ABSTRACT What has made progressives—self-styled champions of the people—the principal targets of populist resentment in contemporary politics? Perhaps it is progressives’ ambivalence about democracy, not merely the racist, sexist and nationalist passions that progressives prefer to blame. Indeed, one of the reasons that progressives find themselves under attack as out-of-touch elitists may be that they are out of touch with the nature and extent of their elitism. So long as progressives remain committed to enlightening the people as well as empowering (...) them, to bringing about social improvement as well as social justice, they are bound to express some discomfort with democracy, no matter how sincerely they may praise it. If they want to mount a more effective response to the populist challenge to progressive politics, then, they need first to acknowledge and address the sources of their ambivalence about democracy. (shrink)

Reid's response to hume has traditionally been taken as begging all of hume's questions. One can, However, Find in reid an argument against hume's phenomenalistic skepticism. Reid's appeal to common sense is an attempt to call attention to the fact that we experience objects as external to us, Not as bundles of impressions. Still, Our access to these objects does arise out of sensations, Which are mental contents. Extending berkeley's idea of the "language of nature" reid suggests that language and (...) signification present apt theoretical models for explaining perception. Using this model, One can provide an answer to the argument from illusion. (shrink)

Bernard Mayo, who died in 2000, was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews from 1967–1983. He chose his 19th century predecessor J F Ferrier as the subject of his inaugural lecture delivered on 26th November 1969. Copies of the lecture were printed and distributed, but it was never published. Mayo's choice of subject for his inaugural shows remarkable and at the time highly unusual insight into the value Ferrier's philosophical writings, and rising current interest in (...) Ferrier warrants its publication now, in a lightly edited version that has eliminated references to the specific occasion on which it was delivered. Mayo explores Ferrier's version of the contrast between the human and the natural as a means of illuminating the 20th century debate between realists and relativists in moral philosophy. (shrink)

This article situates the emergence of cybernetic concepts in postwar French thought within a longer history of struggles surrounding the technocratic reform of French universities, including Marcel Mauss’s failed efforts to establish a large-scale centre for social-scientific research with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the intellectual and administrative endeavours of Claude Lévi-Strauss during the 1940s and 1950s, and the rise of communications research in connection with the Centre d’Études des Communications de Masse (CECMAS). Although semioticians and poststructuralists used cybernetic discourse (...) critically and ironically, I argue that their embrace of a ‘textocratic’ perspective – that is, a theory of power and epistemology as tied to technical inscription – sustained elements of the technocratic reasoning dating back to these 1920s efforts to reform French universities. (shrink)

Part I. Phenomenology -- Phenomenology and the return to beginnings -- Delimitations: phenomenology and the end of metaphysics -- Part II. Sallis's Plato interpretation -- Being and logos: reading the Platonic dialogues -- Chorology: on beginning in Plato's Timaeus -- Platonic legacies -- Part III. Art/Sallis -- Stone -- Shades-of painting at the limit -- Topographies -- Part IV. Sallis and other thinkers -- The gathering of reason -- Spacings-of reason and imagination in texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel -- Echoes: (...) after Heidegger -- Crossings: Nietzsche and the space of tragedy -- Part V. Sallis speaks directly -- Double truth -- Force of imagination: the sense of the elemental -- On translation -- The Sallis/Derrida dialogue -- Derrida's "Tense" and Sallis's The verge of philosophy. (shrink)

The renowned Christian theologian Bernard Lonergan was also a professor, teaching courses on theological method at universities in Canada, the United States, and Italy. This volume records his lectures and teaching materials, thus preserving and elucidating his intellectual development between the publication of Insight in 1957 and Method in Theology in 1972. The present volume contains a record of the lectures delivered in 1962, 1964, and 1968. This is the most 'interactive' volume yet published in the Collected Works series. (...) The audio recordings of the 1962 and 1968 lectures are now available on the website www.bernardlonergan.com, as are PDF files of original papers from his 1964 institute at Georgetown. These lectures help to elucidate the development of Lonergan's ideas on such key notions as horizon, conversion, and meaning, as well as his evolving opinion on how best to divide theology into fields of specialization. (shrink)

The term « subsidiarity » started to appear in managerial literature in the last few years, to advocate innovative managerial practices. The resurgence of this concept that originated from a political context can create problems. The goal of this paper is to expose the main difficulty of translating this concept from the political field to a corporate situation. Indeed, subsidiarity gives its inherent power back to the lower echelons of a political community. But the economic approach of organization theory assumes, (...) mainly by the means of agency theory, a top-down conception of the firm. Thus, it is not the lower echelons which delegates power to the higher echelons. Consequently, the subsidiarity principle seems not to be applicable to a corporate setting, unless we reverse the assumptions of economic approach of organization theory. Then, the principle of subsidiarity could be used as an illusion to con employees into believing they have legitimate power, in order to manipulate their freedom, and domesticate it for managerial ends. (shrink)

Abstract Viroli is right to draw a distinction between republican patriotism and nationalism. But in arguing that the former can correct the problems associated with the latter, he places too much trust in the descriptions of patriotism offered by republican theorists. In practice, republican patriotism has been almost as fierce and hostile to outsiders as nationalism. Patriotism might make us better citizens, but it will not make the world a more peaceful or generous place.

