Hoover Tuesdays: The Hoover Chair Research Seminar, since 1998

Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Charlotte Unruh

12h45 - 14h  
D.041

Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Fredrik Hjorthen

12h45 - 14h  
D.041 Bâtiment Dupriez  

Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Tamaz Tokhadze

Radical Permissivism holds that, in almost all evidential situations, a wide range of credences towards a proposition can be equally rational.  This view allows for the rational permissibility of beliefs that intuitively seem highly irrational – such as Clifford’s shipowner believing his ship is seaworthy despite lack of evidence or a conspiracy theorist believing in the dangers of childhood vaccination. These beliefs, in turn, can justify actions with serious moral consequences, assuming a widely held connection between epistemic rationality and moral permissibility. In this paper, I argue that Radical Permissivism cannot adequately account for the connection between epistemic rationality and the moral permissibility of actions. I further show that Pettigrew’s (2022) proposed strategy for addressing this problem is lacking. I conclude that a more moderate epistemology is needed to preserve a plausible link between rational belief and moral responsibility.

Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Catarina Moiteiro das Neves (Utrecht University) 

G.A. Cohen famously argued that in a society organized around the ideal of community, we will interact with others according to the principle of communal reciprocity, treating others as friends, instead of tools to pursue our goals (Cohen, 2009; similar accounts can be found in ideals of civic friendship e.g., Schwarzenbach, 1996). While the ideal of community has been subjected to extensive debate (Brennan, 2014; Archer, 2016; Arnold, 2020), its relation with economic growth is unclear. 

In his proposal for a convivial society, Ivan Illich stated that we should reclaim the word austerity from its ‘bitter taste’, to acknowledge its role as the ‘foundation of friendship’ (Illich, 1973, 7). A similar thought is captured in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel, the ‘Disposessed’: the hero says that all those who wish to be part of the non-prosperous but communal society of Anarres, thus becoming ‘sharers and not owners’ need to “come to it with empty hands” and “without any past, without any property, wholly dependent on other people for life” (Le Guin, 1974/2010).  In this paper, I will try to answer the following question: does community require the continuous pursuit of economic growth, or to be more precise, is the ideal of community better suited for a world of  ‘austerity’, a sort of degrowth world? 
The questions of what a postgrowth society requires is of timely importance. In 2025 we surpassed seven of the nine planetary boundaries (Richardson et al., 2025), with scientists raising concerns that degrowth is required to stay within planetary boundaries (Keyßer and Lenzen, 2021). Degrowth entails that countries who have achieved a certain level of wellbeing, and are above their fair-share of ecological impacts need to downscale production and consumption to meet ecological limits (Hickel, 2021). In addition, in many affluent countries we are already experiencing long periods of stagnant to zero economic growth. Thus, we have to consider what are the implications for our normative commitments when we move, or are required, to pursue an economy that no longer sustains itself on economic growth. In addition, degrowth is likely to require an account of community. To transition and sustain a demanding transformation, as the one proposed in degrowth, which is just, stable and democratic, will require the harmonization of individual interests with common ones, or what some call  ‘green republicanism’ (White, Gough). The ideal of community offers a good principle to explore how this could take place.   
Thus, in this paper I explore the relation between continuous economic growth and community. First, I examine whether community requires continuous economic growth, either because it generates resources required to promote wellbeing, or because it provides conditions that sustain the right-set of attitudes towards others. I will argue neither of these requires continuous economic growth. Second, I explore whether continuous economic growth undermines community, because it promotes a ‘luxury fever’ that jeopardizes the conditions for mutual self-respect (Parr, 2024), and promotes inequalities that compromise our capacity to care for others (Archer, 2016; Arnold, 2020). While correct, I will argue that these arguments do not establish whether community is better fostered under degrowth. It could well be that continuous growth undermines community, but austerity would do so too. This would support a steady-state society, and caution against any degrowth moves. Thus, in the third part of the paper, I explore Illich’s thesis: actively pursuing a policy of austerity or of dispossession (as in degrowth) offers a fertile ground for the ideal of community. I will explore accounts of a convivial society (Ilich, 1973) and of reducing inequalities by levelling down the position of those who are better off, before addressing objections. 
By testing out these three claims, I intend to show that pass a threshold, continuous economic growth is a threat to the pursuit of a society grounded on the ideal of community. Insofar the latter is more desirable than a society without it, we will have an additional reason for embracing degrowth as a positive transformation of society.

Hoover Tuesdays by Benjamin De Mesel (KU Leuven)

This paper is the work (in progress) of an interdisciplinary working group consisting of philosophers, theologians, criminologists, political scientists and legal scholars. It addresses not only academics, but also policymakers, legal practitioners and the broader educated public. Our objective is to open a discussion about retribution. We begin from a puzzle about punishment in Belgium. On the one hand, over the past three decades punishment has become increasingly severe. Belgian prisons are overcrowded, leading to repeated condemnations for inhumane detention conditions. On the other hand, many people seem to believe that offenders are not being punished harshly or appropriately enough. We argue that this tension reveals a conceptual lack in current penal discourse. In particular, the idea of retribution has largely disappeared from official discourse about punishment. We suggest, counterintuitively, that a careful re-introduction of the idea of retribution may help to solve the puzzle.

