Impact Factor: 0.6

Published since May 30, 2014

Moral Philosophy and Politics

ISSN: 2194-5624

Editor-in-chief: Michael Schefczyk

Edited by: Lukas Heinrich Meyer, Jennifer Page, Mark Peacock, Peter Schaber

Managing Editor: Peter Königs

About this journal

Moral Philosophy and Politics (MOPP) is an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes original philosophical articles addressing matters of public relevance. The notion ‘public relevance’ is construed broadly to encompass various domains and aspects. The journal has a special focus on the philosophical assessment of policies and their normative foundations, analyses of the philosophical underpinnings or implications of political discourse, and discussions of the justice or injustice inherent in social and political structures that govern human conduct.

MOPP is committed to the ideals of clarity, evidence-based reasoning, and intellectual openness. interdisciplinary work and historical approaches are encouraged when they are relevant to contemporary issues. MOPP considers both theoretical and meta-ethical works, as well as those tackling conceptual problems, provided they offer insights into political, moral, economic or social issues that characterize contemporary societies. Contributors are expected to make clear how their work relates to these issues.

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Current Calls for Papers

‘Relational Equality and Migration’, ed. by Daniel Sharp (for more information, click here)

‘Longtermism: Philosophical Questions’, ed. by Stefan Riedener (for more information, click here)
‘Ontic Injustice’, ed. by Christine Bratu, Mirjam Müller (for more information, click here)

‘Power and Sovereignty Across Generations’, ed. by Devon Cass, Manuel Valente (for more information, click here)

Call for Special Issues and Symposia

Moral Philosophy and Politics welcomes guest editors who are interested in organizing special issues for our journal. If you have a topic in mind that aligns with the scope and focus of MOPP and would like to collaborate with us, please get in touch with our editorial team. Interested guest editors are kindly requested to include a one-page proposal outlining their envisioned special issue. For more information about the process of publishing a special issue with MOPP, please click here.

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Supplementary Materials

Topics

Volume 10 Issue 2

October 2023

Publicly Available October 13, 2023

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iv

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Special Issue: Utopophobia; Guest Editors: Achim Vesper & Philipp Schink

Editorial

Open Access October 4, 2023

Introduction to the Symposium on David Estlund’s Utopophobia

Philipp Schink, Achim Vesper

Page range: 225-228

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Articles

May 10, 2022

Which Limitations Block Requirements?

Amy Berg

Page range: 229-248

Abstract

One of David Estlund’s key claims in Utopophobia is that theories of justice should not bend to human motivational limitations. Yet he does not extend this view to our cognitive limitations. This creates a dilemma. Theories of justice may ignore cognitive as well as motivational limitations—but this makes them so unrealistic as to be unrecognizable as theories of justice. Theories may bend to both cognitive and motivational limitations—but Estlund wants to reject this view. The other alternative is to find some non- ad hoc way to distinguish cognitive from motivational limitations. I argue that this strategy will not work. Just as a person’s cognitive limitations may block her motives no matter how much she perseveres, so too motivational limitations may be genuine inabilities. Even ideal theories of justice must bend to even ordinary motivational limitations when they truly cause us to be unable to comply with requirements.

June 29, 2022

A Defence of Robust Idealism in Political Philosophy

Stefano Bertea

Page range: 249-266

Abstract

In this contribution, I defend a robust model of political idealism, making the case for such an approach to both the theory and practice of politics. On this view, not only in framing a political philosophy but also in putting forward policy proposals and institutional designs, we need not think about feasibility as an overriding, make-or-break criterion for evaluating the soundness of that theory or proposal, neither of which loses its point simply because it is deemed to be unlikely to be implemented. Feasibility, in other terms, cannot be taken as the only standard, or even as the main standard, on which basis to assess the practical worth of a political strategy.

