For decades, policy-makers in government, development banks and foundations, NGOs, researchers and students have struggled with the problem of how to protect people who are displaced from their homes and livelihoods by development projects. This book addresses these concerns and explores how debates often become deadlocked between 'managerial' and 'movementist' perspectives. Using development ethics to determine the rights and responsibilities of various stakeholders, the authors find that displaced people must be empowered so as to share equitably in benefits rather than (...) being victimized. They propose a governance model for development projects that would transform conflict over displacement into a more manageable collective bargaining process and would empower displaced people to achieve equitable results. Their book will be valuable for readers in a wide range of fields including ethics, development studies, politics and international relations as well as policy making, project management and community development. (shrink)

This book, published in 1986, addresses questions concerned with a central normative principle in contemporary assessments of economic policies and systems. What does 'consumer sovereignty' mean? Is consumer sovereignty an appropriate principle for the optimization and evaluation of the design and performance of economic policies, institutions and systems? If not, what is a more appropriate principle? The author argues that the conception of consumer sovereignty has to be broadened so that it is not limited to the market mechanism but includes (...) environmental, work and social preferences. However, even this version runs into serious difficulties as the principle of consumer sovereignty still relies on too subjectivist a conception of the interests of individuals to be suitable for the evaluation of economic institutions. An alternative basis for such evaluation is 'human interests' that are not contingent on particular economic systems, After considering various possibilities, a basic-needs approach is proposed and its use in economic evaluation illustrated. (shrink)

This book covers the field of and points to the intersections between politics, art and philosophy. Its hero, the late Sir Roger Scruton had a longstanding interest in all fields, acquiring professional knowledge in both the practice and theory of politics, art and philosophy. The claim of the book is, therefore, that contrary to a superficial prejudice, it is possible to address the philosophical issues of art and politics in the same oeuvre, as the example of this Cambridge-educated analytical philosopher (...) proves. Accordingly, the book has a bold thesis on the general, theoretical level, mapping the connections between politics, art and philosophy. However, it also has a pioneering commitment on the level of the particular, offering the first full-length study into the philosophical legacy of Roger Scruton, probably the most important British conservative philosopher of the late 20th and the first decades of the 21st century. It also allows reader to look into the philosopher’s fascination with Central European art and culture. Finally, it also provides a daring analysis of the late Scruton’s metaphysical inspirations, connecting the arts, and especially music, with religion and the bonds of love. (shrink)

Introductory essay / Peter Jones -- The usefulness of the arts and the humanities : the case of Descartes / Gábor Boros -- Roads of remembrance : the treatment of imagination and memory in Gerard's Essay on genius / Zsolt Komáromy -- Diderot's untimeliness / László Kisbali ; transl. Márton Dornbach -- Melody vs. harmony : Rousseau, or, The aesthetics of vowels / Mária Ludassy ; transl. Zsolt Komáromy -- Judgement and taste : from Shakespeare to Shaftesbury / Ferenc (...) Hörcher -- Lord Shaftesbury's "aesthetic freedom" / Endre Szécsényi -- Why one should imitate the Greeks : on Winckelmann / Sándor Radnóti ; transl. Márton Dornbach -- Beauty or beast, or, Monstrous regiments? : Robertson and Burke on women and the public scene / László Kontler -- The concept of nature and the theodicy problem in the Malebranche-Arnauld-Leibniz debate / Dániel Schmal -- Lessing's anti-candide : between reason and revelation / Krisztina Utasi ; transl. Márton Dornbach. (shrink)

This book provides a critical survey of measurement theories and a clear exposition of the concerning philosophical questions. The author offers a new, constructive interpretation for measurement in both physics and the social sciences, arguing for a constructivist approach.

