The life history of certain philosophical and theological terms and concepts constitutes in itself an interesting matter for consideration and reflection. None is more interesting than that of natural law. Many studies have traced the development of natural law philosophy from its early precursors among the Pre-Socratics through Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, St Thomas, and the early British empiricists; have noted its demise in the nineteenth century, largely as a result of the criticism of Hume; and have observed its (...) renaissance in the twentieth century. Despite this undeniable revival of interest in the theory in the present century, a moral philosopher uses the term only at great risk, for no philosophical theory has been so vigorously attacked and so thoroughly ‘refuted’ as natural law. (shrink)

A recent challenge to statist arguments defending the right of states to exclude prospective immigrants maintains that such statist arguments prove too much. Specifically, the challenge argues that statist arguments, insofar as they are correct, entail that states may permissibily exclude current members' newcomers by birth, which seems to violate a widely held intuition that members' newcomers by birth ought automatically to be granted membership rights. The basic claim is that statist arguments cannot account for the differntial treatment between prospective (...) immigrants and newcomers by birth. Call this the newcomer-by-birth objection. This article rejects the newcomer-by-birth rejection. It begins by sketching the precise extent to which the objection applies to statist arguments. It then examines the case of newcomers by birth and argues for a principled basis for treating them differentially from prospective immigrants such that a right to exclude prospective immigrants need not entail a right to exclude newcomers by birth. But this distinction holds only in most cases, not all, and therefore the newcomer-by-birth objection is not entirely defeated. With respect to the cases in which the objection does hold, it is argued that such cases are morally akin to international adoption, and thus morally benign. All considered, statist arguments easily survive the newcomer-by-birth objection. (shrink)

This new translation of one of the fundamental texts of Western political thought combines strict fidelity to Aristotle's Greek with a contemporary English prose style. Lord's intention throughout is to retain Aristotle's distinctive style. The accompanying notes provide literary and historical references, call attention to textual problems, and supply other essential information and interpretation. A glossary supplies working definitions of key terms in Aristotle's philosophical-political vocabulary as well as a guide to linguistic relationships that are not always reflected in equivalent (...) English terms. Lord's extensive Introduction presents a detailed account of Aristotle's life in relation to the political situation and events of his time and then discusses the problematic character and history of Aristotle's writings in general and of the_ Politics_ in particular. Lord also outlines Aristotle's conception of political science, tracing its relation to theoretical science on the one hand and to ethics on the other. In conclusion, he briefly traces the subsequent history and influence of the _Politics_ up to modern times. "Lord's translation is clearly the best available."—_Claremont Review_. (shrink)

Avia Pasternak’s account of permissible political rioting includes a constraint that insists only oppressed citizens, and not privileged citizens, are permitted to riot when rioting is justified. This discussion note argues that Pasternak’s account, with which I largely agree, should be expanded to admit the permissibility of privileged citizens rioting alongside and in solidarity with oppressed citizens. The permissibility of privileged citizens participating in riots when rioting is justified is grounded in the notions that it is sometimes necessary, in accordance (...) with Pasternak’s necessity condition, and that it will oftentimes substantially improve the chances of successfully achieving the just aims the rioting seeks to achieve, in accordance with Pasternak’s success condition. Allowing for this improves Pasternak’s already strong account of permissible political rioting on its own terms. (shrink)

A challenging question regarding compensation for historic injustices like slavery or colonialism is whether there is anyone to whom it would be just to ascribe duties of compensation given that allegedly all the perpetrators--the guilty parties--are dead. Some answer this question negatively, arguing it is wrong to ascribe to anyone compensatory duties for injustices committed by others who died multiple generations ago. This objection to compensation for historic injustice, which I call the Historical Responsibility Objection (HRO), takes as its core (...) premises (1) that one must be guilty of wrongdoing with respect to a given historic injustice in order to bear a duty to compensate for the injustice, and (2) that no one alive today can be considered so guilty because no one alive today was alive when the historic injustice occurred. The result is that we cannot ascribe compensatory duties to anyone for any historic injustic. While all arguments I am aware of that refute HRO reject premise (1), this paper sketches a novel refutation of HRO by exploring the implications of rejecting premise (2). Doing so would invoke the state as a collective agent, distinct from its constitutive individual agents, liable to acquire compensatory duties for wrongs it commits that none of its constitutive individuals bear. To the extent that states that are collective agents committed historic injustices, such states have duties to compensate for historic injustice. (shrink)

