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Value and Criterion List with Definitions, Counters, and Turns (April 2019)

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Values



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Anarchy



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Definitions

Definition: Anarchy is the weakening of formal state powers.Kaplan, 2013. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2013; Afterword The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp. 347.

The erosion of central authority since the early Post Cold War era introduces the concept of anarchy to the Middle East: anarchy as defined by the weakening or absence of formal state hierarchies and the consequent leveling of political power, so that substate groups – tribal, religious, and ideological – enjoy real sovereignty over specific territory. What may eventually emerge is a more or less peaceful throwback to the medieval and early modern ages, in which state borders have partially disappears and old caravan routes have returned, with some cities in both Syria and Iraq have more to do with each other than with their respective capitals in the same state.



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Common Good



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Turn

Liberal tradition is not congruent with the value of common good. Entire system would have to be overhauled to prefer.Skillen, 2014. James Skillen (Christian political philosopher and author. He was the executive director and then president of the Center for Public Justice from 1981 to 2009, when he retired from the organization). 2014. The Good of Politics, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Pg. 172.

Entirely foreign to Locke’s thinking – and to liberalism to this day – is recognition of the political community as the original, institutional context of government’s obligations, of government’s offices of responsibility and accountability to uphold public justice for the common good. To have standing before the law in a liberal society, individuals must have a life- or property-interest that government has been created to protect. Consequently, a broad-based, society-wide ecological concern would have to rise to a level of such importance for a large number of property owners that a majority of legislators would agree that it deserves that attention of civil law. But legislation to protect the environment in the interest of the majority

would have to be written and passed time and again, in case after case, and not once and for all, because government’s mandate always comes back to the protection of private property, life, and liberty, not to the protection of a political community’s hypothetical common good.



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Constitutionalism



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Definitions

Constitutionalism works in two stages.Hardin, 2014. Russell Hardin (Ph.D. in Political Science, Professor of Politics at NYU); October 31, 2014; “Social Yes; Contract No,” Rationality, Markets and Morals, http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Hardin.pdf

Constitutionalism is a two-stage problem. At the first stage temporally, we coordinate on a constitution and its form of government. At the second stage, that government then enables us to maintain order and to resolve various ordinary problems, many of which are between individuals or small groups of individuals rather than, like the constitution, at the level of the whole society.



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Counters

Statehood is a bad fit for modern social movements.Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp. 127.

A state is a bad fit, he goes on, for those with absolutist goals inspired by religious zeal or ideological extremism that can never be realized by statehood. The mass exodus to slums in our era, by cutting off the link with the traditional countryside, has helped in this process of radicalization along the broad swath of the southern Eurasian rimland. The mass media, to which these groups have access, publicize their demands and in the process further fortify their identities, creating crowd packs of fellow thinkers not necessarily defined by state loyalties. In sum, if we step back a moment and consider the situation, we have a map of Eurasia that is one huge area rather than the smaller divisions of Cold War regions that we have grown used to.



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Democracy



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Definitions

Democracy is both free elections and protection of minority rights.Albright, 2018. Madeleine Albright(former Secretary of State under President Clinton, professor of foreign policy at Georgetown University); 2018; Fascism: A Warning, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, pg 110-111.

NDI is careful to stress that democracy requires far more than choosing a leader via the ballot box. That is essential but never enough. No error is more common than to assume that the winner of an election has license to do whatever he or she may want. In a true democracy, leaders respect the will of the majority but also the rights of the minority – one without the other is not enough. This means that constitutional protections for the individual must be defended, even when those protections become inconvenient to the party on top. Years before taking office, Hitler told fellow Nazis, “The Constitution only maps out the arena of battle, not the goal… once we possess constitutional power, we will mold the state into the shape we hold to be suitable.



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Counters

Decades since fall of Berlin Wall have proved the mandate to spread liberal idea is an illusion.Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York.

Consider: a totalitarian ideology had just been vanquished, even as domestic security in the United States and Western Europe was being taken

for granted. The semblance of peace reigned generally. Presciently capturing the zeitgeist, a former deputy director of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, Francis Fukuyama, published an article a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, “The End of History,” proclaiming that while wars and rebellions would continue, history in a Hegelian sense was over now, since the success of capitalist liberal democracies had ended the argument over which system of government was best for humankind. Thus, it was just a matter of shaping the world more in our own image, sometimes through the deployment of American troops; deployments that in the 1990s would exact relatively little penalty. This, the first intellectual cycle of the Post Cold War, was an era of illusions. It was a time when the words “realist” and “pragmatist” were considered pejoratives, signifying an aversion to humanitarian intervention in places where the national interest, as conventionally and narrowly defined, seemed elusive. Better in those days to be a neoconservative or liberal internationalist, who were thought of as good, smart people who simply wanted to stop genocide in the Balkans.

Democracy leads fragile governments to collapse.Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp. 128.

Indeed, the very orality of the Internet has a way of turning territorial battles into battles of ideas (a reason

why the humanism of Isaiah Berlin is something we will desperately need to hold on to). But as states themselves, no matter how well armed, become fragile, precisely because of how democracy and cyberspace will be friendly to subnational and supranational forces, smaller regions will emerge in bolder lines, as they did during the Middle Ages following the breakup of the Roman Empire.



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Turns

Democracy must both respect the majority AND protect minorities, otherwise it risks leading to fascism.Albright, 2018. Madeleine Albright(former Secretary of State under President Clinton, professor of foreign policy at Georgetown University); 2018; Fascism: A Warning, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, pg 172.

An illiberal democracy is centered on the supposed needs of the community rather than the inalienable rights of the individual. It is democratic because it respects the will of the majority; illiberal because it disregards the concerns of minorities. Orban has made clear that the aspirations of the majority correspond precisely to the program of his own movement: Fidesz. In his calculation, the people and the party are in exquisite balance, and their opponents are aliens –

enemies of Hungary. This thinking is indeed illiberal, and echo of the jingoistic nationalism that carried Mussolini to power a century ago.



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Equality



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Definitions

Equality means that all humans share worth and deserve rights.Allen, 2016. Danielle Allen, Jan/Feb 2016 (Director of the Edmond J Safra center for Ethics at Harvard University and Professor in Harvard’s Dept of Government and Grad School of Education); “Equality and American Democracy,” Foreign Affairs Magazine, Jan/Feb 2016 Issue, pg 23-28.

Moral equality is the idea that all human beings have the same fundamental worth and deserve the same basic protection of rights. The framework of international human rights law rests on and captures this idea.

Political equality is equal access to political institutions.Allen, 2016. Danielle Allen, Jan/Feb 2016 (Director of the Edmond J Safra center for Ethics at Harvard University and Professor in Harvard’s Dept of Government and Grad School of Education); “Equality and American Democracy,” Foreign Affairs Magazine, Jan/Feb 2016 Issue, pg 23-28.

Political equality is the ideal that all citizens have equal rights of access to political institutions. It is most commonly defined as requiring civil and political rights—to freely associate and express oneself, to vote, to hold office, and to serve on juries. These are important rights, and protecting them from infringement is critical. But a richer notion of egalitarian empowerment would also consider whether society is structured so as to empower citizens to enter the fray of a politically competitive system. Questions about a right to education, for instance, would come in here, as would questions about campaign finance and electoral redistricting, which could impede the potential for truly democratic representation.

Equality is the global priority.Inglehart, 2016. Ronald Inglehart, Jan/Feb 2016 (Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and Founding President of the World Values Survey); “Inequality and Modernization,” Foreign Affairs Magazine, Jan/Feb 2016 Issue pg 2-10.

The essence of modernization is the linkages among economic, social, ideational, and political trends. As changes ripple through the system, developments in one sphere can drive developments in the others. But the process doesn’t work in just one direction, with economic trends driving everything else, for example. Social forces and ideas can drive political actions that reshape the economic landscape. Will that happen once again, with popular majorities mobilizing to reverse the trend

toward economic inequality? In the long run, probably: publics around the world increasingly favor reducing inequality, and the societies that survive are the ones that successfully adapt to changing conditions and pressures. Despite current signs of paralysis, democracies still have the vitality to do so.



