In recent years, “deliberation” has become the byword of many political theorists, most of whom identify deliberation with reasoned conversation. Among the most forceful advocates of deliberation as conversation are Jürgen Habermas and, to a greater or lesser extent, his successors who style themselves “deliberative democrats.” For them, the more political decision‐making approximates the ideal of a reasoned public conversation among free and equal individuals, the more legitimate and rational it will be. “Outcomes,” they say are democratically legitimate if and (...) only if they could be the object of a free and reasoned agreement among equals. Their deliberative model produces more rational decision‐making, they say, because it conveys information, impels individuals to order their preferences coherently, and by making persons articulate good reasons in public leads them “to think from the standpoint of all involved.”. (shrink)

Remer offers the surprising conclusion that humanist thinking on toleration was actually founded on the classical tradition of rhetoric.

An examination of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of "alienated self-consciousness.".

Bribery is a complicated, multi-dimensional issue. Upon first glance, most westerners would immediately condemn it as an underhanded, unfair means of gaining an advantage in a competitive or legal situation, and so it is in virtually every case in the westernized world. However, the issue becomes much more complicated in the international context, particularly in developing nations, where giving and accepting bribes is often normal and expected. This paper serves to inform ethical decision-making in situations where the “right choice” is (...) unclear with regards to bribery, primarily for individuals performing aid work in foreign countries with corrupt officials and police officers. In such contexts, a simple offering of food, money, or a small trinket may make the difference between a person being able to accomplish meaningful, life-changing work for the local populace or having that work significantly slowed at best and being thrown out of the country, robbed, or imprisoned in worse cases. The larger scale bribery issues in international business and the laws pertaining to them are also discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric as a Balancing of Ends:Cicero and MachiavelliGary RemerIn his youthful work on rhetoric, De inventione (published about 86 B.C.E.), Cicero lists the ends for deliberative (political) oratory as honestas and utilitas (the good or honorable and the useful or expedient). In more mature writings, like De oratore (55 B.C.E.) and De officiis (44 B.C.E.), Cicero maintains a similar position: that the morally good and the beneficial are reconcilable. (...) For example, Cicero assumes in De officiis the identity of the honestum and the utile. He states there that "there is one rule for all cases;... either the thing that seems beneficial must not be dishonorable, or if it is dishonorable, it must not seem beneficial" (On Duties 3.81).1 In recent years, Victoria Kahn (1994) and J. Jackson Barlow (1999) have offered Machiavelli's "rhetorical politics"—a politics "attuned to the rhetorical concerns of effective political action" (Kahn 1994, 24)—as a more coherent and intellectually honest alternative to Cicero's attempt to reconcile irreconcilables.2 They contend that, unlike Cicero, Machiavelli accepts the impossibility of simultaneously upholding the morally good and the useful. For Machiavelli, the successful political actor must choose the utile over the honestum.Cicero, however, is not alone in his inconsistency. As Kahn demonstrates, Machiavelli's account of virtù is itself inconsistent. For example, he sometimes includes morality as an element of excellence (virtù) and at other times does not. I contend in this article, however, that Kahn's interpretation [End Page 1] of Machiavelli's contradictoriness as only "apparent," a variability, she argues, that is rhetorically inspired rather than logically deficient, applies not only to Machiavelli, as Kahn would have it, but also to Cicero. I argue that both Machiavelli and Cicero eschew "clear-cut or permanent distinctions" within virtù and between the honestum and the utile, respectively, because they wish to signal the political actor's need for flexibility (Kahn 1994, 30). Insofar as Cicero's internal contradictions, like Machiavelli's, are apparent but not real, I hold that Machiavelli does not offer a political approach that is superior to Cicero's, at least not in the sense of greater intellectual coherence.Despite their similarities, however, Cicero and Machiavelli differ from each other in that Cicero, in contrast to Machiavelli, openly affirms that politics is incomplete without a dual commitment to the good and the beneficial. I examine Machiavelli's focus on the useful and public as opposed to Cicero's additional commitment to the honorable and to the private. I analyze, in particular, the pursuit of glory in Machiavelli as it derives from early classical culture, which was preoccupied with appearances and the search for immortality. I argue that Cicero, while not abandoning the quest for glory, also vests this concept (under Stoic influence) with a private, moral character. In doing so, Cicero adheres to the rhetorical principle of decorum, which obliges orators to adapt themselves to context. This principle, I maintain, is not only a matter of expediency for Cicero but also a moral duty. While Cicero accommodates himself to a Roman world in which private morality was already an important part of one's life, Machiavelli violates decorum, attempting to resurrect a heroic ideal that disappeared long ago.Although most recent work on the revival of rhetorical ethics focuses on Aristotle (see Allen 2004, 140–59; Furley and Nehamas 1994; Garver 1994; Rorty 1996), I discuss Cicero in this essay. Not only has Cicero been the dominant influence on the Western tradition of rhetoric, but he also (unlike Aristotle) includes the honorable as one of the ends of deliberative oratory. Thus Cicero states in De inventione that while "Aristotle accepts advantage as the end [of deliberative oratory],... I prefer both honor and advantage" (2.52.156). And while Aristotle's position on deliberative oratory's ends does not mean that he ignores moral considerations, Cicero's decision to promote the good as an explicit rhetorical end forces his readers (and Machiavelli) to confront the relationship between virtue and expediency in a way that Aristotle's readers do not (Cox 1997, 1113). I concentrate, in particular, on Cicero's De officiis because... (shrink)

This book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century BC to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides.

