D. D. Raphael examines the moral philosophy of Adam Smith (1723-90), best known for his famous work on economics, The Wealth of Nations, and shows that his thought still has much to offer philosophers today. Raphael gives particular attention to Smith's original theory of conscience, with its emphasis on the role of 'sympathy' (shared feelings).

In this fascinating exploration of justice, eminent philosopher D. D. Raphael presents the culmination of a lifetime's study of its evolution, from ancient times to the late twentieth century. His aim is not just historical but philosophical: to illuminate our true understanding of justice. His unique approach examines not only classic texts by such philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Mill, and Rawls but also the Bible and Greek tragedy, as well as some neglected but important thought from the modern era. (...) Lucid and stimulating, this work can be enjoyed by anyone interested in moral and political thought, even by those with little to no knowledge of political theory or philosophy. (shrink)

In this new and enlarged edition of a standard introduction to moral philosophy, Raphael shows in clear and simple language the connections between abstract ethics and practical problems in law, government, medicine, and the social sciences in general. Moral Philosophy deals with six main areas. First, it looks at the two opposed traditions of naturalism and rationalism, and considers more recent discussion in terms of logic and language. Next, it explores the attractions and defects of Utilitarianism, and then turns to (...) its main rival, Kantian ethics, which Raphael favors in a modified form. The third section shows how different moral views are related to different theories about justice and liberty. The fourth examines the problem of free will and determinism in the context of the presuppositions of science, especially in the social sciences. This second edition enlarges the relation of moral philosophy to other concerns, with two new chapters: one on ethics and evolution, the other on medical ethics. (shrink)

This book introduces the student to active philosophical thinking about political ideas, offering a more stimulating approach to the subject than traditional chronological surveys. The first edition was hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as 'the best introduction to political philosophy for a long time'. This thoroughly revised second edition brings its coverage up-to-date for the 1990s, with material reorganised to be fully accessible for the beginner.

1. Hobbes-Gay.--2. Hume-Bentham and Index.

Deliberative democracy grounds its legitimacy largely in the ability of speakers to participate on equal terms. Yet theorists and practitioners have struggled with how to establish deliberative equality in the face of stark differences of power in liberal democracies. Designers of innovative civic forums for deliberation often aim to neutralize inequities among participants through proportional inclusion of disempowered speakers and discourses. In contrast, others argue that democratic equality is best achieved when disempowered groups deliberate in their own enclaves before entering (...) the broader public sphere. Borrowing from each perspective, the authors argue that there are strong reasons to incorporate enclave deliberation among the disempowered within civic forums. They support this claim by presenting case study evidence showing that participants in such forums can gain some of the same benefits of deliberation found in more heterogeneous groups, can consider a diversity of viewpoints rather than falling into groupthink and polarization, and can persuade external stakeholders of the legitimacy of the group’s deliberations. (shrink)

D. D. Raphael; I—The Presidential Address*: The Standard of Morals, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 1–12E, https.

D. D. Raphael; VI*—Hume and Adam Smith on Justice and Utility, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 73, Issue 1, 1 June 1973, Pages 87–104, https://d.

This book is both expository and critical and concentres on Hobbes' ethical and political theory, but also considering the effect on these of his metaphysics.

Mill's Utilitarianism is widely used to introduce elementary students to Moral Philosophy. One reason for this, I trust, is a recognition that Mill's doctrines and interests have an immediate attraction for most people. But certainly another reason is the belief that Mill's arguments contain a number of obvious fallacies, which an elementary student can be led to detect, thereby learning to practise critical philosophy.

What darkness was the ‘Enlightenment’ supposed to have removed? The answer is irrational forms of religion. Most of the ‘enlightened’ took the view that revealed religion was irrational and that natural religion could be rational; but some were sceptical about natural religion too. Hume was the most honest and the most penetrating thinker of the latter group. His biographer, Professor E. C. Mossner, is not alone in believing that the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion is ‘his philosophical testament’.

What darkness was the ‘Enlightenment’ supposed to have removed? The answer is irrational forms of religion. Most of the ‘enlightened’ took the view that revealed religion was irrational and that natural religion could be rational; but some were sceptical about natural religion too. Hume was the most honest and the most penetrating thinker of the latter group. His biographer, Professor E. C. Mossner, is not alone in believing that the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion is ‘his philosophical testament’.

In this article I propose to examine Bishop Butler's view of the nature of moral judgment, the epistemological problem which so greatly exercised some of the British moralists of his age. I have discussed the views of four of them in The Moral Sense. The problem seems to have been peculiarly lacking in interest for Butler. This may seem at first sight an odd statement: the moral faculty, or conscience, it would be said, is the chief subject of Butler's moral (...) writings. This is true enough. But although Butler's description of the working of conscience is unsurpassed, he gives no clear definition of the faculty. That is, he does not clearly consider the question whether the moral faculty can be said to be identical with some faculty usually called by another name, or whether it is sui generis. (shrink)

Mill's Utilitarianism is widely used to introduce elementary students to Moral Philosophy. One reason for this, I trust, is a recognition that Mill's doctrines and interests have an immediate attraction for most people. But certainly another reason is the belief that Mill's arguments contain a number of obvious fallacies, which an elementary student can be led to detect, thereby learning to practise critical philosophy.

