Self-Realization and Justice (A Liberal-Perfectionist Defense of the Right to Freedom from Employment)

In this book, Maskivker argues that there ought to be a right not to participate in the paid economy in a new way; not by appealing to notions of fairness to competing conceptions of the good, but rather to a contentious (but defensible) normative ideal, namely, self-realization. In so doing, she joins a venerable tradition in ethical thought, initiated by Aristotle and developed in the work of important eighteenth and nineteenth century thinkers including Smith, Hume, and Marx. The book engages on-going debates (in both philosophical and real world political and social policy circles) about the provision of basic income grants, necessary to make the possibility of self-realization real for all.