Les grands exploits de la pensée moderne ne sont pas tous derrière nous : la modernité constitue l'horizon inéluctable de notre réflexion morale. Mais il nous faut aussi reconnaître qu'il reste bien des problèmes moraux fondamentaux, ayant trait à notre modernité, que nous n'avons pas encore résolus, et où même nous ne voyons pas encore clair.

Resumen: El presente texto trata de la teoría de Charles Larmore, más precisamente, de las relaciones entre las concepciones de desacuerdo razonable, de pluralismo y de liberalismo. Tal teoría tiene como características el intuicionismo racional, contextualismo y defiende una posición realista de la moralidad. Palabras clave: desacuerdo razonable, pluralismo, liberalismo, intuicionismo, contextualismo.

With the 1985 publication of "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical" , John Rawls ushered in a newera in political philosophy. In JAF Rawls provided the first detailed articulation of his conception of"political liberalism"—a concept and a term that would soon thereafter become familiar features of contemporarypolitical theory. In the wake of this development, theorists did more than simply analyse Rawls’ provocative, newpropositions; a few also began to develop and articulate their own conceptions of political liberalism. One suchindividual was Charles (...) Larmore. Of those theorists who have joined Rawls in his effort to develop and promote theconcept of political liberalism, none has been more dedicated to the endeavour than Larmore.Beginning most notably with his Patterns of Moral Complexity and continuing through to his 1999 article entitled"The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism," Larmore has sought to articulate a feasible conception of politicalliberalism and in the course of so doing explain the benefits and necessity of its adoption. Not surprisingly, there hasbeen a substantial degree of convergence between Larmore’s and Rawls’ arguments. While both Larmore and Rawlsreadily acknowledge the similarities between their conceptions, Larmore also, understandably, believes that there areimportant differences between the two. In turn, Larmore argues that these differences enable him to betterdemonstrate the appropriateness and necessity of political liberalism, and thereby more effectively than Rawlsjustify the claim that the concept of political liberalism offers the "best" foundation for a conception of justice formodern liberal democracies. The purpose of this essay is to review the principal features of Larmore’s conception ofpolitical liberalism and note some important similarities and purported differences between it and Rawls’conception. Completing this exercise will not only reveal the extent to which the two conceptions mimic each other, but also show that, when examined closely, the differences cited by Larmore are in fact cosmetic in character and insignificant in their effect. (shrink)

With the 1985 publication of "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical", John Rawls ushered in a new era in political philosophy. In JAF Rawls provided the first detailed articulation of his conception of "political liberalism"—a concept and a term that would soon thereafter become familiar features of contemporary political theory. In the wake of this development, theorists did more than simply analyse Rawls’ provocative, new propositions; a few also began to develop and articulate their own conceptions of political liberalism. One (...) such individual was Charles Larmore. Of those theorists who have joined Rawls in his effort to develop and promote the concept of political liberalism, none has been more dedicated to the endeavour than Larmore. Beginning most notably with his Patterns of Moral Complexity and continuing through to his 1999 article entitled "The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism," Larmore has sought to articulate a feasible conception of political liberalism and in the course of so doing explain the benefits and necessity of its adoption. Not surprisingly, there has been a substantial degree of convergence between Larmore’s and Rawls’ arguments. While both Larmore and Rawls readily acknowledge the similarities between their conceptions, Larmore also, understandably, believes that there are important differences between the two. In turn, Larmore argues that these differences enable him to better demonstrate the appropriateness and necessity of political liberalism, and thereby more effectively than Rawls justify the claim that the concept of political liberalism offers the "best" foundation for a conception of justice for modern liberal democracies. The purpose of this essay is to review the principal features of Larmore’s conception of political liberalism and note some important similarities and purported differences between it and Rawls’ conception. Completing this exercise will not only reveal the extent to which the two conceptions mimic each other, but also show that when examined closely the differences cited by Larmore are in fact cosmetic in character and insignificant in their effect. (shrink)

It is shown that the well-known disparity in classical electrodynamics between the power losses calculated from the radiation reaction and that from Larmor’s formula, is succinctly understood when a proper distinction is made between quantities expressed in terms of a “real time” and those expressed in terms of a retarded time. It is explicitly shown that an accelerated charge, taken to be a sphere of vanishingly small radius \, experiences at any time a self-force proportional to the acceleration it had (...) at a time \ earlier, while the rate of work done on the charge is obtained by a scalar product of the self-force with the instantaneous value of its velocity. Now if the retarded value of acceleration is expressed in terms of the present values of acceleration, then we get the rate of work done according to the radiation reaction equation, however if we instead express the present value of velocity in terms of its time-retarded value, then we get back the familiar Larmor’s radiation formula. From this simple relation between the two we show that they differ because Larmor’s formula, in contrast with the radiation reaction, is written not in terms of the real-time values of quantities specifying the charge motion but is instead expressed in terms of the time-retarded values. Moreover, it is explicitly shown that the difference in the two formulas for radiative power loss exactly matches the difference in the temporal rate of the change of energy in the self-fields between the retarded and real times. From this it becomes obvious that the ad hoc introduction of an acceleration-dependent energy term, usually referred to in the prevalent literature as Schott-term, in order to make the two formulas comply with each other, is redundant. (shrink)

