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Notes
Illustrating the latter, Brownlee mentions Canada’s deportation of one of two co-habiting, elderly friends, who had been caring for the other who had a heart condition and dementia (Ibid., 43).
Ibid., 50.
Ibid., 78.
Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R. Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 117, no. 3 (1995): 497–529. In her introduction, she notes the connection between the need to belong, now well-established in psychology, and the needs she identifies for access to social contacts and to be able to contribute to others’ welfare (Being Sure of Each Other, 17).
Baumeister and Leary, “The Need to Belong,” 497.
Ibid., 497.
As Timo Jutten observes, “In framing a conception of the good or identity, people typically appeal to the shared social meanings of their society and compare themselves to relevant social reference groups, because it is difficult to pursue a life that is incomprehensible to others and therefore cannot be recognized as worthy of pursuit” (“Dignity, Esteem, and Social Contribution: A Recognition-Theoretical View,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 25, no. 3 (2017): 259–280, 261).
Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach, for example, connects fundamental needs with human dignity and flourishing. See, for example, “Human Dignity and Political Entitlements,” in Human Dignity and Bioethics, eds., Edmund D. Pelegrino, Adam Schulman, Thomas W. Merrill (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009).
Brownlee, Being Sure of Each Other, 81.
Brownlee includes on her list of needed social opportunities both opportunities to share knowledge and to offer a corrective mirror to others (Ibid.,20).
Timo Jutten argues that a certain quality to that inclusion matters. “Unemployment, low pay, and precarity are threats to human dignity, because they undermine the sense of self-worth that people derive from what they do” and the possibilities for being socially esteemed (“Dignity, Esteem, and Social Contribution,” 273).
Brownlee, Being Sure of Each Other, 62.
Ibid., 111.
Ibid., 67.
Ibid., 180.
Ibid., 182.
Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 76.
Ibid., 77.
Ibid., 33, 55.
Ibid., 51, 91, 93.
I understood these claims as analogous to Miranda Fricker’s claim that testimonial injustice can wrong individuals in their capacity as knowers. Testimonial injustice can have lots of damaging consequences that don’t involve wronging us qua knower. If our views aren’t taken seriously on the job, we may not get promoted. If a rape victim’s testimony isn’t taken seriously, she will likely fail to secure a conviction against her rapist. If people don’t believe what we say, they may lose out on important pieces of knowledge. These are bad, extrinsic, contingent consequences of testimonial injustice. But in addition, Fricker claims that we can be insulted or dishonored in our capacity “as givers of knowledge” (Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 44). Because being able to “participate in the spread of knowledge by testimony” (ibid., 58) is an essential element of personhood, to be subjected to testimonial injustice is to be treated as less than fully human. Analogously, one might think that in addition to the extrinsic, contingent bad consequences of being deprived of opportunities to socially contribute, there is a more basic wrong of being insulted or dishonored in a person’s capacity as social contributor. The wrong lies in being treated as a kind of being who cannot socially contribute or whose potential contributions simply do not matter.
Brownlee, Being Sure of Each Other, 121.
Ibid., 126.
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z,1Kimberley Brownlee, Being Sure of Each Other: An Essay on Social Rights and Freedoms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
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Calhoun, C. Social Connections, Social Contributions, and Why They Matter: Comments on Being Sure of Each Other. Criminal Law, Philosophy 17, 453–462 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-022-09641-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-022-09641-9