This illuminating guide covers the most interesting and important aspects of Rawls' work in a stimulating manner, highlighting the foundations that underlie his conception of Justice, and explaining the rationale for his famous starting point, The Veil of Ignorance. Also detailing the criticisms that have met his arguments, this study will prove essential reading for students, scholars, and interested readers alike.

The central fact underlying all relations is the question of power and how it can be used to get one's way. When power does not work, we move to compromise. This paper questions the validity of compromise as an effective means of settling differences. My standpoint is that compromise debases relationships, is wrong in principle and does not work in practice either. There is a better strategy: integration, when the contending parties find the wider solution that includes both their interests. (...) Ethically right, integration also works better in practice, for it leads to longer-term, more productive and happier relations. (shrink)

Literary critic and essayist Karl Heinz Bohrer offers a Eurosceptic perspective on the German commitment to a united Europe. This article is a reconstruction of Bohrer's argument. It identifies two distinct critiques. The first is a somewhat prosaic observation that the differences between the national traditions of Europe are simply too great for a united Europe to be viable. The other is a more complex reflection on “European decadence”: Europeans lack the will that is required to project power, and power (...) is a precondition for cultural achievements. Protestantism—the “Protestant mind”—plays a central role in this second critique. The two critiques are connected through Bohrer's conception of the nation-state as an entity that integrates in an agonistic way legal and cultural power. (shrink)

The philosophy of the John Lewis Partnership is exemplified by the unique role of the Branch Registrar and her responsibilities to promote partnership. The author has wide international experience of accountancy and general management in the retail trade, and is currently a freelance lecturer on management and marketing. Her latest work is Integrative Management ‐ Creating Unity from Diversity.

Hart's will theory of rights has been subjected to at least three significant criticisms. First, it is thought unable to account for the full range of legal rights. Second, it is incoherent, for it values freedom while permitting an agent the option of alienating his or her capacity for choice. Third, any attempt to remedy the first two problems renders the theory reducible to the rival benefit theory. My aim is to address these objections. I argue that will theory has (...) been made vulnerable due to misinterpretation. The theory has been characterized as placing great stress on liberty rights (or claim-protected liberties), whereas it is powers that are central, and hence not choice but control. My argument does, however, depend upon appealing to an extra-legal notion — the hypothetical contract — but I argue that this is consistent with the main aim of a theory of rights. (shrink)