Vocations, Exploitation, and Professions in a Market Economy

In a market economy, members of professions—or at least those for whom their profession is a vocation—are vulnerable to a distinctive kind of objectionable exploitation, namely the exploitation of their vocational commitment. That they are vulnerable in this way arises out of central features both of professions and of a market economy. And, for certain professions—the care professions—this exploitation is particularly objectionable, since, for these professions, the exploitation at issue is not only exploitation of the professional’s vocational commitment but also of her even more basic commitment to morality

But I’ve Got My Own Life to Live: Personal Pursuits and the Demands of Morality

The dominant response to Peter Singer’s defense of an extremely demanding duty of aid argues that an affluent person’s duty of aid is limited by her moral entitlement to live her own life. This paper argues that this entitlement provides a basis not for limiting an affluent person’s duty of aid but rather for the claim that she too is wronged by a world marked by widespread desperate need; and the wrong she suffers is a distinctive one: the activation of a duty of aid so demanding that it dominates her life, crowding out her own valuable projects and involvements

A Good Friend Will Help You Move a Body: Friendship and the Problem of Moral Disagreement

On the shared-­ends account of close friendship, proper care for a friend as an agent requires seeing yourself as having important reasons to accommodate and promote the friend’s valuable ends for her own sake. However, that friends share ends doesn't inoculate them against disagreements about how to pursue those ends. This paper defends the claim that, in certain circumstances of reasonable disagreement, proper care for a friend as a practical and moral agent sometimes requires allowing her judgment to decide what you are to do, even when you disagree with her judgment (and even when her judgment is in fact mistaken). In these instances, your friendship can make it the case that you may not act on your own practical and even moral judgments because, at those times, you have a duty as her close friend to defer to her judgments. As a result, treating your friend properly as a responsible agent can require that you assist her in committing what may in fact be serious moral wrongs

Disagreement, Unilateral Judgment, and Kant’s Argument for Rule by Law

Kant argues that it is only as citizens of a properly constituted state that persons are able to respect one another’s innate right to freedom, for joint subjection to the authority of a state enables them to avoid what Kantians call “the problem of unilateralism”: when I interact with you in a state of nature according to my judgment of right in circumstances of disagreement between us, I implicitly claim that my judgment, and not yours, has authority over us simply because it is mine. But this argument seems vulnerable to a powerful objection: my reason for acting on my judgment of right is not that it is mine but rather that it is, as I believe, correct, and so there is no sense in which I am claiming special authority for that judgment. This paper defends the Kantian problem of unilateralism against this objection and, in so doing, illuminates the feature of the Kantian conception of right that accounts for why, no matter how good and right-loving they might be, persons in a state of nature about right are unable coherently to pursue the aim of acting rightly

Kant and the Problem of Unequal Enforcement of Law

Kant infamously opposes not only revolution but also any resistance or disobedience by citizens that aims to compel states to reform themselves. This paper argues that, in fact, the Kantian account of the legitimate state has the resources for a distinctive justification of principled disobedience, including even violent or destructive resistance, that applies to citizens of contemporary Western democracies. When a state fails to enforce the law equally, this lack of equal enforcement can deprive some citizens of the equal assurance of the security of their rights that, on the Kantian account, forms part of the very basis of the state’s claim of legitimate authority. This failure of equal enforcement of the law will thus be a defect of legitimacy and, as a result, those citizens may engage not only in civil disobedience but also in uncivil disobedience, even violent or destructive resistance, in order to compel the state to reform itself. In this context, such disobedience or resistance will count as furthering rather than undermining the project of governance by legitimate law

Political Obligation And Democratic Community: An Account Of The Democratic Citizen'S Duty To Uphold The Law

I argue that citizens of a suitably democratic community will have an important duty to uphold their community's laws, even those laws they reasonably think to be unjust, because upholding the law is required if they are to respect their fellows as free and equal citizens. The version of the problem of political obligation that I address, roughly put, is to explain how laws may bind citizens of a community without threatening their status as free persons. This version of the problem must be addressed because, on the one hand, the duty to uphold the law, as a duty to obey (or defer to) another, seems incompatible with freedom, but, on the other, the aspiration of a community of free and equal citizens-the aspiration motivating much of liberal political philosophy-is only realizable if free citizens can have such a duty. I argue here that the persistence of deep but reasonable disagreement between persons about justice requires that an authoritative scheme of laws govern them. However, a law can be authoritative only if it is enacted in a manner that respects all citizens as free and equal, including those citizens who reasonably disagree with that law. Democratic procedures, I argue, are therefore necessary to achieve authoritative law; but, importantly, they are not sufficient, for a problem of freedom still remains. Drawing on the results of an argument about deference in close personal friendships, I argue that democratic procedures result in authoritative law only when those procedures are embedded within a democratic community whose citizens are bound, in their political choices, by genuine ties of civic friendship