Social ontology examines the nature and mechanisms in human society of concepts that pertain to various kinds of social collectivities. A pioneer in the development of this philosophical field, Mills theorised a social metaphysics of "racial constructivism" for modern philosophy in order to explain the enduring orthodoxies of its…

Using data from a case-study school as a springboard, this article explores how enactments of democratic education might both problematise and illuminate new possibilities for the way we conceptualise social justice in education. Nancy Fraser's tripartite framework of social justice is used to analyse in-depth interviews with students aged 14-16…

This article examines the many traces of John Rawls' theory of justice in contemporary philosophy of education. Beyond work that directly explores the educational implications of justice as fairness and political liberalism, there are many interesting debates in philosophy of education that make use of Rawlsian concepts to defend views that go…

In this article, I critique the foremost proponents of the adequacy and equity approaches to educational equality. I identify tensions within the adequacy approach related to positionality in education, fostering a democratic elite through higher education, and its defense of private schooling. In contrast, equity theorists are vulnerable to the…

Two appealing principles of educational distribution--equality and sufficiency--are comparatively assessed. The initial point of comparison is the distribution of civic educational goods. One reason to favor equality in educational distribution rather than sufficiency is the elimination of undeserved positional advantage in access to labor…

According to one recently influential version of liberalism, law and public policy in a democracy should be justified independently of the controversial ethical or religious beliefs that divide citizens, because political membership is coercive, involuntary and profoundly influential to our overall well-being. For children, however, the…

This article evaluates the credo "integration while maintaining one's identity" with the help of psychological arguments. First, it explores the requirements of being a good citizen in a liberal democracy. Following Rawls, we state that justice is the cardinal liberal virtue and that this virtue includes having the disposition to respect…