1. The present paper is a continuation of my “Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality,” which began with a description of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick. I contended in that essay that the foundational claim of Nozick's philosophy is the thesis of self-ownership, which says that each person is the morally rightful owner of his own person and powers, and, consequently, that each is free to use those powers as he wishes, provided that he does not deploy them aggressively against (...) others. To be sure, he may not harm others, and he may, if necessary, be forced not to harm them, but he should never be forced to help them, as people are in fact forced to help others, according to Nozick, by redistributive taxation. (shrink)

Some ways of defending inequality against the charge that it is unjust require premises that egalitarians find easy to dismiss—statements, for example, about the contrasting deserts and/or entitlements of unequally placed people. But a defense of inequality suggested by John Rawls and elaborated by Brian Barry has often proved irresistible even to people of egalitarian outlook. The persuasive power of this defense of inequality has helped to drive authentic egalitarianism, of an old-fashioned, uncompromising kind, out of contemporary political philosophy. The (...) present essay is part of an attempt to bring it back in. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Examining the Role of Re-Presentation in Mathematical Problem Solving: An Application of Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Conceptual Analysis” by Victor V. Cifarelli & Volkan Sevim. Upshot: The key philosophical premise of von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism is not necessary to the insightful conceptual analysis presented by Cifarelli and Sevim, which could benefit from abandoning it.

The function of philosophy may be circumscribed as consisting in ma king a keen analysis of the peculiar nature of the crisis-situation, as it has existed among mell throughout th~ centuries of human history, and as it manifested itself in definite ways at the various stages of this his tory. That is to say, philosophy may be regarded as the discipline which, again and again, will have to determine the authenticity of man's ex istence in the light of the changing (...) conditions of life, i. e., man's chang ing needs and interests. Fundamentally, these needs may be regarded as being of a material, an intellectual, an aesthetical and a spiritual kind. On the grounds of the crisis, which inevitably exists among men on ac count of the controversial nature of their various truth-perspectives, as they are postulated on a personal level, in the sciences, in history, in the fine arts and in theology, man creates and re-creates the goods of civilization and the cultural values. The task of philosophy consists then in making an ever new assessment of man's changing needs, in terests and aspirations on the basis of the specific conflicts and prob lems with which man wrestles at a certain historical stage. It is in this way that the important philosophical systems were constructed, which we still admire to-day. (shrink)

The major portion of this important work is the "Summary of the Republic." Coordinated with Grube’s translation, it proceeds book by book, first summarizing a chunk of text anywhere from a couple of Stephanus sections to several pages, then commenting in lettered notes of from two lines to four and a half pages. More technical material, aimed at advanced students and scholars, appears occasionally in smaller type. There is a fine bibliography. The format is successful: the book is easy to (...) use and attractive in appearance. (shrink)

Classical temples in ancient Greece show two deterministic illusionistic principles of architecture, which govern their functional design: geometric proportionalism and a set of illusion-strengthening rules in the proportionalism's stochastic margin. Animal morphology, in its mechanistic-deductive revival, applies just one architectural principle, which is not always satisfactory. Whether a Greek Classical situation occurs in the architecture of living structure is to be investigated by extreme testing with deductive methods.Three deductive methods for explanation of living structure in animal morphology are proposed: the (...) parts, the compromise, and the transformation deduction. The methods are based upon the systems concept for an organism, the flow chart for a functionalistic picture, and the network chart for a structuralistic picture, whereas the optimal design serves as the architectural principle for living structure. These methods show clearly the high explanatory power of deductive methods in morphology, but they also make one open end most explicit: neutral issues do exist. (shrink)

Much of Thomas Hobbes's work can be read as historical commentary, taking up questions in the philosophy of history and the rhetorical possibilities of written history. This collection of scholarly essays explores the relation of Hobbes's work to history as a branch of learning.