Online research in philosophy

The dominant focus of thinking about economic justice is overwhelmingly distributive, that is, concerned with what people get in terms of resources and opportunities. It views work mainly negatively, as a burden or cost, or else is neutral about it, rather than seeing it as a source of meaning and fulfilment—a good in its own right. However, what we do in life has at least as much, if not more, influence on whom we become, as does what we get . (...) Thus we have good reason also to be concerned with what Paul Gomberg has termed contributive justice , that is, justice as regards what people are expected and able to contribute in terms of work. Complex, interesting work allows workers not only to develop and exercise their capacities, and gain the satisfaction from achieving the internal goods of a practice, but to gain the external goods of recognition and esteem. As Gomberg’s analysis of the concept of contributive justice in relation to equality of opportunity shows, as long as the more satisfying kinds of work are concentrated into a subset of jobs, rather than shared out among all jobs, then many workers will be denied the chance to have meaningful work and the recognition that goes with it. In this paper I examine the contributive justice argument, suggest how it can be further strengthened, arguing, inter alia, that ignoring contributive injustice tends to support legitimations of distributive inequality. (shrink)

Sayer argues that Popper defended a logicist philosophy of science. The problem with such logicism is that it creates what is termed here as a `truncated foundationalism', which restricts epistemic certainty to the logical form of scientific theories whilst having nothing to say about their substantive contents. Against this it is argued that critical realism, which Sayer advocates, produces a linguistic version of truncated foundationalism and that Popper's problem-solving philosophy, with its emphasis on developing knowledge through criticism, eschews (...) all forms of foundationalism and is better able to account for the development of substantive knowledge claims. Key Words: critical realism • fallibilism • logicism • post-positivism • truncated foundationalism. (shrink)

Walter of Bibbesworth’s late thirteenth-century versified treatise on French vocabulary relevant to the management of estates in Britain has the first extensive list of animal vocalizations in a European vernacular. Many of the Anglo-Norman French names for animals and their sounds are glossed in Middle English, inviting both diachronic and synchronic views of the capacity of these languages for onomatopoetic formation and reflection on the interest of these social and linguistic communities in zoosemiotics.

Burning questions.--The humanistic view of life.--Must empiricism be limited?--Truth-seekers and sooth-sayers.--Must pragmatists disagree?--Humanisms and humanism.--Has philosophy any message for the world?--Must philosophy be dull?--Is idealism incurably ambiguous?--The ultra-Gothic Kant.--Goethe and the Faustian way of salvation.--Plato's Phaedo and the ancient hope of immortality.--Plato's Republic.--How far does science need determinism?--The relativity of metaphysics.--Ethics, casuistry, and life.--Prophecy and destiny.--The crumbling British empire.--Can democracy survive?--The possibility of a United States of Europe.--Ant-men or super-men?--Fascisms and dictatorships.--Humanist logic and theory of knowledge.--Multi-valued logics - and others.--Data, (...) datives, and ablatives.--Are all men mortal?--How is "exactness" possible? (shrink)

Staying for an answer : the untidy process of groping for truth -- The same, only different -- The unity of truth and the plurality of truths -- Coherence, consistency, cogency, congruity, cohesiveness, &c. : remain calm! don't go overboard! -- Not cynicism, but synechism : lessons from classical pragmatism -- Science, economics, "vision" -- The integrity of science : what it means, why it matters -- Scientific secrecy and "spin" : the sad, sleazy story of the trials of remune (...) -- Truth and justice, inquiry and advocacy, science and law -- Trial and error : the Supreme Court's philosophy of science -- An epistemologist among the epidemiologists -- Fallibilism and faith, naturalism and the supernatural, science and religion -- The ideal of intellectual integrity, in life and literature -- After my own heart : Dorothy Sayers's feminism -- Worthwhile lives -- Why I am not an oxymoron -- Formal philosophy? : a plea for pluralism. (shrink)

