Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations

by A. John Simmons

• ISBN13: 9780521790161
• ISBN10: 0521790166
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A. John Simmons is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and creative of today's political philosophers. His work on political obligation is regarded as definitive and he is also internationally respected as an interpreter of John Locke. The characteristic features of clear argumentation and careful scholarship that have been hallmarks of his philosophy are everywhere evident in this collection. The essays focus on the problems of political obligation and state legitimacy as well as on historical theories of property and justice. Cumulatively the collection presents a distinctive social and political philosophy, exploring the nature of our most fundamental rights and obligations, and displaying the power and plausibility of Lockean ideal theory.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The principle of fair play

2. Fair play and political obligation: twenty years later

3. The obligations of citizens and the justification of conscription

4. Associative political obligations

5. External justifications and institutional roles

6. Philosophical anarchism

7. Justification and legitimacy

8. 'Denisons' and 'Aliens': Locke's problem of political consent

9. Human rights and world citizenship: the universality of Human Rights in Kant and Locke

10. Original-acquisition justifications of private property

11. Historical rights and fair shares

12. Makers' rights.