Lecture 10

1. Lecture 10 Loyalty, obligation and historical injustice

2. Canadian ‘head-tax’ on Chinese immigrants 1880s-1920s: head-tax levied on Chinese immigrants to Canada. 2006: official apology (issued by PM Harper) and indemnification

3. Compensation revisited When does a nation have cause to apologise for or compensate victims of historical injustice? Do the criticisms of compensation in the case of affirmative action apply to historical injustice?

4. Sources of obligation • Some obligations are ‘natural’. • Some obligations are self-imposed. • Some obligations derive from the historical narratives in which we find ourselves.

5. Obligation: liberals & communitarians ‘Liberal’ philosophers are likely to recognise only the first two sources of obligation. ‘Communitarians’ are likely to recognise the third as well.

6. Freedom and the individual Liberal view: individuals are constituted as moral beings prior to the moral values and obligations in which we stand. The liberal individual is free of moral ties which it has not freely chosen. The fundamental moral trait of human beings is their freedom to choose their moral ties.

7. Politics Liberal view: since we are autonomous beings who are capable of determining our own ends and values, that is what we should do; nobody should dictate our ends to us and therefore politics should be neutral. The right is prior to the good. (Excursus: utilitarianism, the good and the right)

8. Freedom and the individual Communitarian view: an individual’s ‘moral starting point’ is constituted by certain roles and is situated in a historical trajectory.

9. Politics Communitarian view: Determining the nature of the ‘good life’ is the starting point; this is a public (‘political’) discussion, not something individuals are left to determine for themselves. The good is prior to the right.

10. Obligation without consent Pride and prejudice. Or: does anybody support the Maple Leafs?