Jonathan Quong
Biographic Data
| ID | 1109284 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan Quong |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan |
| FAMILY NAME | Quong |
| SIGNATURE | QUONG J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4176-4106 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 106 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 27 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Political Philosophy
Freedom, Law, and Justice
The free individual and the free society. Public power and private power. The lion and the ox.
Justice by Means of Democracy
Freedom, fairness, and sufficiency in Tahzib’s perfectionist theory of justice
Debate
In his article, “The Space between Justice and Legitimacy”, Kit Wellman offers a novel account of the relationship between political philosophy's two central concepts.1 He argues that states can be legitimate yet impose many unjust laws and policies. This is true, he suggests, because political legitimacy should be understood as a claim about wide proportionality.2 Just as a country's war can be widely proportionate overall, and yet contain many …
Fair equality of opportunity and the gendered division of labor
I learned a lot from Gina Schouten's excellent book, Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor.1 Like Schouten, I'm a political liberal. I thus share her conviction that an account of what's unjust or illegitimate about the gendered division of labor (GDL) should satisfy the constraint of liberal neutrality; it should be grounded in political values that are acceptable as such to all reasonable citizens. One widely held view is t…
The Morality of Defensive Force
This book provides an account of the central moral principles that regulate the permissible use of defensive force. The book argues that we cannot understand the morality of defensive force until we ask and answer deeper questions about how the use of defensive force fits with a more general account of justice and moral rights. In developing this view the book offers original accounts of liability, proportionality, and necessity. It also argues, …
Morality of Defensive Force
When is it morally permissible to engage in self-defense or the defense of others? Jonathan Quong defends a variety of novel ideas in this book about the morality of defensive force, providing an original philosophical account of the central moral principles that should regulate its use. We cannot understand the morality of defensive force, he reasons, until we ask and answer deeper questions about how the use of defensive force fits with a more …
Consequentialism, Deontology, Contractualism, and Equality
This chapter advances two main claims. First, that the distinction between consequentialism and deontology, although widely adopted, is illusory and only serves to obscure some of the genuine disputes underlying central debates in distributive justice. Second, that although luck egalitarianism and democratic egalitarianism are often presented as rival conceptions of justice—in particular, as offering competing accounts of the grounds of distribut…
Symposium on Settlement, Borders, and Violence
Proportionality, Liability, and Defensive Harm
Justification vs. proof
Justification is argument addressed to those who disagree with us, or to ourselves when we are of two minds. It presumes a clash of views between persons or within one person, and seeks to convince others, or ourselves, of the reasonableness of the principles upon which our claims and judgments are founded. Being designed to reconcile by reason, justification proceeds from what all parties to the discussion hold in common. Ideally, to justify a c…
Liberalism without perfection
I would like to begin by thanking all the contributors to this symposium, especially Elvio Baccarini, who hosted the conference at the University of Rijeka where several of the papers in this symposium were initially presented. I?ve learned a great deal from these essays, and I?m very fortunate for my work to be the subject of such careful and perceptive philosophical attention. Below I offer some replies to each contributor, though I do not addr…
On the Idea of Public Reason
The idea of public reason is at the center of John Rawls's political philosophy. Public reason is a standard by which we measure laws and political institutions. This chapter discusses the practice of public reason, the moral basis of public reason, and the challenge posed by religious critics of public reason. It provides three possible answers to the question: What is the moral basis for endorsing this particular conception of democratic politi…
Liability to Defensive Harm
Liberalism without Perfection
A growing number of political philosophers favour a view called liberal perfectionism. According to this view, liberal political morality is characterized by a commitment to helping individuals lead autonomous lives and making other valuable choices. This book rejects this widely held view and offers an alternative account of liberal political morality. It argues that the liberal state should not be engaged in determining what constitutes a valua…
Justice Beyond Equality
Left-Libertarianism
The Distribution of Authority
This article challenges David Estlund’s claim that epistocracy involves an extra element of authority when compared to democracy. I argue there is no more authority in epistocracy than democracy, at least not in a way that would make the former subject to a higher justificatory burden than the latter. I suggest Estlund reaches his democratic conclusion by implicitly relying on an undefended presumption that egalitarian, or prioritarian, distribut…
Political Liberalism Without Scepticism
Political liberalism famously requires that fundamental political matters should not be decided by reference to any controversial moral, religious or philosophical doctrines over which reasonable people disagree. This means we, as citizens, must abstain from relying on what we believe to be the whole truth when debating or voting on fundamental political matters. Many critics of political liberalism contend that this requirement to abstain from r…
