The words 'rebellion' and 'revolution' have gained renewed prominence in the vocabulary of world politics and so has the question of justifiable armed 'resistance'. In this book Christopher J. Finlay extends just war theory to provide a rigorous and systematic account of the right to resist oppression and of the forms of armed force it can justify. He specifies the circumstances in which rebels have the right to claim recognition as legitimate actors in revolutionary wars against domestic tyranny (...) and injustice, and wars of liberation against wrongful foreign occupation and colonialism. Arguing that violence is permissible only in a narrow range of cases, Finlay shows that the rules of engagement vary during and between different conflicts and explores the potential for irregular tactics to become justifiable, such as non-uniformed guerrillas and civilian disguise, the assassination of political leaders and regime officials, and the waging of terrorist war against civilian targets. (shrink)

The words 'rebellion' and 'revolution' have gained renewed prominence in the vocabulary of world politics and so has the question of justifiable armed 'resistance'. In this book Christopher J. Finlay extends just war theory to provide a rigorous and systematic account of the right to resist oppression and of the forms of armed force it can justify. He specifies the circumstances in which rebels have the right to claim recognition as legitimate actors in revolutionary wars against domestic tyranny (...) and injustice, and wars of liberation against wrongful foreign occupation and colonialism. Arguing that violence is permissible only in a narrow range of cases, Finlay shows that the rules of engagement vary during and between different conflicts and explores the potential for irregular tactics to become justifiable, such as non-uniformed guerrillas and civilian disguise, the assassination of political leaders and regime officials, and the waging of terrorist war against civilian targets. (shrink)

Recent debate on the relationship between cyber threats, on the one hand, and both strategy and ethics on the other focus on the extent to which ‘cyber war’ is possible, both as a conceptual question and an empirical one. Whether it can is an important question for just war theorists. From this perspective, it is necessary to evaluate cyber measures both as a means of responding to threats and as a possible just cause for using armed kinetic force. In this (...) paper, I shift the focus away from ‘war’ as such in order to ask whether some cyber threats might justifiably be characterized as a form of ‘violence.’ Some theorists argue that the term violence ought to be defined so as to encompass things like ‘structural’ harm or harm by neglect and thereby question implicitly the focus of just war theorists on armed force. This paper draws on a theory of violence I developed elsewhere as a defence of just war theory’s narrow understanding of violence. According to the ‘Double-Intent’ theory, a distinctive form of ‘Violent Agency’ is the factor uniting the category of violence while partly accounting for the peculiar moral connotations of the term. Here, I argue that the resulting definition of violence reshapes the category in a way that includes some forms of cyber-attack. This may help us to see where cyber might fit in relation to just war theory and the ethics of kinetic attack. (shrink)

Recent debate on the relationship between cyber threats, on the one hand, and both strategy and ethics on the other focus on the extent to which ‘cyber war’ is possible, both as a conceptual question and an empirical one. Whether it can is an important question for just war theorists. From this perspective, it is necessary to evaluate cyber measures both as a means of responding to threats and as a possible just cause for using armed kinetic force. In this (...) paper, I shift the focus away from ‘war’ as such in order to ask whether some cyber threats might justifiably be characterized as a form of ‘violence.’ Some theorists argue that the term violence ought to be defined so as to encompass things like ‘structural’ harm or harm by neglect and thereby question implicitly the focus of just war theorists on armed force. This paper draws on a theory of violence I developed elsewhere as a defence of just war theory’s narrow understanding of violence. According to the ‘Double-Intent’ theory, a distinctive form of ‘Violent Agency’ is the factor uniting the category of violence while partly accounting for the peculiar moral connotations of the term. Here, I argue that the resulting definition of violence reshapes the category in a way that includes some forms of cyber-attack. This may help us to see where cyber might fit in relation to just war theory and the ethics of kinetic attack. (shrink)

