Moments of Mutuality

• Druk: Kraków, 2012
• Autor: Peter McCormick
• Wydawca: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego

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.

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• Język wydania: angielski
• ISBN: 978-83-233-3368-5
• ISBN druku: 978-83-233-3368-5
• Liczba stron: 196

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