Monthly Archives: May 2013

There is a lively debate taking place in libertarian/classical liberal blogosphere over whether the concept of social justice plays a useful role in political philosophy. See, e.g. here:  http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/  and here:  http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/05/specificity-and-overspecificity-about-social-justice/#comments.  Most of this dialog has centered on the question whether this idea can be given a sufficiently precise definition and whether it is internally coherent. While I believe these issues are certainly worth exploring, I am going to argue that even if it satisfies these tests, the inclusion of the concept of social justice in rights-based political theories constitutes a large step down the road to confusion and error.     Continue Reading »

Guest Post by Danny Frederick, http://independent.academia.edu/DannyFrederick

In Parts 1 and 2, we considered the following case.

HIKER. A hiker on a back-packing trip in the high mountain country is beset by an unanticipated blizzard which strikes the area with such ferocity that her life is imperilled. She stumbles onto an unoccupied cabin, locked and boarded up for the winter, clearly somebody else’s private property. She smashes a window, enters, and huddles in a corner for three days until the storm abates. During this period she helps herself to her unknown benefactor’s food supply and burns his wooden furniture in the fireplace to keep warm.

We came to the conclusions that:

• the hiker’s action is a permissible infringement of the cabin-owner’s rights;

• it is permissible even if the cabin-owner refuses to consent to it;

• the net social benefit of the action is not sufficient to make it permissible;

• its permissibility depends on the hiker’s duty to herself, because only another duty can override the hiker’s duty to respect the cabin-owner’s rights;

• the hiker’s duty to save her own life makes the action permissible, rather than obligatory, because she can release herself from her duty to herself;

• in virtue of infringing the cabin-owner’s rights, the hiker owes him appropriate amends. Continue Reading »