Many scholars of modern philosophy link the discussion of the necessary nature of causality inexorably with the name of the David Hume. Yet, long before Hume, the issue of necessary causality had been taken up by the Medieval Islamic philosopher Al-Ghazali. The purpose of this paper will be to examine Al-Ghazali’s views concerning the necessary nature of causality in his work ’The Incoherence of the Philosophers’ with particular reference to the issue of whether there is a complete rejection of causality, (...) and whether Ghazali’s rejection of necessary causality entails that he holds to some sort of occasionalism. (shrink)

John Rawls claims that “benevolent absolutisms” honor human rights without honoring political participation rights. Critics argue that he is mistaken. One objection appeals to the instrumental value of political participation rights. This objection holds that without political participation rights, individuals cannot secure the content of their rights against encroachment. Given this, individuals without political participation rights cannot be said to have rights at all. Here, I evaluate this instrumental objection. I identify three ways of relating political participation rights to human (...) rights and show that one makes sense of Rawls’s claim. I then defend this view from instrumental objections. This has implications beyond the realm of Rawls scholarship. Many societies are not democratic and are not democratizing. We must determine whether any of these societies can secure at least the content of human rights and, if so, what shape their social and political institutions must take to do so. (shrink)

In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls defends the claim that ‘decent’ societies (non-liberal, non-democratic constitutional republics) deserve full and good standing in the international community. His defense of decent societies consists of two main arguments. First, he argues that the basic human right to political participation does not imply a right to democratic political institutions. This argument has been thoroughly discussed by commentators. Second, he argues that decent societies, if admitted to the international community, would pose no special threat (...) to the stability of that community. This argument has largely been ignored. My aim in this article is to analyze this second argument, which I call the ‘peace argument'. argumen. (shrink)

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, federations became a widely used constitutional form. They were rare before the nineteenth century and it may be that they will become less attractive in the twenty‐first century. But for now they are well approved. And this is surprising because this era has also been an era of nationalism when the nation‐state, the sovereign political organization of the folk, is also well approved. These two forms are in some ways contradictory: nation‐states derive from, justify (...) and separate out a single ethnic group, while federations may – and often do – bring together political units with different ethnic bases. So a difficult problem for interpreting federalism is to explain the modern approval of this pragmatic, instrumental constitution in an era that embraces simultaneously the emotional and often irrational loyalties of nationalism. (shrink)

A signal feature of legal and political institutions is that they exercise coercive power. The essays in this volume examine institutional coercion with the aim of trying to understand its nature, justification and limits. Included are essays that take a fresh look at perennial questions. Leading scholars from philosophy, political science and law examine these and related questions shedding new light on an apparently inescapable feature of political and legal life: Coercion.

In this book, John Hanwell Riker develops and expands the conceptual framework of self psychology in order to offer contemporary readers a naturalistic ground for adopting an ethical way of being in the world.

Riker bases his concept on recent work in psychoanalytic theory, emotion theory, sociobiology, ethnogenic social psychology, and feminism, as well as on the insights of such philosophers as Aristotle, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Heidegger, and ...

Drawing from Kohut's conceptualisation of self, Riker sets out how contemporary America's formulation of persons as autonomous, self-sufficient individuals is deeply injurious to the development of a vitalizing self-structure-a condition which lies behind much of the mental illness and social malaise of today's world. By carefully attending to Kohut's texts, Riker explains the structural, functional, and dynamic dimensions of Kohut's concept of the self. He creatively extends this concept to show how the self can be conceived of as an erotic (...) striving for connectedness, beauty, and harmony, separate from the ego. Riker uses this distinction to reveal how social practices of contemporary American society foster skills and traits to advance the aims of the ego for power and control, but tend to suppress the needs of the self to authentically express its ideals and connect with others. The book explores the impact that this view can have on clinical practice, and concludes by imaginatively constructing an ideal self-psychological society, using Plato's Republic as a touchstone. Informed by self psychology and philosophy, this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and philosophers, seeking to revisit and revise constructions of both self and humanity. (shrink)

In The Law of Peoples, Rawls defends the stability of his proposed international order with the democratic peace thesis. But he fails to extend this thesis to decent peoples, which is curious, since they are a non-temporary feature of his law of peoples. This opens Rawls’s proposal to certain objections, which I argue can be met once we understand fully the nature of the democratic peace. Nevertheless, there is reason to worry about the stability of Rawls’s proposed international order. This (...) worry has little to do with decent peoples, though, and is generated by other features of his law of peoples. (shrink)

In The Law of Peoples, Rawls defends the stability of his proposed international order with the democratic peace thesis. But he fails to extend this thesis to decent peoples, which is curious, since they are a non-temporary feature of his law of peoples. This opens Rawls’s proposal to certain objections, which I argue can be met once we understand fully the nature of the democratic peace. Nevertheless, there is reason to worry about the stability of Rawls’s proposed international order. This (...) worry has little to do with decent peoples, though, and is generated by other features of his law of peoples. (shrink)

