The first to use Edmund Burke's ideas to directly tie politics with administration.

Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible.

It is a matter of dispute how far back evolutionary explanations of social order should be traced. Evolutionary ideas certainly appear in the work of the ancient Greek philosophers, but it seems reasonable to identify the origins of modern evolutionary thinking in the eighteenth-century natural histories of civil society such as Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men (1750: Pt III), Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), and Adam Smith’s Wealth of (...) Nations (1776: Bk III). In these eighteenth-century works, the explanation of current social institutions as an unplanned and generally adaptive development out of earlier and simpler arrangements gained traction. Germany too had a tradition of Naturphilosophie employing general evolutionary ideas, as well as Hegelian-influenced thinking on the development of societies. In 1863, four years after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, August Schleicher’s Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaf, drew on these traditions as well as Darwin’s book to present an evolutionary account of the development of families of languages (Taub 1993), an endeavor that was carried on by a number of scholars in the later part of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

The essays that make up this volume, explore the idea of public reason. The task of identifying a distinctively public reason has become pressing in our deeply pluralistic society, just because doubt has arisen whether what is good reasoning for one must be good reasoning for all. Examining the theories of Hobbes and Kant, and also using more recent work such as the comments and theories of John Rawls and David Gauthier, this book explores aspects of the idea of (...) public reason. It explains public reason, and discusses areas such as pluralism, reasonable disagreement, moral conflict, political legitimacy, public justification and post-modernism. (shrink)

William Perm summarized the Magna Carta thus: “First, It asserts Englishmen to be free; that's Liberty. Secondly, they that have free-holds, that's Property.” Since at least the seventeenth century, liberals have not only understood liberty and property to be fundamental, but to be somehow intimately related or interwoven. Here, however, consensus ends; liberals present an array of competing accounts of the relation between liberty and property. Many, for instance, defend an essentially instrumental view, typically seeing private property as justified because (...) it is necessary to maintain or protect other, more basic, liberty rights. Important to our constitutional tradition has been the idea that “[t]he right to property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.” Along similar lines, it has been argued that only an economic system based on private property disperses power and resources, ensuring that private people in civil society have the resources to oppose the state and give effect to basic liberties. Alternatively, it is sometimes claimed that only those with property develop the independent characters that are necessary to preserve a regime of liberty. But not only have liberals insisted that, property is a means of preserving liberty, they have often conceived of it as an embodiment of liberty, or as a type of liberty, or indeed as identical to liberty. This latter view is popular among contemporary libertarians or classical liberals. Jan Narveson, for instance, bluntly asserts that “Liberty is Property,” while John Gray insists that “[t]he connection between property and the basic liberties is constitutive and not just instrumental.”. (shrink)

Under free institutions the exercise of human reason leads to a plurality of reasonable, yet irreconcilable doctrines. Rawls's political liberalism is intended as a response to this fundamental feature of modern democratic life. Justifying coercive political power by appeal to any one (or sample) of these doctrines is, Rawls believes, oppressive and illiberal. If we are to achieve unity without oppression, he tells us, we must all affirm a public political conception that is supported by these diverse reasonable doctrines. The (...) first part of this essay argues that the free use of human reason leads to reasonable pluralism over most of what we call the political. Rawls's notion of the political does not avoid the problem of state oppression under conditions of reasonable pluralism. The second part tries to show how justificatory liberalism provides (1) a conception of the political that takes seriously the fact that the free use of human reason leads us to sharply disagree in the domain of the political while (2) articulating a conception of the political according to which the coercive intervention of the state must be justified by public reasons. (shrink)

As we read his work, John Rawls was developing an innovative approach to political philosophy, and Political Liberalism struggles with different ways to model these new insights. This article presents four models of political liberalism, particularly focusing on understanding the nature of overlapping consensus and its relation to public reason. Beyond clarifying Rawls’s insights, we aim to spur readers to reassemble the rich elements of Political Liberalism to produce tractable and enlightening models of political life among free and equal (...) citizens under conditions of deep diversity to advance the public reason project. (shrink)

