityczna praw zwierząt” oraz innych tekstów filozoficznych. Na początku przyjrzano się historii relacji ludzko-zwierzęcych oraz idei praw człowieka, aby następnie wyjaśnić koncepcję statusu moralnego zwierząt. W drugiej kolejności omówiono samo pojęcie praw zwierząt i stanowiska jakie to pojęcie obejmuje. Następnie omówiono rozszerzoną teorię praw zwierząt, której głównym elementem jest idea obywatelstwa zwierząt (...) udomowionych. Analiza wykazała, że obecny status zwierząt wymaga radykalnej i głębokiej zmiany. Praca nakreśla możliwe działania, które zmierzają do ustanowienia egalitarnego, a w konsekwencji sprawiedliwego społeczeństwa, w którym nie będzie miejsca na wykluczenia i systemową przemoc. -/- Abstract: From historical, ethical, and political perspective, the issue of animal rights seems to be a contemporary problem. This thesis is based on Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, and other philosophical works. The thesis begins with examining the history of human-animal relations and the idea of human rights to explain the concept of the moral status of animals. Then, the very notion of animal rights is discussed, and it is shown which philosophical positions it covers. Furthermore, the supplemented and the extended animal rights theory, in which the major element is the idea of citizenship for domesticated animals, is discussed. The results of the investigation show that the present status of animals needs to undergo radical and thorough changes. This thesis presents possible solutions, which lead to the establishment of egalitarian, and thus, just society, in which there will not be space for exclusions and systemic violence. (shrink)

Climate change leads to environmental transformations and destruction, which deeply affect individuals and communities living in vulnerable areas. There is a growing literature considering the ethical and political implications of climate change on people's identity and attachment to places. Separately, there is a body of research on the mental health impact of climate change, with many studies focusing on ecological grief—the grief felt in response to ecological losses. In this article, we will connect these two strands of inquiry. We will (...) bring together insights from accounts of attachment to place and the experience of ecological grief, which will shed new light on the negative implications of climate change on places and people's connections to them. The study of ecological grief within climate research capitalizes on existing work in psychology on grief over non-death losses. There is growing evidence that people grieve not just bereavement but also losses arising from illness, incarceration, or infertility. A recent proposal is that what unites all these experiences is a sense of losing one's life possibilities. In the case of ecological grief, the heart of the experience is the loss of possibilities that were sustained by one's place. In this article, we will connect this insight with the emerging attention given by political theorists to the significance of occupying a specific place for people's life plans, and we will investigate how climate change threatens people's ability to sustain their traditional ways of life and their stability in life projects, constituting an incommensurable loss. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued that epistemic injustices require epistemic reparations. I draw attention to a particular kind of epistemic injustice: Epistemic moral remainders. Epistemic moral remainders are epistemic harms victims of epistemic injustices experience even if the goods the epistemic injustice interfered with have been restored. Available theories of epistemic reparations have tended to focus on establishing how reparations can restore the goods that the epistemic injustice interfered with. However, victims who experience epistemic remainders seem to be owed something even (...) when the epistemic goods the injustice interfered with have been restored or are impossible to restore. So, we must supplement our theories of epistemic reparations to explain epistemic remainders. I develop a novel theory of reparative justice that can do this. I do so by turning to our fundamental principles of general reparative justice. Doing so, however, reveals a tension. Theories of reparative justice must choose between addressing the particular goods a wrong interfered with or the harms that result from a wrong. I offer a novel hybrid theory of reparations that avoids this tension. And, I use this hybrid theory to develop a theory of epistemic reparations that explains epistemic remainders. (shrink)

The notion of voluntariness has important implications for normative discussions on migration. If the voluntariness of migrants has significant normative implications, the degree of voluntariness in migration ought also to affect, even if not entirely determining, the entitlements of migrants, and the obligations host countries have towards them. Some argue that migration is non-voluntary if and only if it is motivated by the agent’s belief that she lacks any objectively acceptable alternative to migration. The proponents of this motivational account of (...) voluntariness in migration argue that voluntariness is binary. But perceiving voluntariness as binary is unsatisfactory as it prevents us from seeing relevant differences between migrants in terms of their degrees of voluntariness. I adopt the motivational account of voluntariness and argue that it is compatible with the idea that voluntariness in migration is a matter of degree because: (a) evaluating a person’s lack of acceptable alternatives requires a probabilistic assessment of available options, and (b) migration is a process spanning a long period, so discussing voluntariness in migration requires us to examine voluntariness over an extended timespan. I develop a metric to quantify migrants’ degrees of voluntariness and illustrate its application, particularly in legal deliberations concerning migrants’ status. (shrink)