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Counters

Global equality already happening, so should not PERM.Bourguignon, 2016. Francois Bourguignon, Jan/Feb 2016 (Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics and former Chief Economist of the World Bank); “Inequality and Globalization,” Foreign Affairs Magazine, Jan/Feb Issue pg 11-15.

Yet when thinking about inequality, it also makes sense to approach the world as a single community: accounting, for example, not only for the differences in living standards within France but also for those between rich French people and poor Chinese (and poor French and rich Chinese). When looking at the world through this lens, some notable trends stand out. The first is that global inequality greatly exceeds inequality within any individual country. This observation should come as no surprise, since global inequality reflects the enormous differences in wealth between

the world’s richest and the world’s poorest countries, not just the differences within them. Much more striking is the fact that, in a dramatic reversal of the trend that prevailed for most of the twentieth century, global inequality has declined markedly since 2000 (following a slower decline during the 1990s). This trend has been due in large part to the rising fortunes of the developing world, particularly China and India. And as the economies of these countries continue to converge with those of the developed world, global inequality will continue to fall for some time.



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Turns

Equality is a political, not moral question.Inglehart, 2016. Ronald Inglehart, Jan/Feb 2016 (Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and Founding President of the World Values Survey); “Inequality and Modernization,” Foreign Affairs Magazine, Jan/Feb 2016 Issue pg 2-10.

Because advantages tend to be cumulative, with those born into more prosperous families receiving better nutrition and health

care, more intellectual stimulation and better education, and more social capital for use in later life, there is an enduring tendency for the rich to get richer and the poor to be left behind. The extent to which this tendency prevails, however, depends on a country’s political leaders and political institutions, which in turn tend to reflect the political pressures emerging from mobilized popular forces in the political system at large. The extent to which inequality increases or decreases, in other words, is ultimately a political question.

Promoting equality leads to social phenomena that generate other social inequalities.Allen, 2016. Danielle Allen, Jan/Feb 2016 (Director of the Edmond J Safra center for Ethics at Harvard University and Professor in Harvard’s Dept of Government and Grad School of Education); “Equality and American Democracy,” Foreign Affairs Magazine, Jan/Feb 2016 Issue, pg 23-28.

But the moment that societies protect association, expression, and contract, as they must in order to protect human dignity at its most fundamental, they also secure two other phenomena: social discrimination and capitalism. Out of the right of association, socially differentiated groups form, and lines of difference can easily

evolve into lines of division and domination. The requirements of political equality, in other words—freedom of association, expression, and contract—generate social phenomena that potentially jeopardize social equality and can lead to economic exploitation.



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Human Dignity



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Definitions

Protection of human dignity goes beyond individual protections.McCrudden, 2008. Christopher McCrudden (FBA; Professor of Human Rights Law, Oxford University; Fellow, Lincoln College, Oxford; Overseas Affiliated Professor, University of Michigan Law School); 2008; “Human Dignity and Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights,” European Journal of International Law, Volume 19, Issue 4Pp. 655-724, http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/4/655.full.

In Germany, the Constitutional Court has held that ‘human dignity means not only the individual dignity of the person but the dignity of man as a species. Dignity is therefore not at the disposal of the individual.’ The obligation on the state to protect human dignity may justify limiting the rights of the person whom the state seeks to protect, irrespective of the preferences of the individual. The Federal Administrative Court, for example, has held that the dignity of women who work in ‘peep-shows’, exposing themselves to men for payment, is violated and they can legitimately be prohibited from doing so. A prohibition on dwarf throwing, as part of a commercial entertainment, by a local authority in France was upheld by both the Conseil d’État and, subsequently, the Human Rights Committee on the ground that the restriction was justified on the basis of human dignity.



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Counters

Human dignity is only a place holder for avoiding argument over deep social conflicts.McCrudden, 2008. Christopher McCrudden (FBA; Professor of Human Rights Law, Oxford University; Fellow, Lincoln College, Oxford; Overseas Affiliated Professor, University of Michigan Law School); 2008; “Human Dignity and Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights,” European Journal of International Law, Volume 19, Issue 4Pp. 655-724, http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/4/655.full.

How should we react to these institutional uses of dignity? Some may see the three uses of dignity as merely rhetorical. The courts use the concept of dignity merely to disguise, for example, the absence of a theory on how to resolve conflict between

incommensurable values. Instead of making a choice between conflicting rights, they present the conflict as an issue internal to dignity. Some may well consider that this approach obscures the moral issues which give rise to conflicts of rights, pretending that the problem is the absence of a common metric, where the real disagreement is deeper. There may be a similar reaction to the other uses of dignity discussed in this part of the article. If these arguments are accepted, then from a substantive point of view, dignity is a placeholder, but it has taken on a rhetorical function in these three distinct contexts to give judges something to say when they confront the really hard issues.

The Affirmative’s use of human dignity is an attempt to confuse the round and limit negative clash.Rao, 2011. Neomi Rao (Assistant Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law). March 28, 2011. “THREE CONCEPTS OF DIGNITY IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW,” Notre Dame Law Review. http://ndlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Rao.pdf. Accessed 14 Sep 2016.

Some have suggested that dignity poses no greater confusion than terms like “liberty” or “equality.” I would disagree. Lawyers and judges have familiarity with different meanings of liberty and equality, values that are a part of our tradition, even if they remain contested ideals. By

contrast, dignity presents a relatively new legal term; it has no firm footing and no established range of legal meanings. Dignity may be appealing as a legal concept precisely because it obscures difficult choices about what we value and the type of freedom and rights we wish to protect. The obfuscation may allow judges to use dignity with the hope that it can mean a number of different things and that perhaps there need not be a tradeoff between the dignity of individual liberty and autonomy and the dignity of social belonging and equality. But the choices and tradeoffs between values are part of the human condition. These values do not become compatible by calling them all dignity. The different understandings of dignity may sometimes run in the same direction, but they will more often conflict and require a choice by the Court, particularly in difficult or contentious cases.

Human dignity should not be used in the decision-making process as it leads to micro-decisions and manipulation.McCrudden, 2008. Christopher McCrudden (Professor of Human Rights Law, Oxford University; Fellow, Lincoln College, Oxford; Overseas Affiliated Professor, University of Michigan Law School). 2008. “Human Dignity and Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights” (Abstract), European Journal of



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International Law, Vol 19, Issue 4, Pp. 655-724. http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/4/655.full. Accessed 14 Sep 2016.

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights was pivotal in popularizing the use of ‘dignity’ or ‘human dignity’ in human rights discourse. This article argues that the use of ‘dignity’, beyond a basic minimum core, does not provide a universalistic, principled basis for judicial decision-making in the human rights context, in the sense that there is little common understanding of what dignity requires substantively within or across jurisdictions. The meaning of dignity is therefore context-specific, varying significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and (often) over time within particular jurisdictions. Indeed, instead of providing a basis for principled decision-making, dignity seems open to significant judicial manipulation, increasing rather than decreasing judicial discretion. That is one of its significant attractions to both judges and litigators alike. Dignity provides a convenient language for the adoption of substantive interpretations of human rights guarantees which appear to be intentionally, not just coincidentally, highly contingent on local circumstances. Despite that, however, I argue that the concept of ‘human dignity’ plays an important role in the development of human rights adjudication, not in providing an agreed content to human rights but in contributing to particular methods of human rights interpretation and adjudication.

Human dignity is a poor value because it is not intrinsic or inherit to the individual but controlled by group think.Rao, 2011. Neomi Rao (Assistant Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law). March 28, 2011. “THREE CONCEPTS OF DIGNITY IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW,” Notre Dame Law Review. http://ndlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Rao.pdf. Accessed 14 Sep 2016.

