Rethinking Economic Inequality

Secular discourse about problem of economic inequality rests on two foundational premises that are problematic from a theological point of view. First, individuals enter into society with the aim of bettering their own condition. Second, bettering one's own condition entails accruing more wealth and power so that one can fulfill more of one's desires. In this paper I argue that insofar as these premises shape market behavior, they actively promote excessive economic inequality. Ethical responses to the problem of economic inequality that do not challenge these assumptions are unlikely to effectively promote justice. A theological response to the problem of economic inequality should work to promote cultural change by reminding us that genuine human flourishing depends on communal ties and the higher human goods that material wealth is properly meant to support.     

Probing The Politics of Difference: What's Wrong with an All-Male Priesthood?

Though it is often taken for granted that feminists necessarily must condemn the exclusion of women from the Roman Catholic priesthood, the author demonstrates that the "politics of difference," if pursued consistently, reopens this question. International feminist arguments for honoring gender differences, the teachings of John Paul II concerning women, and Catholic social justice teachings, taken jointly, suggest that the current Catholic exclusion of women from the priesthood is unjust not because the reservation of a social role to a single sex is inherently unacceptable, but because of the asymmetry in power between the roles accorded men and women in the governance of the Catholic Church. To be just, sex-specific reservation of roles must meet the criteria of balance, proportion, power, and particularity.     

Naves and Nukes: John Ruskin as “Augustinian” Social Theorist?

John Milbank appropriates John Ruskin as part of his “Augustinian” tradition. Milbank's selective reading, however, omits Ruskin's fixed hierarchies as well as his acknowledgment of conflict in economic life. Neither of these ideas fits the social aesthetics of harmony and difference that Milbank claims is unique to Christian theology. While Milbank's strictly theoretical portrait of theology gains critical force from Ruskin's robust account of social practices and just exchange, Milbank lacks effective historical and institutional responses to the problems in Ruskin's corpus. This deficiency undermines Milbank's dichotomy between theology and secular reason.     

The interpretation of Locke’s Two Treatises in Britain, 1778–1956

ABSTRACT

This paper describes how Locke’s Two Treatises of Government was read in Britain from Josiah Tucker to Peter Laslett. It focuses in particular upon how Locke’s readers responded to his detailed and lengthy engagement with the patriarchalist political thought of Sir Robert Filmer. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the debate between Locke and Filmer continued to provide the framework within which political obligation was discussed. A hundred years later that had changed, to the point where Locke’s readers found it unintelligible that he argued against Filmer and not Hobbes. I explain this in terms of the development in nineteenth-century Britain of a new conception of the history of political philosophy, the product of interest in the Hegelian theory of the state. The story told here is offered as one example of how understandings of the history of philosophy are shaped by understandings of philosophy itself.     

Handedness patterns in deaf persons

The handedness patterns of 226 deaf high-school and college students were compared to those of 210 college students with normal hearing. Both groups evidenced many more right-handed than left-handed members, as determined by responses to a hand preference questionnaire and performance on an activity test battery. There was, however, a significantly higher incidence of left-handedness among the deaf subjects than among the hearing. Moreover, the left-handed deaf students were found to be less likely to have deaf relatives, and to have been introduced to sign language later in their development than the deaf student population as a whole. These findings were interpreted as showing that age of acquisition of language was related to the development of handedness patterns, whereas auditory processing experience probably was not.     

THE STRUCTURE OF JUSTIFICATION IN POLITICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

Abstract: In this article the author develops the view, held by some, that political constructivism is best interpreted as a pragmatic enterprise aiming to solve political problems. He argues that this interpretation's structure of justification is best conceived in terms of two separate investigations—one develops a normative solution to a particular political problem by working up into a coherent whole certain moral conceptions of persons and society; and the other is an empirically based analysis of the political problem. The author argues that the empirically based analysis can generate criteria for assessing whether the normative theory successfully works out a solution, thereby developing a functionalist structure of justification. He further argues that this interpretation overcomes a longstanding criticism of constructivism, namely, that the use of substantive moral concepts in the hypothetical choice procedure biases the defense of principles in a particular direction and therefore begs important philosophical questions.