In the short essay on theory and practice, Kant declares that the social contract differs from all other types of contracts in that agreement to its is obligatory and may be exacted through the use of force. In this paper, I examine Kant's justification of the moral necessity of civil society. Kant locates the ground of our obligation to enter into a civil union in the necessity of property for action and civil society as the necessary condition of the institution (...) of property. It is my contention that the idea of the social contract is central to this project in that it joins together both moral autonomy and political authority in a conceptual unity that establishes the legitimacy of civil society, or the juridical condition as the collective dimension of autonomy. (shrink)

This anthology in epistemology is a collection of essays and excerpts from seminal texts on ways of knowing in mathematics, the natural and social sciences and the liberal and fine arts and communication.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have generated a number of responses by philosophers, perhaps the most controversial of which has been Ted Honderich’s book After the Terror. There Honderich inquires into the question of American responsibility for the events of September 11, 2001. Honderich argues that due to our acts of both commission and omission, we Americans bear partialresponsibility for the terrorist atrocities committed on that day. In this paper, I shall take issue with Honderich’s argument and propose (...) an alternative to it based on the concept of blowback. (shrink)

In the 1950s and 1960s, Conservatives themselves sought to distinguish an authentic conservatism from what Peter Viereck called “Reactionary Nationalism” and George Nash termed “The Radical Right.” In The National Review, William F. Buckley sought to expel the John Birch Society and Ayn Rand from the emerging Conservative movement. Perhaps most famously, the renowned historian Richard Hofstadter distinguished between Conservatism on the one hand and Pseudo-Conservatism on the other, which exhibited an opposition to the broad consensus of American society and (...) culture and what he famously identified as “the paranoid style” that was characterized by a Manichean outlook, an uncompromising political stance, a sense of betrayal, and a conspiratorial mindset. The project of this chapter is to outline the philosophical origins of this development, locating the roots of this debasement deep in the project of modernity itself in which conservatism developed in opposition to the universalism of rationality, science, and liberalism. (shrink)

In his latest book, the distinguished Vico scholar Donald Phillip Verene offers us a diagnosis of our current philosophical malaise and a prescription for its cure.

With this concise and tightly constructed account of Kant’s views on social welfare, Alexander Kaufman has filled a gap in the growing literature on Kant’s political philosophy. Kaufman’s purpose is two-fold: first, to explicate the philosophical basis of Kant’s views of social welfare; and second, to reconstruct Kant’s views on political judgment in order to link his abstract philosophical ideas to public policy.