Second, dignity can express and serve as the grounds for enforcing various substantive values. Unlike intrinsic dignity, substantive forms of dignity require living in a certain way. Dignity may require behaving, for example, with self-control, courage, or modesty. This dignity embodies a particular view of what constitutes the good life for man, what makes human life flourish for the individual as well as the community. Accordingly, such dignity may take a number of different forms. For example, a government policy may enforce a particular conception of dignity on individuals, a conception that accords with the community’s view of what is dignified. Dignity in this sense depends on specific ideals

of appropriateness and deems a person worthy or dignified to the extent that he conforms to such ideals. Constitutional courts have often upheld paternalistic policies that prevent individuals from choosing a vocation or a way of life that might be “undignified” in the view of the social and political community. For example, in France some cities banned the spectacle of dwarf throwing as detrimental to public morality and dignity, despite the willingness of some dwarves to earn their living this way. Similarly, the French government has defended a ban on the burqa on the grounds that such a ban furthers the dignity of Muslim women, despite the fact that some Muslim women choose to wear the burqa as an expression of their faith. Positive or substantive conceptions of dignity are also associated with social-welfare rights or protection by the state from poverty and violence. In this understanding, dignity demands that the government provide the basic conditions of wellbeing. Each of these positive or substantive forms of dignity requires living according to standards of rationality, morality, or material comfort that are shaped by the

community. This dignity is not intrinsic or inherent in the individual, because it can be gained or lost and depends on whether a person measures up to a socially defined standard of dignity.



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Justice



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Definitions

Justice is a result of intelligent understanding strengthened by slow progression.Spector, 2014. Horacio Spector (Doctorate in Legal Science, Founding Dean of the School of Law of Torcuato Di Tella University, Argentina); May 6, 2014; “Hume’s Theory of Justice,” Rationality, Markets and Morals, http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Spector.pdf

In any case, which model we choose is unimportant, because Hume had in mind a diversity of social situations that possess one common trait: a joint strategy is available that is in the best interest of all the participants. This can happen in interactions that can be modeled in various ways.

The important point is that Hume regards the emergence of justice as the unintended outcome of an intelligent practice of understanding and judgment focused on a general plan of actions. The endorsement of this system carries with it the progressive emergence of a sense of justice that is different from natural self-interest. The perception of the potential gains arising from the conventions of justice is not immediate, and justice-generating patterns of behavior are strengthened by a “slow progression” and by “our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it”. It is evident that standard game-theoretical tools are too simplistic to model this process because they do not consider the feedback mechanisms that operate when participants’ motivational and cognitive systems change over time in response to new environments that are produced by the unexpected consequences of their prior decisions.

Justice is respecting each person’s freedom to choose their conception of virtue.Sandel, 2009. Michael Sandel (American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University); 2009; Justice: What’s the right thing to do, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, p. 9.

By contrast, modern political philosophers - from Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century to John Rawls in the twentieth century - argue that the principles of justice that define our rights should not rest on any particular conception of virtue, or of the best way to live. Instead, a just society respects each person's freedom to choose his or her own conception of the good life.

Justice is rooted in deciding what each person is due.Sandel, 2009. Michael Sandel (American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University); 2009; Justice: What’s the right thing to do, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, p. 19.

To ask whether a society is just is to ask how it distributes the things we prize - income and wealth, duties and rights, powers and opportunities, offices and honors. A just society distribute these goods in the right way; it gives each person his or her due. The hard questions begin when we ask what people are due, and why.



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Extensions

Justice trumps common good by providing normative value.Skillen, 2014. James Skillen (Christian political philosopher and author. He was the executive director and then president of the Center for Public Justice from 1981 to 2009, when he retired from the organization). 2014. The Good of Politics, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Pg. 136.

Up to this point, we have used the phrase “common good” to talk about the life of a republic characterized by public justice. It is a phrase used often in the social teachings of the Catholic Church and by those who want to emphasize the solidarity of citizens in the political community. Yet the phrase “common good” is not politically specific and is also used by nonpolitical organizations and institutions. We want to argue, therefore, that if the common good is to be recognized as a normative standard for the political community, it needs to be qualified more specifically by the norm of public justice.

Justice trumps democracy by ensuring public trust in the system.Skillen, 2014. James Skillen (Christian political philosopher and author. He was the executive director and then president of the Center for Public Justice from 1981 to 2009, when he retired from the organization). 2014. The Good of Politics, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Pg. 146

To ask what electoral representation should mean for citizenship is to become conscious of how important the public character of a political community is. In many newly formed democracies, people do not yet have sufficient experience to act as citizens of a res publica. Their ethnic, tribal, linguistic, or confessional identity often remains their primary social identity. So when elections are first held, those elected may aim first to exploit the opportunity of holding office to secure benefits for their

ethnic of cultural group. Elections by themselves, in other words, do not assure the existence of a just political community. A sense of shared citizenship and dedication to justice for all in a public community typically takes a long time to develop, and, of course, it requires a growing confidence among all the people that justice can be done.



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Counters

Justice cannot be gained in a single action making it inappropriate as a value for the resolution.Spector, 2014. Horacio Spector (Doctorate in Legal Science, Founding Dean of the School of Law of Torcuato Di Tella University, Argentina); May 6, 2014; “Hume’s Theory of Justice,” Rationality, Markets and Morals, http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Spector.pdf

In acute fashion Hume claims that, unlike the natural virtues, the social virtues of justice and fidelity are only socially good. He says: “They are highly useful, or indeed absolutely necessary to the well-being of mankind: But the benefit, resulting from them, is not the consequence of every individual single act; but arises from the whole scheme or system, concurred in by the whole, or the greater part of the society.” This instrumental account of justice implies that when social convergence is absent, justice is useless and it is pointless to follow its constraints. The example of the society of ruffians seems like an application of the theory of the second best: “Suppose likewise, that it should be a virtuous man’s fate to fall into the society of ruffians, remote from the protection of laws and government; what conduct must he embrace in that melancholy situation?” Hume’s answer is consonant with his view that justice is not intrinsically good: “[H]is particular regard to justice being no longer of use to his own safety or that of others, he must consult the dictates of self-preservation alone [. . . ].”

Justice cannot not be met by external actions of others.Spector, 2014. Horacio Spector (Doctorate in Legal Science, Founding Dean of the School of Law of Torcuato Di Tella University, Argentina); May 6, 2014; “Hume’s Theory of Justice,” Rationality, Markets and Morals, http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Spector.pdf

In the Treatise Hume’s view about the merit and demerit of virtuous actions is a subjectivist one. The moral quality of benevolence does not lie in the external behavior but in the underlying motive. Hume asserts that “when we praise any actions, we regard only the motives that produced them, and consider the actions as signs or indications of certain principles in the mind and temper.” He adds: “The external performance has no merit.” A few pages later, he asks: “Wherein consists this honesty and justice, which you find in restoring a loan, and abstaining from the property of others?” And he answers in this way: “It does not surely lie in the external action. It must, therefore, be placed in the motive, from which the external action is derived. This motive can never be a regard to the honesty of the action. For it is a plain fallacy to say, that a virtuous motive is requisite to render an action honest, and at the same time that a regard to the honesty is the motive of the action. We

can never have a regard to the virtue of an action, unless the action be antecedently virtuous.” From this he concludes that “we have naturally no real or universal motive for observing the laws of equity, but the very equity and merit of that observance; and as no action can be equitable or meritorious, where it cannot arise from some separate motive, there is here an evident sophistry and reasoning in a circle. Unless, therefore, we will allow, that nature has established a sophistry, and rendered it necessary and unavoidable, we must allow, that the sense of justice and injustice is not derived from nature, but arises artificially, though necessarily from education, and human conventions.” Hume detects a circular reasoning embedded in the language of justice and regards it as a “mark of artifice and contrivance.”





