Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought, by John Gray. New York and London: Routledge, 1993. 358 pp. $45Beyond the New Right: Markets, Government and the Common Environment, by John Gray.New York and London: Routledge, 1993. 195 pp. $34.50.

These two volumes complete this very ambitious trilogy, begun with Rights--The New Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. Volume 2 juxtaposes the major philosophies of history, which are said to occupy the crucial terrain between politics and "pure" philosophy. The chapter-structure of the book parallels exactly the logic of the argument being made.

McDonald's thesis is that the chief villain in the unfolding tragedy of Canada is Pierre Elliott Trudeau and, to a lesser extent, his predecessor Lester B. Pearson. Goldwin Smith's well-known late-19th century comment that Canada was “rich by nature, but poor by policy” seems to hold true today. The secondlargest country in the world, rich in resources, Canada has been virtually bankrupted by government profligacy. Canada has been called “the impossible country,” and many have considered it “an impossible country to (...) govern.” The accumulated national debt is now reaching 600 billion in Canadian dollars (one Canadian dollar equals about $.72 US), which per capita is six times that of the US. (shrink)

This is a reworking in English by Dumont himself of his Homo Aequalis II: L’Idéologie allemande, France-Allemagne et retour. It includes notes, a “Preface to the English Edition”, “Works Cited”, and an index. Dumont is an eminent, senior scholar, who works in the mode of a highlevel “anthropology.” He is known for his studies of Eastern civilizations, notably Homo hierarchicus: Essai sur le système des castes.

Roger Scruton is one of the leading British conservative thinkers today. Among the many works that he has written is the now classic The Meaning of Conservatism, which originally appeared in 1980. Although often seen as a reactionary, authoritarian, or worse, he is far more humane and compassionate than many of his opponents imagine him to be. Unfortunately, in the mid- to late 1980s, Scruton became a highly partisan supporter of Margaret Thatcher, setting aside many possible traditionalist Tory reservations about (...) her hard capitalist program—as well as to a large extent undermining in the process much of his credibility as…. (shrink)

What reflective conservatives see as the attenuation and destruction of tradition and traditionalism in Western societies has proceeded apace along a variety of paths. In this cogent study, Paul Gottfried looks at the shape this process has taken in the United States, where ruling elites have directed a so-called “conservative movement” that would capture the efforts and resources of many of those at least putatively opposed to the present-day regime. Gottfried describes how the initial founding of the “conservative movement” in (...) the 1950s (mainly by William F. Buckley, Jr., and Russell Kirk) was based on some authentic traditionalist impulses. Nevertheless,…. (shrink)

In the 1990s a rise of populist or regionalist parties in Western democracies has challenged the ruling centrist consensus.1 There are, however, only a few similarities between them. Thus it is impossible to equate, e.g., Austria's Jörg Haider or France's Jean-Marie Le Pen with Canada's Preston Manning. Diverse political cultures produce different political figures, programs and ideologies. When all is said and done, Manning's Reform Party remains idiosyncratically Canadian, and it is necessary to examine the Canadian context within which it (...) arose in order to understand it. Generally speaking, the Reform Party offers little to traditionalists, while its “populism” often…. (shrink)

This work is a very fine scholarly biography of George Parkin Grant, often considered Canada's preeminent political philosopher. William Christian is a professor of political studies at the University of Guelph, who--as a younger scholar--knew the more elderly Grant well, in person. Drawing on numerous primary sources, Christian's book is both a personal history of Grant, as well as a careful description of the philosophical, intellectual, and religious odyssey of Grant's life. It pays particular attention to Grant's early life and (...) background as the fount of many of his later ideas. The work includes acknowledgments; a chronology; a preface; twenty-five pithily titled chapters; an epilogue; extensive endnotes; a list of sources--archival and interview sources, works mentioned in text or notes, selected secondary sources, and a bibliography of George Grant's publications prepared by K. Mark Haslett; as well as an index; and photo credits. The scholarly apparatus is quite excellent, indeed, and could serve as a starting point for those interested in further study of Grant. Christian's book may, however, be criticized as being somewhat too hagiographical. (shrink)

In the introduction to Authority and Democracy, the author sets forth his ultimate goal of trying to justify, through arguments grounded in liberal political and moral theory, the enactment of employee democracy in the structures of major and mid-size corporations.

Paul Edward Gottfried is today probably the leading political theorist of the United States “paleoconservative” grouping. He has published three books on the postwar conservative movement in America, including The Search for Historical Meaning: Hegel and the Postwar American Right, as well as studies of Carl Schmitt and of Romanticism in nineteenth century Bavaria.

