In fragment B 18 (DK) Xenophanes asserts that ‘Not from the outset did the gods reveal all things to mortals’ but that ‘in time, as they seek, men discover better.’ The remark has been understood in different ways but is usually read as a rejection of the view of the gods as the givers of all good things and an expression of faith in the capacity of human beings to make progress through their own efforts. I argue that the ‘hymn (...) to progress’ reading of B 18 is unjustified by any other aspect of Xenophanes’ thought and at odds with his generally dour view of the intelligence and character of his fellow citizens. A detailed analysis of the fragment supports the view that Xenophanes is here rejecting belief in divine revelation through natural signs and affirming the value of historiê or inquiry in the form of travel and direct observation. (shrink)

Fragment B 1 of Parmenides describes a youth’s journey to the house of a goddess who enlightens him as to the nature of all things. The task of translating Parmenides’ Greek text is beset with many difficulties, most notably the phrase kata pant’ atê at B 1.3. There, the neuter accusative plural panta (‘all things’) combines with the feminine nominative singular atê (‘heaven sent blindness’) to render translation impossible. Some have proposed emending the text to read astê (‘down to all (...) cities’), understood in connection with the pathway of divine inspiration. Others reject the emendation in so far as the youth is said at B 1.27 to travel ‘far from the beaten path of men.’ I argue in defense of the reading kata pant’ a<s>tê in so far as references to pathways of inspiration and poetic journeys to the cities of men occur frequently in the poetry of Parmenides’ era. (shrink)

This essay considers the nature of duties incumbent on legislators in virtue of the office itself. I argue that there is no duty for a legislator to enact a criminal law based on morality; there is no duty to incorporate substantive moral conditions into the criminal law; and there is therefore no duty derivable from the nature of the legislative office itself to make conditions of culpability depend on those of moral responsibility. Finally, I argue that the relation between morality (...) and the criminal law is therefore much less direct than assumed in most theories of the criminal law. (shrink)

Dmitri Mendeleev, while not creatively a philosopher of science, nor a student of systematic philosophy, was eminently a philosophical scientist. Concern about the nature and foundations of his science is evident throughout the text and footnotes of the Principles of Chemistry. One has to presume that his conclusions provided him with some direction for “the study of his great generalizations” in chemistry, especially for the greatest fruit of his efforts, the Periodic System of the Elements. At least it is apparent (...) that somehow he acquired a much greater confidence in the feasibility of systemizing extant chemical knowledge than almost any of his contemporaries. (shrink)

State of nature theories have a long history and play a lively role in contemporary work. Theories of this kind share certain nontrivial commitments. Among these are commitments to inclusion of a Lockean proviso among the principles of justice and to an assumption of invariance of political principles across changes of circumstances. In this article I want to look at those two commitments and bring to light what I believe are some important difficulties they engender. For nonpattern state of nature (...) theories, the justness of a society is marked by the conformance of the society to procedural principles. Distributions of resources and the like have no particular import for questions of justice. Whatever may later result, so long as it came about in accordance with the rules determined by the principles of justice, is itself just. The Lockean proviso is one of the principles of justice governing property and other rights of nonpattern theories of justice. The proviso hangs as a "shadow" over the results of the operation of the other (usual) principles of justice. It is intended to remedy a complaint which arises when the positions of those no longer at liberty to use some resource are worsened (1) by no longer being able to use freely what they previously were free to use and (2) in such a way that they fall below a "baseline." Following Locke, a traditional formulation of the proviso is to allow acquisition just so long as there is "enough and as good" left over for others. Section I concerns the relation of the Lockean proviso to pattern and nonpattern principles of justice, demonstrating that a Lockean proviso turns a nonpattern into a pattern theory of justice. Section II is about the relation of the Lockean proviso to the ideas revealed by an examination of a state of nature, suggesting reasons to reject ideal theories of justice. (shrink)

The area of investigation known as general systems theory or research features the study of systems as interesting in its own right or one fruitful approach to the study of science in general. This leads to an interesting and still open problem, namely, explicating the concept of a system that seems to unify the interests of researchers in this area. Contrary to received opinion, I argue that there is a unique and interesting concept of a system that underlies the expressed (...) interests of general systems researchers and that it can be given a satisfactory explication. The concept in question has systems as extralinguistic entities that we theorize about, namely, certain sorts of sets of re-related elements. Criteria for its explication are suggested; examples of systems, earlier analyses, and various objections are all considered in leading up to a partial formal explication of the concept and a statement of additional open problems. (shrink)