This article critiques the idea of instrumental justification for violent means seen in Hannah Arendt's writings. A central element in Arendt's argument against theorists like Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon in On Violence is the distinction between instrumental justifications and approaches emphasizing the `legitimacy' of violence or its intrinsic value. This doesn't really do the work Arendt needs it to in relation to rival theories. The true distinctiveness of Arendt's view is seen when we turn to On Revolution and resituate (...) the later arguments of On Violence in the context of her ideas about the separation between revolution and liberation. Arendt's commitment to the American discovery in revolutionary politics of a means that needs no further ends to justify it permits a rereading of her conception of liberation as an attempt to envisage a violence that, while tactically instrumental, is at the same time politically non-instrumental. But while Arendt's view is distinct, the article also highlights important thematic continuities with the writings of Sorel and Walter Benjamin. (shrink)

The ability of international ethics and political theory to establish a genuinely critical standpoint from which to evaluate uses of armed force has been challenged by various lines of argument. On one, theorists question the narrow conception of violence on which analysis relies. Were they right, it would overturn two key assumptions: first, that violence is sufficiently distinctive to merit attention as a category separate from other modes of human harming; second, that it is troubling in a special way that (...) makes acts of violence peculiarly hard to justify. This paper defends a narrow understanding of violence and a special ethics governing its use by arguing that a distinctive form of ‘Violent Agency’ is the factor uniting the category while partly accounting for the fearful connotations of the term. Violent Agency is defined first by a double intention (1) to inflict harm using a technique chosen (2) to eliminate or evade the target’s means of escaping it or defending against it. Second, the harms it aims at are destructive (as opposed to appropriative). The analysis offered connects the concept of violence to themes in international theory such as vulnerability, security, and domination, as well as the ethics of war. (shrink)

In Hume's Social Philosophy, Christopher J Finlay presents a highly original and engaging reading of David Hume's landmark text, A Treatise of Human Nature, and political writings published immediately after it, articulating a unified view of his theory of human nature in society and his political philosophy. The book explores the hitherto neglected social contexts within which Hume's ideas were conceived. While a great deal of attention has previously been given to Hume's intellectual and literary contexts, important connections (...) can also be made between the fundamentals of Hume's philosophy and the social world in which it was developed. Finlay argues that Hume's unified theory of human nature, conceived in terms of passions, reason and sociability, was meant to account for human nature in its most articulate manifestations, in the commercial and 'polite' social contexts of eighteenth-century Europe. Through careful exegetical study of Hume's analysis of reasoning and the passions, Finlay explores the diverse aspects of sociability which the Treatise of Human Nature invokes. In particular, this study finds in the Treatise an important exploration of the tensions between the selfish motivations of individuals and their propensity to bond with others in complex and diverse kinds of social group. Analysis of Book III of the Treatise and of essays published afterwards shows how the various individualist and social propensities explored through the passions are addressed in Hume's theories of justice, morals and politics. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between revolution and violence in Marxism and in a series of texts drawing on Marxian theory. Part 1 outlines the basic normative frameworks which determine the outer limits of permissible violence in Marxism. Part 2 presents a critical analysis of a series of later discussions - by Sorel, Fanon and Žižek - which transformed the terms in which violence was discussed by developing one particular aspect of Marxist thought. By teasing (...) out the implications of revolutionary theory for the commission and permission of violence, it is possible to specify those points at which it tends towards excess. This in turn points towards limits that an adequate normative theory of revolutionary violence should establish. (shrink)

On Michael Walzer's influential account, "dirty hands" characterizes the political leader's choice between absolutist moral demands (to abstain from torture) and consequentialist political reasoning (to do what is necessary to prevent the loss of innocent lives). The impulse to torture a "ticking bomb terrorist" is therefore at least partly pragmatic, straining against morality, while the desire to uphold a ban on torture is purely and properly a moral one. I challenge this Machiavellian view by reinterpreting the dilemma in the framework (...) of the Humean theory of justice and moral sentiment. By interpreting the ticking bomb scenario as a dramatic narrative, I argue that it appeals to properly moral sensibilities, which speak in favour of the use of force against the terrorist. The absolute ban on torture, by contrast, is an artificial virtue and a product of political prudence. On this account, the ticking bomb terrorist dilemma therefore imposes a different burden on the political leader from Walzer's version: an ethic of political responsibility demands that the political leader be prepared to sacrifice her moral soul by upholding the law against moral but politically imprudent demands to break it; while the ticking bomb romance appeals to her feelings of compassionate moral concern towards particular individuals. She dirties her hands morally, not by authorizing torture, but by allowing the terrorist's bomb to detonate and take the lives of the innocent. (shrink)

