Among the instances of apparent illiberality in Plato's Republic, one stands out as especially curious. Long before making a forced return to the cave, and irrespective of the kinds of compulsion operative in such a homecoming, the philosopher-king has been compelled to apprehend the Good (Rep. VII.519c5-d2, 540a3-7). Why should compulsion be necessary or appropriate in this situation? Schooled intensively through the decades for an eventual grasping of the Good, beginning already with precognitive training in music and art calculated to equip the guardian with a natural affinity towards the good and beautiful (Rep. III.401d3-402a4), the fully mature guardian might be expected to leap towards the Good when it is first opportune. For the Good is, according to Plato, the greatest thing to be learned (megiston mathêma; Rep. VI.504e4-5, 505a2). Reflection on these questions permits us to develop a richer appreciation of the forms of necessitation and compulsion Plato envisages for his guardians, which turn out to be primarily merely hypothetical instances of nomic necessitation. It follows that many of Plato's appeals to compulsion are neither coercive nor objectionably authoritarian.

Classical natural law theory derives moral conclusions from the essentialist and teleological understanding of nature enshrined in classical metaphysics. The paper argues that this understanding of nature is as defensible today as it was in the days of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. It then shows how a natural law theory of the grounds and content of our moral obligations follows from this understanding of nature, and how a doctrine of natural rights follows in turn from the theory of natural law. With this background in place, the implications of the theory for questions about property rights and taxation are explored. It is argued that classical natural law theory entails the existence of a natural right of private property, and that this right is neither so strong as to support laissez faire libertarianism, nor so weak as to allow for socialism. Though the theory leaves much of the middle ground between these extremes open to empirical rather than moral evaluation, it is argued that there is a strong natural law presumption against social democratic policies and in favor of free enterprise.

This essay contends that the debate between subjectivism and objectivism in ethics is better understood as a dispute among three alternatives: subjectivism, objectivism, and intrinsicism. Ayn Rand has identified intrinsicism – the belief that certain things are good “in, by, and of” themselves – as the doctrine that is actually operative in many defenses of moral objectivity. What intrinsicism fails to appreciate, however, is the significant role of the subject, the person to whom and for whom anything can be valuable.

Objective value, in Rand's view, is relational. Its existence depends on contributions of both external reality and human consciousness. Values are not reducible to psychological states, as in subjectivism, but nor are they independent of them, as in intrinsicism. Objectivity in ethics is attained neither through revelation of the intrinsic property of goodness nor through the subject's creation of goodness, but through a rational procedure of evaluation that is governed by the method of objectivity.

This essay is in three parts, explaining Rand's view of exactly what intrinsicism is; elaborating on her view of the nature of moral objectivity; and highlighting certain features that make plain the differences between an intrinsicist and an objectivist account of value.

This essay discusses the relation between ideal theory and two forms of political moralism identified by Bernard Williams, structural and enactment views. It argues that ideal theory, at least in the sense Rawls used that term, only makes sense for structural forms of moralism. These theories see their task as describing the constraints that properly apply to political agents and institutions. As a result, they are primarily concerned with norms that govern action. In contrast, many critiques of ideal theory are structured and motivated by their commitment to an enactment model of political theorizing. This instead sees political agents and institutions as instruments for producing or promoting better states of affairs. Enactment models treat the evaluations that rank different states of affairs as justificatorily basic, rather than norms governing action on which structural models focus. This reveals an important feature of debates about ideal theory. Whether ideal theory is capable of appropriately guiding action will depend on what the criteria for appropriately guiding action are, about which different theorists have importantly different views. For example, some popular strategies for defending ideal theory fail, while it may be much less clear that some alternatives to ideal theory can provide action guidance than their advocates claim.

If socialism and liberalism are rivals, one ambition these rivals have shared is that of being a transnational, even universal doctrine. Socialists and liberals have each thought of their own view as being well designed to expand, to reach out and be taken up in an ever-growing number and variety of societies. I do not know whether now is the time to write the final obituary for the socialist version of this dream. But the universalizing dream most vivid before the minds of the inhabitants of the world today clearly is not the socialist one, but the liberal one. “Globalization,” in our day, has come to mean something very close to “liberalization.” For some this is a cause of celebration; for others, it is a cause of protest and despair.

Morality requires us to act for the good of others. This is not the only moral requirement there is, and it is, of course, controversial where the good of others lies. But whatever their good is, there can be no serious doubt that acting so as to bring it about is one crucial obligation morality places on us. Yet the nature of this obligation is unclear, because there are difficult questions about its aim and about the motivational sources required for realizing it. Who are the others for whose good we are obligated to act? Are they only people in our immediate context, or members of our society, or all human beings? And, as a matter of moral psychology, what leads us to honor this obligation? Is it a sense of justice, decency, prudence, benevolence, or some combination of these and perhaps other virtues? The answers we give will shape our understanding of the nature of the obligation. For the character traits which we think should move us will influence the choice of people we aim to benefit and the inclusiveness we attribute to the obligation will affect the motives we wish to cultivate in ourselves and others.

