Children have several features that distinguish them from adults, features which also bear on what is owed to them by justice. The slogan ‘liberte, egalite, fraternite’ applies to children differently than to adults. On the first count, children are entitled to abundant unstructured time, free from pre-set goals, for exploring the world and themselves. Exploration has special importance for our wellbeing during childhood, and is also a necessary condition for becoming autonomous. On the second count, children are entitled to equality of outcome
when adults are not; children’s agential powers are not yet fully developed, and therefore they cannot bear the same responsibility for their choices as grown-ups. On the last count, children are entitled to be guided away from leading bad lives; adults, by contrast, have a complaint against paternalistic treatment. Can a liberal society, even a just one, deliver enough on each and all of these counts? And, if not, would a socialist society do better by children?
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Speaker
Anca Gheaus is a political philosopher interested in justice and the normative significance of personal relationships. She teaches at the Central European University in Vienna; before that she worked at various universities in Europe. In 2023 she published a co-authored book on Debating Surrogacy (with Oxford University Press) and in 2018 the co-edited The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children. At the moment she is working on a monograph on child-centred childrearing, under contract with Oxford
University Press and on a book for Routledge, The Ethics of Childhood, meant to support teaching this subject to advanced undergraduates and graduate students.