Classical utilitarianism and, more recently, longtermism, claim that the welfare of future
people has equal moral significance to that of present people, rejecting the possibility of a
temporal discount. This proposal will not discuss this claim; moreover, I endorse it.
However, I’d like to discuss and test a potential implication that can arise from it. The
reasoning is as follows: given humanity's potential longevity (in the absence of catastrophic
events), the expected number of future lives—potentially trillions over millennia—vastly
exceeds the current ~8 billion. This means that the amount of potential future welfare will
always exceed that of any living present human population. This numerical asymmetry
tends to justify strong obligations to prioritize future-oriented actions. This prioritization
grows stronger in longtermism.
This proposal explores a counterintuitive implication from placing high amounts of value
into the future: could bringing someone into existence wrong them? Before their birth, as
mere potential future people, individuals make part of a horizon of immense expected
value—a "vast territory" of aggregate welfare. Upon birth, individuals will exist in a
present defined by a comparatively smaller amount value. While the potential value of
future is virtually illimited, that of present will be necessarily constrained to the amount of
present living people. Hence, to be born means a shift from a “dimension” of higher
aggregate potential value to a “dimension” of inevitably less value. Although the intrinsic
moral status of each life remains unaltered, to be born places each new person in a
framework wherein the prevailing ethical priorities perpetually defer to the unrealized
future.
When I propose to see this as a wrong, this should not be understood as personal harm or
as a diminished personal value, but due to a relocation to a morally subordinate temporal
context. This challenges the pro-natalism stance that some of these views have: creating
lives increases the overall sum of present value, but positions these individuals in a
perpetually subordinate frame, where duties skew futureward.
Therefore, could it be possible to frame birth as a net loss in contextual value – even if no
individual has any amount of welfare prior to birth? This paradox questions whether
overvaluing the future—core to longtermism—unintentionally wrongs the living by putting
them into a secondary position.
Keywords: longtermism, value, population ethics, future people, welfare

Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Cécile Fabre (Oxford University)

Standard justifications for the moral duty to vote appeal to citizens' general duty of reciprocity not to free ride on the provision of the public good of democratic governance, or to a general duty of justice to support just institutions - which include democratic institutions. However, proponents of the duty have not properly addressed the question of the scope of the duty - to wit, by whom it is borne, and to whom it is owed. This is problematic: all liberal democracies (even relatively stable ones) are marred by wrongdoings, both public and private. The question, then, is whether the fact that some agent has wronged another agent makes a difference to either party's duty to vote and to their claim to be the beneficiary of the duty. While it stands to reason that, if anyone is owed a duty to vote at the bar of justice, victims surely are, it is not obvious that wrongdoers too have that claim. While it seems clear that if anyone owes a duty to vote at the bar of justice, wrongdoers do, it is not obvious that victims too owe it. I defend the following theses. First, the fact that a citizen has committed a serious wrong, of the kind described above, strengthens the case for holding him under a duty to vote. Second, the fact that a citizen has been or continues to be the victim of such wrongs does not exempt her from the duty - a duty which, moreover, she owes to wrongdoers as well as to innocent citizens, who include fellow victims.

Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Kebadu Mekonnen Gebremariam.

This paper examines the social justice implications of farmland grabbing—broadly defined as an expropriative transfer of land from peasant farmers to financial interests. Recent studies in political philosophy that directly address the topic take the distinctive wrong of land grabbing to involve in the way it undermines territorial rights. This paper takes a different approach. It scrutinizes farmland grabbing via two important debates within egalitarian political philosophy, namely the general debate between luck and relational egalitarians about the aim of egalitarian justice, and a specific debate regarding the incentives argument for inequalities. 

I submit that a defense of land grabbing through the incentives argument would be untenable, so for two reasons. Firstly, the process by which assets such as farmland are coded as capital invariably determines their market value, thereby allocating incentives before their productive contributions are known. Secondly, since land grabbing’s distinctive feature consists in expropriation, and not in exploitation, its justification should lie in something other than reasons for unequal distribution of the return from cooperative schemes of production. 

This paper also shows that both luck and relational egalitarianism have implausible implications, each for different reasons. Luck egalitarian views condemn both paradigmatic cases of land grabbing and what I call Robin Hood cases, even though the latter is aimed at eliminating the role of unchosen disadvantages in the distribution of farmland. While relational egalitarianism avoids the challenges that arise when applying a distributive account of justice to a form of land capture that fosters control over land without acquisition, it too has implausible implications at the extremes of material wellbeing. I conclude by highlighting the advantages of Cohen’s community constrained luck egalitarianism—as one plausible approach for rejecting paradigmatic cases of farmland grabbing while simultaneously declaring Robin Hood cases as permissible.

Hoover Tuesdays by  Fernanda Diab (Universidad de la República Oriental del Uruguay)

Scholars have identified inheritance transfers as playing a significant part in wealth accumulation and the rise of inequality in contemporary societies. However, their widespread acceptance as a social institution, along with the economic interests that have emerged around them —such as the trend toward the abolition of inheritance tax— give rise to an axiological tension that must be addressed when approaching the issue philosophically. My research aims to contribute to revealing the normative implications of hereditary transmission, acknowledging this tension and supplementing critiques based on distributive justice with a critique framed in terms of domination. It seeks to argue that the ideal of freedom as non-domination, primarily addressed within democratic republicanism, expands the critical potential for evaluating inheritance by delving into the problem of property and its connection to the access to the goods necessary to achieve economic independence and, consequently, political equality. 
These two principles are indispensable values for the construction and legitimacy of democracy. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that the inheritance of property is a politically unresolved problem, the solution of which cannot be considered in isolation from a conception of fiduciary property. 
One of the main contributions intended is to frame the treatment of the right to inheritance as a problem of intergenerational justice, meaning its study must be projected toward its effects on remote generations. The social and political thought of Carlos Vaz Ferreira (1872-1958) serves as a precursor to this postulate and will therefore be considered as such. The Uruguayan philosopher not only offers methodological guidelines for addressing inheritance as a normative problem, but also justifies its limitation based on the harmful effects on the living conditions of future generations. On this occasion I discuss the relationship between private inheritance, intergenerational duties and the fiduciary conception of property.