ebook Moments of Mutuality Peter McCormick

Wydawca: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego

Rok wydania: 2012

e-ISBN: 978-83-233-8724-4

How is the ethically unacceptable persistence of the unnecessary suffering of extraordinarily poor street children in extraordinarily rich European Union capital cities to be durably remedied? Perhaps centrally, this philosophical essay argues, by re-articulating current inadequate understandings in the European Union of social injustice not as an absence of solidarity but as the failure to imagine and to act on “mutualities.” First presented in 2011 as invited lectures for the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, this extended reflection explores four central elements of the empirical situations of such extreme child poverty amid great affluence in the contexts of a progressively developed case study of destitute street children in Paris. The essay focuses successively on such utterly destitute children’s poor health, poor housing, poor food, and poor education. In each case outstanding contemporary philosophical reflections on violations of social justice – those of J. Rawls, A. Sen, R. Dworkin, and J. Habermas – are found to be deeply suggestive but finally insufficient for understanding such legally and morally intolerable situations. Yet each may be interpreted as contributing substantively to a progressive re-articulation of at least four critical elements of what a renewed idea of social justice in the European Union tomorrow must involve – “mutualizations” of fairness, understanding, respect, and articulacy.

Spis treści ebooka Moments of Mutuality

Preface 11

Orientations 17
§1. An Experience 21
§2. An Issue 22
§3. A Question 24
§4. An Objective 25

Part I. Poor Health: Social Justice and Mutual Recognition

Chapter One: Unhealthy Children 29
§5. Poor Children I: Numbers 29
§6. Unhealthy Poor Children 31
§7. A Tabular Overview 34
Concluding Remarks 36

Chapter Two: Social Justice and Fairness 37
§8. Primary Goods 37
§9. Fairness and Social Justice 40
§10. Two Assumptions 44
Concluding Remarks: Mutualizing Recognition 47

Part II. Poor Housing: Social Justice and Mutual Understanding

Chapter Three: Unsheltered Children 51
§11. Poor Children II: Corrected Numbers 51
§12. Unhoused Children 53
§13. Capabilities and Unsheltered Children 60
Concluding Remarks 63

Chapter Four: Social Justice and Capabilities 65
§14. Capabilities and Destitute Children 65
§15. Cardinal Issues 67
§16. Capacities and Ethical Values 69
Concluding Remarks: Mutualizing Understanding 72

Part III. Poor Food: Social Justice and Mutual Respect

Chapter Five: Unfed Children 77
§17. Poor Children III: Measures 77
§18. The Legal and The Moral 85
§19. Children’s Rights, Social Justice, and Law 92
Concluding Remarks 97

Chapter Six: Law, Interpretation, and Value 99
§20. Law as an Interpretive Concept 99
§21. The Independence and Unity of Value 104
§22. Destitute Children’s Legal Rights 107
Concluding Remarks: Mutualizing Respect 112

Part IV. Poor Spirits: Social Justice and Articulacy

Chapter Seven: Unschooled Children 117
§23. Poor Children IV: Corrected Measures 117
§24. Destitute Children and Discourse Ethics 124
§25. Habermas’s Differences with Rawls 128
Concluding Remarks 131

Chapter Eight: Discourse and Social Justice 133
§26. The Metaphysical and the Political 133
§27. Moral and Ethical Discourse 135
§28. Cultural Groups and Societies 140
Concluding Remarks: Mutualizing Articulacy 145

Re-Orientations 147
§29. A Certain Idea of Mutuality 147
§30. Mutualizing an Idea of Social Justice 150

Concluding Remarks 154
Envoi 155
Endnotes 157
Detailed Table of Contents 193

List of Figures
2.1. Numbers of Poor Immigrant Children in France by Age Distribution 34
2.2. Numbers of Poor Immigrant Children in France by Nationalities 35
2.3. Age Structure of Poor Immigrant Children in France from Morocco, 1990–2006 35
2.4. Age Structure of Poor Immigrant Children in France from Turkey, 1990–2006 36
3.1. Poor Housing in France (Numbers of Persons Affected) 55
7.1. France: Educational situation on 1 May, 2002 of pupils entering sixth form in 1995 (%) 122
7.2. France: Family environment of pupils entering sixth form in 1995 123