During the twentieth century, bibliographic classification theory underwent a structural revolution. The first modern bibliographic classifications were top-down systems that started at the universe of knowledge and subdivided that universe downward to minute subclasses. After the invention of faceted classification by S.R. Ranganathan, the ideal was to build bottom-up classifications that started with the universe of concepts and built upward to larger and larger faceted classes. This ideal has not been achieved, and the two kinds of classification systems are not (...) mutually exclusive. This paper examines the process by which this structural revolution was accomplished by looking at the spread of facet theory after 1924 when Ranganathan attended the School of Librarianship, London, through selected classification textbooks that were published after that date. To this end, the paper examines the role of W.C.B. Sayers as a teacher and author of three editions of The Manual of Classification for Librarians and Bibliographers. Sayers influenced both Ranganathan and the various members of the Classification Research Group (CRG) who were his students. Further, the paper contrasts the methods of evaluating classification systems that arose between Sayers’s Canons of Classification in 1915–1916 and J. Mills’s A Modern Outline of Library Classification in 1960 in order to demonstrate the speed with which one kind of classificatory structure was overtaken by another. (shrink)

The concept of alienation is one of the most important and fruitful legacies of Hegel's social philosophy. It is strange therefore that Hegel's own account is widely rejected, not least by writers in those traditions which have taken up and developed the concept in the most influential ways: Marxism and existentialism.

For Marx, work is the fundamental and central activity in human life and, potentially at least, a ful lling and liberating activity. Although this view is implicit throughout Marx’s work, there is little explicit explanation or defence of it. The fullest treatment is in the account of ‘estranged labour’ [entfremdete Arbeit] in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts;1 but, even there, Marx does not set out his philosophical assumptions at length. For an understanding of these, one must turn to Hegel. Marx (...) is quite explicit about his debt to Hegel in this respect. (shrink)

T HE TOPIC OF THIS PAPER IS MARX’S ACCOUNT of the individual and society, and its roots in Hegel’s philosophy. In outline Marx’s views on this theme are well known, and so too is their connection with the theme of alienation which I shall describe. The Hegelian roots of these ideas are less well documented. Moreover, knowledge of the Hegelian context helps to clarify the philosophical..

The dialectical method, Marx Insisted, was at the basis of his account of society. In 1858, in a letter to Engels, he wrote: In the method of treatment the fact that by mere accident I again glanced through Hegel's Logic has been of great service to me... If there should ever be the time for such work again, I would greatly like to make accessible to the ordinary human intelligence, in two or three printer's sheets, what is rational in the (...) method which Hegel discovered.1 But he never did find the time for this work. As a result, Marx's dialectical method and the ways in which it draws on Hegel's philosophy remain among the most controversial and least well understood aspects of Marx's work. My purpose in this paper is to explain some of the basic presuppositions of this method and to bring out their significance for Marx's theories. I shall do so by focusing critically on G.A. Cohen's account of Marxism in Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. In this important and influential work, Cohen contrives to give an account of 2 Marxism in entirely non-dialectical – indeed, in anti-dialectical – terms. By criticising Cohen's views I will seek to show that the dialectical method is the necessary basis for an adequate theory of history and an indispensable part of Marx's thought. The major purpose of Cohen's book is to develop and defend a particular interpretation of historical materialism, the Marxist theory of historical development. Cohen claims that his account is an `old-fashioned' and a `traditional' one (p.x); and, indeed, in certain respects it is. For, in contrast to the tendency of much recent Marxist writing, Cohen strongly emphasises the materialistic and deterministic character of Marx's theory of history. He insists that the development of the productive forces is the primary motive force for historical change, and portrays Marxism as a form of technological determinism. However, there are various different forms of materialism, not all of them Marx's.. (shrink)

The fundamental principles of modern dialectical philosophy derive from Hegel. He sums them up as follows. ‘Everything is inherently contradictory ... Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality, it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity' (Hegel 1969, 439). In Hegel's philosophy these ideas form part of an all−embracing idealist system which portrays all phenomena ×− both natural and social ×− as subject to dialectic. Marx (...) inherits and transforms these ideas; but how precisely he does so has been a topic of much dispute within western Marxism. Marx himself describes his relation to Hegel with the aid of a couple of graphic but vague metaphors. He says that he turns Hegel's dialectic ‘right side up' in order to ‘discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell' (Marx 1961, 20). But how can this be done? Is there a ‘rational kernel' to Hegel's dialectic? If so, how can it be extracted? (shrink)

