The relationship between law and morality is a topic which receives special importance and attention, especially in "liberal democracies" in which the law is supposed to regulate highly pluralized and fragmented societies. Under conditions of plurality of values, many social forces and legal theories require a certain kind of neutrality from the legal system, a means of compatibility of the many "world views" and "moral systems" that are present within the same social space. Such a conciliating commitment sounds particularly relevant (...) in times of the doctrinal ubiquity of ideas such as "peace based on human rights". This was the title of the 28th World Congress of the IVR in Lisbon, with the special workshop "Law and Morals" on which this book is based. It is divided into four parts: "Law and Practical Reason", "Conceptual Approaches on Law and Morals", "Legal versus Moral Normativity", and "Morals and Legal Positivism". (shrink)

The claim that guns can safeguard freedom is common in US political discourse. In light of a broadly republican understanding of freedom, I evaluate this claim and its implications. The idea is usually that firearms would enable citizens to engage in revolutionary violence against a tyrannical government. I argue that some of the most common objections to this argument fail, but that the argument is fairly weak in light of other objections. I then defend a different argument for the claim (...) that guns can safeguard freedom. I claim that firearm ownership among members of oppressed groups can hinder the use of systematic violence aimed at preventing them from exercising their basic liberties. I show how a commitment to armed self-defense is compatible with non-violent civil resistance as a tool of political change, and show how the former facilitated the latter during the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, I consider the policy implications of my argument. I don’t think it vindicates lax gun control policies. However, it may vindicate some individuals acquiring guns and learning how to use them, and some organizations aiding them in doing so. (shrink)

In view of a rapid succession of events in the contemporary world, on both the political and the scientific levels, it is indeed essential to say more about the subject of democracy in the civil society. If by democracy we mean not only a form of govern- ment but also a system of living, then indeed a unanimous judgment and also a general conception cannot be expected, but nevertheless the concept need not to be debased to the stage of complete (...) meaninglessness. (shrink)

Dry examines the U.S. Supreme Court's treatment of the First Amendment freedoms of religion and speech against the founding of the American Constitution and its philosophical underpinnings.

Es frecuente buscar en Freud a un crítico de la Ilustración y, en particular, del modo de pensar la moral heredero del planteamiento kantiano. Sin embargo, Freud se limita a descubrir en la naturaleza humana un importante obstáculo del que el proyecto ilustrado no se podrá ya desentender. Este obstáculo, que afecta de un modo decisivo al modo como entender el paso a la mayoría de edad, remite a la existencia de un determinado reino de la heteronomía cuyo rasgo más (...) característico es su capacidad para suplantar la voz de la autonomía moral: al igual que la ley moral en Kant, el superyóuna vez ha interiorizado en la infancia y asumido como propios determinados contenidos de cultura. (shrink)

The contribution places Hegel‘s political philosophy, chieflypresented in Elementsof the Philosophy of Right from 1820 but already adumbrated in The GermanConstitution from 1799-1802, intothe context of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns about the relation between thecitizen andthe stateand the corresponding differentiation of political freedom and civil liberty. In particular, the contribution attributes to Hegel a third, conciliatory position beyond the establishedopposition between the ancient republican ideal of civic commitment and service and the modern emphasis on individual choiceand (...) personal self-fulfillment. (shrink)

The two important factors in science development are the social economy (gross domestic product, GDP) and freedom. In order to follow the development of science for both old Arabic-Islamic and Western civilizations, a statistical method is used to trace the variation of scientists' population with time. The analysis shows that: 1- There is a growth in Arabic-Islamic sciences for a period of three centuries (AD 700-1000). Then it is followed by period of declination. The decay time is about of eight (...) centuries. Major factor behind that decay in science activities and the block of the science thoughts may be attributed to religious thoughts domination, and cultural or thoughtful problems, in addition to the normal social problems like wars, disasters..etc. 2- The growth in western civilization started approximately in AD 1200 and remains in its growing. It looks that the wars, political problems have no serious effect in western sciences growth. The growth behaviour has a natural growth form. That may prove that, the secular society is quite perfect for such activities. For present time Arab-Islam societies have no distinguished contributions. The most important factor for that catastrophic retardation is the absence of the freedom of thought and believes. The obtaned curve has similarities with world GDP curve. (shrink)

In Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict: An Historical and Medical Approach to Political Thinking, Marie Gaille rethinks Machiavelli's conception of civil conflict. In complete opposition to the common view of Machiavelli as a defender of tyranny, this analysis brings new elements to the forefront: the use of medical metaphors to describe the body politic, its historical lifespan and its institutional arrangement. This study is also based on a comprehensive approach to Machiavelli's writings, including his most famous works, but also (...) The History of Florence, his correspondence, and his political, military and diplomatic reports. This study allows Marie Gaille to propose an original assessment of Machiavelli's insights for contemporary conceptions of democracy. This is a revised and translated edition of Conflit Civil et Liberté: la Politique Machiavelienne entre Histoire et Médecine, first published in French, in 2004 by Éditions Honoré Champion. (shrink)

Why are democracy, equality and freedom currently in such turmoil? Kitahara discusses the confusion and pessimism in Western civilization today. The author presents his theory of civilization and suggests how the enormous problems within Western civilization can be addressed by pursuing the original basis of Western civilization-individualism. The three key values of democracy, equality and freedom are then re-interpreted from the perspective of individualism, and possibilities for dealing with the problems of Western civilization are suggested. Contents: PART I: PROBLEMS OF (...) WESTERN CIVILIZATION; Western Civilization in Confusion; Democracy; Equality; Freedom; Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Technology; Culture and Biology; Culture and the Individual; PART II: A THEORY OF CIVILIZATION; The Self in the Life Space; The Manipulatory Drive; Identification and Variation; The Conditions for Civilization; The Maintenance of Civilization; The Failure of Civilization; PART III: REFLECTIONS ON WESTERN CIVILIZATION; The Contradictions; Individualism and Democracy; Individualism and Equality; Individualism and Freedom; Epilogue. (shrink)

'This is a powerful piece of advocacy. I'd pick Ewing and Gearty for my counsels any day.' -Bernard Porter, LRBThis book is an account of the struggle for civil liberties against the State in which groups such as the anti-war protestors, the Irish nationalists, the Communist party, trade unionists, and the unemployed workers' movement found themselves involved in the first half of the twentieth century. All had to fight for their civil liberties in the face of strong opposition from the (...) State, including the judges whose attitude to civil liberties was often deeply hostile, and at odds with their supposed role as defenders of freedom. (shrink)

THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM CAN BE A USEFUL FRAMEWORK FOR A\nCOMPARATIVE STUDY OF CIVILIZATIONS. ASSUMING THAT FREEDOM\nIS NOT AN ABSOLUTE CONDITION, BUT MOVES IN A SPECTRUM\nBETWEEN OSSIFIED FORMS AND TOTAL ANARCHY, THE ACTUAL\nPRACTICE OF FREEDOM VARIES FROM CULTURE TO CULTURE.\nMOREOVER, THE NOTION OF FREEDOM IS RELATED TO RESTRICTIVE\nNORMS - SUCH AS LAW, MORALS, AESTHETICS, CUSTOM, VOGUE. IN\nRESPECT OF EACH SUCH NORM THE DEGREE OF FREEDOM MAY VARY.\nTHUS, THE PROFILE OF FREEDOM OF A SOCIETY MAY BE STUDIED BY\nCOMPARING ITS DEGREE IN (...) RESPECT OF DIVERSE NORMS, AS WELL\nAS BY MAKING CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between Churchill’s view of Britain as the home of freedom and his broader conception of Western/European civilization. It considers: first, his attitude to Classical learning and culture; second, his experiences of European travel; and third, his attitude to the Bolsheviks (as much as the Nazis) as the barbaric antithesis of civilization. It is argued that his vision of the European future was linked both to his own experiences of free and civilized travel in the Nineteenth (...) Century and a growing scepticism about the speedier and more globalized locomotion of the Twentieth. Moreover, Churchill’s late-life commitment to the virtues of Classical learning, about which he had previously been sceptical, was connected to his post-WWII enthusiasm for European unity. He believed that a united Europe could act as a vehicle for spiritual and cultural values passed down from the ancient world which themselves had become a part of the continent’s Christian heritage. Although it has rightly been pointed out that Churchill was not a conventional religious believer, he still conceived ‘Christendom’ as a significant geopolitical space (with flexible boundaries) and he saw it as the spiritual inheritor of Greece and Rome. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the role played by the Geological Survey of Portugal in the emergence and consolidation of geology as a government science in the nineteenth century, within a general policy of control over territory. The period under consideration covers the directorates of its first leaders, Pereira da Costa (1809–1888) and the military engineers Carlos Ribeiro (1813–1882), and Nery Delgado (1835–1908). When the Geological Survey was created in 1857 as part of the Directorate of Geodesic, Chorographic, Hydrographical Works of (...) the Kingdom (Direcção Geral dos Trabalhos Geodesicos, Chorographicos, Hydrographicos do Reino) established at the Ministry of Public Works, Trade and Industry (Ministério das Obras Públicas, Comércio e Indústria), Portugal lacked a geological culture and a tradition in geological research. The Portuguese Geological Survey was to be marked by the idiosyncrasies of the local culture and of the organization of the State. In this paper, the emergence of geology as a government science is analysed, by taking into consideration the structure, organization, and a general overview of contributions to the Survey. A particular emphasis will be given to its subordinate staff—the field assistants—not only because their contributions to the geological knowledge of the country have hitherto been largely ignored, but also because they materialized the only possible way for common people to become involved with geology in nineteenth‐century Portugal. Generally, with only a basic education, field assistants gradually acquired enough expertise to make decisions in the field, and a few of them even became what Nery Delgado termed ‘practical geologists’. The letters in which they reported their work in addition to vivid accounts of less glamorous aspects of fieldwork and its organization provide an image of the country and of its culture by portraying the reactions of civil society to the practice of geology. (shrink)

The Qur’an, a divine book, is a source whose authority is indisputable in terms of being a source of knowledge for Muslims and setting the framework of “speaking” about God and also allowing for the determination of what is moral. The Qur’an’s authority derives from both God Himself and the intra-textual consistency. Reasonal and philosophical justification of such values as freedom, creation, reason, wisdom, endeavor, reliability, and particularly unity of God have been dwelled upon in the present article. At the (...) same time, the visible effects of the aforementioned concepts, which are of great significance in themselves, in the external world, have been examined with their notional immanence and with the exemplarity of the Prophet. It is emphasized that absolute determinism, moral nihilism, and other materialistic views that accept the eternal existence of matter with the Creator lead to a worldview that suspends the freedom of choice and, in particular, the freedom of choosing a religion for humans. As Mu‘tazilah rightly argued in this regard, the essential condition of attaching value to an occurrence is that it must take place in an environment of freedom. The present article signalizes the way to achieve the theory, which we have named as Kalam’s Theory of Freedom, by drawing attention to the existence of some values that can also be reached through sole reason and rationalism intrinsic to the kalam discipline. Ultimately, it illuminates the path where the multicultural world can be a home for all of us without coercion and discrimination. Actions expected to attain their purposes and rationalism considering the possible outcomes of actions, especially pluralist and libertarian education processes, do not allow for ‘a single-valued world’ and nihilism. Qur’an’s warning about chaos is explicit for societies losing their religious, rational, and moral values. (shrink)

