Online research in philosophy

This is a collection of essays on themes of legal philosophy which have all been generated or affected by Hart's work. The topics covered include legal theory, responsibility, and enforcement of morals, with contributions from Ronald Dworkin, Rolf Sartorius, Neil MacCormach, David Lyons, Kent Greenawalt, Michael Moore, Joseph Raz, and C.L. Ten, among others.

Hacker, P. M. S. Hart's philosophy of law.--Baker, G. P. Defeasibility and meaning.--Dworkin, R. M. No right answer?-Lucas, J. R. The phenomenon of law.--Honoré, A. M. Real laws.--Summers, R. S. Naïve instrumentalism and the law.--Marshall, G. Positivism, adjudication, and democracy.--Cross, R. The House of Lords and the rules of precedent.--Kenny, A. J. P. Intention and mens rea in murder.--Mackie, J. L. The grounds of responsibility.--MacCormick, D. N. Rights in legislation.--Raz, J. Promises and obligations.--Foot, P. R. Approval and disapproval.--Finnis, J. (...) M. Scepticism, self-refutation, and the good of truth.--Barry, B. M. Justice between generations.--Feinberg, J. Harm and self-interest. (shrink)

In recent years there have been ever-growing concerns regarding environmental decline, causing some companies to focus on the implementation of environmentally friendly supply, production and distribution systems. Such concern may stem either from the set of beliefs and values of the company’s management or from certain pressure exerted by the market – consumers and institutions – in the belief that an environmentally respectful management policy will contribute to the transmission of a positive image of the company and its products. Sometimes, (...) however, ethics and market rules are not enough to deal with this situation and specific laws must be considered. This is the case when companies base their activity on the ‹ethics of self-interest’ concentrating their efforts on projecting an adequate image – e.g. environmental respect – rather than fundamentally behaving in environmentally respectful ways. This article, taking as reference the SME context, discusses the reasons for implementing environmentally friendly systems. Both ethics and business seem to be relevant and, therefore, a certain balance between market and interventionism seems to be necessary. (shrink)

Rehabilitation For Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a state-of-the-science review of the effectiveness of rehabilitation interventions.

This important collection of essays includes Professor Hart's first defense of legal positivism; his discussion of the distinctive teaching of American and Scandinavian jurisprudence; an examination of theories of basic human rights and the notion of "social solidarity," and essays on Jhering, Kelsen, Holmes, and Lon Fuller.

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, has had an enduring impact on academic and public debates about criminal responsibility and criminal punishment. Forty years on, its arguments are as powerful as ever. H.L.A. Hart offers an alternative to retributive thinking about criminal punishment that nevertheless preserves the central distinction between guilt and innocence. He also provides an account of criminal responsibility that links the distinction between guilt and innocence closely to the ideal of the rule of (...) law, and thereby attempts to by-pass unnerving debates about free will and determinism. Always engaged with live issues of law and public policy, Hart makes difficult philosophical puzzles accessible and immediate to a wide range of readers. -/- For this new edition, otherwise a reproduction of the original, John Gardner adds an introduction engaging critically with Hart's arguments, and explaining the continuing importance of Hart's ideas in spite of the intervening revival of retributive thinking in both academic and policy circles. -/- Unavailable for ten years, the new edition of Punishment and Responsibility makes available again the central text in the field for a new generation of academics, students and professionals engaged in criminal justice and penal policy. (shrink)

Dr Hart sets out to answer this question by showing that the issue is as much about the nature of causation as it is about the natures of mind and matter.

In response to the critique of his work by William Sweet, Hendrik Hart first offers some terminological clarifications. The important difference between ‘faith’ (trust in God) and ‘belief’ (our network of accepted understandings of things, expressed in concepts and propositions) is emphasized and his use of terms such as ‘religion,’ ‘knowledge,’ and ‘truth’ are explained. Hart then clarifies his approach to the Western philosophical tradition . He argues that Christian accommodation to philosophy and its idea of ‘reason’ as (...) ultimate arbiter have hindered proper understanding of biblical faith. He finds support for his critique within the philosophical tradition itself, particularly in the form of feminist and postmodern thought. In the end, he offers a vision of religious truth, encapsulated in Jesus’ proclamation, “I am the truth,” that is based upon the embodiment of God’s will and intent. (shrink)

Fourteen philosophers share their experience teaching Peirce to undergraduates in a variety of settings and a variety of courses. The latter include introductory philosophy courses as well as upper-level courses in American philosophy, philosophy of religion, logic, philosophy of science, medieval philosophy, semiotics, metaphysics, etc., and even an upper-level course devoted entirely to Peirce. The project originates in a session devoted to teaching Peirce held at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The session, (...) organized by <span class='Hi'>James</span> Campbell and Richard Hart, was co-sponsored by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. (shrink)

