The Robust Demands of the Right
Abstract
In The Robust Demands of the Good Pettit claims that the three goods he takes to be central to the good, namely attachment, virtue and respect, share a common structure: they are robustly demanding in that they require the provision of an associated benefit not just under actual but across various possible circumstances. The aim of this paper is to show that the unified account of the good misconstrues the nature of respect. First, I argue that Pettit’s account of respect as robust non-interference cannot account for the particularly robust kind of robustness that respect requires and fails to clarify the relation between respect and freedom. Second, drawing on Pettit’s earlier work, I propose to reconceive of respect as the robust provision of discursive address. This account solves the ambiguities of Pettit’s account of respect. However, it suggests that the particularly robust demands of respect are demands of the right, not the good.
Acknowledgements
A first version of this paper was presented at a workshop on Pettit’s The Robust Demands of the Good at the Free University Berlin in 2016. I am particularly grateful to Victoria McGeer and Michael Smith for a stimulating discussion of my claims and to the editors and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on the manuscript.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to the Special Issue on Philip Pettit’s The Robust Demands of the Good
- The Value of Robustness: Promotion or Protection?
- The Robust Demands of the Right
- The Robust Demands of Oppression Problematizing Pettit’s Account of Attachments
- Robust Harms
- Pettit on Love and Its Value: A Critical Assessment
- Defending The Robust Demands of the Good
- Articles
- Arendt and the Legitimate Expectation for Hospitality and Membership Today
- The Difference Principle, Capitalism, and Property-Owning Democracy
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to the Special Issue on Philip Pettit’s The Robust Demands of the Good
- The Value of Robustness: Promotion or Protection?
- The Robust Demands of the Right
- The Robust Demands of Oppression Problematizing Pettit’s Account of Attachments
- Robust Harms
- Pettit on Love and Its Value: A Critical Assessment
- Defending The Robust Demands of the Good
- Articles
- Arendt and the Legitimate Expectation for Hospitality and Membership Today
- The Difference Principle, Capitalism, and Property-Owning Democracy