On 1 November 1755, the city of Lisbon in Portugal was virtually destroyed by the largest documented seismic event ever to hit Europe. It is often claimed that the catastrophe severely damaged the plausibility of Leibniz’s optimism, and even the wider project of theodicy. Leibniz died several decades before the Lisbon earthquake struck, and so was unable to address it and the challenges thrown up by it, which would have included an account of how the event was consistent with God’s (...) providence. Contemporary scholars are of the view that Leibniz explained natural disasters like earthquakes as nothing more than the unfortunate consequences of the normal workings of simple laws of nature, and that God permits such disasters to happen because it would be unworthy of him to overrule the laws he has established. There certainly is this line of thinking in Leibniz’s writings, but it is far from being the whole story, as we shall see. The aim of this paper is to determine what Leibniz’s response to the Lisbon earthquake would have been, had he lived to know about the event. (shrink)

This paper discusses the life and scientific work of José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage, a nineteenth-century Portuguese naturalist who carved a new place for zoological research in Portugal and built up a prestigious scientific career by securing appropriate physical and institutional spaces to the discipline. Although he was appointed professor of zoology at the Lisbon Polytechnic School, an institution mainly devoted to the preparatory training of military officers and engineers, he succeeded in creating the conditions that allowed him to develop (...) consistent research in zoology at this institution. Taking advantage of the reconstruction and further improvement of the building of the Lisbon Polytechnic, following a violent fire in 1843, Bocage transferred a natural history museum formerly located at the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon to his institution, where he conquered a more prestigious place for zoology. Although successive governments were unwilling to meet Bocage’s ambitions for the Zoological Section of the newly created National Museum of Lisbon, the collaborators he found in different parts of the Portuguese continental territory and colonial empire supplied him the specimens he needed to make a career as a naturalist. Bocage ultimately became a renowned specialist in Southwestern African fauna thanks to José de Anchieta, his finest collaborator. Travels to foreign museums, and the establishment of links with the international community of zoologists, proved fundamental to build up Bocage’s national and international scientific reputation, as it will be exemplified by the discussion of his discovery of Hyalonema, a specimen with a controversial identity collected off the Portuguese coast. (shrink)

In Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy, Bradley Watson demonstrates the paradox of liberal democracy: that its cornerstone principles of equality and freedom are principles inherently directed toward undermining it. Modernity, beyond bringing definition to political equality, unleashed a whirlwind of individualism, which feeds the soul's basic impulse to rule without limitationincluding the limitation of consent. Here Watson begins his analysis of the foundations of liberalism, looking carefully and critically at the moral and political philosophies that justify modern (...) civil rights litigation. He goes on to examine the judicial manifestations of the paradox of liberal democracy, seeking to bring a broad philosophical coherence to legal decision making in the United States and Canada. Finally, Watson illuminates the extent to which this decision making is in tension with liberal democracy, and outlines proposals for reform. (shrink)

In response to the spread of COVID-19, governments across the world have, with very few exceptions, enacted sweeping restrictive lockdown policies that impede citizens’ freedom to move, work, and assemble. This paper critically responds to the central arguments for restrictive lockdown legislation. We build our critique on the following assumption: public policy that enjoys virtually unanimous support worldwide should be justified by uncontroversial moral principles. We argue that that the virtually unanimous support in favor of restrictive lockdowns is not adequately (...) justified by the arguments given in favor of them. Importantly, this is not to say that states ought not impose restrictive lockdown measures, but rather that the extent of the acceptance of these measures is not proportionate to the strength of the arguments for lockdowns. -/- We begin by exploring the case for restrictive lockdowns. We first argue that several of the principles that are used to justify the lockdowns yield unexpectedly revisionary implications for other political problems that many would be unwilling to accept. We then outline what we consider the strongest argument for a lockdown—namely, that its net welfare benefits are great enough to defeat the moral presumption against restricting citizens’ civil liberties to move, work, and assemble. However, we give a number of reasons for doubting that the lockdown’s net welfare benefits are, in fact, sufficiently high to defeat the presumption against it. (shrink)

Freedom and law in Hannah Arendt’s thought are not spontaneously compatible and one might think they are almost impossible to occur together. Due to the importance of both freedom and law this might be considered Arendt’s greatest puzzle. Many scholars have addressed this problem but few have paid attention to the answers to this difficulty she found in political events and to the eventual solution to this puzzle, the phenomenon of civil disobedi-ence. This paper aims to address this gap.

