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Inequality is widely regarded as morally objectionable: T. M. Scanlon investigates why it matters to us. Demands for greater equality can seem puzzling, because it can be unclear what reason people have for objecting to the difference between what they have and what others have, as opposed simply to wanting to be better off. This book examines six such reasons. Inequality can be objectionable because it arises from a failure of some agent to give equal concern to the interests of different parties to whom it is obligated to provide some good. It can be objectionable because it involves or gives rise to objectionable inequalities in status. It can be objectionable because it gives the rich unacceptable forms of control over the lives of those who have less.

How do we judge whether an action is morally right or wrong? If an action is wrong, what reason does that give us not to do it? Why should we give such reasons priority over our other concerns and values? In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other. According to his contractualist view, thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others and that they could not reasonably reject. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and he shows how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism. Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong

Article to accompany the Routledge Lecture in Philosophy entitled "Value in Morality and Politics", given at the University of Cambridge, March 15, 2011.

An account of the moral basis of freedom of expression which avoids appeal to the supposed benefits of a "free market in ideas." The central principle holds that neither the falsity of the beliefs engendered by an act of expression nor the actions it will motivate can be taken to justify making that act illegal. This principle, as a limitation on the authority of states, is defended by appeal to a weak notion of the autonomy of citizens. It is then extended to a full theory of freedom of expression which does not rely upon a distinction between speech & action. AA.

This paper discusses the relationship between moral philosophy and political philosophy. It holds that political philosophy in some way is part of moral philosophy as the former deals with the content of moral standards governing the relations between individuals and institutions. That would be the purpose of the "morality of institutions", while the so-called "individual morality" would inform the standards applicable to individuals. On the basis of a conception of individual morality as it relates to contractualism and a discussion of the morality of institutions that closely follows John Rawls' theory of justice, the paper addresses the question of the foundations of the obligation to comply with institution- defined standards that are directed towards individuals. At the end, it focuses in particular on the difficulty of rationalizing that obligation in the case of unjust institutions.

Este artigo mostra o quanto a tolerância é uma atitude complexa que implica encontrar a justa medida entre uma aceitação absoluta e uma oposição imoderada, apontando para as diferentes tensões internas à atitude de tolerância e para os custos e os riscos envolvidos na prática da tolerância, mesmo numa democracia constitucional em que já estão assegurados certos direitos fundamentais.