Catriona McKinnon

---

Catriona McKinnon was born in Manchester in 1970. She studied at the University College of London and she got her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Reading, where she is currently a Political Theory professor. She directs a PhD program in Climate Justice with the support of Leverhulme Trust. This program has the main goal to form experts, from a multi-disciplinary approach, to provide them the required knowledge to enable the development and implementation of just climate policies.

Research career

Dr.McKinnon is the head director of the Reading Centre for Climate and Justice, a working platform for researchers to provide solutions to climate change.

Dr.McKinnon is also part of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment. This is a research and advisory center focused on responding to climate change from a multi-disciplinary dimension. Dr. McKinnon is part of the group of experts on global governance. They deal mainly with questions of justice and ethics in the political responses that can be given to the problem. The center is part of the School of International Service of the University of Washington, DC.

Some of her research areas are political constructivism, climate justice and issues of tolerance. She has meant her work to be quite inspired on a Rawlsian perspective of justice. Apart from several academic articles, she has published 4 books about the mentioned areas of her research.

Major contributions

Liberalism and the defense of political constructivism

This work was McKinnon’s Doctoral Thesis. The main topic of the work is the use of John Rawls’ method of justification to the political order. That is called political constructivism.

According to this, we humans as rational beings must be able to carry out a collective deliberation. All in a condition of equality we must establish a common idea of ​​justice, which will become the fundamental legitimacy principle of society. This justification will also be in the central idea guiding policies developed in such context. As in Rawls’ Theory of (Social) Justice, there are also two phases in this process: first, the concretion of the basic idea of ​​justice for the design of the political order; and second, a discussion about the viability of this original design and the problems it may face.

The author begins explaining which issues political justification must deal with in contemporary societies:

• Scope of the justification framework: a local (state / community) or a cosmopolitan * global / supranational) district. These are inclusive: every person living in that society is taken into account -only mentally handicapped and children are out-; or exclusive: deliberation is reduced to more “genuine members” such as citizens.

• Diversity in deliberation: current societies are of "Deep diversity" in which multiple identities and status exist -going beyond the classical conceptions: Marxism-class, liberalism-citizens, religion-practitioners-. There is a potential in that for constructivism to promote it as something beneficial for the use of reason:

• acceptance instead of irrational stigma.
• coexistence discredits unique truths.
• diversity means that free individuals are able to search for identities which fit them best.

• Success and adequacy of the reasons for justification based on whether they would be acceptable by the members of society, or at least not be rejected in their entirety.

Rawlsian “self-respect” is a key concept in the development of this model. This is for each individual to seek and be able to achieve excellence in the development of all their life activities. It implies congruence between the conception that a person has on him or herself and self-expression: I think I am an excellent version of myself, therefore I express myself in everything I do by being true to my virtues.

A society in which its individuals develop their own love to the maximum, will be able to achieve a much more consolidated political justification among its members. On the contrary, if individuals do not have a firm conception of self-love, this "sum of excellences" that constitutes a more just society will not occur.

In this aspect, the author criticizes Nozick’s idea on self-respect: "Excellence in individuals is always formed according to the rest of excellence expressed among individuals". That means somehow a sort of “market of excellences”, according to its dynamic excellence will grow if there is an increasing competition to achieve the furthermost excellence. McKinnon does not deny the influence of this, but it is not determinative. She defends that individual excellence is much more related to inspirations and expectations of each person. This makes Rawlsian self-respect much more central in constructivism that Nozick’s social categorization. First, because it means individual self-assessment and conviction that their life plan is good (insubordination); and second, confidence in the individual's ability to carry it out with the highest excellence he or she can achieve (congruence). Thus, such a life plan is the result of a rational and deliberative process in which it is chosen based on individual motivations and assessing their consequences. All in all, praises individual motivation and reason, denies external incentives of the "excellence market" to neither guide a satisfactory life plan (from the individual perspective) nor construct a just society.

So, why is self-respect a good method to reason in a practical way about Justice?

First of all, submission forces us to think through prejudice and preconceived ideas to which it is linked, delegitimizing discordant visions with its position. In opposition, collective deliberation of justice requires each person, constituent of the political order, to be in a position to judge by him or herself in a rational manner the proposals made by other members of society.

To provide the deliberation with reasonable proposals about the constitution of the political order, these must be perceived by the other members in congruence with an ideal of social excellence to which such proposals are leading to.

In summary, the idea put forward by the author is that in order to obtain a consistent political justification for society, it must be built on the basis of an ideal of excellence. Social excellence will be achieved as long as members are allowed to exercise their personal excellence and do so. This will ensure that different views contained in a society can be included.    

Climate change and future justice

This book is the main work of Dr.McKinnon on dealing with how to respond to climate change, which should be some good measures against it.

The definition of the importance of climate change as a problem is made by its:

• Seriousness: possible extinction of humankind or at least extinction of several species.
• Immediateness: point of no return very close to this day.
• Duration: although fixing it, it can take a long time to have appreciable benefits from the current situation.
• Complexity: there is more scientific understanding of the problem needed about its dynamics and effects.
• The scope is completely global, nothing escapes, greater than ever. This is also how the answer should be.

The author proposes a Rawlsian approach to the problem: If the current generation has now the opportunity to "save" the human species, the future generation -either this task is solved better or worse by the current generation- will suffer the hardest situation. This means that there are a group a better-offs and a group of worst-offs so the hardest efforts should be made to reduce worst-offs suffering and make their situation much more similar to better-offs’.

In order to compensate the effects of current and past generations the author explores the exercise of intergenerational justice regarding climate change. This is explained through three basic points:

Mitigation: current generation should adopt precautionary climate change policies in order to minimize the risks of serious harm that would be imposed on future generations.

Adaptation: current generation must create a reserve fund to which future generations can turn to be able to compensate the effects that their development may have generated.

​Triage: future generations ought to keep alive hope for a return to the framework of justice for the social cooperation of future people less burdened by climate change harms.

Issues in political theory

This is a handbook on political theory that dr.Mckinnon directed and published under her name in collaboration with several scholars dealing with topics such as Human Rights, Tolerance, War and Intervention or Social Justice.

Toleration, a critical introduction

This book provides a theoretical base about the topic. The first part of the book is devoted to present the foundations of tolerance. They are related to contemporary cases in order to discuss its relevance and validity. Some of the foundations exposed are the extolling of pluralism, the reasonableness of tolerance and the limits of tolerance in relation to "harm" to third parties for political reasons. The author also refers to classical thinkers such as Locke, J.S. Mill or Rawls.

The second part of the book tries to apply the theoretical framework to specific issues of current political debates. It discusses about what should and should not be permitted, under which terms toleration should be required. Those issues are of culture and citizenship, the cases of female circumcision and the use of headscarves in the public sphere; artistic expression; pornography and censorship; and the denial of holocaust.

Critiques

The author hasn’t received many critiques along her research career. The only controversial topic at the moment could be the one on climate change. Perhaps she could be facing negationism of climate change, so according to this view there would be no reason at all to seek for justice on this matter. Anyway, Dr.Mckinnon has devoted several pages of research to point why climate change has a scientific foundation to be taken into account.

Catriona McKinnon

This article "Catriona McKinnon" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Catriona McKinnon. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---