This accessible, college-level introduction to the major theories of public morality begins with a discussion of why we should seek a publicly justified public morality and how we might go about publicly justifying social principles. The latter part of the volume considers the basic principles of public morality, evaluating the concepts of J.S. Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, John Rawls, David Gauthier, and Joel Feinberg, as well as contemporary philosophers. Theories addressed include game theory, (...) social choice theory, and the ideas of rational action, rational bargaining, and public good. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This chapter sketches a reading that confirms John Rawls's view that the stability argument of Part Three of Theory of Justice (TJ) was crucial for the success of TJ as a whole, that it was indeed flawed, and that fundamental ideas of Political Liberalism (PL) can be traced to the wide‐ranging consequences of recognizing the flaw in that argument. In Rawls's political liberalism, one can find at least two accounts of the way in which stability considerations enter into justificatory (...) arguments – one repairs the account in TJ and is similarly structured, while another pushes political liberalism in a more radical direction. The chapter briefly discusses how the thin theory of the good is employed in Rawls's stability analysis. It is not “the fact of pluralism” but the “fact of reasonable pluralism” that motivates Rawls's political turn; reasonable pluralism is the result of our best exercise of free practical reason. (shrink)

In an important essay Charles Larmore tells us that Kant and Mill sought to justify the principle of political neutrality by appealing to ideals of autonomy and individuality. By remaining neutral with regard to controversial views of the good life, constitutional principles will express, according to them, what ought to be of supreme value throughout the whole of our life.1 On Larmore’s influential reading, Mill defended what we might call first-level neutrality: Millian principles determining justified legal (and, we might add, (...) social) intervention are neutral between competing conceptions of the good life. However, Larmore insists that Millian neutral political principles do not posses second-level neutrality: they do not have a neutral justification. The problem with Mill’s valuebased defense of liberalism,” Larmore insists, is that because the value of individuality is “far from uncontroversial,” 2 Mill’s case liberalism is open to reasonable objection. In contrast Larmore and, of course, John Rawls, seek to develop a “political liberalism” that defends liberal neutrality without appeal to a “general ‘philosophy of man’ or a ‘comprehensive moral ideal’.”3 The justification of liberal principles “must be acceptable by reasonable people having different views of the good life, not just those who share, for example, Mill’s ideal of the person.”4 Liberals, argues Larmore, need “a neutral justification of neutrality.”5.. (shrink)

When people of good faith and sound mind disagree deeply about moral, religious, and other philosophical matters, how can we justify political institutions to all of them? The idea of public reason―of a shared public standard, despite disagreement―arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the work of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. At a time when John Rawls’ influential theory of public reason has come under fire but its core idea remains attractive to many, it is important not (...) to lose sight of earlier philosophers’ answers to the problem of private conflict through public reason. -/- The distinctive selections from the great social contract theorists in this volume emphasize the pervasive theme of intractable disagreement and the need for public justification. New essays by leading scholars then put the historical work in context and provide a focus of debate and discussion. They also explore how the search for public reason has informed a wider body of modern political theory―in the work of Hume, Hegel, Bentham, and Mill―sometimes in surprising ways. The idea of public reason is revealed as an overarching theme in modern political philosophy―one very much needed today. (shrink)

First published in 1983. The primary argument of this book is that there is a coherent tradition of liberal thinking that extends from L. S. Mill, through liberals like T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, L. T. Hobhouse and John Dewey to John Rawls. The author places Rawls within a longstanding tradition of liberal thinking, while also arguing that Green and Hobhouse are not simply of historical interest but represent genuine and interesting attempts to develop a modern liberal theory. (...) It is argued that modern liberal theory centres on a conception of human nature; that modern liberals have sought to harmonise the pursuit of individuality with participation in social and communal life. Although the book focuses on six modern liberals, the discussion proceeds topically rather than according to author, thus highlighting similarities and disagreements and providing a comprehensive study of modern liberalism. (shrink)

It has often been argued that John Stuart Mill's normative economics is independent both of his positive economics of production and his liberal normative political philosophy of liberty. In this chapter I seek to show why we should reject this interpretation, by calling into question both the sharp distinctions between production and distribution, and economic and civil liberty. Following Lionel Robbins I argue that Mill is firmly rooted in the classical tradition of political economy and, indeed, that throughout his (...) social thought his primary value is liberty. (shrink)

Public justification-based accounts of liberal legitimacy rely on the idea that a polity’s basic structure should, in some sense, be acceptable to its citizens. In this paper I discuss the prospects of that approach through the lens of Gerald Gaus’ critique of John Rawls’ paradigmatic account of democratic public justification. I argue that Gaus does succeed in pointing out some significant problems for Rawls’ political liberalism; yet his alternative, justificatory liberalism, is not voluntaristic enough to satisfy the (...) desiderata of a genuinely democratic theory of public justification. So I contend that—pace Gaus, but also Rawls—rather than simply amending political liberalism, the claims of justificatory liberalism bring out fatal tensions between the desiderata of any theory of liberal-democratic legitimacy through public justification. (shrink)

