The struggle against liberalism in the totalitarian view of the state.--The concept of essence.--The affirmative character of culture.--Philosophy and critical theory.--On hedonism.--Industrialization and capitalism in the work of Max Weber.--Love mystified; a critique of Norman O. Brown and a reply to Herbert Marcuse by Norman O. Brown.--Aggressiveness in advanced industrial society.

This volume consists of a collection of articles published by Spencer in leading Victorian periodicals, such as The Westminster Review, The Fortnightly Review and Mind. The wide range of subjects explored includes science, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, psychology and politics.

The Study of Sociology, by English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist, Herbert Spencer, was originally published in 1873. Spencer was known for his contributions to evolutionary theory and for applying it outside of biology, to the fields of philosophy, psychology, and within sociology. In particular, this work is a survey of the foundations of sociology, by one of its founders. Within which he applies the idea of natural selection to the group survival and institutional structures.

_Foucault’s Law_ is the first book in almost fifteen years to address the question of Foucault’s position on law. Many readings of Foucault’s conception of law start from the proposition that he failed to consider the role of law in modernity, or indeed that he deliberately marginalized it. In canvassing a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Ben Golder and Peter Fitzpatrick rebut this argument. They argue that rather than marginalize law, Foucault develops a much more radical, nuanced and (...) coherent theory of law than his critics have acknowledged. For Golder and Fitzpatrick, Foucault’s law is not the contained creature of conventional accounts, but is uncontainable and illimitable. In their radical re-reading of Foucault, they show how Foucault outlines a concept of law which is not tied to any given form or subordinated to a particular source of power, but is critically oriented towards alterity, new possibilities and different ways of being. _Foucault’s Law_ is an important and original contribution to the ongoing debate on Foucault and law, engaging not only with Foucault’s diverse writings on law and legal theory, but also with the extensive interpretive literature on the topic. It will thus be of interest to students and scholars working in the fields of law and social theory, legal theory and law and philosophy, as well as to students of Foucault’s work generally. (shrink)

Critical counter-conducts -- Who is the subject of (Foucault's human) rights? -- The ambivalence of rights -- Rights between tactics and strategy.

Herbert Clark argues that language use is more than the sum of a speaker speaking and a listener listening. It is the joint action that emerges when speakers and listeners, writers and readers perform their individual actions in coordination, as ensembles. In contrast to work within the cognitive sciences, which has seen language use as an individual process, and to work within the social sciences, which has seen it as a social process, the author argues strongly that language use (...) embodies both individual and social processes. (shrink)

As dominant liberal conceptions of the relationship between rights and freedom maintain, freedom is a property of the individual human subject and rights are a mechanism for protecting that freedom—whether it be the freedom to speak, to associate, to practise a certain religion or cultural way of life, and so forth. Rights according to these kinds of accounts are protective of a certain zone of permitted or valorised conduct and they function either as, for example, a ‘side-constraint’ on the actions (...) of others or as a ‘trump’ over governmental or community goals. In such accounts, of course, the emphasis is placed upon the forms of power against which rights protect the individual, whether that be the trespasses of others or the overweening attentions of the state. Such accounts famously do not themselves take much account of the multiple ways in which rights also function as forms of power, often delimiting the courses of action that a putative rights-holder can take and affecting the manner of its exercise, indeed often in the very name of freedom itself. Of course, there is a sizeable critical literature which does address itself to these kinds of question, most notably from the radical traditions of Marxism and critical legal theory, which see rights in terms of the relations of production, consumption and exploitation that they establish between legal subjects. For various reasons, Foucault has not figured as prominently in critical discussions of rights. Here I do not propose to enter into debates surrounding Foucault’s engagement with, or failure to engage with, law as an object of study, nor with the emergent literature on Foucault’s deployments of rights, indeed even of human rights. Rather, what I want to do in this paper is to articulate and defend the view that through a reading of Foucault’s work, both on rights and on power relations more broadly, we can discern an understanding of the political ambivalence of rights. For Foucault (and for some of the post-Foucaultian scholars whose work I shall address, below), rights are both political tools for the contestation and alteration of mechanisms of power and simultaneously mechanisms of inscription, both disciplinary and governmental, which work to conduct those who rely upon them. Far from being an unproblematic tool for the protection of the subject’s freedom, rights emerge in this account as conflicted and ambivalent mechanisms. In the first part of this paper I develop a Foucaultian account of rights along these lines and then hope to illustrate it by reference to several examples, from the constitution of gender and cultural identity via rights to the figure of the refugee, whilst in the final part of the paper I make a return to the idea of freedom in Foucault’s work and link the view of rights developed herein to a certain conception of freedom in his work. (shrink)

This volume addresses the relationship between law and neoliberalism. Assembling work from established and emerging legal scholars, political theorists, philosophers, historians and sociologists from around the world, including the Americas, Australia, Europe and the United Kingdom, it addresses the conceptual, legal, and political relationships between liberal legality and neoliberal economics. More specifically, the book analyses the role that legality plays in the dominant economic force of our time: offering both a legal corrective to scholarship in economics and political economy that (...) has paid insufficient attention to legal ideas and, at the same time, a political economic corrective to legal scholarship which has only recently turned to theorizing neoliberalism. It will be of enormous interest to those working at the intersection of law and politics in our neoliberal age. (shrink)

The original publication of this volume drew Herbert into the epistemological debate with John Stuart Mill. It was to be of relevance to future psychologists, including William James, a pioneer of experimental psychology.