Marxist philosophers have always given great attention to theoretical questions concerning the historical role and significance of the state and to the processes by which the types and political forms of states have changed. As we know, historical materialism demands both concrete analysis of the political organization of the society of a given socioeconomic system and the discovery of certain general patterns that manifest themselves in the course of world history. Marx's thesis that reality can truly be understood only on (...) the basis of a theoretical study of history retains its full significance to this day for philosophical analysis of the complex and diverse problems of the theory of the state. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores different perceptions of space, taking the reader on a journey from the inner space of the mind to the vacuum beyond Earth. Eight leading researchers span a broad range of fields, from the arts and humanities to the natural sciences. They consider topics ranging from human consciousness to virtual reality, architecture and politics. The essays are written in an accessible style for a general audience.

This book presents the psychological basis, methodology, and application of Marton's phenomenographic approach to the theory of learning.

In this new book, Fr. Damian Ference proposes a more precise lens for decoding Flannery O'Connor's narrative art, one that originates in O'Connor's own words about herself: Hillbilly Thomism. The author examines the various ways in which St. Thomas Aquinas and the philosophical tradition of Thomism shaped not only O'Connor's view of reality but also the stories she told to help us see and know it."--from inside front flap.

Diese Studie führt einen Dialog mit dem französischen Philosophen Gilles Deleuze, um anhand seines Denkens die Erscheinungsweisen von Ereignis zeit- und sprachphilosophisch zu beschreiben. Ereignis, dieses Begriffswort, das sich jeder Definition naturgemäß entzieht, wird in der jüngeren Praktischen Theologie und in der Systematischen Theologie seit Karl Barth häufig gebraucht und selten bestimmt. In dieser Studie geht Ferenc Herzig dem Ereignis nach, ohne es mit einer „Was-ist“-Frage einzuzäunen. Die Konsequenzen für liturgische und homiletische Grundfragen werden daraufhin ebenso dargestellt wie der (...) Versuch unternommen, die Frage nach Gott unter poststrukturalistischen Vorzeichen zu stellen. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem whether arts, sciences and humanities can be regarded as useful. First it examines the means-ends relation and argues that some means are not causally but rather constitutively connected to ends. Second, it specifies two dimensions along which the problem of values will be addressed. One is the issue about the relation between values and desirability, the other is the active and affective conceptions of valuation. Third the paper offers a concise reconstruction of the answers to (...) the question of usefulness formulated during the enlightenment. It will be argued that traditionally usefulness was understood causally and not on the individual, but rather on the social level. In the final section the paper contends that values should be understood in terms of activities rather than in terms ofdesire satisfaction and that this interpretation can bring us closer to answering the question whether and why arts and sciences are useful. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explain the sense in which laws of physics are contingent. It argues, first, that contemporary Humean accounts cannot adequately explain the contingency of physical laws; and second, that Hume’s own arguments against the metaphysical necessity of causal connections are not applicable in this context. The paper concludes by arguing that contingency is an essentially emergent, macroscopic phenomenon: we can understand the contingency of fundamental physical laws only through their relation to the distribution of (...) macroscopic modal properties in the manifest world. (shrink)

This volume - the joint effort of the research groups on practical philosophy and the history of political thought of the Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences - brings together scholarly essays that attempt to face the challenges of the contemporary situation. The authors come from rather divergent disciplinary backgrounds, including philosophy, law, history, literature and the social sciences, from different cultural and political contexts, including Central, Eastern and Western Europe, (...) and belong to different generations. But they all share an interest to bravely answer the large topical issues concerning universal morality, here and now. (shrink)

This paper provides a short overview of how Oakeshott identifies the functions and limits of government, with reliance primarily on two texts. The first one from “Lectures on the History of Political” thought distinguishes nomocratic and teleocratic ways of governing. Oakeshott describes the two forms in a detached fashion, and indirectly hints at his preference for nomocratic rule. The second text is Oakeshott’s essay “On Being Conservative”, where Oakeshott gives a sceptical and critical description of human nature. The paper argues (...) that this account of human nature should be seen as the basis, on which a nomocratic rule can be defended. It will be argued, that the two texts should be read together, if we want to get a reasoned overview of Oakeshott’s criticism of contemporary forms of government, and of his reasons to choose nomocratic rule instead of the teleocratic one. It will be argued that a complex political philosophy based on these two pillars will be provided by Oakeshott’s late book On Human Conduct. (shrink)