The esteemed psychologist and thinker John Dewey headed for previously unexplored philosophical territory with this influential work. Written shortly after World War I, it embodies Dewey's system of pragmatic humanism and maintains that individuals can attain "a more ordered and intelligent happiness" by reconsidering the ultimate effects of their deepest beliefs and feelings. With its promise of achieving an understanding of the past and attaining a brighter future, Reconstruction in Philosophy remains ever relevant. "A modern classic." — Philosophy and (...) Phenomenological Research. (shrink)

The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy is a comprehensive, definitive reference work, providing an up-to-date survey of the field, charting its history and key figures and movements, and addressing enduring questions as ...

With precision and profundity born of 30 years of devoted study, John Boyle offers an essential introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas on Scripture, shedding helpful light on the goals, methods, and commitments that animate the Angelic Doctor's engagement with the sacred page. Because the genius of St. Thomas's approach to the Bible lies not so much in its novelty but rather in the fidelity and clarity with which he recapitulates the riches of the preceding interpretive Tradition, this initiation into (...) St. Thomas's vision of Scripture is itself an orientation to the Church's vision of Scripture, from the Fathers through and beyond the Middle Ages. St. Thomas's embeddedness within the Church's Tradition and his own historical context is integral to his approach to Scripture, yet it sets him at some distance from modern readers, for whom his interpretive vision may seem perplexing or even impenetrable. In this Primer, Boyle first provides an acclimation to this medieval context through a survey and explanation of pertinent technical terminology used by St. Thomas and characteristic of the scholastic theology of the time. With an eye to the medieval practice of considering Scripture according to the fourfold division of causes, Boyle builds on this initial foundation by exploring in turn St. Thomas's accounts of the end or use of Scripture (final cause), its divine and human authorship (efficient cause), its order and division (material cause), and its literary styles or genres (formal cause). Drawing on writings from across St. Thomas's corpus, but especially his work On the Commendation and Division of Sacred Scripture and the prologues to his biblical commentaries, Boyle masterfully elucidates both the hermeneutical principles and deep wisdom of the Angelic Doctor's approach to Scripture, imparting invaluable guidance not only for reading and understanding St. Thomas and other great masters of the Tradition, but also-and ultimately-for understanding Scripture in light of this Tradition and reading it with greater benefit and joy. (shrink)

Despite recurring efforts, a gap exists across a variety of contexts between the protection of patients' safety in theory and in practice. This timely Research Handbook highlights these critical issues and suggests both legal and policy changes are necessary to better protect patients' safety. Multidisciplinary in nature, this Research Handbook features contributions from eminent academics, policy makers and medical practitioners from the Global North and South, discussing the essential facets concerning patient safety and the law. It highlights how the role (...) of legislation and case law has the potential to influence, both positively and negatively, medical practice and the quality of care. Chapters explore patient safety and the global health agenda; physiotherapy; 'non-therapeutic' clinical research with children; patient safety awareness in healthcare education; and the increasing use of robotics and artificial intelligence in healthcare. Outlining a wide range of international perspectives on patient safety and the law, this Research Handbook will appeal to academics and researchers specialising in health and medical law, human rights and healthcare regulation. It will also serve as a valuable resource for legal and medical practitioners alike, as well as clinicians and professionals working in healthcare governance. (shrink)

The notion of proof is central to mathematics yet it is one of the most difficult aspects of the subject to teach and master. In particular, undergraduate mathematics students often experience difficulties in understanding and constructing proofs. Understanding Mathematical Proof describes the nature of mathematical proof, explores the various techniques that mathematicians adopt to prove their results, and offers advice and strategies for constructing proofs. It will improve students’ ability to understand proofs and construct correct proofs of their own. The (...) first chapter of the text introduces the kind of reasoning that mathematicians use when writing their proofs and gives some example proofs to set the scene. The book then describes basic logic to enable an understanding of the structure of both individual mathematical statements and whole mathematical proofs. It also explains the notions of sets and functions and dissects several proofs with a view to exposing some of the underlying features common to most mathematical proofs. The remainder of the book delves further into different types of proof, including direct proof, proof using contrapositive, proof by contradiction, and mathematical induction. The authors also discuss existence and uniqueness proofs and the role of counter examples. (shrink)

