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In his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth and Queen Christina, as well as in parts of the Passions of the Soul, Descartes provides the beginnings of a theory of ethics. Descartes argues that the supreme good, or the end that one ought to pursue in all of one’s actions, is virtue. The latter is understood by Descartes as a matter of using one’s absolutely free will as well as one can. In the paper we try to shed some light on what this Cartesian notion of virtue more specifically entails.

A common intuition is that there is a moral difference between ‘making people happy’ and ‘making happy people.’ This intuition, often referred to as ‘the Asymmetry,’ has, however, been criticized on the grounds that it is incoherent. Why is there, for instance, not a corresponding difference between ‘making people unhappy’ and ‘making unhappy people’? I argue that the intuition faces several difficulties but that these can be met by introducing a certain kind of reason that is favouring but non-requiring. It is argued that there are structural similarities between the asymmetry and moral options and that the asymmetry can be defended as an instance of a moral option.

Aesthetic value and good taste usually go hand in hand. A person with good taste is, typically, someone who appreciates things which exhibit some aesthetic quality or excellence. However, in ordinary life it is commonplace that we indulge in things which are lacking in aesthetic value. For example, we might prefer to watch Days of Our Lives rather than The Wire, or to read a bad crime novel rather than good poetry.

It is tempting to draw the conclusion that we are making a mistake, and lacking good taste, when our aesthetic attitudes do not match up against the aesthetic value of the things we prefer. However, this conclusion may be too quick. It has recently been argued by John Dyck and Matt Johnson¹ that appreciating bad art—art which lack aesthetically good making features or whose bad making features clearly outweigh its good making ones—isn’t always inappropriate. In this paper I will argue that while there might be a case to be made for this claim, the problem which Dyck and Johnson identify is much more general and that their proposed solution can at best be a partial one.

This thesis in an invistigation into the concept of "harm" and its moral relevance. A common view is that an analysis of harm should include a counterfactual condition: an act harms a person iff it makes that person worse off. A common objection to the moral relevance of harm, thus understood, is the non-identity problem.

This thesis criticises the counterfactual condition, argues for an alternative analysis and that harm plays two important normative roles.

The main ground for rejecting the counterfactual condition is that it has unacceptable consequences in cases of overdetermination and pre-emption. Several modifications to the condition are considered but all fail to solve this problem.

According to the alternative analysis to do harm is to perform an act which (1) is responsible for the obtaining of a state of affairs which (2) makes a person’s life go worse. It is argued that (1) should be understood in terms of counterfactual dependence. This claim is defended against counterexamples based on redundant causation. An analysis of (2) is also provided using the notion of a well-being function. It is argued that by introducing this notion it is possible to analyse contributive value without making use of counterfactual comparisons and to solve the non-identity problem.

Regarding the normative importance of harm, a popular intuition is that there is an asymmetry in our obligations to future people: that a person would have a life worth living were she to exist is not a reason in favour of creating that person while that a person would have a life not worth living is a reason against creating that person. It is argued that the asymmetry can be classified as a moral option grounded in autonomy. Central to this defence is the suggestion that harm is relevant to understanding autonomy. Autonomy involves partly the freedom to pursue one’s own aims as long as one does no harm.

Populationsetiken tycks befinna sig i något av en kris. Ända sedan Derek Parfits misslyckade försök att hitta en teori som undviker den motbjudande slutsatsen har filosofer på olika sätt befäst misstanken att det inte finns någon teori som undviker denna slutsats. I denna uppsats diskuterar jag huruvida en kontraktualistisk ansats till populationsetik kan kringgå de problem som har identifierats för konsekventialistiska teorier och argumenterar för att dessa ansatser inte har någon tydlig fördel framför konsekventialistiska teorier