Edward Aloysius Pace, philosopher and educator, by J. H. Ryan.-Neo-scholastic philosophy in American Catholic culture, by C. A. Hart.- The significance of Suarez for a revival of scholasticism, by J. F. McCormick.- The new physics and scholasticism, by F. A. Walsh.- The new humanism and standards, by L. R. Ward.- The purpose of the state, by E. F. Murphy.- The concept of beauty in St. Thomas Aquinas, by G. B. Phelan.- The knowableness of God: its relation to the theory (...) of knowledge in St. Thomas, by Matthew Schumacher.- The modern idea of God, by F. J. Sheen.- The analysis of association of its equational constants, by T. V. Moore.- Bibliography (p. 224-225) - Character and body build in children, by Sister M. Rosa McDonough. Bibliography (p. 248-249) - The moral development of children, by Sister Mary.- Medieval education (700-900) by T. J. Shahan.- The need for a Catholic philosophy of education, by George Johnson. (shrink)

"Today our nation saw evil." - President George W. Bush, September 11th 2001 Evil! Like a zombie back from the grave, it has arisen--a word many of us had long ago relegated to Sunday sermons, video games and horror flicks. But of course, evil is not old fashioned, nor has it ever gone away, and may be as robust as ever. So what is evil? Does it exist? Veteran journalist Bill Hart tries to drag evil out of the darkness (...) and hold it up to the light. In doing so, he has written a very readable account of 5,000 years of philosophy, theology and human history as it reflects and refines its notion of evil. More than an explanation of why bad things happen, Evil: A Primer is a tour through the nether regions in search of what we really know. (shrink)

In his introduction to these closely linked essays Professor Hart offers both an exposition and a critical assessment of some central issues in jurisprudence and political theory. Some of the essays touch on themes to which little attention has been paid, such as Bentham's identification of the forms of mysitification protecting the law from criticism; his relation to Beccaria; and his conversion to democratic radicalism and a passionate admiration for the United States.

The Concept of Law is the most important and original work of legal philosophy written this century. First published in 1961, it is considered the masterpiece of H.L.A. Hart's enormous contribution to the study of jurisprudence and legal philosophy. Its elegant language and balanced arguments have sparked wide debate and unprecedented growth in the quantity and quality of scholarship in this area--much of it devoted to attacking or defending Hart's theories. Principal among Hart's critics is renowned lawyer (...) and political philosopher Ronald Dworkin who in the 1970s and 80s mounted a series of challenges to Hart's Concept of Law. It seemed that Hart let these challenges go unanswered until, after his death in 1992, his answer to Dworkin's criticism was discovered among his papers. In this valuable and long-awaited new edition Hart presents an Epilogue in which he answers Dworkin and some of his other most influential critics including Fuller and Finnis. Written with the same clarity and candor for which the first edition is famous, the Epilogue offers a sharper interpretation of Hart's own views, rebuffs the arguments of critics like Dworkin, and powerfully asserts that they have based their criticisms on a faulty understanding of Hart's work. Hart demonstrates that Dworkin's views are in fact strikingly similar to his own. In a final analysis, Hart's response leaves Dworkin's criticisms considerably weakened and his positions largely in question. Containing Hart's final and powerful response to Dworkin in addition to the revised text of the original Concept of Law, this thought-provoking and persuasively argued volume is essential reading for lawyers and philosophers throughout the world. (shrink)

This volume offers a selection of the most interesting and important work from recent years in the philosophy of mathematics, which has always been closely linked to, and has exerted a significant influence upon, the main stream of analytical philosophy. The issues discussed are of interest throughout philosophy, and no mathematical expertise is required of the reader. Contributors include W.V. Quine, W.D. Hart, Michael Dummett, Charles Parsons, Paul Benacerraf, Penelope Maddy, W.W. Tait, Hilary Putnam, George Boolos, Daniel Isaacson, Stewart (...) Shapiro, and Hartry Field. (shrink)

In this volume comprised of sixteen essays and rebuttals, author and professor of philosophy Susan Haack responds to her fellow philosophers and her critics on a wide range of topics that involve much more than the esoteric nature of contemporary philosophy. Instead, as is Haack's forte, she asserts her views on important current issues such as how scientists conduct their work, the ethics of affirmative action and the pitfalls of preferential hiring, and how the distorted reality the postmodern thinkers (...) have presented has corrupted legal thinking. Her charge is to bring clarity, precision, integrity, and most of all, practicality to her field of study. (shrink)

In his important and engaging book LEGALITY, Scott Shapiro seeks to provide the motivation for the development of his own elaborate account of law by undertaking a critique of H.L.A. Hart’s jurisprudential theory. Hart maintained that every legal system is underlain by a Rule of Recognition through which the officials of the system identify the norms that belong to the system as laws. Shapiro argues that Hart’s remarks on the Rule of Recognition are confused and that his (...) model of law ─ though commendably more sophisticated than any model propounded by earlier legal positivists ─ is consequently untenable. Having thus endeavored to establish that Hart’s exposition of the nature of legality is unsustainable, Shapiro contends that a new approach is vital for progress in the philosophy of law. With his lengthy presentation of his own Planning Theory of Law, he aspires to pioneer just such an approach. -/- Except for a very terse observation in the final main section, this article will not directly assess the strengths and shortcomings of Shapiro’s piquant Planning Theory. Instead, I will defend Hart against Shapiro’s charges and will thereby undermine the motivation for the development of the Planning Theory. Nearly all the objections to Hart’s work posed by Shapiro are inapposite, or so this article will aim to show. (shrink)

These are for entries for the forthcoming _Rawls Lexicon_, edited by Jon Mandle and David Reidy, on H.L.A. Hart, Charles Beitz, Sovereignty, and Citizen.