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Justice is artificial making it not natural.Spector, 2014. Horacio Spector (Doctorate in Legal Science, Founding Dean of the School of Law of Torcuato Di Tella University, Argentina); May 6, 2014; “Hume’s Theory of Justice,” Rationality, Markets and Morals, http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Spector.pdf

How does Hume prove that justice obligations are artificial rather than natural? He avails himself of a logical method for disclosing the artificiality of justice. He assumes that nature by necessity accords with logical principles, and that, therefore, the descriptions of natural phenomena cannot lead to inconsistencies or fallacies. If nature does not cause fallacies, the discovery of hidden fallacies in our reasonings is a mark of our own intellectual frailty, that is, of artificiality. Hume dissects our ideas of justice and shows that the rules of justice are contrived, invented and projected onto the world, rather than discovered. Hume’s assumption is that human societies generate superstitions that present themselves as if they were realities. But superstitions are imperfect and, therefore, empirical observation and philosophical argument can discover their contrived character.

The value of justice cannot be proven.Sandel, 2009. Michael Sandel (American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University); 2009; Justice: What’s the right thing to do, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, p. 28.

If moral reflection consists in seeking a fit between the judgments we make and the principles we affirm, how can such reflection lead us to justice, or moral truth? Even if we succeed, over a lifetime, in bringing our moral intuitions and principled commitments into alignment, what confidence can we have that the result is anything more than a self-consistent skein of prejudice?




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Turns

Principles of justice apply to institutions, thus demand on individuals is slight.Mulgan, 2001. Tim Mulgan (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, and Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of St Andrews); 2001; Introduction to The Demands of Consequentialism, Clarendon Press: Oxford, http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5280V.pdf.

Rawls might reply that the principles of justice apply only to institutions, not to individuals. They thus cannot place demands on individuals, beyond the requirement to obey the dictates of just institutions. In a world of just institutions, deprivation and poverty could be solved by a modest level of general taxation. The demands on affluent individuals would thus be slight.



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Morality



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Counters

Morality does not provide value or the understanding of the “good.”Eagleton, 2014. Terry Eagleton (a British literary theorist, critic and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University. Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)). 2014. Culture and the Death of God, Yale University Press, 41-42.

Eighteenth-century moral rationalists such as Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston hold that the good must be grounded in a Reason independent of sentiment, if the vital domain of morality is to be insulated from the vulgarities of subjectivism. Yet, these thinkers, so the empiricists, sentimentalists and “moral sense” theorists

riposte, are unable to say why it is good to obey the dictates of Reason in the first place. As such, their case is simply question-begging. If Reason does not already include an idea of the good, in the manner of Plato and Aquinas, there is a problem about why one should commend it. A purely technical rationality can have nothing to say about questions of value. Francis Hutcheson holds that you cannot give a rational justification for accepting a moral viewpoint. The moral sense must be prior to reasoning, a kind of Heideggarian pre-understanding which we are unable to

think ourselves behind, a capacity which must always already be in place if a piece of language is to count as a moral argument in the first place. Moreover, if Reason signifies the rational design of the universe, then there is not compelling argument as to why one should obey it in the sense of living in conformity with this order, as Friedrich Neitzsche was later to point out.

Generalized morality does not provide motivation to fulfill its requirements, so won’t work as a value.Eagleton, 2014. Terry Eagleton (a British literary theorist, critic and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University. Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)). 2014. Culture and the Death of God, Yale University Press, 41-42.

Moral rationalists like Richard Price were dismayed by this aestheticizing of ethics. “Our ideas of morality, if this account is right,” he complains of the benevolists and sentimentalists, “have the same origin with our ideas of the sensible qualities of bodies, the harmony of sounds, or the beauties of painting and sculpture… Virtue (as those who embrace this scheme say) is an affair of taste.” This kind of morality Pirce has in his sights can stir men and women to action, but it is perilously

reliant on sentiment, intuition or moral sense. By contrast, a morality based on Reason is solidly founded, but lacks the power to motivate. Hume famously denies that Reason can furnish a source of motivation. Indeed, the more you ground morality in Reason, the more it may rob you of initiative. If the moral order is divinely manufactured, built into the mighty design of the cosmos itself, it is likely to appear as deterministic as the laws of gravity, and thus as indifferent to the individual will. One is accordingly in danger of being caught between what Seamus Deane has called the “smiling lunacies of the Man of Reason and the sodden effusions of the Man of Feeling.”

States act within a different moral framework than individuals.Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp. 25.

Furthermore, states must operate in a much more constrained moral universe than do individuals. “The individual,” Morgenthau writes, “may say to himself … ‘Let justice be done, even if the world perish,’ but the



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state has no right to say so in the name of those who are in its care.” An individual has responsibility only for his loved ones, who will forgive him his mistakes so long as he means well. But a state must protect the well-being of millions of strangers within its borders, who in the event of a failed policy will not be so understanding. Thus, the state must be far wilier than the individual.



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Pragmatism



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DefinitionsPragmatism aims at solving problems, not just espousing theory.Guthrie, 2010. Gerard Guthrie. 2010. Basic Research Methods: An Entry to Social Science Research, Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc.

The approach taken in this book is predominately one of philosophical pragmatism. Pragmatism views knowledge as useful in terms of its practical effect. It puts prime emphasis on objectives and what is useful in achieving them. From this perspective, the value of research methodologies lies in their usefulness in engaging with the real world. The book synthesizes various methods from the perceptive of their usefulness in addressing research problems. Ideas fit where they belong according to their role in research projects: not “have theory (or methodology) will travel”; rather “have problem, will attempt to solve”.

Pragmatism requires fulfillment of two conditions and yield satisfaction.Kloppenberg, 1996. James T. Kloppenberg (associate professor of history at Brandeis University); June 1996; “Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of Thinking?”, The Journal of American History, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jun., 1996), pp. 100-138.

When his critics continued to accuse him of counseling his readers to believe any fiction they might find expedient, James responded by writing

The Meaning of Truth. There he specified the circumstances in which one might invoke the pragmatic test of truth and clarified the conditions necessary for verifying any proposition pragmatically. First, and fundamentally, it must correspond to what is known from experience about the natural world. The following apparently unambiguous sentence has escaped the attention of James's critics -and some of his contemporary champions: "The notion of a reality independent of . . . us, taken from ordinary social experience, lies at the base of the pragmatist definition of truth." Calling himself an "epistemological realist," James explained that he simply took for granted the existence of that independent reality and did not consider its

independent existence philosophically interesting or important. Second, to be judged pragmatically true, a proposition must be consistent with the individual's stock of existing beliefs, beliefs that had withstood the severe test of experience. That, James felt sure, would rule out simpleminded wishful thinking. Finally, a statement may be considered pragmatically true if it fulfills those two conditions and yields satisfaction.

Pragmatism upholds the necessity for bold attempts at social experimentation and change.McDermid, 2006. Douglas McDermid (MA and PhD from Brown University where he graduated in 1998; Primary research interests are in epistemology, metaphysics, and the history of modern philosophy; Professor of Philosophy at Trent University, Canada); 2006; “Pragmatism,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002, http://www.iep.utm.edu/, accessed 1/30/2016.

Not so, says Dewey. For Dewey, Peirce, and like-minded pragmatists, knowledge (or warranted assertion) is the product of inquiry, a problem-solving process by means of which we move from doubt to belief. Inquiry, however, cannot proceed effectively unless we experiment—that is, manipulate or change reality in certain ways. Since knowledge thus grows through our attempts to push the world around (and see what happens as a result), it follows that knowers as such must be agents; as a result, the ancient dualism between theory and



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practice must go by the board. This insight is central to the “experimental theory of knowledge,” which is Dewey’s alternative to the discredited spectatorial conception.



