Should property owners have a unique right to express their opinion just because they own property? While current law recognizes owners’ rights to express their voices in certain instances, it does not provide comprehensive and coherent answers to this question. This article provides an analytical framework for recognizing the owners’ right to voice as an independent property entitlement within the owners’ property bundle of rights and delineates its boundaries. Yet even when the owners’ voice is property-dependent, there is a difference (...) between voice that facilitates the realization of another property entitlement (such as the right to exclude, use, or trade) and voice that is constitutive to ownership in and of itself. Only the latter instances justify recognition of the owners’ right to a voice as an independent property entitlement. By examining different branches of both tangible and intellectual property law, such as inheritance law, eminent domain, homeowners’ association law, zoning law, and copyright law, this article demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed analytical framework in explaining certain parts of the current law and suggests modifications of other parts. (shrink)

Edna Ullmann-Margalit provides an original account of the emergence of norms. Her main thesis is that certain types of norms are possible solutions to problems posed by certain types of social interaction situations. She presents illuminating discussions of Prisoners' Dilemma, co-ordination, and inequality situations.

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the question of whether an individual has a moral obligation to sign a protest petition which has been initiated on moral grounds. It is argued that there is such an obligation when the petition represents a viewpoint with which one broadly agrees. This is a general dury which may lapse with changed circumstances or which may be redeemed by some alternative action. It is argued that the duty to initiate a protest petition is, on (...) the other hand, supererogatory as far as an individual is concerned, but may be a duty for a community or group. Finally it is argued that protest petitions are essentially protests, not against evil deeds as such, but against evil deeds done in one's own name, and are therefore a vital aspect of democracy. (shrink)

I want to focus on some of the limits of decision theory that are of interest to the philosophical concern with practical reasoning and rational choice. These limits should also be of interest to the social-scientists’ concern with Rational Choice.

In a book that asks, 'Is there an ethics of memory?' Avishai Margalit addresses a separate, perhaps more pressing, set of concerns.

When is political compromise acceptable--and when is it fundamentally rotten, something we should never accept, come what may? What if a rotten compromise is politically necessary? Compromise is a great political virtue, especially for the sake of peace. But, as Avishai Margalit argues, there are moral limits to acceptable compromise even for peace. But just what are those limits? At what point does peace secured with compromise become unjust? Focusing attention on vitally important questions that have received surprisingly little (...) attention, Margalit argues that we should be concerned not only with what makes a just war, but also with what kind of compromise allows for a just peace. Examining a wide range of examples, including the Munich Agreement, the Yalta Conference, and Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, Margalit provides a searching examination of the nature of political compromise in its various forms. Combining philosophy, politics, and history, and written in a vivid and accessible style, On Compromise and Rotten Compromises is full of surprising new insights about war, peace, justice, and sectarianism. (shrink)

This article is about the rules of succession in Bronze Age Greece as reflected in Greek tradition. The question as to whether or not the figures dealt with by this tradition are historical is of little relevance to the present discussion: what I seek to recover is not the history of one royal house or another but rather the recurring patterns according to which the members of these houses – no matter whether real or fictitious – were expected to behave (...) when it came to the question of accession to the throne and transmission of the kingship to their successors. (shrink)

What makes a choice difficult, beyond being complex or difficult to calculate? Characterizing difficult choices as posing a special challenge to the agent, and as typically involving consequences of significant moment as well as clashes of values, the article proceeds to compare the way difficult choices are handled by rational choice theory and by the theory that preceded it, Kurt Lewin's "conflict theory." The argument is put forward that within rational choice theory no choice is in principle difficult: if the (...) object is to maximize some value, the difficulty can be at most computational. Several prototypes of choices that challenge this argument are surveyed and discussed ; special attention is given to difficult choices faced by doctors and layers. The last section discusses a number of devices people employ in their attempt to cope with difficult choices: escape, "reduction" to non-difficult choices, and second-order strategies. (shrink)

