The debate between impartialists and their critics has dominated both moral and political philosophy for over a decade. Characteristically, impartialists argue that any sensible form of impartialism can accommodate the partial concerns we have for others. By contrast, partialists deny that this is so. They see the division as one which runs exceedingly deep and argue that, at the limit, impartialist thinking requires that we marginalise those concerns and commitments that make our lives meaningful. This book attempts to show both (...) that the dispute between impartialists and their critics runs very deep, and that it can nonetheless be resolved. The resolution begins by asking how impartialist political philosophy can defend the priority of justice when it conflicts with people's commitments to their conceptions of the good. It is argued that priority can only defended if political impartialism has a moral foundation, and that moral foundation must not be a foundation in the ideal of equality (as is often thought), but a foundation in the partial concerns we have for others. In short, impartialist moral philosophy must take our partial concerns as central if it is to gain allegiance. However, if it does take our partial concerns as central, then it can generate a defence of political impartialism which shows why justice must take priority, but which also acknowledges that pluralism about the good is permanent. (shrink)

In this book, Susan Mendus seeks to address these important questions to assess whether this apparent tension between morality and politics is real and, if so, ...

After MacIntyre contains original essays by leading moral and political philosophers who assess both the merits and limitations of Alasdair MacIntyre's work. Among the themes explored here are MacIntyre's historical arguments about the sources of the failure of modernity; the validity and relevance of his attempt to reinstate the ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas as central to any satisfactory moral understanding; the effectiveness of his critique of modern liberalism; and the adequacy of key concepts, such as tradition and practice, in (...) his analyses and arguments. In addition, MacIntyre responds in a substantial essay to the issues raised by the other contributors. (shrink)

This book combines the insights of enlightenment thinking and feminist theory to explore the significance of love in modern philosophy. The author argues for the importance of emotion in general, and love in particular, to moral and political philosophy, pointing out that some of the central philosophers of the enlightment were committed to a moralized conception of love. However, she believes that feminism's insights arise not from its attribution of special and distinctive qualities to women, but from its recognition of (...) human vulernability. (shrink)

Is toleration a requirement of morality or a dictate of prudence? What limits are there to toleration? What is required of us if we are to promote a truly tolerant society? These themes--the grounds, limits, and requirements of toleration--are central to this book, which presents the W.B. Morrell Memorial Lectures on Toleration, given in 1986 at the University of York. Covering a wide range of practical and theoretical issues, the contributors--including F.A. Hayek, Maurice Cranston, and Karl Popper--consider the philosophical difficulties (...) inherent in the concept as well as the practical problems of implementing a policy of toleration. Although the contributors differ in their conclusions about the grounds of toleration, they all share a belief in the importance of the concept both historically and in modern society. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent writings in feminist ethics have urged that the activity of caring is more central to women's lives than are considerations of justice and equality. This paper argues that an ethics of care, so understood, is difficult to extend beyond the local and familiar, and is therefore of limited use in addressing the political problems of the modern world. However, the ethics of care does contain an important insight: if references to care are understood not as claims about women's (...) nature, but as reflections on the extent to which moral obligations are both unchosen and conflicting, then an ethics of care can supplement an ethics of justice, and can also provide a more realistic account of both men's and women's moral life. (shrink)

Most modern moral theories are impartialist in character. They perceive the demands of morality as standing in opposition to partial concerns and acting as constraints upon them. In this paper I argue that our partial concerns in general, and our love and concern for others in particular, are not ultimately at odds with the demands of morality, impartially understood, but are the necessary preconditions of our being motivated by impartial morality. If we are to care about morality, we must first (...) care about people and things other than morality. If we are to be educated morally, we must first be educated in the emotions. (shrink)

In his essay ‘The Simple Art of Murder’, Raymond Chandler describes the world of the American detective story as ‘a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities, in which hotels and apartment houses and celebrated restaurants are owned by men who made their money out of brothels, in which a screen star can be the fingerman for a mob, and the nice man down the hall is a boss of the numbers racket; a world where a (...) judge with a cellar full of bootleg liquor can send a man to jail for having a pint in his pocket, where the mayor of your town may have condoned murder as an instrument of money making, where no man can walk down a dark street in safety’. Nevertheless, ‘down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.’ What are the possibilities of being such a man in the world as we know it? The hero of the American detective story is not only a good man, and a man of honour, but also a man who must get things done. In Dashiel Hammett's Red Harvest he is the man who is sent in to clean up the pig-sty that is Poisonville, and in so doing he becomes poisoned himself. He has a choice between being effective and being good, but he cannot be both together. ‘Poisonville is right’, he says despairingly. ‘It's poisoned me.’. (shrink)

Susan Mendus; Toleration and Recognition: education in a multicultural society, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 29, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 191–2.

