In spite of its dominance, there are well-known problems with Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium (MRE), as a method of justification in meta-ethics. One issue in particular has preoccupied commentators, namely, the capacity of this method to provide a convincing account of the objectivity of our moral beliefs. Call this the Lack-of-Objectivity Charge. One aim of this article is to examine the charge within the context of Rawls’s later philosophy, and I claim that the lack-of-objectivity charge remains unanswered. A second (...) aim of this article is to examine the extent to which, despite Rawls’s express intention to avoid reliance on Kant’s moral philosophy, supplementing Rawls’s political constructivism with some Kantian elements, in particular Kant’s idea of a universal principle of right, not only addresses some of the issues raised by the lack-of-objectivity charge, but also does so without compromising the ability of the Rawlsian account to accommodate the pluralism of conceptions of the good, which he takes to be a fact of modern democracies. I argue for a revised justificatory methodology, which combines Rawls’s MRE and Kant’s Critical Method. (shrink)

The principle of right is Kant's main formulation of the rules of politics, and it has obvious affinities with the moral law. Do we have moral reasons to obey the principle? I argue that we may have moral reasons to obey the principle ourselves, but not coercively to enforce it. Do we have prudential reasons to obey the principle? I argue that we do not have reasons based on happiness, but that we may have prudential reasons of a wholly (...) different, but distinctively Kantian kind. These may be reasons both to obey the principle ourselves and to enforce it. (shrink)

John Rawls based his theory of justice, in the work of that name, on a ‘Kantian interpretation’ of the status of human beings as ‘free and equal’ persons. In his subsequent, ‘political rather than metaphysical’ expositions of his theory, the conception of citizens of democracies as ‘free and equal’ persons retained its foundational role. But Rawls appealed only to Kant’s moral philosophy, never to Kant’s own political philosophy as expounded in his 1797 Doctrine of Right in theMetaphysics of Morals. (...) I argue here that the structure of Kant’s political philosophy, with its categories of the innate right to freedom, private acquired right and public right, can clarify the relationship between Rawls’s two principles of justice and his scheme of basic liberties and primary goods. (shrink)

This paper addresses the following questions: what is Fichte’s first principle of right, how does he argue for it, and how does it function as the first principle of his substantive political theory? To answer these questions, the paper offers an overview of the main steps of Fichte’s derivation of the principle of right, explains its relationship to Fichte’s account of individual personhood, and then specifies some of the senses in which the resulting principle serves as the foundation (...) of the rest of Fichte’s political and economic theory. I focus on the developmental logic of Fichte’s account of the “summons” and the “relation of right.” This developmental logic, I argue, is both recapitulated and completed within Fichte’s political theory and political economy. (shrink)

Alan Gewirth’s claim that agents contradict that they are agents if they do not accept that the principle of generic consistency (PGC) is the supreme principle of practical rationality has been greeted with widespread scepticism. The aim of this article is not to defend this claim but to show that if the first and least controversial of the three stages of Gewirth’s argument for the PGC is sound, then agents must interpret and give effect to human rights in ways consistent (...) with the PGC, or deny that human beings are equal in dignity and rights (which idea defines human rights) or that they are agents (and hence subject to any rules at all). Implications for the interpretation of the international legal system of human rights inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 are sketched. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes' method of deriving some moral principles from a social contract has inspired some contemporary moral philosophers to combine the contractarian approach with the model of rational behavior familiar to economists, in order to derive substantive principles of right from essentially formal constraints on the choice of principles. They argue that the device of a hypothetical social contract could serve to generate intuitively plausible moral principles even when the contractors are assumed to be self-interested (...) maximizers of expected utility . Since economic rationality, as defined here, is a relatively pliable model of rational deliberation, the hope is that this approach will provide a systematic tool for the derivation and justification of moral principles. ;Given this conception of rationality, a hypothetical social contract may be interpreted as any of several formal models of rational choice, each of which I examine, as exhibited in the work of some contemporary contract theorists: John Rawls' early work represents the view that choosing the social contract involves an individual decision under certainty; in his later work , Rawls presents the social contract as an individual decision made under ignorance; John Harsanyi defends the case for an individual decision under risk; and David Gauthier's recent work treats the social contract as the product of a rational collective bargain. ;I argue that, if the model of economic rationality is taken seriously, none of these conceptions of the social contract produce principles which conform to our considered moral judgments, and most of them will fail to produce a contractual agreement of any sort. Consequently, I conclude that the combination of economic rationality and procedural constraints on the deliberations of such contractors is an inadequate substitute for other-regarding sentiments usually considered necessary for the justification of moral principles. (shrink)

