This essay examines Nicole Hassoun’s concept of creative resolve, a virtue she proposes to bridge the gap between moral knowledge and action in pursuit of a minimally good life for all. While creative resolve emphasizes persistence, imagination, and the willingness to challenge perceived limits, this analysis highlights key challenges in its application. First, the virtue is often only recognizable retrospectively, as the moral and practical significance of actions remains uncertain during complex social or political processes. Second, the ends toward which creative resolve is directed can be underdetermined, raising questions about how to ensure morally desirable outcomes. Third, exercising creative resolve can reinforce hierarchies and power asymmetries between actors and beneficiaries, particularly in public or institutional contexts. While the virtue offers a compelling framework for moral action, its ethical value depends on how it is exercised, toward what ends, and in what structural and relational context.
In his Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Moral Tyranny, Jesse Spafford offers an extended argument for social anarchism. Spafford’s moral tyranny constraint plays a key role in that extended argument. Spafford’s moral tyranny constraint is proposed and defended as a general constraint on the acceptability of a moral theory. In this symposium contribution, I express some reservations about Spafford’s moral tyranny constraint.
I first challenge Spafford’s case for the social anarchist ideal by raising worries for his “you own yourself and nothing else” thesis along with the Moral Tyranny Constraint that grounds that thesis. I then argue that the intuitions behind the Moral Tyranny Constraint should instead point us to a position I describe as “anarchic egalitarianism,” which speaks in favor of more familiar libertarian conclusions about self-ownership and external property. This anarchic egalitarianism, also, suggests a more confident rejection of the state than Spafford’s.
Despite the rise in non-democratic regimes across the globe, political theorists have been relatively slow in addressing the normative issues raised by it. This paper draws attention to this lacuna by investigating one specific question—that of political obligation(s) in non-democracies. Accounts of political obligation stemming from democratic theory assume that non-democratic regimes do not generate such obligations, and more specifically a duty to obey the law. Some also hypothesize that non-democratic citizens may have a duty to resist their regimes. This paper looks more closely at these assumptions and identifies the contexts when they do or do not hold. I find that, while associative accounts of political obligation tend to favor allegiance, accounts grounded in the natural duty of justice lean toward a duty to resist, with fairness accounts providing no clear support for either option. These contradictory results cast doubt over the ability of a multiple principles approach to provide action-guiding orientation in the normative landscape of non-democratic citizenship. With regard to the possibility of a prima facie duty of obedience to such regimes, I also sketch the form that an associative account should take in order to be able to defend this.
In this article, I pursue two main goals. First, I emphasise the importance of considering philosophy of science as a helpful framework to improve normative theorising. Briefly put, I defend the transfer of insights from the philosophy of science specifically to ethics. Second, I discuss one well-studied area within the philosophy of science, the use of models, to improve the way normative theorising is done. In short, models in ethics ought to be devised for clearly established purposes. I illustrate these ideas with historical examples and by purposefully modelling a representative device for deciding public policy issues.
Electoral autocracies sustain themselves through periodically held, pluralistic elections that are nominally free but manifestly unfair. Yet, on occasion, the opposition prevails in an uphill battle and assumes power. This paper examines cases in which democratic restoration cannot proceed without a supermajority, and the post-autocratic government lacks it. Such a situation presents the government with a dilemma: it either proceeds in strict compliance with the rules that govern legislative procedure, or it does not. If it does, legality is preserved—but at the serious risk that democratic restoration will remain unattained. If it does not, the government may attempt to initiate a transition toward a legitimate liberal democratic regime, but the irregularities involved may undermine legality and, more broadly, the rule of law. This paper addresses the dilemma from the conflict between the requirements of restoring a legitimate democratic regime and those of proceeding in accordance with the norms of legality. It seeks to clarify the nature of that dilemma by introducing two distinctions: one between dilemmas of desiderata and moral dilemmas, and second, between rigid and flexible moral dilemmas. It argues that the post-autocratic government’s dilemma is moral in nature and flexible in structure. With this characterization in view, the paper addresses the question of how that dilemma ought to be navigated.
The essay demonstrates that the argument from unmet urgent needs does not support limitarianism, which is a (partial) theory of justice that holds that there should be an upper limit on wealth. The argument, which has been used in support of limitarianism, leads to the conclusion that we should redistribute resources to combat extreme poverty. However, a concern for unmet urgent needs does not establish whose resources should be redistributed for that purpose. It is consistent with redistribution both above and/or below some limitarian threshold. Such an upper limit would thus have to be supported by other reasons, such as the democratic argument or a concern for justice at the top. Contrary to what limitarians have suggested, the argument from unmet urgent needs has a rather limited relevance for limitarianism. The essay will outline the argument and the problem with its use in support of limitarianism, followed by a discussion and rejection of three strategies that limitarians could adopt to make the argument relevant.
