This chapter contains sections titled: Worker‐Owned Firms Municipal Enterprises Building Community: Neighborhoods and Nonprofits State and National Innovators Integrated Advances and Further Possibilities3 Challenging the Ideology of Unconstrained Wealth Inequality Conclusion References.

When Leviathan appeared as the third version of Thomas Hobbes' s civil science, it was notable in several respects: its rhetorical strategies, its political implications, and its appeal to an anglophone audience. There has been much scholarly attention paid to Hobbes's religious writing, but little specifically to his use of the phrase the “Christian Commonwealth.” Hobbes's first invocation of the notion of the Christian Commonwealth was found in his early Elements of Law. Hobbes's main concern was to secure (...) the “obedience to public authority” of Christians living in Christian polities, and the “Christian Commonwealth” found in the Elements was primarily distinguished from non‐Christian polities. The Christian Commonwealth of Leviathan was an absolute political entity achievable wherever a sovereign state espoused Hobbes's minimal theology. Bramhall's objection to Hobbes's pluralistic and minimal understanding of Christian polities, shorn of all clerical authority, would persist in high church and particularly Catholic ecclesiology. (shrink)

While discussing critical individuality as oneof the main goals of liberal education, theemphasis has usually been on direct educationalmeasures. Much less attention has been given tothe social preconditions for its development.This paper discusses the societal aspect of thequestion by employing the notion of spherepluralism. The attempt is to point out someways in which the diversified nature of societycan be employed in its full potential for thedevelopment of critical individuality. Thearticle aims to outline a form of spherepluralism, which is based on (...) structuraldifferentiation, cultural diversity, communalvitality, confessional pluralism andcross-communal criticism. The suggestion isthat the critical potential of sphere pluralismpresupposes a proper balance between sphereautonomy and inter-sphere criticism as well asthat between social construction of meaning andobjective-structural constraints. (shrink)

This book presents a contextual study of the life and work of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688). Focusing on the theological basis of Cudworth's ethical philosophy, this book unlocks the hitherto ignored political aspect to Cudworth's ethical philosophy. Through a detailed examination of Cudworth's published works - particularly his voluminous "True intellectual system of the Universe" -, his posthumously published writings, and his 'freewill' manuscripts Benjamin Carter argues that the ethical and political arguments in Cudworth's philosophy develop out of (...) Cudworth's Trinitarian theology. Carter traces the link between Cudworth's trinitarianism and his ethical and political ideas by placing Cudworth's work in the turbulent religious and intellectual context of seventeenth-century England, and the University of Cambridge in particular. (shrink)

Richard Tuck has argued that important elements of Hobbes's thought grew out of a confrontation with scepticism; seen in this context, rather than through the lens of post-Kantian philosophy, Hobbes’s moral science takes on a ‘negotiatory’ and fundamentally pluralist character, Tuck alleges. In this paper, I offer an alternative account of Hobbes's relationship with scepticism, while defending Tuck's position against critics who see no role at all for scepticism in Hobbes's intellectual development. Even if his primary purpose was not (...) to defeat the sceptics. Hobbes may have been deeply influenced by sceptical ideas, in particular the sceptic's awareness of the great diversity that exists in human perceptions, tastes, customs and opinions. Hobbes put an epistemological twist on the sceptical recognition of diversity, however, allowing him to justify a moral theory that was reductive in character. Moreover, Hobbes's epistemology and political theory were closely connected; in the hands of the sovereign, his moral theory was to serve as a tool for the reform of popular discourse, in the interest of peace. While certainly no fanatic, Hobbes feared that any significant diversity of opinion within a single commonwealth would inevitably lead to strife. (shrink)

