The concept of supererogation is an act that it is right to do but not wrong not to do. The moral trinity of the deontic logic excludes such acts from moral theory. A moral theory that is based on duty or obligation unqualified seems inevitably to make all good acts obligations, whether construed from a teleological or deontological point of view. If supererogation is a moral fact, no moral theory can survive without acknowledging it. One way to distinguish supererogation from (...) obligation that is not arbitrary is to draw the line of obligation at death and dismemberment. Such a limit to obligation is often implicit in moral theory. Inclusive obligation requires us all to be heroes all of the time. The moral limit to obligation is one of Hobbes's teachings. Though it is seldom noted in contemporary political and moral theory, it is, for example, implied in Rawls's definition of ‘supererogation.’ In this definition it is said that heroic supererogation would be a duty but for the high cost associated with it. This cost is the risk of life and limb;.it distinguishes supererogation from both benevolence and obligation.A supererogation is a good act with a high cost. The goodness of the act, however determined, must be proportionate to the cost to the agent. If life is risked, life or something deemed no less valuable must be gained. The intention to effect such important goods for others is sufficient for an act to be supererogatory even if it fails.If moral reality is inevitably vague, complex, and incomplete, then it is no surprise that moral theory is that way, too. The challenge is that moral theory be no more vague, complex, and incomplete than necessary and in ways justified by the nature of moral reality. A science, Aristotle advised, can be no more precise than its subject matter permits. (shrink)

The task of the historian is not one of tracing a series of links in a temporal chain; rather, it is his task to analyze a complex pattern of change into the factors which served to make it precisely what it was. The relationship which I therefore take to be fundamental to historiography is ... a relationship of part to whole, not a relationship of antecedent to consequent.Mandelbaum's historian relates the part to the whole, leaving it for the sociologist to (...) relate the antecedent to the consequence.If that is so, then Maigret is first an historian ascertaining and accumulating the subjective meanings that individuals use to produce the facticity of their own lives. And in the course of so doing he discovers the nature of the reality in which the crime occurred. Once he finds his way into the realities of the crime there is time and need for the sociological analysis of antecedent and consequent. To suggest a comparison, Maigret practices in miniature the method of Norbert Elias in that he tries to understand his subjects as they understand themselves. Maigret's is an idiographic science and not a nomethetic one. For this reason Maigret, unlike Holmes, almost never refers to previous cases in the effort to understand the matter at hand.The temptation is to conclude that Maigret is a little like Fernand Braudel in combining history and sociology by turns. But I wonder if there is not a more profound sense in which Maigret, if not all sociologists, is an historian. If we have any knowledge it is of the past, not of the present or the future. Minerva's owl does indeed take wing only at dusk, as Hegel wrote. By the time we have understood the present, it is the past.If Maigret's aim is not the unvarnished truth, that is not because of the constraints of police work but because of the constraints of the world. The irony of Maigret's ethnomethodology is this. Simenon's style is rightly celebrated for its evocation of atmosphere. The apposite analogy occasionally offered is between Simenon's spare and laconic style and Impressionist painting. Simenon does not describe people and places in the Maigret stories but suggests them with a sentence or two. The style is not realism, whatever the effect. As Rafael Koskimies has written, Simenon selects and simplifies. Impressionism is the style of painting that accepts the surface as reality. The play of light and color on the surface of objects is suggested on the surface of the canvas with the texture and color of the paint. If Simenon is an impressionist in his art, Maigret cannot be in his. He does not settle for the surface, but goes inside of it. Once there he learns all he needs to know and all that he can know. The confessions that so frequently occur in the Maigret stories do not confirm his suppositions, but release the tensions of the drama in a catharsis. Finally, if Maigret's Maigret must admit in his Memoirs that he could not in fact go into the detail of every reality personally in the manner described above, it only proves how terribly taxing the method called Verstehen is.To conclude, Maigret has a method, but it is not a recipe that others can follow step-by-step. His method is an orientation to reality and a commitment to understanding in a certain way. To call Maigret's procedure a method requires the definition of “method” to include more than cook books, however brilliant the cook books are. Maigret's method is a part of the context of discovery. Naive realists like Méchin imagine that they live only in the context of justification.Of course, no one's understanding is perfect. Maigret makes mistakes. There are times when an explanation based on behavior would be more accurate and economical. If Simenon does not dwell on Maigret's failures it is clear that Maigret uses other methods, too. The triangulation of a variety of methods is what in fact most of us practice whatever we preach. (shrink)

