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Justice

Recently, a politician announced that (unlike his opponent) he supported a major government initiative that would bring money and jobs to my area. If the initiative passed, my life would almost certainly improve. The rest of the country, however, would be worse off, because the plan is mostly pork spending that wastes money. At first I thought I should vote for the candidate who opposes the initiative, because that would help the most people. But on the other hand, our political system seems to be designed expecting citizens to vote in their interest. Our congress, for instance, is elected on a state-by-state basis, implying that each congressperson should have a special concern for their state. What would be the responsible way to vote?

I don't think geographical representation implies what you say it does. Its rationale could just as easily be that the legislature -- when deliberating about justice and the common good for all Americans -- should be fully informed of how its decisions would affect people in different parts of the country. Each legislator would then bring her or his special knowledge and understanding into the debate, but they all would decide on a common basis of what's best for all citizens. This would be, in my view, a much better system than the one we have, where legislators are beholden to the interests of their specific electorates and contributors (often actually more to the campaign contributors from outside their district than to ordinary people within their district). But it does not follow that you must therefore act in the interest of all citizens, impartially. You can say that, even if it were best if everyone were impartial, citizens and their political representatives are not in fact impartial and,...
Ethics
Justice

Does the great size of the population give me an out, since my contribution, say one in 150,000,000, is neither here nor there, when it comes to,say, voting, recycling garbage, paying taxes? Of course, if "everybody did it", it would be a problem. But everybody, in fact, isn't doing it, so there is no actual problem. My failure to co-operate has a minimal impact. And, my keeping quiet about my non-co-operation further minimizes the minimal impact.

Suppose that by mailing in a postcard you could get a 1 in 10 chance to direct $10,000 to a good cause: an orphenage, say, or a promising development project in Africa. Would you mail the postcard? I suppose you would. You would say that a 1 in 10 chance of $10,000 is worth about as much as $1000 for certain. So this is very much worth a postage stamp. Now consider the same question in regard to a 1 in 20 chance of being able to direct $20,000 to a good cause. The probability that it will work out is smaller, to be sure, but the good it would do is correspondingly larger. So again it would seem that you have very strong reason to mail that postcard. Voting in the US election comes rather later in this chain. Your chance of affecting the result is very small, but the payoff is correspondingly larger. The difference between a good and a bad US President is huge for a generation of human beings and possibly future ones as well. So don't be fooled by the small probability; it isn't zero. And do not...
Justice

If I believe something is wrong, namely poverty and income inequality, then shouldn't I do as much as I can to make it right? So then my question becomes, what is the most effective way to help impoverished people? If I become completely devoted to ending poverty and spent all my time say working for a non-profit organization I believe I would be doing some good. However, if I become a successful businessperson then I could possibly be doing even more good by donating millions of dollars, although I would be more committed to business then fixing poverty at that point. How can I be sure what option will give me live the "good life"?

On your first question, in its general form: No, it is not the case that you should do as much as you can to make right what you believe is wrong. First, there are wrongs that you can make right only by committing serious wrongs of your own. Second, your resources (time, money, energy) are limited, and it is simply impossible for you to do as much as you can with regard to every wrong you perceive. (For example, doing all you can to make right a trivial wrong may prevent you from making right a much greater wrong.) Third, you are not morally required to do all you can to right the wrongs of the world you live in -- some wrongs are not your responsibility (e.g., a blatant injustice in the Danish tax code), and you are morally entitled to devote some of your resources to things other than the righting of wrongs. Fourth, you may not be sure that what you believe to be wrong is wrong, and you may then have reason not to act on your judgment. (For example, when many people whose judgment you respect do not...
Justice

Let's say a certain group of people V, from a distant country invaded and colonized another group of people G, in the late 19th century. These people V built mansions for themselves, schools for their children, divided G's land among themselves. They then forced this population of natives to work for them, and built up a vibrant economy from this exploitation Now we are in the 21st century, all the people who invaded G are dead of old age, and their descendants are still benefiting from their father's colonization. G managed to get political independence from V, but the economy is still in the hands of V. What is the just thing to do here, both for V and G?