Can existence benefit or harm a person? I argue that it cannot. In order for existence to harm a person it has to be the case that existence is worse for the person than never existing. This claim could only be true if it is understood as a claim about the actual, extrinsic value of existence for a person. However, understanding harm (and benefit) in terms of actual extrinsic value comes at the cost of depriving benefits and harms of their normative relevance. I show that a person who is guided by promoting actual extrinsic value can face situations where an outcome is extrinsically better for her but where the same outcome would be extrinsically worse for her were it to obtain. A person who is guided by promoting extrinsic value will in such situations not be able to deliberate about what she should do, prudentially or morally. I conclude that extrinsic value is therefore not something we should be guided by when deliberating about what we should do, and that if harm and benefit is understood in terms of extrinsic value, then we should not be guided by these notions either.

According to “the asymmetry”, the fact that a future person would have a life not worth living counts against bringing that person into existence but the fact that a future person would have a life worth living does not count in favour of bringing that person into existence. While this asymmetry seems intuitive, it is also puzzling: if we think that it is of moral importance to prevent people from living lives not worth living, shouldn’t we also that it is of moral importance to create people with lives worth living? Melinda Roberts has suggested a view, “Variabilism”, which she argues solves this problem. I argue that Variabilism fails as a solution to the asymmetry. First, Variabilism relies on a particular distinction between gains and losses which is at least as puzzling as the asymmetry itself. Second, in some cases Variabilism is incompatible with the asymmetry. In these cases, the fact that a person would have a life worth living does count in favour of creating her.

In this article we distinguish two versions of the non-identity problem: one involving positive well-being and one involving negative well-being. Intuitively, there seems to be a difference between the two versions of the problem. In the negative case it is clear that one ought to cause the better-off person to exist. However, it has recently been suggested that this is not so in the positive case. We argue that such an asymmetrical treatment of the two versions should be rejected and that this is evidence against views according to which it is permissible to cause the less well-off person to exist in the positive non-identity case.

John Rawls A Theory of Justice har haft ett monumentalt inflytande på den moderna politiska filosofin. Jag försöker här genom några nedslag i den nutida diskussionen förmedla en bild av detta inflytande, och av bokens fortsatta filosofiska relevans. Jag inleder med en kort presentation av huvuddragen i Rawls rättviseteori. Efter det går jag igenom, och bemöter, kritiken mot idealteori. Jag diskuterar sedan förhållandet mellan rättvisa och ekonomisk ojämlikhet, och förklarar varför teorin är radikalare än vad många kritiker insett. Slutligen går jag igenom hur en kontraktsteori av detta slag kan hantera frågan om rättvisa mellan generationer.

Recently, there have been attempts at offering new justifications of the Rawlsian idea of public reason. Blain Neufeld has suggested that the ideal of political autonomy justifies public reason, while R.J. Leland and Han van Wietmarschen have sought to justify the idea by appealing to the value of political community. In this paper, I show that both proposals are vulnerable to a common problem. In realistic circumstances, they will often turn into reasons to oppose, rather than support, public reason. However, this counterintuitive result can be avoided if we conceive of autonomy and community differently.

This paper considers the view that the basis of equality is the range property of being a moral person. This view, suggested by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice (1971), is commonly dismissed in the literature. By defending the view against the criticism levelled against it, I aim to show that this dismissal has been too quick. The critics have generally failed to fully appreciate the fact that Rawls's account is restricted to the domain of distributive justice. On Rawls's view distributive justice is a matter of the fair terms of cooperation among the participants of a system of social cooperation. I argue that this understanding of distributive justice can provide a compelling rationale for considering moral personality as the basis of equality for this domain of morality. That moral persons are indeed equal is further supported by an intuitive argument concerning the irrelevance of morally arbitrary factors, giving us reasons to believe that varying capacities among moral persons does not result in an unequal moral status. The dismissal of Rawls's account of equality has thus been premature, and it remains an important view to consider.