This paper argues that the reason why political leadership often involves dirty hands is because of its relationship with violence. To make the case, it maintains that violent means create and assert a form of dominating power that is in tension with the proper ends of political action. This power casts a wide shadow, frequently dominating large numbers of non-targets and empowering unscrupulous agents. On the other side of the balance, characteristically political justifications for violence are ‘supra-moral,’ meaning that they (...) are motivated by the value of a conception of morality taken as a whole (or, indeed, morality as such) rather than by any particular moral value. The weight that ought to be given to such ends is indeterminate in a way that makes uncancelled remainders arising from the evil of violence likely in many cases. (shrink)

If people have a right to rebel against domestic tyranny, wrongful foreign occupation, or colonial rule, then the normative principles commonly invoked to deal with civil conflicts present a problem. While rebels in some cases might justifiably try to secure human rights by resort to violence, the three normative pillars dealing with armed force provide at best only a partial reflection of the ethics of armed revolt. This article argues that the concept of “terrorism” and the ongoing attempt to define (...) it in international law, the laws of war and their application to armed conflict, and the Responsibility to Protect all obscure as much as clarify the problem. Given the prevalence of political oppression and the occurrence of civil conflicts originating in attempts to confront it, there is therefore a pressing need to establish a place for the rights of rebellion in the international normative architecture. (shrink)

There is a tension apparent in Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society between his naturalistic account of the history of societies as emanating from principles of human nature on the one hand, and on the other, the rhetorically charged moralism that readers have generally noted in his critique of contemporary polished and commercial societies. This is related in the article to questions about the appropriate relationship between forms of rhetoric and the writing of moral and political philosophy (...) as they appeared in early-modern political thought and were taken up by other figures in the Scottish Enlightenment (most notably Hume). The article shows how reading Ferguson's text as an exercise in political rhetoric, which harnesses the additional force of forensic and demonstrative forms of eloquence, can provide a basis for understanding not only the intended relationship between the two sides of its argument but also its relationship with Ferguson's role as a teacher of morals at Edinburgh University. (shrink)

This article interprets David Hume’s social and political thought as a ‘theory of civil society’, arguing that as such it constituted an important challenge to the civic humanism of much early 18th-century British political argument. Since republican theorists invoke the historical traditions of civic thought in current debates, Hume’s theory of civil society therefore is of especial interest in relation to the foundations of contemporary neo-republicanism. The first part argues that, in A Treatise of Human Nature, by analysing various different (...) kinds of relation between human beings, Hume articulated a fundamental distinction between society and the state. The second examines Hume’s Essays and Political Discourses, focusing in particular on the relationship between the respective interests of society and government, the effects of commercial refinement on virtues and sociability, and on forms of mediation between society and the state. The concluding section reviews the historical and theoretical significance of Hume’s theory, focusing particularly on concepts of liberty. (shrink)

When faced with security threats from terrorism and other forms of nonstate political violence, how should liberal-democratic states respond? Finlay discusses books by Tamar Meisels, Seumas Miller, and Timothy Shanahan.

In this article, I analyse the theory and practice of interventions in foreign civil wars to assist rebels fighting against violently oppressive government. I argue that the indirect nature of this kind of intervention gives rise to political complications that are either absent from or less obvious in humanitarian interventions aimed chiefly at defending human rights from imminent threats. An adequate theory must therefore accommodate three additional components. First, it requires a theory of indirect warfare accounting for how the ends (...) of the interveners’ added violence relate to those of the rebels’ violence. Second, it requires a theory of indirect political leadership, paying careful attention both to the political status of the rebel leaders vis‐à‐vis the people on whose behalf they fight and to the relationship between those leaders and the interveners. Third, the peculiarities of indirect military intervention mean that the violence it introduces isn’t easily explained purely in terms of defensive goals. An adequate account needs additionally to pay attention to the role of violence in shaping new political movements and institutions. The value of such goals is less easily quantified than those of humanitarian intervention, making it harder to set upper limits on permissible ‘proportionate’ harm. (shrink)

