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Much of the recent literature on freedom of speech has focused on the arguments for and against the regulation of certain kinds of speech. Discussions of hate speech and offensive speech, for example, abound in this literature, as do debates concerning the permissibility of pornography. Less attention has been paid, however, at least recently, to the normative foundations of freedom of speech where three classic justifications still prevail, based on the values of truth, autonomy and democracy. In this paper we argue, first, that none of these justifications meet all four intuitive desiderata for an adequate theory of free speech. We go on to sketch an original relational view of free speech, one which grounds its value in the recognition that speakers grant each other when engaging in speech practices, and its limits in the republican ideal of non-dominated co-exercisable liberty. We briefly illustrate the relational approach’s implications for the debate on hate speech regulation and for the response to fake news.

Religiously offensive speech, i.e. speech that offends members of religious groups, especially religious minorities, is on the rise in western liberal democracies, particularly following the recent wave of right-wing populism in the UK, the US and beyond. But when is such speech wrongful? This paper argues that the wrongfulness of some religiously offensive speech does not depend on some intrinsic feature of it, or on the subjective reaction of its targets. Instead, such wrongfulness depends on the fact that religiously offensive speech normally takes place against the background of enduring social injustices suffered by certain minorities, for example religious discrimination (which it at the same time compounds). In that context, we argue, religiously offensive speech is wrongful when it disables its victims from maintaining an adequately respectful relationship to themselves, and sets back their freedom through domination. Recognizing the wrongfulness of some religiously offensive speech, however, need not entail endorsing its legal regulation all things considered. The paper therefore illustrates different available forms of intervention, ranging from civil law action to state support for the victims of such speech and long-term programmes of citizenship education.

This response to Balint focuses on his stance towards minority cultural and religious practices where he is in general sceptical of special accommodation. I argue that there are grounds to ...

In his recent book, Respecting Toleration (2017), the Australian philosopher Peter Balint proposes a novel and arresting account of this old and familiar concept. In contrast to the intuitive idea ...

This Chapter examines the effects of poverty on self-respect (and self-esteem). Though Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition offers an insightful framework for analysing the way poverty tends to undermine its victims’ self-respect and self-esteem, its high level of abstraction means the precise ways that poverty affects individuals’ feelings of self-worth merits further investigation. After some preliminary remarks on (what I call) the ‘normative harms’ of poverty, the Chapter sets out a novel view of self-respect where that concept consists of four dimensions: confidence in one’s status as a person and agent; confidence in claiming one’s rights and legitimate entitlements; a responsible willingness to meet others’ rights and entitlements; and a willingness to demonstrate morally admirable (but not morally required) respect for others in one’s society. Self-esteem, it’s suggested, has a more complex relationship to self-respect than Honneth allows, with linkages with each of these dimensions. The Chapter goes on to argue that the normative harms of poverty can all be viewed as pathologies of self-respect on the four dimensional view: specifically, diminished agency, lack of confidence as a rights bearer, a weakened sense of being a contributor to society and more generally the sense of not being a participant in it. These pathologies, furthermore, are related to the experiences of marginalisation, helplessness, anxiety and, above all, shame which also invariably accompany economic poverty.

This paper examines what objections we might have to moderate religious establishment as found in a number of contemporary liberal democracies. This form of establishment respects citizen’s rights and liberties, so it is not immediately clear what if anything is troubling about it. One view is that moderate establishment is alienating for non-believers but I suggest this is either untrue or rests on contestable premises. Another view is that moderate establishment communicates an unacceptable message to those outside the faith. However, I argue that there is no clear expressive harm involved. In the final section of the paper, I defend an ideal of public reason which is exclusivist, since citizens must abjure from controversial religious premises in public political debate, but also (contrary to common assumptions about public reason) applies to the sorts of non-coercive measures moderate establishment often involves. I argue that under such a public reason framework, moderate establishment measures are often illegitimate, though not invariably so.