The object of this article is to examine, with the work of Jeremy Bentham as the principal example, one strand in the complex pattern of European social theory during the second half of the eighteenth century. This was of course the period not only of the American and French revolutions, but of the culmination of the movements of thought constituting what we know as the Enlightenment. Like all great historical episodes, the Enlightenment was both the fulfilment of long-established processes and (...) the inauguration of new processes of which the fulfilment lay in the future. Thus the seminal ideas of seventeenth-century rationalism (in moral and social theory the idea, above all, of natural law) realized and perhaps exhausted their potentialities in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The ideas with which this article is concerned, however—conveniently grouped and labelled as the ideas of utilitarianism—only began to achieve systematic development in these later decades of the eighteenth century. Within that period—during the first half and more of Bentham's long life—attempts to apply those ideas to the solution of social problems met largely with failure and frustration. Yet unrealized potentialities remained, the realization of which was reserved for a time when the world of thephilosophesno longer existed. The movements for social and political reform which have played so large a part in modern history since the French Revolution may be judged in widely differing ways; but whatever the verdict, these movements surely cannot be understood without due consideration of that part of their origins which lies in eighteenth-century utilitarianism. (shrink)

Robert Boyle's corpuscular philosophy was an important instance in the history of thought of a use of metaphysical principles in formulating new methods for physical science. Since Boyle nowhere completely and explicitly discussed his metaphysic, I shall undertake to reconstruct it and trace its influence on his scientific work.

Principal editor of the great Encyclopedia, novelist and prose writer of genius, contributor to the development of scientific thought and method, to the theory of the bourgeois drama and to the practice of art criticism, Diderot perhaps embodies the rich variety of the Enlightenment spirit more than any other man. His only real rival is surely Voltaire. Rousseau, whose influence was greater than Diderot's, would not thank us for classing him among the philosophes. The more profound philosophers - a Hume (...) or a Kant - not only lack his range, but are less unquestionably ‘Enlightenment men’. (shrink)

There are three significant questions which may be asked about the Enlightenment, as about any similar phenomenon: what? whence? and whither? This is a short general survey of this important movement in the history of ideas, which would combine some account of the historical and social background with a closer look at the thought of the more outstanding individuals.

It is given to few political thinkers to be at once as innovative and as self- contradictory as Jean Bodin. This paper examines the way in which a number of his ideas were developed in the seventeenth century, and attempts made, principally in Germany, the Netherlands and England, either to reconcile apparent contradictions within his thought or to exploit their ambiguity for political advantage. Elsewhere in Western Europe there was a more hostile response. In Counter-Reformation Spain Bodin was almost universally (...) disparaged as a politico, second only to Machiavelli in his alleged advocacy of the subordination of religion to political ends. His constructive ideas were taken rather more seriously in Counter-Reformation Italy, but there too there were attacks upon his secularism and negative criticism of his theory of sovereignty. In France itself Bodin was absorbed into the absolutist current, and since his reservations were weakened by the prevailing doctrine of divine right kingship, and his deviations generally forgotten, the problem of his legacy there is much less complex. (shrink)

The term Volkskerk in the Church Order of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van AfrikaThe Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk states in its Church Order that it is a volkskerk. In this article the term volkskerk and the historical line of how it came to use in the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, is researched. In the light of these statements the term volkskerk and its meaning in the contemporary Order of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, is dealt with.

Raynal and his collaborator, Diderot, offer views on the history and nature of the British Constitution in various parts of their encyclopedic account of Western expansion, The History of the Two Indies (1770, revised versions 1780 and 1784). These opinions are analysed in comparison with the judgments of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, Bolingbroke, De Lolme and others. The evolution of Raynal's ideas on the subject is discussed in the light of his earlier anglophobic History of the Parliament of England (1748) and (...) the mutually contrasting French historians he used for that work, the Jesuit Pierre-Joseph d'Orleans and the Huguenot Paul de Rapin-Thoyras. Raynal's conversion to a liberal admiration for British institutions is seen both in the context of the American Revolution and his relationship with Diderot. His insistence on a historical approach clashes with Diderot's more radical and philosophical rhetoric, and the stress between their attitudes becomes apparent in the compromises they attain. Notable among their conclusions are the rejection of English appeals to antiquity, and the fortuitous development of liberty through a series of well defined stages. (shrink)