Quentin Skinner is one of the leading thinkers in the social sciences and humanities today. Since the publication of his first important articles some two decades ago, debate has continued to develop over his distinctive contributions to contemporary political philosophy, the history of political theory, the philosophy of social science, and the discussion of interpretation and hermeneutics across the humanities and social sciences. Nevertheless, his most valuable essays and the best critical articles concerning his work have been scattered in various (...) journals and difficult to obtain. Meaning and Context includes five of the most widely discussed articles by Skinner, which present his approach to the study of political thought and the interpretation of texts. Following these are seven articles by his critics, five of these drawn from earlier publications and two, by John Keane and Charles Taylor, written especially for this volume. Finally, there appears a fifty-seven page reply by Skinner--a major new statement in which he defends and reformulates his method and lays out new lines of research. The editorial introduction provides a systematic overview of the evolution of Skinner's work and of the main reactions to it.Besides James Tully, John Keane, and Charles Taylor, the contributors include Joseph V. Femia, Keith Graham, Martin Hollis, Kenneth Minogue, and Nathan Tarcov. (shrink)

I argue that consideration of certain cases of severe depression reveals a problem for desire-based theories of welfare. I first show that depression can result in a person losing her desires and then identify a case wherein it seems right to think that, as a result of very severe depression, the individuals described no longer have any desires whatsoever. I argue that the state these people are in is a state of profound ill-being: their lives are going very poorly for (...) them. Yet desire theories get this case wrong. Because no desires are being frustrated, the desire theorist has no grounds for ascribing ill-being; indeed, because the individuals described seem utterly without desire, the desire theorist has no grounds for treating these people as subjects of welfare ascription at all. I argue that these results are unacceptable; therefore, we should reject desire-based theories of well-being and ill-being. (shrink)

In The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen advocates democracy defined as ‘public reasoning’ and ‘government by discussion’. Sen’s discursive approach facilitates the exercise of political freedom and development of one’s public capacities, and enables victims of injustice to give public voice and discussion to specific injustice. It also responds to the contested nature of ‘universal human rights’ and the need to clarify and defend them via public reasoning. However, Sen’s approach leaves intact the hegemony of a liberal form of (...) democracy that prioritizes political and civil rights over social and economic rights and thus precludes alternative democratic forms, most notably a form of cooperative democracy that politicizes social and economic activities in the pursuit of local and global justice. Sen’s ‘government by discus- sion’ must combine with cooperative democracy and a global ethos emphasizing cooperation (and action) over privatization in order to address our most serious global injustices, including exploitation, inequality and poverty in the Global South, accelerating destruction of the environment and biodiversity, and global warming and climate change. (shrink)

The field comprising both the theory and practice of struggles over recognition developed over the last 50 years in relative independence of the parallel field of deliberative and agonistic democracy. Over the last decade these two fields, in both theory and practice, have merged because courts, legislatures, ministries and rival armies around the world have often turned the reconciliation of struggles over recognition over to various institutions and practices of negotiation and deliberation. The result is the emergence of a new (...) hybrid field of recognition and dialogue. This paper is a critical examination of the emergence and the strengths and weaknesses of this new and important field of politics and law. (shrink)

Most agree that Scotus is a voluntarist of some kind. In this paper we argue against recent interpretations of Scotus’s ethics (and metaethics) according to which the norms concerning human actions are largely, if not wholly, the arbitrary products of God’s will. On our reading, the Scotistic variety of voluntarism on offer is much more nuanced. Key to our interpretation is keeping distinct what is too often conflated: the reasons why Scotus maintains that the laws of the Second Table of (...) the Decalogue are (a) contingent (a modal distinction) as well as (b) not universal (a categorical distinction). A proper interpretation of Scotus must also take seriously the fact that these Second Table laws are natural laws “exceedingly in harmony with” (multum consona) the necessary laws, and are distinct from and not reducible to divine positive laws. (shrink)