Political debate about the place of religion and religious identities in liberal democracies is as vigorous as ever, as evidenced by Christians' assertiveness against what they regard as secularising tendencies and the attempt to eliminate their established place in public life, as well as religious minorities seeking to combat their often marginalised position and the specific injustices to which they are subject (such as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia). The papers in this collection aim to address these and similar issues, and to offer novel and fresh perspectives on some of the key themes and debates on religion and public life in contemporary political theory. In this introductory essay, we illustrate, first, the key elements of four contemporary debates on religion and public life which are explored in the articles that follow. These are the conflict between secularism and religious establishment, public reason and the use of religious arguments in public deliberation, the accommodation of religious beliefs, and the relationship between freedom of speech and religion. After surveying these debates we end with an overview of the essays in this special issue.

This paper engages with the recent dignity-based argument against hate speech proposed by Jeremy Waldron. It’s claimed that while Waldron makes progress by conceptualising dignity less as an inherent property and more as a civic status which hate speech undermines, his argument is nonetheless subject to the problem that there are many sources of citizens’ dignitary status besides speech. Moreover, insofar as dignity informs the grounds of individuals’ right to free speech, Waldron’s argument leaves us balancing hate speakers’ dignity against the dignity of those whom they attack. I suggest instead that a central part of the harm of hate speech is that it assaults our self-respect. The reasons to respect oneself are moral reasons which can be shared with others, and individuals have moral reasons to respect themselves for their agency, and their entitlements. Free speech is interpreted not as an individual liberty, but as a collective enterprise which serves the interests of speakers and the receivers of speech. I argue that hate speech undermines the self-respect of its targets in both the agency and entitlement dimensions, and claim, moreover, that this is a direct harm which cannot be compensated for by other sources of self-respect. I further argue that hate speakers have no basis to respect themselves qua their hate speech, as self-respect is based on moral reasons. I conclude that self-respect, unlike dignity, is sufficient to explain the harm of hate speech, even though it may not be necessary to explain its wrongness.

This paper offers a distinctively egalitarian defence of religious accommodation in contrast to the rights-based approaches of contemporary legal thinking. It argues that we can employ the Rawlsian idea of a fair framework of co-operation to model the way that accommodation claimants reason with others (such as their employers) when they wish to be released from generally applicable rules. While participants in social institutions have ‘framework obligations’ to adhere to the rules those institutions involve, they also have ‘democratic obligations’ to re-consider and on occasion revise those rules which set back participants basic interest, ncluding individuals’ interest in manifesting their religion or belief. A number of objections to accommodation are considered, and it’s argued that the personal responsibility objection is most serious. It’s argued that responsibility can be interpreted through the notion of identifi - cation which in turn can be conceptualised through the ideal of integrity, and that the value of integrity in fact counts in favour of accommodation claims. The paper also offers replies to other objections to religious accommodation including the problem of proliferation, the problem of illiberal beliefs and the rewarding the doctrinaire objection.

The problem of parental partiality and justice concerns the conflict between parents’ natural desire to put their own children’s interests first and the principles of egalitarian justice which express equal concern with the well-being of all. The underlying dilemma between partial concern and impartial treatment is a much discussed one in moral and political philosophy. Parental partiality raises that dilemma in an acute form given the very close attachment that parents have to their children and the substantial and ongoing social and economic inequalities present in contemporary societies. Investigating the meaning of egalitarian justice reveals that under any interpretation it imposes substantial obligations which many parents concerned with their own children’s interests will reject. Parental partiality, in turn, can be theorized as a social convention or personal project, but is most plausibly seen as realizing a special kind of value or form of flourishing, such as intimacy for example. Short of abolishing the family or abandoning the commitment to egalitarian justice, any reconciliation of this conflict will have to speak to both sets of values. One option is to circumscribe the domain of parental partiality by arguing that parents only have rights to realize a particular kind of valuable relationship with their children; another is to build in to our conception of parental partiality moral constraints of which egalitarian justice might be one. As long as we live in an unequal world where parents have strong attachments to their children, this debate looks set to continue.