Dr Anne Merriman is the founder of Hospice Africa and Hospice Africa Uganda. She is presently Director of Policy and International Programmes. Here she tells the story of how HAU was founded. Dr Richard Harding is an academic researcher working on palliative care in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper described Dr Merriman's experience in pioneering palliative care provision. In particular it examines the steps to achieving wider availability of opioids for pain management for those with far advanced disease. Hospice (...) Africa Uganda has been a model facility in achieving high quality clinical care embedded in a strategy of advocacy and education, using a multifaceted approach that has addressed logistical, policy and legislative barriers. Until 1990 control of severe pain in Sub-Saharan Africa was non-existent except in Zimbabwe and S Africa. Oral affordable morphine was brought to Kenya through Nairobi Hospice that year, and to Uganda through Hospice Africa Uganda in 1993. This paper offers an example of a highly effective and cost efficient model of care that has transformed the ability to humanely manage the problems of those with terminal illness, and to offer a culturally appropriate. (shrink)

This conceptual paper revisits the concept of equality as a base of distributive justice and contends that it is underspecified, both theoretically and in terms of its ethical and pragmatic application to human resource management (HRM) within organizations. Prior organizational literature focuses primarily upon distributive equality of remunerative outcomes within small groups and implicitly employs an equity-based conception of inputs to define equality. In contrast, through exposition of the philosophical roots of equality principles, we reconceptualize inputs as de facto equal (...) and consider the systemic application of distributive equality in the form of status leveling practices. Ethical ramifications of distributive equality so viewed are explored. We conclude by arguing that, to implicitly insert a stronger ethics focus into the study and practice of HRM, perhaps there should be "equality theory" competing with equity theory for recognition in managerial and scholarly discourse. (shrink)

In this article I provide a critical account of the ‘placing’ of England’s M1 motorway. I start by critiquing Marc Augé’s anthropological writings on ‘non-places’ which have provided a common point of reference for academics discussing spaces of travel, consumption and exchange in the contemporary world. I argue that Augé’s ethnology of supermodernity results in a rather partial account of these sites, that he overstates the novelty of contemporary experiences of these spaces, and that he fails to acknowledge the heterogeneity (...) and materiality of the social networks bound up with the production of non-places/places. I suggest that, rather than focusing on the presences and absences associated with the polarities of place and non-place, academics should examine the multiple, partial, dynamic and relational ‘placings’ which arise through the diverse performances and movements associated with travel, consumption and exchange. I then trace the topologies of England’s M1 motorway, examining some of the different ways in which the motorway has been assembled, performed and placed over the past 45 years. (shrink)

In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect (...) theories of justice--essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years--needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, Gaus points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society--with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives--have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. Gaus defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, The Tyranny of the Ideal rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times. (shrink)

The dominant social scientific approach to studying judicial behavior treats judges as strategic actors pursuing their political preferences under institutional constraint. The intellectual roots of this rational choice approach are in American law’s long but sporadic engagement with pragmatist ideas. This article challenges that approach: a fully pragmatist account of judicial action provides a better description of the intellectual and social work of judging, and better explains how judges reach a decision in difficult cases that most affect the development of (...) law and its relationship to society. The article argues that the foundational intellectual problem for appellate judges is how to define the legal questions presented in a case. Definitions of legal questions arise from the interplay of habitual and creative action in the local social context of an appeals court. Professional and local interpretive habits and legal forms ordinarily do a great deal to define the key questions, which are not strictly determined when a case comes before a court. Unscripted small group interactions at oral arguments also figure in question definition; oral arguments are most important in the rare but legally important cases where habitual practices alone are insufficient to delimit the legal question judges must answer. Supported by extensive interviews with federal appeals judges and clerks, the article illustrates judges’ creative, interactional efforts to define an answerable question in a major asylum case decided in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Building from this case, the article describes the factors that shape judicial question definition, and describes the conditions when creative judicial action is likely to be most prominent. (shrink)