Forthcoming in Kramer et al (eds), The Legacy of H.L.A. Hart. Posted 8 February 2008.

[Susan Hurley] I argue that the aim to neutralize the influence of luck on distribution cannot provide a basis for egalitarianism: it can neither specify nor justify an egalitarian distribution. Luck and responsibility can play a role in determining what justice requires to be redistributed, but from this we cannot derive how to distribute: we cannot derive a pattern of distribution from the 'currency' of distributive justice. I argue that the contrary view faces a dilemma, according to whether it (...) understands luck in interpersonal or counterfactual terms. /// [Richard J. Arneson] Does it make sense to hold that, if it is bad that some people are worse off than others, it is worse if those who are worse off come to be so through sheer bad luck that it is beyond their power to control? In her contribution to this symposium, Susan Hurley cautions against a closely related fallacy: from the fact that people have come to an unequal condition through unchosen bad luck, it does not follow that, if we aim to undo the influence of unchosen luck, we ought to institute equality of condition. Forswearing the fallacy that Hurley analyses is compatible with answering the question affirmatively, and more generally with holding that principles of distributive justice should be sensitive to the distinction between chosen and unchosen bad luck. This essay explores how this might be done. (shrink)

A review which, among other criticisms of Archer's book, discusses some philosophical problems concerning talk of the "self" in the human sciences.

For the past four decades, Anglo-American legal philosophy has been preoccupied – some might say obsessed – with something called the “Hart-Dworkin” debate. Since the appearance in 1967 of “The Model of Rules I,” Ronald Dworkin’s seminal critique of H.L.A. Hart’s theory of legal positivism, countless books and articles have been written either defending Hart against Dworkin’s objections or defending Dworkin against Hart’s defenders. My purpose in this essay is not to declare an ultimate victor; rather (...) it is to identify precisely the core issue around which the debate is organized. Is the Hart-Dworkin debate, for example, about whether the law contains principles, as well as rules? Or does it concern whether judges have discretion in hard cases? Is it about the proper way to interpret legal texts in the American legal system? Or is it about the very possibility of conceptual jurisprudence? Although trying to capture the essence of a philosophical debate can be tricky, I think that there is an important unity to the Hart-Dworkin debate that can be described in a relatively straightforward manner. I suggest that the debate is organized around one of the most profound issues in the philosophy of law, namely, the relation between legality and morality. Dworkin’s basic strategy throughout the course of the debate has been to argue that, in one form or another, legality is ultimately determined not by social facts alone, but by moral facts as well. This contention directly challenges, and threatens to undermine, the positivist picture about the nature of law, in which legality is never determined by morality, but solely by social practice. As one might expect, the response by Hart and his followers has been to argue that this dependence of legality on morality is either merely apparent or does not, in fact, undermine the social foundations of law. The Hart-Dworkin debate, I also try to show, is not a monolithic entity. In the second half of the paper, I describe how Dworkin modified his critique to circumvent the responses of Hart’s followers, thereby inaugurating a new phase in the debate. Virtually no attention, however, has been paid to this latter challenge, which is especially surprising given that none of the previous positivistic defenses are helpful against it. I then sketch out a possible response positivists might offer to this extremely powerful objection. (shrink)

The famous mid-20th century debate between Patrick Devlin and Herbert Hart about the relationship between law and morality addressed the limits of the criminal law in the context of a proposal by the Wolfenden Committee to decriminalize male homosexual activity in private. The original exchanges and subsequent contributions to the debate have been significantly constrained by the terms in which the debate was framed: a focus on criminal law in general and sexual offences in particular; a preoccupation with the (...) so-called “harm principle,” a sharp delineation of the realms of law and morality, and a static conception of the relationship between them. This article explores the limitations imposed by these various starting-points and argues for a holistic and symbiotic understanding of the relationship between law and morality. (shrink)

HLA Hart has sometimes been associated with the false proposition that there is 'no necessary connection between law and morality'. Nigel Simmonds is the latest critic to make the association. He offers an 'ironic' interpretation of a famous passage in Hart's The Concept of Law in which the proposition is apparently rejected as false by Hart. In this paper I explain why, even if Simmonds's ironic interpretation is tenable, it does not associate Hart with the proposition (...) in the way that Simmonds believes that it does. More affirmatively, I show that among several necessary connections between law and morality that Hart defends, there is an important indirect one that runs from law to legality, from legality to justice, and from justice to morality. (shrink)

H. L. A. Hart and the "Open Texture" of Language tries to clarify the writings of both Hart and Friedrich Waismann on "open texture". In Waismann's work, "open texture" referred to the potential vagueness of words under extreme (hypothetical) circumstances. Hart's use of the term was quite different, and his work has been misunderstood because those differences were underestimated. Hart should not be read as basing his argument for judicial discretion on the nature of language; primarily, (...) he was putting forward a policy argument for why rules should be applied in a way which would require that discretion. (shrink)