In our era of globalization, migration increasingly enforces cultural heterogeneity at the level of single societies and countries mirroring the cultural heterogeneity at the macroscopic level, i.e. the planet. Thus, the question of intercultural understanding and coexistence not only is crucial when it comes to states, but is increasingly gaining in importance in terms of identifying preconditions that enable individuals from various cultural backgrounds to share one commonwealth. At present, a growing number of people are convinced that this challenge (...) is not easily met due to what are believed to be fundamental moral disagreements between ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ (in particular, Islamic) culture(s). Against this background, different proposals have been provided to rise to the above-mentioned challenge. One of them is to allow for ‘cultural’ justifications in matters of criminal law. In this article I try to outline the state of discussion on claims for a ‘cultural defense’ by identifying and analysing three distinct rationales: the argument from pluralism; the argument from fairness; and the argument from necessity. Finally, I critically reflect on them from a human rights perspective. (shrink)

Since the fundamental challenge that I laid at the doorstep of the pluralists was to defend, with nonderivative models, a strong notion of genic cause, it is fatal that Waters has failed to meet that challenge. Waters agrees with me that there is only a single cause operating in these models, but he argues for a notion of causal `parsing' to sustain the viability of some form of pluralism. Waters and his colleagues have some very interesting and important ideas about (...) the sciences, involving pluralism and parsing or partitioning causes, but they are ideas in search of an example. He thinks he has found an example in the case of hierarchical and genic selection. I think he has not. (shrink)

The three-tenet model, which focuses on ‘distributional justice’, ‘procedural justice’, and ‘justice as recognition’, has emerged as the most influential framework in the field of energy justice. Based on critical reviews of the three-tenet model, we identify three challenges that the model currently still faces: (i) a normative challenge on the grounding of the three-tenet model in philosophical theories; (ii) an ‘elite’ challenge on the justification of the use of power in energy-related decision; and (iii) a practical challenge on the (...) application of the three tenets in situations of conflicting justice demands. In this article, we provide the basic contours of a three-step pluralist and pragmatic dialogue model for questions of energy justice that addresses the three challenges, based on the ‘commonwealth model’ of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. The model proposes to create moral legitimacy in the face of plural demands for energy justice by engaging actors in an inclusive dialogue based on an explicit recognition of Boltanski and Thévenot’s commonwealth model. We thereby make three contributions to the existing literature on energy justice. First, the commonwealth model’s rootedness in normative political theory provides a stronger philosophical underpinning than was available up till now in the literature (challenge 1). Second, it allows one to go beyond the (almost exclusive) focus on injustices perpetrated on disempowered or marginalised groups, to include questions on the justified exercise of power (challenge 2). Third, the commonwealth model shows us practical ways out of situations where conflicting demands for justice are being made (challenge 3). (shrink)

A cornerstone of modern western philosophy, addressing the role of man in government, society and religion In 1651, Hobbes published his work about the relationship between the government and the individual. More than four centuries old, this brilliant yet ruthless book analyzes not only the bases of government but also physical nature and the roles of man. Comparable to Plato's Republic in depth and insight, Leviathan includes two society-changing phenomena that Plato didn't dare to dream of -- the rise of (...) great nation-states with their claims to absolute sovereignty, and modern science, with its unprecedented analytic power. To Hobbes, the leviathan -- a mythical sea creature described in the Old Testament -- represented his central thesis: that the state must be strong in order to control and protect its citizens. Even today, Hobbes's thesis in Leviathan is debated among scholars and philosophy aficionados around the globe. One of the earliest attempts at a genuinely scientific understanding of politics and society in their modern form, this book also remains one of the most stimulating. In his timeless work, Hobbes outlines his ideas about the passions and the conduct of man, and how his theories are realized in every individual. Addressing free will and religion, Hobbes constructs an intelligent argument for the basis of religion within government and how to organize a peaceful and successful Christian commonwealth. Like Plato's Republic, this book contains ideas on psychology, ethics, law, language, and religion that continue to challenge modern thinkers and exercise a profound influence on Western thought. A classic treatise of philosophy, Leviathan is critical reading for anyone who wishes to examine the human mind through the prisms of government and society. (shrink)

