(DOWNLOAD) "Present Payments, Past Wrongs: Correcting Loose Talk About Nozick and Rectification (Critical Essay)" by Libertarian Papers # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Present Payments, Past Wrongs: Correcting Loose Talk About Nozick and Rectification (Critical Essay)
- Author : Libertarian Papers
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 91 KB
Description
The Problem Stated ACCORDING TO NOZICK (and Locke and innumerable others), what has come to be termed "distributive justice" is a matter of goods going to those who made or found them, or to those who get them from others by agreement, e.g. by buying or selling them. No other fundamental ways of arriving at ownership of anything are morally legitimate--since, by definition, the only other ways there are would involve compelling some to give goods to others, contrary to the general libertarian principle that Nozick (and many others, including the present writer) suppose to be the most fundamental general principle of morals. But of course things sometimes go wrong, and people get things by theft, assassination, fraud, and so forth. When this happens, what should be done about it? Nozick calls upon a third category, rectification. The simplest way of putting this idea is that if A unjustly acquires x from B, then A may (if necessary) be compelled to restore x to B. The idea can be made more precise: to the extent that A has illegitimately worsened the situation of B, rectification is accomplished if A brings it about that B is no worse off, given the actions done with a view to rectification, than B would have been had the injustice not occurred in the first place. This last is a tall order, and not easily accomplished in a wide variety of cases. Indeed, in conspicuously important cases, it is, in the most direct way, impossible, for in those cases, B is dead and nothing whatever can be done to make B in particular better off than he now is. And in numerous other cases as well, rectification would no doubt be very difficult.