Christine Sypnowich – författare

This book seeks to remedy the contempt for law prominent in socialist writings. While political thinkers on the left are indisputably concerned with justice, they dismiss those legal institutions which, in liberal capitalist societies, have ensured some minimum measure of justice in citizens' lives. Marxists in particular have tended to reduce law to a capitalist apparatus necessary to mediate conflict between egoistic wills or social classes. The book argues against this doctrine by showing that however ideal a society socialists envisage, legal institutions would be necessary to fairly adjudicate conflict between private and public interests. Each chapter takes up an issue in liberal jurisprudence to see how it would fare in a socialist theory which takes a constructive approach to law. The rule of law, natural and legal rights, obligations, and the sources of law are among the subjects covered. The book concludes that a socialist concept of law would enrich, not only debates about the nature of socialism, but also debates about community and justice which preoccupy `mainstream' political theory and jurisprudence.

The Egalitarian Conscience pays tribute to the highly influential work of Professor G. A. Cohen. Professor Cohen is a philosopher of international stature and tremendous achievement, who has been vital to the flourishing of egalitarian political philosophy. He has a significant body of work spanning issues of Marxism and distributive justice, consistently characterized by original ideas and ingenious arguments. The high standard of rigour he sets for progressive thinkers, particularly himself, has been a source of inspiration for colleagues and students alike.The volume honours Professor Cohen with first-rate essays on a number of significant and fascinating topics, reflecting the wide-ranging themes of Professor Cohen's work, but united in their concern for questions of social justice, pluralism, equality, and moral duty. The contributors are scholars of international stature: Joshua Cohen, Jon Elster, Susan Hurley, Will Kymlicka, Derek Parfit, John Roemer, T. M. Scanlon, Samuel Scheffler, Hillel Steiner, and Jeremy Waldron. There is an afterword by G. A. Cohen.

How should we approach the daunting task of renewing the ideal of equality? In this book, Christine Sypnowich proposes a theory of equality centred on human flourishing or wellbeing. She argues that egalitarianism should be understood as seeking to make people more equal in the constituents of a good life. Inequality is a social ill because of the damage it does to human flourishing: unequal distribution of wealth can have the effect that some people are poorly housed, badly nourished, ill-educated, unhappy or uncultured, among other things. When we seek to make people more equal our concern is not just resources or property, but how people fare under one distribution or another. Ultimately, the best answer to the question, ‘equality of what?,’ is some conception of flourishing, since whatever policies or principles we adopt, it is flourishing that we hope will be more equal as a result of our endeavours. Sypnowich calls for both retrieval and innovation. What is to be retrieved is the ideal of equality itself, which is often assumed as a background condition of theories of justice, yet at the same time, dismissed as too homogenising, abstract and rigid a criterion for political argument. We must retrieve the ideal of equality as a central political principle. In doing so, she casts doubt on the value of focussing on cultural difference, and rejects the idea of neutrality that dominates contemporary political philosophy in favour of a view of the state as enabling the betterment of its citizens.

In making the argument for the remedy of inequality, contemporary political philosophers often emphasize the arbitrariness of disadvantage, stressing how one’s lot in life is to a significant extent determined by the circumstances of one’s birth, that is, in which family, and in what part of the world. In the latter instance, people differ in how well they live in a large part because of their context in the global order. But equally important for a person’s chances in life is the family that raises her (if the person is lucky enough to have a family in the first place). In Family Values: the Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift provide a systematic analysis of the morality and politics of the family, exploring why families are valuable, whether people have a right to parent, what rights and duties parents have, and, in particular, what rights children have that may constrain the rights of their parents. The essays in this volume assess Brighouse and Swift’s contribution, taking up a number of controversial issues about autonomy, human flourishing, parental rights, and indeed the nature of childhood itself. Contributors offer a range of arguments, some challenging, others complementing, of Brighouse and Swift’s account of the ethics of parent-child relationships. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Much discussion in recent years has centred on the status of the self, identity and subjectivity in the light of powerful arguments about the social origins of personhood. The Social Self presents many dimensions of the debate, spanning psychology, philosophy, politics and feminist theory, and provides a critical overview of the key themes involved.