This clearly argued, well-structured work may be seen by some as very revisionist in regards to Adam Smith, and by others as wholly noncontroversial. Werhane's central argument is that Adam Smith cannot be categorized as an advocate of pure "self-interest," in the sense it is interpreted today to defend a certain type of untrammeled capitalism. Rather, Smith's definition of "self-interest" is distinct from unabashed "selfishness." Werhane argues that the free-market system, according to Smith, can only operate optimally and successfully in (...) the context of a prior framework of rights and justice, to be provided by society. His arguments are also seen to be most relevant to a social context which embraces prudential self-restraint, small proprietorship, and theistic religion. (shrink)

Maistre's Considerations sur la France originally appeared in 1797. Richard A. Lebrun is a long-time Maistre scholar, and this translation, based on the critical French edition of de Johannet and Vermale, can be considered as definitive, especially since he mentions his further consulting of the new critical edition of Jean-Louis Darcel, to emend the translation originally published in 1974. Lebrun's translation includes some material Maistre had struck out of his original manuscript. It appears in both French critical editions, which benefitted (...) from access to Maistre's manuscript and "his own corrected copies of editions published during his lifetime". This material was included when it "seemed to facilitate understanding of Maistre's thought". All of Maistre's own footnotes have been included. Translations of all Latin and Italian citations are very helpful. Also, possibly unfamiliar persons, events, and references are briefly footnoted by Lebrun. (shrink)

This sharp, erudite work discusses and also takes its place in the "Schmittean revival" which, the author argues, is emerging today in Western Europe, and, to a lesser extent, in North America. The author takes a stance as someone not only interested in Schmitt, but also wishes to bring Schmitt's insights into the koinë of modern American political and philosophical discourse.

John Gray, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, notes in the preface that this work completes a "train of thought" carried through his Liberalisms, Post-liberalism, and Beyond the New Right. The book includes acknowledgments, a preface, notes, and an index. Only the last of the ten essays, "Enlightenment's Wake", appears here originally.

In the introduction, “Justice, Rationality, and Democracy”, Simone Chambers states the purpose of her work—to provide a coherent justification and philosophical elaboration of the idea that “... the more we employ noncoercive public debate to resolve our deepest collective moral, political, and social disputes, the better”.

This is the first complete translation of this work of Maistre's into the English language. It also includes Maistre's shorter piece, "Elucidation on Sacrifices," which has traditionally been appended to these philosophical dialogues. Maistre himself had divided his writing into eleven numbered dialogues, each of which formally represents an evening of conversation, as well as a "Sketch of a Final Dialogue," in which the participants say their farewells. The debating figures are called "the Count", "the Senator", and "the Chevalier." There (...) is an elaborate apparatus surrounding the work, consisting of the footnotes and endnotes to each dialogue that Maistre himself had written, as well as explanatory footnotes and endnotes to each dialogue by the translator. Lebrun has traced virtually all of the references Maistre had made, and in some cases has been able to point out slight errors and misstatements in Maistre's own citations. He has also translated into English all the passages in languages other than French, which follow immediately after their appearance in the text in their original tongue. Lebrun has also provided fine supplements to Maistre's writing--a preface, scholarly introductory essay, chronology, critical bibliography, a well as a note on the text. There is also a very fine index, which includes virtually every work and author cited or mentioned in Maistre's text. The quality of Lebrun's translation is excellent indeed, clearly aware of a variety of nuances in Maistre's language, and based squarely on a life-long study of the thinker. (shrink)

This work contains a full, critical translation of Huai Nan Tzu, Book 9, Chu-shu, which is part of "an important compendium of knowledge and philosophical speculation... presented to the Chinese court of Wu Ti during the first century of the Former Han ". Preceding the translation is a dense philosophical analysis of the treatise, and of its place in a painstakingly reconstructed history of ideas, particular to the development of China up to that date. China had already gone through nearly (...) two millennia of history. (shrink)

This is a diverse, carefully assembled collection of scholarly writing on Max Weber's thought. Included are an introduction by the editors, endnotes for each essay, and notes on the contributors. Nine of the twelve essays appear here originally. The essays are grouped under three major sections.