My hope has been to persuade readers that Hobbes's mighty thought experiment of the state of nature distorts our conceptual learning because it ignores the second morality. Instead, it inflates the first morality as the whole of morality. This inflation arises from Hobbes's exclusive preoccupation with universalizable reason. As important as universal reason undeniably is, it does not encompass the whole of moral reality. To suppose that it does is to distort moral reality. Like so many Enlightenment figures, Hobbes would (...) have political theory be more like logic than life.To refer once again to the Enlightenment allows me to observe that the drive to universality through reason is a distinctive feature of European civilization. To proceed along this line might lead to the conclusion that the pursuit of the universal is a cultural artifact. It is itself culturally relative. I am in no position to argue that point here at the end of the day, but did not the universal criteria propounded by the Enlightenment prove serviceable in the justification of European imperialism? By the universal standards of the Enlightenment only Europe was civilized.Reason is often a weapon. Alasdair MacIntyre has termed the search for rationality in moral philosophy a masquerade. MacIntyre sees the quest for rationality to be a quest for authority. He cites John Maynard Keynes's observations that “in practice, victory [in moral argument] was with those who could speak with the greatest appearance of clear, undoubting conviction and could best use the accents of infallibility.” Rationality is a weapon. “In moral argument the apparent assertion of principles functions as a mask for expressions of personal preference.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 1985), pp. 9, 17, and 19. Seasoned participants in academic conferences and learned seminars realize the intensity of involvement in what Sheila Ruth has called “The Hunt.”Sheila Ruth, “Methodocracy, Misogyny, and Bad Faith,” Men's Studies Modified, Dale Spender (ed.) (Oxford: Pergamon, 1981), p. 48. The speaker is the quarry. The others, the auditors are the hunters. Some are accomplished, others are not yet blooded. They wait for the weak point. It's blood. They attack. The inexperienced hunters are enthusiastic. The seasoned hunters take their time. The quarry defends. An arbitrary time limit ends the combat, and after tea it is someone else's turn. Can anyone say that this is the best way to search out alternatives, weigh experience, assess implications, evaluate assertions? My title “The Government of Reason” is deliberately ambiguous. On the one hand it might mean governing according to the light of reason. This was, of course, the avowed aim of the Enlightenment. The conduct of political life would follow the bright line of reason. On the other hand, the title could mean governing reason, taking control of reason and using it as a weapon. Here we may be forgiven for thinking of Michel Foucault on the use of knowledge as power. The ambiguity of the title is meant to reflect the ambiguity of reality where both alternatives have occurred. Only half of the moral realm has been made the subject of political theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Imagine Oskar Schindler before the bar of moral theory. Schindler, a minor industrialist, sheltered more than 1000 Jews during the Holocaust. This would seem to be a record of virtue. Or is it? The dominant consensus in moral theory stresses a rationality and universality of judgement and action that Oskar did not even consider. Efforts to interpret Schindler in universal terms by reference to human rights or to the tenet that ought implies can are entertained and denied. If Schindler's (...) deeds are moral reality, the consensus in contemporary moral theory is the poorer for being unable to recognise them. Schindler's virtue is noteworthy in its own right and also as a limiting case for the mainline of contemporary moral theory. (shrink)

Is the 20th Century as obviously preferable to all other times as Rawls would have us assume? Is 20th Century Stockholm preferable to 12th Century Florence in each and every way? In 12th Century Florence men lived without liberty or equality. Yet Florentines were reasonably happy, accepted their place in life, and communicated directly with others. R. Dworkin, ‘The Social Contract’, The Sunday Times, 9 July 1972, p. 31. It was a society with sharply marked class distinctions. In such a (...) society the lowly can gain more self-respect through identity, excellence, and capacity within their station than in an egalitarian society. The lowly can perceive the importance of their labour, be secure that their place is assured by powerful protectors, see models of virtue to admire, and derive a sense of contributing to a meangingful social drama. They may also learn something of the difference between the noble and the ignoble. Are these not qualities Aristotle would appreciate? Medieval man was certainly not free but 'sneither was he alone and isolated ... Man was rooted in a structuralized whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need, for doubt.Eric Fromm, Escape From Freedom (New York: Rinehart, 1941), p. 41. In a brief reference to feudalism Rawls himself seems to realise this state of affairs (74). In contrast, Stockholm is a competitive society where loneliness, anxiety, and identity crises have been endlessly documented by social scientists, all occurring despite the high material standard of living. Yet Stockholm would seem to be the model for Rawls and obviously not Florence. One wonders if this social scientific knowledge of Stockholm will be part of the knowledge available to persons in the original position.One critic lauds Rawls's grasp of the social sciences, but perhaps he is not serious, see Hugo Bedau, ‘Rawls’, Nation, 11 September 1972.Justice is not quantitative but qualitative, so Aristotle might say in a brief discussion. In a just society a person's possessions and consumptions are not on the minds of the other people with whom they meet and treat. When Odysseus came home he was delighted to climb into a peasant's cart to ride the last mile home. Contrast this king with King Arthur riding with another peasant on another road, choking with the anxiety that he may not be acting kingly by being in the cart. In Ithaca both king and commoner were sure of each other and, more importantly of themselves. (shrink)

