This essay explores the distinctive humanist method through which The Greatest of All Plagues investigates the presence of economic inequality in the history of political thought. It then follows the various thinkers in the book—from Plato to Marx—and observes that a vocabulary of virtue and wisdom not only accompanies but often underwrites criticisms of inequality deep into the 19th century. In conclusion, Williams’ book implicitly allows his readers to perceive how virtue ethics and criticisms of inequality have only become separated in the late modern period. In the 21st century, their rapprochement will deepen and energize inquiries into virtue ethics and egalitarian approaches to political economy alike.
This response to critics addresses the questions raised throughout the symposium on the various issues raised throughout the Greatest of All Plagues . I address some of Cordelli's concerns about Hobbes's empirical assumptions by turning to Tocqueville. I answer Kirkland's questions regarding the nature of reforms intended to rectify inequality—whether practical or moral. Finally, I address Arlen's objections that the book has focused too much on the moral dimensions of inequality at the possible cost of underemphasizing the dangers of oligarchy. This particular concern provides an opportunity to discuss Walzer's Spheres of Justice and the difficulties of walling off inequality from other spheres of social life.
This article contributes to contemporary debates about racial capitalism by turning to Stuart Hall, a Jamaican cultural theorist active in the British New Left and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Hall made two moves to better diagnose the mediating role that “race” and racism played in the crises of post-war British capitalism. First, he adopted an imperial frame that situated Britain's industrialization in relation to its colonial sites of production. Second, Hall developed a “Marxism without final guarantees” that could explain how racialized difference becomes embedded within relations of production as a regulative norm. I argue his approach should be preferred to both formal and world-historical theories of racial capitalism, as the latter can fall back into an oversimplified economism. Hall's conjunctural analysis, by contrast, makes space for a more sustained consideration of both (a) the state and (b) a materialist account of popular culture.
Despite its prominence in the history of political thought, the analogy between states and organisms has fallen into disrepute. Evolutionary theory, however, gives reason to reconsider it. The Price equation, a model drawn from theoretical biology, identifies specific conditions that facilitate the transition from a collection of individuals to a collective organism. It thereby provides a powerful framework for resolving the longstanding debate in political theory between those who view states as cohesive organisms and critics who emphasize rational individual choice. Our analysis suggests that organic theory can withstand the main criticisms offered by methodological individualists, but only with certain qualifications. Although organic theory is unlikely to apply to large, modern states, it may prove useful when applied to subnational entities.
The average citizen scores poorly on tests that measure political knowledge. Does this suggest anything about whether such citizens are politically competent? In this paper, I argue that citizens are so competent, despite lacking what is typically construed as “political knowledge.” This is because citizens possess a kind of knowledge in common, one that has yet to be taken seriously by skeptics and supporters of democracy alike: citizens have knowledge of other persons, which grounds their politically-salient competence for mutual consideration.
Public debate and scholarly discussions about a crisis of institutional trust focus on an external perspective: declining citizen trust, indicating that institutions lose legitimacy. While important, this perspective does not capture a conceptually distinct and politically salient form of institutional dysfunction occurring inside institutions that can undercut their trustworthiness. We develop an internal perspective on institutional trustworthiness. It focuses on the endogenous conditions under which officeholders are warranted in trusting that their interrelated actions can uphold institutional functioning. We argue that such warranted trust is grounded in the joint realization of two commitments: (1) to mutual accountability in exercising office power and (2) to the assumption of interrelated responsibility to uphold institutional action. We call the configuration in which these commitments are jointly realized “endogenous institutional trustworthiness.” We argue that endogenous institutional trustworthiness is irreducible to standard requirements of professional ethics. It is a distinct normative standard that specifies when officeholders are warranted in trusting one another under conditions of epistemic and normative uncertainty. This internal perspective matters for political theory because it reveals a specific form of institutional breakdown and identifies a corresponding target for institutional repair that cannot be seen from the external perspective alone.
Is surrogacy a form of legitimate work? Or does the nature of pregnancy and parenthood render surrogacy illegitimate? In this essay, I argue that the best strategy in defence of commercial surrogacy - which I call the 'surrogacy-as-legitimate-work' strategy - relies on two implicit assumptions and that once we make them explicit, we are forced to see that commercial surrogacy inevitably leads to a conflict of core moral rights. As I hope to show, if commercial surrogacy is a type of work, it is work that cannot simultaneously protect the right of the surrogate to opt out and the right of the intending parent to exercise ultimate authority over the foetus.