Hart identified a utilitarian tradition in jurisprudence, which he associated with Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. This tradition consisted in three doctrines: the separation of law and morals; the analysis of legal concepts; and the imperative theory of law. I argue, contrary to Hart, that Bentham did not adopt a 'positivist' conception of law whether understood in terms of the separation of legal theory and morality or in terms of the separation of law and morals. Misinterpreting Bentham's approach (...) to the analysis of language, Hart was wrong to assume that Bentham's jurisprudential project was a precursor to his own attempt to provide a morally neutral description of a legal system. It was this assumption that led to mistakes in Hart's editing of Of Laws in General. Bentham's utilitarian theory of law should be recognised as a distinct alternative to Common Law and Natural Law theories. (shrink)

HLA Hart and Joseph Raz are usually interpreted as being fundamentally opposed to Lon Fuller’s argument in The Morality of Law that the principles of the rule of law are of moral value. Hart and Raz are thought to make the ‘instrumental objection’, which says that these principles are of no moral value because they are actually principles derived from reflection on how to best allow the law to guide behaviour. Recently, many theorists have come to Fuller’s defence (...) against Hart and Raz, refuting the ‘instrumental objection’ and affirming the non-instrumental moral value of conformity to the principles of legality. This article argues that although this moral value should be affirmed, the orthodox view is incorrect, because Hart and Raz never understood their arguments about the instrumental or ‘purposive’ value of the principles of legality as denials of their moral value, as a close reading of their work shows. (shrink)

Abstract. The paper begins by challenging Hart's argument aimed to show that sanctions are not part of the concept of law. It shows that in the "minimal" legal system as understood by Hart, sanctions may be required for keeping the legal system efficacious. I then draw a methodological conclusion from this argument, which challenges the view of Hart (and his followers) that legal philosophy should aim at discovering some general, politically neutral, conceptual truths about law. Instead, the (...) aim should be to discover the values because of which certain things in the world are classified as law and others as non-law. Focusing on those would give us a more insight to the roles law plays in society, as well as more illuminating answers to traditional jurisprudential questions like the status of law in evil regimes. (shrink)

Susan Haack presents a striking and appealing figure in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. In spite of British birth and education, she appears to bridge the gap between analytic philosophy and American pragmatism, with its more diverse influences and sources. Well known for her writings in the philosophy of logic and epistemology, she fuses something of the hard-headed debunking style of a Bertrand Russell with a lively interest in Peirce, James and Dewey.

Consider Susan Hurley's depiction of mainstream views of the mind: "The mind is a kind of sandwich, and cognition is the filling" (p. 401). This particular sandwich (with perception as the bottom loaf and action as the top loaf) tastes foul to Hurley, who devotes most of "Consciousness in Action" to a systematic and sometimes extraordinarily detailed critique of what has otherwise been dubbed "classical" models of the mind. This critique then provides the basis for her alternative proposal, in (...) which perception, action and environment are deeply intertwined. (shrink)

Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why it Matters Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s10677-011-9321-8 Authors Simon Derpmann, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Philosophisches Seminar, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster, Germany Journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Online ISSN 1572-8447 Print ISSN 1386-2820.

Colemanand Shapiro have recently advanced a second at- tempt to reconcile Hart’s practice theory of rules and the idea of the normativity of law; i.e., the idea that legal rules qua social rules give reasons for actions and, in some circumstances create and impose duties and obligations. Their argumentative strategy is to resort to elements in Bratman’s work on shared agency and planning, though they introduce important and substantive modifications to Bratman’s own explanation. Bratman describes his own theory as (...) a modest theory of the will where the notion of planning plays a fundamental role. Both Shapiro’s and Coleman’s application of Bratman’s planning theory of agency to an authority structure such as law is impressive, but a number of objections can be levelled, with the intention of grasping both the nature of authority structures and the normativity of law. Although I have referred to Shapiro’s and Coleman’s applica- tions as being similar to one another, the differences are sub- stantive and important. I will scrutinise both Shapiro’s and Coleman’s explanations of ‘shared agency’ and discuss the objections that can be raised against each application. (shrink)

In this paper I defend a liberal theory about how legal rules can and ought to be interpreted. The theory emerges from a critical examination of H. L. A. Hart's influential views on the limited but unavoidable indeterminacy of legal rules. I begin with a brief sketch of Hart's early theory (as it is traditionally understood) offering various suggestions as to how it might usefully be modified. Next, several possible objections to my modifications are sketched and criticized. Finally, (...) reasons are provided for supposing that the modified theory may well represent Hart's current position. (shrink)

Introduction HLA Hart: A biographical sketch Jurisprudence is the theoretical study of a practical subject. Its object is to achieve a systematic and ...

