Is Goodness Without God Good Enough contains a lively debate between William Lane Craig and Paul Kurtz on the relationship between God and ethics, followed by seven new essays that both comment on the debate and advance the broader discussion of this important issue. Written in an accessible style by eminent scholars, this book will appeal to students and academics alike.

Socially responsible publishers, such as the BMJ Publishing Group, have demonstrated a commitment to health equity and working towards rectifying the structural racism that exists both in healthcare and in medical publishing. 1 The commitment of academic publishers to collecting information relevant to promoting equity and diversity is important and commendable where it leads to that result. 2 However, collecting sensitive demographic data is not a morally neutral activity. Rather, it carries with it both known and potential risks. Among these (...) are issues around privacy or data misuse, as well as more basic concerns about how, when or why people should be categorised in certain ways and/or prompted to conceive of themselves or their identities in certain terms. 3 If such data are to be collected, therefore, their effectiveness in achieving the stated ends must have a sufficiently compelling evidence base so as to justify the... (shrink)

Controversy has centered on the frightening potential possessed by the state to deprive of his rights the individual officially classified as mad.In this book, ...

Antony Flew is one of the most well-known and respected philosophers alive today. In Philosophical Essays, twelve of Flew's most significant works are gathered together for the first time, creating a unique and valuable collection. The book begins with a new autobiographical sketch of Flew's life and career. In addition to some of the distinguished scholar's most influential and famous articles, Philosophical Essays includes a number of rare works that have not been available to a wide audience until now. (...) This important book will be an essential addition to the library of any philosopher. (shrink)

Novel regulatory elements that enabled expression of pre‐existing immune genes in reproductive tissues and novel immune genes with pregnancy‐specific roles in eutherians have shaped the evolution of mammalian pregnancy by facilitating the emergence of novel mechanisms for immune regulation over its course. Trade‐offs arising from conflicting fitness effects on reproduction and host defenses have further influenced the patterns of genetic variation of these genes. These three mechanisms (novel regulatory elements, novel immune genes, and trade‐offs) played a pivotal role in refining (...) the regulation of maternal immune systems during pregnancy in eutherians, likely facilitating the establishment of prolonged direct maternal–fetal contact in eutherians without causing immunological rejection of the genetically distinct fetus. (shrink)

