PTRG: 16 May 2018
Killing is justifiable if it is necessary. If killing is unnecessary, it is unjustifiable and therefore wrong. Then, a question is: When is killing necessary or unnecessary? Oberman addresses this question in relation to the act of other-defence: When is killing someone necessary or unnecessary to defend others against death? Continue reading
PTRG: 4 April 2018
Maternity Mark in Japan
Summary of the paper:
One’s decision to have children, or to become a parent, has negative environmental impact. The birthing of children results in an increase in the global population, and ultimately in additional ecological burdens. Admitting this, Liz asks: Do individuals, at least in the affluent class, have a moral duty to attempt to mitigate the environmental impact of having children/ becoming a parent? Her answer is that they do. But Liz also argues that this does not mean individuals have a duty to have no (biological) child or not to become a (biological) parent. Continue reading
PTRG: 8 Feb 2018
Photo: Yuki Iwaki
We are delighted to have invited Prof Daniel Butt from Oxford University as the presenter for last week’s Political Theory Research Group seminar. Dan presented the paper ‘Should carnivores let their children eat meat?’.
PTRG: 8 Nov 2017
This paper looks to establish a dialogue between Karl Marx’s historical understanding of rights and conceptual analyses of rights of the sort practised by, among others, HLA Hart. Continue reading
PTRG 13 Oct 2017
Photo: Yuki Iwaki
We are delighted to have invited Professor Henry Shue from Oxford University as the presenter for PTRG yesterday. In the presented paper, Professor Shue critically reflects upon his earlier argument: that it is important to make a distinction between ‘subsistence emissions’ and ‘luxury emissions’, and that this distinction should be incorporated into climate policy intended to achieve mitigation. ‘Subsistence emissions’ are emissions necessary for securing the basic right to subsistence, whereas ‘luxury emissions’ are those that exceed a minimally adequate level of emission. According to Professor Shue, it is morally unacceptable to ask the poor to sacrifice subsistence emissions so that the affluent can maintain their luxury emissions. Continue reading
PTRG 27 Sept 2017
Photo: Glenda Alvarez
This week Political Theory Research Group welcomed back Professor Tim Hayward’s book chapter: Constituting Finance as a Global Public Good. Continue reading
PTRG 3 May 2017
Photo: Garry Knight
Today’s Political Theory Research Group seminar brought Dr. Matthew Chrisman’s paper The Speech Act of Protest. The paper aims at examining the conditions under which protests, as a speech act, are felicitous by deploying the speech-act theory. The paper argues that there are three constitutive norms of the speech act of protest: first, the act must aim to express disapproval of something; second, it must aim to demand some change in response to this disapproval; third, it must do both of these things by appealing to some presumed shared conception of what is fair. Because of these conditions, a protest which indicates insincerity or hypocrisy. The paper ends with comparing the liberal and republican accounts of civil disobedience, but Chrisman argues that the speech act theory developed above is a more general and neutral alternative to both liberal and republican accounts. Continue reading
PTRG 10 May 2017
Photo: Glenda Alvarez
Summary of the paper
The economic premises of the Western liberal democracies are unsustainable in the light of social justice and ecology. This indicates the ‘necessity’ of conceiving of an alternative to the existing global economic institutions. The global financial system, too, needs to be reorganised and reoriented. But how? Answering this question may indicate the ‘possibility’ of conceiving of alternative constitutional arrangements concerning global finance. Continue reading
Statue of Hume on the Royal Mile, Edinburgh (Photo: Yukinori Iwaki)
This week’s PTRG session discussed ‘The Tory Consequences of Whig Foundations’ by Chandran Kukathas. In this paper, Chandran defends David Hume’s critique of social contract theory and demonstrates the broader implications this has for certain strands of liberalism today. He begins with a historical account of the emergence of the modern nation state before discussing attempts at its justification by social contract theorists. What unites the disparate theories provided by thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant is the idea that the legitimacy of the state comes from its embodying the abstract, collective will of the citizens who comprise it. Chandran contrasts this with the approach taken by Hume who rejects the idea of such a will and bases the endurance of the state on its ability to satisfy particular interests. This latter perspective is beneficial in outlining a more realist account of politics which acknowledges the sectional nature of society as a contest between competing interests. In attempting to justify the state in terms of the collective will of the governed, social contract theory can serve to obscure the particular interests which underpin the governance and institutions of the state. Continue reading
Source: Vinoth Chandar (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
This week the PTRG welcomed Anca Gheaus from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. In her paper, ‘The Best Available Parent’, Anca argues against the widely-held assumption that children’s biological parents have an automatic moral right to
exercise exclusive parental control over their children. Her argument rests on the liberal assumption that it is only justifiable to exert control over another individual when that individual has given their consent or, if consent cannot be given, when it is in the controlled individual’s best interests. Given that children fall into the latter category it is necessary that any controlling action is conducted in their best interests, which entails giving parental control to the best available parents.