It has often been noted that Margaret Cavendish discusses God in her writings on natural philosophy far more than one might think she ought to given her explicit claim that a study of God belongs to theology which is to be kept strictly separate from studies in natural philosophy. In this article, I examine one way in which God enters substantially into her natural philosophy, namely the role he plays in her particular version of teleology. I conclude that, while (...) Cavendish has some resources with which to partially alleviate this tension, she is nonetheless left with a significant difficulty. (shrink)

According to Margaret Cavendish the entire natural world is essentially rational such that everything thinks in some way or another. In this paper, I examine why Cavendish would believe that the natural world is ubiquitously rational, arguing against the usual account, which holds that she does so in order to account for the orderly production of very complex phenomena (e.g. living beings) given the limits of the mechanical philosophy. Rather, I argue, she attributes ubiquitous rationality to the natural world (...) in order to ground a theory of the ubiquitous freedom of nature, which in turn accounts for both the world's orderly and disorderly behavior. (shrink)

Susan Stebbing’s paper “Logical Positivism and Analysis” (March 1933) was unusually critical of Wittgenstein. It put up a sharp opposition between Cambridge analytic philosophy of Moore and Russell and the positivist philosophy of the Vienna Circle to which she included Wittgenstein from 1929–32. Above all, positivists were interested in analyzing language, analytic philosophers in analyzing facts. Moreover, whereas analytic philosophers were engaged in directional analysis which seeks to illuminate the multiplicity of the analyzed facts, positivists aimed at final analysis (...) which “proves” that there are simples. Stebbing’s paper urged Wittgenstein to recast his philosophy and 1933 abandon those components of it that linked him to the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

It has now been more than 50 years since H. L. A Hart and Lord Patrick Devlin first squared off in perhaps the most celebrated jurisprudential debate of the twentieth-century (1959–1967). The central issue in that dispute—whether the state may criminalize immoral behavior as such—continues to be debated today, but in a vastly changed legal landscape. In this article I take a fresh look at the Hart-Devlin debate in the light of five decades of social and legal changes.

What is a social rule? This paper first notes three important problems for H.L.A. Hart's famous answer in the Concept of Law. An alternative account that avoids the problems is then sketched. It is less individualistic than Hart's and related accounts. This alternative account can explain a phenomenon observed but downplayed by Hart: the parties to a social rule feel that they are in some sense 'bound' to conform to it.

Hart and Honoré contend, in their book Causation in the Law, that causal appraisals in everyday life and in the law can be made, with justifiable confidence, without appealing to relevant general laws; that in order to grasp the workings of causal notions in everyday life and the law, it is sufficient to note that causes are events which interfere with or intervene in the course of events which would normally have taken place. This thesis is criticized on the (...) ground that what purport to be purely causal appraisals are hopelessly vulnerable to moral considerations, especially when such appraisals are presumed to take place in complete independence of scientific theory. (shrink)

Until recently, little was known of H.L.A. Hart’s private life. That has now changed with the publication of Nicola Lacey’s A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream. Drawing on Hart’s notebooks and correspondence, Lacey paints an illuminating portrait of Hart, which reveals that despite his public success he struggled with internal perplexities, including his sexual orientation, Jewish identity, intellectual insecurity, and unconventional marriage. Yet, as critics have noted, the connection between these revelations (...) and the development of Hart’s ideas is unclear. Moreover, one cannot help but wonder whether by focusing on these aspects of Hart’s personal life, Lacey has missed an opportunity to explore certain basic questions about his jurisprudence and its link to wider intellectual currents. For example, linguistics, psychology, and the philosophy of language and mind are much different today than they were in the 1940s and 1950s, yet Lacey does not discuss how such familiar events as the overthrow of logical positivism, the demise of behaviorism, the rise of generative linguistics, or the broader cognitive revolution of which they were a part actually impacted Hart or should influence our understanding of his legacy. Surprisingly, none of these developments are taken up in this book, leading one to ponder the significance of their absence. (shrink)

Forthright and wryly humorous, philosopher Susan Haack deploys her penetrating analytic skills on some of the most highly charged cultural and social debates of recent years. Relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action, pragmatisms old and new, science, literature, the future of the academy and of philosophy itself—all come under her keen scrutiny in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate.

Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, ed. 2008. Human genetic biobanks in Asia: Politics of trust and scientific advancement Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11673-010-9234-6 Authors Darryl Macer, UNESCO Bangkok Regional Adviser in Social and Human Sciences for Asia and the Pacific, Regional Unit for Social and Human Sciences in Asia and the Pacific (RUSHSAP) 920 Sukhumvit Road, Prakanong Bangkok 10110 Thailand Journal Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Online ISSN 1872-4353 Print ISSN 1176-7529 Journal Volume Volume 7 Journal Issue Volume 7, Number 2.