Proponents of nonviolent tactics often highlight the extent to which they rival arms as effective means of resistance. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, for instance, compare civil resistance favorably to armed insurrection as means of bringing about progressive political change. In Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, Ned Dobos cites their work in support of the claim that similar methods—organized according to Gene Sharp's idea of “civilian-based defense”—may be substituted for regular armed forces in the face of international aggression. I deconstruct (...) this line of pacifist thought by arguing that it builds on the wrong binary. Turning away from a violence-nonviolence dichotomy structured around harmfulness, I look to Richard B. Gregg and Hannah Arendt for an account of nonviolent power defined by non-coercion. Whereas nonviolent coercion in the wrong hands still has the potential to subvert democratic institutions—just as armed methods can—Gregg's and Arendt's conceptions of nonviolent power identify a necessary bulwark against both forms of subversion. The dangers of nonviolent coercion can be seen in the largely nonviolent attempts at civil subversion by supporters of Donald Trump during Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the U.S. presidential election in 2020, while the effectiveness of noncoercive, nonviolent power is illustrated by the resistance of U.S. democratic institutions to resist them. (shrink)

Benbaji and Statman’s contractarian ethics of war offers a powerful new philosophical defence of orthodox conclusions against revisionist criticism. I present a two-pronged argument in reply. First, contractarianism yields what I call ‘decent war theory,’ a theory in which war between decent states is paradigmatic. I argue, by contrast, that states should treat wars against indecent states as paradigmatic, resulting in a Rawlsian alternative that issues in an ethics closer to revisionism. The second prong argues that the symmetrical international distribution (...) of power required by contractarianism throws into doubt the viability of war as an instrument for securing just ends. But I argue that there is a very important lesson to take from Benbaji and Statman’s analysis here. Even if contractarianism is arguably weakened by its political assumptions, revisionists frequently fail to pay any attention to the vagaries of power and their effects in shaping the outcomes of different accounts of ethics. I therefore argue that just war theory in general ought to develop an ethics with sufficient versatility to respond to shifts and variations in the distribution of military power. In particular, philosophers must consider morally defensible ways in which decent states can challenge rising indecent powers. (shrink)

Attempts to simplify ethics in war by claiming exclusive legitimate authority for the law of armed conflict underestimate the moral complexities facing soldiers. Soldiers risk wrongdoing if they refuse moral guidance that can independently evaluate their legal permissions. State soldiers need to know when to object to a legal duty to fight; nonstate fighters need to know when to disregard legal prohibitions against fighting. And both might sometimes best discharge their moral duties by following a bespoke rule departing from noncombatant (...) immunity in a principled way that has been designed for a particular conflict by an authoritative leadership. (shrink)

This article challenges the tendency exhibited in arguments by Michael Ignatieff, Jeremy Waldron, and others to treat the Law of Armed Conflict as the only valid moral frame of reference for guiding armed rebels with just cause. To succeed, normative language and principles must reflect not only the wrongs of ‘terrorism’ and war crimes, but also the rights of legitimate rebels. However, these do not always correspond to the legal privileges of combatants. Rebels are often unlikely to gain belligerent recognition (...) and might sometimes have strong moral reasons to exceed the rights of regular combatants. Where this gives rise to tensions between morality and the LOAC, a decision is needed to determine which to follow. Setting aside the idea of suppressing just war theory altogether in favour of a more purely regulatory approach to war and reforming law in the direct light of moral theory, I question the attempt by Waldron to argue that moral weight of the legal conventions at the heart of the LOAC trump any moral reasons there might be for breaching them. Even if non-combatant immunity is, as Waldron suggests, a deadly serious convention, I argue that war is justified only if pursued for the sake of deadly serious causes which may even be serious enough to oblige agents to break the law. A political theory of the ethics of war is needed to mediate between the moral and legal in such cases where they cannot be reconciled directly. (shrink)