John Duns Scotus is arguably one of the most significant philosopher theologians of the middle ages who has often been overlooked. This book serves to recover his rightful place in the history of Western philosophy revealing that he is in fact one of the great masters of our philosophical heritage. Among the fields to which Scotus has made an immense contribution are logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, and ethical theory.The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus provides a (...) formidable yet comprehensive overview of the life and works of this Scottish-born philosopher. Vos has successfully combined his lifetime of dedicated study with the significant body of biographical literature, resulting in a unique look at the life and works of this philosopher theologian. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Two Cheers for Blueprints, or, Negative Reasons for Positive UtopianismAntonis Balasopoulos (bio)It is well known that the decline of programmatic or so-called blueprint utopias and utopianism came on the heels of a widespread and concerted attack against them during the first two decades of the Cold War. In the writings of thinkers like Hayek, Popper, Talmon, Kolakowski, and many others, program became synonymous with hubris.1 It was construed as (...) a dangerous effort to regulate the diversity of human subjectivity and the complexity of the social organism, a repressive will-to-order and predictability that tainted utopias by associating them with Totalitarianism. In Popper’s exemplary exposition:The Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using a blueprint for society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which therefore is likely to lead to a dictatorship. [...] [Utopia] claims to plan rationally for the whole of society, although we do not possess anything like the factual knowledge which would be necessary to make good such an ambitious claim.2 [End Page 489]Yet, though this view of how Utopia, to recall Robert C. Elliott, became “a bad word,” is accurate in itself, it also reflects only the negative or destructive side of Cold War anti-utopianism, a trend whose logical inconsistencies and ideological biases have already been ably dissected in the work of Russell Jacoby, Marc Olssen, and Darren Webb, to name but a few.3What one could term the “positive” or “productive” side of anti-utopian denunciations of the dogmatically programmatic character allegedly inherent in utopias went well beyond the exigencies of generating a geopolitical and ideological enemy image. It involved an effort to reconcile western subjects to seismic and highly consequential shifts within postwar, late-capitalist societies themselves. If, as I have argued elsewhere, utopian fictions (and, indeed, nonfictions) before the Cold War period can be read as fictions of organization—of everything from architecture and urban planning, to production, sexuality and biological reproduction, clothing, or diet—it is also the case that in them, “organization” is a response, a reaction to traumatic historical experiences of disorganization, from the decline of the ancient city-state in the case of Platonic utopianism; to the impoverishment and dislocation of rural communities in the era of Thomas More; to the experience of the fracturing of religious community during the religious, civil, and international wars that marked the seventeenth century; to the dramatic impact of early nineteenth-century industrialization on artisanal and agrarian communities, on family cohesion and on the rhythms of the premodern working day.4My argument is, then, that the anti-utopian denunciation of blueprint and program was not simply motivated by the liberal capitalist attack against the planned and highly regulated character of economy and society in the countries of so-called actually existing socialism. It was also motivated by the ideological need to normalize and legitimize the transition, within western capitalist societies themselves, to what Scott Lash and John Urry called “disorganized capitalism.” Lash and Urry’s book, originally published during the decade of the triumphant rise of neoliberalism, in 1987, launches its investigation by tellingly quoting the passage of Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto that focuses on the creatively destructive aspects of capitalist social transformation: the bourgeoisie, Lash and Urry observe, is a class “with vested interest in change, crisis and chaos”; the social world over which it presides is one “which swings wildly out of control, menacing and destructive.”5 In their introduction, the authors outline the basic features of the postwar shift from the organized capitalism of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its disarticulated successor formation during the rise of [End Page 490] neoliberal governance. Under the rubric of “disorganization” (which is to say, of a mutation within the western capitalist economic and social order), they include de-industrialization and the decline in the absolute and relative size of the working class in the core capitalist economies; the rise of flexible forms of labor organization in the place of defunct Taylorist principles; the weakening of trade unionist organization; the increasing decoupling of large monopolies from the control and regulation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Isaac Barrow on the Mathematization of Nature: Theological Voluntarism and the Rise of Geometrical OpticsAntoni MaletIntroductionIsaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy embodies a strong program of mathematization that departs both from the mechanical philosophy of Cartesian inspiration and from Boyle’s experimental philosophy. The roots of Newton’s mathematization of nature, this paper aims to demonstrate, are to be found in Isaac Barrow’s (1630–77) philosophy of the mathematical sciences.Barrow’s attitude (...) towards natural philosophy evolved from his earnest interest in medicine of around 1650, when a young Cambridge graduate, to natural philosophy (apparently under Henry More’s influence); from his thesis on the insufficiency of the Cartesian hypothesis to geometrical optics and the strong program of mathematization of natural philosophy of the middle 1660s; from Lucasian professor of Mathematics to Chaplain of his Majesty and eminent Restoration divine. Contemporary accounts of Barrow’s life suggest that he grew ever more skeptical about the worth of natural philosophy and mathematics. 1 In his last years he became a prolific [End Page 265] author of sermons and theological works. Published shortly after his death by John Tillotson (1630–94), later archbishop of Canterbury, they occupy over two thousand folio pages. Overloaded with involved philosophical arguments, Barrow’s sermons were apparently not very popular, but they were highly regarded by scholars and the Anglican hierarchy. 2 It is on certain of his sermons, as well as on the philosophical discussions contained in the Mathematical Lectures that our account of Barrow’s philosophy of the mathematical sciences will rest. 3 Barrow’s understanding of the mathematical sciences will allow us to discuss together three issues often analyzed independently: the theological background to English natural philosophy, the changing notion of mixed mathematical sciences during the seventeenth century, and finally the philosophical foundations of modern geometrical optics.It has long been recognized that significant relationships exist between theological voluntarism or intellectualism and views on natural philosophy. In particular Robert Boyle’s theological voluntarism is seen as grounding his experimentalist approach to natural philosophy. It is not quite so clear, however, how well theological voluntarism may relate to a strong program of mathematization such as the one embodied in Newton’s Principia Mathematica. In fact it has been suggested that the relationship is a negative one. This is derived from the necessary character of mathematical laws, which would put unwanted restrictions on God’s absolute dominion over nature, and also from the notion that theological intellectualism is conducive to a deductive, a priori science—the paradigm of which is of course geometry. However, Barrow’s theological voluntarism lead him to heighten the role of mathematics within natural philosophy.During the seventeenth century the so-called mixed or subalternate mathematical sciences changed profoundly. In the Enlightenment mixed mathematics—meaning above all rational mechanics—became one of the most prestigious and influential disciplines. The mixed mathematics of the Enlightenment, however, was markedly different from the Aristotelian [End Page 266] mixed mathematical sciences. The differences are noticeable both in the subject matter and in the substitution of mathematical infinitesimal analysis for geometrical synthesis, but also in the way of grounding mathematical theory on empirical evidence. Barrow’s Mathematical Lectures (delivered at Cambridge from 1664 to 1666) offer a fresh insight into the metamorphosis of these sciences just when Newton’s “mathematical principles” were in the making. Not the least interesting feature of Barrow’s discussion is that God’s omnipotence allows an evaluation of the truth of mathematical theories that do not apply to this world. Therefore, Barrow is led to introduce the distinction between the internal consistency, or mathematical truth, of a mathematical theory and its physical truth. This, in turn, leads him to the notion that theories need testing.Barrow on Matter and GodRecent literature has established significant correlations between theological voluntarism and empiricism, as well as between theological intellectualism and rationalism. As E. B. Davis writes, “the Christian doctrine of creation is a dialogue between God’s unconstrained will, which utterly transcends the bounds of human comprehension, and God’s orderly intellect, which serves as the model for the human mind.” Intellectualist theology considers God’s omniscience His... (shrink)