Les premières conférences John Robert Seeley, données par James Tully en 1994, traitaient des six types de demandes de reconnaissance culturelle qui sont au coeur des conflits les plus insolubles de notre époque : les associations supranationales, le nationalisme et le fédéralisme, les minorités linguistiques et ethniques, le féminisme, le multiculturalisme et l'autonomie gouvernementale des Autochtones. Ni les écoles actuelles du constitutionnalisme occidental moderne ni le constitutionnalisme post-moderne n'offrent d'outil équitable pour juger ces demandes diverses de reconnaissance parce qu'elles reposent (...) sur des suppositions indéfendables, héritées de l'époque de l'impérialisme européen. Toutefois, en effectuant une étude critique et historique de quatre cents ans de constitutionnalisme européen et non européen, et en prêtant une attention particulière aux populations autochtones d'Amérique, James Tully élabore une philosophie et une pratique post-impériales du constitutionnalisme. Elles consistent à concilier des demandes de reconnaissance à travers le temps grâce à des dialogues constitutionnels qui permettent à des citoyens de se mettre d'accord sur des formes adéquates d'accommodements de leurs différences culturelles, guidées par des conventions constitutionnelles communes. Cette forme de constitutionnalisme a la capacité de résoudre des conflits de notre époque et d'apporter la paix au vingt et unième siècle. (shrink)

The most urgent problem facing the European Union is to develop the best approach to conflicts over integration in the fields of culture, economics and foreign policy. The essay argues that a particular form of democratic integration is better than the two predominant approaches. This approach draws on the actual practices of the democratic negotiation of integration that citizens engage in on a daily basis but which tend to be overlooked and overridden in the dominant approaches.

John Locke's subtle and influential defense of religious toleration as argued in his seminal _Letter Concerning Toleration_ appears in this edition as introduced by one of our most distinguished political theorists and historians of political thought.

This paper presents and defends a new conception of freedom as a value in the sphere of economic production. It challenges the common, proprietarian-contractual view of economic liberty. My alternative integrates three elements: compossible control, non-alienation, and reason-responsiveness. After surveying various forms of freedom, conceptual ground is cleared for the presentation of those three elements in a relational structure. I define them, show how they interpenetrate, and argue for their shared centrality. Compossible control involves a person’s conditions of economic agency (...) being sufficiently under their influence to satisfy their entitlement to a self-directed life, consistent with others having equivalent control in their own case. Non-alienation involves having reasons to apprehend one’s productive activities as a worthy manifestation of one’s identity. Reason responsiveness obtains when the requirements of production that one faces can be met by weighing and acting on reasons one takes as normative. I then discuss possible objections to my account. These have to do with its consistency with market requirements, the coherence of its basic distinctions, and the importance ascribed to non-alienation. I show how each of these objections are defeated. (shrink)

Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity James Tully. these ambassadors from Haida Gwaii conciliate the goods which appear irreconcilable to us? To discover the answer, and learn our way around on this strange common ground, we need to ...

This paper offers a brief account and defense of freely associated production as a political ideal. I discuss its conceptual structure, specifying what is meant by free association in terms of economic production, the sense in which it is a value for political order, and its approximate place in an historical lineage of reflection on freedom. Given that our economic arrangements are constitutively determined by law and public policy, and involve relations of governing power, the values that legal authority must (...) subserve bear directly on the productive sphere. One of those values – arguably the highest – is relational freedom. Reigning structures of production violate its demands. Without understanding the ways in which that violation occurs, we cannot effectively address some of our most urgent social crises. (shrink)

John Locke's theory of property is perhaps the most distinctive and the most influential aspect of his political theory. In this book James Tully uses an hermeneutical and analytical approach to offer a revolutionary revision of early modern theories of property, focusing particularly on that of Locke. Setting his analysis within the intellectual context of the seventeenth century, Professor Tully overturns the standard interpretations of Locke's theory, showing that it is not a justification of private property. Instead he shows it (...) to be a theory of individual use rights within a framework of inclusive claim rights. He links Locke's conception of rights not merely to his ethical theory, but to the central arguments of his epistemology, and illuminates the way in which Locke's theory is tied to his metaphysical views of God and man, his theory of revolution and his account of a legitimate polity. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive evaluation of Charles Taylor's work and a major contribution to leading questions in philosophy and the human sciences as they face an increasingly pluralistic age. Charles Taylor is one of the most influential contemporary moral and political philosophers: in an era of specialisation he is one of the few thinkers who has developed a comprehensive philosophy which speaks to the conditions of the modern world in a way that is compelling to specialists in various disciplines. (...) This collection of specially commissioned essays brings together twelve distinguished scholars from a variety of fields to discuss critically Taylor's work. The topics range from the history of philosophy, to truth, modernity and postmodernity, theism, interpretation, the human sciences, liberalism, pluralism and difference. Taylor responds to all the contributions and re-articulates his own views. (shrink)

