Abstract This article argues that the approach to political theory articulated by Shmuel Nili’s Philosophizing the Indefensible needs to be modified to address non-ideal political circumstances in illiberal political societies in deep conflict. Building on Nili’s analysis of Israeli politics as a paradigmatic example, and with the moral catastrophe of October 7 and the Gaza war in mind, I argue that the burdens of politics under these circumstances are likely to make repugnant views commonplace; that worldviewing – the attempt to engage with the strongest version of our interlocutor’s arguments – is an overly charitable exercise, allowing repugnant views to appear non-repugnant; and that, counter-intuitively, the imperative to engage with repugnant views is stronger, not weaker, under these non-ideal circumstances.
In the literature on global justice, the issue of economic growth in developed countries has received only scant attention. Where addressed, it is widely presumed to be either detrimental or irrelevant from the perspective of the world's poor. This contribution aims to challenge this disregard by arguing that affluent countries have a duty of global justice to pursue economic growth deriving from their widely recognised obligation to eradicate global poverty.
Most interpretations of Hume's political philosophy cast him as either a conservative sceptic or a proto-utilitarian theorist of public utility. This paper argues instead that Hume's central contribution lies in his realist account of political legitimacy and collective judgement as grounded in sentiment rather than rational justification. This interpretation illuminates both Hume's distinctive position in the history of political thought and contemporary challenges to democratic authority. Against contractarian and deliberative theories, Hume shows that political obligation emerges from shared public sentiment shaped through sympathy, custom, and sustained institutional experience. Public opinion, on this view, is not primarily a set of beliefs but a socially cultivated structure of affective commitment. Reconstructing Hume's distinction between violent passions and calm sentiments, the article shows how his political psychology anticipates key dynamics of contemporary populism while also diagnosing its intrinsic instability. Populist mobilization, from a Humean perspective, derives its power from the rapid circulation of violent political affects while simultaneously undermining the slow institutional formation of calm democratic sentiments on which durable political authority depends. The result is a form of political realism that illuminates contemporary democratic pathologies without collapsing into cynicism about political possibility.
This paper examines the ethics of public shaming, both online and in person, from the perspective of freedom of speech. Current work on public shaming conceptualises it as a form of social punishment and principally examines its effects. In contrast to that, the paper considers shaming as a form of wrongful treatment. The argument proceeds in two stages. First, I emphasise the importance of uptake for free speech to have the worth it has for speakers. Though there is no right to uptake, persons do have duties not to undermine its prerequisites. Second, I maintain that shaming represents an attempt to deny the shamed person the basic eligibility conditions for social membership. With these pieces in place, I argue that public shaming, by labelling a person as socially unworthy, violates the duty to respect the conditions for uptake. The badge of shame is a signal not to give speakers' views due weight. This applies particularly to the interest in self-presentation, an important aspect of speech.
This paper explores how felt subjection - the vivid awareness of subordination to another in a power hierarchy - undermines relational equality by eroding egalitarian regard, the disposition to conceive of oneself and others as equals. While relational egalitarians often focus on objective or structural social conditions, I argue that the subjective experience of power matters to relational egalitarian justice in a way which has been undertheorized. To this end, I define egalitarian regard and clarify its role in relational equality, identify properties of power's expression which tend to evoke felt subjection, and summarize empirical evidence linking it to inegalitarian regard. Finally, I present a moral-psychological mechanism to explain this connection, showing it as a reasonable outcome of human psychology. I conclude by applying the insights of this paper to the case of the workplace, showing how the framework developed provides relational egalitarians with new tools for analyzing institutions and the relations that constitute them.