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Counters

Pragmatism is barbaric in modern society.Friedman, 2009. George Friedman (Hungarian-born U.S. geopolitical forecaster, and strategist on international affairs. He is the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures, a new online publication that analyzes and forecasts the course of global events). 2009. The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, pg 63.

If we look for the essence of American culture, it is not only in pragmatism as a philosophy but also in the computer as the embodiment of pragmatism. Nothing exemplifies American culture more than the computer, and

nothing has transformed the world faster and more thoroughly than its advent. The computer, far more than the car or Coca-Cola, represents the unique manifestation of the American concept of reason and reality. Computing culture is also, by definition, barbaric. The essence of barbarism is the reduction of culture to a simple, driving force that will tolerate no diversion or competition. The way the computer is designed, the manner in which it is

programmed, and the way it has evolved represent a powerful, reductionist force. It constitutes not reason contemplating its complexity, but reason reducing itself to its simplest expression and justifying itself through practical achievement.



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Probabilistic Determinism



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Definitions

Recognizes obvious terrain, but leaves open many possibilities.Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp. 37.

So what to do? How do we split the difference between recognizing the importance of geography in shaping history and the danger of

overemphasizing that very fact? We can take harbor, I think, in Raymond Aron’s notion of a “sober ethic rooted in the truth of ‘probabilistic determinism,’ ” because “human choice always operates within certain contours or restraints such as the inheritance of the past.” The key word is “probabilistic,” that is, in now concentrating on geography we adhere to a partial or hesitant determinism which recognizes obvious differences between groups and terrain, but does not oversimplify, and leaves many possibilities open.



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Realism



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Definitions

Realism accepts the human material at hand, even when flawed.Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp. 24.

Morgenthau begins his argument by noting that the world “is the result of forces inherent in human nature.” And, human nature, as Thucydides pointed out, is motivated by fear (phobos), selfinterest (kerdos),

and honor (doxa). “To improve the world,” writes Morgenthau, “one must work with these forces, not against them.” Thus, realism accepts the human material at hand, however imperfect that material may be. “It appeals to historical precedent rather than to abstract principles and aims at the realization of the lesser evil rather than of the absolute good.” For example, a realist would look to Iraq’s own history, explained through its cartography and constellations of ethnic groups, rather than to moral precepts of Western democracy, to see what kind of future Iraq would be

immediately capable of following the toppling of a totalitarian regime. After all, good intentions have little to do with positive outcomes, according to Morgenthau.

Realism is more important than liberal humanist values (insert value).Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp. 123-124.

It is in the megacities of Eurasia principally where crowd psychology will have its greatest geopolitical impact. Ideas do matter as the liberal humanists and anti-determinists proclaim. And it is the very compression of geography that will provide optimal circumstances for new and dangerous ideologies—as well as for healthy democratizing ideas. Mass education, because it produces hosts of badly educated people liberated from fatalism, will contribute to instability. Lack of space will be the key factor. The psychological hearth place of nationalist identity is increasingly the city and not the idealized rural landscapes of the past, even as urban crowds will at times demand maximalist foreign policies from their governments based on this very idealized terrain.



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Safety



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Definitions

Safety involves removal of the primary risk.Hansson, 2014. Hansson, Sven Ove; Spring 2014; "Risk", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/risk/.

Inherent safety, also called primary prevention, consists in the elimination of a hazard. It is contrasted with secondary prevention that consists in reducing the risk associated with a hazard. For a simple example, consider a process in which inflammable materials are used. Inherent safety would consist in replacing them by non-inflammable materials. Secondary prevention would consist in removing or isolating sources of ignition and/or installing fire-extinguishing equipment. As this example shows, secondary prevention usually involves added-on safety equipment. The major reason to prefer inherent safety to secondary prevention is that as long as the hazard still exists, it can be realized by some unanticipated triggering event. Even with the best of control measures, if inflammable materials are present, some unforeseen chain of events can start a fire.



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Stewardship Obligation



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DefinitionStewardship obligation is a well established encumbrance on citizenship and property ownership important to the operating of a liberal society. Skillen, 2014. James Skillen (Christian political philosopher and author. He was the executive director and then president of the Center for Public Justice from 1981 to 2009, when he retired from the organization). 2014. The Good of Politics, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Pg. 181.

Environmental protection can best be thought of as a stewardship obligation or an encumbrance on citizens generally and on any owner or user of property, similar to the way zoning works in a town or city and the way civil rights protection works in all employment decisions. Homeowners and business owners to not hold unqualified rights to their private property and the resources they buy, use, and sell. Homeowners in my town may not set up commercial or industrial business on property that is zoned residential. The simple fact is that property ownership is encumbered with various stewardship obligations from the start.



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Criterion



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Categorical Imperative



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Definitions

Categorical imperative relies on rational principles to develop universal laws of morality.Mulgan, 2001. Tim Mulgan (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, and Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of St Andrews); 2001; Introduction to The Demands of Consequentialism, Clarendon Press: Oxford, http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5280V.pdf.

The basis of Kant’s ethics is the search for a rational foundation for morality. Only if our actions are grounded solely in rationality can they be truly free, and hence worthy of moral assessment. The test of rationality is the Categorical Imperative, under which a rational agent acts only according to maxims (or principles) that can consistently be willed as universal laws. Kant tests a maxim by asking if it would be consistent for a rational agent to desire

a world where everyone obeyed that maxim. For instance, Kant argued that the maxim ‘Tell lies’ cannot be universally adopted, as that would be self-defeating. The point is not just that universal lying would have bad consequences. Rather, Kant is claiming that it is not possible for lying to be universal. It only makes sense to tell a lie if you expect other people to believe you. If everyone always lied, no one would ever believe anyone. There would thus be no point in lying. The very concept of lying would lose its meaning of ‘deceptive presentation of falsehood intended to be accepted by others as truth’. Therefore, no rational agent will ever tell a lie, whatever the consequences.



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Consequentialism



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Definitions

Elements of consequentialist theory are part of most solutions to moral problems.Mulgan, 2001. Tim Mulgan (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, and Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of St Andrews); 2001; Introduction to The Demands of Consequentialism, Clarendon Press: Oxford, http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5280V.pdf.

Our discussion may seem of limited interest, as only those who are predisposed towards Consequentialism will be concerned to discover its limits. However, many other moral theories must address the same questions as Consequentialism. In particular, if we have obligations to meet the needs of others, then we are owed an explanation of the structure and limits of those obligations. Even within a Non-Consequentialist theory, obligations to aid others often take a Consequentialist form. An exploration of the limits of Consequentialism is useful to anyone interested in understanding morality.

Consequentialism is best criterion due to the theory of simplicity.Mulgan, 2001. Tim Mulgan (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, and Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of St Andrews); 2001; Introduction to The Demands of Consequentialism, Clarendon Press: Oxford, http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5280V.pdf.

A final argument in favour of Consequentialism appeals to the theoretical virtue of simplicity. If we accept that promotion is sometimes a rational response to value, then the simplest moral theory will recommend promotion as a universal response to value.



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Counters

Consequentialism can be used to demand innocents killed, beaten, lied to, or deprived of rights.Alexander and Moore, 2015. Alexander, Larry (Distinguished Professor of Law, Co-Executive Director, Institute for Law & Religion, Co-Executive Director, Institute for Law & Philosophy) and Moore, Michael (Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Chair, Co-Director, Program in Law and Philosophy), Spring 2015. "Deontological Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/ethics-deontological/.

On the other hand, consequentialism is also criticized for what it seemingly permits. It seemingly demands (and thus, of course, permits) that in certain circumstances innocents be killed, beaten, lied to, or deprived of material goods to produce greater benefits for others. Consequences—and only consequences—can conceivably justify any kind of act, for it does not matter how harmful it is to some so long as it is more beneficial to others.



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Turns

Consequentialism undermines the integrity of individual life.Mulgan, 2001. Tim Mulgan (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, and Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of St Andrews); 2001; Introduction to The Demands of Consequentialism, Clarendon Press: Oxford, http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5280V.pdf.