The starting point of this brief discussion is the emendation in line 782 of Aeschylus' Septem proposed by M.L. West in his 1990 Teubner edition. In the fifth strophe of the second stasimon, the chorus recollects the misfortunes that struck Oedipus when he finally discovered the truth about his marriage. This severely corrupt passage, whose original meaning was lost at an early stage of transmission, runs as follows:ἐπεὶ δ' ἀρτίϕρων ἐγένετο [στρ. ε]μέλεος ἀθλίων γάμων,ἐπ' ἄλγει δυσϕορῶν 780μαινομέναι κραδίαιδίδυμα κάκ' ἐτέλεσενπατροϕόνωι (...) χερὶ τῶν†κρεισσοτέκνων δ' ὀμμάτων† ἐπλάγχθη.τέκνοις δ' †ἀραίας† ἐϕῆκεν [ἀντ. ε]ἐπίκοτος τροϕᾶς, αἰαί, 786πικρογλώσσους ἀράς.782 δίδυμ' ἃ West 784 κρεισσοτέκνων M2PKQ1Tr κρείσσω τέκνων rell. κυρσοτέκνων Herm. δ' ὀμμάτων HaQTr δ' ἀπ᾽ ὀμμάτων rell. δωμάτων Schütz χρυσοτέχνων πωμάτων Verrall κρεισσοτέρων γνωμάτων West 785 ἀθλίας Prien ἀρχαίας Wil.But when the miserable man became aware of his wretched marriage, vexed with pain in his frenzied heart, he committed double evil: with his parricidal hand †he wandered from his eyes, dearer than children†. But upon his sons he put bitter-tongued curses, angry on account of his †accursed† sustenance. (shrink)

Since being brought to light in 1853 by Adalbert Kuhn, the fact that the Homeric expressionκλέος ἄφθιτονhas an exact parallel in the Veda has played an extremely important role in formulating the hypothesis that Greek epic poetry is of Indo-European origin. Yet only with Milman Parry's analysis of the formulaic character of Homeric composition did it become possible to test the antiquity ofκλέος ἄφθιτονon the internal grounds of Homeric diction.It is generally agreed that the conservative character of oral composition entails (...) a high degree of correlation between the antiquity of a Homeric expression and its formulaic character. In other words, although not all Homeric formulae are necessarily of ancient origin, it is nevertheless in the formulaic stock of the epic diction that archaic and backward-looking expressions should be sought. Consequently, demonstration thatκλέος ἄφθιτον is a Homeric formula would constitute valuable evidence for its origin in Indo-European heroic poetry. Strangely enough, however, as Parry's analysis won the recognition of scholars,κλέος ἄφθιτονwas identified as a Homeric formula simply because of its agreement with the Vedicśráva ákṣitam. Yet examination ofκλέος ἄφθιτονfrom the internal standpoint of the Greek epic casts serious doubts on the formulaic and traditional character of this Homeric expression. (shrink)

Much effort has been invested by scholars in defining the specific character of the Homeric values as against those that obtained at later periods of Greek history. The distinction between the ‘shame-culture’ and the ‘guilt-culture’ introduced by E. R. Dodds, and that between the ‘competitive’ and the ‘cooperative’ values advocated by A. W. H. Adkins, are among the more influential ones. Although Adkins's taxonomy encountered some acute criticism, notably from A. A. Long, it has become generally adopted both in the (...) scholarly literature and in general philosophical discussions of Greek ethics. Objections to Adkins's approach have mainly concentrated on demonstrating that his denial of the cooperative values to Homer is untenable on general grounds and is not supported by Homeric evidence. Characteristically, Adkins's thesis concerning the centrality to Homer's ethics of the so-called ‘competitive values‘ has never received similar attention, probably owing to the fact that this is the point at which his picture of the Homeric society concurs with the influential reconstructions by W Jaeger and M. I. Finley. The present study oftimēandaretē, generally held to be the two competitive values central to the Homeric poems, purports to address this issue. (shrink)

