Are there absolute truths that can be gradually approached over time through rational processes? Or are all modes and systems of thought equally valid if viewed from within their own internally consistent frames of reference? Are there universal forms of reasoning and understanding that enable us to distinguish between rational beliefs and those that are demonstrably false, or is everything relative?These central questions are addressed and debated by the distinguished contributors to this lively book. Some of them - Hollis, Lukes, (...) Robin Horton, and Ernest Gellner - discuss new directions in their thinking since their earlier articles appeared in 1970 in the seminal volume Rationality. They are now joined in the debate by Ian Hacking, W. Newton-Smith, Charles Taylor, Jon Elster, Dan Sperber, and, in the jointly authored lead article, by Barry Barnes and David Bloor.Emerging from the debate are a variety of supportable interpretations and conclusions rather than a single, distinct "truth." The contributors represent the complete spectrum of positions between a relativism that challenges the very concept of a single world and the idea that there are ascertainable, objective universals. (shrink)
It is reported that the moment anyone talked to Marx about morality, he would roar with laughter. Yet, plainly, he was fired by outrage and a burning desire for a better world. This paradox is the starting point for Marxism and Morality. Discussing the positions taken by Marx, Engels, and their descendants in relation to certain moral issues, Steven Lukes addresses the questions on which Marxist thinkers and actors have taken a number of characteristic stands as well as other questions--personal (...) relations and the moral virtues of the individual, for example--on which Marxism falls silent. A provocative exploration of the gray area where Marxism and morality meet, this book argues that Marxism makes a number of major moral claims and that its appeal has always been, in large part, a moral one. (shrink)
Moral relativism attracts and repels. What is defensible in it and what is to be rejected? Do we as human beings have no shared standards by which we can understand one another? Can we abstain from judging one another's practices? Do we truly have divergent views about what constitutes good and evil, virtue and vice, harm and welfare, dignity and humiliation, or is there some underlying commonality that trumps it all? These questions turn up everywhere, from Montaigne's essay on cannibals, (...) to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, to the debate over female genital mutilation. They become ever more urgent with the growth of mass immigration, the rise of religious extremism, the challenges of Islamist terrorism, the rise of identity politics, and the resentment at colonialism and the massive disparities of wealth and power between North and South. Are human rights and humanitarian interventions just the latest form of cultural imperialism? By what right do we judge particular practices as barbaric? Who are the real barbarians? In this provocative new book, the distinguished social theorist Steven Lukes takes an incisive and enlightening look at these and other challenging questions and considers the very foundations of what we believe, why we believe it, and whether there is a profound discord between "us" and "them.". (shrink)
The concept that peope have of themselves as a 'person' is one of the most intimate notions that they hold. Yet the way in which the category of the person is conceived varies over time and space. In this volume, anthropologists, philosophers, and historians examine the notion of the person in different cultures, past and present. Taking as their starting point a lecture on the person as a category of the human mind, given by Marcel Mauss in 1938, the contributors (...) critically assess Mauss's speculation that ntions of the person, rather than being primarily philosophical or psychological, have a complex social and ideological origin. Discussing societies ranging from ancient Greece, India, and China to modern Africa and Papua New Guinea, they provide fascinating descriptions of how these different cultures define the person. But they also raise deeper theoretical issues: What is universally constant and what is culturally variable in people's thinking about the person? How can these variations be explained? Has there been a general progressive development toward the modern Western view of the person? What is distinctive about this? How do one's notions of the person inform one's ability to comprehend alternative formulations? These questions are of compelling interest for a wide range of anthropologists, philosophers, historians, psychologists, sociologists, orientalists, and classicists. The book will appeal to any reader concerned with understanding one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence. (shrink)
This fascinating study, Steven Lukes, one of the foremost political theorists writing in English today, examines value pluralism and moral conflict and their implications for political thinking and practice. In Parts I and II he discusses them directly and their consequences for how we are to think about equality, liberty, power, and authority. In Part III he focuses on the non-obvious role of morality in Marxist theory and practice, and in Part IV he examines the contributions of contemporary political thinkers, (...) including Vaclav Havel. In the final section he puts theory to the test, looking at important political issues and showing how political moralities influence the world we live in. This book will be of particular interest to teachers and students of political theory, political philosophy, and moral philosophy. (shrink)
Winch’s ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’ addressed the question of how to interpret apparently irrational alien beliefs and practices. Criticizing Evans-Pritchard’s study of Zande witchcraft, Winch argued that across cultures there are divergent conceptions of what is rational and real and that, where they diverge, it is mistaken to apply ‘our’ standards and conceptions to ‘their’ beliefs. Winch’s position is here re-examined in the light of the current debate about whether the Hawaiians thought Captain Cook was divine. Sahlins holds that they (...) did, asserting that different cultures have different rationalities. Obeyesekere disagrees, holding that these views are just further evidence of European myth-making about the natives’ savage mentality, and that ‘practical rationality’ is common to all cultures. In conclusion it is argued that Sahlins’s ‘Maussian’ interpretative strategy is preferable to Obeyesekere’s ‘Davidsonian’ approach, that Sahlins cannot sustain his Winchean claim about rationality and that denying it is a precondition for understanding a practice central to all cultures: that of trying to get the world right. (shrink)
