Students of the history of ethics sometimes find themselves tempted by moderate or extreme versions of an approach that might roughly be called ‘historicist’. This temptation may result from the difficulties of approaching historical texts from a ‘narrowly philosophical’ point of view. We may begin, for instance, by wanting to know what Aristotle has to say about ‘the problems of ethics’, so that we can compare his views with those of Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Sidgwick, and Rawls, and then decide what (...) is true or false in each theorist's position. But this narrowly philosophical attitude soon runs into difficulties, and writers on the history of ethics often warn us against it. (shrink)

By the death, last summer, of Jack Robson, the world of utilitarian studies and a wider world of scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic lost one of their most distinguished figures. It would not be appropriate here, even if it were possible now, to attempt a full and measured assessment of his work. Writing only a few months after the news of his death, while the sense of loss is still so sharp for all his many friends, two things (...) are possible. Something can and should be said to acknowledge and celebrate Robson's achievement as a scholar; and to this can be added some personal recollections of one whose human qualities were as outstanding as his scholarship. (shrink)

The full range of Bentham's engagement with Blackstone's view of law is beyond the scope of a single article. Yet it is important to recognize at the outset, even in a more restricted enquiry into the matter, that the engagement, begun when Bentham, not quite sixteen years of age, started to attend Blackstone's Oxford lectures, was indeed a lifelong affair. Whatever Bentham had in mind when, at the age of eighty, in 1828, he began to write a work entitled ‘A (...) familar view of Blackstone: or say Blackstone familiarized’, the manuscripts at least suffice to prove that ‘Our Author’ was still in the forefront of his mind at that octogenarian but still indefatigably active stage of his career. Every aspect of Bentham's multifarious intellectual activity over the intervening decades had been touched in some measure by his response to Blackstone's ideas. It still seems true to say what was said a dozen years ago: It would be an exaggeration to say that Bentham elaborated his own conception of law by way of a constant and conscious dialectic with the views of Blackstone. But it would be an exaggeration for which the evidence would afford some excuse. (shrink)

Analytical study of the social theories of Muslim philosophers belonged to 9th to 18th centuries.

This latest book, whose editors were among those who prepared the first two volumes, centers on Popkin's crucial role in bringing together scholars from around ...

Mr. P. H. Ling's suggestion that the famous line θερουσιν θη χρσθ' μιλαι κακα stood at the beginning of a play of Euripides seems to me to lack anything like cogent proof. A gnomic verse of this sort—to take the characteristics of the line in the order given by Mr. Ling—may indeed begin a play, as in the fragment of the Stheneboia which he quotes; but it may also begin a speech, as Hec. 864; or come early in a speech, (...) cf. Heracl. 2; or alone in stichomythia, as Alc. 540; or late in a speech, as Med. 561; or at the end of one, as Supp. 510. In other words, there is no position which it may not have. As to its lack of ‘any particle or conjunction to connect it with what preceded or followed,’ how does Mr. Ling prove that it was not preceded by γιγνσκων τι, cf. Med. 560; or that the previous line did not end in γάρ, like Hec. 551, Supp. 361; or that this line is not the end of a longer sentence, like Alc. (shrink)

يتناول محمد حيان السمّان في كتابه في "تدبير القداسة: الحجابة والحجاب - أدب الدخول على السلطان في التراث العربي الإسلامي"، الصادر عن المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات، العلاقة بين السلطة السياسية والمجتمع في السياق العربي - الإسلامي، من خلال موضوع الحجابة والسلطان المحتجِب عن رعيته، والوقائع المتصلة بالقدوم على أصحاب السلطة من خلفاء وملوك وسلاطين ووزراء وغيرهم، وانتظار الإذن بلقائهم. يتألف الكتاب (407 صفحات بالقطع الوسط، موثقًا ومفهرسًا) من مدخل، وقسمين فيهما عشرة فصول. في المدخل، تأسيس وإضاءة، يعالج المؤلف مسألة (...) الحجابة والحاجب من حيث اللغة والاصطلاح، ومسألة الحجابة عند ابن خلدون من منطلق الحضارة الداعية إلى انتحال الألقاب وتمييزها، ومسألة الاستئذان الشرعي والحجابة والفرق بينهما. (shrink)

Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, -1641--Criticism and interpretation. ; Islamic philosophy.