Online research in philosophy

In Value and Context Alan Thomas articulates and defends the view that human beings do possess moral and political knowledge but it is historically and culturally contextual knowledge in ways that, say, mathematical or chemical knowledge is not. In his exposition of "cognitive contextualism" in ethics and politics he makes wide-ranging use of contemporary work in epistemology, moral philosophy, and political theory.

I wrote this book to explain how South Africa has succeeded to steer away from the brink of civil war to become a political miracle of peace.

To write this book meant fusing empirical studies on the politics of apart¬heid and political violence with theories of political morality. I first had to explain the links between the unjust apartheid system and political violence and then how South Africans managed to establish peace despite injustice and violence. The book ends with a detailed explanation of the moral vision on which the new South Africa rests.

The first chapter of the book explains the concepts injustice and violence. The next three chapters trace the developments which led to the establish¬ment and demise of apartheid South Africa. Chapter Two characterizes the first twenty-five years of the rule of National Party government from 1948 to 1983. Chapter Three discusses the main trends in South African politics brought about by the reforms unilaterally instituted by the National Party in 1983. Chapter Four deals with the conflicting political trends that emerged after the unbanning of persons and organizations by former President F.W. de Klerk in February 1990. The final two chapters give a detailed explanation of the conception of justice underlying South Africa’s remarkable peace.

Abstract The concept ?development stage? seems to be going through a revival (cf. Commons and Richards, 1984; Levin, 1986). Three positions regarding the conceptualization of development stages can be distinguished. Piaget's original formulations are presented as a starting point (Piaget, 1960). Trends in the sub?discipline of developmental psychology concerned with the study of cognitive development are then shortly reviewed and contrasted with trends in the sub?discipline concerned with the study of moral development. In the field of moral development research, Kohlberg has proposed a hard structural stage model which subscribes to Piaget's criteria while in the field of cognitive development most of the stage criteria specified by Piaget are regarded as untenable and the weaker notion of ?sequence? has become popular. By relating this divergence in interpretation and appreciation to trends in the methodology and theory of research concerning moral development, reasons for maintaining a hard?structural stage model are made intelligible. Characteristic of the Kohlbergian stage concept is an interest in meaning structures, structured wholeness and hierarchical integration.

This fascinating study, Steven Lukes, one of the foremost political theorists writing in English today, examines value pluralism and moral conflict and their implications for political thinking and practice. In Parts I and II he discusses them directly and their consequences for how we are to think about equality, liberty, power, and authority. In Part III he focuses on the non-obvious role of morality in Marxist theory and practice, and in Part IV he examines the contributions of contemporary political thinkers, including Vaclav Havel. In the final section he puts theory to the test, looking at important political issues and showing how political moralities influence the world we live in. This book will be of particular interest to teachers and students of political theory, political philosophy, and moral philosophy.

moral foundation of liberalism can be defended in one of three ways: (1) as a conception one accepts as a result of one’s affirmation of political liberalism, (2) as a conception one must affirm as a presupposition for political liberalism, or (3) as a philosophical truth about practical reason and persons. The first option makes it impossible to distinguish a moral consensus from a modus vivendi . The second renders the moral foundation of liberalism dogmatic because it affirms a moral foundation for which no justification is provided. Since there are good reasons for rejecting (1) and (2), that leaves option (3). I argue that (3) should be the preferred option for liberals who advance liberalism as a political doctrine with a moral foundation.

Do moral questions have objective answers? In this great debate, Gilbert Harman explains and argues for relativism, emotivism, and moral scepticism.

Rawls's political constructivism in Political Liberalism maintains that the two principles of justice will be accepted and endorsed by persons who are both reasonable and rational. A Theory of Justice explains the motivation to endorse the political conception on the basis of a Kantian moral psychology. Both Leif Wenar and Brian Barry argue that despite Rawls's claims to the contrary, the later work still supposes a Kantian moral psychology. If so, political constructivism fails to account for stability in society among a plurality of reasonable conceptions of good. This paper draws on Rawls's distinction in Political Liberalism between the political and nonpolitical moral sell characterizing each citizens' moral identity in claiming that the two parts of the sell correlate to two sets of motivation, political and moral motivation. This account explains resolution of conflict in the agent in favor of the political conception without invoking a Kantian moral psychology.

Gilbert Harman’s defense of moral relativism is distinctive because it is grounded upon a fundamental theory of moral obligation, and not merely upon certain well-known anthropological facts (e.g., cultural diversity). Harman’s theory of moral obligation is a particular form of “internalism”-roughly, that to have a moral obligation, one must have some adequate motivation (either dispositional or occurrent) to observe such constraints on action. It is argued, in the present piece, that Harman’s version of internalism fails to account for the sense of using common moral judgments for the purposes of moral education (there is, in other words, a relativism that exists between those with more complex moralities and those who are just learning moral ideas). But this use of moral judgments seems to be crucial in moral education. Since this is so, this difficulty poses an important anomaly to Harman’s relativistic moral theory.

Explaining Value is a selection of the best of Gilbert Harman's shorter writings in moral philosophy. The thirteen essays are divided into four sections, which focus in turn on moral relativism, values and valuing, character traits and virtue ethics, and ways of explaining aspects of morality. Harman's distinctive approach to moral philosophy has provoked much interest; this volume offers a fascinating conspectus of his most important work in the area.