Ou como um manuscrito do século XVIII, que não mereceu a glória de ser publicado, constitui uma fonte documental de indesmentível interesse. Trata-se de um relato de viagem de Lisboa a Roma na segunda metade do século XVIII o qual, embora não corresponda à descrição de uma peregrinação, revela com clareza questões culturais e religiosas que atormentam o Portugal de setecentos. Um diário de viagem que ajuda a compreender, em parte, o rótulo de exótico que a Europa iluminada atribuía a (...) Portugal. Através de uma leitura atenta, conseguem identificar-se elos, à primeira vista imperceptíveis, valorizando o próprio documento e lançando pistas para situar e compreender figuras de relevo naquele período da história portuguesa. O presente relato, como acontece com a literatura de viagens em geral, atribui ao leitor a responsabilidade de perscrutar a intenção do autor. Discute-se ainda a autoria, origem e fins do manuscrito, um conjunto de elementos que explicam a importância do mesmo. (shrink)

We propose to discuss about the possession and expression of a capacity that empowers individuals to act as citizens. First, elements of Aristotelian politics are presented as arguments for civility as a capacity inherent in the social nature of human beings. Then, according a contractualist interpretations, the individual becomes a citizen to the extent that he forms an agreement with the other members of society. A first finding refers to the fact that with contractualism, the individual has lost the inherence (...) of his civic action and must define himself as a citizen if he meets the extrinsically given requirements Likewise, it is indicated that the expression of civility has been interfered with by an idea of individual freedom understood in negative terms. However, before returning to Aristotelian perspective, it is necessary to redefine the idea of freedom that guides civic interaction, advocating for a social and intrinsically motivated citizenship. Proponemos discutir sobre la posesión y expresión de una capacidad que faculta a los individuos para actuar como ciudadanos. Primero, se exponen aspectos de la política aristotélica como argumentos en favor de la civilidad como una capacidad inherente a la naturaleza social de los seres humanos. Luego, desde una interpretación contractualista, el individuo se convierte en ciudadano en la medida en que establece acuerdos con los demás miembros de la sociedad. Así, una primera constatación se refiere a que, con el contractualismo, el individuo ha perdido la inherencia de su acción cívica y es definido como ciudadano en la medida en que cumple requisitos dados extrínsecamente. Asimismo, se indica que la expresión de civilidad se ha visto interferida por una idea de libertad individual entendida en términos negativos. Sin embargo, antes de retomar una perspectiva aristotélica, es necesario redefinir la idea de libertad que guía la interacción cívica, abogando por una ciudadanía social e intrínsecamente motivada. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Must Liberty and Equality Come Apart? Freedom of Conscience Self‐Ownership and Universal Suffrage Slavery Women's Rights The Cold War Thurgood Marshall Discussion Acknowledgments.

ArgumentThis article discusses the conditions that lead to the autonomy of scientific disciplines by analyzing the case of zoology in the nineteenth century. The specialization of knowledge and its institutionalization in higher education in the nineteenth century were important processes for the autonomy of scientific disciplines, such as zoology. The article argues that autonomy only arises after social and political power is mobilized by specific groups to acquire appropriate conceptual, physical, and institutional spaces for a discipline. This is illustrated through (...) the case study of the Lisbon Polytechnic School, a higher education establishment that was created in 1837, in Portugal. The case shows that autonomy in zoology can arise before the consolidation of a community of experts in the discipline, which may have been a common feature of the discipline in other countries. (shrink)

In recent decades, the digital age and the Third Industrial Revolution have attracted significant attention in terms of their benefits and risks. Scholars have explored the impact of these changes on autonomy, freedom, human interactions, cognition, and knowledge sharing. However, the influence of the digital communicative environment on civic interactions and public deliberation processes has received limited attention from virtue theorists. This paper aims to address this gap. First, we discuss the challenges posed by the digital communicative environment, and we (...) present recent attempts to revive civility within this context. Then, we propose a twofold account of civility as consisting in the two virtues of civic benevolence and civil deliberation. Finally, we focus on the epistemic side of civility, civil deliberation, and we conduct the first empirical studies on two of its components. (shrink)