August 2, 2022

Bad Facts and Principles: Finding the Right Kind of Fact-Insensitivity

Jochen Bojanowski

Page range: 267-283

Abstract

David Estlund holds that ultimate normative principles are insensitive to bad facts. This is a deliberately twisted appropriation of Jerry Cohen’s famous dictum that ultimate normative principles are fact-insensitive. In this paper, I will show why Estlund’s twist misses the point of Cohen’s argument. The fact-insensitivity claim is not a requirement to eliminate all facts from our normative theories because facts necessarily make these theories concessive. Instead, it may help us to locate the true origin of these concessions. In normative theorizing, we have not explained why a fact supports a principle if we fail to articulate the higher-order principle in light of which that fact is normatively significant.

Open Access June 21, 2022

How Do You Like Your Justice, Bent or Unbent?

Lars J. K. Moen

Page range: 285-297

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Abstract

Principles of justice, David Estlund argues, cannot be falsified by people’s unwillingness to satisfy them. In his Utopophobia , Estlund rejects the view that justice must bend to human motivation to deliver practical implications for how institutions ought to function. In this paper, I argue that a substantive argument against such bending of justice principles must challenge the reasons for making these principles sensitive to motivational limitations. Estlund, however, provides no such challenge. His dispute with benders of justice is therefore a verbal one over the true meaning of justice, which need not worry those with the intuition that justice should perform a function that requires bending. By focusing on John Rawls’s reasons for bending his justice principles, I point towards a substantive critique of bent justice.

April 15, 2022

In Defense of Wishful Thinking

E. R. Prendergast

Page range: 299-319

Abstract

In Utopophobia: On the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy , David Estlund defends against utopophobia in political philosophy. Estlund claims that it is no defect in a theory of justice if it sets a high standard that has little chance of being achieved by any society. The book does not, however, give similar permission to argue for unrealistically optimistic political proposals. Going beyond Estlund, I consider the possibility that some utopian thinking is warranted not just in the context of formulating a theory of justice, but in the practical context, too. Sometimes theorizers ought to argue for and pursue political proposals that seem unrealistically optimistic.

October 12, 2023

Replies to Critics

Dave Estlund

Page range: 321-336

Abstract

I reply to several pieces of commentary on my recent book.

Regular Articles

Open Access June 20, 2022

A More Liberal Public Reason Liberalism

Roberto Fumagalli

Page range: 337-366

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Abstract

In recent years, leading public reason liberals have argued that publicly justifying coercive laws and policies requires that citizens offer both adequate secular justificatory reasons and adequate secular motivating reasons for these laws and policies. In this paper, I provide a critical assessment of these two requirements and argue for two main claims concerning such requirements. First, only some qualified versions of the requirement that citizens offer adequate secular justificatory reasons for coercive laws and policies may be justifiably regarded as plausible liberal principles of public justification. And second, the requirement that citizens offer adequate secular motivating reasons for coercive laws and policies is untenable on multiple grounds. Public reason liberals should focus on assessing the justificatory reasons offered for and against coercive laws and policies rather than requiring citizens to offer adequate secular motivating reasons for such laws and policies.

Open Access June 28, 2022

Refugee-based Reasons in Refugee Resettlement – The Case of LGBTIQ+

Annamari Vitikainen

Page range: 367-385

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Abstract

This paper discusses a recent turn in the ethics of refugee resettlement which involves taking the interests of refugees themselves into account in the distribution of refugees among potential refugee receiving countries. It argues that there is an important category of interest that does not align with the two commonly held views on what is owed to refugees: ‘safety’ or ‘conditions of a good life’. This category, focussing on the refugees’ interests in not being subjected to a variety of non-asylum-grounding injustices, should, by default, take precedence in the assessment of the refugee-based reasons in refugee resettlement. The normative salience of this category – not being subjected to injustice – is illustrated with the help of the case of LGBTIQ+ refugees, and the kinds of injustices they may be subject to in countries that provide them with asylum.

November 29, 2022

The Irrationality of Stand Your Ground: Game Theory on Self-Defense

Carlos Santana, Adam C. Smith, Kathryn Petrozzo, Derek Halm

Page range: 387-404

Abstract

US law continues its historical trend of growing more permissive towards actors who engage in violent action in purported self-defense. We draw on some informal game theory to show why this is strategically irrational and suggest rolling back self-defense doctrines like stand your ground to earlier historical precedents like duty to retreat.

Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Volume 10 (2023)

Volume 9 (2022)

Volume 8 (2021)

Volume 7 (2020)

Volume 6 (2019)

Volume 5 (2018)

Volume 4 (2017)

Volume 3 (2016)

Volume 2 (2015)

Volume 1 (2014)

Journal Impact Factor	0.6	2022, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2023)
Journal Citation Indicator	0.58	2022, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2023)
CiteScore	1.0	2022, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2023)
SCImago Journal Rank	0.291	2022, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2023; Data Source: Scopus)
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	0.550	2022, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2023; Data Source: Scopus)

More information about journal rankings

Submit

Moral Philosophy and Politics (MOPP) invites submissions on any topic falling within the scope of the journal. It welcomes both submissions for special issues as well as submissions unrelated to any current call for papers. Submissions should be between 3.000 and 12.000 words in length.

MOPP uses a double-blind refereeing process. The identity of the author(s) of a submission is not known to the referees, nor vice versa. The editor in charge of the submission knows the identity of both. Submissions must be anonymized to allow for blind reviewing. Each submission is typically reviewed by two referees within six to twelve weeks.　

Submissions need not conform to any particular formatting style upon submission, but must be adjusted to the MOPP house style upon acceptance.

Manuscripts are submitted via ScholarOne at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mopp.

De Gruyter allows authors the use of the final published version of an article (publisher pdf) for self-archiving (author's personal website) and/or archiving in an institutional repository (on a non-profit server) after an embargo period of 12 months after publication. The published source must be acknowledged and a link to the journal home page or articles' DOI must be set. Authors may not self-archive their articles in public and/or commercial subject based repositories. Click here for more information on De Gruyter’s self-archiving policy.

MOPP has a policy of making selected papers of every issue openly available for free.

For information on De Gruyter’s Open Access policy, please click here.

Editorial

Editor-in-Chief

Michael Schefczyk (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany)

Editors

Lukas Meyer (Graz University, Austria)
Jennifer Page (Zürich University, Switzerland)
Mark Peacock (York University, Canada)
Peter Schaber (Zürich University, Switzerland)
Michael Schefczyk (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany)

Managing Editor

Peter Königs (RWTH Aachen, Germany)

Editorial Board

Elizabeth Anderson (University of Michigan, MI, USA)
Arthur Applbaum (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Dieter Birnbacher (Düsseldorf University, Germany)
Rüdiger Bittner (Bielefeld University, Germany)
Idil Boran (York University, United Kingdom)
John Broome (Oxford University, United Kingdom)
Simon Caney (Oxford University, United Kingdom)
Paula Casal (ICREA/Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain)
Stephen Darwall (Yale University, New Haven, CN, USA)
Andreas Føllesdal (Oslo University, Norway)
Rainer Forst (Frankfurt University, Germany)
Stephen Gardiner (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)
Stefan Gosepath (FU Berlin, Germany)
David Heyd (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Wilfried Hinsch (Cologne University, Germany)
Duncan Ivison (Sydney University, Australia)
Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt University Berlin, Germany)
Matt Matravers (University of York, United Kingdom)
Kirsten Meyer (Humboldt University Berlin, Germany)
David Miller (Oxford University, United Kingdom)
Nenad Miscevic (Maribor University, Slovenia)
Susan Neiman (Einstein Forum)
Elif Özmen (Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich)
Nigel Pleasants (University of Exeter)
Thomas Pogge (Yale University)
Mathias Risse (Harvard University)
Sam Scheffler (New York University)
Thomas Schmidt (Humboldt University Berlin)
Ralf Stoecker (Potsdam University)
Adam Swift (University of Warwick)
John Tasioulas (University College London)
Leif Wenar (King’s College London)
Andrew Williams (ICREA/Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)
Lea Ypi (London School of Economics)

(Deutsch)

Online ISSN: 2194-5624
Print ISSN: 2194-5616
Type: Journal
Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
First published: May 30, 2014
Publication Frequency: 2 Issues per Year
Keywords: Politics; Ethics; Public Debates