This chapter investigates the moral basis for laws which accommodate the interests of religious believers in the light of the objection that individuals are morally responsible for their beliefs. One response to the objection says that individual responsibility is only operative when there are fair circumstances for choice. This sets out an alternative view according to which individuals have an interest in integrity self-respect, civic participation, and in ethical coherence. It explains how exceptionless laws can threaten these interests and they can be combined to ground a case for legal accommodation. Individual responsibility nonetheless has a role in this account.

This paper examines the phenomenon of marginalization through the lens of the relatively neglected concept of contribution. It argues that the opportunity to contribute positively to others’ lives is an important component of human well-being which promotes the goods of meaning, self-respect and reliance. Where individuals enjoy that opportunity, they are on that account less marginalized. Contributory practices channelled through publicly recognized median institutions (between the state and the personal sphere) are especially valuable.

The distinction between egoistic and altruistic motivation is firmly embedded in contemporary moral discourse, but harks back too to early modern attempts to found morality on an egoistic basis. Rejecting that latter premise means accepting that others’ interests have intrinsic value, but it remains far from clear what altruism demands of us and what its relationship is with the rest of morality. While informing our duties, altruism seems also to urge us to transcend them and embrace the other-regarding values and virtues constitutive of a good life. This rather wide conception of morality may strike us today as too demanding. At the same time, however, currently popular impartialist accounts of morality can disrupt much everyday altruism in their insistence that each person’s interests are weighed precisely equally. Having sketched this problematic of altruism, the second half of this Introduction outlines the arguments of the four papers and review essay in this collection, each of which, in a different way, negotiates the difficult relationships between egoism, altruism, morality and impartiality.

Though people value altruism, they also value freely choosing if and when to be altruistic. They essay explores the question of whether a society that is more altruistic would be one which is more free or less. It begins by considering cases where altruism is legally enforced, the paradigm example of which is good Samaritan legislation. I argue that coercively enforcing altruistic duties submerges people's altruistic motives under the demands of justice (which is not to say that these intrusions on our freedom may not be justified). It goes on to consider state-encouraged altruism and examines our attachment to individual freedom which stands in its way. The strength of this objection is weakened once we distinguish between the different freedoms – some more significant than others – to which we are attached. Though altruism cannot be coerced, there remain compelling reasons to encourage it. The essay concludes by sketching a few of the social and political benefits of a more altruistic society: one benef...

(2002). The ethics of altruism: Introduction. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 5, Altruism, pp. 1-8.

Recent work in liberal political theory has rejected cosmopolitanism to incorporate the empirical agenda of nationalism and multiculturalism. In this article three issues facing cultural national liberalism are first extracted from Rawls's Political Liberalism: the range of reasonable cultural identities under liberalism; the substantive ethical bases of the state; and the possibility of principles of cultural self-respect. I then examine three works which address these problems, Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship, David Miller's On Nationality, and Charles Taylor's ‘The Politics of Recognition’. Kymlicka provides principles of cultural self-respect but is caught between conceptualising culture in universalist and particularist terms. Miller's liberal national state rests on shared meanings, but this serves to complicate the introduction of universal moral ideas. Taylor presents authenticity as an alternative self-understanding to liberal autonomy, but I argue against the notion of cultural authenticity.

This paper takes issue with Colin Tyler's critique of Bhikhu Parekh's work on liberalism and cultural pluralism in his ‘The Implications of Parekh's Cultural Pluralism’, Politics 16(3). I argue that Tyler subscribes to an overly monolithic view of cultural identity, that democracy can be a procedural or practical ideal not a cultural understanding, and that in any case the existence of deep-seated cultural pluralism is a good reason for rethinking democratic values and endorsing a republican, rather than liberal, conception of democracy.

In Richard Rorty's persuasive alternative to contemporary liberal theory he maintains that a contingent, rather than a universalist, liberalism can better engender human solidarity and that the ironic stance can better safeguard liberal freedom than any metaphysical buttress. In an internal critique I argue that irony is an aesthetic, rather than, as solidarity, a moral ideal. Moreover, Rorty's notion of agency is too voluntaristic to supply the necessary communitarian sentiments for solidarity to be achieved. Hence the twin ideals of irony and solidarity cannot both be situated in his decentered notion of selfhood.