An approach to political philosophy: Locke in contexts brings together Professor Tully's most important and innovative statements on Locke in a treatment of the latter's thought that is at once contextual and critical. The essays have been rewritten and expanded for this volume, and each seeks to understand a theme of Locke's political philosophy by interpreting it in light of the complex contexts of early modern European political thought and practice. These historical studies are then used in a variety of (...) ways to gain critical perspectives on the assumptions underlying current debates in political philosophy and the history of political thought. The themes treated include government, toleration, discipline, property, aboriginal rights, individualism, power, labour, self-ownership, community, progress, liberty, participation, and revolution. (shrink)

During the last forty years, the Aboriginal peoples of the Americas, of the British Commonwealth, and of other countries colonized by Europeans over the last five hundred years have demanded that their forms of property and government be recognized in international law and in the constitutional law of their countries. This broad movement of 250 million Aboriginal people has involved court cases, parliamentary politics, constitutional amendments, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the development of an international law of (...) Aboriginal peoples, and countless nonviolent and violent actions in defense of Aboriginal systems of property and cultures. The Aboriginal peoples of New Zealand, Canada, and the United States have been at the forefront of the movement, and it is in these countries that the greatest legal recognition has been achieved. (shrink)

This is the first of four papers to be published in Research Ethics Review in 2009 that address methodological issues of relevance to research ethics committees. These will be practical papers, intended to assist ethics committee members to determine whether a research method is both ethically justified and likely to lead to high quality research. This paper prepares the way for the series through a consideration of the relationship between research ethics and methodology.

In this paper, I address the question of whether it is ever permissible to grant a request for physician-aid-in-dying (PAD) from an individual suffering from treatment-resistant depression. I assume for the sake of argument that PAD is sometimes permissible. There are three requirements for PAD: suffering, prognosis, and competence. First, an individual must be suffering from an illness or injury which is sufficient to cause serious, ongoing hardship. Second, one must have exhausted effective treatment options, and one’s prospects for recovery (...) must be poor. Third, the individual must be judged competent to request PAD. I argue that many cases of treatment-resistant depression meet the first two requirements. Thus, the key question concerns the third. I consider four features of depression that might compromise a person’s decision-making capacity. Ultimately, I conclude that PAD requests from depressed patients can be permissibly granted in some circumstances. (shrink)

I would like to present a two part response to the following question that Seyla Benhabib posed at a conference at Harvard University in 1999: “Is there a Transition from Distribution to Recognition?” The first part proposes that issues of distribution and recognition should be seen as aspects of political struggles, rather than distinct types of struggle, and thus a form of analysis is required that has the capacity to study political struggles under both aspects. The second part suggests that (...) struggles over multicultural and multinational recognition are undergoing an important change in practice which requires a corresponding change in the prevailing forms of analysis. These two recommendations rest on and follow from an underlying orientation. The primary but not exclusive orientation would be practices of freedom rather than theories of justice. The aim of such an aspectival political philosophy and corresponding democratic political practice would not be to discover and constitutionalize thejust and definitive form of recognition and distribution, but to ensure that ineliminable, agonic democratic games over recognition and distribution, with their rival theories of distribution and recognition, can be played freely, with a minimum of domination. (shrink)

At a moment of cultural and political crisis, with forces of reaction seemingly ascendant throughout the West, it's fair to ask what use does anyone have for America, God, or any other similar fictions? What use does theological language have for the radical facing the apocalypse? Among the subjects considered: the need for an Augustinian left, legacies of American violence, speaking in tongues, the humanities facing climate change, the maturity of realizing that you will die, how to sail towards Utopia, (...) and witches."--Back cover. (shrink)