This textbook, oriented toward non-majors in philosophy, aims to provide an understanding not merely of forms of valid and invalid inference but also of the cognitive situation, of the methods of successful "problem-solving thought" and of the role of language therein. Great emphasis is thus placed on semiotics, which is integrated with the material from methodology and logic by considerations from general theory of knowledge. The whole presentation is marked by innovations, both pedagogical and theoretical. Most of the material of (...) the usual course in elementary formal logic is crowded into the last part. The author has attempted, with some success, to develop a reformed "traditional" approach to logic in the light of the recent technical advances in semiotic and symbolic logic, without reducing it to a narrow and fragmentary formal exposition of these sciences. --L. K. B. (shrink)

In a series of articles and in a recent book, What Darwin Got Wrong, Jerry Fodor has objected to Darwin’s principle of natural selection on the grounds that it assumes nature has intentions.1 Despite the near universal rejection of Fodor’s argument by biologists and philosophers of biology (myself included),2 I now believe he was almost right. I will show this through a historical examination of a principle that Darwin thought as important as natural selection, his principle of divergence. The (...) principle was designed to explain a phenomenon obvious to any observer of nature, namely, that animals and plants form a hierarchy of clusters. Theodosius Dobzhansky made this the motivating observation of his great synthesizing work, Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937): “the living world is not a single array of individuals in which any two variants are connected by a series of intergrades, but an array of more or less distinctly separate arrays, intermediates between which are absent or at least rare. . . Small.. (shrink)

The right to ‘domestic remedies’, which ideally connects ‘subsidiarity’ and ‘embeddedness’ of the ECHR in the legal systems of member States, is deemed to play a crucial role for the Strasbourg machinery survival as well as for an effective protection of human rights, especially in the field of the ‘reasonable-time’ requirement. In this respect the Italian case seems an excellent test. Once a compensatory remedy was introduced in the Italian legal system by Law No. 80 of 2001 (the ‘Pinto (...) Act’), it soon appeared that such a remedy could be considered ‘effective’ in so far as it was implemented in accordance with the ECtHR’s jurisprudence. Therefore a legal tool for the interaction between ECtHR and Italian courts had to be found. Nevertheless, the results of this interaction might suggest that the domestic remedy has neither increased the protection of the reasonable-time requirement in Italy nor is it the final solution to the ECtHR’s overload. (shrink)

Who should have a right to participate in a polity’s decision-making? Although the answers to this ‘boundary problem’ in democratic theory remain controversial, it is widely believed that the enfranchisement of tourists and children is unacceptable. Yet, the two most prominent inclusion principles in the literature – Robert Goodin’s ‘all (possibly) affected interests’-principle and the ‘all subjected to law’-principle – both enfranchise those groups. Unsurprisingly, democratic theorists have therefore offered several reasons for nonetheless exempting tourists and children from (...) the franchise. In this paper, I argue that their attempts fail. None of the proposed rationales can do the job without having unacceptable implications for the voting rights of other groups. I then develop a new specification of the affected interests-view, one that avoids such problems. According to my life plan-principle, a person is entitled to participate in a polity’s decision-making if and only if its decisions will actually affect her autonomously chosen life plans, or prevent her from developing or revising plans of that kind. I show that this principle straightforwardly avoids enfranchising tourists and children, and thus improves upon its two prominent rivals. The paper ends by considering and rejecting two objections to my new principle. (shrink)

The book comprises contemporary legal theory pertaining to Democratic States based on the Rule of Law from the perspective of general principles of law. It explains in detail, theoretically and based on the specific case law, the phenomenon of general principles of law - as a source of law and directly applicable legal norms. It is a work of legal theory, legal philosophy, and legal method, but it will also assist scholars and practitioners in the transitional justice field (...) as it shows how this theory of general principles of law has assisted Latvia to move away from the socialist legal tradition. (shrink)

