Uma Teoria da Justiça: O Musical!!

O blog chega ao seu centésimo post!

Como parte de nossas comemorações, nada mais apropriado do que "A Theory of Justice: The Musical"!!

Aparentemente a peça é um sucesso entre os alunos de Oxford....

(A trilha sonora e o filme (!) já estão a venda no site do musical) 

Enjoy!!!

"I need a theory, a theory of justice, something ambitious for everyone sake ..."

"Written by an enterprising group of 3^rd year PPEists, A Theory of Justice not only gets to grips with some seriously high-brow material, it manages to get some laughs out of a pretty niche subject matter – if any play were worthy of the label ‘only in Oxford’, this would be it.

The musical is an adaptation of John Rawls’s book A Theory of Justice, which, to cut a long story short, synthesises previous philosophic ideas into a one simple form of words: justice as fairness.

[...]

Even if you don’t know your Russell from your Rousseau, A Theory of Justice is easy to understand – if you’re still struggling, then a fairy godmother might point her wand at you and give you some hints".

                                                                                           The Tab

Filosofia, Wittgenstein e Locke

Do blog de filosofia The Stone: dois textos que discutem o legado filosófico de Wittgenstein, especialmente em quanto ao seu papel normativo.

Paul Horwich sintetiza os argumentos de seu novo livro sobre o filósofo austríaco - Wittgenstein's Metaphlosohy. De acordo com Horwich, conceitos aparentemente fundamentais como "verdade" não seriam passíveis de sistematizações filosóficas justamente porque admitem usos linguísticos distintos (e até mesmo contraditórios) em nossa linguagem.

- Horwich: "Was Wittgenstein right?"

Michael Lynch contesta a interpretação metafilosófica de Horwich na qual a filosofia "deixa tudo como está". Ao contrário, conceitos como verdade e direito são fundamentais para intervirmos racionalmente no mundo:

- Lynch: "Of Flies and Philosophers: Wittgenstein and Philosophy"

[...]

I think philosophy can play a more radical role. Return to our fly. Wittgenstein was not the first to compare the philosopher to one, nor the most famous. That award goes to Socrates, who claimed that the role of the philosopher was to act as a gadfly to the state. This is a very different metaphor. Leaving the world as it is isn’t what gadflies do. They bite. As I see it, so can philosophers: they not only describe how we think, they get us to change our way of thinking — and sometimes our ways of acting. Philosophy is not just descriptive: it is normative.

This is most obvious with ethical questions. Locke’s view that there are human rights, for example, didn’t leave the world as it was, nor was it intended to. 

Chamada: "Real Legitimacy" e "Health Promotion"

O centro de teoria política da Universidade de Manchester (MANCEPT) abriu dois processos de submissão de trabalhos para seus famosos "workshops" em teoria política. O primeiro deles, "Real Realist Legitimacy" procura discutir as relações (pouco teorizadas) entre filosofia política e estruturas reais de poder . O segundo, "Incentives in Health promotion: the Ethics and Politics of Healthy Choices", procura discutir quais os limites para a intervenção (por meio de incentivos por exemplo) nas decisões pessoais sobre saúde e bem-estar. Ambos os eventos possuem o mesmo prazo: 24 de maio.

Call for papers: Real Realist Legitimacy

A MANCEPT Workshop in Political Theory, convened by Robert Jubb and Enzo Rossi

4th – 6th September 2013, University of Manchester, UK

The current realist movement in political theory promises to change the way in which we approach first-order normative questions. It suggests that mainstream political philosophy is overly reliant on pre-political moral beliefs and so fails to adequately engage with the reality of politics. Politics is about the coercive provision of structuring orders rather than conforming to moral ideals, which its tools and problems may make impossible anyway. However, what difference does this make to the prescriptions that normative political philosophy aims at making? Some realists urge that political philosophers should turn their attention from the contemporary concern with the allegedly moral issue of justice to questions of the properly political virtue of legitimacy; questions of legitimacy should override the traditional contemporary concern with justice; others, noting that moral ideals are not discovered or created in political or historical vacuums, press charges of false consciousness, obfuscation and ideology on liberal-democratic thought. These arguments are clearly connected. But do those insights actually produce radically different accounts of political authority? The aim of this workshop is to move the realist current beyond methodological debates and into normative theorising, with particular attention to the issue of legitimacy and its connection to the problem of ideology. What would taking the historical specificity of political problems and the resources available to solve them mean, and how  would this differ from more directly moralised accounts?

We would particularly welcome papers on the relationship between legitimacy and

ideology, and their connections to justice, democracy, modernity, collective responsibility, and related topics.

Please send a 300-word abstract to R.Jubb@ucl.ac.uk and enzo.rossi@newport.ac.uk by 24 May 2013.