Three converging infrastructure layers — national digital identity systems, programmable central bank digital currencies, and agentic AI surveillance — constitute a single conditional existence architecture in which participation in economic and civic life becomes contingent on behavioral compliance with parameters set at the protocol level. As of March 2026, 134 countries representing 98% of global GDP are in active central bank digital currency exploration, pilot, or launch phase. India’s Aadhaar system enrolls 1.4 billion persons; the EU Digital Identity Wallet enters (...) mandatory acceptance in 2026; ISO 20022 structured transaction data became mandatory for global interbank messaging in November 2025. This paper applies the seventeen-axis recursive palimpsest superposition methodology of the Observer framework to both the civilizational and labor-scale instantiations of this architecture simultaneously. It traces the container boundary between the stated purpose of these systems — financial inclusion, fraud prevention, monetary security — and their actual optimization function: the concentration of permission to participate in economic life in nodes outside democratic accountability. The paper documents the enrolled hostage condition at civilizational scale, names the bilateral silence preventing either mainstream political coalition from identifying what is being built, provides explicit falsification conditions, and renders the architecture’s forward trajectory visible before it arrives. (shrink)

Abstract This paper examines how museums function as institutional arbiters of historical memory, transforming Black history into an officially sanctioned narrative that emphasizes rescue, progress, and closure while deferring accountability. Treating museums not as neutral educational spaces but as authoritative sites of narrative governance, the analysis shows how curatorial practices convert structural violence into consumable history through omission, sanitization, and linear progress arcs. Drawing on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Black scholarship alongside critical analysis of national and regional museum exhibits, the paper (...) demonstrates how slavery is framed as an origin rather than a system, civil rights as resolution rather than interruption, and state action as benevolent correction rather than contested power. These narrative choices produce emotional safety and moral permission, teaching the public when history is considered “enough” and when demands for repair appear excessive. As part of Series — What America Changed About Black History, this paper argues that without confronting the museum as a site where memory becomes official, historical injustice is curated rather than repaired, and accountability is replaced with closure. Publication Note This paper is part of Series — What America Changed About Black History, a Black History Month research project examining how U.S. institutions shape historical memory, legitimacy, and accountability. Building on prior analyses of narrative manufacture and substitution, this paper focuses on museums as authoritative sites where Black history becomes officially sanctioned. By analyzing national and regional museum exhibits alongside Black scholarly critique, the series advances a structural examination of how memory is curated to emphasize progress and resolution while deferring repair. The project aims to provide scholars, students, and educators with frameworks for critically engaging institutional history beyond celebratory or closure-based narratives. (shrink)

Abstract This paper examines substitution as a central governance strategy through which institutions neutralize accountability for specific historical harm by replacing lineage-based redress with generalized inclusion. Focusing on the shift from reparative language to frameworks of “diversity,” “equity,” and “all minorities,” the analysis shows how specificity is diluted until obligation disappears. Drawing on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Black scholarship alongside policy language from education, law, and public institutions, the paper traces how substitution operates across domains to redistribute harm rather than repair (...) it. By aggregating distinct histories of violence into abstract categories, institutions preserve legitimacy while avoiding material redress for slavery, land theft, and administrative erasure. This paper argues that inclusion without repair functions not as progress but as stabilization, converting justice claims into representation metrics and moral acknowledgment without debt resolution. As part of Series — What America Changed About Black History, the paper demonstrates that substitution is not accidental rhetoric but an administrative technology that transforms responsibility into optics and ensures that historical injustice remains unresolved under the language of inclusion. Publication Note This paper is part of Series — What America Changed About Black History, a Black History Month research project examining how U.S. institutions reshaped Black lineage, accountability, and historical responsibility through administrative and narrative practices. Building on prior analyses of naming, documentation, recognition, and resistance, this paper focuses on substitution as a governance strategy that replaces specific harm with generalized inclusion. By tracing how diversity frameworks displace lineage-based redress across education, law, and policy, the series advances a structural analysis of why accountability for slavery and its afterlives remains deferred rather than resolved. (shrink)

responsibility one might bear for bringing about death is, as a result, an important ethical question. Indeed the right to life is often regarded as the bedrock upon which all other rights of persons are supported.1 This right to life is often thought to be a negative right—a right of non-interference—a right, more or less, not to be killed.2 Additionally, many philosophers defend the Equivalence Thesis, according to which the bare difference between doing and allowing makes no moral difference. In (...) the case of death, the Equivalence Thesis implies that a killing is not by that very fact at all morally worse (or better) than an allowing to die. Both the Equivalence Thesis and the view that the right to life is a negative right are plausible enough individually. In this paper, I argue that their conjunction implies an implausible (and generally unrecognized) third claim. Some doings (killings) will be morally equivalent to some allowings (lettings die) despite the facts that the killing will violate the right to life, the letting die will not, and these facts will be the only differences between the cases. In other words, defenders of these claims seem committed to the claim that violating one’s right to life is morally irrelevant to the wrongness of the actions in question. That is simply implausible. (shrink)

