Poles are today the largest group of family immigrants to Norway. Since Polish immigration is an intra-Euro-pean movement of labour, there are no specific laws or regulations, apart from labour regulations, pertaining to the introduction of Polish families to Norway and their settlement there. Consequently, there are few guidelines in schools and local authorities on dealing with Polish children in school. They receive the same introduction to school as immigrants from any other background, with no considera-tion of the specific characteristics of Poles. Equally, their parents are not eligible for the orientation courses and language classes that are offered to adult asylum seekers or refugees. As these are expen-sive, many Polish parents postpone language classes until they can afford them or find alternative ways of learning language and culture. In this article, I explore the inclusion of Polish children in Norwegian schools through the voices of teachers receiving Polish children in their classrooms and Polish mothers of children attending school in Norway. Interviews with both teachers and mothers reveal inadequate understandings of each other’s conceptions of school, education and the roles of home and school in the education of children. They also demonstrate a limited understanding of culturally bound interpre-tations of each other’s actions. Although both sides are committed to the idea of effective integration, we risk overlooking the social and academic challenges that Polish children face in Norwegian schools unless conceptions and expectations of school and education are articulated and actions are explained and contextualised. There is also a risk that cultural differences will be perceived as individual prob-lems, while real individual problems may be overlooked due to poor communication between schools and families. The data is drawn from an extended case study including classroom observations, inter-views with teachers and Polish mothers in Norway, and focus groups of educators and researchers in the field of social work.

The paper analyses and develops John Rawls’s defence of his theory of justice against the conservative objection that egalitarian conceptions of social justice are an expression of envy. The defence involves the following claims: (1) The content of the difference principle does not match an essential property of envy. (2) The parties in the original position are not motivated by envy. (3) None of the conditions imposed on the original position arise from envy. Next, it is argued that there are reasons to suppose that the parties in the original position would choose a more egalitarian principle of distributive justice than the difference principle. These reasons are grounded in the claim that self respect is the most important primary good and in the fact that the level of economic inequalities is negatively correlated with self respect among the least advantaged members of society. It is shown that even though the content of the more egalitarian principle matches the essential property of envy, the conservative objection remains unjustified.

My current considerations concern the way in which the category of animals is present in contemporary philosophy, especially if it occurs in the context of moral philosophy and the theory of cognition and mind. These are, I suppose, the areas of inquiry inspiring wide interest, even if we focus on the narrow question of the place of animals in the domains of morality, cognition, and consciousness. Although John Rawls himself approaches these issues with caution, and his interest in these types of problems is marginal, they deserve some philosophical attention. There is a close relationship between the belief that non‑personal living entities such as animals are capable of feeling pain and pleasure on the one hand, and the human sensitivity or social sentience, on the other. We should face the question of what kind of society we want to live in: effective or sensitive. Ethical utilitarianism is in favor of an effective society. It may seem that there is no place for social sensitivity in it, and consequently that public interest is postulated in its place instead. However, I believe that an effective society is more sensitive to the harm done to or the plight suffered by non‑personal subjects than a sensitive society, if the latter is understood as Rawls frames it. Thus, we come to a specific paradox – which I shall refer to as the blunted sentience paradox – that the utilitarian, efficient society criticized by Rawls is in fact more morally sensitive than the egalitarian society he postulates. The paradox of the blunted sentience has its source in Rawls’s egalitarianism, for this egalitarianism is offered only to the chosen. It does not extend to those members of society who extend their care to those creatures whom Rawls denies subjectivity, but whose unhappiness constitutes an important factor in the social life of humanity. I propose to look at the fate of animals in modern society, and if we do so, we will notice some flaws in Rawls’s theory of justice that can perhaps be amended by espousing some aspects of emotivism. This proposed approach avoids what I have called the blunted sentience paradox.

Recent years have witnessed the publication of a number of research papers and books seeking to assess threats of electoral victories of anti-establishment politicians and political parties, described as authoritarian populists. This essay focuses on three books directly addressing the origins and threats of authoritarian populism to democracy. It consists of six sections and the conclusion. The first section presents findings (Norris and Inglehart) based on surveys of values of voters of various age cohorts concluding that authoritarian populism is a temporary backlash provoked by the post-materialist perspective. The second section examines the contention, spelled out in Levitsky and Ziblatt, that increase in openness of American political system produced, unintentionally, a degradation of the American political system. The third section continues brief presentations focusing on to the causes and implications of “illiberal democracy,” and “undemocratic liberalism” (Mounk). The fourth section examines developments in the quality of democracy in the world showing that despite the decline in Democracy Indices, overall there was no slide towards non-democratic forms of government in 2006–2019. The next two sections deal with dimensions missing in reviewed books; the notion of nation-state, international environment, civic culture and, in particular, dangers of radical egalitarianism to democracy. The last section concludes with regrets that the authors ignored rich literature on fragility of democracy and failed to incorporate in their analyses deeper structural factors eroding democracy: by the same token, return to the pre-populist shock trajectory is unlikely to assure survival of liberal democracy.