Most modern moral theories are impartialist in character. They perceive the demands of morality as standing in opposition to partial concerns and acting as constraints upon them. In this paper I argue that our partial concerns in general, and our love and concern for others in particular, are not ultimately at odds with the demands of morality, impartially understood, but are the necessary preconditions of our being motivated by impartial morality. If we are to care about morality, we must first (...) care about people and things other than morality. If we are to be educated morally, we must first be educated in the emotions. (shrink)

Introduction JOHN HORTON AND SUSAN MENDUS The essays in this volume are concerned with the theoretical and conceptual issues involved in the idea of ...

ABSTRACT This article addresses the question‘What is the justification of higher education in modern society?’ It takes issue with writers such as Alasdair Macintyre and Allan Bloom, who argue that the fragmentation of value characteristic of modernity has undermined the possibility of providing a coherent justification of higher education. Against MacIntyre and Bloom, I argue that we should understand education as a means of developing reflective consciousness in students, and that that will require fragmentation and the immanent conflict of traditions (...) rather than a background of agreed values. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two works of nineteenth-century feminism: Harriet Taylor's essay, Enfranchisement of Women, and John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women. My aim is to indicate that these texts are more radical than is usually allowed: far from being merely criticisms of the legal disabilities suffered by women in Victorian Britain, they are important moral texts which anticipate central themes within twentieth-century radical feminism. In particular, The Subjection of Women is not merely a liberal defence of legal equality; (...) it is a positive statement of the inadequacy of ‘male” conceptions of reason and its powers. So understood, I shall argue, it coheres with Mill's other moral and political writings, and draws much of its persuasive power from the doctrines advanced in Harriet Taylor's Enfranchisement of Women. (shrink)

This article addresses the question‘What is the justification of higher education in modern society?’ It takes issue with writers such as Alasdair Macintyre and Allan Bloom, who argue that the fragmentation of value characteristic of modernity has undermined the possibility of providing a coherent justification of higher education. Against MacIntyre and Bloom, I argue that we should understand education as a means of developing reflective consciousness in students, and that that will require fragmentation and the immanent conflict of traditions rather (...) than a background of agreed values. (shrink)

Susan Mendus; Toleration and Recognition: education in a multicultural society, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 29, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 191–2.

I begin with the story told by Herman Melville in his short novel, Billy Budd.The year is 1797. Britain is engaged in a long and bitter war against France, and the British war effort has been threatened by two naval mutinies: the Nore Mutiny and the mutiny at Spithead. The scene is His Majesty’s Ship, the Indomitable, and the central character is Billy Budd, sailor. Billy Budd is a young man of exceptional beauty, both physical and moral, whose only flaw (...) is a stammer. He is loved by all his fellow sailors except the master-at-arms, John Claggart. The incarnation of evil, Claggart recognises in Billy the incarnation of goodness, and is consumed by a jealousy which leads him to accuse Billy (falsely) of inciting the crew to mutiny. Alone with Claggart and the ship’s Captain, Edward Vere, Billy hears the lying charge against him. He is enraged, but his stammer prevents him from responding in words. He strikes Claggart, and the blow is fatal. Billy Budd, sailor, has killed the master-at-arms of one of His Majesty’s ships on active service, and the penalty for this is death. (shrink)

I begin with two quotations: one from Anthony Crosland's Socialism Now, the other from Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War. Crosland says:experience shows that only a small minority of the population wish to participate [in politics]. I repeat what I have often said—the majority prefer to lead a full family life and cultivate their gardens. And a good thing too … we do not necessarily want a busy, bustling society in which everyone is politically active and fussing around in an (...) interfering and responsible manner, and herding us all into participating groups. The threat to privacy and freedom would be intolerable. (shrink)

Susan Mendus; VII*—Liberty and Autonomy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, Pages 107–120, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristo.

The central question of this paper is how modern liberal political theory can understand and make sense of value pluralism and the conflicts upon which it is premissed. It is a commonplace that liberalism was born out of conflict, and has been partly characterised ever since as a series of attempts to accommodate it within the framework of the nation state . However, it is also true that liberals have proposed many different routes to the resolution, or containment, of conflict, (...) and these different routes are manifestations of different understandings of conflict itself both within an individual life and between lives. Thus, some assert the irreducible heterogeneity of value: John Stuart Mill famously inveighs against the attempt to model all human life on a single pattern and tells us that ‘human beings are not sheep, and even sheep are not indistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit him unless they are either made to his measure or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from; and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat?’ . On Mill's account, plurality is the natural condition of humanity. We should neither hope for nor expect the elimination of conflict, and a world in which there is diversity is richer and better for it. (shrink)

The articles collected in this critical edition represent a variety of interpretations both of the kind of feminism Mill represents and of the specific arguments he offers in The Subjection of Women including their lexical ordering and relative merit. Each selection is preceded by a brief and useful summary of the author's position intended to assist introductory students.

Though several editions of Locke's Letter of Toleration art available, the unique value of this volume lies in the fact that it conbines both the text of the Letter and interpretative, critical essays. Several essays are reprints of the most important articles on the Letter , but there is also new material , specially commissioned for the volume and published here for the first time. Given the importance of Locke's Letter on Toleration , this volume will be welcomed by both (...) students and teachers of political philosophy, the history of political thought, as well as philosophy and politics generally. (shrink)