The life-world is a central topic of Husserl’s phenomenology. He addresses this issue in some of the works published during his lifetime and attempts to analyze the life-world extensively in many of his works and posthumously published research manuscripts. The life-world is one of the topics that have been discussed most extensively in phenomenology. However, there are many misunderstandings of Husserl’s phenomenology of the life-world. One misunderstanding concerns the variety of concepts of the life-world in Husserl and the possibility of (...) developing various fields of the phenomenology of the life-world. It is the aim of this paper to show that Husserl has a pluralistic concept of the life-world, which makes it possible to develop various fields of the phenomenology of the life-world. I will introduce the monistic view and the pluralistic view of the concept of the life-world in Husserl and will clarify what the life-world is, thereby showing that the monistic view of the concept of the life-world in Husserl is not legitimate. However, even though Husserl has a pluralistic concept of the life-world, nowhere does he systematically clarify the various concepts of the life-world. Hence I will sort out and clarify various concepts of the life-world such as the narrower concept and the wider concept, the general concept and the particular concept, the natural concept and the transcendental concept, and the empirical concept and the eidetic concept. Based on the discussion of the various concepts of the life-world in Husserl, I will assess the monistic view and the pluralistic view of Husserl’s concept of the life-world so that we can better understand his various concepts of the life-world. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes and critiques several forms of pluralism about the levels of selection, and introduces a novel way of thinking about the biological properties and processes typically conceptualized in terms of distinct levels. In particular, "levels" should be thought of as being entwined or fused. Since the pluralism discussed is held by divergent theorists, the argument has implications for many positions in the debate over the units of selection. And since the key points on which the paper turns apply (...) beyond this specific issue, the paper may prove of general interest in thinking about the metaphysics of science. (shrink)

Federated Australia was seen for a long time as a significant social ‘laboratory’. The Commonwealth itself was seen as an ‘experiment’. This widespread metaphor relied on a particular pattern of perception: the country was ‘new’ (it was not), and the country was allegedly isolated (it was not, at least not completely). Many believed that its social environment could be controlled, like that of a scientific laboratory. A laboratory is designed to shut all disturbances out – the value of the (...) data and experiments depends on it. This article outlines this metaphor in the context of Australian history during the 20th century, its rhetorical power and what made it discursively possible. (shrink)

Various theorists have endorsed the “communication argument”: communicative capacities are necessary for morally responsible agency because blame aims at a distinctive kind of moral communication. I contend that existing versions of the argument, including those defended by Gary Watson and Coleen Macnamara, face a pluralist challenge: they do not seem to sit well with the plausible view that blame has multiple aims. I then examine three possible rejoinders to the challenge, suggesting that a context-specific, function-based approach constitutes the most (...) promising modification of the communication argument. (shrink)

I consider two attempts to combine realism with pluralism about the units of selection: Sober and Wilson’s combination of “model” and “unit” pluralism, and Sterelny and Griffiths’ “local pluralism”. I argue that both of these attempts fail to show that realism and pluralism are compatible. Sober and Wilson’s pluralism turns out, on closer inspection, to be a kind of monism in disguise, while Sterelny and Griffiths’ local pluralism involves a combination of realism and anti-realism about interactors, and the units of (...) selection, that is fundamentally unstable. My conclusion is that one must choose whether to be a realist or a pluralist in this area: one cannot be both. The question of which we should choose is a further question that I do not take a stand on. (shrink)

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Pluralism, Relativism and the Neutral Teacher, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 12, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 129–139, https://d.

As recent elections in Iran and Iraq have shown, the increasing diversity of religious practices around the world may redefine democracy as we know it—leaving many of us to wonder just how compatible religion and democracy really are. _The Pluralist Paradigm _explores this difficult question with essays from a variety of disciplines, including theology, philosophy, political science, sociology, and ethics. It will be an ideal reference for anyone concerned with fostering tolerance in a progressively global society.