Globalisation, repeated economic (financial) crisis and other contemporary social processes are changing the capability of the state to provide individual social security and guarantee human rights. There is therefore a need to review social policy guidelines and their implementation measures. The problem is how to develop the social security system of state, so that human rights are not violated. For the reformation of the social security system to be consistent, it is also necessary to determine the principles on which (...) the social security system should be based. This article examines the concept of the principle of subsidiarity and its impact on the implementation of socio-economic human rights. The goal of this research is to explore theoretical aspects of application of principle of subsidiarity for ensuring the protection of socio-economic human rights and development of the policy of social security in Lithuania. In order to achieve this goal, the research starts from the analysis of the concept and origin of the principle of subsidiarity and its impact on the implementation of human rights. Further the constitutional basis and levels of application of this principle for implementation of socio-economic human rights are studied. Lastly, according to the principle of subsidiarity, some relevant issues of Lithuanian social security system are evaluated. (shrink)

THE first and most important deduction from the principles we have so far laid down is that the general will alone can direct the State according to the object ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 305-306 [Access article in PDF] Fichte, J. G. Foundations of Natural Right according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre. Edited by Frederick Neuhouser. Translated by Michael Baur. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xxxv + 338. Cloth, $64.95; Paper, $22.95. Though best known for his immensely influential effort to "systematize" Kant's (...) Critical philosophy and to ground the same upon a transcendental analysis of the structure of self-consciousness, Fichte also made seminal contributions to social and political philosophy. Of these contributions, the most original is surely his effort to demonstrate that mutual recognition of free subjects is a condition for the possibility of individual self-consciousness. This transcendental deduction of the essentially social or intersubjective character of human beings provides the theoretical underpinnings for a pure theory of Naturrecht ("natural law" or "natural right"), in which the principles of political philosophy are established without any reference to the purely practical principles of morality. Unlike moral laws, the principles of right are only hypothetically or conditionally valid, inasmuch as they are dependent upon one's free decision to live in a community of free beings and to limit one's own freedom accordingly.Justice and law are thereby grounded upon a new, distinctly political conception of [End Page 305] human freedom, which is itself grounded in a new account of the intersubjective dimension of self-consciousness. Following his deduction of the pure concept of right, Fichte proceeds to deduce the conditions for applyingthe same, among the most significant of which is embodiment. Here again, Fichte was a pioneer in arguing for the necessary connection between self-consciousness and the human body. The next step is to demonstrate in detail how social relations between embodied free agents must be organized if such agents are to co-exist in a community. This hypothetical application of the pure concept of right establishes both the "right of coercion" and the basic outlines of the "right of the state," and hence the general form of any legitimate state constitution.Though it appears that Fichte is working with the social contract tradition, his deductive strategy requires a fundamental revision of the same and allows him to construct a theory of the just state that is both recognizably "liberal" and extraordinarily open to considerations of economic justice and social welfare. It is for this reason that some European philosophers (notably, Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut) have in recent decades employed Fichte's political thought as a major resource in their effort to defend a rights-based political theory against attacks from both the right and the left.The primary source of Fichte's political philosophy is his 1796/97 Grundlage des Naturrecht, a work that exercised a decisive influence upon Hegel (whose Phenomenology of Spirit is often and incorrectly described as the first effort, within the context of post-Kantian Idealism, to demonstrate that intersubjectivity is a condition for the possibility of self-consciousness). Directly and indirectly (that is, through Hegel) Fichte's social and political philosophy exercised a strong influence upon Marx and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century socialists.For all of the above reasons, the appearance of a new and reliable English translation of Fichte's Grundlage des Naturrechts is a cause for celebration. Let it be said at once that Michael Baur's translation is simply marvelous. It is accurate and readable, as well as faithful to the style of this, one of Fichte's best-written works. Frederick Neuhouser's Introduction to this translation is equally fine. In it, Neuhouser not only outlines Fichte's main arguments and conclusions, but also offers a brief but trenchant critical appraisal of the historical significance of Fichte's achievement and of the potential relevance of his ideas to contemporary debates and discussions. The Introduction also includes a provocative and well-balanced discussion of some of the unresolved problems implicit in Fichte's arguments. Readers will also appreciate the useful "Guide to Further Reading," and index... (shrink)