Roads are highly dangerous and unequal places. This paper argues that their risks and benefits are not simply one category of the many benefits and burdens of social cooperation to be considered by a theory of justice. Rather, against the backdrop of a regime of land enclosure, certain sorts of inequalities in the roads are pro tanto morally objectionable simply as such. A system of publicly accessible roads is a precondition for justifiable enclosure of land. Further, the justifiability of enclosure depends on the system of roads fulfilling certain functions for all those subject to the regime of enclosure. This condition imposes constraints on the use of heavy vehicles within the road system. It is doubtful whether existing road systems in fact live up to this justificatory condition.
What resources does the history of political thought offer for confronting the democratic and ecological crises of the present? Through a reconstruction of the political thought of William Morris within the context of late nineteenth century socialism, I show how he built a vision of ecological flourishing on the foundation of the democratic freedom of workers, which I call “regrowth communism.” According to Morris, only in the struggle of workers for freedom through fellowship is earthly flourishing possible, since mastery degrades both human and nonhuman life. Reading Morris's vision of economic freedom and earthly wealth in the late nineteenth century not only gives us a fuller picture of this moment in the history of political thought, but also a vision of a democratic and sustainable form of life that might provide hope in this moment of dual crises.
Nicholas Smyth's recent argument that political conservatism fails to constitute a comprehensive political theory rests on overly restrictive criteria for what qualifies as political theory. Smyth argues that conservatism fails to provide action-guiding principles when institutions conflict and cannot maintain its distinctiveness when forced to create new institutions. His criteria for political theory, however, are overly restrictive and demand abstract doctrines that exclude practical political engagement. I contend that political theories are better understood as normative visions that orient political action rather than abstract principles. Following Burke's critique of theoretical abstraction and Aristotle's emphasis on practical wisdom, I argue that conservatism constitutes a coherent political theory when understood as a vision oriented toward preserving institutions. By reconceptualizing political theories as visions rather than abstract doctrines, and by offering a more nuanced understanding of institutions as communities rather than mere patterns of norms, I demonstrate that conservatism qualifies as a normative, action-guiding political theory focused on preserving institutions.
This article asks how contemporary labor domination is sustained through the organization of knowledge, evidence, and procedure. Building on work in epistemic injustice, it introduces the concept of "processual epistemic burdens," meaning the cumulative mental exhaustion and iterative cognitive labor imposed on disadvantaged actors who must repeatedly interpret events, assemble evidence, translate their experience in ways that are legible to relevant institutions and authorities, and defend their claims over time. Much of the epistemic injustice literature is oriented to discrete and episodic harms, yet insufficiently accounts for the protracted process by which the oppressed must struggle for recognition. Centering the platform gig economy as an archetypal case, this article shows how algorithmic opacity, fragmented accountability, and adversarial litigation compel workers to become perpetual investigators, translators, and litigants. Reconceptualizing domination as epistemically mediated, the article shows that reducing epistemic injustice in the digital economy requires a more equitable distribution of epistemic labor.
The concept of sovereignty is often confined to power-centric, state-bound aspects of politics, leaving its normative dimension under-theorised. This article argues that sovereignty cannot be treated as a normatively inert notion, nor reduced to the nation-state. It offers a revised, historically grounded account of sovereignty as containing an abstract normative ideal of political authority oriented toward the common good and irreducible to empirical claims, national borders, or fixed institutional forms. The article conceptualises sovereignty's normative dimension through the notion of the "normative loop," which captures the interconnection among sovereign power, the public realm, and the common good. It then elaborates four desiderata that an account of the common good must satisfy to function within this framework. Finally, the article explores the framework's implications for political legitimacy and autonomy. The upshot is that the value of external autonomy hinges on internal legitimacy, which in turn is grounded in a fiduciary duty to the common good. This provides an alternative to both sovereigntist nostalgia and realist, power-centric, state-bound accounts of sovereignty.
This paper describes and defends a novel principle for allocating self-determination powers: the persistent alienation principle. This holds that there are pro tanto grounds for extending greater powers of self-determination to persistently alienated internal minorities who seek such powers, if doing so will alleviate their alienation without alienating or threatening the basic interests of others. For this principle, alienation should be understood in structural rather than subjective terms, as something experienced by people as members of groups that are negatively defined or politically positioned in such a way as to injure their members' civic standing.
We argue that sustained economic development is a source of normative political legitimacy for poor states. On the foundational level, we defend restricted instrumentalism: the primary source of legitimacy in poor countries is the ability of regimes to achieve valuable outcomes. On the practical level, we argue that economic growth and enhanced state capacity are sources of legitimacy. Moreover, drawing on empirical evidence, we defend three heuristics: regimes with successful developmental records, high popular support and responsive institutions presumptively enjoy legitimacy. We illustrate the approach with reference to China.