During this period, when disciples were growing in number, a grievance arose on the part of those who spoke Greek, against those who spoke the language of the Jews; they complained that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.

When Americans think of ethnic conflict, conflict between blacks and whites comes to mind most immediately. Yet ethnic conflict is pervasive around the world. Azerbijanis and Turks in the Soviet Union; Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; Arabs and Jews in the Middle East; Maoris and English settlers in New Zealand; Muslims and Hindus in India and Pakistan; French and English speakers in Quebec; Africans, Afrikaaners, and mixed-race people in South Africa, in addition to the tribal warfare among the Africans themselves: these are just a few of the more obvious conflicts currently in the news. We observe an even more dizzying array of ethnic conflicts if we look back just a few years. Japanese and Koreans; Mongols and Chinese; Serbs and Croats; Christians and Buddhists in Viet Nam: these ancient antagonisms are not immediately in the news, but they could erupt at any time. And the history of the early Christian Church recounted in the Acts of the Apostles reminds us that suspicion among ethnic groups is not a modern phenomenon; rather, it is ancient.

The present paper seeks to address the problem of ethnic conflict in modern western democracies. How can our tools and traditions of participatory governments, relatively free markets, and the common law contribute to some resolution of the ancient problems that we find within our midst? In particular, I want to focus here on the question of ethnic integration.

As a motive, self-interest is constituted by a certain kind of concern for oneself; but we also use the term “self-interest” to refer to the object of such a motive, to the well-being or good life sought by a self-interested agent. In this essay, I want to concentrate on self-interest in the latter sense and say something about how self-interest or well-being relates to virtue. One reason to be interested in this relationship stems from our concern to know whether virtue pays, i.e., is in the moral agent's self-interest, a question which Plato notably asks in the Republic and which has been of concern to moral philosophers ever since. But the importance for ethics of notions like virtue and self-interest is hardly exhausted by their role in the debate over whether virtue pays; indeed, any large-scale ethical theory will presumably have something to say about how these major notions relate, so we have reason to want to understand this relationship independent of the particular desire to show that morality or virtue is in the self-interest of the (virtuous) agent.

It will be a background assumption of this essay that some ways of connecting virtue and well-being/self-interest redound to the advantage of the larger theories that incorporate them. If, in particular, we believe in the bona fides of ethical theory, then unifying power is a desideratum in ethics and it stands in favor of utilitarianism (and Epicureanism) that it offers us a way of unifying our understanding of virtue and well-being. To be sure, that advantage may to some extent or ultimately be undercut if unification leads to counterintuitive ethical consequences.

Part One of Marx's “On the Jewish Question” is a communitarian manifesto, one of the finest and subtlest ever penned. But has it anything valuable to offer defenders of liberalism?

I think it does; for in “On the Jewish Question” Marx points to a potential danger into which communitarians are liable to fall, and I shall argue that his discussion sheds light on an analogous peril for liberals. Specifically, Marx distinguishes between a genuine and a spurious form of communitarianism, and warns that a failure to recognize this distinction may lead communitarians to embrace liberal values in communitarian guise. Using Marx's analysis as a model, I hope to show that the same distinction may be found within the liberal tradition, posing a corresponding danger (communitarian values in liberal guise) into which contemporary liberalism has in large part already fallen.

The existence of a meaningful distinction between economic rights and “other rights” has been a cornerstone of constitutional law for the past sixty years. During this period, the federal courts consistently have taken the position that Congress is free to abuse citizens’ economic liberties, but is not permitted to interfere with such other, noneconomic “rights” as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.

We reject Moorean holism about value—the view that the value of the whole does not equal the sum of the values of its parts. We propose an alternative aggregative holism according to which the value of a state of affairs is the sum of the values of its constituent states. But these constituents must be evaluated in situ.

We also argue that, in addition to value tout court, there are benefits that can go to individuals—where the value of a state of affairs need not equal the sum of the benefits it supplies. To deny this claim is to deny, among other things, the possibility of even raising distributional concerns, or that of stating egoism in a coherent fashion. And denying these possibilities is implausible. But once benefits are in the picture, there is, pace certain forms of consequentialism, pressure to acknowledge that we can have extra reason to pursue them beyond considerations of the effect of such pursuit on the general good.

We conclude by applying these thoughts to, first, the claim that Pareto-optimality is necessary for maximal value (we argue that this thesis is false); and, second, Parfit's ‘repugnant conclusion’ (we use this conclusion to bolster our claim that value need not be the sum of benefits: if value were always the sum of benefits, the repugnant conclusion would follow; the repugnant conclusion is false; therefore value is not always the sum of benefits).

