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

Yearly Archive: 2021

Climate / Economics / General / Governance

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Accounting for global and local justice in behavioural climate policy

Anthropogenic climate change is a global concern. However, that climate change concerns all of us does not mean that it would concern all of us equally. Income is the primary correlate of carbon footprint whether analysed on a national or individual level. The richest half of the world’s countries (in GDP) emit 86% of global CO2 emissions. The difference is even starker when analysed on an individual level: income level is also the strongest correlate with citizen CO2 footprint (2016 data from the Global Carbon Project). The effect of attempts to decrease carbon footprint in wealthy countries by producing climate-friendly consumer goods, energy, and transport options have had limited effect – in part because these only transform a small part of citizens’ total consumption behaviour, and in part because reductions are needed, primarily, in the amount of consumption by high-income citizens rather than in the specific goods being consumed. (more…)

Academia / Education / General / Pedagogy / Teaching / Teaching Philosophy

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“What I would like is for people to come at the world with lots of different ways of seeing things”; Dr Liam Kofi Bright on the philosophical canon

Detail of Raphael's The School of Athens

Detail of Raphael’s fresco, The School of Athens, depicting among others Plato and Aristotle

In 2020, Dr Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) was interviewed by the Dutch newspaper Trouw [in Dutch]. In that interview, he outlined his case for getting rid of philosophical canons. “The Dutch far right got very angry with me on Twitter,” Bright says. “A quite prominent far-right politician said what a terrible person I am, and a bunch of her followers agreed.” But much of this anger was based on a misunderstanding of Bright’s argument. “They assumed without really reading what I was saying that my objection was to the particular people on the canon, so say Descartes, because he was a white guy from Europe. And they, being the far right, didn’t like that. But actually my objection isn’t really to any particular items on the canon at all.”

To start off our new series of posts about teaching philosophy – titled, unimaginatively, “Teaching Philosophy in the 21st Century” – we caught up with Dr Bright in August 2021 to discuss his argument, and to learn more about what teaching philosophy without teaching to the philosophy canon might look like.

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General

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How to Ask Questions and Alienate People: Is Playing Devil’s Advocate Morally Defensible?

This is a guest post by Avril Tynan, a postdoctoral researcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies in Finland.

It often seems that asking questions is an infallible activity. When we ask questions we demonstrate curiosity; it’s how we learn and understand; in universities we encourage students to ask questions, to interrogate data and theories and to challenge conventional approaches. When we ask how, why, when, where and who, we illuminate the grey areas of our knowledge and understanding, and we may even stumble upon new information and fresh perspectives. But asking questions can be damaging, disrespectful and even dangerous, particularly when the objective is not to understand, but rather to undermine. (more…)

Beyond the Ivory Tower / General / Governance / Health / International / Public Philosophy

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What the pandemic can teach us about political philosophy

This post originally appeared on LSE School of Public Policy’s COVID-19 blog on 3rd September. You can access this version here. Political Philosophy in a Pandemic: Routes to a More Just Future, the collection of essays discussed in this post, is out this coming Thursday (23rd September)!

Aveek Bhattacharya (Social Market Foundation) and Fay Niker (University of Stirling), co-editors of a new book on the ethics and politics of the COVID-19 pandemic and our response to it, introduce some of its ideas.

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Back in April 2020, in the period we now look back on as “the first lockdown”, we gathered together some early reflections from philosophers and political theorists on the ethical dimensions of the developing COVID-19 pandemic. We published these on Justice Everywhere, the blog we help to run. Experts from almost every academic field – epidemiology, statistical modelling, social psychology, economics – were turning the tools of their trades to the growing crisis. What, if anything, did we and our peers have to offer? (more…)

Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / General / MediaPhilosophy / Public Philosophy

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Political Philosophy in a Pandemic: Chapter Preview (Adam Swift)

Several Justice Everywhere authors have been involved in a book project about the ethics and politics of COVID-19. The volume, Political Philosophy in a Pandemic: Routes to a More Just Future (Bloomsbury 2021), is a collection of 20 essays covering five main themes: (1) social welfare and vulnerability; (2) economic justice; (3) democratic relations; (4) speech and (mis)information; and (5) the relationship between crisis and justice.

The second of three chapter previews that we’re releasing in the run up to the book’s publication next week comes from Adam Swift, who contributed a chapter to the final theme on the relationship between crisis and justice. His chapter, Pandemic as Political Theory, takes a step back to consider what the COVID-19 crisis reveals about the nature of politics and political theory in general. (more…)

Climate / General / Health / International / Public Philosophy

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Political Philosophy in a Pandemic: Chapter Preview (Julia Hermann)

Several Justice Everywhere authors have been involved in a book project about the ethics and politics of COVID-19. The volume, Political Philosophy in a Pandemic: Routes to a More Just Future (Bloomsbury 2021), is a collection of 20 essays covering five main themes: (1) social welfare and vulnerability; (2) economic justice; (3) democratic relations; (4) speech and (mis)information; and (5) the relationship between crisis and justice.

The first of three chapter previews that we’ll be publishing over the next few weeks comes from Julia Hermann, who contributed a chapter to the final theme on the relationship between crisis and justice. Her chapter, co-authored with Katharina Bauer and Christian Baatz, is entitled Coronavirus and Climate Change: What Can the Former Teach Us about the Latter? Check out her short video introduction to their chapter below: (more…)

General

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Welcome back: Launching our 2021/22 season!

Justice Everywhere returns this week for a new season. We continue in our aim to provide a public forum for the exchange of ideas about philosophy and public affairs.

We have lots of exciting content coming your way! This includes:

So please follow us, read and share posts on social media (we’re on both Facebook and Twitter), and feel free to comment on posts using the comment box at the bottom of each post. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to contribute a guest post on a topical subject in political philosophy (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

General

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From the Vault: Books by the Justice Everywhere Team

While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2020-21 season.

 

Over this past year, several Justice Everywhere authors have published (or are soon to publish) books in 2021. Check them out below:

Several other Justice Everywhere authors are currently working on books on topics connecting philosophy and public affairs, so keep tuned in for more information about these over the coming year! (more…)

Children / Duties / Gender / General / Governance / Public Philosophy

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From the Vault: Good Reads on Children and Upbringing

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2020-21 season. 

 

Here are three good reads on issues relating to children and upbringing that you may have missed or be interested to re-read:

  • Anca Gheaus’s post, Having Slaves and Raising Children, which discusses just how far one may push the analogy between holding slaves and raising children in a world like ours, which has not yet fully outgrown the long tradition of denying rights to children.
  • Daniela Cutas and Sabine Hohl’s post, which explores the question: What Do Co-Parents Owe Each Other? (This post is part of our ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy.)
  • Helen McCabe’s guest contribution, Ending Child Marriage in the UK, which examines the philosophical dimensions of a recent bill proposing to raise the minimum age of marriage in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to 18 – namely, questions about what decisions people should be permitted to make at 16, and about the balance between maximising people’s options and protecting a small number from significant harm.

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War

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On The Decision to Leave Afghanistan

This post is not an assessment of the military performance of the Afghan National Army or whether the American withdrawal made sense politically (or if it could have been planned better). There are more qualified people for that task. What’s lacking in the current discussion is a just war perspective; in other word, a moral assessment of the decision to wrap up our military involvement in Afghanistan. This post offers a tentative analysis of President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan and, crucially, to do nothing to aid the government of President Ghani when it became evident Kabul would fall. (more…)