Alfredo Traps in Durrenmatt’s tale discovers that he has brought off, all by himself, a murder involving considerable ingenuity. The mock prosecutor in the tale demands the death penalty “as reward for a crime that merits admiration, astonishment, and respect.” Traps is deeply moved; indeed, he is exhilarated, and the whole of his life becomes more heroic, and, ironically, more precious. His defense attorney proceeds to argue that Traps was not only innocent but incapable of guilt, “a victim of the (...) age.” This defense Traps disavows with indignation and anger. He makes claim to the murder as his and demands the prescribed punishment—death. (shrink)

Bourne, H. R. F. A sketch of his life--Thornton, W. T. His career in the India House.--Spencer, H. His moral character.--Trimen, H. His botanical studies.--Minto, W. His place as a critic.--Levy, J. H. His work in philosophy.--Hunter, W. A. His studies in morals and jurisprudence.--Cairnes, J. E. His work in political economy.--Fawcett, H. His influence at the universities.--Fawcett, M. G. His influence as a practical politician.--Harrison, F. His relation to positivism.--Hunter, W. A. His position as a philosopher.

The author's primary aim is to help readers discover what is distinctive in Confucius & to learn what he can teach us.

Dewey’s book is the first systematic attempt at a pragmatistic logic (since the work of Peirce). Because of the ambiguity of the concept of pragmatism, the author rejects the concept in general. But, if one interprets pragmatism correctly, then this book is ‘through and through Pragmatistic’. What he understands as ‘correct’ will become clear in the following account. The book takes its subject matter far beyond the traditional works on logic. It is a material logic first in the sense that (...) the matter of logic (the ‘objects’, that with which logical thought has to do) is thoroughly included in the cycle of investigation, and logical ‘forms’ are discussed only in their constitutional connection with this .. (shrink)

The foundation of historical materialism.--A study on authority.--Sartre's existentialism.--Karl Popper and the problem of historical laws.--Freedom and the historical imperative.

Confusion surrounds Catholic teaching on the use of assisted nutrition and hydration, specifically the question of when, if ever, its refusal or removal is ethical. This paper focuses on two often-neglected considerations: the relationship between means and mechanism, and an assessment of proportionality of the mechanism from the patient’s perspective. The authors draw on two critical principles of Catholic moral teaching: only ordinary means are required, and proportionality is subject to the perspective of the patient, not just that of experts (...) or the culture. The mechanisms that provide food and water have distinct benefits and burdens. Their proportionality is properly subject to analysis by the patient or surrogate, who determines which mechanism is acceptable in the patient’s situation. (shrink)

When 16- and 17-year-old students are required to write a framed argumentative text which first supports position A and then supports an opposing position B, the familiarity of the debated topic seems to determine the “argumentative quality” of the texts produced. Indeed, the possibility of getting personally involved in the discourse leads to more effective writing strategies and to the use of typical marks of argumentation.

A series of experiments on children and adults were conducted to define the features and workings of argumentative discourse. Oral and written arguments were analyzed for the complexity of the argument support structure and the presence of typological argumentation markers (certainty modals, value judgments, etc.). Subjects were asked to assess the argumentativity of texts that did or did not contain typical argumentation markers.At about age ten, children can produce and recognize a ‘minimal argumentative structure,’ in which the speaker takes a (...) stance and supports it with text that derives its argumentativity from the presence of this stance). However, full mastery of the negotiation process, that involves acknowledgment of the opponent's stance (generally through the use of counterarguments) is not present before the ages of 15 to 16. The minimal argumentative structure continues to develop with age and gain complexity. Certain situations are more conductive to the production of elaborate argumentative discourse, such as a genuinely controversial topic with an unfamiliar adult addressee whose stance is not known and whose reaction is thus unpredictable. Here speakers produce complex arguments while still leaving room for negotiation.Overall, certain argumentation markers can be identified in all argumentative text. these markers can be used to characterize stages of development of argumentative discourse. A number of issues remain unexplored, including: What other (implicit...) devices do speakers use to convince their audience? Why is the capacity to put argumentation in writing acquired at such a late stage of development? (shrink)

Maks Del Mar’s book, Artefacts of Legal Inquiry: The Value of Imagination in Adjudication, proposes a rich and generative conception of judicial imagination. This essay reflects upon and then deplo...