Kremer zeigt am Beispiel zwischenstaatlicher Herrschaftsausübung, wie Suárez vom Begriff des gerechten Friedens her seine Theorie des politischen Handelns unter der Perspektive des Heils entfaltet.

Prologue: Quintilian and John of Salisbury in the Ciceronian tradition -- Rhetoric, emotional manipulation, and morality: the contemporary relevance of Cicero vis-a-vis Aristotle -- Political morality, conventional morality, and decorum in Cicero -- Rhetoric as a balancing of ends: Cicero and Machiavelli -- Justus Lipsius, morally acceptable deceit, and prudence in the Ciceronian tradition -- The classical orator as political representative: Cicero and the modern concept of representation -- Deliberative democracy and rhetoric: Cicero, oratory, and conversation.

In this essay, I examine the changes effected by the English political theorist James Harrington (1611-77) in both classical deliberative (political) rhetoric and classical republicanism and the relationship between these changes. I argue here that the author of The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) offers a model of deliberative rhetoric that is distict from the classical model: classical deliberative oratory was popular, but Harrington's vision of deliberative rhetoric was elitist; classical deliberative oratory made use of emotional apppeals, but Harrington's deliberative rhetoric (...) excluded emotional appeals; and classical deliberative oratory was determined by the speaker's rhetorical knowledge and moral character, whereas Harrington's political rhetoric was regulated by a complex set of institutional procedures. (shrink)

Lycan not only uses the numerous arguments against materialism, and functionalist theories of mind in particular, to gain a more detailed positive view of the ..

Epistemology -- Power I -- Power II -- Subjectivity -- Resistance -- Critique -- Ethics.

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

The fitting attitude analysis of value states that for objects to have value is for them to be the fitting targets of attitudes. Good objects are the fitting targets of positive attitudes, while bad objects are the fitting targets of negative attitudes. The following paper presents an argument to the effect that value and the fittingness of attitudes differ in terms of their explanations. Whereas the fittingness of attitudes is explained, inter alia, by both the properties of attitudes and those (...) of their fitting targets, the explanation of value tends to have a different content. In particular, objects have value in virtue of the features that make them valuable, and these need not involve any attitudinal properties. If this is right, then there are reasons to doubt the claim that for objects to have value is just for them to be the fitting targets of attitudes. Insofar as value is a property, it appears to be distinct from the property of objects being the fitting targets of attitudes. (shrink)

Predicted relationships between media preference and authoritarianism were derived from theoretical and experimental studies. It was hypothesized that authoritarians would be more likely to believe their preferred media sources than would nonauthoritarians, and that the authoritarian’s position on political issues would be closer to the position represented by positively evaluated media but farther from the position of negatively evaluated media. Results from mail questionnaires obtained from 445 Detroit adults supported the hypotheses. Coercive force also was strongly related to authoritarianism when (...) the media were described as disagreeing with the views of important political leaders. (shrink)

This volume is a study of the influence of Timaeus on the development of Western cosmology in three axial periods of European culture: Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Disjunctivism about perceptual appearances, as I conceive of it, is a theory which seeks to preserve a naïve realist conception of veridical perception in the light of the challenge from the argument from hallucination. The naïve realist claims that some sensory experiences are relations to mind-independent objects. That is to say, taking experiences to be episodes or events, the naïve realist supposes that some such episodes have as constituents mind-independent objects. In turn, the disjunctivist claims that in a case of (...) veridical perception like this very kind of experience that you now have, the experiential episode you enjoy is of a kind which could not be occurring were you having an hallucination. The common strategy of arguments from hallucination set out to show that certain things are true of hallucinations, and hence must be true of perceptions. For example, it is argued that hallucinations must have non-physical objects of awareness, or that such states are not relations to anything at all, but are at best seeming relations to objects. In insisting that veridical perceptual experience is of a distinct kind from hallucination, the disjunctivist denies that any of these conceptions of hallucination challenges our conception of veridical perceptions as relations to mind-independent objects. More specifically, I assume that the disjunctivist advocates naïve realism because they think that this position best articulates how sensory experience seems to us to be just through reflection. If the disjunctivist is correct in this contention, then anyone who accepts the conclusion of the argument from hallucination must also accept that the nature of sensory experience is other than it seems to us to be. In turn, one may complain that any such error theory is liable to lead to sceptical consequences. A Humean scepticism about the senses launches a challenge about our knowledge of the world through questioning the conception we have of what sense experience is, and how it can provide knowledge of the world. (shrink)