Contractualism, reciprocity, and egalitarian justice
Can contractualism yield a suitably egalitarian conception of social justice? G.A. Cohen has forcefully argued that it cannot - that one cannot be both a contractualist and an egalitarian. Cohen presents a number of arguments to this effect, the particular target of which is John Rawls’s version of contractualism. In this article, I show that, contra Cohen, the Rawlsian model of contractualism, and the ideal of reciprocity on which it relies, can…
Cultural Exemptions, Expensive Tastes, and Equal Opportunities
The most well‐known liberal‐egalitarian defence of cultural rights, provided by Will Kymlicka, presents culture as a primary good, and thus a resource that ought to be distributed according to some fair egalitarian criteria. Kymlicka relies on the intuition that inequalities between persons that are the result of brute luck rather than personal choice are unjust in making the case for various multicultural rights. This article makes two main clai…
Disagreement, asymmetry, and liberal legitimacy
Reasonable people disagree deeply about the nature of the good life. But reasonable people also disagree fundamentally about principles of justice. If this is true, then why does political liberalism permit the state to act on reasons of justice, but not for reasons grounded in conceptions of the good life? There appears to be an indefensible asymmetry in the way political liberalism treats disagreements about justice and disagreements about the …
Disputed practices and reasonable pluralism
The Rights of Unreasonable Citizens
The Rights of Unreasonable Citizens
The Scope of Public Reason
This paper presents two conceptions of the scope of public reason. The narrow view asserts that the ideal of public reason must regulate questions of constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice, but should not apply beyond this limited domain. The broad view claims that the ideal of public reason ought to be applied, whenever possible, to all political decisions where citizens exercise coercive power over one another. The paper questio…
Liability to Defensive Harm
Disagreement, asymmetry, and liberal legitimacy
Reasonable people disagree deeply about the nature of the good life. But reasonable people also disagree fundamentally about principles of justice. If this is true, then why does political liberalism permit the state to act on reasons of justice, but not for reasons grounded in conceptions of the good life? There appears to be an indefensible asymmetry in the way political liberalism treats disagreements about justice and disagreements about the …
Left-Libertarianism
Contractualism, reciprocity, and egalitarian justice
Can contractualism yield a suitably egalitarian conception of social justice? G.A. Cohen has forcefully argued that it cannot - that one cannot be both a contractualist and an egalitarian. Cohen presents a number of arguments to this effect, the particular target of which is John Rawls’s version of contractualism. In this article, I show that, contra Cohen, the Rawlsian model of contractualism, and the ideal of reciprocity on which it relies, can…
Are Identity Claims Bad for Deliberative Democracy
The Distribution of Authority
This article challenges David Estlund’s claim that epistocracy involves an extra element of authority when compared to democracy. I argue there is no more authority in epistocracy than democracy, at least not in a way that would make the former subject to a higher justificatory burden than the latter. I suggest Estlund reaches his democratic conclusion by implicitly relying on an undefended presumption that egalitarian, or prioritarian, distribut…
Proportionality, Liability, and Defensive Harm
Are Identity Claims Bad for Deliberative Democracy
Disputed practices and reasonable pluralism
The Rights of Unreasonable Citizens
The Scope of Public Reason
This paper presents two conceptions of the scope of public reason. The narrow view asserts that the ideal of public reason must regulate questions of constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice, but should not apply beyond this limited domain. The broad view claims that the ideal of public reason ought to be applied, whenever possible, to all political decisions where citizens exercise coercive power over one another. The paper questio…
Disagreement, asymmetry, and liberal legitimacy
Reasonable people disagree deeply about the nature of the good life. But reasonable people also disagree fundamentally about principles of justice. If this is true, then why does political liberalism permit the state to act on reasons of justice, but not for reasons grounded in conceptions of the good life? There appears to be an indefensible asymmetry in the way political liberalism treats disagreements about justice and disagreements about the …
Cultural Exemptions, Expensive Tastes, and Equal Opportunities
The most well‐known liberal‐egalitarian defence of cultural rights, provided by Will Kymlicka, presents culture as a primary good, and thus a resource that ought to be distributed according to some fair egalitarian criteria. Kymlicka relies on the intuition that inequalities between persons that are the result of brute luck rather than personal choice are unjust in making the case for various multicultural rights. This article makes two main clai…
Political Liberalism Without Scepticism
Political liberalism famously requires that fundamental political matters should not be decided by reference to any controversial moral, religious or philosophical doctrines over which reasonable people disagree. This means we, as citizens, must abstain from relying on what we believe to be the whole truth when debating or voting on fundamental political matters. Many critics of political liberalism contend that this requirement to abstain from r…