General information on the MANCEPT Annual Workshops: http://manceptworkshops2013.wordpress.com/

Call for papers: “Incentives in Health Promotion: The Ethics and Politics of Healthy Choices”

A MANCEPT Workshop in Political Theory, convened by Richard Ashcroft (Queen Mary, University of London) and Jurgen De Wispelaere (McGill University)

4-6 September 2013, University of Manchester

Behaviour shaping through incentives plays a major role in health and health promotion, and governments are increasingly interested in incentive technologies to counter what they perceive as poor health outcomes. On the one hand, poor health often results directly from people making “unhealthy choices” (smoking, no exercise, poor diet), and incentives to promote healthy choices are typically regarded as justified by their effect on health outcomes. On the other hand, we also know that many external interventions impact on individual or population health, and here too aligning the incentives of the relevant individual (e.g., organ donors) or corporate (e.g., tobacco firms or food and drinks industry) actors with the goal of health promotion appears justified.

Nevertheless, considerable disagreement persists over both the appropriate range of incentives and the particular mechanisms or tools best suited for the task. Regarding the former, we must question whether there are areas or aspects that should remain off-limits to incentivizing interventions; a concern related to the oft-debated public/private distinction in ethics and politics. Regarding the latter, recent controversies include the use of monetary incentives in an increasing range of health interventions, the debate between strict regulation and self-regulation (including the use of extreme penalties and even outrights bans), and most recently the importance of nudging technologies affecting the “choice architecture” of both individuals and health professionals. These issues raise many normative questions of relevance to heath ethicists, political theorists, social scientists and policy analysts, including the role of legitimate paternalism, stigma, manipulation, coercion, exploitation, distributive fairness and equality of regard, and more generally trade-offs between freedom and objective good in a liberal society.

In this workshop we invite papers that address general issues related to incentives in health promotion or a more targeted discussion of a particular incentive mechanism or a specific area of application within the health field. We welcome papers that take a philosophical stance but equally those that consider issues of policy application and governance.

Please send a 250-word proposal to r.ashcroft@qmul.ac.uk and jurgen.dewispelaere@mcgill.ca by 24 May 2013.

General information on the MANCEPT Annual Workshops: http://manceptworkshops2013.wordpress.com/

Lançamento: "Making Human Rights a Reality"

Emilie Hafner-Burton, professora de políticas públicas e diretora do Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, publicou seu livro sobre o "enfoque estratégico" da implementação dos direitos humanos. Ao contrário de metas universais (e discursos filosóficos) defensores dos direitos humanos deveriam propor uma aliança "estratégica" entre Estados e entidades não-governamentais orientada pelos objetivos mais do que pelas razões oferecidas.  

Os interessados podem avaliar as propostas da autora: o primeiro capítulo está disponível em pdf.

- Hafner-Burton: "The problem of Human Rights"

Making Human Rights a Reality

by Emilie Hafner-Burton

Table of Contents:

Preface ix
Research xiii
Introduction xv

1 The Problem of Human Rights 1

Part I The Calculus of Abuse 19

2 Contexts 21

3 Rationales 29

Part II International Law 41
4 The International Human Rights Legal System 44
5 Scholarly Perspectives 67
6 Practitioner Perspectives 86
7 System Reform 116

Part III A Stewardship Strategy 135
8 The Status Quo 138
9 Nongovernmental Organizations 151
10 National Human Rights Institutions 164
11 Triage 176
12 Making More of Law and Power 193

Notes 199
Index 267

Religião sem Deus

O NYReview publicou o primeiro capítulo do ultimo livro de Dworkin, escrito pouco antes dele falecer em fevereiro. O artigo "Religion Without God" é uma síntese de três conferências ministradas por Dworkin na Universidade de Bern ano passado (post).

(clicar aqui para a versão impressão)

Religion Without God

by Ronald Dworkin

The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude. Many millions of people who count themselves atheists have convictions and experiences very like and just as profound as those that believers count as religious. They say that though they do not believe in a “personal” god, they nevertheless believe in a “force” in the universe “greater than we are.” They feel an inescapable responsibility to live their lives well, with due respect for the lives of others; they take pride in a life they think well lived and suffer sometimes inconsolable regret at a life they think, in retrospect, wasted. They find the Grand Canyon not just arresting but breathtakingly and eerily wonderful. They are not simply interested in the latest discoveries about the vast universe but enthralled by them. These are not, for them, just a matter of immediate sensuous and otherwise inexplicable response. They express a conviction that the force and wonder they sense are real, just as real as planets or pain, that moral truth and natural wonder do not simply evoke awe but call for it.

There are famous and poetic expressions of the same set of attitudes. Albert Einstein said that though an atheist he was a deeply religious man:

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.¹

Percy Bysshe Shelley declared himself an atheist who nevertheless felt that “The awful shadow of some unseen Power/Floats though unseen among us….”² Philosophers, historians, and sociologists of religion have insisted on an account of religious experience that finds a place for religious atheism. William James said that one of the two essentials of religion is a sense of fundamentality: that there are “things in the universe,” as he put it, “that throw the last stone.”³ Theists have a god for that role, but an atheist can think that the importance of living well throws the last stone, that there is nothing more basic on which that responsibility rests or needs to rest.