The premodern history of the European university can be divided into two triads of three centuries: the medieval university and the ‘medieval’ university of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During these last three centuries Europe’s Christian university was a ‘confessional’ university: the catholic, Lutheran, reformed and Anglican university and the dissenter university of New England. The reformed university of these centuries offered a distinctive way of systematic thought. A specific doctrine of God was connected with a distinct ontology and (...) this combination constituted the theoretical framework of its philosophy and theology. What are the main distinctive features of this scholastic way of thought and can a specific traditionhistorical background be identified ? I– The key concept of this systematic way of thought is God’s free knowledge . This free knowledgeis here understood to be God’s knowledge of future states of affairs – see section 7 for the main lines of Turrettini’s doctrine of God. This free knowledge of future states of affairs is also called definite , because future states of affairs are definite on the basis of God’s certain will. Thus God’s free knowledge is partly based on divine will, but the other pillar of God’s free knowledge is that divine knowledge which is structurally prior to an act of divine will: God’s ‘natural’ knowledge . This natural or necessary knowledge of God encompasses all possible states of affairs. This structure turning around the notion of scientia libera is vital for understanding Western thought, because Aristotelianism and latin Averroism, Thomism and nominalism do not dispose of this notion of scientia libera. Such a free knowledge doctrine of God is married to a specific type of ontology, namely a contingency ontology– see section 8. This type of ontology centres on the notion of fundamental possibility. All possible states of affairs enjoy the status of possibility . This status of possibility is constituted by logical possibility. Turrettini joins Duns Scotus in defining the logicum possibile: If a state of affairs is possible, then it is not inconsistent that it obtains. Therefore, the twin concept of fundamental possibility is logical IMpossibility: What is logically impossible, is inconsistent and self-contradictory, because it includes contradictory predicates. This approach leads to the central ontological notion of synchronic contingency. Turrettini’s key term is even almost the same as this modern invention to name this crucial device: simultas potentiae. When is an event contingent in this sense? An event e is synchronically contingent at time t, if e is the case at time t – therefore eis possible – while it is possible too that e is not the case at the same time t. Because of the simultaneity of the possibility of the opposite, reality is not necessary. It is open. Thus, the tool of implicative necessity is essential to Turrettini’s methodology. It does not only govern his doctrine of God, but also his theory of true freedom of the human will. II – In contrast to traditional descriptions of reformed scholasticism, Turrettini’s theology is a theology of will and radical contingency in general and a theology of freedom and grace in particular. I have already indicated that Turrettini followed Scotism in vital respects and Duns Scotus stood on the shoulders of Henry of Ghent and of Bonaventure . The ontological infrastructure was delivered by Duns Scotus’ way of thinking structured by synchronic contingency, but the basics of this type of doctrine of God’s knowledge are already conspicuous in the so-called Summa fratris Aleandri . Thomas Aquinas substantially borrowing from Aristotle consciously deviates from this tradition built on the legacy of Augustine and Anselm, the Victorines and Alexander of Hales by ignoring the new theory of divine knowledge put forward by John of La Rochelle. This new approach develops a new relationship between God’s notitia simplex and notitia visionis on the one hand and his potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata on the other hand. (shrink)