Another common objection to Consequentialism is the ‘integrity’ or ‘alienation’ objection. The classic formulation is due to Bernard Williams: ‘how can a man, as a utilitarian agent, come to regard as one satisfaction among others, and a dispensable one, a project or attitude round which he has built his life. . .’ Williams suggests that, by requiring every agent to take no more

account of her own welfare than of the welfare of others, Consequentialism undermines the integrity of the agent’s life. The Consequentialist agent must view every life from the outside, seeing it only in terms of the value it adds to the overall value of the universe. We might refer to this as the impersonal value of a life. The charge is that Consequentialism requires us to view our lives only from the impersonal perspective. Williams suggests that no agent can view her own life in this way and flourish.



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Deontology



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Definitions

Deontology looks at social norms to establish the right over the good.Alexander and Moore, 2015. Alexander, Larry (Distinguished Professor of Law, Co-Executive Director, Institute for Law & Religion, Co-Executive Director, Institute for Law & Philosophy) and Moore, Michael (Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Chair, Co-Director, Program in Law and Philosophy), Spring 2015. "Deontological Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/ethics-deontological/.

For such deontologists, what makes a choice right is its conformity with a moral norm. Such norms are to be simply obeyed by each moral agent; such norm-keepings are not to be maximized by each agent. In this sense, for such

deontologists, the Right is said to have priority over the Good. If an act is not in accord with the Right, it may not be undertaken, no matter the Good that it might produce (including even a Good consisting of acts in accordance with the Right).



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Geography



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Definitions

Must look at geography to answer question for the future.Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp.xii.

A good place to understand the present, and to ask questions about the future, is on the ground, traveling as slowly as possible.

Post- 9/11 era has proven the power of geography over liberal universalism.Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp. 4.

In that new decade following 9/11, geography, a factor certainly in the Balkans and Africa in the 1990s, would go on to wreak unmitigated havoc on America’s good intentions in the Near East. The journey from Bosnia to Baghdad, from a limited air and land campaign in the western, most developed part of the former Turkish Empire in the Balkans to a mass infantry invasion in the eastern, least developed part in Mesopotamia, would expose the limits of liberal universalism, and in the process concede new respect to the relief map.



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Just Constitution



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Definitions

The means of a just constitution require the defining of the society’s virtues.Sandel, 2009. Michael Sandel (American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University); 2009; Justice: What’s the right thing to do, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, p. 9.

According to the textbook account, this question divides ancient and modern medical thought. In one important respect, the textbook is right. Aristotle teaches that justice means giving people what they deserve. And in order to determine who deserves what, we have to determine what virtues are worthy of honor and reward. Aristotle maintains that we can't figure out what a just constitution is without first reflecting on the most desirable way of life. For him, law can't be neutral on questions of the good life.



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Counters

There are no just institutions in the world, thus these dictates put a heavy burden on individuals.Mulgan, 2001. Tim Mulgan (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, and Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of St Andrews); 2001; Introduction to The Demands of Consequentialism, Clarendon Press: Oxford, http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5280V.pdf.

The main problem with this reply is that we do not live in a world of just institutions. If our political theory is to offer us relevant advice, then we must move to an impure theory, and ask what individuals should do in a world without just institutions. Two obvious alternatives present themselves. (1) Individuals have an obligation to seek to bring just institutions into existence. (2) Individuals have an obligation to pursue the goals a just institution would pursue. If just institutions would include a welfare state, then in the absence of such institutions individuals must engage in personal charity. These obligations obviously threaten to become very demanding, and we are owed an account of their limits.



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Just Government



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Definitions

Just government has two major implications on policy.Skillen, 2014. James Skillen (Christian political philosopher and author. He was the executive director and then president of the Center for Public Justice from 1981 to 2009, when he retired from the organization). 2014. The Good of Politics, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Pg. 44.

The two implications for just governance can be summarized as follows. First, the particular and limited responsibilities of government must include the proper treatment of each creature, including each human person and each distinct kind of human relationship, organization, and institution. This means giving each its due – a mode of attributive and distributive justice. Second, just governance will entail equal treatment of all citizens, regardless of their faith, in ways that are patient and merciful , in tune with Christ’s own patient and merciful rule.



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Limiting Violence



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Definitions

Violence includes a broad spectrum of acts regardless of outcome.World Health Organization; 2002; “World Report on Violence and Health,” Edited by Etienne G. Krug, Linda L. Dahlberg, James A. Mercy, Anthony B. Zwi and Rafael Lozano, http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/42495/1/9241545615_eng.pdf.

Any comprehensive analysis of violence should begin by defining the various forms of violence in such a way as to facilitate their scientific

measurement. There are many possible ways to define violence. The World Health Organization defines violence as: The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation. The definition used by the World Health Organization associates intentionality with the committing of the act itself, irrespective of the outcome it produces. Excluded from the definition are unintentional incidents – such as most road traffic injuries and burns.

The inclusion of the word ‘‘power’’, in addition to the phrase ‘‘use of physical force’’, broadens the nature of a violent act and expands the conventional understanding of violence to include those acts that result from a power relationship, including threats and intimidation. The ‘‘use of power’’ also serves to include neglect or acts of omission, in addition to the more obvious violent acts of commission. Thus, ‘‘the use of physical force or power’’ should be understood to include neglect and all types of physical, sexual and psychological abuse, as well as suicide and other self-abusive acts.

An inclusive definition of violence allows for a better understanding of social consequences. De Haan, 2008. Willem de Haan (Professor of Criminology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands; Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law); 2008; “Violence as an Essentially Contested Concept,” Violence in Europe, http://www.springer.com/us/book/9780387745077.

However, for a criminologist a restrictive, e.g. legal definition implies more serious disadvantages. To begin with, a restrictive, e.g. legal definition is not necessarily a precise definition because even if we focus upon an extremely limited notion of violence, it will immediately become apparent that ‘violence’ – however narrowly defined – represents a surprisingly broad spectrum of incidents. Restricting a priori what qualifies as ‘violence’ would unduly and unhelpfully limit our understanding of how violence is socially constructed. An important benefit of a more inclusive definition of ‘violence’ is also that it allows researchers to penetrate the personal experience and subjective meaning of ‘violence’ for those involved either as victim (or perpetrator). In this respect, a broad inclusive definition of violence is preferable to a more restricted one because a restrictive definition tends to be a ‘etic’ while a broad inclusive definition enables emergent ‘emic’ perspectives to be integrated in the concept of violence. Only by refusing to make a priori assumptions about what qualifies as violence or not, can the full spectrum of behavior remain open to empirical research.



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Popular Sovereignty



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Definitions

Popular Sovereignty rejects the alienation of the sovereignty to law makers.Ardito, 2005. Dr. Alissa Ardito (doctorate in political science from Yale University; visiting professor at Duke University); 2005; Introduction to The Social Contract, translation by GDH Cole, published by Barnes & Noble, Inc, New York, p. xiii-xiv.

In contrast to Hobbes who argued that people together consented to delegate power forever in the interest of avoiding chaos at all costs, Locke proposed that people tacitly consented to government, while collectively retaining the right of rebellion should a government show signs of

tyranny. When his time came, Rousseau unleashed the doctrine of popular sovereignty. The people, not rulers, together maintain sovereignty, or ultimate political authority. Furthermore, sovereignty cannot be alienated to representatives, in the manner of British and American democracies. In The Social Contract , “We the People,” remain in charge. Moreover, consent cannot be given just once but must be repeatedly rendered throughout a citizen’s lifetime. As a result, genuine self-government, the only legitimate political order, is possible only in cities or small states.



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Turns

Modern social movements are not interested in statehood or popular sovereignty.Kaplan, 2012. Robert Kaplan (Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst; Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.; appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; professor at US Naval Academy.); 2012; The Revenge of Geography, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, pp. 127.