The 'ethical commonwealth', the central social element in Kant's account of religion, provides the church, as 'the moral people of God', with a role in establishing a cosmopolitan order of peace. This role functions within an interpretive realignment of Kant's critical project that articulates its central concern as anthropological: critically disciplined reason enables humanity to enact peacemaking as its moral vocation in history. Within this context, politics and religion are not peripheral elements in the critical project. They are, instead, (...) complementary social modalities in which humanity enacts its moral vocation to bring lasting peace among all peoples. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus among philosophers of science that scientific endeavors of understanding the human mind or the brain exhibit explanatory pluralism. Relatedly, several philosophers have in recent years defended an interventionist approach to causation that leads to a kind of causal pluralism. In this paper, I explore the consequences of these recent developments in philosophy of science for some of the central debates in philosophy of mind. First, I argue that if we adopt explanatory pluralism and the interventionist (...) approach to causation, our understanding of physicalism has to change, and this leads to what I call pluralistic physicalism. Secondly, I show that this pluralistic physicalism is not endangered by the causal exclusion argument. (shrink)

It is demonstrated that the reduction of a physical theory S to another one, T, in the sense that S can be derived from T holds in general only for the mathematical framework. The interpretation of S and the associated central terms cannot all be derived from those of T because of the qualitative differences between the cognitive levels of S and T. Their cognitively autonomous status leads to an epistemic as well as an ontological pluralism. This pluralism is consistent (...) with the unity of nature in the sense of a substantive monism. (shrink)

In this paper I present Pluralistic Kantianism as a viable alternative to other prominent accounts of the determination of the truth conditions of our ordinary empirical statements. I further claim that this sort of Kantianism is capable of handling certain theoretical difficulties faced by any scheme-based semantics. Moreover, Pluralistic Kantianism can shed some light on such crucial issues as cross-cultural communication and understanding. As a result, if the account offered here is on the right track, we may get a palatable (...) alternative to both restrictive monism and apathetic relativism, both of which ultimately fail to explicate or enlighten the successful and unsuccessful instances of cross-cultural understanding. (shrink)

In his lectures on pragmatism, William James famously proposed that the question of ‘the one and the many’ constitutes the most central of all philosophic problems, and that it is ‘central because so pregnant’. Prompted by James’ proposition, this article explores the intimately political connection in James’ thought between his pluralistic metaphysics and the nature of the problematic as a generative force that impregnates worlds and thoughts with differences: what I here call ‘the pluralistic problematic’. Exploring the generative significance of (...) the problematic in James’ philosophy, I propose that, where James is concerned, the pluriverse has a thoroughly problematic mode of existence. And pluralism, rather than a celebration of the many, rather than a philosophical exposition on multiple worlds and ontologies, or a theory of the organisation of a diverse polis, is first and foremost a pragmatics of the pluriverse – a political, experimental and pragmatic response to the ongoing insistence of the pluralistic problematic. (shrink)

Cicero's On the Commonwealth and On the Laws were his first and most substantial attempts to adapt Greek theories of political life to the circumstances of the Roman Republic. They represent Cicero's understanding of government and remain his most important works of political philosophy. On the Commonwealth survives only in part, and On the Laws was never completed. The new edition of this volume has been revised throughout to take account of recent scholarship, and features a new introduction, (...) a new bibliography, a chronological table and a biographical index. James E. G. Zetzel offers a scholarly reconstruction of the fragments of On the Commonwealth and a masterly translation of both dialogues. The texts are further supported by notes and synopsis, designed to assist students in politics, philosophy, ancient history, law and classics. (shrink)

Legal and philosophical theories of religious exemptions have primarily understood them as a means toward one or more moral ends: protecting rights and securing equality, primarily. But exemptions also serve an under-theorized stabilizing function in resolving conflicts between law and belief. In this paper, I argue that these conflicts pose a challenge to public justification, and ipso facto to political stability. I then show how religious exemptions can support stability by ameliorating these conflicts, and elaborate parameters for identifying those exemptions (...) most likely to achieve this stability-enhancing effect. (shrink)