Some scholars have argued that Margaret Cavendish was ambivalent about women's roles and capabilities, for she seems sometimes to hold that women are naturally inferior to men, but sometimes that this inferiority is due to inferior education. I argue that attention to Cavendish's natural philosophy can illuminate her views on gender. In section II I consider the implications of Cavendish's natural philosophy for her views on male and female nature, arguing that Cavendish thought that such natures were not fixed. (...) However, I argue that although Cavendish thought women needed to be better educated, and could change if they had such an education, she also thought their education should reinforce the feminine virtues. Section III examines Cavendish's notorious “Preface to the Reader” (from The Worlds Olio), where Cavendish claims that women are naturally inferior in strength and intelligence to men. Section IV addresses another notorious Cavendish text, “Female Orations,” arguing that its message is similar to that of the “Preface to the Reader.” Nonetheless, although Cavendish held conventional views about male and female nature and appropriate gender roles, she also recognized how social institutions could limit women's freedom; section V explores the complexities of Cavendish's critique of one such institution, patriarchal marriage. (shrink)

: Naturalized moral epistemology eschews practices of assuming to know a priori the nature of situations and experiences that require moral deliberation. Thus it promises to close a gap between formal ethical theories and circumstances where people need guidelines for action. Yet according experience so central a place in inquiry risks "naturalizing" it, treating it as incontestable, separating its moral and political dimensions. This essay discusses these issues with reference to Margaret Walker's Moral understandings.

Margaret Fuller's name today often appears when the Transcendentalists in general are mentioned-we may hear of her in the course of writing on Emerson, or Bronson Alcott-but not nearly enough work about Margaret herself, her thought, and her remarkable childhood has been done in recent times.1 Interestingly enough, her name surfaces in connection with some theorizing done about same-sex relationships, but the great import of Fuller's editing of "The Dial," a periodical of the time, her authoring of Woman (...) in the Nineteenth Century, and her life of adventure and rebellion has seldom been articulated.2A virtual child prodigy, Margaret Fuller was educated at home in a way reminiscent of the sort of education given to .. (shrink)

Susan James, in her recent work Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon 1997), prefaces her investigation of emotions in the seventeenth century with a series of remarks about the earlier career of the emotions, in particular their treatment in the Middle Ages. In brief, she takes the ‘new’ analyses of the passions put forward in the seventeenth century to be a philosophical sideshow to the main event: the dethronement of Aristotelian natural philosophy and metaphysics (22). (...) She describes the consequences for psychology as follows.. (shrink)

Hart's "Ascription of Responsibility and Rights" is where we find perhaps the first clear pronouncement of defeasibility and the technical introduction of the term. The paper has been criticised, disavowed, and never quite fully redeemed. Its lurid history is now being used as an excuse for dismissing the importance of defeasibility.

According to the received opinion there is a theoretical incompatibility between Herbert Hart's The Concept of Law and Alf Ross's On Law and Justice, and, according to the received opinion, it stems above all from Hart's emphasis on the internal point of view. The present paper argues that this reading is mistaken. The Concept of Law does not go beyond On Law and Justice in so far as both present arguments to the effect that law is based on (...) a shared understanding between participants in a project perceived by every participant to be a project in common. The paper demonstrates that there are substantive parallels between Hart's combination of “acceptance” or “acknowledgement” and a “critical reflective attitude” and Ross's combination of “motivation” or “feeling” and a “coherent whole of meaning and motivation.” The main conclusion is that the views of norms and normativity put forward in The Concept of Law and On Law and Justice are very close in essential respects, and, more specifically, that the two works are at root identical in their representation of the basis of normativity in reality. (shrink)

Naturalized moral epistemology eschews practices of assuming to know a priori the nature of situations and experiences that require moral deliberation. Thus it promises to close a gap between formal ethical theories and circumstances where people need guidelines for action. Yet according experience so central a place in inquiry risks "naturalizing" it, treating it as incontestable, separating its moral and political dimensions. This essay discusses these issues with reference to Margaret Walker's Moral understandings.

In a way that is rarely even attempted, and even more rarely actually pulled off, Susan Hurley, in her book Consciousness in Action, brings scientific ideas into contact with mainstream philosophy. It is not at all unusual for empirical results from cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience to be raised in discussion of issues in philosophy of science and philosophy of mind--Dennett and the Churchlands, for example, have been doing so for years. But Hurley attempts to draw empirical results even (...) closer to the center of philosophy, using them to make points about metaphysics and epistemology more broadly, especially PutnamÂ’s Twin Earth cases. We are very fond of Hurley's book, and we agree with nearly all of her conclusions. We do think, though, that there are two important cases where Hurley has misunderstood scientific work. First, we think she misunderstand dynamical systems theory; second, we think her criticism of ecological psychology is misplaced. In neither case do these misunderstandings derail HurleyÂ’s overall project--indeed, the former of them makes her conclusions all the more plausible. We consider them in order. (shrink)

Reviewing "The Ethics of Gender, Feminism and Christian Ethics," and "The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology," the author suggests that Susan Parsons responds to questions postmodernism has posed to both feminism and Christian ethics by using insights gained from various accounts of the moral subject found in feminist philosophy, ethics, and theology. Hesitant to embrace postmodernism's critique of the possibility of ethics, Parsons redefines ethics by establishing a moral point of view within discursive communities. Yet in her brief treatment (...) of Emmanuel Levinas, Parsons does not explore the postmodern option he offers feminists: an understanding of moral responsibility that can be critical of ethics. Parsons also ignores some feminist perspectives in the physical and natural sciences, thereby missing valuable insights of feminists who insist upon the materiality of the body. (shrink)