The editor of Political Theory asked us to respond to the question, 'What is political theory?' This question is as old as political theory or political philos- ophy. The activity of studying politics, whether it is called science, theory, or philosophy, always brings itself into question. The question does not ask for a single answer, for there are countless ways of studying politics and no univer- sal criteria for adjudicating among them. Rather, the question asks, 'What comparative difference does it (...) make to study politics this way rather than that?' Political theory or philosophy not only spans three millennia of study- ing politics in innumerable ways but also three millennia of dialogues among practitioners over various approaches, their relative merits, and the contest- able criteria for their comparison. Because there is no definitive answer, there is no end to this dialogue. Rather, it is the kind of open-ended dialogue that brings insight through the activity of reciprocal elucidation itself. Dialogue partners gain insight into what ruling, being ruled, and contesting rule is through the exchange of questions and answers over different ways of study-ing politics and different criteria for their assessment in relation to how they throw light on different aspects of the complex worlds of politics-and what counts as the 'different aspects of the complex worlds of politics' is also ques- tioned in the course of the dialogue.'. (shrink)

These two ambitious volumes from one of the world's most celebrated political philosophers present a new kind of political and legal theory that James Tully calls a public philosophy, and a complementary new way of thinking about active citizenship, called civic freedom. Professor Tully takes the reader step-by-step through the principal debates in political theory and the major types of political struggle today. These volumes represent a genuine landmark in political theory from the author of Strange Multiplicity, one of the (...) most influential and distinctive commentaries on politics and the contemporary world published in recent years. This first volume of Public Philosophy in a New Key consists of a presentation and defence of a contextual approach to public philosophy and civic freedom, and then goes on to study specific struggles over recognition and distribution within states. (shrink)

Within the ambit of modernity, "to be" a "person" means "to have" "a body." But what exactly do we mean when we say: ‘I have a body’? Who or what is this ‘I’ that ‘has’ ‘a body’ anyway? And how and why does this ‘having’, this possessing, of ‘a body’ confer legal and psychological personhood on us? Does such bodily possession necessarily define a mode of ‘self ownership’? Is distinguishing between the notions of ‘being an organism’, or even ‘being alive’, (...) and ‘having a body’ just a matter of semantics? Or are there pragmatic, bio-political consequences to the ways we construe our vitality and embodiment? Can thinking about ‘the body’ as a (or even, the) matter of ‘self possession’ tell us something interesting about how ‘personhood’ informs our lives? After all, what is ‘the nature’ of ‘the body’, if it can be possessed in such a manner? And does this proprietary way of thinking exhaust the possibilities for how we can imagine what it means to be an organism, a person, a citizen or a human? (shrink)

v. 1. Democracy and civic freedom -- v. 2. Imperialism and civic freedom.

The objective of this article is to deepen our understanding of transformative engagement in comparative and critical dialogues of comparative or transnational political thought. The first five sections discuss the challenges of dialogical comparative political thought. The following three sections discuss how a dialogue approach responds to these challenges and generates comparative and critical mutual understanding and mutual judgment.

James Tully: To Think and Act Differently collects classic, contemporary, and previously unpublished examples of public philosophy in action from across James Tully's four decades of scholarship. The book provides readers with a perspicuous representation of public philosophy as an ongoing experiment with reconstructing the practice of political theory as a democratizing and diversifying dialogue between scholars and citizens. This volume offers an overview of this participatory mode of political philosophy and political change by reconstructing the arc of Tully's intellectual (...) trajectory in contexts, illuminating moments of clarification and transformation, and the ways it continues to shed new insights into the challenges of citizenship in the present. Topics discussed include approaches to the history of political though, constitutionalism, democratic theory, comparative political theory, intercultural dialogue and translation; Indigenous political thought; settler colonialism and empire; climate change and sustainability; modernity; nonviolence; and mutual aid. It will be of interest to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, constitutional law, Indigenous studies, intellectual history, and ecological humanities. It will be of interest to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, constitutional law, Indigenous studies, intellectual history, and ecological humanities. (shrink)