Legal and philosophical theories of religious exemptions have primarily understood them as a means toward one or more moral ends: protecting rights and securing equality, primarily. But exemptions also serve an under-theorized stabilizing function in resolving conflicts between law and belief. In this paper, I argue that these conflicts pose a challenge to public justification, and ipso facto to political stability. I then show how religious exemptions can support stability by ameliorating these conflicts, and elaborate parameters for identifying those exemptions (...) most likely to achieve this stability-enhancing effect. (shrink)

Traditional monist theories of art fail to account for the diversity of objects that intuitively strike many as belonging to the category art. Some today argue that the solution to this problem requires the adoption of some version of pluralism to account for the diversity of art. We examine one recent attempt, which holds that the correct account of art must recognize the plurality of concepts of art. However, we criticize this account of concept pluralism as being unable to offer (...) an explanation of why some concept is an art concept. Instead, many of the disagreements over the definition of art could be reconciled by recognizing that works of art can be valued in a plurality of ways. By recognizing a plurality of values for art, we claim further that the definition of art becomes a non-issue. (shrink)

In Law’s Empire, Ronald Dworkin argues that the choice between conflicting interpretations of law is, and should be, influenced by the aspiration to “integrity,” that is, the construction of law as a coherent whole, as though it were the product of a single author. I argue that, particularly under conditions where opinion on relevant issues is significantly divided, the search for a single coherent explanation of law may be seriously misleading. The idea of integrity is a principled basis for legal (...) interpretation only where there is an underlying unity, rather than an underlying plurality. Dworkin suggests that there is a basis for striving toward such unity, and for an obligation to obey the law, in our “associative” obligations to fellow members of our political community. I argue that such obligations, to the extent that they exist, are too weak to provide an adequate basis for a moral obligation to obey the law. (shrink)

While it is often thought that pluralism is best accommodated by a liberal state, John Kekes has recently argued that pluralism and liberalism involve inconsistent commitments. He maintains that liberalism is committed to the idea that one or more of the “liberal values” must override all other values, while pluralism is committed to the idea that there are no overriding values whatsoever. In this paper I challenge Kekes' position by arguing that ethical pluralism does not require an absence of overriding (...) values, and that liberalism does not require that one or more of the liberal values must override all others. (shrink)

This paper argues that John Hick's commitment to the moral principle of altruism undermines his pluralistic claim that all of the major world religions are equally efficacious from a soteriological perspective. This argument is placed in a context of a discussion evaluating the theoretical virtues of various hypotheses about religious diversity. (Published Online April 7 2006).

Alex Gourevitch’s From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth is a valuable contribution to republican historiography: in reconstructing the ideas of the 19th century American labour republicans, this work significantly expands and enriches our appreciation of the classical republican tradition. While the labour republicans are convincingly shown to have made important contributions to that tradition, stronger claims that they fundamentally transformed republicanism are less persuasive.

Argument teachers and scholars have frequently invoked external justification-impressing one's viewpoint upon another-as the primary social function of argument. Pluralism and fundamental disagreement in contemporary democratic societies raise questions regarding the status of argument, including the functions argument should serve. In this essay, I suggest alternatives of agenda expansion, responsibility attribution, and identity formation as important functions of argument in diverse societies. Thesealternative functions are especially important under conditions of social inequality, since they allow less powerful individuals and groups to (...) confront more powerful actors in situations where decision making is not open to all. (shrink)

This article depicts the dynamic demonstrations of religions in late imperial and republican Jining. It argues with evidences that the open, tolerant and advanced urban circumstances and atmosphere nurtured the diversity and prosperity of formal religions in Jining in much of the Ming and Qing periods. It also argues that the same air and ethos enabled Jining to less difficultly adapt to the West-led modern epoch, with a notable result of welcoming Christianity, quite exceptional in hinterland China.