This sort of case satisfies three conditions: Contemporary Vs enjoy considerably superior starting positions and life conditions than contemporary Gs. The starting positions and life conditions of contemporary Gs and Vs are profoundly affected by the historical wrongs committed by earlier Vs against earlier Gs. And it would be impossible surgically to correct the wrongs (in the way one might correct a recent theft by restoring the stolen object to its rightful owner). In such cases, I would think that justice makes at least these two demands: Starting positions and life conditions are to be made roughly equal between the two groups. And very poor and very inferior (to the V+G average) starting positions are to be avoided insofar as this is reasonably possible. To be sure, justice may well make the second demand independently of historical wrongs. But I think the moral reasons for avoiding starting positions and living conditions that are avoidably very poor in absolute or relative terms become...
Justice

Should the state be seen as responsible for crimes committed by prisoners against prisoners in jails? It seems to me that knowingly incarcerating a person in a place where inmates are at risk to be beaten, raped or killed is like throwing him in the lion's den.

Such crimes in jails cannot be avoided completely -- at least not without utterly draconian and inhumane isolation of inmates. So the state should be held responsible for the statistical excess: for that fraction of the in-jail crime rate that is reasonably avoidable. In the US, this excess is abnormally large. And in the US the responsibility of the state -- and this is us : taxpayers and citizens eligible to vote -- is further aggravated by the fact that the excess is deliberate. We consider vulnerability to in-jail crime to be part of an offender's punishment, and we also use the prospect of in-jail crime to extract cooperation and confessions from suspects. (The cops in Law & Order routinely tell male suspects that, if they won't cooperate, they'll be sent to a jail where they will be "someone's girlfriend." To be sure, with my sheltered life, I have never heard this from a real cop in a real-life situation. But I think that, based on our reading of the news, we can be fairly sure that...
Justice

I am a Zimbabwean student studying in South Africa and like many, am distressed quite deeply by the events of Zimbabwe's recent past. I am particularly opposed to the blinding lights of patriotism and nationalism-and the inextricable fetters it places upon human thought. However, at the moment I feel that much of my disgust and my desire for change in Zim is motivated by that very patriotism I tend to abhor. Is nationalism ever justified? Or does it always form the pretext for the ideologies of hate that grip the world so voraciously? Also, is the use of force justified in opposition to the government's fierce crackdown on civil protest? Is civil disobedience of Mahatma Gandhi's brand the only justified response to tyranny?

It's worth distinguishing two very different kinds of nationalism or, more broadly, partiality. The first is well-expressed by "my country right or wrong". Here the agent is a nationalist or patriot by putting the interests (crudely conceived) of a certain group above those of others and above morality. With the second kind of nationalism or partiality, the agent puts an especially high value on the moral quality of a certain group or of certain special others. To illustrate, consider how a parent may respond to the discovery that her son has stolen toys from a little store in the neighborhood. Family partiality of the first kind may lead the parent to help ensure that the theft is not discovered (even while this parent would not give similar help to stealing children of another household). Family partiality of the second kind may lead the parent to ask the son to bring the toys back and to apologize to the shopkeeper (even while this parent would make no effort to impart such a character lesson to...
Justice

The rulers of country X are dictators in every sense of the word. Due to their repressive policies, living conditions of the inhabitants of X have dropped to pathetic levels. The rulers of X, because they have the money and wealth, decide to send their children to a country C which has better living conditions than X. Is it just for the rulers of C to deport these children back to X?