The internationally renowned contributors examine the senses in which we are `social selves' whose very identities are intimately bound up with the communities and cultures in which we live. Drawing on Wittgenstein, Marx, Foucault, Bakhtin, Gilligan and MacIntyre, among others, the chapters show the diversity of influences that have shaped this exciting and controversial issue.

How should we approach the daunting task of renewing the ideal of equality? In this book, Christine Sypnowich proposes a theory of equality centred on human flourishing or wellbeing. She argues that egalitarianism should be understood as seeking to make people more equal in the constituents of a good life. Inequality is a social ill because of the damage it does to human flourishing: unequal distribution of wealth can have the effect that some people are poorly housed, badly nourished, ill-educated, unhappy or uncultured, among other things. When we seek to make people more equal our concern is not just resources or property, but how people fare under one distribution or another. Ultimately, the best answer to the question, ‘equality of what?,’ is some conception of flourishing, since whatever policies or principles we adopt, it is flourishing that we hope will be more equal as a result of our endeavours. Sypnowich calls for both retrieval and innovation. What is to be retrieved is the ideal of equality itself, which is often assumed as a background condition of theories of justice, yet at the same time, dismissed as too homogenising, abstract and rigid a criterion for political argument. We must retrieve the ideal of equality as a central political principle. In doing so, she casts doubt on the value of focussing on cultural difference, and rejects the idea of neutrality that dominates contemporary political philosophy in favour of a view of the state as enabling the betterment of its citizens.

In making the argument for the remedy of inequality, contemporary political philosophers often emphasize the arbitrariness of disadvantage, stressing how one’s lot in life is to a significant extent determined by the circumstances of one’s birth, that is, in which family, and in what part of the world. In the latter instance, people differ in how well they live in a large part because of their context in the global order. But equally important for a person’s chances in life is the family that raises her (if the person is lucky enough to have a family in the first place). In Family Values: the Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift provide a systematic analysis of the morality and politics of the family, exploring why families are valuable, whether people have a right to parent, what rights and duties parents have, and, in particular, what rights children have that may constrain the rights of their parents. The essays in this volume assess Brighouse and Swift’s contribution, taking up a number of controversial issues about autonomy, human flourishing, parental rights, and indeed the nature of childhood itself. Contributors offer a range of arguments, some challenging, others complementing, of Brighouse and Swift’s account of the ethics of parent-child relationships. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

G. A. Cohen was one of the towering political philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His intellectual career was unusually wide-ranging, and he was celebrated internationally not only for his penetrating ideas about liberty, justice and equality, but also for his method, a highly original and influential combination of analytical philosophy and Marxism.Christine Sypnowich guides readers through the rich body of Cohen’s work. By identifying five paradoxes in his thought, she explores the origins of his interest in analytical philosophy, his engagement with the ideas of right-wing libertarianism, his critique of John Rawls’s work, his late-career turn to conservatism, and the tension between his preoccupation with individual responsibility and the idea of a socialist ethos. Sypnowich acknowledges the strengths of Cohen’s positions as well as their tensions and flaws, and presents him as a thinker of startling insight.This compelling introduction is a go-to resource for students and scholars of modern political philosophy.

G. A. Cohen was one of the towering political philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His intellectual career was unusually wide-ranging, and he was celebrated internationally not only for his penetrating ideas about liberty, justice and equality, but also for his method, a highly original and influential combination of analytical philosophy and Marxism.Christine Sypnowich guides readers through the rich body of Cohen’s work. By identifying five paradoxes in his thought, she explores the origins of his interest in analytical philosophy, his engagement with the ideas of right-wing libertarianism, his critique of John Rawls’s work, his late-career turn to conservatism, and the tension between his preoccupation with individual responsibility and the idea of a socialist ethos. Sypnowich acknowledges the strengths of Cohen’s positions as well as their tensions and flaws, and presents him as a thinker of startling insight.This compelling introduction is a go-to resource for students and scholars of modern political philosophy.