According to John Rawls’s famous Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all citizens. The currently dominant interpretation of what is justifiable to persons in this sense is an internalist one. On this view, what is justifiable to persons depends on their beliefs and commitments. In this paper I challenge this reading of Rawls’s principle, and instead suggest that it is most plausibly interpreted in externalist terms. On this alternative view, what is justifiable to persons is not in any way dependent on, or relativized to, their beliefs and commitments. Instead, what is justifiable to all in the relevant sense is what all could accept as free and equal. I defend this reinterpretation of the view by showing how it is supported by Rawls’s account of the freedom and equality of persons. In addition, a considerable advantage of this suggestion is that it allows for an inclusive account of to whom the exercise of political power must be made justifiable.

This thesis is an inquiry into the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, formulated by John Rawls in his later writings. According to this principle, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all citizens. This view can be interpreted in different ways, and I argue that the presently most popular way of doing so faces serious problems. The aim is to identify and defend a more plausible version of the principle, which overcomes these problems, and yet preserves the most essential and appealing features of the approach. Among the most central issues for how to interpret the principle are how to understand the notion of justifiability to a person, and who should be included in the group of persons referred to as "all citizens". On the currently received view, only justifiability to those who count as "reasonable" matter, and justifiability to these persons is understood in non-moral terms, as being determined by what is accessible to them, given the beliefs that they happen to hold. I argue that we have good reasons to reject both of these suggestions. We should instead spell out justifiability to a person in terms of what could be reasonably accepted in a moral sense, which allows us to retain the appealing idea that legitimacy is dependent on justifiability to all citizens over whom political power is exercised. I further suggest that we can use the original position – Rawls’s version of the social contract – to determine what is justifiable to all in this sense. I defend this suggestion against the expected objection that it will not be able to take reasonable pluralism – the assumption of deep disagreement between citizens – into account, by explaining why we should sharply distinguish this principle of political legitimacy from the theory of Political Liberalism. This distinction also contributes to my response to the objection, raised against this principle, that it is self-defeating. That my suggested interpretation allows us to convincingly respond to this line of criticism is yet another reason as to why it is preferable to the standard view.

In constructivist contractualist theories, such as Rawls’, principles of justice should mirror beliefs that we all, in some sense, share. One would then arrive at principles that everybody could, in that sense, accept. These principles should specify, among other things, to whom to distribute the relevant benefits and burdens and to whom to assign responsibility for the distribution. In addition to this classical assignment problem, however, constructivist contractualism must also deal with a new, and quite different, assignment problem since what to count as beliefs that we all share depends on how the set of people that make up the “we” is delimited. Thus, for constructivist contractualism, the questions of whom to assign a part in the justification procedure and whom to exclude, and how to justify these inclusions and exclusions, are of crucial importance. In this chapter we consider the inclusion or exclusion of future generations, and how this case illuminates a general problem for constructivist contractualism.

The repugnant conclusion can be formulated as follows: For any population consisting of people with very high positive welfare, there is a better population in which everyone has a very low positive welfare, other things being equal. As the name indicates, this conclusion appears unacceptable. Yet it has proven to be surprisingly difficult to find a theory that avoids it without implying other very counterintuitive conclusions. Moreover, the conclusion is a problem not just for total utilitarians or those committed to welfarism but for all moral theories according to which welfare matters at least when all other things are equal, which arguably is a minimal adequacy condition for any moral theory. And, not the least, how to deal with it has implications for the present generations’ duties to future generations and intergenerational justice. The question as to how the repugnant conclusion should be dealt with has thus become one of the cardinal challenges of modern ethics, and the inquiry into what it shows about the nature of ethics has opened up many new avenues for research. This chapter covers the different suggestions in the literature on how to do deal with the conclusion, both on the axiological and on the normative levels. Moreover, the conclusion and different ways of deriving it are explained in detail.