D. D. Raphael; VI*—Hume and Adam Smith on Justice and Utility, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 73, Issue 1, 1 June 1973, Pages 87–104, https://d.

A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This contribution uses the career and writings of Juan Solórzano Pereira (1575–1655) to probe the relationship between mercury, governance, and the obligations of individuals to the early modern Iberian state. It focuses specifically on two terms often employed in the context of practical governance—“bien público” (public good) and “hacienda” (treasury)—by placing Solórzano Pereira’s 1647 Politica Indiana and administrative documents generated during his tenure at the mercury mine of Huancavelica (modern Peru) in dialogue. Read in tandem, these texts reveal that Solórzano (...) Pereira articulated the relationship between mercury, the bien público, and the hacienda through comparisons between mining and agriculture, a conception of nature as an agential force, and period understandings of the “common.” While historians of practical governance often dismiss appeals to the bien público and the hacienda as hollow rhetoric, this essay reveals that the terms were important for period actors in conceptualizing the distribution of labor and materials. (shrink)

Bertolt Brecht’s poem “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor” is frequently cited as a means to raise awareness among health workers of the health effects of living and working conditions. Less cited is his Call to Arms trilogy of poems, which calls for class-based action to transform the capitalist economic system that sickens and kills so many. In this article, we show how “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor,” with its plea for empathy for the ill, contrasts with the more (...) activist and often militant tone of the Call to Arms trilogy: “Call to a Sick Communist,” “The Sick Communist’s Answer to the Comrades,” and “Call to the Doctors and Nurses.” We also show that, while “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor” has been applied in the training of health workers, its accusatorial tone towards health workers’ complicity in the system the poem is critiquing risks alienating such workers. In contrast, the Call to Arms trilogy seeks common ground, inviting these same workers into the broader political and social fight against injustice. While we contend that the description of the sick worker as a “Communist” risks estranging these health workers, our analysis of the Call to Arms poems nevertheless indicates that their use can contribute to moving health workers’ educational discourse beyond a laudable but fleeting elicitation of empathy for the ill towards a structural critique and deeper systemic understanding in order to prompt action by health workers to reform or even replace the capitalist economic system that sickens and kills so many. (shrink)

In some sense every man has a moral right, or more properly a moral claim, to equality with other men. In what sense will, I hope, become apparent in the course of this paper. That there is such a claim in some sense is clear enough. “Equality before the law,” for example, is something which we all recognize to be right.

This article suggests that second-wave feminist theology between around 1968 and 1995 undertook the quintessentially religious and task of theology, which is to break its own idols. Idoloclasm was the dynamic of Jewish and Christian feminist theological reformism and the means by which to clear a way back into its own tradition. Idoloclasm brought together an inter-religious coalition of feminists who believed that idolatry is not one of the pitfalls of patriarchy but its symptom and cause, not a subspecies of (...) sin but the primary sin of alienated relationship. The first moment of feminist theology’s criticism of patriarchal power is not that it is socially unjust, but that it has licence to be unjust because it is idolatrous. Yet, neither opponents of feminist theology who dismiss it on the grounds that it is a secular import into the tradition, nor feminist students of theology and religion, have paid sufficient attention to feminist theology’s counter-idolatrous turn as the religious ground of women’s liberation. Here, the freedom and becoming of women is dependent on the liberation of the religious imagination from captivity to a trinity of idols: the patriarchal god called God who is no more than an inference from the political dispensation that created him; the idol of the masculine that created God in his own image and the idol of the feminine worshipped as an ideational object of desire only as the subordinated complement of the masculine and as a false image that becomes a substitute for the real, finite women whose agency and will it supplants. (shrink)

This article examines how Jesuit Gabriele Beati taught the subject of sunspots in two textbooks commemorating his teaching of natural philosophy and mathematics at the Collegio Romano. Whereas Beati defended the incorruptibility of the heavens in his natural philosophical course, he argued that sunspots were located on the face of the sun itself and generated and corrupted like terrestrial clouds in his mathematical one. While it may be tempting to attribute these different presentations to censorship practices within the Jesuit Order, (...) they are best understood as the result of disciplinary distinctions and scholarly practices shared widely by scholars across Europe. (shrink)

This contribution examines the role of diagrams in early modern pedagogy. It begins with an analysis of images from the 1632 Dialogo and 1638 Discorsi. I claim that Galileo often employed images in a pedagogical context, illustrating to readers through his dialogue how he may have used images in his own teaching. Building on the work of previous historians, I argue that a classification of Galileo’s images should include not only heuristic images and images used for virtual witnessing, but also (...) pedagogical images designed to illustrate to the reader (or student) how to reach conclusions about a given question. I then turn to the way Galileo’s readers at the University of Pisa employed Galileo’s images in their own teaching. I argue that Galileo’s readers employed his images in their own works in ways which reflected their training and the genre in which they wrote and taught. (shrink)