This paper proposes the notion of evaluative injustice as a distinct kind of injustice. Evaluative injustice occurs when someone is evaluated with regard to whether one satisfies the ideal associated with a social role one occupies, and the evaluation is characterized by an unjust failure of appraisal respect. This kind of injustice is importantly distinct from other kinds of injustice recently theorized, in particular epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007) and ontological injustice (Jenkins 2023). It is distinct insofar as it is how (...) one is evaluated with respect to a given ideal that accounts for the injustice in question. After analyzing the nature of the phenomenon of evaluative injustice (section 2), this paper discusses the multiple different forms it can take (section 3) and argues that the wrong of all instances of evaluative injustice can be understood in terms of appraisal respect (Darwall 1977) (section 4). Throughout, the paper highlights various theoretical benefits the notion of evaluative injustice affords us. (shrink)

THIS PAPER ATTEMPTS TO PINPOINT EXPLICITLY THE VICIOUS\nCIRCULARITY IN PROPOSITION I OF DESCARTES' "GEOMETRICAL\nDEMONSTRATIONS" OF GOD'S EXISTENCE. THE ARGUMENT IS TREATED\nBOTH DISCURSIVELY AND SYMBOLICALLY. SINCE THE PHRASE\n"NATURE OR CONCEPT" OCCURS CRUCIALLY, THE TERM "CONCEPT" IS\nEXAMINED RELEVANT TO THE FOLLOWING DISTINCTIONS: (I)\nPROPERTY CONCEPTS--GENERAL AND INDIVIDUAL (ENUMERATIVE AND\nDESCRIPTIVELY UNIQUE) (II) PSYCHOLOGICAL\nCONCEPTS--DEPENDING ON HOW ONE INTERPRETS "CONCEPT," THE\nARGUMENT DIFFERS IN FORM AND CONCLUSION. WHEN "CONCEPT" IS\nTAKEN IN THE SENSE OF: GENERAL PROPERTY CONCEPTS AND\nDESCRIPTIVELY UNIQUE, INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY CONCEPTS--ONLY A\nHYPOTHETICAL CONCLUSION IS DERIVABLE.

One of the fundamental works of Western political thought, Aristotle’s masterwork is the first systematic treatise on the science of politics. For almost three decades, Carnes Lord’s justly acclaimed translation has served as the standard English edition. Widely regarded as the most faithful to both the original Greek and Aristotle’s distinctive style, it is also written in clear, contemporary English. This new edition of the _Politics _retains and adds to Lord’s already extensive notes, clarifying the flow of Aristotle’s argument and (...) identifying literary and historical references. A glossary defines key terms in Aristotle’s philosophical-political vocabulary. Lord has made revisions to problematic passages throughout the translation in order to enhance both its accuracy and its readability. He has also substantially revised his introduction for the new edition, presenting an account of Aristotle’s life in relation to political events of his time; the character and history of his writings and of the _Politics_ in particular; his overall conception of political science; and his impact on subsequent political thought from antiquity to the present. Further enhancing this new edition is an up-to-date selected bibliography. (shrink)

As Stanley Cavell has critiqued Christianity for displacing authority from the individual to somewhere beyond critical assessment, so several Christian theologians have also turned to Wittgenstein to justify just such displacement. This article suggests that both offer theologically impoverished and historically inattentive accounts of authority. It aims instead to sketch five moments in the Christian tradition to suggest five ways of naming the intimacy of religious authority with individual critical assessment. Such intimacy is then theologically described through the doctrinal loci (...) of creation and incarnation, which generate a picture of authority surprisingly near to one Cavell might want to celebrate. (shrink)

En el campo de la Ciencia Política, la categoría gobernabilidad suele ser tratada desde abordajes de corte institucionalista que la derivan de conductas ajustadas a las reglas de juego que prescribe el poder político en su ejercicio, ajuste que explica la estabilidad y continuidad de tal ejercicio. La apuesta de este trabajo es pensar aquella gobernabilidad también a partir de la constitución de sujetos gobernables en base a distintas racionalidades y técnicas de gobierno (algunas de ellas de tipo neoliberal ), (...) para lo que apelamos a los denominados estudios de la gubernamentalidad como perspectiva de análisis. (shrink)