One needs a bit more detail here. Guessing at what interests you, let me fill this in. Let's assume the children were granted a proper visa, for instance a student visa after having been admitted to a university in C. They have started their study, and their parentage now comes to light. Should their visa be revoked, and they be deported? An argument in favor is that they are enjoying privileges that are denied to most of their compatriots. Letting them enjoy study here affords them an unfair advantage. On the other hand, lots of other foreigners study here; so, while these kids are unfairly advantaged vis-a-vis their peers from X, they are not unfairly advantaged vis-a-vis many other young people. Sending them home while students from other countries are allowed to stay may look like punishing them for the crimes of their parents. Such punishment, if this is what it is, can have its advantages, of course. It puts the rulers of X (and the rulers of other countries as well) on notice that, if...
Justice

I've been thinking about how people generalize all the time when trying to figure out if something is moral. Let's say I enact some form of vigilante justice, like shooting some criminal at large whom I know will repeat heinous acts if unstopped. Naturally I would find myself on trial and would face some variation of the argument: so do you believe, then, that everyone should take the law into their own hands? It seems that this generalizing argument/question flows naturally from the demands of logic. But I think it's a perversion of thought and distortion of morality. Why would Justice be so limited a concept that it must bow in all instances to some simply statable, spiffy sounding, ostensibly proceeding from almighty logic claim like the generalizing one? I feel that I can answer "no" to this question without surrendering my belief that what I did was right. It shouldn't involve me in any contradiction (nor would it be a huge deal if it did) to claim: what I did was right, but I don't believe...

You are right that the generalizing argument you criticize is invalid. The claim that some particular act is permissible cannot be defeated merely by pointing out that this act falls under a more general type and that not all acts of this type are permissible. The argument involves two kinds of generalization. It generalizes from one particular agent (token) to a type of agent and it generalizes from one particular act (token) to a type of act. Yesterday, I encountered someone who ordered me to open my bag. I could have asked her many generalizing questions: Do you think that any middle-aged woman may give orders to others? Do you think that any New Yorker may go through other people's luggage? And so on. It's absurd to think that the answer to all such questions must be affirmative for her conduct to be permissible. This shows that, when challenged by a generalizing question, one always has at least two options. One can try to support an affirmative answer, or one can reject the...
Justice

What place does social welfare have within the larger context of the social contract? In other words, is there a philosophical connection (and/or basis) between social welfare and the ideas and principles inherent within the social contract? Stated in its most elementary form, the social contract requires human beings to give up some of their natural rights in order to receive certain protections that government provides under the social contract. The question therefore is whether or not social welfare constitutes one of these "protections"? Did John Locke, Rousseau, or Hobbes ever speak of social welfare as an inherent aspect of the social contract? Is it logical or illogical -- on a strictly philosophical basis -- to suppose that social welfare is a natural product of the social contract? Are there any other authors/works that might be cited that deal with this philosophical investigation?

If we understand welfare broadly in terms of the fulfillment of human interests, then the idea of a social contract among human beings is related, in the first instance, to individual welfare. Each contractor will work out, on the basis of her or his own interests, what agreement to seek or to make. Social welfare (understood as some aggregate of individual "welfares" or in some other way) is typically said to result from social arrangements justified through a social contract -- either because contractors do not know how alternative designs of the social order would affect them in particular and therefore seek a design that is good for all or because each contractor will resist designs that impose great risks or burdens upon herself. A widely shared element of social-contract thinking is then that the agreement or contract brings the contractors a net welfare gain relative to non-agreement. The contractors are more than compensated, in welfare terms, for what they give up.
Justice

There is this field of philosophy called "social and political philosophy." I have a difficulty distinguishing "social" from "political." How does "social philosophy" differ from "political philosophy"? I think this is significant; otherwise, the field should be simply called either "social philosophy" or "political philosophy."

The main reason for adding "social and" to "political philosophy" seems to be to include conceptual, empirical, and normative questions about human social life that do not fall within the political as conventionally conceived -- for example, issues about shaping the personality and character of young people through education in schools and in the family. The expression "social philosophy" for the whole field would be quite bland (the expression occurs rarely on its own). It would not make sufficiantly clear that the central concern is to think about political systems and the rules that structure them and the rules generated by them (which importantly organize and condition much of human life in the last few millennia).

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