This paper develops an account of recognition as a normative orientation to others’ evaluative features. Against strong attribution models, I argue that recognition does not generate value or normative reasons but orients agents to evaluative features that already ground responsibilities. I analyze recognitional competence into five interdependent dimensions and show how recognition may succeed or fail at distinct loci. I then examine how institutionalized cultural value patterns mediate these dimensions, producing patterned forms of misrecognition. Drawing on Fraser’s criterion of participatory parity as a heuristic for diagnosing structural distortion, I argue that repair must operate across intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional levels. The result is a framework that connects an agent-centered account of recognitional competence with an account of the socio-structural conditions under which that competence succeeds or fails.
The literature on feasibility in political philosophy has been dominated by non-moralized accounts, but also moralized variants have been defended. Recently, however, it has been argued that unless reduced to mere possibility, also allegedly non-moralized accounts are in fact moralized, and therefore cannot do the theoretical work assigned to them. In this paper, we reject that conclusion. Whether moralization is understood in the commonsensical sense—according to which an instantiation of the concept itself provides a moral reason—or in the weaker sense of value-ladenness—according to which correct application depends on background evaluative judgments—the concept of feasibility does not collapse into moralization. The paper furthermore argues that feasibility should not be moralized, since doing so obscures the distinct role of feasibility in practical deliberation. A non-moralized concept of feasibility preserves the difference between what is infeasible and what is merely costly, demanding, or morally unattractive, and thereby retains its value as an analytical and practical tool in political philosophy.
This article offers a supportive but critical engagement with Nicole Hassoun’s method for determining the content of the minimally good life. Against the dangers of both homogenising, paternalistic objectivism and capricious, uncritical subjectivism, Hassoun develops an account grounded in the second-person perspective of a free, reasonable, caring agent. While this framework marks a considerable advance, we argue that it systematically and problematically sidelines the politics of need: the contested, power-structured, and institutionally embedded processes through which needs are generated, interpreted, contested, claimed, legitimised, and met. Analysing each of Hassoun’s triad of freedom, reasonableness, and care, we show how her attempt to locate normative authority in well-placed individual agents generates both conceptual difficulties and a troubling detachment from the real-world challenges her theory is designed to address. Emphasising the risk of adaptation in affluent societies, the persistence of reasonable disagreement and pluralism, and the relational and political dimensions of caring practices, we argue that assessments of the minimally good life cannot plausibly be treated as matters of individual judgement. Instead, they require collective processes capable of coordinating and legitimating our choices, judgements, and actions under conditions of persistent disagreement and asymmetrical power. We conclude by proposing a shift from individual standpoints to political relationships as the proper locus for determining the content and demands of a minimally good life.
The reserve army situation is the triadic relationship between employers, employees, and unemployed workers. In competitive capitalist labour markets, employers hold power over employees through their capacity to threaten replacement by the unemployed. Although Marx and Engels described this triangular structure, its moral dimension remains unexamined. This article fills that gap by offering the first axiological assessment of the reserve army situation. The question is what explains the relational badness of this triadic relationship. One natural answer is domination: the reserve army situation is bad insofar as employers hold arbitrary power over employees. This captures the vertical dimension of power, but it overlooks the interests of the unemployed. Another answer is estrangement: the situation is bad insofar as labour markets pit the employed against the unemployed. This captures horizontal rivalry but remains compatible with asymmetrical concern. To complete the picture, I introduce a third answer: solidarity. The reserve army situation is also bad insofar as it undermines mutual concern between the employed and the unemployed. As trends like automation risk exacerbating the reserve army situation, a correct relational diagnosis is crucial for an adequate response.
This article builds on the regime type comparison conducted recently by Dimitri Landa and Ryan Pevnick and presents a well-designed semi-parliamentarian democratic meritocracy as a theoretically plausible alterative to representative democracy. It advances two separate but interrelated claims. One is that attractive consequences which Landa and Pevnick have associated with a well-designed representative democracy can be equally matched by a well-designed semi-parliamentarian democratic meritocracy. The other is that their insights about the compatibility between political meritocracy and egalitarian values can be further developed to address existing criticisms of democratic meritocracy in Confucian political theory and strengthen its normative justification. By making those two claims, the article contributes to a convergence of interests between Western democratic theory and Confucian political theory over the reconciliation of democracy with meritorious governance.
Defenders of negative freedom consider it an important part of being treated respectfully as an autonomous person capable of acting responsibly in the absence of constraints. Critics, however, argue that negative freedom is compatible with the possibility of making oneself free, or freer, despite being subject to others’ degrading constraints. This objection threatens the significance of negative liberty and has led several political philosophers to endorse alternative conceptions of liberty. This paper clarifies conceptual mistakes in this influential objection and shows how negative freedom is incompatible with self-liberation.
