David V Axelsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 114768 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David V Axelsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | David V |
| FAMILY NAME | Axelsen |
| SIGNATURE | AXELSEN D V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Essex |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0711-7087 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 54 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Justice without millionaires
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
How Thresholds Matter: On the Bounds and Demands of Justice
Two important tasks for theorists of justice are to determine the bounds of justice, which explain why some claims are matters of justice and others are not, and to determine the demands of justice, which settle conflicts that fall within those bounds. In this paper, we clarify the distinction between bounds and demands, revealing two striking things. First, while thresholds have typically been understood to be demands of justice, their use as su…
Members Only? Why Associational Autonomy Cannot Justify Closing State Borders
The expressive injustice of being rich
According to limitarianism , it is morally impermissible to be too rich . We consider three main challenges to limitarianism: the redundancy objection , the inconclusiveness objection , and the commitment objection . As a distributive principle, we find that limitarianism fails to overcome the three objections—even taking recent theoretical innovations into account. Instead, we suggest that the core commitment of limitarianism can be drawn from t…
What’s Wrong With Extreme Wealth
The expansion in the wealth of the extremely wealthy has received much attention in recent public and academic debate. In political theory, the phenomenon has only recently begun to be scrutinized. This article builds on these preliminary steps, exploring the normative reasons we have to worry about extreme wealth. Looking at the issues, first, through a distributive lens, we reveal that the excess wealth of the extremely wealthy compounds the in…
Envy, Levelling-Down, and Harrison Bergeron: Defending Limitarianism Against Three Common Objections
Justice for Millionaires
In recent years, much public attention has been devoted to the existence of pay discrepancies between men and women at the upper end of the income scale. For example, there has been considerable discussion of the ‘Hollywood gender pay gap’. We can refer to such discrepancies as cases of millionaire inequality . These cases generate conflicting intuitions. On the one hand, the unequal remuneration involved looks like a troubling case of gender inj…
When the state doesn’t commit: A review essay of Julian Culp’s Democratic Education in a Globalized World
The world has evolved from being international to being global. Increasingly, global issues like climate change, migration, pandemics, trade, big data, and terrorism spill over borders drawn centuries ago as if they were no longer there. In this globalized world, however, people are still born and educated as citizens of particular nation states. Indeed, education is still used as one of the state's main tools for shaping citizen virtues and comm…
Being Responsible and Holding Responsible: On the Role of Individual Responsibility in Political Philosophy
Big Data Justice: A Case for Regulating the Global Information Commons
The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) challenges political theorists to think about data ownership and policymakers to regulate the collection and use of public data. AI producers benefit from free public data for training their systems while retaining the profits. We argue against the view that the use of public data must be free. The proponents of unconstrained use point out that consuming data does not diminish its quality and that inform…
Unequally egalitarian? Defending the credentials of social egalitarianism
In his new book, Luck Egalitarianism, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen responds to challenges raised by social egalitarians against luck egalitarianism. Social egalitarianism is the view according to which a just society is one where people relate to each other as equals, while the basic premise of luck egalitarianism is that it is unfair if people are worse-off than others through no fault or choice of their own. Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the most i…
Luck Egalitarianism: Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and His Critics
Harsh and Disrespectful: Rescuing Moral Agency from Luck and Choice
Many policies hinge on determining whether someone’s situation is due to luck or choice. In political philosophy, this prevalence is mirrored by luck egalitarian theories. But overemphasizing the distinction between luck and choice will lead to tensions with the value of moral agency, on which the distinction is grounded. Here, we argue that the two most common contemporary critiques of luck egalitarianism, holding it to be harsh and disrespectfu…
Against institutional conservatism