The purpose of our article is to contemplate, from an aesthetic-artistic vision, the principles of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, adopted by UNESCO in 2005. As a result of a restful, attentive and calm look (contemplation), we believe that the development of a line of thought capable of proposing answers to the great questions posed by the current existential and historical paradigm shift requires an effort of transdisciplinary dialogue. On the one hand, reason, as a specific (...) and differential faculty of the human being, must overcome the limits of its reduction to mere empirical scientism and redefine itself as a reason with an open horizon. On the other hand, the creation of works of art and the aesthetic experience constitutes a way of understanding the complexity and multiplicity of reality. Based on two classic works of art: "The kidnapping of the Sabinas" (Da Cortona) and "Liberty leading the people" (Delacroix) we propose a bio-aesthetic experience on the two fundamental axes on which the principles of the Declaration of UNESCO navigate, which are the centrality of the person and of society. Knowing and deepening such principles, through bio-aesthetic contemplation, is shown as a valid educational instrument, which entails the art of stimulating the capacity to reverberate the beauty existing in the world when good is manifested in human behavior and recognizing the transforming power of art, which facilitates a pedagogical and comprehensive assimilation of the principles of the UNESCO Declaration. (shrink)

The merit system is based on a person’s ability to achieve. The concept of merit hence rejects a process that awards any particular entitlement explicitly based on disability. Brian Barry says that under the merit principle, people can compete for positions or advantage. This paper argues that the idea of merit, as explained by Barry, is unjust. Iris Marion Young points out that a person with cognitive disability faces a different situation compared to other people. Under normal circumstances, persons can (...) have skills that enable them to do things with ease, something that is not readily available to individuals with autism or Asperger’s syndrome. The problem is also exacerbated by policies that do not recognize the diverse needs of individuals with impairment. In this regard, practical ethics demands that a law or national policy must ensure a level playing field for everyone. (shrink)

Certainly principles of criminal liability may be understood as rules or norms outlining orders or prohibitions and standing out among other norms with their weight, for legal culture, legal doctrine, etc. In such a classic approach they are norms defining basic rights and obligations in the applicable criminal law. However, is it the only possible and cognitively interesting meaning of the word “principle” in jurisprudence? From the semiotic point of view, they can occur in three forms: special-kind norms, teleological (...) directives, rules which constitute valid performance of conventional activities. In an extra-directival sense these principles may be understood as models-descriptions of shaping the system of criminal law. From a theoretical and practical point of view principles addressed to the legislator are extremely weighty—they can be called rules constructing the system of criminal liability. These all problems are discussed in the article. (shrink)

Just last week (October 4, 2022), the U.S. White House released a blueprint for an A.I. Bill of Rights, consisting of “five principles and associated practices to help guide the design, use, and de...

RESUMEN: La labor del Tribunal Penal Internacional para la Ex-Yugoslavia tuvo un momento importante en la compresión del principio de legalidad, como principio básico en la garantía de los derechos humanos, al enfrentar no sólo el derecho consuetudinario como fuente de derecho sino también diferentes modos o enfoques en la identificación de este derecho consuetudinario. Esta relación debe ser analizada a la luz de las limitaciones que tiene el derecho internacional y, sobre todo, de los procedimientos de creación de normas. (...) No resulta fácil exigir responsabilidad en el cumplimiento del derecho internacional humanitario y de los derechos humanos. La práctica de este Tribunal abre una vía para la reflexión con la finalidad de asegurar el respeto de los derechos humanos en cualquier circunstancia, incluso de aquellos que llevaron a cabo la comisión de graves crímenes contra la comunidad internacional.ABSTRACT: The work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was important for understanding the principle of legality as a key principle on the guarantee of Human Rights. The former was due to the Tribunal’s work on having faced the customary law as a source of law using different perspectives for its identification. The link between customary law, principle of legality and human rights has to be analyzed taking in account the limits of International law and the procedures for creating legal norms. It is not easy to invoke responsibility in the fulfillment of international humanitarian law and international law of human rights. The practice developed by this Tribunal provides an avenue for thinking about ensuring the respect of the human rights in any case including the commission of grave crimes against international community. PALABRAS CLAVE: derecho internacional de los derechos humanos, principio de legalidad, derecho internacional humanitario, costumbre internacionalKEYWORDS: international law of human rights, principle of legality, international humanitarian law, international custom. (shrink)