Contractualism, reciprocity, and egalitarian justice
Can contractualism yield a suitably egalitarian conception of social justice? G.A. Cohen has forcefully argued that it cannot - that one cannot be both a contractualist and an egalitarian. Cohen presents a number of arguments to this effect, the particular target of which is John Rawls’s version of contractualism. In this article, I show that, contra Cohen, the Rawlsian model of contractualism, and the ideal of reciprocity on which it relies, can…
Liberalism without Perfection
A growing number of political philosophers favour a view called liberal perfectionism. According to this view, liberal political morality is characterized by a commitment to helping individuals lead autonomous lives and making other valuable choices. This book rejects this widely held view and offers an alternative account of liberal political morality. It argues that the liberal state should not be engaged in determining what constitutes a valua…
Justice Beyond Equality
Left-Libertarianism
The Distribution of Authority
This article challenges David Estlund’s claim that epistocracy involves an extra element of authority when compared to democracy. I argue there is no more authority in epistocracy than democracy, at least not in a way that would make the former subject to a higher justificatory burden than the latter. I suggest Estlund reaches his democratic conclusion by implicitly relying on an undefended presumption that egalitarian, or prioritarian, distribut…
Liability to Defensive Harm
On the Idea of Public Reason
The idea of public reason is at the center of John Rawls's political philosophy. Public reason is a standard by which we measure laws and political institutions. This chapter discusses the practice of public reason, the moral basis of public reason, and the challenge posed by religious critics of public reason. It provides three possible answers to the question: What is the moral basis for endorsing this particular conception of democratic politi…
Justification vs. proof
Justification is argument addressed to those who disagree with us, or to ourselves when we are of two minds. It presumes a clash of views between persons or within one person, and seeks to convince others, or ourselves, of the reasonableness of the principles upon which our claims and judgments are founded. Being designed to reconcile by reason, justification proceeds from what all parties to the discussion hold in common. Ideally, to justify a c…
Liberalism without perfection
I would like to begin by thanking all the contributors to this symposium, especially Elvio Baccarini, who hosted the conference at the University of Rijeka where several of the papers in this symposium were initially presented. I?ve learned a great deal from these essays, and I?m very fortunate for my work to be the subject of such careful and perceptive philosophical attention. Below I offer some replies to each contributor, though I do not addr…
Proportionality, Liability, and Defensive Harm
Symposium on Settlement, Borders, and Violence
Consequentialism, Deontology, Contractualism, and Equality
This chapter advances two main claims. First, that the distinction between consequentialism and deontology, although widely adopted, is illusory and only serves to obscure some of the genuine disputes underlying central debates in distributive justice. Second, that although luck egalitarianism and democratic egalitarianism are often presented as rival conceptions of justice—in particular, as offering competing accounts of the grounds of distribut…
The Morality of Defensive Force
This book provides an account of the central moral principles that regulate the permissible use of defensive force. The book argues that we cannot understand the morality of defensive force until we ask and answer deeper questions about how the use of defensive force fits with a more general account of justice and moral rights. In developing this view the book offers original accounts of liability, proportionality, and necessity. It also argues, …
Morality of Defensive Force
When is it morally permissible to engage in self-defense or the defense of others? Jonathan Quong defends a variety of novel ideas in this book about the morality of defensive force, providing an original philosophical account of the central moral principles that should regulate its use. We cannot understand the morality of defensive force, he reasons, until we ask and answer deeper questions about how the use of defensive force fits with a more …
Debate
In his article, “The Space between Justice and Legitimacy”, Kit Wellman offers a novel account of the relationship between political philosophy's two central concepts.1 He argues that states can be legitimate yet impose many unjust laws and policies. This is true, he suggests, because political legitimacy should be understood as a claim about wide proportionality.2 Just as a country's war can be widely proportionate overall, and yet contain many …
Fair equality of opportunity and the gendered division of labor
I learned a lot from Gina Schouten's excellent book, Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor.1 Like Schouten, I'm a political liberal. I thus share her conviction that an account of what's unjust or illegitimate about the gendered division of labor (GDL) should satisfy the constraint of liberal neutrality; it should be grounded in political values that are acceptable as such to all reasonable citizens. One widely held view is t…
Freedom, fairness, and sufficiency in Tahzib’s perfectionist theory of justice
Justice by Means of Democracy
Political Philosophy and Ethics (24 works) · Political science (24 works) · Law (22 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Law and economics (17 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Economic Justice (11 works)