Location:

Tilburg University, Dante Building, room DZ005

Date and time:

Tuesday the 7^th of January 2020, 13:00 – 15:00

Program:

13:00 – 14:00 ‘The Roles of Fair Play and Parental Justice’, Serena Olsaretti (ICREA – UPF)

Commentator: Jeffrey Moriarty (Bentley University)

14:00 – 15:00 ‘The Best Available Parent’, Anca Gheaus (UPF)

Commentator: Tim Meijers (Leiden University)

Abstracts:

The Roles of Fair Play and Parental Justice, Serena Olsaretti

The principle of fair play is widely invoked but under-theorised. At its most general, the principle holds that under certain conditions, those who benefit thanks to others´ having deliberately engaged in certain benefits-producing activities, have obligations, to the benefits-producers, to share in the creation of the benefits and/or help bear some of the costs of their production. While it is widely deployed, the principle and at least some of its uses have been placed under pressure (Nozick 1974; Simmons 1979; Casal and Williams 199), and defenders of the principle have offered different versions of it mostly in response to counterexamples in specific cases. Like with other political principles (e.g. desert, freedom, or equality), the resulting picture is one involving a plurality of different understandings of the principle of fair play; unlike with other political principles, little has been done thus far to take stock of the state of play with regard to how we do and should understand the demands of fair play. This paper takes a step in that direction. After identifying the key dimensions along which different interpretations of the principle differ, it does three things. First, it argues that the principle of fair play has been invoked to play at least two importantly different normative roles in our theories of justice. Second, the paper argues that on some interpretations of the principle of fair play, its demands are fully reducible to independently specified principles of distributive justice. Finally, the paper revisits the debate on who should pay for children with these observations in mind.

The Best Available Parent, Anca Gheaus

Children are owed, parents – that is, people who control their lives in numerous ways. Children’s moral status makes it generally impermissible to sacrifice their interests for the sake of advancing other individuals’ interests. Therefore, the allocation of the moral right to parent should track the child’s, and not the potential parents’s, interest. This is the doctrine of the best available parent. This view is at odds with universal practices and laws. Liberal philosophers attempt to explain why mere adequate parents can hold the right to parent. I examine, and refute, two kinds of attempts: one that seeks to partially ground the right in a fundamental interest to parent held by would-be adequate parents; and a second one explaining why procreators have the right to parent if they can do so adequately. The best available parent view is deeply revisionary. However, two additional qualifications moderate it. First, while parents may exclude others from exercising certain forms of authority over their children, they do not have the moral right to exclude others from associating with the child. Therefore, the most important goods of childrearing can be made available to a large number of adults. Second, children usually come into the world as part of an already existing relationship with their gestational parent; in most cases, this relationship deserves protection.

Organized by:

Huub Brouwer (Utrecht University)

Attending:

Attendance is free. To attend, send a message to Huub (h.m.brouwer@uu.nl) by Friday the 3^rd of January 2020 latest. Papers will be circulated amongst those registered before the workshop. Attendees are expected to read them before the workshop.