Given a descriptive word, what is the nature of the relation between it and the features of the object to which it is supposed to apply? What is it that entitles one to assert ‘this is a horse’?A traditional answer has been in terms of ‘Merkmal’: a collection of features, or properties, severally necessary and Jointly sufficient for the application of the word in question. This relation - call it the Merkmal relation - between word and features is common to (...) a variety of theories of meaning that may otherwise be in disagreement about the status of the features themselves in their relation to the object: whether they be actual or believed, perceptual or ‘essential,’ phenomenal or ‘real,’ etc. (shrink)

In _The Gatekeeper: Narrative Voice in Plato’s Dialogues_ Margalit Finkelberg offers the first narratological analysis of all of Plato’s transmitted dialogues. The book explores the dialogues as works of literary fiction, giving special emphasis to the issue of narrative perspective.

The list of Helen's suitors in the Catalogue of Women, a late epic poem attributed to Hesiod, is directly related to the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad 2, in that it is in fact a list of future participants in the Trojan war. That the two catalogues treat the same traditional material is demonstrated above all by their agreement on minor personages: not only the protagonists of the Trojan saga, but also such obscure figures as Podarces of Phylace, Elephenor of (...) Euboea, Thoas of Aetolia, or Menestheus of Athens feature in both Homer and Hesiod, and are characterized by basically the same traditional expressions. But, though the Hesiodic catalogue is sometimes used as evidence that a given Homeric personage belongs to the authentic tradition,3 it seems that the exegetic potential of this poem has not yet been exploited in full. As I hope to show, the Catalogue of Women throws light on one of the most controversial issues in Homeric scholarship, that of the representation of Athens and Salamis in the Catalogue of Ships. (shrink)

Since being brought to light in 1853 by Adalbert Kuhn, the fact that the Homeric expression κλέος φθιτον has an exact parallel in the Veda has played an extremely important role in formulating the hypothesis that Greek epic poetry is of Indo-European origin. Yet only with Milman Parry's analysis of the formulaic character of Homeric composition did it become possible to test the antiquity of κλέος φθιτον on the internal grounds of Homeric diction. It is generally agreed that the conservative (...) character of oral composition entails a high degree of correlation between the antiquity of a Homeric expression and its formulaic character. In other words, although not all Homeric formulae are necessarily of ancient origin, it is nevertheless in the formulaic stock of the epic diction that archaic and backward-looking expressions should be sought. Consequently, demonstration that κλέος φθιτον is a Homeric formula would constitute valuable evidence for its origin in Indo-European heroic poetry. Strangely enough, however, as Parry's analysis won the recognition of scholars, κλέος φθιτον was identified as a Homeric formula simply because of its agreement with the Vedic śráva ákitam. Yet examination of κλέος φθιτον from the internal standpoint of the Greek epic casts serious doubts on the formulaic and traditional character of this Homeric expression. (shrink)

Plato’s Symposium has no less than three dramatic dates: its narrative frame is placed in 401 BCE; Agathon’s dinner party is envisaged as having occurred in 416; finally, Plato makes Socrates meet Diotima in 440 BCE. I will argue that the multi-level chronology of the Symposium should be approached along the lines of Socrates’ intellectual history as placed against the background of Greek ideas of age classes. As a result, the Symposiumfunctions as a retrospective of Socrates’ life, which uses the (...) traditional concept of ages of man to create a paradigm of philosophical life. (shrink)

Looking at the Essene connection, the archaeology of Qumran, and the sectarian nature of the scrolls community, this work explores the different arenas, and ways, in which contesting theories of the scrolls do battle. In this context, it finds examples that exercise philosophers of science as well as the general public.

Reasoning Practically deals with a classical philosophical topic, the link between thought and action--how we think about what we do or ought to do, and how we move from thinking to doing. The essays by such renowned contributors as Donald Davidson, Barry Stroud, Cass R. Sunstein, Seyla Benhabib, and Gerald Dworkin, cover a range of issues raised when we link reason and practice. This collection connects state-of-the-art philosophical work with concrete issues in social life and political practice, making it of (...) interest not only to philosophers, but to political theorists, legal scholars, and any researcher interested in the practical application of reason. (shrink)