Economic Exceptionalism? Justice and the Liberal Conception of Rights

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Abstract

Are political and economic rights equally basic? This is one of the
main issues liberal egalitarians and classical liberals disagree about. The former
think political rights should be more strongly protected than economic ones;
classical liberals thus accuse them of an unjustified and politically biased
‘economic exceptionalism’. Recently, John Tomasi has developed a special version of this challenge, which is targeted against Murphy and Nagel’s account of the relationship between property rights and just taxation. In this paper, I
analyze this challenge, and provide an account of its limitations. Tomasi’s
strategy to drive Murphy and Nagel’s account into an overgeneralization problem brings to light that liberals weren’t guilty of any kind of economic exceptionalism in the first place. However, this also shows that classical liberalism and libertarians do not disagree as much as it might seem.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)151–167
Number of pages17
JournalMoral Philosophy and Politics
Volume7
Issue number1
Early online date2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Keywords

  • liberalism
  • libertarianism
  • justice
  • economic exceptionalism
  • JohnTomasi

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