In A Minimally Good Life (2024), Nicole Hassoun proposes an account of the minimally good life. She offers this account as a solution to the problem of basic justice. This problem involves specifying what human beings owe to all other human beings and what human beings may reasonably claim from all other human beings. In Rawls’s terms, Hassoun offers her account of the minimally good life as a conception of basic justice. She further contends that any such conception must specify a threshold below which no human being should be allowed to fall. For her, basic justice imposes a duty upon all human beings to raise everyone above this threshold so long as acting upon this duty does not lower anyone below the threshold. The assumption that basic justice must take this form generates a dilemma for Hassoun. Set the threshold low, and it is hard to imagine how anyone could be motivated to make the sacrifices demanded by basic justice. Set the threshold high, and only a small minority of human beings will regularly be confronted by the demands of basic justice. The difficulties posed by this dilemma raises the question of whether basic justice really must assume the form specified by Hassoun.
Many courts and political theorists reject legal accommodations for minority religious communities on the ground that they demand more rights or opportunities than other citizens enjoy. Such arguments often characterize these requests, which often take the form of exemptions from the law or support for essential religious activities, as what Ronald Dworkin and Brian Barry call “expensive tastes.” These critics argue that the law guarantees equal rights, resources, and opportunities, not the equal success or survival of each religious community. Focusing on sacred lands claims brought by Native American tribes, this article argues that extending the “expensive tastes” logic to cases like these would be mistaken for two reasons. First, it introduces a phenomenon I call “exclusionary drift,” which occurs when legal doctrine develops from majoritarian assumptions, making minority claims look increasingly burdensome. When a religious or cultural community’s claim is “expensive” due to drift, this is the state’s responsibility. Second, it emphasizes the role that religious convictions play in communities whose ways of life are insulated from alternatives. For such communities, their inherited practices often function as the only psychologically accessible path to a meaningful life. This article concludes that many supposedly “expensive” claims are demands for equal rights following decades of structural exclusion. Thus, this article offers a novel defense of a class of cultural preservation rights that are not typically the focus of the “expensive tastes” debate, but which have been wrongly denied to indigenous groups and other religious minorities.
This article responds to challenges raised by John Olusegun Adenitire, Alasdair Cochrane, and Maneesha Deckha in this special issue on my book More Equal Than Others: Humans and the Rights of Other Animals, specifically targeting my theory of the Species Membership Approach (SMA). According to the SMA, legal rights and other legal entitlements should be granted to non-human animals on the basis of their species membership, not their individual capacities. The article first takes on a principal competitor to the SMA: Adenitire's and Cochrane’s sentience-based theories. I argue that these theories are unlikely to satisfy many human rights proponents because: they exclude some human beings from rights protection, they do not do enough to show that sentience is a binary capacity that can provide a solid foundation for basic equality, and they justify rights by, and proportion them to, the properties of individual beings. As a result, they are unlikely to satisfy many human rights proponents. Second, I address Deckha’s challenge that the SMA manifests a problematic human-first mindset which reinforces existing species privileges. I respond by demonstrating that the SMA does not, in fact, adopt a human-first mindset, and that even my book’s more specific discussion of how human rights could be temporarily prioritised does not make my theory problematically anthropocentric.
Speeding heightens the risk of traffic accidents, which are a leading cause of death. Vehicles can be fitted with a new technology, Limited Intelligent Speed Assistants (LISA), that makes it impossible for drivers to exceed local speed limits. In a chapter in Thomas Søbirk Petersen’s recent book, he argues—alongside Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, who coauthored the chapter—that LISA-enabled vehicles should be mandatory. The authors base their argument on the “Principle of Required Prohibition,” according to which the state ought to regulate design of a product to reduce the harms of illegal use if it can do so without creating comparable harms or making any lawful use impossible, and if this is the most feasible and efficient way to avoid the harm caused by illegal use (Petersen and Lippert-Rasmussen 2025). In this commentary we argue that, at least in some contexts, required LISA installation represents unjustified state action because it undermines moral agency. We understand moral agency as the ability to be sensitive to and act in accordance with our own reasons, including moral reasons. States often use technology to encourage good action and reduce harm by way of our reasoning capacity, by highlighting certain reasons and adding consequences to action. However, LISA technology operates outside of the space of reasons. By removing opportunities for moral choice, LISA can erode moral knowledge and our attentiveness to morally relevant facts. In this way it goes beyond criminalization of conduct, which disincentivizes, but does not make impossible, criminal action. We conclude that LISA is not the most efficient way for a state to reduce the harm related to traffic accidents, at least in certain contexts. We recommend other state actions, including other techno-regulations, that address the harms of speeding without diminishing moral agency.
In this paper, I respond to critical papers on my book “What is Intergenerational Justice?” In Sect. “Non-Identity, Severance and Containment”, I address concerns about two responses to the non-identity problem, i.e. severance and containment. In doing so, I discuss issues such as the unjust nature of inequalities with the past, the defensibility of a duty to procreate or the function of the “their duties are our duties” proviso. In Sect. “Distributive Justice?”, I clarify my conception of distributive justice against concerns for the centrality of human agency and I apply it to historical emissions of greenhouse gases. In Sect. “Is the Narrow Path too Narrow?”, I defend the “narrow path” view as a default position against a variety of concerns. In Sect. “On Legitimacy and Representation”, I defend the view that our decisions cannot be said to be legitimate towards the future and that one should avoid claiming to be representing the future.