In his contribution to a recent symposium on Habermas's work, (1) Charles Larmore critiques Habermas's Between Facts and Norms (2) from a largely Rawlsian perspective. His reading raises fundamental questions that divide Habermas from American pragmatists and other contextualists, and helps reveal, in my view, that the differences between Habermas's and Rawls's conceptions of justice are more basic than is often recognized. Yet as I will argue, in several places Larmore misconstrues Habermas's position and fails to understand his (...) point at crucial junctures, largely because he attempts to discuss.. (shrink)

This collection of essays displays Charles Larmore’s exceptional ability to combine the best of analytic and Hegelian traditions of moral and political theory. This cross-pollination has produced a book that, as a whole, advances several important new proposals, especially regarding political liberalism and moral epistemology.

This work proposes a philosophical analysis of the ideal of authenticity, first by presenting and discussing the works of Charles Taylor and Charles Larmore, then by developing some more personal analysis of conformism and what the author calls experiences of authenticity.

On connaît de Charles Larmore (1950), philosophe moral américain contemporain, ses célèbres objections à John Rawls, mais peu de travaux se concentrent sur sa philosophie : son réalisme moral, sa réhabilitation partielle de l'idéal d'authenticité, sa version du libéralisme politique ou encore à sa théorie normativiste du moi. Ce sont ces différents aspects de sa pensée que les études contenues dans ce volume, premier ouvrage entièrement consacré à l'oeuvre de Charles Larmore, interrogent et mettent en perspective. Un essai (...) inédit du philosophe américain ainsi qu'un débat entre Charles Larmore et Alain Renaut autour de la controverse réalisme-idéalisme y figurent également, en guise de conclusion. (shrink)

L’anno appena trascorso è stato dimenticabile (per ovvie ragioni) e i filosofi politici hanno una ragione in più per dimenticarlo data la prematura scomparsa di Gerald Gaus. Tuttavia, essi potrebbero forse trovare una qualche consolazione nel fatto che il 2020 ha visto la pubblicazione di due notevoli opere dedicate alla loro disciplina. Non mi riferisco a due notevoli opere di filosofia politica – quelle spesso non mancano – ma a due opere sulla filosofia politica: Utopohobia: On the Limits (if any) (...) of Political Philosophy, di David Estlund e What is Political Philosophy?, di Charles Larmore. Ci sarebbe molto da dire su entrambi questi volumi. Quello di Estlund, soprattutto, apre un grande ventaglio di questioni interessanti ed è ricco di spunti di grande originalità, solo parzialmente abbozzati nei saggi che il volume riprende e sviluppa. Tuttavia, lo spazio a disposizione è limitato e impone una scelta. Ho optato per questa: dopo aver offerto una sintesi criminalmente breve del nucleo argomentativo dei due volumi (sezione 2), li metterò in dialogo. Cercherò, in altre parole, di usare alcune risorse offerte dall’uno per interrogare e problematizzare alcuni aspetti centrali dell’altro. Per quanto riguarda Larmore, l’aspetto che discuterò è il primato che egli assegna al disaccordo e al problema della legittimità in filosofia politica: un punto che interrogherò a partire da alcune critiche. (shrink)

Two fundamental features of a liberal political community are usually identified in contemporary deliberations: there is an inevitable pluralism of visions of good and worthy life, blended into a wide range of religious, philosophical and ethical positions; those who are in power are under an obligation to set public matters in such a way as to avoid discrimination of any class of the ruled. In respect of and, it is presumed that the process of enacting, implementing and executing public law (...) shall be separated from any perfectionist moral position, because being impartial when making political decisions is a prerequisite for non-discriminatory politics. This kind of politics looks for proper, convincing and comprehensible reasons to establish a new legal standard of behaviour in the ‘public reason’ – a set of moral statements and political values commonly shared in an open, pluralistic and tolerant society, which does not provide decisive answers to any questions about the meaning of life and does not bring us closer to discover its ideal. This article tries to reproduce the main notions and ideas of leading, contemporary liberal philosophers – John Rawls and Charles Larmore – that deal with the very nature of impartiality of a liberal state and the ability of policymakers to be impartial. It also presents the critical views of Stephen Macedo and Nicholas Wolterstorff, who question the possibility of building a neutral state. (shrink)

In his book Vernunft und Subjektivität, Charles Larmore investigates what the nature of reason and subjectivity consists in. This book originates from two lectures that Larmore held in Frankfurt, Germany. It is composed in an elegant German and packed throughout with insights that Larmore works out in intense confrontation with prominent views in the history of philosophy and in contemporary philosophy. The overarching thesis of the book is that while our responsiveness to reasons lies at the basis (...) of reason, subjectivity should be understood as a self-relation that is structured by our commitment to what we take as reasons. (shrink)