When is political compromise acceptable--and when is it fundamentally rotten, something we should never accept, come what may? What if a rotten compromise is politically necessary? Compromise is a great political virtue, especially for the sake of peace. But, as Avishai Margalit argues, there are moral limits to acceptable compromise even for peace. But just what are those limits? At what point does peace secured with compromise become unjust? Focusing attention on vitally important questions that have received surprisingly little attention, (...) Margalit argues that we should be concerned not only with what makes a just war, but also with what kind of compromise allows for a just peace. Examining a wide range of examples, including the Munich Agreement, the Yalta Conference, and Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, Margalit provides a searching examination of the nature of political compromise in its various forms. Combining philosophy, politics, and history, and written in a vivid and accessible style, On Compromise and Rotten Compromises is full of surprising new insights about war, peace, justice, and sectarianism. (shrink)
Given a descriptive word, what is the nature of the relation between it and the features of the object to which it is supposed to apply? What is it that entitles one to assert ‘this is a horse’?A traditional answer has been in terms of ‘Merkmal’: a collection of features, or properties, severally necessary and Jointly sufficient for the application of the word in question. This relation - call it the Merkmal relation - between word and features is common to (...) a variety of theories of meaning that may otherwise be in disagreement about the status of the features themselves in their relation to the object: whether they be actual or believed, perceptual or ‘essential,’ phenomenal or ‘real,’ etc. (shrink)
In this article, I will explore an idea of authority as depicted by a religious picture (note the indefinite article). It is a picture, not the picture. It is the picture of God as the supreme decision maker without him being a deliberator. I shall call it the decisionist picture of God. His authority is based on his absolute will unhindered by any laws and rules and in particular by any laws of morality. One may call the decisionist picture of (...) God a fascist picture of God. This is perhaps abusive but not inaccurate. 'That there must be', in the language of the 18th century Blackstone, 'a supreme, irresistible, absolute, and uncontrolled authority, in which the … right of sovereignty resides', is the idea and ideal that I am interested in. Pompously put, it is the genealogy of authority that I am interested in. (shrink)
Abstract: Social justice concerns us on two counts: One, what is social justice? Two, given that we know the answer to one, then the question is: how can social justice be implemented? Answering the first question requires hitting the right balance between two values: liberty and equality. My concern here, however, is with the second question, the question of implementation rather than with what social justice consists of. I assume that the right balance between liberty and equality is somehow a (...) given. To implement the structural changes that a just society requires calls for a historical agent that can bring about such changes. The working class was a good candidate to be such a historical agent. The working class was suitable for this historical task because it was the class that had the most to gain from a just society and it was a very large class of people. The working class was singled out for this task not for being a particularly virtuous class but by being the class that had the most to gain from a change in the status quo. But the working class is rapidly disappearing; in the developed countries, it has shrunk considerably. Thus, the implementation of social justice is now left without an effective historical agent to carry it through. (shrink)
Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration gathers tributes, reflections, and commentaries on the great thinker and his philosophy, politics, and life-including contributions from Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, Ronald Dworkin, Stephen Spender, and many others. "Some [essays], like Joseph Brodsky's tribute, are touchingly personal. Others, like G. A. Cohen's 'Isaiah's Marx, and Mine,' mingle personal reminiscences with a more theoretical look at Berlin's ideas. . . . The volume is a fitting tribute to a thinker famed for his erudition, eclecticism, and clarity of (...) style."--Merle Rubin, The Christian Science Monitor "One of the many merits of this rich and rewarding collection is the sense-very imperfectly conveyed here-it transmits of the tone of Berlin's writings and conversation, of the multiplicity of his interests and the variety of his achievements. . . . The essays testify to the character of Berlin's mind as a luminous prism, in which the cultural traditions of Russia, England and Judaism are marvelously refracted."--John Gray, Times Literary Supplement "[T]he collection testifies to the learning and profundity of Berlin's thought and, by way both of reminiscence and influence, to the charm and gaity of its expression."--Anthony Quinton, The Times of London. (shrink)
‘The Russian Revolution and the National Socialist ascendancy in Germany are the two most important sources of evidence of moral philosophy in our time, as the French Revolution was for Hegel and Marx, and later to Tocqueville and for Mill. Although both revolutions produced, both in intention and in effect, a triumph on a gigantic scale, there are often remarked differences between the evil effects planned and achieved.’ This is an observation made by Stuart Hampshire, a keen philosophical connoisseur of (...) the 20th century. (shrink)
