Carlos Santiago Nino (3 November 1943 – 29 August 1993) was anArgentinemoral,legal andpoliticalphilosopher.
Nino studied law at theUniversity of Buenos Aires and at theUniversity of Oxford, where he received his Ph.D. in 1977 with a thesis directed byJohn Finnis andTony Honoré.
Nino began his academic activity in the early 1970s, concentrating on some traditional issues injurisprudence, such as the concept of a legalsystem, theinterpretation of the law, the debate betweenlegal positivism andnatural law, and the concept ofvalidity.[1] After realizing the need to clarify the normative problems involved in some of those issues, he was led to embrace a model based on the explicit adoption of principles of justice and social morality, rejecting the predominantGerman-inspired "dogmatic" approach.[2] This signaled the beginning of hisphilosophical investigations, which were always oriented to practical issues, and marked by a distinctivelyanalytical approach. His need to provide aliberal justification for criminal law practice thus lead him tomoral philosophy, and to the development of an original "consensual" theory ofpunishment which combined the merits of the retributive andutilitarian (seedeterrence) varieties while avoiding their respective difficulties.[3] Similarly, the problems presented by the characterization of criminal conduct stimulated his work in the field ofphilosophy of action.[4]
During the early 1980s, after the restoration ofdemocracy, Nino became engaged in politics, serving as personal assistant to PresidentRaúl Alfonsín and as coordinator of his newly created "Consejo para la consolidación de la democracia", a special committee for the study and design of institutional reforms. His theoretical activities, however, were not forgotten: in 1984 he published his monumentalÉtica y derechos humanos,[5] dedicated to Alfonsín, where he provided a comprehensive exposition of his moral thought; divided in three parts, it dealt withnormative andapplied ethics, as well as withmeta-ethics. This last field he expanded in a separate volume,[6] where he adopted a constructivist approach that attempted to derive his fundamental ethical principles from the presuppositions of moral discourse, in a manner that put him, as he said, "betweenRawls andHabermas". These substantive principles, comprising the nucleus of a theory that aspired to capture the essential components ofpolitical liberalism, were the principle ofautonomy, the principle ofinviolability, and the principle ofdignity. The first expressed Nino's conception of thegood: those things, and those things only, that were valued by the individual in question. The second imposed deontological restrictions to the pursuit of that good, prohibiting the sacrifice of some to achieve the benefit of others. The third principle allowed for individual consent, thus permitting persons to waive the rights recognized by the second one.
With this solid normative foundation, Nino went to tackle some practical issues, such asabortion,capital punishment, anddrug regulation. On the former, he proposed a gradualist approach similar to theAmerican one, recognizing rights to thefetuses only when they showed the cognitive and affective capacities necessary for considering them moral persons. As regards death penalty, he was firmly opposed to it—as he was to the criminalization of drug consumption.
While on trip toLa Paz, Bolivia in 1993 to work on the reform of theBolivian constitution, Nino had an asthma attack and subsequently died. This tragedy killed a man who appeared to be at the peak of his productivity: the year before he had published two books,[7] served as editor to two others,[8] and had given the manuscripts of a couple more to his friendOwen Fiss, who assumed the responsibility of readying them for publication.The Constitution of Deliberative Democracy andRadical Evil on Trial saw the light in 1996. In the first he developed his "epistemic justification" ofdeliberative democracy, arguing that democratic deliberation provides better reasons to believe in the validity of moral norms than private reflection. The second is a moving personal description of themilitary junta trials; it provides a testimony to his unique ability to approach public affairs with both philosophical sophistication and political commitment.
