The Realist Turn: Repositioning Liberalism

Preface......Page 9
Contents......Page 13
Chapter 1: Whence Natural Rights?......Page 16
1 What’s Wrong with Natural Rights?......Page 19
2 Problems with the Non-aggression Principle?......Page 27
3 Why the Reluctance to Appeal to Natural Rights?......Page 32
Chapter 2: How to Understand and Justify Individual Rights: A Synopsis......Page 34
Liberty as a Moral Notion......Page 35
Understanding the Role of Rights......Page 43
Individualistic Perfectionism......Page 47
Why We Have Rights......Page 56
A Realist Basis for Rejection of Equinormativity......Page 59
The Virtue of Justice and Metanorms......Page 61
Three Senses of Justice......Page 69
Social Justice and Natural Endowments......Page 72
3 Conclusion......Page 77
1 Rights, Principles, and Practicality......Page 79
Understanding the Context for Side-Constraints......Page 82
The Range of Applicability of Individual Rights......Page 90
On Being Practical......Page 92
Ideals and Principles......Page 97
Conflicting Principles......Page 101
2 Natural Rights as Principles......Page 103
3 Conclusion......Page 109
Chapter 4: Objections to Natural Rights and Replies......Page 110
Natural Rights do not Precede Their Implementation......Page 111
Natural Rights are Over-Individualized......Page 113
Natural Rights are Basically a Matter of Power......Page 114
Natural Rights are Neither Primary Nor Sufficiently Obligatory......Page 117
The Alleged Naturalistic Fallacy......Page 120
Deeper Ontological and Epistemological Issues......Page 127
Natural Rights are Grounded in Controversial Metaphysics......Page 128
The Irrelevance of Natural Rights......Page 129
Natural Rights Fail to Guide......Page 133
The Absoluteness of Natural Rights......Page 134
The Impotency of Natural Rights......Page 136
The Failure of Inclusivity in Natural Rights......Page 138
The Problematic Concept of Human Nature......Page 140
1 MacIntyre, Rights, and Tradition......Page 143
2 Natural Rights and Metaphysical Realism......Page 154
1 Essentialism without Realism......Page 159
Metaphysical Realism and Conceptual Relativity......Page 164
Conceptual Relativity and Getting it Right......Page 169
Idealized Rational Acceptability and the Democratization of Inquiry......Page 174
3 Questioning Idealized Inquiry......Page 180
Whose Freedom? Which Way of Expressing Human Intelligence?......Page 181
Ayn Rand and Universalizability: Asking Questions You Were Always Afraid to Ask......Page 185
The Human Capabilities Approach: Legislating for Human Flourishing......Page 190
Questioning the Criteria of Idealized Inquiry......Page 193
4 Conclusion......Page 197
1 Constructivism, Metaphysical Realism, and Aquinas’s Distinction......Page 199
2 Replying to some Basic Objections to Epistemological Realism......Page 206
On Imposing a Conceptual Scheme on the World......Page 207
The Problem of Hooking on to the World......Page 211
A Neo-Aristotelian-Thomistic View of Concepts and Cognition......Page 217
The Myth of the Framework......Page 231
Defining the Nature of Something......Page 234
On Being Fallible and Limited......Page 238
3 Putnam, Metaphysical Realism, and Conceptual Relativism......Page 242
Chapter 8: The Importance of the Realist Turn......Page 250
1 Ideal and Non-ideal Theory......Page 251
2 Facing a New Direction and/or Recovering an Old One......Page 265
Index......Page 269