George Parkin Grant is probably Canada’s leading political and social philosopher. This carefully chosen collection extends from his earliest to latest writings. William Christian who, as a younger scholar, knew Grant personally, has authored George Grant: A Biography and edited, George Grant: Selected Letters. He has introduced the new editions of Grant’s Philosophy in the Mass Age, and Time as History. Sheila Grant was married to George Grant for forty-one years, and has taken a very active role in the continuation (...) of his intellectual legacy. Most recently, she made a major contribution in George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity, edited by Arthur Davis. (shrink)

Willem Vanderburg holds professorships in both sociology and engineering at the University of Toronto, and is the founding director of the Centre for Technology and Social Development. This provocative, interdisciplinary work encompasses very diverse areas such as epistemology, history and philosophy of science and technology, ecology, and sociology. The book includes a preface, postscript, notes, and index. The main text is divided into four numbered parts and eleven numbered chapters, which are further subdivided into numbered sections.

Menczer was a cultivated man, of letters of a type which has now virtually become extinct, who never held an academic posting, but nevertheless could write intellectual history with a degree of insight. This work, originally published in 1952, pulls no punches in its unabashed Catholicism, and would today be seen by many as a work of unreconstructed, very traditionalist theology, rather than of political thought.

Peter Emberley is one of Canada's leading scholars writing on issues linking education and philosophy. This dense, very erudite work could be seen as the high counterpart to his two more popular books on similar themes, Bankrupt Education: The Decline of Liberal Education in Canada and Zero Tolerance: Hot Button Politics in Canada's Universities.

Despite its nonscholarly sounding title, this work is a trenchant reinterpretation of certain crucial aspects of Aristotle's thought for the contemporary age, and an excellent survey of the "liberal-communitarian" debate today. The author seeks to restore the philosophical language and concerns of classical moral theory, which he sees as having perennial importance, as against the "thinness" of contemporary liberal theorizing. The work has a prefatory note, including Václav Havel's warning about Western smugness, and a short Index. Footnotes, often substantial, are (...) placed at the bottom of the page. The author's consciously chosen strategy is to raise problematic issues, and questions for further study, rather than to try to establish an unassailable theoretical structure. (shrink)

This is the thirty-first volume in Religion and Public Life, formerly This World, a series on religion and public affairs. This ongoing series seeks to provide a wide-ranging forum for differing views on religious and ethical considerations. The essays grouped together in Culture and Consumption discuss the phenomenon of consumption, an identifiable and pervasive feature of American culture that distinguishes it from other national cultures. The lead article provides an insight into the long-standing pattern of consumption that has been progressively (...) elevated into social policy in America. This is a balanced analysis of the history of the consumption cultural ethos beginning with the undermining of the Native American Culture and ending with Wilsonian Liberal-Internationalism and the demise of the moral authority of organized labor. This commercialization of culture has always competed with the funding vision of a dispassionate social order in which custom, deferential politics, and continuation of traditional hierarchal values would be the constitutional agenda. Another contributor argues that the emergence of the democratic-consumer state in America was anticipated in de Tocqueville's observation that "in democracies nothing has brighter luster than commercea." Other contributor essays treat issues such as the New Class and the consumer state; technology's triumph at the expense of the social and natural worlds; and argue against the materialist perspective in addiction. Culture and Consumption includes the following major contributions: "The Dialectic of Consumption: Materialism and Social Control" by David Brown; "Religion, Social Science and the Ironies of Parasitic Modernity" by Guy Alchon; The Dilemma of Hypermodernity" by Mark Wegierski; "Toward an Epistemology of Addiction" by Leonard Kaplan and Vince Rinella. Also included are book reviews by Martha Davis and Conrad Kanagy. In a concluding essay, Gabriel Ricci reviews Jerome Bruner's The Culture of Education. Culture and Consumption is part of an annual survey of religion and public life that provides relevant information and ideas about significant issues of the day. (shrink)

Mark Wilson presents a highly original and broad-ranging investigation of the way we get to grips with the world conceptually, and the way that philosophical problems commonly arise from this. He combines traditional philosophical concerns about human conceptual thinking with illuminating data derived from a large variety of fields including physics and applied mathematics, cognitive psychology, and linguistics. Wandering Significance offers abundant new insights and perspectives for philosophers of language, mind, and science, and will also reward the interest of (...) psychologists, linguists, and anyone curious about the mysterious ways in which useful language obtains its practical applicability. (shrink)

