2024/03/26 by Joshua C. Gellers · 1 voice · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Political Philosophy and Ethics #Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
paper · doi:10.1080/09644016.2024.2334611
openalex publication_date 2024/03/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Although the non-human turn in justice theory remains in its infancy, several projects have emerged, including Earth system justice, multispecies justice, and planetary justice. Crucially, candidate theories must provide convincing responses to the who, what, and how of justice. The question of who can prove particularly challenging, as philosophers continue to debate the moral relevance of properties of entities or the relations between them. Scholars of environmental politics seeking to develop more-than-human justice theories must carefully attend to issues inherent in this debate, including conceptual inconsistencies. Recent work by Winter and Schlosberg advancing a materialist perspective on multispecies and planetary justice demonstrates the difficult task of participating in this conversation, as evidenced by their application of the term ‘subjects of justice.’ In this brief essay, I identify three flaws in their use of this phrase and explain why the treatment of subjects matters to justice theory in the Anthropocene.