A state is a bad fit, he goes on, for those with absolutist goals inspired by religious zeal or ideological extremism that can never be realized by statehood. The mass exodus to slums in our era, by cutting off the link with the traditional countryside, has helped in this process of radicalization along the broad swath of the southern Eurasian rimland. The mass media, to which these groups have access, publicize their demands and in the process further fortify their identities, creating crowd packs of fellow thinkers not necessarily defined by state loyalties. In sum, if we step back a moment and consider the situation, we have a map of Eurasia that is one huge area rather than the smaller divisions of Cold War regions that we have grown used to.



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Progressivism



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Definitions

Progressivism provides moral and social direction without religion.Goff and Strow, 2016. Brian Goff (Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Economics at Western Kentucky University) and Brian Strow (Professor for the Study of Capitalism at Western Kentucky University); Winter 2016; “The Church of Progressivism,” National Affairs, Issue No 26.

By the early 20th century, religion-free ethics had become a kind of mature, established religion of its own: the Church of Progressivism.

Instead of moral and political philosophy being dominated by religious writers, the opposite has become true. Purely secular political thought has surpassed religious thought and now sets the boundaries for acceptable morals and actions in society.



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Counters

Progressivism contradicts its goals by becoming a religious movement in itself.Goff and Strow, 2016. Brian Goff (Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Economics at Western Kentucky University) and Brian Strow (Professor for the Study of Capitalism at Western Kentucky University); Winter 2016; “The Church of Progressivism,” National Affairs, Issue No 26.

The irony persists today. The best places to see progressivism behaving as a religion are colleges and universities, and especially their social-responsibility or global-citizenship programs. These seminars and programs are quite direct about their normative standards and agendas. With eyes closed, one can easily mistake the impassioned and strident moralism for a sermon from an evangelical pastor during the First Great Awakening. The directors and coordinators of these programs train and evangelize students, with university campuses serving as both seminary and mission field. Going beyond the casually religious, these endeavors ooze with the self-righteousness and unawareness of very insular, cultic religious movements.

Progressives view the State as the only answer to all society’s issues.Goff and Strow, 2016. Brian Goff (Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Economics at Western Kentucky University) and Brian Strow (Professor for the Study of Capitalism at Western Kentucky University); Winter 2016; “The Church of Progressivism,” National Affairs, Issue No 26.

For progressives, progress comes through central, rational control of society, which means that its adherents promote greater government control over all things, as the state alone can stand above and dictate to the rest of society. They distrust the structures of civil society that stand between the state and the individual - traditional religion, the family, local organizations, and businesses, for example - as

these institutions are plagued by a rational tradition and superstition. The ultimate goal is the rationale liberation of the individual from all unnecessary constraints, in the means is the state.



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Turns

Progressivism is a new religious test for public office that hurts public discourse.Goff and Strow, 2016. Brian Goff (Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Economics at Western Kentucky University) and Brian Strow (Professor for the Study of Capitalism at Western Kentucky University); Winter 2016; “The Church of Progressivism,” National Affairs, Issue No 26.

Another place to find dogmatic adherents to progressivism is in the upper echelon of the environmental movement. In his resignation letter from the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change, former chairman Rajendra Pachauri professed, "For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion

and my dharma." Matt Ridley, former editor of the Economist, lamented, "In the climate debate, pay obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.



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Social Contract



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Definitions

The social contract establishes a collective community.Ardito, 2005. Dr. Alissa Ardito (doctorate in political science from Yale University; visiting professor at Duke University); 2005; Introduction to The Social Contract, translation by GDH Cole, published by Barnes & Noble, Inc, New York, p. xiv.

Rousseau suggests that people can preserve their freedom and enjoy the blessings of social life by consenting to join a cooperative system rather than subjecting themselves to a ruler/protector. People can vanquish chaos by working together to preserve their lives, liberty, and property. Parties to The Social Contract agree to be governed by a system of rules, similar to the U.S. Constitution, which contain broad provisions in the general interest.

The contract establishes a collective organization, a political community.

The social contract is centered around census.Ardito, 2005. Dr. Alissa Ardito (doctorate in political science from Yale University; visiting professor at Duke University); 2005; Introduction to The Social Contract, translation by GDH Cole, published by Barnes & Noble, Inc, New York, p. x.

In the end, The Social Contract moves readers emotionally as well as philosophically through its recognition of the need of the soul for human solidarity. The state exists not merely to protect the individual but to protect common things: a system of justice, the environment, artistic and architectural masterpieces, public libraries and schools, ambulances and sidewalks. Politics, however, is also about language, talking, negotiating, arguing; and for that Rousseau had no need and little patience. The goal in The Social Contract is always consensus , and in the end one suspects what Rousseau finally wanted was silence, a world beyond speech, which he offers us: the timeless republic of collective memory.

Social contract is morally superior to utilitarianism.Hardin, 2014. Russell Hardin (Ph.D. in Political Science, Professor of Politics at NYU); October 31, 2014; “Social Yes; Contract No,” Rationality, Markets and Morals, http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Hardin.pdf

Hume’s arguments and facts are so devastating to the idea of the social contract that one must wonder why that idea continues to be in discussion at all. John Rawls essentially agrees with Hume’s central conclusion. He says that, because citizens have not genuinely contracted for or agreed to any political obligation, they cannot have such obligations. Yet, he still perversely classifies his theory as part of the contractarian

tradition. There seems to be a prevalent view that contractarianism is morally superior to utilitarianism, and Rawls poses his theory this way. This is a deeply odd view. A utilitarian acts primarily on behalf of others. Those who enter contracts typically are concerned with their own benefits and need not care about the benefits to their partners in trade. The former is other-regarding; the latter is self-seeking. Indeed, this is precisely Rawls’s position: he assumes that we are all mutually disinterested, by which he means each of us is concerned only with our own benefits and burdens, not with those of others. This condition blocks concern with envy. It is a saving grace of contemporary claims for contractarianism that they are not about contracts. Unfortunately, they are rather about rationalist agreement on what are the right principles to follow as though these could merely be deduced from first principles.




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People accede to social contracts for protection and preservation of peace.Fieser, 2001. James Fieser (professor of philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He received his B.A. from Berea College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Purdue University); 2001; Moral Philosophy through the Ages, accessed through Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=9Jl2x7G1G90C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Hobbes’s social contract theory serves double duty: as (1) a political theory that justifies the existence of a government and (2) a moral theory that specifies our moral obligations. As a political theory, Hobbes’s

social contract theory maintains that governments are the creations of people, and not the creations of God. The complete justification for a government’s existence is its role as preserver of the peace. However, even though we are the ones who create governments, we are never allowed to overthrow them once they are established, even if we’re not happy with the job that they’re doing. The reason for this is that, to guarantee that governments will be effective in their peacekeeping mission, we must give them absolute and irrevocable authority over us. For Hobbes, if governments have anything less than this, then they will be unable to enforce the laws. The governments that we establish can be monarchies, aristocracies, or democracies. However, Hobbes believed that monarchies are the most effective in preserving the peace, for several reasons. Monarchs will receive better counsel since they can select experts and get advice in private. Monarchs’ policies will also be more consistent since they are operating as individuals, unlike other forms of government that have many leaders. Similarly, there is less chance of a civil war with a monarchy since monarchs will not disagree with themselves.



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Counters

A population’s acquiescence to a social contract does not give consent.Hardin, 2014. Russell Hardin (Ph.D. in Political Science, Professor of Politics at NYU); October 31, 2014; “Social Yes; Contract No,” Rationality, Markets and Morals, http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Hardin.pdf

Given that it is a mystery how contracting could work to motivate us to abide by a constitution to which we or our forebears have contracted, we should be glad that the problem we face is such that we have no need of a contract or its troublesome lack of enforcement devices or

commitments across generations. Moreover, the acquiescence that a successful constitution produces cannot meaningfully be called agreement or consent. Some citizens might prefer extant constitutional arrangements to any plausible alternative, but for those who do not, their obedience to the constitutional order has more the quality of surrender than of glad acceptance . Indeed, if our constitution and its institutions are solidly ensconced, surrender or acquiescence gives us the best we can get, given that almost everyone else is abiding by them—even if almost all of them are merely acquiescing or surrendering in abiding by them.