This essay discusses human rights from the standpoint of five outlooks dominant in our time by imaging five stylist ideal-typical countries. First, three countries in which the principle of defending human rights is unknown: Utilitaria, Communitaria and Proletaria. Each rejects human rights for a distinct set of reasons: the first because they conflict with utilitarian calculation, the second because they abstract from correct ways of living, the third because they soften hearts and are superfluous in a classless world. Accepting human (...) rights means departing from each of these standpoints in a given respect. First, we restrain the pursuit of social advantage, however enlightened or benevolent that pursuit. Second, we accept and protect the abstraction or distance of persons from specific, concrete ways of life. Third, we hold that the conditions of human life will never surmount scarcity, conflict of interests, moral divergences and limited rationality to render human rights superfluous. Next, two further countries are imagined in which human rights might be said to be respected: Libertaria and Egalitaria. The first represents a context of market freedoms, property rights, equal opportunity and civil rights but generates basic inequalities of condition and the sanctification of self-interest. The second is committed to rendering civil rights of equal worth to all and maintaining decent minimum standards for all, while striving for growth and improvement. But is Egalitaria feasible and viable? The incentives needed for growth give rise to inequalities, and the ideal of equal individual treatment conflicts with the communitarian goal of treating cultural identities as equal. These difficulties lead some away from Egalitaria back to Libertaria or Communitaria, but the essay concludes by suggesting that there is an »egalitarian plateau« that should not be abandoned for any of the other four possibilities. (shrink)
Abstract Hayek's argument that social justice is a mirage consists of six claims: that the very idea of social justice is meaningless, religious, self?contradictory, and ideological; that realizing any degree of social justice is unfeasible; and that aiming to do so must destroy all liberty. These claims are examined in the light of contemporary theories and debates concerning social justice in order to assess whether the argument's persuasive power is due to sound reasoning, and to what extent contemporary theories of (...) justice meet or escape the Hayekian challenge. (shrink)
A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though possibly well-founded or essentially true’. In this article I shall try to show that the classical orthodox Marxist view of morality is a paradox. I shall seek to resolve the paradox by trying to show that it is only seemingly self-contradictory or absurd. But I shall not claim the standard Marxist view of morality to be well-founded or essentially true. On the contrary, I shall suggest that, (...) though coherent, it is ill-founded and illusory. (shrink)
Nicolas de Condorcet, the innovating founder of mathematical thinking in politics, was the last great philosophe of the French Enlightenment and a central figure in the early years of the French Revolution. His political writings give a compelling vision of human progress across world history and express the hopes of that time in the future perfectibility of man. This volume contains a revised translation of 'The Sketch', written while in hiding from the Jacobin Terror, together with lesser-known writings on the (...) emancipation of women, the abolition of slavery, the meanings of freedom and despotism and reflections on revolutionary violence. The introduction by Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati sets these works in context and shows why Condorcet is of real interest today as we reinterpret the meaning of Enlightenment, the very idea of progress and the founding ideas of social democracy. (shrink)
This article considers Cohen's claim that the economic structure or base can be conceived independently of the superstructure by adressing his attempt to identify "a rechtsfrei economic structure to explain law ". It examines his programme of presenting relations of production as a set of powers and constraints that 'match' the rights and obligations of property relations. It is argued that, first, Cohen does not carry through this programme rigorously but, second, he could not do so, since it cannot be (...) carried out at all. Three arguments are advanced, the first two against the possibility of a determinate,objective, account of such powers and constraints, the third against the possibility of abstracting norms from contractual relationships: it is argued that one cannot identify the powers and constraints embodied in norm-governed economic relationships independently of the norms which govern them. Alternative interpretations are considered of Cohen's programme that might escape these objections, but these are rejected as untrue to his purpose, and in any case ineffective. It is concluded that Cohen fails to distinguish base from superstructure in the manner required. (shrink)
A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though possibly well-founded or essentially true’. In this article I shall try to show that the classical orthodox Marxist view of morality is a paradox. I shall seek to resolve the paradox by trying to show that it is only seemingly self-contradictory or absurd. But I shall not claim the standard Marxist view of morality to be well-founded or essentially true. On the contrary, I shall suggest that, (...) though coherent, it is ill-founded and illusory. (shrink)
Tomasi’s view of social democracy is shown to mischaracterize it as hostile to private economic liberties, which all real-world social democracies guarantee. The supposed Manichean choice between social and market democracy, seen as requiring contrasting accounts of fairness, results from combining Rawls-style idealization of regime types, the Hayekian presumption that social democracies are advancing along the road to serfdom, and tendentious appeal to scant and unconvincing historical evidence. The proposed constitutional protection of ‘thick,’ market-based economic liberties, as favoring both individual (...) self-authorship and fair equality of opportunity, is defended by Tomasi against high-liberal and social democratic views as compatible with what Rawls’s social justice demands, but as their scope expands in the course of the book this fails to convince. Finally it is argued that the ever-expanding reach of the market across all social life, with feedback effects on the formation of preferences, renders questionable Tomasi’s claims that his account of market fairness is neutral with respect to ways of life and that it specifies conditions under which individuals can live lives that are truly their own. (shrink)