Conditionalization is a widely endorsed rule for updating one’s beliefs. But a sea of complaints have been raised about it, including worries regarding how the rule handles error correction, changing desiderata of theory choice, evidence loss, self-locating beliefs, learning about new theories, and confirmation. In light of such worries, a number of authors have suggested replacing Conditionalization with a different rule — one that appeals to what I’ll call “ur-priors”. But different authors have understood the rule in different ways, and (...) these different understandings solve different problems. In this paper, I aim to map out the terrain regarding these issues. I survey the different problems that might motivate the adoption of such a rule, flesh out the different understandings of the rule that have been proposed, and assess their pros and cons. I conclude by suggesting that one particular batch of proposals, proposals that appeal to what I’ll call “loaded evidential standards”, are especially promising. (shrink)

Deference principles are principles that describe when, and to what extent, it’s rational to defer to others. Recently, some authors have used such principles to argue for Evidential Uniqueness, the claim that for every batch of evidence, there’s a unique doxastic state that it’s permissible for subjects with that total evidence to have. This paper has two aims. The first aim is to assess these deference-based arguments for Evidential Uniqueness. I’ll show that these arguments only work given a particular kind (...) of deference principle, and I’ll argue that there are reasons to reject these kinds of principles. The second aim of this paper is to spell out what a plausible generalized deference principle looks like. I’ll start by offering a principled rationale for taking deference to constrain rational belief. Then I’ll flesh out the kind of deference principle suggested by this rationale. Finally, I’ll show that this principle is both more plausible and more general than the principles used in the deference-based arguments for Evidential Uniqueness. (shrink)

An adequate account of laws should satisfy at least five desiderata: it should provide a unified account of laws and chances, it should yield plausible relations between laws and chances, it should vindicate numerical chance assignments, it should accommodate dynamical and non-dynamical chances, and it should accommodate a plausible range of nomic possibilities. No extant account of laws satisfies these desiderata. This paper presents a non-Humean account of laws, the Nomic Likelihood Account, that does.

A number of cases involving self-locating beliefs have been discussed in the Bayesian literature. I suggest that many of these cases, such as the sleeping beauty case, are entangled with issues that are independent of self-locating beliefs per se. In light of this, I propose a division of labor: we should address each of these issues separately before we try to provide a comprehensive account of belief updating. By way of example, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order (...) to accommodate these issues. Then, putting these other issues aside, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order to accommodate self-locating beliefs. Finally, I propose a constraint on updating rules, the "Learning Principle", which rules out certain kinds of troubling belief changes, and I use this principle to assess some of the available options. (shrink)

Standard decision theory has trouble handling cases involving acts without finite expected values. This paper has two aims. First, building on earlier work by Colyvan (2008), Easwaran (2014), and Lauwers and Vallentyne (2016), it develops a proposal for dealing with such cases, Difference Minimizing Theory. Difference Minimizing Theory provides satisfactory verdicts in a broader range of cases than its predecessors. And it vindicates two highly plausible principles of standard decision theory, Stochastic Equivalence and Stochastic Dominance. The second aim is to (...) assess some recent arguments against Stochastic Equivalence and Stochastic Dominance. If successful, these arguments refute Difference Minimizing Theory. This paper contends that these arguments are not successful. (shrink)

Some of the most interesting recent work in formal epistemology has focused on developing accuracy-based approaches to justifying Bayesian norms. These approaches are interesting not only because they offer new ways to justify these norms, but because they potentially offer a way to justify all of these norms by appeal to a single, attractive epistemic goal: having accurate beliefs. Recently, Easwaran & Fitelson (2012) have raised worries regarding whether such “all-accuracy” or “purely alethic” approaches can accommodate and justify evidential Bayesian (...) norms. In response, proponents of purely alethic approaches, such as Pettigrew (2013b) and Joyce (2016), have argued that scoring rule arguments provide us with compatible and purely alethic justifications for the traditional Bayesian norms, including evidential norms. In this paper I raise several challenges to this claim. First, I argue that many of the justifications these scoring rule arguments provide are not compatible. Second, I raise worries for the claim that these scoring rule arguments provide purely alethic justifications. Third, I turn to assess the more general question of whether purely alethic justifications for evidential norms are even possible, and argue that, without making some contentious assumptions, they are not. Fourth, I raise some further worries for the possibility of providing purely alethic justifications for content-sensitive evidential norms, like the Principal Principle. (shrink)