In this article, I assess Jürgen Habermas’s defence of civil disobedience as ’the guardian of legitimacy’ in democratic societies. I suggest that, despite its appeal, the defence as it stands is incomplete. The problem relates to his account of the justification of this mode of protest. Although Habermas wants to defend civil disobedience as a response to inadequacies in deliberative democratic procedures, he does not provide us with a clear and compelling account of these inadequacies. In order to provide such (...) an account, I examine the various ways in which the illegitimate circulation of social power can distort democratic processes. Civil disobedience can be seen as a legitimate response to inequalities in social power, a defence that builds on the strengths of Habermas’s approach while transcending its limitations. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]. (shrink)

In this classic exposition of Marxist thought, Raya Dunayevskaya, with clarity and great insight, traces the development and explains the essential features of Marx's analysis of history. Using as her point of departure the Industrial and French Revolutions, the European upheavals of 1848, the American Civil War, and the Paris Commune of 1871, Dunayevskaya shows how Marx, inspired by these events, adapted Hegel's philosophy to analyze the course of history as a dialectical process that moves "from practice to theory." The (...) essence of Marx's philosophy, as Dunayevskaya points out, is the human struggle for freedom, which entails the gradual emergence of a proletarian revolutionary consciousness and the discovery through conflict of the means for realizing complete human freedom. But freedom for Marx meant freedom not only from capitalist economic exploitation but also from all political restraints. Continuing her historical analysis, Dunayevskaya reveals how completely Marx's original conception of freedom was perverted through its adaptations by Stalin in Russia and Mao in China, and the subsequent erection of totalitarian states. The exploitation of the masses persisted under these regimes in the form of a new "state capitalism." Yet despite the profound derailment of Marxist political philosophy in the twentieth century, Dunayevskaya points to developments such as the Hungarian revolt of 1956, and the Civil Rights struggles in the United States as signs that the indomitable quest for freedom on the part of the downtrodden cannot be forever repressed. The Hegelian dialectic of events propelled by the spirit of the masses thus moves on inexorably with the hope for the future achievement of political, economic, and social freedom and equality for all. (shrink)

This is the first full-length presentation of a republican alternative to the liberal and communitarian theories that have dominated political philosophy in recent years. The latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford Political Theory series, Pettit's eloquent and compelling account opens with an examination of the traditional republican conception of freedom as non-domination, contrasting this with established negative and positive views of liberty. The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of this conception, displays its many attractions, and (...) makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at what the implementation of the ideal would imply for substantive policy-making, constitutional and democratic design, regulatory control and the relation between state and civil society. Prominent in this account is a novel concept of democracy, under which government is exposed to systematic contestation, and a vision of relations between state and society founded upon civility and trust. Pettit's powerful and insightful new work offers not only a unified, theoretical overview of the many strands of republican ideas, but also a new and sophisticated perspective on studies in related fields including the history of ideas, jurisprudence, and criminology. (shrink)

In her fifth dystopian novel, The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood portrays North America in the not so far future, in the wake of a global economic crisis. Parts of the country are in the state of complete chaos, subjected to a ruthless gang rule. The solution to the system's breakdown comes in the form of the socio-economic experiment that requires from its participants relinquishing their freedom as every other month they will spend in prison. The seemingly preposterous experimental project (...) enables Atwood to explore principal questions about the limits of our freedom in the times of an economic crisis or a neoliberal model of economy. The satirical form the novel takes, especially towards its end, helps the writer to decry people's over-willingness to give away their freedom and civil liberties in exchange for happy, uninterrupted consumption. The following article aims to demonstrate that the notion of freedom and free will permeate The Heart Goes Last, which is, in that respect, a politically and socially engaged satire. (shrink)