In this article, I argue against institutional conservatism, and the reluctance to include radical changes to important institutions within normative principles for fear of losing practical significance. In making this argument, I will focus on the debate on global justice, in which the issue is especially clear due to the greater potential effects of radical institutional changes. My main target, then, is theorists who are institutionally conser…
Equality, responsibility, and justice
In this introduction, we underline the theoretical connection between responsibility, luck, and equality upon which luck egalitarianism rests, and we consider the social and political relevance of the approach. We then situate Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen’s version of the view as proposed in his book, Luck Egalitarianism, in the egalitarian landscape. Lastly, we introduce the six papers that make up this symposium: some are critiques from within or o…
Unequally egalitarian? Defending the credentials of social egalitarianism
In his new book, Luck Egalitarianism, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen responds to challenges raised by social egalitarians against luck egalitarianism. Social egalitarianism is the view according to which a just society is one where people relate to each other as equals, while the basic premise of luck egalitarianism is that it is unfair if people are worse-off than others through no fault or choice of their own. Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the most i…
Capabilitarian Sufficiency: Capabilities and Social Justice
This paper suggests an account of sufficientarianism—that is, that justice is fulfilled when everyone has enough—laid out within a general framework of the capability approach. In doing so, it seeks to show that sufficiency is especially plausible as an ideal of social justice when constructed around key capabilitarian insights such as freedom, pluralism, and attention to empirical interconnections between central capabilities. Correspondingly, w…
Essentially Enough
This chapter outlines the elements needed to render sufficiency a plausible ideal of distributive justice. To attain such plausibility, it must avoid four potentially debilitating problems: ambiguity, arbitrariness, underdemandingness, and blindness to important values other than sufficiency. Critics think these problems are inescapably a part of sufficientarian views. This chapter claims that sufficientarians can avoid these critiques by includi…
Sufficiency as Freedom from Duress
Journal of Political PhilosophyVolume 23, Issue 4 p. 406-426 Original Article Sufficiency as Freedom from Duress† David V. Axelsen, Corresponding Author David V. Axelsen Political Science, Aarhus University Philosophy, University of WarwickSearch for more papers by this authorLasse Nielsen, Lasse Nielsen Political Science, Aarhus University VIA University College, HorsensSearch for more papers by this author David V. Axelsen, Corresponding Author…
The State Made Me Do It: How Anti‐cosmopolitanism is Created by the State
Anti-cosmopolitans claim that our obligations towards compatriots greatly outweigh (and in some cases eclipse) duties towards foreigners, and that our relationship with the latter is of a sort that does not include strong, redistributive obligations as a matter of justice. Contradicting this claim, cosmopolitans hold that our obligations towards compatriots and non-compatriots are equally strong (or for weak cosmopolitans, almost equally strong),…
Sufficiency as Freedom from Duress
Journal of Political PhilosophyVolume 23, Issue 4 p. 406-426 Original Article Sufficiency as Freedom from Duress† David V. Axelsen, Corresponding Author David V. Axelsen Political Science, Aarhus University Philosophy, University of WarwickSearch for more papers by this authorLasse Nielsen, Lasse Nielsen Political Science, Aarhus University VIA University College, HorsensSearch for more papers by this author David V. Axelsen, Corresponding Author…
The State Made Me Do It: How Anti‐cosmopolitanism is Created by the State
Anti-cosmopolitans claim that our obligations towards compatriots greatly outweigh (and in some cases eclipse) duties towards foreigners, and that our relationship with the latter is of a sort that does not include strong, redistributive obligations as a matter of justice. Contradicting this claim, cosmopolitans hold that our obligations towards compatriots and non-compatriots are equally strong (or for weak cosmopolitans, almost equally strong),…
Capabilitarian Sufficiency: Capabilities and Social Justice
This paper suggests an account of sufficientarianism—that is, that justice is fulfilled when everyone has enough—laid out within a general framework of the capability approach. In doing so, it seeks to show that sufficiency is especially plausible as an ideal of social justice when constructed around key capabilitarian insights such as freedom, pluralism, and attention to empirical interconnections between central capabilities. Correspondingly, w…
What’s Wrong With Extreme Wealth