Hegel transformed political philosophy in distinguishing between civil society and the state. That is Riedel’s thesis. Riedel reads Hegel in the context of the preceding and contemporary writers to whom Hegel responded, e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Haller, Wolff, Thomasius, and Kant. In the tradition composed of such writers, civil society was the state and vice versa. In light of the English industrial revolution and the French political revolution, Hegel concluded that this identity was untenable. Riedel traces the intellectual arguments (...) of Hegel’s early works, like the Jenenser Realphilosophie, Naturrecht, and System der Sittlichkeit, to the Philosophie des Rechts. (shrink)

Hegel transformed political philosophy in distinguishing between civil society and the state. That is Riedel’s thesis. Riedel reads Hegel in the context of the preceding and contemporary writers to whom Hegel responded, e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Haller, Wolff, Thomasius, and Kant. In the tradition composed of such writers, civil society was the state and vice versa. In light of the English industrial revolution and the French political revolution, Hegel concluded that this identity was untenable. Riedel traces the intellectual arguments (...) of Hegel’s early works, like the Jenenser Realphilosophie, Naturrecht, and System der Sittlichkeit, to the Philosophie des Rechts. (shrink)

The sixteen essays on Hegel’s philosophy of right in relation to European constitutional history in this volume show the importance of the discovery of Hegel’s lecture notes. These notes from students before and after the publication of Die Philosophie des Rechts have done much to fill out Hegel’s elliptic style, at once grand and cryptic. Of particular use to several contributors to this collection are the newly published Peter Wannenmann manuscripts. Though the title of only one of four parts of (...) the book refers to constitutional matters, they figure in most of the other essays, too. (shrink)

In this book Peter Steinberger takes up one of the fundamental issues of political theory, namely the relationship between the individual and society. Most of Western political theory has accepted two principles: first, that individuals may be different and, second, that society requires rules and patterns. These two principles compete and may come into conflict.

This handsome tome comprises twelve original contributions together with a detailed introduction by the editors. The anthology begins with Jan Narveson’s wide-ranging survey of the theses of universalizability. He begins with the claim that morality somehow involves universalizability because it ensures consistency. Implicit in this essay and throughout the volume is the assumption that morality consists of rules and principles. Consequently, moral philosophy is the search for and elucidation of such rules and principles. Though Narveson acknowledges that there are those (...) that have thought that character is more important, he brushes this exception aside. Narveson arrives at the conclusion that a rule “is an acceptable moral rule only if there is sufficient reason in terms of their own values, for all moral agents who have reason to decline the ruleless state to accept” it. (shrink)

This handsome tome comprises twelve original contributions together with a detailed introduction by the editors. The anthology begins with Jan Narveson’s wide-ranging survey of the theses of universalizability. He begins with the claim that morality somehow involves universalizability because it ensures consistency. Implicit in this essay and throughout the volume is the assumption that morality consists of rules and principles. Consequently, moral philosophy is the search for and elucidation of such rules and principles. Though Narveson acknowledges that there are those (...) that have thought that character is more important, he brushes this exception aside. Narveson arrives at the conclusion that a rule “is an acceptable moral rule only if there is sufficient reason in terms of their own values, for all moral agents who have reason to decline the ruleless state to accept” it. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to describe and evaluate the work of the Idealists in the period 1880–1914. Of course, the prince of these Idealists was T. H. Green, but it is made clear that he had many colleagues. For the Idealists the state was not merely an instrument, it was also an end. It provided a focus for a sense of community. The religious doctrines and metaphysical theories of the Idealists led them to emphasize the state.

The purpose of this book is to describe and evaluate the work of the Idealists in the period 1880–1914. Of course, the prince of these Idealists was T. H. Green, but it is made clear that he had many colleagues. For the Idealists the state was not merely an instrument, it was also an end. It provided a focus for a sense of community. The religious doctrines and metaphysical theories of the Idealists led them to emphasize the state.

The Paris manuscripts made Marx’s humanism into a controversy. Louis Althusser argued that these early works were irrelevant to the mature work of Capital, while Shlomo Avineri contended that they were essential. In this book the thesis is that there is a continuous and complex development in Marx rather than Althusser’s coupure epistémologique or Avineri’s seamless web.

The Paris manuscripts made Marx’s humanism into a controversy. Louis Althusser argued that these early works were irrelevant to the mature work of Capital, while Shlomo Avineri contended that they were essential. In this book the thesis is that there is a continuous and complex development in Marx rather than Althusser’s coupure epistémologique or Avineri’s seamless web.

These two fragments, the earliest surviving examples of Hegel’s political theory, have not before been available in English. Though each is obscure, the germs of many of Hegel’s ideas are visible, including “spirit.” Annotations and appendices round off each fragment. An excellent index allows for cross-referencing. Moreover, H. S. Harris provides introductions to each fragment. That for the “System of Ethical Life” exceeds 90 pages. All told, more than two-thirds of the book is devoted to that fragment, but Harris is (...) right to say that is it illuminated by the “First Philosophy of Spirit” and vice versa. (shrink)