Marx conceives of labour as form giving activity. This is criticised for presupposing a ”productivist’ model of labour which regards work that creates a material product -- craft or industrial work -- as the paradigm for all work (Habermas, Benton, Arendt). Many traditional kinds of work do not seem to fit this picture, and new ”immaterial’ forms of labour (computer work, service work, etc.) have developed in postindustrial society which, it is argued, necessitate a fundamental revision of Marx’s approach (Hardt (...) and Negri). In this paper I argue that Marx’s theory must be understood in the context of Hegel’s philosophy. In that light, I show that the view that Marx has a ”productivist’ model of labour is mistaken. I criticise the concept of ”immaterial’ labour, and argue that Marx’s ideas continue to provide an illuminating framework for understanding work in modern society. (shrink)

Something about my book, Marxism and Human Nature,1 seems to have provoked Eagleton's hostility and clouded his mind, but it is difficult to figure out what. All that is evident from his review is that he has not read the book carefully or taken the trouble to understand it properly.

Why work? Most people say that they work only as a means to earn a living. This is also implied by the hedonist account of human nature which underlies utilitarianism and classical economics. It is argued in this paper that Marx’s concept of alienation involves a more satisfactory theory of human nature which is rooted in Hegel’s philosophy. According to this, we are productive beings and work is potentially a fulfilling activity. The fact that it is not experienced as such (...) is shown to be at the basis of Marx’s critique of capitalist society. (shrink)

Hiding behind the anodyne title of this book is a work of large scope and considerable interest for the Hegelian reader. Its main purpose is to vindicate a dialectical interpretation of Marxism in the context of recent analytical Marxism. The book falls into two parts. The first contains a detailed account of the dialectical philosophy implicit in Marx's work, and of its background in the philosophies of Kant and Hegel. The second shows how this account of Marx's approach can (...) be used to resolve some of the major issues in Marxist philosophy and to illuminate some of the central topics in Marxist social, political and economic thought. (shrink)

Scholarly interest in Marxist philosophy has fluctuated dramatically in the past fifty years. Before that, there was little scholarly work in Britain on Marxist philosophy or on Marxism more generally. In the nineteen fifties there were important contributions by economic theorists1 and social historians2 but academic discussion of Marx's philosophy or even of his political theory was minimal and mainly by critics.3 There were only a few philosophers who adhered to Marxism and these were mostly associated with the British Communist (...) Party. This was an orthodox party aligned with the Soviet Union in its political and theoretical standpoint.4 It was never a large political party, unlike those in some other European countries such as Italy or France, and had only a limited impact on British intellectual life. (shrink)

other approaches. The first of these is `material thinking' (das materielles Denken): `a contingent consciousness that is absorbed only in material stuff', a form of thought which is rooted in existing conditions and cannot see beyond them. At the `opposite extreme' is the transcendent critical method of `argumentation' (das Räsonieren), which involves `freedom from all content and a sense of vanity towards it'. The dialectical method, Hegel maintains, must `give up this freedom'. It refuses `to intrude into the immanent rhythm (...) of the Notion, either arbitrarily or with wisdom obtained from elsewhere'. Instead, it `sink[s] this freedom in the content, letting it move spontaneously of its own nature ... and then ... contemplate[s] this movement' (Hegel 1970 p. 56; Hegel 1977 pp. 35-6). (shrink)

Radical Philosophy was born in the aftermath of the student movement of the 1960s. At that time, philosophy in British universities was very conservative and traditional. Ordinary language philosophy, the analytical approach, and the empiricist tradition were absolutely dominant. However, the student movement of the 1960s had opened young people's minds to a whole new range of radical ideas and issues. These were dismissed as not worthy of study, and excluded from discussion in philosophy departments.

A fascinating and disturbing exhibition was on show at the British Museum this summer (‘The Shadow of the Guillotine: Britain and the French Revolution’, until 10 September). The exhibition was one of the main British bicentenary events. As the title suggests, however, it was not the usual celebration. Certainly, it differed completely from the big bicentenary exhibition in Paris (‘The French Revolution and Europe: 1789-99’, Grand Palais, until 26 July). There, the focus was on the Revolution’s positive achievements. In London (...) the emphasis was almost entirely negative. The French are reported to be angry about this; but it is we who should be upset. For the exhibition forces us to face up to some of the uglier aspects of our attitudes to France and Europe. (shrink)