This book provides a rich, systematic, and accessible introduction to moral psychology, aimed at undergraduate philosophy and psychology majors. There are eight chapters, in addition to a short introduction, prospective conclusion, and extensive bibliography. The recipe for each chapter will be: a) to introduce a philosophical topic (e.g., altruism, virtue, preferences, rules) and some prominent positions on it, without assuming prior acquaintance on the part of the reader b) to canvass and explain the relevance of a particular domain of empirical (...) inquiry (e.g., evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience) to the topic c) to argue for some tentative conclusions about the topic d) to suggest further avenues for conceptual and empirical research The guiding theme of the book is that moral philosophy without psychological content is empty, whereas psychological investigation without philosophical insight is blind. Thus, I advocate a holistic approach that pictures moral psychology as a project of collaborative inquiry into the descriptive and normative aspects of the human condition. Ideally, students will come away from (a course built around) the book with the sense that, though philosophy may not be the queen of the sciences, its role is not merely to interpret scientific results. (shrink)

Mark Jago presents an original philosophical account of meaningful thought: in particular, how it is meaningful to think about things that are impossible. We think about impossible things all the time. We can think about alchemists trying to turn base metal to gold, and about unfortunate mathematicians trying to square the circle. We may ponder whether God exists; and philosophers frequently debate whether properties, numbers, sets, moral and aesthetic qualities, and qualia exist. In many philosophical or mathematical debates, when (...) one side of the argument gets things wrong, it necessarily gets them wrong. As we consider both sides of one of these philosophical arguments, we will at some point think about something that’s impossible. Yet most philosophical accounts of meaning and content hold that we can’t meaningfully think or reason about the impossible. -/- In The Impossible, Jago argues that we often gain new information, new beliefs, and, sometimes, fresh knowledge through logic, mathematics, and philosophy. That is why logic, mathematics, and philosophy are useful. We therefore require accounts of knowledge and belief, of information and content, and of meaning which allow space for the impossible. Jago’s aim in this book is to provide such accounts. He gives a detailed analysis of the concept of hyperintensionality, whereby logically equivalent contents may be distinct, and develops a theory in terms of possible and impossible worlds. Along the way, he provides a theory of what those worlds are and how they feature in our analysis of normative epistemic concepts: knowledge, belief, information, and content. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe some of what I take to be the more interesting features of friendship, then explore the extent to which other virtues can be reconstructed as sharing those features. I use trustworthiness as my example throughout, but I think that other virtues such as generosity & gratitude, pride & respect, and the producer’s & consumer’s sense of humor can also be analyzed with this model. The aim of the paper is not to demonstrate that all moral (...) virtues are exactly like friendship in all important respects, but rather to articulate a fruitful model in which to explore the virtues. Section 2 explores the relational nature of friendship, drawing on Aristotle’s discussion of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. Section 3 catalogues four motivations for taking seriously the friendship model of virtue. Section 4 applies the friendship model in depth to the virtue of trustworthiness. (shrink)

Experimental moral philosophy emerged as a methodology in the last decade of the twentieth century, as a branch of the larger experimental philosophy (X-Phi) approach. Experimental moral philosophy is the empirical study of moral intuitions, judgments, and behaviors. Like other forms of experimental philosophy, it involves gathering data using experimental methods and using these data to substantiate, undermine, or revise philosophical theories. In this case, the theories in question concern the nature of moral reasoning and judgment; the extent and sources (...) of moral obligations; the nature of a good person and a good life; even the scope and nature of moral theory itself. This entry begins with a brief look at the historical uses of empirical data in moral theory and goes on to ask what, if anything, is distinctive about experimental moral philosophy—how should we distinguish it from related work in empirical moral psychology? After discussing some strategies for answering this question, the entry examines two of the main projects within experimental moral philosophy, and then discusses some of the most prominent areas of research within the field. As we will see, in some cases experimental moral philosophy has opened up new avenues of investigation, while in other cases it has influenced longstanding debates within moral theory. (shrink)

This paper brings together two erstwhile distinct strands of philosophical inquiry: the extended mind hypothesis and the situationist challenge to virtue theory. According to proponents of the extended mind hypothesis, the vehicles of at least some mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions) are not located solely within the confines of the nervous system (central or peripheral) or even the skin of the agent whose states they are. When external props, tools, and other systems are suitably integrated into the functional apparatus of (...) the agent, they are partial bearers of her cognitions, motivations, memories, and so on. According to proponents of the situationist challenge to virtue theory, dispositions located solely within the confines of the nervous system (central or peripheral) or even the skin of the agent to whom they are attributed typically do not meet the normative standards associated with either virtue or vice (moral, epistemic, or otherwise) because they are too susceptible to moderating external variables, such as mood modulators, ambient sensibilia, and social expectation signaling. We here draw on both of these literatures to formulate two novel views – the embedded and extended character hypotheses – according to which the vehicles of not just mental states but longer-lasting, wider-ranging, and normatively-evaluable agentic dispositions are sometimes located partially beyond the confines of the agent’s skin. (shrink)