There is a large literature on how the use of an intolerant style of political rhetoric can erode democratic communication and give people reasons to question their faith in the democratic system. But the reverse is also true: that is, everyday linguistic practices shape political communication by providing stylistic forms and common words. My central claim is that an interactionist interpretation of the more-speech argument offers a normative foundation for a distinctive model of counterspeech as democratic self-defense: counterspeech as decentralized democratic self-defense. The core of this model is the idea that democratic institutions have a role to play in making it easier for citizens to engage in conversations with those they would otherwise avoid.
Many prominent writers on political ethics suggest that refusing to employ violence and force when required is a mark of political irresponsibility given the specific demands and obligations of holding high political office. Such judgements fuel the theory of dirty hands, which famously holds that admirable politicians will sometimes have to commit or commission grave moral wrongdoing. Drawing on Bernard Williams's discussion of the audience of political philosophy, I suggest that the normative, action-guiding claims that the theory of dirty hands is standardly said to deliver are, ironically, likely to encourage dangerous forms of political irresponsibility. On the one hand, if the theory is intended to guide the action of high-ranking politicians, it is highly unclear that the responsible politician would accede to the suggestion that they must often act in ways that violate ordinary moral requirements which prohibit violent acts. On the other hand, if the theory is intended to improve the political judgements that citizens make about high-ranking politicians, it conflicts with a series of underlying political attitudes that responsible citizens will display.
In democratic theory, Condorcet's jury theorem plays an ambiguous part: a powerful justification of democracy for some, it is a predictor of democratic failings for others. This article discusses the theorem's independence condition (according to which votes must be independent if numerous voters are to make good decisions with reasonable likelihood) in light of the conception of independence Condorcet came to develop in his political and revolutionary writings. I show that the independence condition's implications for democracy are standardly misunderstood and that Condorcet defended a broader conception of independence, which provides sounder ground for a defense of democracy than the standard uses of the theorem suggest. For Condorcet, vote independence rests not only on voters' independence of mind, but also on their social independence. Independence is not the precondition for political participation, as the standard uses of the theorem would have it, but the goal of democratic practice. In the comprehensive democratic ideal that Condorcet developed as the French Revolution unfolded, the conditional epistemic argument expressed in the early jury theorem thus becomes secondary.
While recognized as a major 20th century liberal thinker, Hayek's place in the liberal tradition remains indeterminate. This is partially due to his conception of freedom, which Hayek's liberal-minded commentators deemed unable to guarantee a liberal order. By analyzing Hayek's engagement with the classical world, I contend that he departs from a well-ingrained liberal view as he argues that individual liberty and liberalism are not a modern phenomenon but find their origins in ancient Greece and Rome. I demonstrate that, for Hayek, reconnecting with the classical exposition of freedom underlines that it is indissociably tied to the "true"/substantive conception of law as nomos originating in ancient Greece. I show that in Hayek's eyes revisiting Antiquity reveals that from its inception individual freedom was indifferent to the form of government, i.e., who lays down the law. I maintain that, by relying on the claim that political participation is neither necessary nor sufficient for individual freedom, Hayek's theory of liberty within the law ultimately comes close to the Roman conception of freedom developed by Cicero and Livy. I thereby propose that it is because his conception of freedom draws on a pre-liberal one that Hayek's critics could question its liberal credentials.
In a recent programmatic contribution to this journal, Marta Wojciechowska and James Hickson have urged (normative) political theorists to systematically reflect on the local dimension of politics. Assuming that local phenomena are not simply a miniature of larger entities or forces, they emphasize the significance of examining the local to develop more nuanced accounts of the intricacies of the political world. This commentary addresses this important intervention and scrutinizes whether the concept of “the local” serves as an adequate starting point for this research agenda. It is argued that “the local” carries conceptual burdens that bear the risk of undermining the very objectives of Wojciechowska's and Hickson's proposal. The article will thus propose a spatio-theoretical alternative which allows to rearrange and advance the localization of political theory.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence have sparked widespread interest from political philosophers. In this review article, I examine two different methodological approaches to engaging with such technology by comparing Mathias Risse's Political Theory of the Digital Age and Josh Simons’ Algorithms for the People. Risse undertakes a broad exploration of the political questions raised by AI in an effort to update liberal-egalitarian thought for the digital century. Conversely, Simons adopts a narrower scope, homing in on machine learning algorithms used in ranking and automated decision making and grounding analysis in the economic, legal, and technical features of these systems. My argument is that while both works make valuable contributions to the field, if we wish political philosophy to guide the integration of technology into our common lives, we should prefer Simons’ approach.
