"Bibliographical notes": pages [243]-244.

Examines the contributions of Kant, Clausewitz, Marx and Engels, and Tolstoy to the understanding of the character and causes of war and of the possibility of peace between nations.

The House of Lords debate of July last on the Death Penalty Abolition Bill 1 may prove to have been a landmark in British constitutional and legal history; certainly it was of the greatest interest as a specimen of current moral thinking and moral conflicts on the death penalty; and it is in this latter light that I shall discuss it here. Socialists and radicals might of course complain that a predominantly Conservative House of Lords could not be representative of (...) current thinking; and they might contrast the voting for the second reading of Mr. Silverman's Bill in the Lords—Contents 95, Non-contents 238—with the votes that had previously been recorded in the Commons. (shrink)

One Morality or many? Liberal morality and Socialist morality; bourgeois morality and Georges Sorel's “morality of producers”; Protestant morality and Catholic; Greek morality and Christian; “aristocratic” morality and “slave” morality, “open” morality and “closed” morality—what, if any, is the relevance of such distinctions as these to moral philosophy?

During his lifetime Peirce was appreciated for his erudite and accurate thinking by experts in a few borderline philosophical subjects—in particular the history and philosophy of physics, semeiotics, mathematical logic, the theory of probability—and was suspected by a few prescient souls to be a general philosopher of outstanding genius; but by academic and other publishers he was consistently regarded as a bad bet. These facts largely explain the history of Peircean publication in the last few decades. It was only in (...) 1958, nearly fifty years since Peirce stopped writing, that the wealthiest university in the wealthiest nation in the world was able to complete its eight volume edition of his Collected Papers; but in the meanwhile at least three useful smaller anthologies of Peirce’s writings had been put before the public. Professor Wiener’s volume makes a fourth. And the obvious initial question is: was this additional anthology really necessary? (shrink)

The political writings of Kant and of Hegel present two contrasts, whose connection and explanation have never been adequately explored. The first contrast is in respect of the quality of their discussions of ‘home’ politics—in Kant's language, the ‘problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution’. Here Hegel shines. However much one may dislike the tone of voice, the vocabulary, the style and the arrangement of its arguments, his Philosophy of Right , especially when supplemented by his more topical political writings, (...) presents an array of dicta, judgments and arguments of notable penetration, balance and prescience. Consider for instance his account of the very different political functions of free associations and of representative bodies, and his perception of the symbolic—but crucially symbolic—role of head of state. On these, as on many other issues, Hegel's views deserve the credit that has of late begun to be restored to them. Whatever his philosophical failings, he had a remarkable sense of the key junctures of different strands in the life of politics; so that, although the kind of state he describes and admires retains little practical relevance today, his exposition of it remains a valuable training-ground in political appreciation. By contrast Kant's philosophy of the state, as we find it in Part II of his Philosophy of Right , in Part II of Theory and Practice and in Appendices I and II of Perpetual Peace , is at first sight little more than an academic exercise. It amounts to a restatement, in dehistoricized terms and in accordance with Kant's rationalist theory of morals, of Rousseau's central political teachings, viz. that an original, unanimous, unrescindable contract explains political allegiance, and that the idea of a General Will is a sufficient criterion of political justice within the state. From these two basic positions Kant develops a theory of civic obedience far more restrictive than that of Rousseau or indeed than that of Hobbes. Throughout, Kant accepts—in the spirit which one might accord to revelation—Rousseau's assumptions that government can be confined to issues that fall under a General Will, and that such a Will can be ‘found’ for the resolution of every political issue, so that honest men need never disagree about what the General Will is. But to say this is to say that Kant's concern with home politics is little more than academic. (shrink)

Is The Prelude a philosophical poem? It is, of course, many things besides: it is an autobiography; it contains profound reflections on psychology, education and politics; and there are passages of an almost purely lyrical character. Does it also contain philosophical poetry? On this question, the critics of Wordsworth are divided. Coleridge and Raleigh answer Yes; Arnold, Bradley, Dr. Leaves, from their different points of view, agree in answering No. I believe that the first answer is right, although it has (...) usually been supported by the wrong reasons. I believe the second answer to be wrong, although many of the arguments that are supposed to lead to it are in themselves sound enough. Those who say that The Prelude is not a philosophical poem, usually mean that it does not offer a coherent system of philosophy—that it expresses an original outlook and a personal wisdom, but that the only systematic philosophy in it comes at second-hand from Hartley or Coleridge and contributes not at all to the poem. And this is largely true. But the mistake is, to identify philosophy with system, philosophizing with “a philosophy.” This is a mistake that has been repudiated again and again by many of the greatest philosophers, from Socrates and Plato to Locke and Kant and others. I shall argue that The Prelude achieves philosophical poetry, because in it Wordsworth grapples with philosophical problems—problems which arise out of the story of his own early life—which are actually forced upon him by the poem itself; and because he tries to answer these problems in a way which would be possible only in poetry. (shrink)