Nicolai Abramovich

Political liberalism aspires to be a cosmopolitan and universal system. Yet, in the last decades, it has often been accused of arbitrarily imposing a particular conception of the good. How can we to explain this apparent contradiction? This study aims to determine if the liberal character is necessary to have a just society, even if it is not sufficient, or if it is a contingent feature. It tries to see if it is possible to universalize the principles of political liberalism. Our thesis is that only a justification of liberty via negationis can be universalized. In order to demonstrate this idea, we will highlight the qualitative distinction between the negative justifications that defend the political value of liberty as a tool to restrain power; and the positive justifications that defend its moral value, as a human good. Furthermore, we will defend two arguments: a) a principle of asymmetry of good and evil, which states that avoiding evil has an epistemic and moral priority over promoting good; and b) the idea that the summum malum can be absolute and universal. As defended by Judith Shklar, cruelty is that sovereign evil. Unlike the summum bonum, summum malum is independent from particular moralities. In order to give a normative and universal status to individual liberties, liberalism shall then prove that its political configuration allows to avoid or reduce political evil. That is the argumentative structure of negative liberalism.

The paper (in French) studies Avishai Margalit's concept of decency and its link with John Rawls's principles of justice. Criteria of decency may help to realize effectively justice - when it has to deal with political and social reality - or at least to avoid intolerable injustice.

The article explores sustainability from a normative perspective to determine the legitimate uses of the concept in general and in business practices in particular. It is evident that when sustainability is used as an instrumental bluff to maximize profits, it is being diverted from its main objective: intergenerational and environmental justice. To avoid that trap, most of the justifications in favor of sustainable business adopt a structure based on the idea that sustainability conceived as a particular policy can bring benefits to society and to businesses. Strategic management based on stakeholder theory appears often as a pertinent solution to this problem: considering future generations as valid stakeholders would allow to integrate sustainability into the calculation. But stakeholder capitalism defends a pragmatist view that erases the borders between strategy and ethics. It considers sustainable goals as normative goods as well as strategic means for cost-effective results. We think that it is insufficient to treat and understand sustainability as a matter of justice and fairness that ought to be addressed by businesses. We defend that in the case of sustainability only moral justifications are logically valid and consistent. Hence, we suggest an argument based on the Rawlsian conception of justice as fairness. Thinking behind the veil of ignorance in the original position allows to defend sustainability as an economic and social model needed not only to secure a fair distribution of basic goods or capabilities between generations, but also to preserve the consistency of any true commitment with the concept of fairness.