It seems evident that class differences and class struggle continue to exist in socialist societies; that is to say, in societies like the Soviet Union and China, which have undergone socialist revolutions and in which private property in the means of production has been largely abolished. I shall not attempt to prove this proposition here; rather it will form my starting point. For my purpose in this paper is to show how the phenomenon of class in socialist society can be (...) understood and interpreted in Marxist terms; and, in particular, to explain and expound Mao Zedong's attempt to do so. For one of Mao's most striking and important contributions to Marxism was his recognition that `contradictions among the people' continue to exist in socialist society, and his attempt to explain them within the theoretical framework of historical materialism. Marx outlines his account of historical development in the following well-known words: It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - what is merely a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within the framework of which they have hitherto operated. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. At that point an era of social revolution begins. With the change in the economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed. (Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) It has been common to interpret these words as expressing a simple form of economic or even technological determinism which would rule out the very possibility of class divisions continuing to be a fundamental feature of socialist society. For, according to this account, a socialist society, by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, thereby abolishes the material and economic basis of class differences; and so classes are destined to die out in socialist society 2 as the forces of production are developed. According to this interpretation, which I shall call the `traditional' account, in Marx's account of historical development all the emphasis is placed upon the development of the productive forces.. (shrink)

In the `Preface' to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel outlines the dialectical method and contrasts it with two other approaches. On the one hand, there is `material thinking' (das materielles Denken): `a contingent consciousness that is absorbed only in material stuff', a form of thought which is rooted in existing conditions and cannot see beyond them. At the `opposite extreme' is the transcendent critical method of `argumentation' (das Räsonieren), which involves `freedom from all content and a sense of vanity towards (...) it'. The dialectical method must `give up this freedom'. It refuses `to intrude into the immanent rhythm of the Notion, either arbitrarily or with wisdom obtained from elsewhere'. Instead, it `sink[s] this freedom in the content, letting it move spontaneously of its own nature ... and then ... contemplate[s] this movement'. (shrink)

Plato Tom Angier -- Aristotle Timothy Chappell -- Stoics Jacob Klein -- Aquinas Vivian Boland O.P -- Hume Peter Millican -- Kant Ralph Walker -- Hegel Kenneth Westphal -- Marx Sean Sayers -- Mill Krister Bykvist -- Nietzsche Ken Gemes and Christoph Schuringa -- Macintyre David Solomon.

Illness narratives from patients with colorectal cancer commonly record patterns of change in social relationships that follow the diagnosis and treatment of the condition. We believe that these changes are best explained as a process of facework, which reflects losses of face on the part of the patient, and which assists in the creation of new faces that convey new senses of identity. Facework is familiar in the work by E. Goffman (1955) and has been extensively reworked since his time. (...) There is considerable agreement that face is a pervasive and universal constituent of all social interaction, and that it expresses the subject's view of the way he or she would like to be considered by others in interactions. Ho's concept of multiple faces negotiated dynamically according to social context is particularly useful in understanding the purpose and techniques of facework (D. Y.-F. Ho, 1994). We propose a model of face that uses dignity as the face-expression of personal attributes and acquisitions, and honor as the face-expression of systemic capabilities and attainments. This model can be used to examine individual variations in response and adaptation to colon cancer and its treatment, and it provides a useful means of teaching health care workers about the experience of illness. (shrink)

This paper discusses Marx’s concept of alienated (or estranged) labour, focusing mainly on his account in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. This concept is frequently taken to be a moral notion based on a concept of universal human nature. This view is criticized and it is argued that the concept of alienation should rather be interpreted in the light of Hegelian historical ideas. In Hegel, alienation is not a purely negative phenomenon; it is a necessary stage of human (...) development. Marx’s account of alienated labour should be understood in similar terms. It is not a merely subjective discontent with work; it is an objective and historically specific condition, a stage in the process of historical development. Marx usually regards it as specific to capitalism. The criticism of capitalism implied in the concept of alienation, it is argued, does not appeal to universal moral standards; it is historical and relative. Overcoming alienation must also be understood in historical terms, not as the realization of a universal ideal, but as the dialectical supersession of capitalist conditions of labour. Marx’s account of communism as the overcoming of alienation is explained in these terms. (shrink)

The concept of alienation: Hegelian themes in modern social thought -- Creative activity and alienation in Hegel and Marx -- The concept of labour -- The individual and society -- Freedom and the "realm of necessity" -- Alienation as a critical concept -- Private property and communism -- The division of labour and its overcoming -- Marx's concept of communism.