One conclusion has already been reached, namely, the diagnosis of the problems of Rousseau's political thought. Again, this is not to say that Locke or Hobbes is correct and Rousseau incorrect, but only to observe that one cannot mix myths without getting into the deepest trouble. But there are several other observations of a more general nature that I want to make. First, the considerations introduced above are intended to point out something of the character of the language of political (...) theory. It is an error to treat such language as if it were assimilable to the verifiability model of scientific language (this was the mistake of both Hume and Weldon). The language of political theory, such as social contract theory, bears a much closer relationship to religious language than it does to at least that model of scientific discourse, for it is basically mythic in character. Speaking still in terms of the verifiability model of scientific discourse, political theories such as social contract are neither true nor false. If one means by “cognitively meaningful” the same thing as “true or false,” then one would be constrained to say that such political theories are meaningless. But the point is that although such theories cannot be shown to be either true or false in that rather simple-minded way that both Hume and Weldon require, they are in fact meaningful, and cognitively so. The essential difference is that the Hume-Weldon model requires that cognitive discourse be descriptive, while the view here advanced rejects this.It is perhaps worth noting, that the Hume-Weldon (positivistic) model has rather gone out of fashion even in the paradigmatic case of the language of science. The difficulties of the verifiability theory of meaning are legion and are well-known to philosophers of science. The problem is, however, that those difficulties and the more recent developments in the theory of scientific language arising out of those difficulties are not equally well known to all philosophers and not known at all outside philosophy. Thus a great many philosophers and practically all nonphilosophers operate with an outmoded theory of language and this theory, unfortunately, governs most of the discussion about political theory.Second, a problem related to that of verification arises out of a consideration of the relationships among mythic structures. For example, it is sometimes maintained that the American democratic system rests on a certain religious point of view: that we are a Christian nation. I am not concerned to attack or defend this position. I want only to observe that it is conceivable that myths may “stack” in certain ways, that hierarchies of mythic structures are possible, such that under one very general kind of myth (such as Marxism), certain subordinate or lower-order myths are permissible and others are not. Among these high-order myths may be certain metaphysics, such as Spinozism or Platonism, or certain religions. Consequently, in addition to such “verification” procedures as have already been suggested, there may be another, namely, the determination of the compatibility of the given myth with others of higher order. If this is so, then one must be careful not to assume that his particular political myth is compatible with just any other point of view he might hold.Finally, returning once more to Rousseau, there is the difficulty involved in getting out of one myth and into another. Religious thinkers have always known about this, for it is the problem of conversion. But philosophers have tended to think that all one had to do was present some arguments and everyone would come around to that point of view. What has been missed is the blikish element, and this undoubtedly explains why there have been virtually no philosophical conversions by argument. Scientific disputes can usually (though not always) be resolved by the introduction of evidence, but if religious points of view and political myths (like the social contract) are bliks, then they determine what will be accepted as evidence and consequently no evidence will count against them. As I have already said, I think this is too strong. There is a blikish element in myths, but in a very large, although recognizable, sense, they are “verifiable.” Even so, the fact that in myth one is presented with a picture, a drama, of which one is a part and not, as in the descriptive model of scientific language, with a set of propositions of which the knowing subject is independent, this fact, I say, makes all the difference in the world so far as switching positions is concerned. Thus, as Rousseau's case suggests, it is extremely hard to get out of one myth, one blik, one way of looking at the world, and into another. This suggests why Democrats do not often become Republicans, why Buddhists do not often become Christians, and why teen-agers complain that their parents do not understand them. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to argue that Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, one of the lead characters of the novel War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, can be taken as a Schopenhauerian hero.