This book is the product of a major British Academy Symposium held in 2007 to mark the centenary of the birth of H.L.A. Hart, the most important legal philosopher and one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century. -/- The book brings together contributions from seventeen of the world's foremost legal and political philosophers who explore the many subjects in which Hart produced influential work. Each essay engages in an original analysis of philosophical problems that (...) were tackled by Hart, some essays including extended critical discussions of his major works: The Concept of Law, Punishment and Responsibility, Causation in the Law and Law, Liberty and Morality. All the main topics of Hart's philosophical writings are featured: general jurisprudence and legal positivism; criminal responsibility and punishment; theories of rights; toleration and liberty; theories of justice; and causation in the law. (shrink)

The late Susan Moller Okin was a leading political theorist whose scholarship integrated political philosophy and issues of gender, the family, and culture. Okin argued that liberalism, properly understood as a theory opposed to social hierarchies and supportive of individual freedom and equality, provided the tools for criticizing the substantial and systematic inequalities between men and women. Her thought was deeply informed by a feminist view that theories of justice must apply equally to women as men, and she was (...) deeply engaged in showing how many past and present political theories failed to do this. She sought to rehabilitate political theories--particularly that of liberal egalitarianism, in such a way as to accommodate the equality of the sexes, and with an eye toward improving the condition of women and families in a world of massive gender inequalities. In her lifetime Okin was widely respected as a scholar whose engagement went well beyond the world of theory, and her premature death in 2004 was considered by many a major blow to progressive political thought and women's interests around the world. -/- This volume stems from a conference on Okin, and contains articles by some of the top feminist and political philosophers working today. They are organized around a set of themes central to Okin's work, namely liberal theory, gender and the family, feminist and cultural differences, and global justice. Included are major figures such as Joshua Cohen, David Miller, Cass Sunstein, Alison Jaggar, and Iris Marion Young, among others. Their aim is not to celebrate Okin's work, but to constructively engage with it and further its goals. (shrink)

H. L. A. Hart, in his classic book Law, Liberty, and Morality, is unsuccessful in arguing that James Fitzjames Stephen’s observations about the role of vice in criminal sentencing have no relevance to a more general defense of legal moralism. He does, however, have a very important insight about the special significance of sexual liberty.

ln a number of recent essays, Hendrik Hart has elaborated an account of the nature and function of religious belief that, he believes, is post-modern in inspiration and anti-foundationalist in character. ln this paper, I reconstruct what I take to be Hart’s central claims. While Hart does remind us of some important aspects of the nature of religious belief---aspects often overlooked by many critics---l suggest that there are several problems in the account he provides, that there are (...) tensions between his view of religious belief and his claims about how it can function, and that it is not clear that he ultimately avoids adopting a variant of the foundationalism he explicitly rejects. (shrink)

This article explores the pedagogical significance of non-static and hybrid utopian readings and writings by focusing on Margaret Cavendish's educationally-philosophically neglected female utopia The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World. It questions the exaggerated, inflated and exclusivist emphasis on the pedagogical benefits of homologous spatial signifiers of entry into utopia and return to home and draws examples of utopian passages across genres, texts, minds and worlds from the writing of Cavendish. Such passages can be read as (...) performative ways of hybridising and reinventing both the utopian topos and the traveller's identity. New space is thus opened for learning as imitation and re-writing rather than as a return to, or manifestation of, an original self. Finally, new performative means for fashioning pedagogical authorship, nurturing the other's learning, and fashioning intellectual growth are promoted. Such means comprise mutuality of pedagogical initiatives, improvisation through imitation and supplementarity of cooperative writing. (shrink)

The Postscript to 'The Concept of Law' contains Herbert Hart's only sustained and considered response to the objections made by his distinguished critic, Ronald Dworkin. In this extraordinary collection, an array of leading legal philosophers evaluates the success of Hart's response to Dworkin.

Professor Margaret Jo Osler of the University of Calgary, an historian of early modern science and philosophy (and a member of the Board of Directors of the Journal of the History of Philosophy since 2002) died on September 15, 2010. Born on November 27, 1942, she proudly proclaimed herself to be a "red diaper baby" and particularly delighted in telling her right-wing friends how her middle name was her parents' homage to Stalin. An energetic scholar with a vibrant and (...) positive personality, Maggie, as everyone who worked with her came to call her, never considered retirement and was actively working right up to her diagnosis with pancreatic cancer in early July, 2010.After graduating from Swarthmore College in .. (shrink)