The paper replies to Professor Alex Michalos'' keynote address, "Ethics Counsellors as a New Priesthood". Michalos argues that an intractable diversity of opinion about fundamental issues in ethical theory precludes substantive, well-founded ethical counselling. However, Michalos has inappropriately modelled his understanding of an acceptable structure and application for ethical theory on natural scientific theory. For we may countenance a less severe understanding of theory for ethical theory than in the hard sciences. In particular, instructive moral reasoning may tolerate a degree (...) of disagreement across human beings in their conception of moral good. On condition that such variance is not so considerable as to undermine a necessary commonality of language on ethical matters, there will be an adequate basis for warranted theory-construction in ethics and effective moral counselling underwritten by such theory. And, on the available historical evidence, such a condition can be met. (shrink)

Discussions of objectivity often start from considerations about disagreement. We might ask why this should be so. It makes it seem as though disagreement were surprising, but there is no reason why that should be so (the earliest thinkers in the Western tradition found conflict at least as obvious a feature of the world as concord). The interest in disagreement comes about, rather, because neither agreement nor disagreement is universal. It is not that disagreement needs explanation and agreement does not, (...) but that in different contexts disagreement requires different sorts of explanation, and so does agreement. (shrink)

This paper takes a close look at Berlin’s claim that the emergence of Counter-Enlightenment pluralism marks a momentous historical watershed. It concludes that Berlin is right to draw our attention to the importance of this event, but that he seriously misinterprets its significance. He has good reason, in particular, to treat Herder as ‘the most formidable adversary of the French philosophes and their German disciples’, but not because Herder put a stop to the ancient creed of monism on which they (...) relied. For Berlin’s monistic interpretation of the French Enlightenment, I shall show, badly misrepresents that intellectual movement and its impact on the world. The great significance of Herder’s pluralist critique of the Enlightenment lies, instead, in the way in which it rehabilitates prejudice as a source of human virtue and creativity, a critique that directly attacks the core mission of the philosophes: to remove the obstacles to the gathering, preservation and dissemination of useful knowledge. (shrink)

Although Hobbes talks about the laws of nature as prescribing the virtues, it is easier to think of them as proscribing the vices. The nine vices that are proscribed by the laws of nature are injustice, ingratitude, greed or inhumanity, vindictiveness , cruelty, incivility or contumely, pride, arrogance, and unfairness . The corresponding virtues that are prescribed by the laws of nature are justice, gratitude, humanity or complaisance, mercy, , civility, humility, , modesty, and equity. The difficulty of coming up (...) with names for some of the virtues, and even for some of the vices, shows that they are not all among the most common moral virtues and vices. Nonetheless, as described by Hobbes, they are genuine moral virtues and vices, traits of character such that all impartial rational persons would favor everyone having the virtues and no one having the vices. All of these virtues are such that they benefit everyone impartially by promoting peace, and are not primarily of benefit to the person having them. This is what makes them moral virtues and distinguishes them from the personal virtues of courage, prudence, and temperance. The laws of nature are the dictates "of right reason, conversant about those things which are either to be done or omitted for the constant preservation of life and members, as much as in us lies." But the law of nature "dictating peace, for a means of the conservation of men in multitudes;" is also the moral law because "in the means to peace, [it] commands also good manners, or the practice of virtue; and therefore it is called moral." Hobbes correctly sees both that peace benefits all persons impartially and that impartiality is essential to morality. His account of the moral virtues correctly makes them traits of character that would be favored by all impartial persons. His argument for the rationality of these moral virtues is that one's self-interest, which for Hobbes is primarily one's long-term preservation, is enhanced by having these virtues. There is no incompatibility between morality and self-interest as long as what is in one's own self-interest is equally in the interest of everyone else. Hobbes sees this point quite clearly and it is at the heart of his justification of the moral virtues. (shrink)

Bernard Williams, who died in 2003, was one of the most influential moral philosophers of his generation. A lifelong opera lover, his articles and essays, talks for the BBC, contributions to the Grove Dictionary of Opera, and program notes for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the English National Opera, generated a devoted following. This elegant volume brings together these widely scattered and largely unobtainable pieces, including two that have not been previously published. It covers an engaging range (...) of topics from Mozart to Wagner, including sparkling essays on specific operas by those composers as well as Verdi, Puccini, Strauss, Debussy, Janacek, and Tippett. Reflecting Williams's brilliance, passion, and clarity of mind, these essays engage with, and illustrate, the enduring appeal of opera as an art form. (shrink)