Explore the vast range of titles available.

Democracy is not naturally plausible. Why turn such important matters over to masses of people who have no expertise? Many theories of democracy answer by appealing to the intrinsic value of democratic procedure, leaving aside whether it makes good decisions. In Democratic Authority, David Estlund offers a groundbreaking alternative based on the idea that democratic authority and legitimacy must depend partly on democracy's tendency to make good decisions. Just as with verdicts in jury trials, Estlund argues, the authority and legitimacy of a political decision does not depend on the particular decision being good or correct. But the \"epistemic value\" of the procedure--the degree to which it can generally be accepted as tending toward a good decision--is nevertheless crucial. Yet if good decisions were all that mattered, one might wonder why those who know best shouldn't simply rule.

We are told, by Machiavelli and others, that political philosophy must not be utopian. I am sure there is wisdom in this, but there is also the danger of a chilling effect. Unless we get very clear about what kind of theorizing is appropriately proscribed, there is the risk that a broader set of possible projects will go unpursued, for no good reason. I take up just one part of this question. My thesis is that moral theories of social justice, political authority, political legitimacy, and many other moral-political concepts are not shown to have any defect in virtue of the fact, if it is one, that the alleged requirements or preconditions of these things are not likely ever to be met. If a theory of social justice is offered, and it is objected, \"But you and I both know people will never do that,\" I believe the right response is (as a starter), \"I never said they would.\"

Estlund narrates that it is often supposed that a person is not required to do anything they cannot do. \"Ought\" implies \"can,\" as this is often put. Yet he states that this is not so. If there are facts of human nature of this general kind, consisting in limits to what humans will be able to muster the will to do, they are not, simply as facts, constraints on what can soundly be prescribed or morally required. The reason is that agents' abilities and inabilities to muster their will are subject to moral evaluation in their own right. Some such inabilities are morally objectionable, others are not. Here, he argues that human nature is a constraint on some tasks in political philosophy but not on others.

Does social justice lose all application in the (imaginary, of course) condition in which people are morally flawless? The answer, I will argue, is that it does not — justice might still have application. This is one lesson of my broader thesis in this paper, that there is a variety of conditions we would all regard as highly idealistic and unrealistic which are, nevertheless, not beyond justice. The idea of “circumstances of justice” developed especially by Hume and Rawls may seem to point in a more realistic direction, but we can see that this is not so once we distinguish between conditions of need for norms of justice, conditions of their emergence, and conditions of applicability of the standard of justice. Justice, I argue, can have application even in conditions where no mechanism of justice is present or needed, such as the case of internalized motives of justice.

Democracy can seem to empower the masses without regard for the quality of the political decisions that will result. Concern for the quality of decisions can seem to lead in an antidemocratic direction, toward identifying and empowering those who know best. Partly for these reasons, philosophical treatments of democracy’s value have often tried to explain why politics should be democratic even though democracy has no particular tendency to produce good decisions. I believe these accounts are weak, and I want to put democratic convictions on more secure footing. My goal is to show how a concern for the quality of

Analogy theories accept that democracy tracks justice partly because citizens are motivated nonegoistically and in a morally significant way. Estlund argues that the analogy has an invisible hand structure because it needs to conceive of voters as addressing some question other than that of justice. Democratic participation modeled on the contractualist situation would be self-serving within the limits of reasonable accommodation of others.

This piece is a response to four essays that critically discuss my bookDemocratic Authority. In addition to responding to their specific criticisms, it takes up several methodological issues that put some of the critiques in a broader context. Among the issues discussed are “normative consent,” which I offer as a new theory of authority; the “general acceptability requirement,” which advances a broadly Rawlsian approach to political justification; and methodological questions about theory building, including a device I dub the “method of provisional leap.”

It is often argued that if one holds a liberal political philosophy about individual rights against the state and the community, then one cannot consistently say that a state that violates those principles is owed the right of noninterference. How could the rights of the collective trump the rights of individuals in a liberal view? I believe that this debate calls for more reflection, on the relation between liberalism and individualism. I will sketch a conception of liberalism (“liberal associationism”) in which there is nothing awkward about saying that associations, as such, have some moral (not just, say, legal) rights to noninterference. If liberal associationism is compelling in general terms then, if states (or some of them) can be shown to be associations in the relevant respects, then liberalism itself will supply the moral basis for a right of that kind, held by a state or people as such, to nonintervention.

Sex, Preference, and Family brings together seventeen eminent philosophers and legal scholars who offer illuminating and often provocative commentary on sexuality (including sexual behavior, sexual orientation, and the role of pornography in shaping sexuality), on the family (including both same-sex and single-parent families), and on the proper role of law in these areas. Of vital importance to anyone interested in sexuality, homosexuality, gender, feminism, and the family, Sex, Preference, and the Family both clarifies the current debate and points the way toward a less divisive future.