Papers by Aart van Gils
Business Ethics Quarterly, 2020
Raghuram Rajan argues in The Third Pillar for the empowerment of communities—the “third pillar”—t... more Raghuram Rajan argues in The Third Pillar for the empowerment of communities—the “third pillar”—to balance the currently exaggerated power of both markets (the “first pillar”) and governments (the “second pillar”). As he discusses in the preface, Rajan adopts a dictionary definition of community as “a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.” The Third Pillar contains three parts. Part 1, “How the Pillars Emerged,” is a historical overview across four chapters on the three pillars’ emergence out of “the original single pillar, the community” (25). Part 2, “Imbalance,” discusses in four chapters how, owing to several developments since the postwar era, we today have an imbalance between the three pillars and why specifically the pillar of “community” needs to be strengthened. Finally, part 3, “Restoring the Balance,” proposes in five chapters several initial steps to restore the balance between the three pillars by strengthening the power of communities rather than diminishing the power of the market. The main contribution of Rajan’s book is the combination of 1) the realistic working assumption of holding the power of the global market fixed while at the same time 2) considering whether reinvigorated local communities could offer a better counterweight to themarket. So, rather than a negative argument for increased regulation of markets to curtail their influence in an attempt to rebalance the three pillars, the positive argument is considered whether a rebalancing could be achieved by (re)strengthening the local community through (re)locating political power and decision-making from the (trans)national to the local level. Let’s start with the end, part 3, because it presents Rajan’s main positive argument. Rajan argues for an “inclusive localism.” Localism is understood as “the process of decentralising power to the local level so that people feel more empowered in their communities” (285). But because Rajan is concerned that advocating localism simpliciter could give license to the establishment of intolerant and oppressive communities, he adds the qualification of “inclusive” to localism (299). Inclusive, however, is not strictly defined. Rajan appears to understand the inclusive kind of localism as a localism where communities are not given free rein but are checked by the other two pillars, the market and the state (285). My concern with Rajan’s argument for inclusive localism is that it gives too striking an impression that Rajan wants to have his cake and eat it too. Specifically, this concern arises because of the following tension, at which Rajan hints in passing but which he never appropriately addresses. On one hand, Rajan suggests that the community should play the prominent role by claiming the following:
Ethics, Policy & Environment, 2020
E l libro The Uninhabitable Earth. Life After Warming explora lo que significa el calentamiento g... more E l libro The Uninhabitable Earth. Life After Warming explora lo que significa el calentamiento global por el modo en que los seres humanos habitamos la Tierra, aclara su autor, David Wallace-Wells, periodista estadounidense especializado en cambio climático. Colaborador de The Guardian y editor de New York Magazine, Wallace-Wells publicó, en 2017, un ensayo con el mismo nombre que dio al libro. 1 El ensayo entonces, como el libro hasta ahora, han suscitado una interesante polémica pues, si bien entre el público general han tenido amplia aprobación, científicos y especialistas han cuestionado algunos contenidos en particular, y el mensaje de la obra en general, calificándola de alarmista. La razón de tal calificativo es que el autor considera factibles los escenarios extremos del calentamiento global calculados hasta ahora, contrariamente a la tendencia general, conservadora, que prefiere referir los escenarios convencionales en forma gradual y sin un tono de verdadera alarma. El solo debate provocado ofrece una rica veta para la reflexión sobre los contenidos y las principales líneas argumentales del libro, las cuales, desde una perspectiva educativa, pueden enriquecer los enfoques de la educación y la comunicación para el cambio climático. El libro se divide en cuatro partes, e incluye al final un extenso apartado de notas en las que el autor refiere las fuentes informativas que dan sus-
In this thesis, I discuss the aggregation problem for T. M. Scanlon's (1998) "contractualism". I ... more In this thesis, I discuss the aggregation problem for T. M. Scanlon's (1998) "contractualism". I argue that Scanlonian contractualists have the following two options when it comes to the aggregation problem. First, they can choose to limit aggregation directly via a specific version of the Relevance View, "Sequential Claims-Matching". Second, Scanlonian contractualists can adopt a so-called "mixed solution" of which I propose a specific version. My mixed solution does not limit aggregation. Rather, it either avoids some of the (for Scanlon at least) counterintuitive results in certain cases, or at least makes these same results look a lot less counterintuitive by putting them into perspective thanks to a plausible plurality of precisely specified values. The stakes between these two options are as follows. The first option justifies Scanlon's intuition in one vs. many cases of which his "World Cup Case" is one example, but it comes at the cost of a seemingly quite limited range of application: any version of the Relevance View only works in cases in which we have no more than two groups of competing claimants. The second option has the exact opposite implications: my mixed solution cannot justify Scanlon's intuition in one vs. many cases, but it could be applied to any case with any number of groups of competing claimants. In this choice between pre-theoretical intuition and (practical) feasibility, I would urge Scanlonian contractualists to choose feasibility.
Often institutions or individuals are faced with decisions where not all claims can be satisfied.... more Often institutions or individuals are faced with decisions where not all claims can be satisfied. Sometimes, these claims will be of differing strength. In such cases, it must be decided whether or not weaker claims can be aggregated in order to collectively defeat stronger claims. Many are attracted to a view, which this chapter calls Limited Aggregation, where this is sometimes acceptable and sometimes not. A new version of this view, Local Relevance, has recently emerged. This chapter seeks to explore and evaluate this view. In order to do so, the chapter offers a more precise interpretation of this basic approach, calling it ‘Sequential Claims-Matching’. The chapter shows how Sequential Claims-Matching avoids problems that dog other Limited Aggregation views but suffers from difficulties and ambiguities of its own. In particular, the chapter shows that it is hard to accommodate some core Limited Aggregation intuitions around tie-break cases within the Local Relevance view.
Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy
Often institutions or individuals are faced with decisions where not all claims can be satisfied.... more Often institutions or individuals are faced with decisions where not all claims can be satisfied. Sometimes, these claims will be of differing strength. In such cases, we must decide whether or not weaker claims can be aggregated in order to collectively defeat stronger claims. Many are attracted to a view, which we call Limited Aggregation, where this is sometimes acceptable and sometimes not. A new version of this view, Local Relevance, has recently emerged. In this paper, we seek to explore and evaluate this view. In order to do so, we offer a more precise interpretation of this basic approach, which we call ‘Sequential Claims-Matching’. We show how Sequential Claims-Matching avoids problems that dog other Limited Aggregation views but suffers from difficulties and ambiguities of its own. In particular, we show that it is hard to accommodate some core Limited Aggregation intuitions around tie-break cases within the Local Relevance view.
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Book Reviews by Aart van Gils
Ethics, Policy, & Environment
This book review has been accepted for publication in Ethics, Policy, & Environment published by ... more This book review has been accepted for publication in Ethics, Policy, & Environment published by Taylor & Francis.
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Papers by Aart van Gils
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Book Reviews by Aart van Gils
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