Fellows 2017

Christian Schemmel

Lecturer in Political Theory, University of Manchester (UK)

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

July 2014; April‒July 2017

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

»Egalitarianism and the Economic Liberties«

Project outline:

Recent work on social justice and equality has fortunately returned to focus on the connection between theories of social justice, questions of the ownership and control of the means of production, and institutions of political economy. This is shown especially by the lively debates surrounding the ideas of predistribution and of a property-owning democracy (see, for example, Christian Schemmel and Stefan Gosepath (eds.), Special Issue on »Socioeconomic Justice: Beyond the Welfare State?«, Journal of Applied Philosophy 32/4 (2015), Alan Thomas: Republic of Equals. Predistribution and Property-Owning Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2016).
In this research project, I investigate the implications of both liberal egalitarian and republican theories of social justice for the status of economic liberties, and their preferred institutional implementation. Main questions asked in the project are: are there fundamental economic liberties, and, if so, how far do they reach? For example, do they cover the owning and running of small businesses? More (or less) than that? Do they conflict with economic equality? Should they be constitutionalised, or should they be left to the ordinary democratic process? Does recognising fundamental economic liberties imply that political liberties, and perhaps political equality, have to be curtailed? (Christian Schemmel)

Funding of the stay:

»Justitia Amplificata. Rethinking Justice − Applied and Global«

Scholarly profile of Christian Schemmel

Main areas of research:

Social justice and equality; global justice; liberalism and republicanism; political theory of the welfare state; self-respect and other self-evaluative attitudes.

Selected publications:

»How (Not) to Criticise the Welfare State«, in: Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 32 (2015), pp. 393-409, with a reply by Thad Williamson, ibid., 410-416.
»Social Equality – or Just Justice?«, in: C. Fourie, F. Schuppert and I. Wallimann-Helmer (eds.): Social Equality – On What It Means to Be Equals, New York: Oxford University Press 2015, pp. 146-166.
»Luck Egalitarianism as Democratic Reciprocity?«, in: Journal of Philosophy, vol. 109 (2012), pp. 433-338.
»Distributive and Relational Equality«, in: Politics, Philosophy & Economics, vol. 11 (2012), pp. 123-148.
»Why Relational Egalitarians Should Care About Distributions«, in: Social Theory and Practice, vol. 37 (2011), pp. 365-390.

Further academic activities:
Christian Schemmel is a founding member, and currently President, of The Global Justice Network, and a founding editor of Global Justice. Theory Practice Rhetoric.

Christian Schemmel

Scholarly profile of Christian Schemmel

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