Michael Polanyi’s essay “Rules of Rightness” argues that for living beings, both machine-like embodied processes and informal purposeful operations are guided by standards of proper func­tioning. This article traces the origins of rules of rightness back to the concomitant rise of life and purpose in the universe. Thereby the deterministic control of all things by the laws of physics and chemistry is broken. Powered by an independent active principle and guided by three inarticu­late modes of learning, life takes on increasingly (...) complex expressions of purpose in evolutionary history. Along the way, purposeful informal operations make use of and often create contrivances that further the explosive telic growth of life. (shrink)

Rights define the prevailing relations that constitute a community. They are in turn defined by the character of a given mode of production, and as that changes so too the system of rights. The rights that comprise ‘human rights’ evolved in the transition from feudalism to capitalism and represent the principles of the emerging world order in the 18th and 19th centuries. Only in the aftermath of World War II with the exhaustion or defeat of the European states and (...) Japan was it possible to declare these same principles as belonging to the whole world equally and as intrinsic to all humans - yet within national frameworks. The accumulation of capital on a global scale, however, soon began to undermine the national practice of these human rights. By the end of the 1980s the construction of regional or global ‘enabling frameworks,’ quasi-states for capital, detached from any formal or legitimate means of countervailing political leverage, made human rights appear increasingly like anachronisms. An increasingly violent usurpation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other forms of rights around the world followed. In the absence of a legitimizing set of principles for this new global economy, a growing need for a rationale to govern by fiat becomes the central problem of the day. (shrink)

The paper explores the relationship between the Principle of Double Effect and Just War Theory, with emphasis on their relationship in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Both PDE and JWT are of Medieval origin, and are classical exponents of medieval moral philosophy. The main connection between them is, however, that they can both be viewed as theories about permissible violence and harm, that is theories about when it is morally permissible to harm and possibly kill another human being. The final (...) point of the paper is that PDE is an important element within JWT, or rather that when just war theorists manage to justify a certain types of violence they do so by extensive use of PDE. This only applies to one part of JWT, jus in bello, which concerns the actual morality of fighting, not the right to war itself. If these assumptions can be reasonably fleshed out, and if it is possible to show that PDE is of crucial importance to certain elements of jus in bello, such as methods for justifying civilian casualties, that would entail that our own moral examinations of warfare differ precisely because we either accept or don’t accept PDE as a viable and reasonable principle in normative ethics. (shrink)

John Harris is one of the prominent philosophers and bioethicists of our time. He has published tens of books and hundreds of papers throughout his professional life. This paper aims to take a ‘deep-look’ at Harris' works to argue that it is possible to find some principles of Islamic ethics in Harrisian philosophy, namely in his major works, as well as in his personal life. This may be surprising, or thought of as a ‘big’ and ‘groundless’ claim, since John (...) Harris has nothing to do with any religion in his intellectual works. The major features of Harrisian philosophy could be defined as consequentialism or utilitarianism with liberal overtones. Despite some significant and fundamental differences in the application of principles (ie, abortion, euthanasia), the similarities between the major principles in Harrisian philosophy and Islamic ethics are greater at some points than the similarities between Islamic ethics and some other religious ethics (ie, Christian, Judaism). In this study I compare Harrisian teachings with major Islamic principles on ‘Responsibility’, ‘Side-effects and Double-effects’, ‘Equality’, ‘Vicious choice, guilt and innocence’, ‘Organ transplantation and property rights’ and ‘Advance directives’. (shrink)

This article explores Alan Gewirth’s argument for a secular foundation for the idea 2 of human rights as a possible response to Michael J. Perry’s claim “that the idea of 3 human rights is…ineliminably religious.” I examine Gewirth’s reasoning for constructing 3 a theory, namely that existing theories are fundamentally flawed and leave the idea of human rights without a logically consistent foundation, before considering in detail his claims for the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC). Having looked at his critique (...) of numerous other theories, as well as at his own argument about human action grounding basic rights to freedom and well-being, I then offer a critique of Gewirth’s PGC. Ultimately my conclusion is that Gewrith's 3 theory relies too heavily on the notions, first that we have a meta-desire not to contradict ourselves and, second, that we are unable to find persuasive justifications for our behavior that might allow us to avoid self-contradiction. If one is not troubled by charges of self-contradiction or, as is more often the case, one does not recognize that one’s victim is as much a human being as oneself, Gewirth’s theory 5 V 3 will not seem particularly persuasive. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A28BB025 00003. (shrink)