In this innovative and important work, Gerald Gaus advances a revised and more realistic account of public reason liberalism, showing how, in the midst of fundamental disagreement about values and moral beliefs, we can achieve a moral and political order that treats all as free and equal moral persons. The first part of this work analyzes social morality as a system of authoritative moral rules. Drawing on an earlier generation of moral philosophers such as Kurt Baier and Peter Strawson (...) as well as current work in the social sciences, Gaus argues that our social morality is an evolved social fact, which is the necessary foundation of a mutually beneficial social order. The second part considers how this system of social moral authority can be justified to all moral persons. Drawing on the tools of game theory, social choice theory, experimental psychology and evolutionary theory, Gaus shows how a free society can secure a moral equilibrium that is endorsed by all, and how a just state respects, and develops, such an equilibrium. (shrink)

An analysis of Geoffrey Hill's lyric poem about William Blake illuminates the relations between art, prophecy, and imperial politics across more than two centuries. Hill's poem responds to David V. Erdman's argument that Blake was resolutely, if ineffectually and sometimes secretly, opposed to war. It also establishes Hill's own cryptic but definite resistance to contemporary war and warmongers, while it mourns poetry's public powerlessness to halt the violent competition for material resources. Ignored by the majority, poetry fails to bring about (...) the ethical social change that poets often envision. The layering of perspectives (Hill the poet and scholar writing about Erdman the scholar, who is explicating Blake the poet and artist) allows for a multidimensional interpretation of the role of poets and prophetic poetry. Despite their fury at society's deafness and greed, and frustration at their own incapacities, poets—because if they are great poets, they are prophets, too—continue to speak to their audiences about the problems of this world and about the better worlds that can be imagined. Hill's text obliquely teaches how the small success of a great poem can provide a minor note of consolation as it objects to terror and tyranny. (shrink)

An analysis of Geoffrey Hill's lyric poem about William Blake illuminates the relations between art, prophecy, and imperial politics across more than two centuries. Hill's poem responds to David V. Erdman's argument that Blake was resolutely, if ineffectually and sometimes secretly, opposed to war. It also establishes Hill's own cryptic but definite resistance to contemporary war and warmongers, while it mourns poetry's public powerlessness to halt the violent competition for material resources. Ignored by the majority, poetry fails to bring about (...) the ethical social change that poets often envision. The layering of perspectives (Hill the poet and scholar writing about Erdman the scholar, who is explicating Blake the poet and artist) allows for a multidimensional interpretation of the role of poets and prophetic poetry. Despite their fury at society's deafness and greed, and frustration at their own incapacities, poets—because if they are great poets, they are prophets, too—continue to speak to their audiences about the problems of this world and about the better worlds that can be imagined. Hill's text obliquely teaches how the small success of a great poem can provide a minor note of consolation as it objects to terror and tyranny. (shrink)

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

The metaphor of “gene editing” has been employed widely in popular discussions of CRISPR technology. The editing metaphor obscures the physical mechanism of action in CRISPR techniques, and understates the present frequency of off-target effects. However, the editing metaphor may be a useful means to think about approaches to regulating the future use of CRISPR. Conceiving of CRISPR as an information technology recalls the highly computational, information-oriented context of genomic research in which CRISPR has emerged. More importantly, the editing metaphor, (...) while currently inaccurate, anticipates a future moment when CRISPR technology will be ubiquitous and extremely reliable. Contemporary deliberations about the regulation of CRISPR should keep in mind that the technology may become more powerful—and more susceptible to misuse—as the overall state of genomic science advances and applications of CRISPR become less expensive and more refined. (shrink)

This book advances a theory of personal, public and political justification. Drawing on current work in epistemology and cognitive psychology, the work develops a theory of personally justified belief. Building on this account, it advances an account of public justification that is more normative and less "populist" than that of "political liberals." Following the social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke and Kant, the work then argues that citizens have conclusive reason to appoint an umpire to resolve disputes arising from inconclusive (...) public justifications. The rule of law, liberal democracy and limited judicial review are defended as elements of a publicly justified umpiring procedure. (shrink)

Social experimental research commonly employs media to elicit responses from research subjects. This use of media is broadly protected under fair use exemptions to copyright, and creators of content used in experiments are generally not afforded any formal consideration or protections in existing research ethics frameworks. Online social networking sites are an emerging and important setting for social experiments, and in this context the material used to elicit responses is often content produced by other users. This article argues that users (...) may have a reasonable interest in controlling the use of their content in experiments conducted in online social networks. Matters of risk and autonomy in research ethics are explored by analogy to active debates in law over adhesion contracts, moral rights, and the right to be forgotten. The article concludes by considering practical difficulties in identifying and protecting the interests of creators. (shrink)