Emil Andersson
Biographic Data
| ID | 5969037 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emil Andersson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emil |
| FAMILY NAME | Andersson |
| SIGNATURE | ANDERSSON E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Uppsala University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2905-3424 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
On Scepticism About Intergenerational Legitimacy
Most of us believe that future people – i.e., people who do not yet exist, but who will exist in the future – are directly relevant for questions of justice. Most of us also believe that those who rule should not only rule justly, but also legitimately. This invites the question: if future people matter for what counts as ruling justly, is the same true for ruling legitimately? Though it has recently been argued that future people matter for dete…
What We Owe to Future People: A Contractualist Account of Intergenerational Ethics
Stability and the question of to whom justification is owed
According to a widespread interpretation of John Rawls’s Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, political legitimacy requires justifiability to all reasonable citizens, but not to the unreasonable. A highly influential attempt at justifying this exclusion of the unreasonable – one first formulated by Jonathan Quong, and later endorsed by many others – is to appeal to the project of solving the problem of inherent stability. Since this is a problem that…
Liberal legitimacy and future citizens
If the legitimate exercise of political power requires justifiability to all citizens, as John Rawls’s influential Liberal Principle of Legitimacy states, then what should we say about the legitimacy of institutions and actions that have a significant impact on the interests of future citizens? Surprisingly, this question has been neglected in the literature. This paper questions the assumption that it is only justifiability to presently existing…
What Can Historicising Rawls Achieve
This essay explores the implications of historicising John Rawls’s theory of justice. While historical research on Rawls and his social context has provided valuable insights, some scholars argue that historicising carries significant philosophical consequences. This paper critically examines one such argument that contends that historicising Rawls’s theory demonstrates its contextual nature, undermines its diagnostic powers, and leads to its com…
Autonomy, Community, and the Justification of Public Reason
Recently, there have been attempts at offering new justifications of the Rawlsian idea of public reason. Blain Neufeld has suggested that the ideal of political autonomy justifies public reason, while R.J. Leland and Han van Wietmarschen have sought to justify the idea by appealing to the value of political community. In this paper, I show that both proposals are vulnerable to a common problem. In realistic circumstances, they will often turn int…
The Repugnant Conclusion: An Overview
The repugnant conclusion can be formulated as follows: For any population consisting of people with very high positive welfare, there is a better population in which everyone has a very low positive welfare, other things being equal. As the name indicates, this conclusion appears unacceptable. Yet it has proven to be surprisingly difficult to find a theory that avoids it without implying other very counterintuitive conclusions. Moreover, the conc…
Freedom, Equality, and Justifiability to All: Reinterpreting Liberal Legitimacy
According to John Rawls’s famous Liberal Principle of Legitimacy , the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all citizens. The currently dominant interpretation of what is justifiable to persons in this sense is an internalist one. On this view, what is justifiable to persons depends on their beliefs and commitments. In this paper I challenge this reading of Rawls’s principle, and instead suggest that it is most p…
Distributive justice, social cooperation, and the basis of equality
This paper considers the view that the basis of equality is the range property of being a moral person. This view, suggested by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice (1971), is commonly dismissed in the literature. By defending the view against the criticism levelled against it, I aim to show that this dismissal has been too quick. The critics have generally failed to fully appreciate the fact that Rawls's account is restricted to the domain of d…
Actualizing Human Rights: Global Inequality, Future People, and Motivation
Political Liberalism and the Interests of Children: A Reply to Timothy Michael Fowler
Political Liberalism and the Interests of Children: A Reply to Timothy Michael Fowler
The Repugnant Conclusion: An Overview
The repugnant conclusion can be formulated as follows: For any population consisting of people with very high positive welfare, there is a better population in which everyone has a very low positive welfare, other things being equal. As the name indicates, this conclusion appears unacceptable. Yet it has proven to be surprisingly difficult to find a theory that avoids it without implying other very counterintuitive conclusions. Moreover, the conc…
Freedom, Equality, and Justifiability to All: Reinterpreting Liberal Legitimacy
According to John Rawls’s famous Liberal Principle of Legitimacy , the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all citizens. The currently dominant interpretation of what is justifiable to persons in this sense is an internalist one. On this view, what is justifiable to persons depends on their beliefs and commitments. In this paper I challenge this reading of Rawls’s principle, and instead suggest that it is most p…
Distributive justice, social cooperation, and the basis of equality
This paper considers the view that the basis of equality is the range property of being a moral person. This view, suggested by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice (1971), is commonly dismissed in the literature. By defending the view against the criticism levelled against it, I aim to show that this dismissal has been too quick. The critics have generally failed to fully appreciate the fact that Rawls's account is restricted to the domain of d…
Actualizing Human Rights: Global Inequality, Future People, and Motivation
Autonomy, Community, and the Justification of Public Reason
Recently, there have been attempts at offering new justifications of the Rawlsian idea of public reason. Blain Neufeld has suggested that the ideal of political autonomy justifies public reason, while R.J. Leland and Han van Wietmarschen have sought to justify the idea by appealing to the value of political community. In this paper, I show that both proposals are vulnerable to a common problem. In realistic circumstances, they will often turn int…
What Can Historicising Rawls Achieve
This essay explores the implications of historicising John Rawls’s theory of justice. While historical research on Rawls and his social context has provided valuable insights, some scholars argue that historicising carries significant philosophical consequences. This paper critically examines one such argument that contends that historicising Rawls’s theory demonstrates its contextual nature, undermines its diagnostic powers, and leads to its com…
What We Owe to Future People: A Contractualist Account of Intergenerational Ethics
Stability and the question of to whom justification is owed
According to a widespread interpretation of John Rawls’s Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, political legitimacy requires justifiability to all reasonable citizens, but not to the unreasonable. A highly influential attempt at justifying this exclusion of the unreasonable – one first formulated by Jonathan Quong, and later endorsed by many others – is to appeal to the project of solving the problem of inherent stability. Since this is a problem that…
Liberal legitimacy and future citizens
If the legitimate exercise of political power requires justifiability to all citizens, as John Rawls’s influential Liberal Principle of Legitimacy states, then what should we say about the legitimacy of institutions and actions that have a significant impact on the interests of future citizens? Surprisingly, this question has been neglected in the literature. This paper questions the assumption that it is only justifiability to presently existing…
On Scepticism About Intergenerational Legitimacy
Most of us believe that future people – i.e., people who do not yet exist, but who will exist in the future – are directly relevant for questions of justice. Most of us also believe that those who rule should not only rule justly, but also legitimately. This invites the question: if future people matter for what counts as ruling justly, is the same true for ruling legitimately? Though it has recently been argued that future people matter for dete…
Political Philosophy and Ethics (10 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Law and economics (6 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Politics (5 works) · Environmental ethics (4 works)