_Freedom of the Will_ provides a novel interpretation of G. E. Moore’s famous conditional analysis of free will and discusses several questions about the meaning of free will and its significance for moral responsibility. Although Moore’ theory has a strong initial appeal, most metaphysicians believe that there are conclusive arguments against it. Huoranszki argues that the importance of conditional analysis must be reevaluated in light of some recent developments in the theory of dispositions. The original analysis can be amended so (...) that the revised conditional account is not only a good response to determinist worries about the possibility of free will, but it can also explain the sense in which free will is an important condition of moral responsibility. This study addresses three fundamental issues about free will as a metaphysical condition of responsibility. First, the book explains why agents are responsible for their actions or omissions only if they have the ability to do otherwise and shows that the relevant ability is best captured by the revised conditional analysis. Second, it aims to clarify the relation between agents’ free will and their rational capacities. It argues that free will as a condition of responsibility must be understood in terms of agents’ ability to do otherwise rather than in terms of their capacity to respond to reasons. Finally, the book explains in which sense responsibility requires self-determination and argues that it is compatible with agents’ limited capacity to control their own character, reasons, and motives. (shrink)

The question of the relationship of the State and the law is one of the oldest questions of the history of the theory of state. It is one of those fundamental issues which can be regarded as real dividing lines: the decision one takes in this theoretical question determines a lot in the thinker's later theory. It is difficult to find the reasons for this phenomenon. One might argue that this is so because these two concepts are so basic, that (...) while one has to use them quite frequently, one would hardly dare to define them. But even if we accept this aversion from clearcut definitions, the explanation of why the relationship of these two concepts is so important is an unavoidable task for a number of reasons. (shrink)

This paper aims to defend the common-sense view that we exempt compulsive agents from responsibility to the extent that they are unable to choose what they do and hence they cannot control their actions by their choices. This view has been challenged in a seminal paper by Gary Watson, who claimed that akratic agents lack control in the same sense but they are responsible nonetheless. In the first part of the paper, I critically examine the arguments Watson advances for this (...) claim first in his original paper and then in some more recent works. I conclude that his account is based on the widely held assumption that both compulsive behavior and weakness of the will must be understood as a direct result of some inner motivational conflict. In the second part, I argue for an alternative understanding of the difference between weakness and compulsion. My claim is that compulsion is a cognitive rather than a motivational deficiency, since the compulsive, unlike the weak-willed, does not desire to perform the action which she actually performs. Furthermore, I argue that compulsive agents cannot control their actions by their choices because they have a distorted view of their own actional abilities. In the final part of the paper, I discuss a consequence of this account to the conditional analysis of free will as a condition of responsibility. (shrink)

Eigentlich ist es offenkundig, dass Hegel keine Ethik hat. Es ist allgemein bekannt, dass die Individualitat der Person, die vom Person abhangige Aspekte der moralischen Wahl bei Hegel in der menschlichen Gattung--im allgemeinobjektiven Wertcharakter deren--aufgehoben werden. Ebensowohl ist es wahr, dass eine moderne Sozialontologie und ontologisch fundierte Ethik ohne Hegel nicht moglich ist. Die Philosophie Hegels bringt im Rahmen der Geschichte der Philosophie eine ontologische Wendung zustande, als er in den Mittelpunkt der gesellschaftsphilosophischen Untersuchung die menschliche gegenstandliche Tatigkeit stellt.(edited).

(1990). Redefining the boundaries of the possible: New perspectives on European unification. World Futures: Vol. 29, Transition in Eastern Europe, pp. 3-17.