The expansion in the wealth of the extremely wealthy has received much attention in recent public and academic debate. In political theory, the phenomenon has only recently begun to be scrutinized. This article builds on these preliminary steps, exploring the normative reasons we have to worry about extreme wealth. Looking at the issues, first, through a distributive lens, we reveal that the excess wealth of the extremely wealthy compounds the in…
Big Data Justice: A Case for Regulating the Global Information Commons
The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) challenges political theorists to think about data ownership and policymakers to regulate the collection and use of public data. AI producers benefit from free public data for training their systems while retaining the profits. We argue against the view that the use of public data must be free. The proponents of unconstrained use point out that consuming data does not diminish its quality and that inform…
Unequally egalitarian? Defending the credentials of social egalitarianism
In his new book, Luck Egalitarianism, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen responds to challenges raised by social egalitarians against luck egalitarianism. Social egalitarianism is the view according to which a just society is one where people relate to each other as equals, while the basic premise of luck egalitarianism is that it is unfair if people are worse-off than others through no fault or choice of their own. Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the most i…
The expressive injustice of being rich
According to limitarianism , it is morally impermissible to be too rich . We consider three main challenges to limitarianism: the redundancy objection , the inconclusiveness objection , and the commitment objection . As a distributive principle, we find that limitarianism fails to overcome the three objections—even taking recent theoretical innovations into account. Instead, we suggest that the core commitment of limitarianism can be drawn from t…
The State Made Me Do It: How Anti‐cosmopolitanism is Created by the State
Anti-cosmopolitans claim that our obligations towards compatriots greatly outweigh (and in some cases eclipse) duties towards foreigners, and that our relationship with the latter is of a sort that does not include strong, redistributive obligations as a matter of justice. Contradicting this claim, cosmopolitans hold that our obligations towards compatriots and non-compatriots are equally strong (or for weak cosmopolitans, almost equally strong),…
Sufficiency as Freedom from Duress
Journal of Political PhilosophyVolume 23, Issue 4 p. 406-426 Original Article Sufficiency as Freedom from Duress† David V. Axelsen, Corresponding Author David V. Axelsen Political Science, Aarhus University Philosophy, University of WarwickSearch for more papers by this authorLasse Nielsen, Lasse Nielsen Political Science, Aarhus University VIA University College, HorsensSearch for more papers by this author David V. Axelsen, Corresponding Author…
Essentially Enough
This chapter outlines the elements needed to render sufficiency a plausible ideal of distributive justice. To attain such plausibility, it must avoid four potentially debilitating problems: ambiguity, arbitrariness, underdemandingness, and blindness to important values other than sufficiency. Critics think these problems are inescapably a part of sufficientarian views. This chapter claims that sufficientarians can avoid these critiques by includi…
Capabilitarian Sufficiency: Capabilities and Social Justice
This paper suggests an account of sufficientarianism—that is, that justice is fulfilled when everyone has enough—laid out within a general framework of the capability approach. In doing so, it seeks to show that sufficiency is especially plausible as an ideal of social justice when constructed around key capabilitarian insights such as freedom, pluralism, and attention to empirical interconnections between central capabilities. Correspondingly, w…
Against institutional conservatism
In this article, I argue against institutional conservatism, and the reluctance to include radical changes to important institutions within normative principles for fear of losing practical significance. In making this argument, I will focus on the debate on global justice, in which the issue is especially clear due to the greater potential effects of radical institutional changes. My main target, then, is theorists who are institutionally conser…
Equality, responsibility, and justice
In this introduction, we underline the theoretical connection between responsibility, luck, and equality upon which luck egalitarianism rests, and we consider the social and political relevance of the approach. We then situate Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen’s version of the view as proposed in his book, Luck Egalitarianism, in the egalitarian landscape. Lastly, we introduce the six papers that make up this symposium: some are critiques from within or o…
Unequally egalitarian? Defending the credentials of social egalitarianism
