Suchergebnisse

Every day we face rules of behaviour imposed upon us by norms that happen to be generally accepted in our environment. Laura Valentini illuminates this aspect of our lives by offering an account of when we are morally bound by socially constructed norms and when we should instead disregard them.

Abstract
Do not chew with your mouth open! Take your hat off when you enter a church! Do not skip the queue! Pay your taxes! Do not cross on a red light! These are familiar imperatives, and their immediate source are 'socially constructed norms': norms that exist as a matter of social fact. These range from informal etiquette and politeness norms to the complex norms making up our legal systems. While we often feel bound by these norms, we are also aware that they can be pernicious: the product of injustice and vehicles for its perpetuation. The question thus arises: when and why, if ever, does the fact that a socially constructed norm requires us to perform a certain action place us under a genuine moral obligation to comply? In Morality and Socially Constructed Norms, I answer that such an obligation, when it exists, is grounded in a broader, familiar duty, namely the duty to respect people's permissible and authentic exercises of agency. This is what I call the 'Agency-Respect View.' The first part of the book outlines and defends the view, the second part considers relevant applications.

Millions of people in our world are in need of assistance: from the global poor, to refugees, from the victims of natural disasters, to those of violent crimes. What are our responsibilities towards them? Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland's answer is plausible and straightforward: we have enforceable duties to assist others in need whenever we can do so 'at relatively moderate cost to ourselves, and others'. Barry and Øverland defend this answer on the ground that it best fits our intuitions in a variety of hypothetical rescue scenarios. I argue that, although Barry and Øverland's view is intuitively appealing, appeal to intuitive cases is insufficient to vindicate it satisfactorily. Intuitive cases alone do not allow us to establish: (i) what costs count as moderate and (ii) whether assistance-based responsibilities are, in fact, enforceable. These considerations suggest that Barry and Øverland's defence of their preferred answer to the assistance question may be incomplete.

Principles of distributive justice bind macro-level institutional agents, like the state. But what does justice require in non-ideal circumstances, where institutional agents are unjust or do not exist in the first place? Many answer by invoking Rawls's natural duty 'to further just arrangements not yet established', treating it as a 'normative bridge' between institutional demands of distributive justice and individual responsibilities in non-ideal circumstances. I argue that this response strategy is unsuccessful. I show that the more unjust the status quo is due to non-compliance, the less demanding the natural duty of justice becomes. I conclude that, in non-ideal circumstances, the bulk of the normative work is done by another natural duty: that of beneficence. This conclusion has significant implications for how we conceptualize our political responsibilities in non-ideal circumstances, and cautions us against the tendency – common in contemporary political theory – to answer all high-stakes normative questions under the rubric of justice.

Bei der vorliegenden Masterarbeit handelt es sich um eine Fallstudie im Kontext des französischen Kunst- und Kulturgutraubes um 1800. Anknüpfend an den von Bénédicte Savoy geführten Terminus des "befreiten Kulturerbes", nimmt die Arbeit exemplarisch die kulturelle Bedeutung der Rückgewinnung und inszenierten Rückführung eines durch die französischen Besatzer konfiszierten Kunstwerkes in den Fokus. Zum wahrhaftigen "Tag des Triumphes" deklarierte die Kölnische Zeitung den 18. Oktober des Jahres 1815, an dem die Stadt Köln die Rückführung des Gemäldes Kreuzigung Petri von Peter Paul Rubens im Rahmen des "Rettungstags der deutschen Freiheit" zelebrierte. Das Altarbild – von Peter Paul Rubens einst im Auftrag einer Kölner Familie für die katholische Pfarrkirche St. Peter gemalt – war 1794 in den Pariser Louvre verschleppt worden und konnte erst nach rund zwanzigjähriger Abwesenheit mit dem Ende des napoleonischen Kaiserreiches nach Köln zurückgebracht werden. Die Entstehungsgeschichte und Bedeutung des Objektes, wie auch eine detaillierte Auseinandersetzung mit den Geschehnissen um Raub und Rückgewinnung bilden die Grundlage zur analytischen Auseinandersetzung mit der Gestaltung des Festakts zum 18. Oktober 1815. Vor dem Hintergrund (früh-)neuzeitlicher Fest- und Ritualforschung fragt die Arbeit nach der Bedeutung der inszenierten Politisierung des Gemäldes und dessen spezifischen Ausdrucks im Rahmen eines öffentlichen Festes mit einer aufwendig inszenierten Prozession. In der Analyse des Festablaufes, symbolischer Botschaften und Intentionen der involvierten Akteure gelingt der Autorin die Zusammenführung eines breiten thematischen Spektrums, das von der seit den späten 1790er Jahren zunehmenden Restitutionsdebatte um das von den Franzosen geraubten Kunst- und Kulturgut über Fragen nach "deutscher Identität" und eines zu schützenden "nationalen Kulturerbes" bis hin zum strukturellen Wandel der Stadt Köln an der Schwelle von französischer zu preußischer Herrschaft reicht.

In late 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the U.S., causing much suffering and devastation. Those who could have easily helped Sandy's victims had a duty to do so. But was this a rightfully enforceable duty of justice, or a nonenforceable duty of beneficence? The answer to this question is often thought to depend on the kind of help offered: the provision of immediate bodily services is not enforceable; the transfer of material resources is. I argue that this double standard is unjustified, and defend a version of what I call "social samaritanism." On this view, within political communities, the duty to help the needy—whether via bodily services or resource transfers—is always an enforceable demand of justice, except when the needy are reckless; across independent political communities, it is always a matter of beneficence. I defend this alternative double standard, and consider its implications for the case of Sandy.