Evidential Uniqueness is the thesis that, for any batch of evidence, there’s a unique doxastic state that a subject with that evidence should have. One of the most common kinds of objections to views that violate Evidential Uniqueness are arbitrariness objections – objections to the effect that views that don’t satisfy Evidential Uniqueness lead to unacceptable arbitrariness. The goal of this paper is to examine a variety of arbitrariness objections that have appeared in the literature, and to assess the extent (...) to which these objections bolster the case for Evidential Uniqueness. After examining a number of different arbitrariness objections, I’ll conclude that, by and large, these objections do little to bolster the case for Evidential Uniqueness. (shrink)

This essay seeks to illuminate the ethical concerns that animate Richard Rorty's philosophy. I argue that Rorty's ethics foregrounds as its central priority the issue of responsibility and frame Rorty's work as offering us a picture of ethical comportment in a postfoundational, pluralistic milieu, where citizens not only recognize the contingency of their own deepest beliefs but give up any sense of responsibilities owed to nonhuman authorities. To paraphrase Rorty, from any number of occasions, all we have to be responsible (...) to is each other. Yet Rorty goes even further than antiauthoritarianism in ethics. He not only shifts to thinking about ethics in terms of our relations to others; he specifically attunes this ethics to those who are suffering or excluded or merely previously unnoticed. What emerges is an alternative Rorty to the smirking gadfly blithely shrugging off criticism and incapable of inhabiting a position of moral seriousness. (shrink)

Echo chambers have received widespread attention in recent years, but there is no agreement over whether they are always epistemically bad for us. Some argue they’re inherently epistemically bad, whilst others claim they can be epistemically good. This paper has three aims. First, to bring together recent studies in this debate, taxonomizing different ways of thinking about the epistemic status of echo chambers. Second, to consider and reject several accounts of what makes echo chambers epistemically harmful or not, and then (...) offer an alternative account which builds on some features of existing accounts. In our view, echo chambers – even those that are truth-conducive – are always epistemically harmful because of their reasons-undermining features, e.g. the way that they impede the development of epistemic reasons which can answer and withstand challenges. This account captures important ideas behind several theories in the epistemology of echo chambers, but offers a richer explanation that does not suffer from their limitations. (shrink)

This article proposes an approach to understanding life that overcomes reductionist and dualist approaches. Kant’s analysis of the conditions of knowing an organism shows that attempts to explain its teleology and autopoiesis from the interactions of its components is problematic. Based on an analysis by Van de Vijver and colleagues, a co-constitutive relationship between the cognitive activities of the observer and the living features of the organism is described. Using the example of a developmental series, it is shown that within (...) this active relational process, both autopoiesis and teleology of the organism manifest themselves on the mental level of the observer. The Kantian mode of objectification, which refers to the sensually perceptible appearance of an organism, can be supplemented by an active mode of relational objectification that encompasses the life of the organism. The analysis introduces a phenomenological first-person perspective on the study of life "from within", which enables an empirical investigation of the vital properties of an organism. (shrink)

This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts-whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic; and yet what they can do--and what can happen to them--is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules of composition do (...) powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first section of this book explores how powers divide; the second section how powers compose. The final section showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology. Powers, Parts and Wholes will be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic. (shrink)

The figure of Richard Rorty stands in complex relation to the tradition of American pragmatism. On the one hand, his intellectual creativity, lively prose, and bridge-building fueled the contemporary resurgence of pragmatism. On the other, his polemical claims and selective interpretations function as a negative, fixed pole against which thinkers of all stripes define themselves. Virtually all pragmatists on the contemporary scene, whether classical or "new," Deweyan, Jamesian, or Peircean, use Rorty as a foil to justify their positions. The resulting (...) internecine quarrels and divisions threaten to thwart and fragment the tradition's creative potential. More caricatured than understood, the specter of Rorty is blocking the road of inquiry and future development of pragmatism. Reconstructing Pragmatism moves beyond the Rortyan impasse by providing what has been missing for decades: a constructive, non-polemical account of Rorty's relation to classical pragmatism. The first book-length treatment of Rorty's intellectual debt to the early pragmatists, it establishes his selective appropriations not as misunderstandings or distortions but as a sustained, intentional effort to reconstruct their thinking. Featuring chapters devoted to five key pragmatist thinkers - Peirce, James, Dewey, Royce, and Addams - the book draws on archival sources and the full scope of Rorty's writings to challenge prevailing misconceptions and caricatures. By illuminating the critical resources, still largely untapped, that Rorty offers for articulating classical pragmatism's ongoing relevance, the book reveals limitations in the received images of the classical pragmatists that predominate in current debates and opens up new modes of understanding pragmatism and why it matters today. (shrink)