In his new book, Luck Egalitarianism, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen responds to challenges raised by social egalitarians against luck egalitarianism. Social egalitarianism is the view according to which a just society is one where people relate to each other as equals, while the basic premise of luck egalitarianism is that it is unfair if people are worse-off than others through no fault or choice of their own. Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the most i…
Unequally egalitarian? Defending the credentials of social egalitarianism
In his new book, Luck Egalitarianism, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen responds to challenges raised by social egalitarians against luck egalitarianism. Social egalitarianism is the view according to which a just society is one where people relate to each other as equals, while the basic premise of luck egalitarianism is that it is unfair if people are worse-off than others through no fault or choice of their own. Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the most i…
Luck Egalitarianism: Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and His Critics
Harsh and Disrespectful: Rescuing Moral Agency from Luck and Choice
Many policies hinge on determining whether someone’s situation is due to luck or choice. In political philosophy, this prevalence is mirrored by luck egalitarian theories. But overemphasizing the distinction between luck and choice will lead to tensions with the value of moral agency, on which the distinction is grounded. Here, we argue that the two most common contemporary critiques of luck egalitarianism, holding it to be harsh and disrespectfu…
Being Responsible and Holding Responsible: On the Role of Individual Responsibility in Political Philosophy
Big Data Justice: A Case for Regulating the Global Information Commons
The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) challenges political theorists to think about data ownership and policymakers to regulate the collection and use of public data. AI producers benefit from free public data for training their systems while retaining the profits. We argue against the view that the use of public data must be free. The proponents of unconstrained use point out that consuming data does not diminish its quality and that inform…
Envy, Levelling-Down, and Harrison Bergeron: Defending Limitarianism Against Three Common Objections
Justice for Millionaires
In recent years, much public attention has been devoted to the existence of pay discrepancies between men and women at the upper end of the income scale. For example, there has been considerable discussion of the ‘Hollywood gender pay gap’. We can refer to such discrepancies as cases of millionaire inequality . These cases generate conflicting intuitions. On the one hand, the unequal remuneration involved looks like a troubling case of gender inj…
When the state doesn’t commit: A review essay of Julian Culp’s Democratic Education in a Globalized World
The world has evolved from being international to being global. Increasingly, global issues like climate change, migration, pandemics, trade, big data, and terrorism spill over borders drawn centuries ago as if they were no longer there. In this globalized world, however, people are still born and educated as citizens of particular nation states. Indeed, education is still used as one of the state's main tools for shaping citizen virtues and comm…
Members Only? Why Associational Autonomy Cannot Justify Closing State Borders
The expressive injustice of being rich
According to limitarianism , it is morally impermissible to be too rich . We consider three main challenges to limitarianism: the redundancy objection , the inconclusiveness objection , and the commitment objection . As a distributive principle, we find that limitarianism fails to overcome the three objections—even taking recent theoretical innovations into account. Instead, we suggest that the core commitment of limitarianism can be drawn from t…
What’s Wrong With Extreme Wealth
The expansion in the wealth of the extremely wealthy has received much attention in recent public and academic debate. In political theory, the phenomenon has only recently begun to be scrutinized. This article builds on these preliminary steps, exploring the normative reasons we have to worry about extreme wealth. Looking at the issues, first, through a distributive lens, we reveal that the excess wealth of the extremely wealthy compounds the in…
Justice without millionaires
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
How Thresholds Matter: On the Bounds and Demands of Justice
Two important tasks for theorists of justice are to determine the bounds of justice, which explain why some claims are matters of justice and others are not, and to determine the demands of justice, which settle conflicts that fall within those bounds. In this paper, we clarify the distinction between bounds and demands, revealing two striking things. First, while thresholds have typically been understood to be demands of justice, their use as su…
Political science (19 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (15 works) · Law and economics (14 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Positive economics (9 works)