Questions about the relation between mind and world have long occupied philosophers of mind. In _Consciousness in Action_ Susan Hurley invites us to adopt a ninety-degree shift and consider the relation between perception and action. The central theme of the book is an attack on what Hurley dubs the _Input-Output Picture_ of perception and actionthe picture of perceptions as sensory inputs to the cognitive system and intentions as motor outputs from it, with the mind occupying the buffer zone in (...) between. Hurley argues that this picture confuses the personal level of normatively constrained mental contents and the subpersonal level of causal processes sustaining the mind. The notions of perception and action belong to the former, those of input and output to the latter. In place of the Input-Output picture, Hurley proposes a _Two-level _ _Interdependence View_. At the subpersonal level, she points out, there are not only one-way processes from input to output but also a host of feedback loops from output to inputsome internal to the central nervous system, some of wider orbit, involving proprioception, for example, or visual feedback on movement. The system as a whole can be seen as a _dynamical singularity_a tangle of sensorimotor feedback loops centred on the organism but extending out into the world beyond. The processes at this level are the vehicles of perceptions and actions, but, Hurley insists, the two levels cannot be mapped onto each other in a simple way. Changes on the output side may affect the content of perceptions, and changes on the input side may affect that of intentions. Perception and intention are in this way _interdependent_. The point here is not the uncontroversial one that perceptions and intentions can _cause_ changes in each other. That would be compatible with the Input-Output Picture. The dependency, in Hurleys view, is not instrumental, but _constitutive_: the contents of perceptions and intentions are each constituted by processes involving both inputs and outputs.. (shrink)

The article is a commentary to Susan Haack’s The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth. It consists of two parts. In the first one some doubts about Haack’s conception of partiality of truth are formulated. However, Haack’s concept of truth is treated as one of the assumptions and not brought up for discussion. In the second part of the article a simple typology of possible sources of truth’s partiality in science is presented. The list includes deliberate and unintentional (...) omissions, misleading, lack of scientific interest, unattainability, and epistemological problems with truth and realism. (shrink)

The Post-Modern Reader edited by Charles Jencks An Anthology of a World Movement Post-Modernism has been debated, attacked, and defended for a generation, but only in the last few years has it come into focus as a coherent way of thought embracing all areas of culture. This is the first anthology that presents the synthesising trend in all its diversity, a convergence in architecture and literature, film and cultural theory, sociology, feminism and theology, science and economics. It is however, a (...) synthesis with a difference; it is one which stresses a contested pluralism, the ‘dialogic' that underlies the growth of sciences as well as the development of other art forms such as the novel. Some of the key historical texts are reprinted in part - those of Daniel Bell on the post-industrial society and Jean-François Lyotard on the post-modern condition. The new cultural logic of contested pluralism is analysed in seminal papers by Andreas Huyssen and Jim Collins. The fundamental ideas on post-modern literature are defined by Umberto Eco, John Barth and David Lodge and the theories they present challenge the notion of post-modernism as an ultra avant-garde movement and the expression of a consumer society. New Cultural Theory Late Modernism Literature, Art, Architecture and Film Sociology, Politics and Geography Feminism Science and Religion Tito Arecchi, John Barth, Jean Baudrillard, Daniel Bell, Charles Birch, David Bohm, Jim Collins, Norman K Denzin, Umberto Eco, Edward Goldsmith, David Ray Griffin, Jürgen Habermas, David Harvey, Ihab Hassan, Linda Hutcheon, Andreas Huyssen, Charles Jencks, Heinrich Klotz, Hans Küng, David Lodge, Jean-François Lyotard, Robin Murray, Craig Owens, Paolo Portoghesi, Margaret Rose, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Edward W Soja. (shrink)

Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was born in Yorkshire in 1907 to second generation Jewish immigrants. Having won a scholarship to Oxford University, he went on to become the most famous legal philosopher of the twentieth century. -/- From 1932-40 H.L.A Hart practised as a barrister in London. He was pronounced physically unfit for military service in 1940, and was recruited by MI5, where he worked until 1945. During his time at the Bar he had continued to study philosophy (...) and at M15 his interest was further stimulated by his philosopher colleagues in M16, Stuart Hampshire and Gilbert Ryle. After the war, Hart returned to Oxford to take up a philosophy fellowship, later to become Professor of Jurisprudence. -/- H.L.A Hart single-handedly reinvented the philosophy of law and influenced the nation's thinking in the 1960s on abortion, the legalization of homosexuality, and on capital punishment. Hart's approach to legal philosophy was at once disarmingly simple and breathtakingly ambitious, combining as it did the insights of Austin and Bentham and the new linguistic philosophy of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He sought to elucidate a concept of law which would be of relevance to all forms of law, wherever or whenever they arose: his bestselling book, The Concept of Law, has sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide. -/- In 1941, he married Jenifer Williams (a high-ranking civil servant, later an Oxford academic) with whom he had four children. Their relationship was an enduring if unconventional one. In the early 1950s, Jenifer was rumoured to be having a long-standing affair with Isaiah Berlin, one of Hart's closest friends. She was also, falsely, accused by the Sunday Times of having been a Russian spy, an allegation which was all the more scandalous given Hart's position at MI5 during the War. -/- Nicola Lacey draws on Hart's previously unpublished diaries and letters to reveal a complex inner life. Outwardly successful, Hart was in fact tormented by doubts about his intellectual abilities, his sexual identity and his capacity to form close relationships. Her biography also sheds fascinating light on the origins of his ideas, and assesses his overall contribution. Above all, it chronicles of a life which had a depth ands impact far greater than many of Hart's readers have realized. (shrink)