Andries De Smet | Ghent University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Andries De Smet

The characterisation of anthropogenic climate change as a violation of basic human rights is gain... more The characterisation of anthropogenic climate change as a violation of basic human rights is gaining wide recognition. Many people believe that tackling this problem is exclusively the job of governments and supranational institutions (especially the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). This argument can be traced back to the delegated authority model, according to which the legitimacy of political institutions depends on their ability to solve problems that are difficult to address at the individual level. Since the institutions created to tackle climate change fail to do so, their legitimacy is under great pressure and can only be saved by considerations of feasibility. We argue that democratically elected representatives are able to claim that a more robust climate policy is unfeasible, but only because the mandate we as citizens grant them is very restrictive. Instead of shifting responsibility for the thoroughly inadequate response to climate change fully to political representatives, we should highlight the failure of the political community as a whole to fulfil its responsibility at the input-side of the delegation of authority. When individual voters fail to fulfil the minimal obligation to at least vote for parties that explicitly advocate robust climate policies, they cannot hide behind the delegated authority argument, but should accept their complicity in the massive violations of basic human rights caused by the failure to successfully tackle climate change.

The concept of environmental justice is well developed in North America, but is still at the evol... more The concept of environmental justice is well developed in North America, but is still at the evolutionary stage in most other jurisdictions. This article seeks to explore two jurisdictions where claims for environmental justice are likely to be seen in the future as a consequence of polluting industries. We focus on avenues open to private citizens to enforce environmental justice. The first jurisdiction considered is China, where the Tort Liability Law was introduced in 2010 to improve the regulatory framework for private citizens seeking environmental justice. The second jurisdiction is Australia, where no specific tort laws exist to help pollution victims. On the basis of Christian Barry’s vulnerability presumption principle, we argue for the development of environmental justice avenues in Australia that draw inspiration from China’s novel approach, while noting that significant implementation challenges exist in upholding Chinese pollution laws.

Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, 2014

If climate change represents a severe threat to humankind, why then is response to it characteriz... more If climate change represents a severe threat to humankind, why then is response to it characterized by inaction at all levels? The authors argue there are two complementary explanations for the lack of motivation. First, our moral judgment system appears to be unable to identify climate change as an important moral problem and there are pervasive doubts about the agency of individuals. This explanation, however, is incomplete: Individual emitters can effectively be held morally responsible for their luxury emissions. Second, doubts about individual agency have become overly emphasized and fail to convincingly exonerate individuals from responsibility. This book extends the second explanation for the motivational gap, namely that the arguments for the lack of individual agency do in fact correspond to mechanisms of moral disengagement. The use of these mechanisms enables consumption elites to maintain their consumptive lifestyles without having to accept moral responsibility for their luxury emissions.

In this paper we examine to what extent globalization has altered responsibilities for human righ... more In this paper we examine to what extent globalization has altered responsibilities for human rights. We give priority to negative human rights and take the violation of these rights as the baseline for determining harm and injustice. We will focus on the global economic order and on climate change and examine whether these aspects of globalization provide us with new reasons to value our relationships with distant others. We argue that, if a relationship of harm is established, fulfilling positive duties is no longer a matter of general charity, but has become a special obligation of justice. Accordingly, human rights and corresponding obligations gain important normative weight. We propose to use the ‘vulnerability presumption principle’ as a guideline in determining whether or not such a relationship of harm is established.

According to Samuel Scheffler, a conflict exists between distributive justice and individual resp... more According to Samuel Scheffler, a conflict exists between distributive justice and individual responsibility. At the heart of this debate lies the common-sense moral concept of ‘special responsibilities,’ i.e. responsibilities we only have to people with whom we have significant personal ties. For example, membership of the same community is often said to entail this kind of responsibilities. However, this conception of individual responsibility is under attack from two different directions. On the one hand, according to the voluntarist objection, special responsibilities may constitute significant burdens for their bearers and hence, cannot be imposed on people without their consent or voluntary choice. The distributive objection on the other hand, claims that the common-sense moral conception of responsibility is overly limited in scope, and that it cannot be a sufficient guide for moral conduct, given the challenges we are facing in a globalized world (such as climate change, persistent poverty and rapid resource depletion).

