A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Monthly Archive: January 2020

Economics / Governance / Health / Liberty

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Against Pharmaceutical Libertarians

In this post, David Teira discusses his recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy defending pharmaceutical paternalism.

On January 11, 2020 The New York Times (NYT) published an opinion piece by their Editorial Board: “The F.D.A. Is in Trouble. Here’s How to Fix It”. The F.D.A. is the US Food and Drug Administration, a regulatory body with gatekeeping powers over pharmaceutical markets. Since 1962, patients can access new medical treatments only after the F.D.A. has declared them safe and effective, on the basis of evidence gathered in clinical trials. This is a form of pharmaceutical paternalism: patients’ right to try whatever treatment they see fit is partially restricted – they will find in chemists only those drugs that the F.D.A. judge good for them. Yet, argues the NYT Editorial Board, “libertarian groups bent on deregulation at any cost” are exploiting the frustration of patients who don’t find any treatment option in the market to put pressure on the F.D.A., curtailing its “already diminished powers.” I think that the NYT is right to be concerned with this trend, and in a recent article, I provide an account of why exactly we should value pharmaceutical paternalism. (more…)

Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / Democracy / Public Philosophy

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An Interview with Marc Stears (Beyond the Ivory Tower series)

This is the second interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series, following Onora O’Neill. Back in November, Aveek Bhattacharya spoke to Marc Stears about his experiences in politics, focusing on his time as a close adviser to then leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband.

Prof Marc Stears is Director of the Sydney Policy Lab. Stears was Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford in 2010 when his university friend Ed Miliband was elected leader of the opposition Labour party. After a secondment to the think tank Institute for Public Policy Research, Stears left academia in 2012 to become Chief Speechwriter for Miliband. He was a co-author of the 2015 Labour election manifesto and a member of the party’s general election steering committee. In 2013, the Telegraph ranked him the UK’s eighth most influential left-winger. After Labour’s election defeat in 2015, Stears joined another British think tank, the New Economics Foundation, as Chief Executive, before his move to Australia in 2018.

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Democracy / Duties / International / Migration

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Why citizens should choose which refugees to admit to their states

In this post, Patti Lenard discusses her recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on the ethics of citizen selection of refugees.

The situation for refugees world-wide is persistently horrendous.  Globally, there is pressing, urgent, need to adopt create ways to support them. In a recent article, I argue that governments should adopt private or community sponsorship of refugee schemes, which permit citizens to select specific refugees for admission, if they are willing to bear the costs of resettlement.  They are one crucial way forward in bleak times.

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Gender / General / MediaPhilosophy

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No more victims: Machismo and gender violence in Latin America advertising

In this guest post, Marta Mensa writes on machismo culture and gender violence in Latin America, and argues that advertisements for social campaigns against gender violence should be carefully designed.

Latin America is one of the continents with the highest rate of violence against women. The most extreme form of this crime is called femicide, the murder of a woman for the fact that she is a woman. Advertising can be a good tool to reduce this violence, but social campaigns have portrayed women as victims and not as empowered. Unfortunately, Latin American advertisements for social campaigns reinforce the idea that women need protection, which is used as an excuse for machismo to control them.

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International / War

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Was the Killing of General Soleimani Justified? An Ethical Analysis

This post is co-written with Anh Le (University of Manchester)

The killing of General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds force, has, once again, ignited the debate surrounding the practice of targeted killing. Much has been said about the legality and prudence of this strike. In this post, we assess the morality of this strike. From an ethical perspective, there are two paradigms that can justify the state’s killing of individuals: just war and law enforcement (there is, in addition, the emerging framework of jus ad vim but we’ll stick with the two familiar paradigms in this post). Any justified state-sanctioned killings have to fall within the purview of these two paradigms. If a particular act of killing fails to meet the rigorous demands of both paradigms, then such killing is unjust. In this post, we will analyse both possible justifications.

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Distribution / Economics / Gender / Public Philosophy / Work

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Feminism for Working-Class Women Is the Best Feminism

This extended post is a response to a recent Boston Review article by Gina Schouten, called “‘Flexible’ Family Leave is Lousy Feminism”.

This must be one of the most animated debates amongst feminists: how to find the best remedial policies for women who are disadvantaged because they serve as main care-givers for their children, elderly parents, sick relatives or friends. They are disadvantaged in many ways. Some are economic: lower lifetime earnings and fewer work-related benefits compared to people without care commitments – hence more dependency on spouses. Others are social: part-time workers take a hit in status, stay-at-home mums even more so. Finally, there are the relational and psychological disadvantages: women who are economically dependent on their partners have less negotiating power than their partners, and many face tremendous difficulties when they want to leave abusive relationships.

The gendered division of labour – women’s assignment to the hands-on care that we all need at different periods of our lives – explains, to a large extent, not only the gender pay gap but also the feminisation of poverty and the private domination to which many women are subjected. No surprise, then, that feminists have two distinct aims: to protect women from the risks of being a care-giver, and also to do away with the gendered division of labour, which is a main source of the problem. I am one of these feminists; I would like to see women and men equally engaged in the labour market, and looking after anybody who needs care.

But I’m also adamant that we should pursue these two aims in the right order: we should give priority to protecting women from the worst consequences of the gendered division of labour over the abolition of the gendered division of labour itself. Moreover, we should be aware of the unavoidable tension between the two aims, and keep this in mind when advocating for particular gender policies. (more…)

Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / Governance / Public Philosophy / Technology / Work

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An Interview with Baroness Onora O’Neill (Beyond the Ivory Tower series)

Aveek Bhattacharya and Fay Niker recently interviewed Baroness Onora O’Neill, asking her about her wide-ranging experiences combining being a professor of philosophy and a member of the House of Lords (among many other things). 

Baroness Onora O’Neill of Bengarve is Emeritus Honorary Professor at the University of Cambridge and has been a cross-bench (i.e. not aligned with any political party) member of the British House of Lords since 2000. She has written widely in ethics and political philosophy, and is particularly known for her work on bioethics, trust and the philosophy of Kant. She was Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge from 1992-2006, President of the British Academy from 2005-9, chaired the Nuffield Foundation from 1998-2010 and chaired the Equality and Human Rights Commission from 2012-2016. (more…)

Beyond the Ivory Tower / General

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Introducing: Beyond the ivory tower

Most of us believe that the questions of political theory are not merely academic, in either sense of the word. We may be partly motivated by philosophical curiosity, seeking knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but that is not the only reason we want to understand what justice requires, what equality means or how to meet our obligations to one another. Most of us think the answers to these questions have practical implications as well. If we discover what a better society looks like, we don’t just want to keep that to ourselves – we want to help make that society come about.

That implies that the ideas of political theorists ought not be limited to universities and scholarly journals, but that they should seek to influence the outside world of ‘real politics’. Indeed, many of the most venerated thinkers in the history of political thought have sought, with varying degrees of success, to put their ideas into practice – from Marx trying to direct international revolutionary socialism, to Rousseau’s constitution writing, to Burke and JS Mill sitting in parliament. Yet as political theory has professionalised, there is a concern that it has withdrawn into abstraction and esoterica and become detached from practical political concerns.

The purpose of Beyond the Ivory Tower is to speak to prominent philosophers that have, in different ways, managed to bridge the divide between academic political theory and ‘real politics’. In part, this is because their stories are interesting in their own right. It is also to help us understand the position of political theory today, and how other political theorists might achieve wider impact.

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