Giannotti: "Crítica a um modo de produzir riqueza"

O filósofo e professor emérito da USP, José Giannotti, escreveu uma introdução a nova edição de O Capital, Uma parte dela foi adiantada pelo Sabático (Estado de São Paulo) na última semana. O primeiro livro da nova edição sai pela Boitempo no dia 21 de março. 

Crítica a um modo de produzir riqueza

José Arthur Giannotti

O primeiro volume d'O Capital - Crítica da Economia Política foi publicado em 1867, na Alemanha. Embora seu autor, Karl Marx, já tivesse emigrado para Londres em 1850, ele continuava a manter profundas relações com os alemães e os líderes dos movimentos operários que participavam das políticas revolucionárias espalhadas por toda a Europa.

O Capital não foi escrito com intenções meramente teóricas, não pretendia elaborar uma nova visão dos acontecimentos econômicos nem aspirava a ser mais uma notável publicação do mercado editorial: o que a obra pretendia era criticar um modo de produção da riqueza essencialmente ancorado no mercado, isto é, na troca de produtos sob a forma mercantil. Como é possível que uma troca que equalize produtos possa sistematicamente produzir excedente econômico? Criar tanto riqueza como pobreza? Em sua análise, Marx pretende mostrar que esse excedente provém da diferença entre o valor da força de trabalho e o valor que o trabalhador cria ao pô-la em movimento. Espera, assim, provar cientificamente a especificidade da exploração do trabalho pelo capital, inserida num modo de produção que leva ao extremo o tradicional conflito de classes que marca toda a história. No limite, esse conflito não teria condições de ser superado?

No entanto, se o livro desde logo é arma política, não é por isso que foge dos padrões mais rigorosos que regem as publicações universitárias. O fato de nem sempre ter sido bem acolhido pelos pensadores acadêmicos não quer dizer que sua composição e seus passos analíticos deixem de seguir uma metodologia rigorosa e cuidadosamente traçada, buscando uma nova interpretação que pudesse pôr em xeque o pensamento estabelecido.

Essa intenção crítica já se evidencia no subtítulo da obra. A economia política foi o primeiro esboço daquela ciência que hoje conhecemos sob o nome de economia. Como veremos, haverá uma ruptura de paradigma entre essa forma antiga e a nova, que a disciplina assume no século 20. Tal ciência nasce estudando como se constrói e se mantém a riqueza das nações, como se desenvolvem o comércio, o crédito, o juro, o sistema bancário, o imposto, o Estado e assim por diante. Lembremos que o Estado, como formação política separada da totalidade da polis, somente se configura de modo pleno no Ocidente a partir do Renascimento. De certo modo, a economia política é a primeira forma de pensar as relações de produção, o metabolismo do homem com a natureza - retomando a linguagem favorita do jovem Marx - que as desliga de intervenções políticas diretas. Note-se que o Estado sempre esteve presente no desenvolvimento capitalista, mas o mercado, principalmente na sua fase adulta, recusa essa interferência acreditando ser mais eficaz do que qualquer intervenção pública.

Democracia Republicana

A Edinburgh University Press publicou os trabalhos apresentados na conferência internacional "Republicanism, The Rule of Law, and Democracy", ocorrido em 2009 na Goethe Univeristät (Frankfurt). O resultado é o livro "Republican Democracy: Liberty, Law and Politics", organizado por Andreas Niederberg e Phillip Schink. Entre os autores, Pettit, Bohman, Forst, et alli....

Republican Democracy: Liberty, Law and Politics

Andreas Niederberg & Phillip Schink (org.)

 

Description

This book provides a new theory of democracy and an alternative to contemporary liberalism, in its exploration of the historical and theoretical relationship between democracy and republicanism, and its consequences. It expands on the foundational principle of republicanism, and puts forward new insights into connections between liberty, law and democratic politics, and a radically new conceptualization of the meaning and structure of democratic institutions and procedures.

Contents

Introduction - Andreas Niederberger & Philipp Schink

1. The Tension Between Law and Politics in the Modern Republican Tradition [paper] - Marco Geuna
2. Impotence, Perspicuity, and the Rule of Law - Jack N. Rakove
3. Kant, Madison and the Problem of a Transnational Order [abstract] - James Bohman
4. Republicanism and Democracy - John P. McCormick
5. Two Views of the City: Republicanism and Law - John Ferejohn
6. A Kantian Republican Conception of Justice as Nondomination -Rainer Forst
7. Two Republican Traditions - Philip Pettit
8. Freedom, Control and the State - Philipp Schink
9. Legal Modes and Democratic Citizens in Republican Theory -Galya Benarieh Ruffer
10. Rights, Republicanism and Democracy - Richard Bellamy
11. Republicanism and Global Justice: A Sketch - Cécile Laborde
12. Republicanism and Transnational Democracy - Andreas Niederberger