On the moderate view, an objecting pharmacist may refuse to fill a prescription, provided that the pharmacist then refers the client to a non-objecting pharmacist who will fill the prescription in a timely manner (see, e.g., Cantor and Baum, 2004, or Brock, 2008). This view seeks to balance the interests of the pharmacist and the interests of the client. The complicity objection holds that the moderate view fails to balance these interests, because the referral itself makes the objecting pharmacist complicit (...) in the act she sought to stop or at least avoid (see, e.g., Brock, 2008, Card, 2007, Charo, 2005, Nelson 2005, Snyder, 2010, Wicclair, 2006). Some claim that this objection shows that an objecting pharmacist should not be required to refer the client to another pharmacist. But what are the limits of the complicity objection? For example, does the complicity objection imply that an objecting pharmacist should also refuse to return the prescription to the client? I argue that the complicity objection has this implication. This does not mean that pharmacists should confiscate prescriptions. My goal is just to examine the moral reach of the complicity objection to the moderate position. What we should do, once we recognize the reach of this objection, is a separate question that I do not take up here. (shrink)

All our previous political experience, and especially, of course, the experience of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, offers little hope that democracy can coexist with the centralized allocation of economic resources. Indeed, simple observation suggests that a market economy with private property rights is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for the existence of a democratic political regime. And this accords fully with the political theory of liberalism, which emphasizes that private rights, both civil and economic, be protected and secure. (...) At the same time, our previous experience also indicates that market economies are more successful than centrally planned economies not only in producing, but also in distributing, both private and collective goods. This economic experienee is supported by neoclassical economic theory, which treats clearly defined and secure rights to private property as essential to a market economy. (shrink)

Some argue that at least some non-liberal, non-democratic societies deserve fiill and good standing in the international community. These arguments imply that some divergence in understanding the role of the press is also justified and should be tolerated. But what are the limits of diversity here? I begin to find these limits by considering John Rawls's "decent" societies in the context of Amartya Sen's work on famine. Sen claims that a free press plays an important role in famine prevention. After (...) giving an account of press rights, I argue that a partially free press can play the role Sen attributes to the free press. I then argue that decent societies could and should accommodate such partially free presses. (shrink)

Skepticism has always been a part of the history of Western philosophy. If one were to look at current works focusing on the history of skepticism in philosophy, however, one would get the impression that skepticism disappeared from the philosophical landscape after the work of Sextus Empiricus, only to reappear with the methodological skepticism of Descartes. Yet, did skepticism, which had thus been so prevalent in the ancient period, disappear so completely during the middle Ages? The resounding answer that this (...) dissertation proposes to give to this question is no. To that end, the main focus will be on Nicolaus of Autrecourt, a figure in the waning High Middle Ages who revived skepticism within a peculiarly Christian context. In the first three chapters of the dissertation, the skepticism of Nicolaus of Autrecourt will be studied. Starting in the first chapter with a study of Nicolaus's life and the skeptical elements of his correspondence, the second chapter will continue to look for these same skeptical elements in his Exigit ordo, while the third chapter will look for possible influences on Nicolaus's skepticism. The fourth and fifth chapter will present views similar to Nicolaus's in the works of the Muslim thinker al-Ghazali and the more well-known David Hume concerning the skepticism of causal necessity. In the sixth and final chapter, a major difference between the doctrines of Nicolaus and al-Ghazali on the one hand and Hume on the other concerning the issue of miracles will be examined. From this point, a simplified genealogy of skepticism shall be offered, and it will be contended that the skepticisms of Nicolaus and al-Ghazali deserve a place in that genealogy. By allowing Nicolaus's and al-Ghazali's type of skepticism into this genealogy, the main conclusion shall be that skepticism is in fact a double-edged sword that can be used against religion by attempting to destroy the ability of reason to come to any definitive conclusions about God or against atheistic philosophy in leaving room for faith in the omnipotence of God. (shrink)

In Why It Is Good to be Good, John H. Riker shows how modernity's reigning concept of the self undermines moral life and lays the basis for the epidemic of cheating that is devastating social and economic institutions. He argues that by accepting Kohut's brilliant and original psychoanalytic concept of the self, modernity can have a naturalist account for showing why it is personally good to be a morally good person.

In Why It Is Good to be Good, John H. Riker shows how modernity's reigning concept of the self undermines moral life and lays the basis for the epidemic of cheating that is devastating social and economic institutions. He argues that by accepting Kohut's brilliant and original psychoanalytic concept of the self, modernity can have a naturalist account for showing why it is personally good to be a morally good person.

Kuntz begins his book by asking, “Why is yet another interpretation [of Whitehead’s philosophy] needed?” and answers that “This book is a sustained effort to make clear his philosophy as the discovery of the many orders that together are our cosmos.” Kuntz examines “order” as it appears in Whitehead’s philosophies of education, mathematics, nature, civilization, experience, and metaphysics. The merits of the book are, first, that it attempts to explicate Whitehead’s philosophy without getting deeply involved in the technical terminology of (...) Process and Reality. This makes the book much more readable for the novice to Whitehead’s thought. Second, Kuntz makes widespread use of the lesser known of Whitehead’s essays and books and quotes from them extensively. (shrink)