How do classical myths shape the foundations of our political and social worldviews? This essay explores the myth of the phoenix in anarchist imagery, arguing that its resistance and capacity for renewal function as an absolute metaphor in Blumenberg’s sense, structuring an ethic of infinite struggle. The study examines how this mythological figure, rooted in ancient traditions and the concept of cyclicality, is constantly reinterpreted and stands as a symbol of resistance to oppression and injustice. It also offers a pre-conceptual (...) framework for revolutionary action. In this sense, the myth implicitly guides not only what is thought (resistance and renewal), but also how the militant acts and is politically formed. Thus, a libertarian political education understands the subject not as a passive recipient of ideas, but as an active participant in cycles of symbolic death and resurrection that the phoenix embodies. -/- Keywords: Absolute metaphor, anarchist ethics, philosophy of myth, infinite struggle, symbolism of the phoenix, conceptual history, militant education. (shrink)

High-speed vehicular flight from law enforcement constitutes one of the most persistently underaddressed forms of public endangerment in contemporary American criminal law. This treatise advances a philosophical and legal argument for the enactment of the Vehicular Public Endangerment Act (VPEA), a proposed standalone penal statute that classifies the use of a motor vehicle in flight from law enforcement as the deployment of a deadly weapon against the general public. Drawing from moral philosophy, criminal law theory, constitutional jurisprudence, and public safety (...) data, this work argues that existing legal frameworks inadequately address the compounding harm that fleeing suspects impose upon innocent motorists and bystanders. The proposed statute introduces a per-vehicle endangerment model, in which each civilian vehicle placed in direct peril constitutes a separate criminal count, analogous to the established legal treatment of discharging a firearm in a populated area. The treatise defends three central premises: (a) a motor vehicle operated at high speed in flight from law enforcement constitutes a lethal instrument under established deadly weapon doctrine; (b) continued flight beyond 100 feet of a lawful command to stop demonstrates willful intent to endanger the public, warranting a conclusive presumption of mens rea; and (c) proportional, compounding penalties calibrated to speed increments and the number of vehicles endangered are both philosophically just and practically necessary for deterrence. The proposed statute is designed for immediate legislative enactment and is accompanied by full statutory text, philosophical justification, and a substantive counterargument analysis. (shrink)

This thesis examines the philosophical relationship between Plato and Michael Psellos by comparing their historical contexts, literary styles, and universal philosophical ambitions through analysis of The Republic and On Style. Although Psellos was deeply influenced by Platonic thought and played a significant role in reviving classical philosophy within the Byzantine intellectual tradition, the two thinkers differ substantially in how they present and apply philosophy. Plato develops philosophy as a universal and transformative pursuit grounded in metaphysical truth, political order, and the (...) search for objective justice. Through dramatic dialogue, dialectical inquiry, mythic imagery, and architectonic structure, Plato presents philosophy as a pathway toward knowledge and the harmonious organization of both the soul and the state. In contrast, Psellos reinterprets philosophical universality through rhetorical and stylistic analysis. His work emphasizes the preservation of classical wisdom, the establishment of enduring standards of intellectual excellence, and the cultivation of educated elites within Byzantine society. Rather than pursuing metaphysical inquiry as Plato does, Psellos frames philosophy as a disciplined rhetorical tradition that supports Christian intellectual culture and cultural continuity with antiquity. By comparing their historical circumstances and literary approaches, this study demonstrates that while Psellos draws heavily from Platonic foundations, he transforms Platonic philosophy into a distinctly Byzantine project centered on rhetorical cultivation and cultural preservation rather than metaphysical system-building. (shrink)

Although many accept the Rawlsian distinction between ‘end-state’ and ‘transitional’ principles, theorists disagree strongly over which feasibility constraint to use when selecting the former. While ‘minimalists’ favor a scientific-laws-only constraint, ‘non-minimalists’ believe that end-state principles should also be constrained by what people could (empirically) accept after reasoned discussion. I argue that a theorist who follows ‘non-minimalism’ will devise end-state principles that cannot be realized (as end-state principles), or cannot be stabilized (as end-state principles), or are indistinguishable in content from those (...) she would have selected had she followed ‘minimalism.’ The paper ends by outlining the implications of my analysis for the broader methodological map of political philosophy. (shrink)