Discussions of the object as a key to understanding central aspects of modern and contemporary art. Artists increasingly refer to "post-object-based" work while theorists engage with material artifacts in culture. A focus on "object-based" learning treats objects as vectors for dialogue across disciplines. Virtual imaging enables the object to be abstracted or circumvented, while immaterial forms of labor challenge materialist theories. This anthology surveys such reappraisals of what constitutes the "objectness" of production, with art as its focus. Among the topics (...) it examines are the relation of the object to subjectivity; distinctions between objects and things; the significance of the object's transition from inert mass to tool or artifact; and the meanings of the everyday in the found object, repetition in the replicated or multiple object, loss in the absent object, and abjection in the formless or degraded object. It also explores artistic positions that are anti-object; theories of the experimental, liminal or mental object; and the role of objects in performance. The object becomes a prism through which to reread contemporary art and better understand its recent past. Artists surveyed include Georges Adéagbo, Art in Ruins, Iain Baxter, Louise Bourgeois, Pavel Büchler, Lygia Clark, Claude Closky, Brian Collier, Jimmie Durham, Fischli & Weiss, Luca Frei, Meschac Gaba, Isa Genzken, Gruppe Geflecht, Eva Hesse, Mike Kelley, John Latham, Antje Majewski, Gustav Metzger, Cady Noland, Gabriel Orozco, Adrian Piper, Falke Pisano, Eva Rothschild, Aura Satz, Kenneth Snelson, Hito Steyerl, Josef Strau, Alina Szapocznikow, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Erwin Wurm Writers include Homi K. Bhabha, Jack Burnham, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Lynne Cooke, Gillo Dorfles, Jean Fisher, Ferreira Gullar, Charles Harrison, Paulo Herkenhoff, Julia Kristeva, Bruno Latour, Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger, Jean-François Lyotard, Lev Manovich, Ursula Meyer, Bruno Munari, Georges Perec, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Dieter Roelstraete, Howard Singerman, Nancy Spector, Marcus Steinweg, Anne Wagner, Gérard Wajcman, Slavoj Zizek. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:176 HUME ON PROMISES AND THEIR OBLIGATION This discussion of Hume's account of promises pursues certain issues raised by William Vitek in his paper "The Humean Promise: Whence Comes Its Obligation?" The question I consider first is what, for Hume, it is for someone to make a promise. I then go on to consider Hume's view of promisekeeping as an artificial virtue and the distinction which Hume makes between (...) two kinds of obligation in relation to promises: a natural and an artificial obligation. The issue with which I am principally concerned is how far Hume succeeds in explaining our recognition of the obligation to keep promises. The Humean Promise There is implicit in Hume's "Of the Obligation of Promises" an account of what it is for someone to make a promise, i.e., of the conditions which are at least necessary for this to occur. It is worthwhile making these conditions explicit in order to bring out points of similarity with the celebrated account of promises provided in recent 4 philosophy by John Searle. We find in both Hume and Searle a recognition that promising is a social institution which depends upon certain conventions, and that the conditions for promising reflect these conventions. Among the conditions which appear to be common to their different accounts are the following: 1.That a certain form of words is used (typically, of the form ' I promise...'). 2.That these words are understood by the speaker. 177 3.That they predicate an act of the speaker which will be performed for the interest or advantage of another. 4.That the action is not one which the speaker would undertake in the normal course of events. 5.That the speaker's utterance expresses a serious intention or resolution. 6.That in making this utterance the speaker wills the obligation to act accordingly. Let me comment briefly on these conditions. 1.The condition that a certain form of words is used in effect acknowledges that promising involves a distinctive type of speech act: namely, one which can, in itself, bind the speaker to the performance of an action (T 522). Presumably, however, this does not necessarily require the actual use of the words · I promise' — the context may determine that a promise has been made, even without the use of these words. We should note that language itself is, for Hume, the product of a convention (T 490); so also, therefore, must be the institution of promisemaking and promise-keeping. 2.The condition that these words are understood by the speaker is implicit in Hume's comment that while "the expression makes on most occasions the whole of the promise," someone who makes use of the expression without understanding its meaning "wou'd not certainly be bound by it" (T 523). It is a condition which relates to what Searle describes as the normal 'input' and 'output' conditions, i.e., the conditions which govern "serious and literal linguistic communication." It is presupposed, for example, that the speaker (and perhaps also the hearer) knows how to speak 178 the language, that he is not play-acting or speaking in jest, and so on. 3.The condition that these words predicate an act of the speaker for the interest or advantage of another is obviously implicit, at least, in Hume's account of promise-keeping as an artificial virtue (of which I will say more later). But it should be emphasised that a promise is not simply an undertaking to act in a certain way towards another person: it is a matter of undertaking to do something for that person. 4.That the action is not one which the speaker would normally undertake, again, is a condition for which Hume caters: indeed, it is an essential part of his account that an action which a person promises to perform is not one which would occur in accordance with his natural passions or inclinations (T 519). There may, nevertheless, be possible exceptions to this, as where someone promises to do something which self-interest would incline him to do anyway. But in this kind of case promising has for Hume the special function of increasing the... (shrink)