Hobbes emphasized that the state of nature is a state of war because it is characterized by fundamental and generalized distrust. Exiting the state of nature and the conflicts it inevitably fosters is therefore a matter of establishing trust. Extant discussions of trust in the philosophical literature, however, focus either on isolated dyads of trusting individuals or trust in large, faceless institutions. In this paper, I begin to fill the gap between these extremes by analyzing what I call the topology (...) of communities of trust. Such communities are best understood in terms of interlocking dyadic relationships that approximate the ideal of being symmetric, Euclidean, reflexive, and transitive. Few communities of trust live up to this demanding ideal, and those that do tend to be small (between three and fifteen individuals). Nevertheless, such communities of trust serve as the conditions for the possibility of various important prudential epistemic, cultural, and mental health goods. However, communities of trust also make possible various problematic phenomena. They can become insular and walled-off from the surrounding community, leading to distrust of out-groups. And they can lead their members to abandon public goods for tribal or parochial goods. These drawbacks of communities of trust arise from some of the same mecha-nisms that give them positive prudential, epistemic, cultural, and mental health value – and so can at most be mitigated, not eliminated. (shrink)

Explores the place of intellectual virtues and vices in a social world. Chapters are divided into four sections: Foundational Issues; Individual Virtues; Collective Virtues; and Methods and Measurements.

We argue that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. First, we explain the recognition heuristic as studied by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to, and outside the control of, the cognitive agent. We then connect the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, arguing that the recognition heuristic is best understood as an instance of (...) scaffolded cognition. In section three, we consider the double-edged sword of cognitive scaffolding. On the one hand, scaffolds can reduce the internal processing demands on cognitive agents while increasing their access to information. On the other hand, the use of scaffolding leaves cognitive agents increasingly vulnerable to forming false beliefs or failing to form beliefs at all about particular topics. With respect to the recognition heuristic, agents rely on third parties (such as the media) to report not just what’s true but also what’s important or valuable. This makes cognitive agents relying on these third parties vulnerable to two erroneous influences: 1) because they don’t recognize something, it isn’t important or valuable, and 2) because they do recognize something, it is important or valuable. Call the latter the Kardashian Inference and the former the Darfur Inference. In section four, we use Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to characterize the nature and harm of these false inferences, with special emphasis on the Darfur Inference. In section five, we use data-mining and an empirical study to show how Gigerenzer’s population estimation task is liable to produce Darfur Inferences. We conclude with some speculative remarks on more important Darfur Inferences, and how to avoid them by scaffolding better. One primary way to accomplish this it to shift the burden of embodying the virtue of epistemic justice from the hearer or consumer of media to the media themselves. (shrink)

This chapter explores a case study in contemporary fanaticism. We adopt Katsafanas’s conceptualization of fanaticism to make possible an in-depth discussion of and evaluation of a diffuse but important social movement — the anglophone manosphere. According to Katsafanas, fanatics are fruitfully understood as members of a group that adopts sacred values which they hold unconditionally to preserve their own psychic unity, and who feel that those values are threatened by those who do not accept them. The manosphere includes several social (...) movements, including incels, men’s rights activists, and men-going-their-own-way. We show that many members of these groups are well-characterized by Katsafanas’s theory of fanaticism, and that they have forged their fanatical group identity using tools that philosophers have tended to associate with more benign social movements and the task of “conceptual engineering.” Indeed, we think that manosphere groups have in many cases been more successful than more palatable liberationist movements, and that this case study in the dark side of conceptual engineering may be both sobering and informative. (shrink)

How should emotions figure in scientific practice? I begin by distinguishing three broad answers to this question, ranging from pessimistic to optimistic. Confirmation bias and motivated numeracy lead us to cast a jaundiced eye on the role of emotions in scientific inquiry. However, reflection on the essential motivating role of emotions in geniuses makes it less clear that science should be evacuated of emotion. I then draw on Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectivism to articulate a twenty-first century epistemology of science that recognizes (...) the necessity of emotion to inquiry but aims to manage the biases that emotions can introduce. Twenty-first century perspectivism is both social and (temporally) distal, helping it to overcome a paradox of self-critical inquiry. (shrink)