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Displaying: 1-10 of 10 documents


1. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Hugh Breakey Property, Persons, Boundaries: The Argument from Other-Ownership
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Should one individual have, prior to any consent, property rights in another person? Libertarians answer that they should not--and that this commitment requires rejecting all positive duties. Liberals-egalitarians largely agree with the libertarian's answer to the question, but deny the corollary they draw from it, arguing that egalitarian regimes do not require other-ownership. Drawing on recent property theory, I argue that both sides are mistaken, and that a prohibition on other-ownership guides us towards a middling political position, both allowing and constraining our positive duties and liabilities to others.
2. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Nicholas Vrousalis Libertarian Socialism: A Better Reconciliation between Equality and Self-Ownership
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Socialists believe that equality, community, and economic democracy can only be achieved by a system of joint ownership in the means of production. These property rights do not, as such, pass judgment as to what rights individuals have to their own person. Libertarians believe that individual liberty and autonomy are only coextensive with a set of stringent rights to the person and its powers. These property rights do not, as such, pass judgment as to what rights individuals have to the external world. Bringing libertarianism and socialism together is therefore, in principle, possible. This paper takes this further step, by sketching a constituiton that reconciles individual autonomy with radical equality of condition. To those libertarians drawn to socialist values (such as the pioneers of nineteenth-century anarchism), the paper offers a reconciliation that is arguably more true to these values than left-libertarianism. To those socialists drawn to libertarian values, it offers an alternative to left-libertarianism that avoids the pitfalls of statism.
3. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Suzy Killmister Group-Differentiated Rights and the Problem of Membership
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Justifications of group-differentiated rights commonly overlook a crucial practical consideration: if rights are to be allocated on the basis of group membership, how should we determine which individuals belong to which group? Assuming that social identities are fixed and transparent runs the risk of creating further injustices, whilst acknowledging that social groups are porous and heterogeneous runs the risk of rendering group-differentiated rights impracticable. In this paper, I develop a schema for determining group membership that avoids both horns of this dilemma.
4. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Göran Duus-Otterström Freedom of Will and the Value of Choice
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Many argue that our reasons to value choice do not depend on our having libertarian free will.The paper argues against this view. One reason to value choice is that it is constitutive of a life of self-determination. If choices are determined, however, they can be predicted and brought about by others; and if choices are randomly indeterministic, they can be mimicked. In either case, the importance of choice to self-determination is challenged. Thus, it is only as long as our choices are free in a libertarian manner that the importance of choice as a means to self-determination makes full sense.
5. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Paul Bou-Habib Distributive Justice, Dignity, and the Lifetime View
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This paper provides a critical examination of the strongest defenses of the pure lifetime view, according to which justice requires taking only people's whole lives as relevant when assessing and establishing their distributive entitlements and obligations. The paper proposes that we reject a pure lifetime view and replace it with an alternative view, on which some time-specific considerations--that is to say, considerations about how people fare at specific points in time--have nonderivative weight in determining what our obligations are to them.
6. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Bernard G. Prusak Breaking the Bond: Abortion and the Grounds of Parental Obligations
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Contemporary philosophy offers two main accounts of how parental obligations are acquired: the causal and the voluntarist account. Elizabeth Brake's provocative paper "Fatherhood and Child Support: Do Men Have a Right to Choose?" seeks to clear the way for the voluntarist account by focusing on the relevance of abortion rights to parental obligations. The present paper is concerned with rebutting Brake's argument that, if a woman does not acquire parental obligations to an unborn child just by having voluntarily acted in such a way that had the reasonably foreseeable consequence of bringing him or her into being, neither does a man acquire parental obligations to a child once he or she is born just by having voluntarily acted in the same way.
7. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Peter Brian Barry Same-Sex Marriage and the Charge of Illiberality
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However liberalism is best understood, liberals typically seek to defend a wide range of liberty. Some have argued that it is the recognition of same-sex marriage--not its prohibition--that conflicts with liberalism's commitments. I refer to the thesis that recognition of same-sex marriage is illiberal as "The Charge." As a sympathetic liberal, I take The Charge seriously enough to consider and ultimately reject it. Ultimately, I contend that The Charge is simply misguided and that arguments for it either fail to find support in some liberal principle or else find support from some illiberal principle.
book reviews
8. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Lori Watson After Identity: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Gender
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9. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Andrew Lister Democracy and Moral Conflict
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10. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Mark R. Reiff International Criminal Law and Philosophy
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