Equality

This chapter reconstructs G.A. Cohen’s influential critique of John Rawls’s theory of justice, focusing on Cohen’s claim that Rawls construed the scope of justice too narrowly. While Rawls held that the principles of justice apply to the basic structure of society—its fundamental social, political, and economic institutions—Cohen argued that these principles must also govern the personal decisions individuals make under those institutions. On Cohen’s view, everyday choices must be guided by an egalitarian ethos of justice. The chapter considers two key (...) responses to this challenge: that Cohen’s view is overly demanding, and that Rawls’s own theory, properly interpreted, already entails such an ethos. In tracing this debate, the chapter highlights Cohen’s departure from Marxist orthodoxy, the moralist dimension of his account of distributive justice, and an underappreciated relational egalitarian strand in his political philosophy. Ultimately, it suggests that the gap between Rawls and Cohen may be narrower than is often assumed, raising broader questions about the relationship between liberalism and socialism in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

Theories of recognition have transformed contemporary social philosophy by demonstrating that identity, dignity, and justice are fundamentally relational achievements. This article argues that recognition remains philosophically incomplete because it presupposes more fundamental structures of belonging. Drawing upon contemporary science, it develops the Philosophy of Belonging as a post-essentialist reconstruction of social philosophy grounded in four principles: being is belonging; synchrony and diachrony; imperfect belonging; and stratified reality. Recognition is reinterpreted as a historically contingent form of belonging rather than its foundation. (...) The article further develops an evolutionary interpretation of institutions, capitalism, and globalization, arguing that contemporary crises reflect a global belonging deficit rather than merely deficits of recognition. (shrink)

Historically, domestic violence has been dismissed as a personal matter and standardly understood as beyond public concern. What happened within the home was seen as under the authority of the head of the household rather than the state. More recently, activists and scholars have argued that the state should protect the civil liberties of private citizens, even when those civil liberties are violated within the family. As a consequence, domestic violence is increasingly recognized as a legitimate public concern and as (...) a serious wrong meriting public condemnation and intervention. Even so, what is recognized as “domestic violence,” any explanation of why domestic violence is wrong, and the appropriate means of intervention remain contested. Clarifying the nature of and appropriate responses to domestic violence therefore remains an ethically, socially, and politically important challenge. (shrink)

Oppression, marginalization, and other forms of disadvantage often come with emotional burdens, such as feelings of insecurity or stress. At the same time, some features of oppression are emotional in nature—for example, the dismissal of anger from victims of racial or gender injustice. The concept of affective injustice aims to capture the distinctively emotional wrongs that contribute to, or themselves constitute, unfair disadvantage. This article offers a critical overview of the existing literature on affective injustice, understood as the unjust interference (...) with people’s affective lives. (shrink)

This paper proposes a minimal theoretical framework for understanding individuality, selection, and equality through the concept of feedback boundaries. The central claim is that individuality is not a fixed substance but a boundary generated by the density, reciprocity, and continuity of connection. When systems remain outside a shared individual boundary, their differences cannot be internally coordinated. Difference is then more likely to be resolved through competition, exclusion, domination, or selection. When systems become sufficiently connected, however, they no longer function merely (...) as separate external individuals. Their relations may generate a higher-order individual. Within this shared boundary, difference is not primarily resolved by selection, but by coordination, adjustment, and integration. Equality, in this sense, is not merely a moral demand but a structural tendency internal to sufficiently integrated individuality. The paper therefore distinguishes two regimes of difference: selection outside the individual and equality within the individual. It does not claim that every conflict or inequality is caused by insufficient connection alone. Rather, it argues that the boundary of individuality determines whether difference is mainly externalized as selection or internalized as coordination. The formal notation used in the paper is intended as a heuristic clarification of the argument, not as a complete empirical model. (shrink)

This text is the result of academic research aimed at finding viable ways to reduce social inequalities in the Brazilian context through education. Our main focus was the search for ways to reduce violence through education and the ways in which education can promote human development and security in general. To achieve this goal with clarity and consistency, I address both theoretical and practical issues. The theoretical part clarifies essential concepts and establishes the background for the rest of the work. (...) The practical part is an application of these concepts in the Brazilian educational setting. (shrink)

Is a controversial ideology needed, if the uncontroversial elements of good government –external defence, law and order, economic stability, necessary public services, competence, integrity, energy, and a focus on “what works”– can be assured? The paper argues that every polity needs the ideology that will correct its own distinctive structural tendency towards some morally unacceptable outcome. The tendency of a democracy is to sacrifice the interests of the poorest third of the population to those of the richer two-thirds, who will (...) permanently outvote them. A party of the left needs to be committed both, for its own electability, to the good government conception, and to a controversial ideology aimed at counteracting the morally and prudentially damaging tendencies inherent in the polity itself. (shrink)

The central idea is that civilization can achieve a soft landing if tensions are identified early, problems are reported honestly, and people are given enough time to adapt to a better operating model. The transition does not need to begin with mass adoption; it can begin with a small number of people and institutions becoming more capable of converting stress, confusion, and conflict into useful resolution. The real pressure is not fear of missing out, but opportunity cost, because every year (...) that a better system compounds, the cost of remaining inside the old system becomes more visible. The goal is to create a safe crisis: enough pressure to stop sleepwalking, but not so much pressure that fear, blame, and instability are pushed onto children, workers, families, or public institutions. The replacement metric for GDP is civilizational efficiency, meaning the degree to which people, organizations, and economies convert burdens into useful outputs without externalizing damage. A healthy system is not one that moves as fast as possible; it is one where burdens are matched to capabilities and where people have enough slack to resolve problems rather than transmit them. In this model, some people and institutions act as resolution nodes that absorb friction and return stability, clarity, work, care, or trust. The strongest nodes should not become public rulers or status figures; they should operate more like quiet master mechanics who help the rest of the network become stronger. At the policy level, the argument is that money creation or fiscal support only works if it is directed into restoring capability and efficiency rather than merely soothing symptoms. The long-term economic claim is that a civilization capable of moving from a 3% growth path to a staged 15%, 8%, and 5% efficiency-compounding path ends up almost ten times larger over 80 years than the baseline model. (shrink)