This essay explores the implications of historicising John Rawls’s theory of justice. While historical research on Rawls and his social context has provided valuable insights, some scholars argue that historicising carries significant philosophical consequences. This paper critically examines one such argument that contends that historicising Rawls’s theory demonstrates its contextual nature, undermines its diagnostic powers, and leads to its complete dissolution. We offer a reconstruction of this argument and show that it fails. Further, while we argue that this argument fails, we go on to suggest that historical evidence may contribute to a defensive argument against appeals to expert opinion. By examining the appropriate relationship between historical research and philosophy, this essay contributes to the evaluation of the historicist critique and offers insights into the broader role of historical research in philosophical discourse.

In an outline of a paper found amongst his philosophical papers and correspondence after his untimely death in 2001 — “Nihil Obstat: An Analysis of Ability”, reproduced in this volume — David Lewis sketched a new compatibilist account of abilities, according to which someone is able to A if and only if there is no obstacle to their A-ing, where an obstacle is a "robust preventer" of their A-ing. In this paper, we provide some background context for Lewis's outline, a section-by-section commentary, and a general discussion of the account's main features.

The Projectability Challenge states that a metaethical view must explain how ordinary agents can, on the basis of moral experience and reflection, accurately and justifiably apply moral concepts to novel situations. In this paper, we argue for two primary claims. First, paradigm nonnaturalism can satisfactorily answer the projectability challenge. Second, it is unclear whether there is a version of moral naturalism that can satisfactorily answer the challenge. The conclusion we draw is that there is an important respect in which nonnaturalism holds an advantage over its most prominent naturalist rivals. The conclusion is interesting if only because it is widely assumed that naturalism has an easier time handling thorny problems in moral epistemology. We argue that there is at least one such problem of which this assumption is not true.

In this essay, I will examine the theory of territorial rights developed by Anna Stilz. The overarching project of hers is to defend a system of territorially sovereign states, the defense of which is grounded in the natural rights of individuals to personal autonomy and self-preservation. She begins her theoretic project by arguing for the plausibility of the preinstitutional occupancy right, intended to grant individuals usage-rights over the earth, existing irrespective of social or moral conventions, formally defined as follows: “Occupancy Rights. A person has a preinstitutional right to occupy a particular area if (1) access to spaces in that area is fundamental to his located life plans and (2) his connection to the territory was established without any wrongdoing on his part, involving (at a minimum) no expulsion or wrongful interference with prior occupants or infringement of others’ claims to an equitable distribution of geographical space.”

The condition of equitable distribution expresses a concern for proportionality.  It seems as if Stilz believes that no territorial holding will be legitimate unless it is of an appropriate scale, with regard to the holdings of others. This condition is referred to by Stilz as the fair-use proviso. The fair-use proviso concerns the occupancy claims made by individuals. Stilz also introduces conditions for a legitimate global distribution of territory, named as the full proviso. Stilz’ defines the full proviso as follows: (conditions for a legitimate global distribution of territory): “The full proviso hold that a just distribution of the earth’s spaces must (i) satisfy everyone’s basic territorial interests and (ii) grant groups with shared practice-based interests the right to use geographical space in ways that reflect these interests, so long as the groups are of sufficient size, and so far as this is institutionally feasible.” For an individual occupancy claim to be legitimate is simply that it is consistent with the conditions for a legitimate global distribution of territory, i.e. the full proviso. The full proviso and the fair-use proviso are thus inseparable parts of a whole. In what follows, if not specified otherwise, I will alternate in referring to the fair-use proviso as the fair-use proviso or simply the proviso. The full proviso will always be italicized when discussed. 

The purpose of this essay is to investigate whether the fair-use proviso is satisfying in the face of some criticism. In completing this task, I will draw on an objection put forth by Lea Ypi. The objection as formulated by her is not in direct response to Stilz, however I believe we might draw on her work to formulate a powerful objection from scarcity to Stilz’ fair-use proviso. The question at stake in this essay is thus if the objection of scarcity is successful against Stilz’ fair-use proviso.

This short paper states a new objection against "spectrum arguments" for nontransitive betterness. It is shown that defenders of such arguments must reject one of two very plausible principles.