The article presents a critique of John Searle's attack on computationalist theories of mind in his recent book, The Rediscovery of the Mind. Searle is guilty of caricaturing his opponents, and of ignoring their arguments. Moreover, his own positive theory of mind, which he claims "takes account of" subjectivity, turns out to offer no discernible advantages over the views he rejects.

Includes essays on parapsychology and life after death by J. B. Rhine, David Hume, George Price, Plato, Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, among others.

In welcher Hinsicht können körperlich-leibliche Erfahrungen als Teil sozialer Aktivitäten verstanden werden und wie kann man sie sozialwissenschaftlich untersuchen? Unter Rückgriff auf den klassischen Pragmatismus, insbesondere John Dewey, und soziologische Praxistheorien leistet Alexander Antony einen Beitrag zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen. Er entwickelt eine Soziologie leiblicher Praxis, welche Sozialtheorie, methodologische Reflexion und die Erforschung der Produktion ge- und erlebter Körperlichkeit miteinander verschränkt. Empirisch widmet sich das Buch aus einer diskursanalytischen und ethnographischen Perspektive der Praktik der Atemarbeit, einem,,ganzheitlichen" Therapie- und (...) Selbsterfahrungsangebot. Die Atemarbeit zielt darauf, eine bewusst erlebte leibliche Selbstbezüglichkeit zu etablieren, um derart körperliches, psychisches und seelisch-spirituelles Wohlbefinden zu befördern. Auf unterschiedlichen Analyseebenen spürt der Autor der Frage nach, wie individuelles leibliches Erleben und die diskursive und soziomaterielle Produktion von Erfahrungssituationen zusammenspielen. Die zentrale Einsicht: Sozialität geht buchstäblich unter die Haut. Der Autor Alexander Antony ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Soziologie der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. (shrink)

The article presents a critique of John Searle’s attack on computationalist theories of mind in his recent book, The Rediscovery of the Mind. Searle is guilty of caricaturing his opponents, and of ignoring their arguments. Moreover, his own positive theory of mind, which he claims “takes account of” subjectivity, turns out to offer no discernible advantages over the views he rejects.