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Utilitarianism



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Definitions

Utilitarianism is a means of maximizing happiness for both individuals and communities (Bentham).Sandel, 2009. Michael Sandel (American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University); 2009; Justice: What’s the right thing to do, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, p. 34.

Bentham, in English moral philosopher and legal reformer, founded the doctrine of utilitarianism. Its main idea is simply stated and intuitively appealing: The highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, the overall balance of pleasure over pain. According to Bentham, the right thing to do is whatever will maximize utility. By "utility," he means whatever produces pleasure or happiness, and whatever prevents pain or suffering. Bentham arrives at his principle by the following line of reasoning: We are all governed by the feelings of pain and pleasure. They are our "sovereign masters." They govern us and everything we do and also

determine what we ought to do. The standard of right and wrong is "fastened to their throne." We all like pleasure and dislike pain. The utilitarian philosophy recognizes this fact, and makes it the basis of moral and political life. Maximizing utility is a principle not only for individuals but also for legislators. In deciding what laws or policies to enact, a government should do whatever will maximize the happiness of the community as a whole. What, after all is a community? According to Bentham, it is "a fictitious body," composed of the sum of the individuals who comprise it. Citizens and legislators should therefore ask themselves this question: If we add up all the benefits of this policy, and subtract all the cost, will it produce more happiness than the alternative?

Utilitarianism accounts for both happiness and individual rights (Mill).Sandel, 2009. Michael Sandel (American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University); 2009; Justice: What’s the right thing to do, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, p. 49.

Mill's writing can be read as strenuous attempt to reconcile individual rights with a utilitarian philosophy he inherited from his father and adopted from Bentham. His book On Liberty (1859) is the classic defense of individual freedom in the English-

speaking world. Its central principal is that people should be free to do whatever they want, provided they do no harm to others. Government may not interfere with individual liberty in order to protective person from himself, or to impose the majority's beliefs about how best to live. The only actions for which a person is accountable to society, Mills argues, are those that affect others. As long as I am not harming anyone else, my "independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

Bentham’s utilitarianism offers a moral comparative scale without judging individual’s virtues.Sandel, 2009. Michael Sandel (American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University); 2009; Justice: What’s the right thing to do, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, p. 41.

Utilitarianism claims to offer a science of morality, based on measuring, aggregating, and calculating happiness. It weighs preferences without judging them. Everyone's preferences count equally. This nonjudgmental spirit is the source of much of its appeal. And its promise to make moral choice a science



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informs much contemporary economic reasoning. But in order to aggregate preferences, it is necessary to measure them on a single scale. Bentham's idea of utility offers one such common currency.



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Counters

Utilitarianism fails to protect individual rights.Sandel, 2009. Michael Sandel (American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University); 2009; Justice: What’s the right thing to do, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, p. 37.

The most glaring weakness of utilitarianism, many argue, is that it failed to respect individual rights. By caring only about the sum of satisfactions, it can run roughshod over individual people. For the utilitarian, individuals matter, but only in the sense that each person's preferences should be counted along with everyone else's. But this means that the utilitarian logic, if consistently applied, could sanction ways of treating persons that violate what we think of as fundamental norms of decency and respect, as the following case illustrates:

UTIL ignores how we view the world around us.Edmonds, 2014. David Edmonds. 2014. Would You Kill the Fat Man? Oxford: Princeton University Press: xiii-xiv.

Jim’s quandary has a closer parallel to the Fat Man case. Williams though that Jim should, on balance, kill the Indian. But the problem with utilitarianism was how it assessed this situation, how it weighed and balanced reasons for action. For the utilitarian it is obvious that this is what Jim should do: it’s one life against twenty. But that misses the fact, said Williams, that if Jim picks up the gun, it will be Jim who does the killing.

The utilitarian, in the philosopher’s jargon, takes no account of “agency.” All the utilitarian cares about is what produces the best result, not who produces this result or how this result is brought about. Whether it

is caused by Jim acting, or failing to act, is irrelevant. We are as responsible for what we fail to do, as for what we actually do. But that’s not how we ordinarily view matters: if Jim can’t bring himself to shoot the Indian we’d hold the Captain, not Jim, responsible for

the deaths of the twenty. Utilitarians make the mistake, in Williams’s view, of believing they can judge actions from the “point of view of the universe.”



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TurnsUtilitarianism ignores human emotion, results in actions that make us unhappy regardless of rationale.Edmonds, 2014. David Edmonds. 2014. Would You Kill the Fat Man? Oxford: Princeton University Press: xiii-xiv.

If Jeremy Bentham ruled the world he would encourage the toppling of fat men over footbridges, where this sacrifice was necessary for the

greater good. But ordinary folk can’t bring themselves to push the fat man. Ordinary folks don’t believe that their primary obligation is to maximize happiness; they believe that there are constraints on their behavior, such as a

prohibition on harming innocent individuals. Even if they were persuade by Jeremy Bentham, and did push the fat man, they’d probably feel terrible remorse afterward: perhaps they’d suffer flashbacks and nightmares. Bentham would no doubt regard any guilt or regret as irrational. But humans aren’t always in control of their emotions. Striving to be utilitarian might have the perverse effect of making us unhappy.



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Topicality



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Ought



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Definitions



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Ought Not



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Definitions

“Ought not” is a cost-benefit analysis of moral benefits.Greenspan, 2007. Patricia Greenspan, “Practical Reasons and Moral ‘Ought’,” in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, ed. Russ Shafer-Ladau (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2007), 172, accessed December 3, 2018, http://faculty.philosophy.umd.edu/PGreenspan/Res/ME.pdf.

Morality is a source of reasons for action, what philosophers call practical reasons. Kantians say that it ‘gives’ reasons to everyone. We can even think of moral requirements as amounting to particularly strong or stringent reasons, in an effort to demystify deontological views like Kant’s,

with its insistence on inescapable or ‘binding’ moral requirements or ‘oughts.’ When we say that someone morally ought not to harm others, perhaps all we are saying is that he has a certain kind of reason not to, one that wins out against any opposing reasons such as those touting benefits to him of ignoring others’ concerns.



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Should



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Definitions



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Theory



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Criterion



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Definition

The criterion distinguishes between progress and regress.Skillen, 2014. James Skillen (Christian political philosopher and author. He was the executive director and then president of the Center for Public Justice from 1981 to 2009, when he retired from the organization). 2014. The Good of Politics, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Pg. 63.

The question, of course, is how to distinguish progress from regress. By what criteria do we judge that the public prolongation and celebration of an execution in fourteenth-century Europe was worse than what goes on in America’s prisons today, largely

hidden from public view? By what criteria do we judge that a contemporary constitutional state represents progress beyond the kingdoms and cities of the late Middle Ages? We raise these questions not to cast doubt on the possibility of making judgements about progress and regress but to draw attention to the fundamental importance of criteria.



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Solvency



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Solvency Matters

Thought experiments are not created in a vacuum, the real-world matters.Edmonds, 2014. David Edmonds. 2014. Would You Kill the Fat Man? Oxford: Princeton University Press: xiii-xiv.

Thought experiments don’t exist until they have been thought up. Books covering philosophy tend, rightly, to focus on ideas, not people. But ideas do not emerge from a vacuum; they are the product of time and place, of upbringing and personality. Perhaps they have been conceived as a rebuttal to other ideas, or as a reflection of the concerns of the moment. Perhaps they reflect a thinker’s particular preoccupation. In any case, intellectual history is fascinating, and I wanted to weave in the stories of one or two of those responsible for the ideas on which this book is based.



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