John Donne's song was hardly written in the tradition of political philosophy, but it has a good deal to say about the theme of luck, both good and bad, which I want to address. There is no doubt but that bad luck has bad consequences for the persons who suffer from it. If there were a costless way in which the consequences of bad luck could be spread across everyone in society at large, without increasing the risk of its occurrence, then most of us would pronounce ourselves better off for the change. In this sense it can be said, for example, that there is a utilitarian grounding for a moral obligation to care and provide for those persons who suffer the fortunes of bad luck. For the sake of argument I do not wish to contest this particular starting point, although there are many who would. Instead, I want to ask the question of whether this moral obligation should be converted into a legal obligation, backed by public force. The dominant answer to that question today is yes. Even those who think that markets should determine decisions on production find that the state has a proper role to reduce the adverse consequences of bad luck. My cast of mind is more skeptical. In life, or, in this instance, politics, “come bad chance, and we do join to it our strength.” In general the effort to use coercion to counter the adverse effects of luck tends only to make matters worse.

The aim of this essay is to set out an argument for moral objectivity. A brief sketch of the considerations at issue should help make it possible to keep sight of the forest amid the profusion of trees.

By what steps, historically, did morality emerge? Our remote ancestors evolved into social animals. Sociality requires, among other things, restraints on disruptive sexual, hostile, aggressive, vengeful, and acquisitive behavior. Since we are innately social and not social by convention, we can assume the biological evolution of the emotional equipment – numerous predispositions to want, fear, feel anxious or secure – required for social living, just as we can assume cultural evolution of various means to control antisocial behavior and reinforce the prosocial kind. Small clans consisting, say, of several extended families whose members cooperated in hunting, gathering, defense, and child-rearing could not exist without a combination of innate and social restraints on individual behavior.

I shall argue for a naturalistic theory of morality, by which I do not mean the definitional claims G.E. Moore sought to refute, but a broader and more complex theory that maintains that a sufficient understanding of human nature, history, and culture can fully explain morality; that nothing is left hanging. A theory that coherently brings together the needed biological, psychological, and cultural facts I shall call a philosophical anthropology; it is a theory that:

1) takes the good for humans – both an ultimate good (if there is any) and other important goods – to depend on human nature;

2) argues that a rudimentary but improving scientific and philosophical theory of human nature now exists, and thus denies that people are “essenceless”;

3) takes this theory to be evolutionary and historical, making the question “How did morality originate?” pivotal for ethical theory, but leaves open the empirical question of the relative importance of biological and cultural evolution; and

4) takes the origin of the moral ideas to be explainable in terms of human nature and history.

From the standpoint of libertarian ideology, capitalism is a form of liberation. In contrast to the slave, whose productive powers are wholly owned by his master, and the serf, whose productive powers are partially owned by his lord, the worker under capitalism is presented as possessing the fullest possible self-ownership. That capitalism fosters self-ownership is a false and stultifying myth. Exposing its errors from within capitalism's own conceptual framework requires a careful analysis of the concept of a person's “ownership” bodh of his or her productive powers and of the means of exercising these productive powers. This analysis will show that, in certain plausible circumstances, the capitalist economic system can make full self-ownership impossible. Since capitalism's supposed nurturing of self-ownership provides one of the major justifications for its moral legitimacy, capitalist ideology has a serious internal inconsistency.

The Ministry of Transport is planning for the construction of new roads in its territory. Many projects are being considered, and the Ministry needs to identify the worthwhile projects for which the benefits exceed the costs. Among costs and benefits are the expense of constructing the road, the time saved by motorists using the new road rather than some other road, the time saved through the reduction of congestion on other roads, and the expected increase or decrease in the number of deaths due to traffic accidents. I am concerned in this paper with the last item on the list. It is, of course, difficult to estimate fatalities accurately, but this difficulty is neither unique nor central to our problem. The problem is how best to place a monetary value on fatalities, so that the expected number of fatalities can be compared with other costs and benefits in deciding whether to build a road. However chosen, the monetary value of fatalities for use in this context is what the economist means by “the value of life.” The term is almost a joke, a bit of gallows humor to exorcise the ghoulishness that inevitably clings to analysis of life and death in monetary terms.

Internal and External Questions. The most profound questions in ethics, social philosophy, and the philosophy of law are foundational; i.e., they are questions that call the entire framework of our ordinary evaluations into doubt in order to determine to what degree, if at all, that framework can be rationally defended. Such questions, called “external” by Rudolf Carnap, are currently dominating my own philosophical reflections and are forcing me to rethink a variety of positions I have in the past defended.