Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Introduction: An Overview of the Argument -- Part One: Communitarianism and Individualism in Ethics -- What is ethics? -- Two modern western theories of ethics -- Rawls also -- How not to align individual and general interests -- The altruist -- The idea of a community -- An error theory of ethics -- Individualism and communitarianism in universalist ethics -- Is communitarian ethics a contractarian theory? -- Is virtue ethics a communitarian theory? -- The conditional unconditionality of communitarian ethics -- Types of human goods -- Part Two: Substantive Communitarian Ethics in the Self-Governing Community -- A. The communitarian "contract" further considered -- B. The economic and ideological structures -- The primitive community -- The interdependent economy -- Public goods and profit-maximisation -- Self-ownership -- The place of the superstructure in the economy -- C. The political superstructure -- The relation of polity to economy -- One party rule -- The cultural identity of one-party states -- The accountability of one-party regimes and the rule of law -- Multi-party liberal-democratic regimes -- Liberal-democracy and electoral systems -- Liberalism and free speech -- Liberal values: 1). Freedom -- Liberal values: 2) Equality -- Identity politics -- Who is a member of the communitarian society? -- Part Three: A Community of States -- The outsider -- The Westphalian society of states and the principle of state sovereignty -- War and peace in Westphalian society -- The League of Nations and the United Nations -- Ideological conflict between states -- The UN Human Rights regime -- The "real" and the ideological conflict between the great powers -- The rules of a communitarian society of states -- International civil society -- States behaving badly -- Index.

Frontmatter --Contents --Acknowledgments --Introduction: The Possibility of Ethical Life --Part One: Self-Interest --1. Desire, Reason, and Value --2. Prudential Rationality --3. Personal Identity --4. Autonomy --Part Two: Morality --5. The Self-Interest Theory of Morality --6. Moral Rationalism --7. Utilitarianism --Part Three: Community --8. Morality as a Common Good --9. Political Association --10. The Principles of Just Cooperation --Index

The belief in equality as the basis of a just society is fundamental to the dominant western, liberal viewpoint. Yet, the standard individualist justification for it is weak and contradictory. This book provides a radically new communitarian account of the value of equality and establishes it's proper limits.

The value of equality as the basis for a just polity is fundamental to modern, western, liberal society's self-understanding. Yet, this book shows that the standard individualist justification for it is implausible and lacks coherence while recent discussions of equality tend to ignore the question of justification altogether. John Charvet adopts a wider perspective than usual by contrasting the modern liberal view with pre-modern inegalitarian theories. This enables him to show that a basic moral equality is common to egalitarian and inegalitarian theories alike and hence that additional arguments are needed to justify the modern egalitarian standpoint. Having demolished the individualist account of those arguments, the author develops an original, coherent, communitarian, yet essentially liberal, justification for modern egalitarianism. This account also determines the proper limits of equality. The author distinguishes his new communitarian theory from the earlier communitarianism of the 1980s and ends by showing how his theory is to be applied in a multi-state world.

Does the recognition of human rights in international law undermine the traditional conception of international society as a society of sovereign states? The internal jurisdictional sovereignty of states is limited by those provisions and the non-intervention rule appears to be breached, but the most fundamental notion of sovereignty for international society is the absolute sense of not being subject to a superior authority. The notion of absolute sovereignty is examined with regard to the individual state on its own and it is argued that the only acceptable notion of absolute sovereignty is that of the general will of a political association, which is an ideal entity with a built-in moral structure of equal rights. Applied to international society, it is argued that the constitutional sovereign can only be the collective of states; this constitutional authority must itself be grounded in the sovereignty of the general will of international society, whose constituents are immediately the states but ultimately the general will of all the members of the different states. Since the general will is ideal with a built-in structure of equal rights of the human rights type, the recognition of human rights in international law is not a curtailment of this sovereignty but an expression of it.