We will take the non-reductionist claim as the point of departure for our analysis. According to this claim, genuine special responsibilities are based upon relationships that one has reason to value, irrespective of whether or not these relationships are actually valued. Although non-reductionists defend special responsibilities against the voluntarist objection on this basis, we will argue that a sound conception of the reasons to value certain relationships can widen rather than restrict the scope of individual responsibility, thus meeting the distributive challenge as well. More specifically, we will examine which conditions might provide sufficient reasons to value relationships. We will conclude that such an account can widen the scope of special responsibilities to include the whole of mankind and shall defend a conception of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism.

book chapters by Andries De Smet

(in D. McBain (ed.). Power, justice and citizenship: The relationships of power, pp. 123-133) Acc... more (in D. McBain (ed.). Power, justice and citizenship: The relationships of power, pp. 123-133)
According to Samuel Scheffler, a conflict exists between distributive justice and individual responsibility. At the heart of this debate lies the common-sense moral concept of ‘special responsibilities,’ i.e. responsibilities we only have to people with whom we have significant personal ties. For example, membership of the same community is often said to entail this kind of responsibility. However, this conception of individual responsibility is under attack from two different directions. On the one hand, according to the voluntarist objection, special responsibilities may constitute significant burdens for their bearers and hence, cannot be imposed on people without their consent or voluntary choice. The distributive objection on the other hand, claims that the common-sense moral conception of responsibility is overly limited in scope, and that it cannot be a sufficient guide for moral conduct, given the challenges we are facing in a globalised world (such as climate change, persistent poverty and rapid resource depletion). We will take the non-reductionist claim as the point of departure for our analysis. According to this claim, genuine special responsibilities are based upon relationships that one has reason to value, irrespective of whether or not these relationships are actually valued. Although non-reductionists defend special responsibilities against the voluntarist objection on this basis, we will argue that a sound conception of the reasons to value certain relationships can widen rather than restrict the scope of individual responsibility, thus meeting the distributive challenge as well. More specifically, we will examine which conditions might provide sufficient reasons to value relationships. We will conclude that such an account can widen the scope of special responsibilities to include the whole of mankind and shall defend a conception of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism.

(in D. McBain (ed.). Power, justice and citizenship: The relationships of power, pp. 3-17) Althou... more (in D. McBain (ed.). Power, justice and citizenship: The relationships of power, pp. 3-17)
Although an appeal to human moral agency can motivate us to shoulder responsibility for our normative conduct, its phenomenological features have also been invoked to support certain restrictions on individual responsibility imposed by common-sense morality. Indeed, global dynamics such as climate change generate doubts about our practice of regarding the individual as the locus of responsibility, since, as noted by Samuel Scheffler, we tend to experience acts as having primacy over omissions, near effects as having primacy over remote effects, and individual effects as having primacy over group effects. At first sight, these phenomenological features of agency might appear to justify absolving the individual of her responsibility, but we will argue that in fact they can neither support nor justify a restrictive conception of individual responsibility. Individuals are agents with causal powers on the global level and therefore they can properly be held responsible for the harm their actions cause – however mediated the causal connection may be. In contrast to Scheffler, we will argue that the doubts about individual responsibility on the global level are generated by the context that gives rise to the so-called common-sense morality in which the vested interests of those who have a great deal to gain from a restrictive conception of responsibility and a great deal to lose from coming to see the global context as morally salient, are dominant. This context is shaped by a particular interpretation of the liberal political assumptions, which emphasises individual freedom and holds that the role of social and political institutions is to discharge as many responsibilities for citizens as possible.

Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, 2014