A ‘might’ counterfactual is a sentence of the form ‘If it had been the case that A, it might have been the case that C’. Recently, John Hawthorne has argued that the truth of many ‘might’ counterfactuals precludes the truth of most ‘would’ counterfactuals. I examine the semantics of ‘might’ counterfactuals, with one eye towards defusing this argument, but mostly with the aim of understanding this interesting class of sentences better.

Michael Haneke’s film Caché explores the psychological and social effects of the intrusion of the immigrant Other into privileged Western capitalist society. Caché allegorises the intrusion of the immigrant Other through a series of intrusive and threatening non-diegetic surveillance tapes delivered to a wealthy Parisian family’s home, the subject of the surveillance. Haneke’s film undertakes a significant critique of the increasing right-wing anti-immigrant sentiment driving neo-liberal politics and ideology in the capitalist West. Here, Caché confronts the viewer with their (...) complicity in the disavowal and subjugation of the immigrant Other within their own social edifice. The significance of Caché is the film’s potential to facilitate the viewers’ confrontation with the disavowed and repressed truth of the social edifice. This confrontation enables the viewer to assume an emancipatory subjectivity which extends beyond Caché’s cinematic frame into the viewers’ own social edifice. I argue that Haneke’s film has the potential to radically alter the way viewers relate to the diegetic reality and, through the figuration of cinema, to their own social edifice. Ultimately, Caché brings to the fore the disavowed truth of both capitalist society and of privileged subjectivities, demanding a new politics based on the excluded immigrant Other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:177 SOCIAL JUSTICE: FROM RAWLS TO HUME It is said that "the implacable Professor," John Langshaw Austin, once set as a final examination question: "'Power polities': what other sorts of politics are there?" Had Hume been requested to discourse about social justice, he might well have responded in a parallel way: 'What non-social kinds is the insertion of that adjective intended to exclude from consideration?1 For, as Hayek (...) has urged, Hume chose an unfortunate label for the second of the two kinds of virtue distinguished at the beginning of Part II of Book III of the Treatise. Certainly "the circumstances and necessities of mankind," which give rise to the "artifice or contrivance" of what Hume calls artificial virtues, are "the circumstances and necessities" of social living; something which, he would always be the first to insist, is altogether natural to our species. So, if only he had thought to label this sort of virtues 'social' rather than 'artificial,1 he would not have had to end that Section I with an awkward final paragraph protesting that, "Tho' the rules of justice be artificial they are not arbitrary. Nor is the expression improper to call them Laws of Nature; if by natural we understand what is common to any species, or even if we confine it to mean what is inseparable from the species." In fact, it is just worth remarking, no contemporary ever would have asked Hume for his views about social justice; or, at any rate, not in those words. For, as my friend Roland Hall tells me, the first employment known to the revisers of the Oxford English Dictionary of what has since become one of the most popular of political cant phrases dates only from 1861. It occurs in Utilitarianism, at pp. 57-58 178 in the Everyman edition. There J. S. Mill first insists: not that society should treat all equally well, period; but "that society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it." He continues: "This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost possible degree to converge." Mill himself says nothing here, or perhaps anywhere, to explain what the adjective is supposed to be doing. It seems to have been a favourite, which he was the first to preface, with equally little particular reason given, to several other nouns. So if, as seems most likely, it is intended to be no more than a superfluous synonym for 'distributive,' then it becomes important for us to notice that to Mill, as to so many of his successors, the scope of "social and distributive justice" is universal: it is what determines who is the rightful possessor of any good whatever. Thus, in contemporary courts of distributive justice, everything is up for grabs. Yet it was not ever thus, and we ought to demand reason why it should have become so. Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, was, so far as we know, the first philosopher to distinguish distributive from corrective justice. He ruled that the former "is exercized in distributions of honour or wealth or of anything else which is to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution; since in these it is possible for one to have an allocation either equal or unequal to that of another" (1130B30-4). A generation dazed by the drum-beat rhetoric of equality and social justice will no doubt be 179 inclined to construe these words as making the very modern assumption that there has been an active and collective distribution of all goods, and ought now to be an active and collective redistribution. Yet such anachronistic assumptions are ruled out as Aristotle proceeds: first, to entertain the oligarchic suggestion that the relevant criterion of entitlement might be the possession of wealth; and then to conclude that this "Justice in distributing common property... when a distribution is made from the common stock... will follow the same ratio as that between the amounts which the several persons have contributed to the common stock" (1131A 25-9 and 1131B 28-33). The common... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:177 SOCIAL JUSTICE: FROM RAWLS TO HUME It is said that "the implacable Professor," John Langshaw Austin, once set as a final examination question: "'Power polities': what other sorts of politics are there?" Had Hume been requested to discourse about social justice, he might well have responded in a parallel way: 'What non-social kinds is the insertion of that adjective intended to exclude from consideration?1 For, as Hayek (...) has urged, Hume chose an unfortunate label for the second of the two kinds of virtue distinguished at the beginning of Part II of Book III of the Treatise. Certainly "the circumstances and necessities of mankind," which give rise to the "artifice or contrivance" of what Hume calls artificial virtues, are "the circumstances and necessities" of social living; something which, he would always be the first to insist, is altogether natural to our species. So, if only he had thought to label this sort of virtues 'social' rather than 'artificial,1 he would not have had to end that Section I with an awkward final paragraph protesting that, "Tho' the rules of justice be artificial they are not arbitrary. Nor is the expression improper to call them Laws of Nature; if by natural we understand what is common to any species, or even if we confine it to mean what is inseparable from the species." In fact, it is just worth remarking, no contemporary ever would have asked Hume for his views about social justice; or, at any rate, not in those words. For, as my friend Roland Hall tells me, the first employment known to the revisers of the Oxford English Dictionary of what has since become one of the most popular of political cant phrases dates only from 1861. It occurs in Utilitarianism, at pp. 57-58 178 in the Everyman edition. There J. S. Mill first insists: not that society should treat all equally well, period; but "that society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it." He continues: "This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost possible degree to converge." Mill himself says nothing here, or perhaps anywhere, to explain what the adjective is supposed to be doing. It seems to have been a favourite, which he was the first to preface, with equally little particular reason given, to several other nouns. So if, as seems most likely, it is intended to be no more than a superfluous synonym for 'distributive,' then it becomes important for us to notice that to Mill, as to so many of his successors, the scope of "social and distributive justice" is universal: it is what determines who is the rightful possessor of any good whatever. Thus, in contemporary courts of distributive justice, everything is up for grabs. Yet it was not ever thus, and we ought to demand reason why it should have become so. Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, was, so far as we know, the first philosopher to distinguish distributive from corrective justice. He ruled that the former "is exercized in distributions of honour or wealth or of anything else which is to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution; since in these it is possible for one to have an allocation either equal or unequal to that of another" (1130B30-4). A generation dazed by the drum-beat rhetoric of equality and social justice will no doubt be 179 inclined to construe these words as making the very modern assumption that there has been an active and collective distribution of all goods, and ought now to be an active and collective redistribution. Yet such anachronistic assumptions are ruled out as Aristotle proceeds: first, to entertain the oligarchic suggestion that the relevant criterion of entitlement might be the possession of wealth; and then to conclude that this "Justice in distributing common property... when a distribution is made from the common stock... will follow the same ratio as that between the amounts which the several persons have contributed to the common stock" (1131A 25-9 and 1131B 28-33). The common... (shrink)

In this article, we trace the histories of discourses supporting ‘jobs for natives’ in the UK and Austria using the discourse-historical approach to critical discourse studies. DHA uses four ‘levels of context’ as heuristic devices in critical analysis. In this article, we focus our attention predominantly on the broadest of these, largely eschewing the text internal analysis typical of CDA, in favour of a wider contextual sweep. In this way, we deconstruct and trace the conceptual history of British and Austrian (...) slogans of the extreme right related to issues of un/employment. We argue that slogans such as ‘British Jobs for British workers’ and ‘Austria First’ have been recontextualised into current political rhetoric while carrying historical context-dependent connotations, stemming from pre-World War II colonialism and antisemitism. Hence, we further claim that – although such rhetoric is currently widespread across EU member states – the ideologies and traditions drawn upon are distinct and create specific subtexts to be exploited for political ends; this is part of the discursive strategy of ‘calculated ambivalence’ employed in such rhetoric. (shrink)