This article argues that to call Hume a conservative is a shorthand label that is at least insecure and at most a distortion. It is not claimed that the label is fanciful or without justification but the argument does serve to raise questions as to its accuracy once it is subject to further inspection and, consequently, to doubt its aptness or utility in capturing what is a key characteristic of Hume’s sociopolitical thought. This argument is constituted as follows. After some (...) preliminary refinement of the topic, part I, in order to establish that the paper is not attacking a ‘straw-man’, identifies, by using Oakeshott as a benchmark, those aspects of Hume’s thought that most securely underwrite attributing the conservative label. Part II constructs an argument to render the conservative label insecure, by drawing attention to the case for Hume as a liberal. Part III outlines the grounds for the further claim that when Hume’s commitment to ‘science’ and his polemics against superstition, and other ‘chimerical’ practices and principles, are taken on board then the stronger case that the label is a distortion can be judged to have substance. (shrink)

Niklas Luhmann wrote a number of works which have decisively shaped the recent development of legal science as a theoretical discipline. Some basic elements of his theory have been widely appropriated by other legal theorists, such that it is difficult to imagine contemporary reflection in legal theory, and above all legal sociology, without Luhmann. This collection brings together the most important canonical and cutting-edge papers on Luhmann s legal thought. It is introduced in a comprehensive editorial piece by the editor (...) which locates the articles in context and explores the issues and topics at hand. ". (shrink)

This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts-whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic; and yet what they can do-and what can happen to them-is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules of composition do (...) powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first section of this book explores how powers divide; the second section how powers compose. The final section showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology. Powers, Parts and Wholes will be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic. (shrink)

Why would Rene Descartes, the father of modern rationalist philosophy, choose "meditations" -- a term and genre associated with religious discourse and practice -- for the title of his magnum opus that lays the metaphysical foundations for his reform of all knowledge, including mathematics and sciences? Why did he believe that the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, which the Meditations on First Philosophy set out to demonstrate, can only be made self-evident through meditating? These are the (...) question that Christopher Wild's book answers. Descartes discovered the "foundations of a marvelous science" through a dramatic conversion in southern Germany in the winter of 1619. The spiritual and cognitive exercises, derived from ancient philosophy and the Christian meditative tradition, which Descartes deployed in the Meditations, enable readers to discover metaphysical truths with the same degree of self-evidence with which Descartes did during his own conversion. Descartes' meditative turn, Wild argues, brings to a culmination a life-long preoccupation with the practice or craft of thinking, known as Cartesian method. By joining meditation to method the Meditations becomes the founding document for a Cartesian "art of turning," a new practice of both thought and life. (shrink)

What is social justice? At this point, there is considerable disagreement. For many, the term social justice is baffling and useless, with no real meaning. Most who use it argue that social justice is the moral fairness of the system of rules and norms that govern society. Do these rules work so that all persons get what is due to them as human beings and as members of the community? Shifting from the will of individuals in rendering justice to the (...) outcome of the system of rules in achieving justice can be a dangerous leap. To some, it suggests that virtually every inequality arises because the rules of the game are unfair and that the state must intervene whenever there are unequal outcomes. The dangers of this leap are the primary focus of Is Social Justice Just?, whose twenty-one authors accepted an invitation to "explore, reassess, and critique the concept of social justice-relating it to ongoing debates in economics, history, philosophy, politics, public policy, religion, and the broader culture.". (shrink)