“Theater” has become a fashionable metaphor that theologians and ethicists deploy to correct what they see as a Gnostic or antinomian impulse to prioritize “inner state” over “outer action.” But their turn to theater as an easy way to valorize “outer action” conflates person and role, generating a confused anthropology that 1) obscures what theater could make obvious about occupational roles; 2) misses the distinctively non‐theatrical character of performing Christ and church; and 3) renders actions more easily legible than they (...) in fact are. These losses are traced in the work of several theater theologians, and their resultant distortions in self, power, and freedom are elaborated with the help of Stephen Mulhall's critique of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. Gregory of Nyssa's use of theater, by contrast, avoids such distortions by invoking theater together with the “mysteries of our existence”—death and creatio ex nihilo. Theater, for Gregory, becomes a way to describe the estrangement Christians must live into in a world beholden to wealth and power. The anthropology embedded in his metaphor of theater elaborates how Christians might approach their occupational roles, the world, and skepticism. (shrink)

There seems to be universal agreement among Epicurean scholars that friendship characterized by other-concern is conceptually incompatible with Epicureanism understood as a directly egoistic theory. I reject this view. I argue that once we properly understand the nature of friendship and the Epicurean conception of our final end, we are in a position to demonstrate friendship’s compatibility with, and centrality within, Epicureanism’s direct egoism.

This paper argues that liberal states are wrong to forcibly separate through deportation the unauthorized immigrant parents of member children and that states must therefore regularize such unauthorized immigrants. While most arguments for regularization focus on how deportation wrongs the unauthorized immigrants themselves, I ground my argument in how deportation wrongs the state’s members, namely the unauthorized immigrants’ member children. Specifically, forced separation through deportation wrongs affected children by violating a basic right to sustain the intimate relationships with their parents (...) on which they rely for their development into fully autonomous agents. (shrink)

Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791 plunges students into the intellectual political and ideological currents that surged through revolutionary Paris in the summer of 1791. Part of the “Reacting to the Past” series, this text consists of elaborate games in which students are assigned roles, informed by classic texts, set in particular moments of intellectual and social ferment. Students are leaders of major factions within the National Assembly (and in the streets outside) as it struggles to create a constitution (...) amidst internal chaos and threats of foreign invasion. (shrink)

This article brings an account of reasonable expectations to bear on the question of when unauthorized immigrants have a right to be regularized—that is, to be formally guaranteed freedom from the threat of deportation. Contrary to the current literature, which implicitly relies on a flawed understanding of reasonable expectations, this article argues that only those unauthorized immigrants who have both been tacitly permitted by the state despite lacking formal authorization and have remained long enough to develop deep social roots in (...) the state have a right to regularization. (shrink)

This article follows Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, and Gregory of Nyssa in a journey of epistemic dispossession. It begins by tracing two ways of wandering off this trail, two epistemological sirens that tempt wayfarers from a path of epistemic dispossession. These are skepticism and anti‐skepticism, elaborated by Wittgenstein and Cavell as joined in their enthronement of epistemically‐anchored certainty. Following Wittgenstein and Cavell into an exploration of the forms of life and death that sustain and are sustained by grasping at such (...) certainty, this article yet identifies two sources of un‐peace in their projects. One is an ill‐confessed threat that looms over their work, and the other is the inhuman difficulty of resisting the skeptical temptations of isolation and domination after this threat is named. It is the threat of death, which becomes, under the skeptic's anxiety, the threat of murder. That is, the skeptic denies finitude in such a way that he refuses to come to terms with the way that death attends life, and such refusal introduces as a skeptical temptation the further threat of murder. The difficulty of resisting skeptical temptations rides on the incompleteness of epistemic dispossession, which will always undo itself unless deepened into a more radical form of dispossession. Such forms of dispossession are suggested by Cavell and perfected in Gregory's descriptions of his sister Macrina. Macrina illumines epistemic dispossession as a form of love that refuses certain relationships to property. Yielding a vision for how dispossession might meet the threat of murderousness, Macrina's life thus interprets relationships of property, love, and death that complete epistemic dispossession. (shrink)

The first longevity revolution began in the middle of the 19th century, accelerated through the first half of the 20th century, and led to the first and only quantum leap in human life expectancy.In the 20th century alone, life expectancy at birth in most developed nations rose by about 30 years. The first three quarters of the century were notable for gains made at younger and middle ages, and in the last quarter century, old age mortality declined. Nothing in history (...) has ever come close to the magnitude of this benefit to humanity. The rise in life expectancy occurred swiftly because the primary beneficiaries of advances in public health and... (shrink)