BackgroundThe expectation of pandemic-induced severe resource shortages has prompted authorities to draft and update frameworks to guide clinical decision-making and patient triage. While these documents differ in scope, they share a utilitarian focus on the maximization of benefit. This utilitarian view necessarily marginalizes certain groups, in particular individuals with increased medical needs.Main bodyHere, we posit that engagement with the disability critique demands that we broaden our understandings of justice and fairness in clinical decision-making and patient triage. We propose the capabilities (...) theory, which recognizes that justice requires a range of positive capabilities/freedoms conducive to the achievement of meaningful life goals, as a means to do so. Informed by a disability rights critique of the clinical response to the pandemic, we offer direction for the construction of future clinical triage protocols which will avoid ableist biases by incorporating a broader apprehension of what it means to be human.ConclusionThe clinical pandemic response, codified across triage protocols, should embrace a form of justice which incorporates a vision of pluralistic human capabilities and a valuing of positive freedoms. (shrink)

This paper argues that intellectual property rights are incompatible with Rawls’s principles of justice. This conclusion is based upon an analysis of the social stratification that emerges as a result of the patent mechanism which defines a marginalized group and ensure that its members remain alienated from the rights, benefits, and freedoms afforded by the patent product. This stratification is further complicated, so I argue, by the copyright mechanism that restricts and redistributes those rights already distributed by means of (...) the patent mechanism. I argue that the positions of privilege established through both the patent and the copyright mechanisms are positions that do not “allow the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all.” They do not “benefit the least advantaged.” Nor are they “open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.” In making this argument I critically assess the utilitarian defense of intellectual property rights and find it insufficient to respond to the injustices manifest in our current arrangement for the protection of intellectual property rights. (shrink)

Edited by four leading members of the new generation of medical and healthcare ethicists working in the UK, respected worldwide for their work in medical ethics, Principles of Health Care Ethics, Second Edition_is a standard resource for students, professionals, and academics wishing to understand current and future issues in healthcare ethics. With a distinguished international panel of contributors working at the leading edge of academia, this volume presents a comprehensive guide to the field, with state of the art introductions (...) to the wide range of topics in modern healthcare ethics, from consent to human rights, from utilitarianism to feminism, from the doctor-patient relationship to xenotransplantation. This volume is the Second Edition of the highly successful work edited by Professor Raanan Gillon, Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics at Imperial College London and former editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, the leading journal in this field. Developments from the First Edition include:_ The focus on ‘Four Principles Method’ is relaxed to cover more different methods in health care ethics. More material on new medical technologies is included, the coverage of issues on the doctor/patient relationship is expanded, and material on ethics and public health is brought together into a new section. (shrink)

In precisely 33 paragraphs that begin his Principles of Human Knowledge George Berkeley lays out the argument that establishes his position. There are strong reasons for adopting “immaterialism” as the name for Berkeley's theory. Another term frequently used in connection with Berkeley is “idealism”. This term too has a lengthy pedigree: Kant referred to Berkeley as a Dogmatic Idealist. Berkeley does go on to offer an elucidation of what it means to say that spirit is the only substance, but (...) he does not do so right away. The only argument that he has offered rests on the anti‐abstraction claim. Berkeley has not, for example, argued that the reason sensible qualities exist only in the mind is because there is no material substance for them to exist in. Anti‐abstractionism also turns out to be central to his argument that ideas cannot resemble mind‐independent real things. (shrink)

Stephen Nathanson's clear-sighted abridgment of Principles of Political Economy, Mill's first major work in moral and political philosophy, provides a challenging, sometimes surprising account of Mill's views on many important topics: socialism, population, the status of women, the cultural bases of economic productivity, the causes and possible cures of poverty, the nature of property rights, taxation, and the legitimate functions of government. Nathanson cuts through the dated and less relevant sections of this large work and includes significant material omitted (...) in other editions, making it possible to see the connections between the views Mill expressed in Principles of Political Economy and the ideas he defended in his later works, particularly On Liberty. Indeed, studying Principles of Political Economy, Nathanson argues in his general Introduction, can help to resolve the apparent contradiction between Mill's views in On Liberty and those in Utilitarianism, making it a key text for understanding Mill’s philosophy as a whole. (shrink)