A critical interrogation of elements of Hobbes's political and natural philosophy and its capacity to enrich our understanding of the natural of democratic life.

The classic theory of Common Law is based on the idea of a law derived from immemorial customs that guide judges’ decisions and contribute to the continuity and stability of the legal order. Hobbes, in his criticism of Edward Coke, questions the legal principles that characterize the “spirit of Common Law”. In his view, it is authority and not use that makes the law. This Hobbesian criticism, which can be considered as one of the ­sources of positivist interpretation of customary (...) law, first raises the question of the legal validity of custom but also leads to an original analysis of the court decisions and precedents. Two forms of rationality of law are opposed: one based on custom and knowledge of which is an “artificial reason”, the other based on natural law and the prescriptions of the judges’ individual reason. (shrink)

La doctrine classique de la Common Law est la cible de nombreuses critiques de la part de Hobbes et de Bentham. Tous deux remettent en cause les principes qui fondent et justifient cette composante fondamentale du droit anglais. Sont notamment visés le caractère coutumier qui lui est attribué, sa prétendue rationalité ainsi que l’interprétation qu’en font les juges. Moment décisif dans l’histoire des théories du droit, cette controverse tend à faire prévaloir l’idée d’un droit créé par un acte de volonté (...) sur un droit non écrit, tiré de la coutume, que les juges s’efforcent d’appliquer et de perpétuer. Mais, au-delà de leur portée critique, les textes de Hobbes et Bentham présentent des divergences qui font apparaître deux conceptions distinctes de la Common Law et de la décision judiciaire. (shrink)

There is widespread scholarly disagreement whether Hobbesian passions are or involve a type of cognition (i.e., imagination). This largely overlooked disagreement has implications for our understanding of Hobbesian deliberation. If passions are intrinsically cognitive, then, because Hobbesian deliberation is a series of alternating passions, deliberation would appear to be intrinsically cognitive as well. In this paper, I bring to light this overlooked disagreement and argue for a non-cognitive reading of Hobbesian passions, according to which, a passion is an appetite or (...) aversion caused by, but distinct from, an imagination of a future good or harm. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes argues that the fear of violent death is the most reliable passion on which to found political society. His role in shaping the contemporary view of religion and honor in the West is pivotal, yet his ideas are famously riddled with contradictions. In this breakthrough study, McClure finds evidence that Hobbes' apparent inconsistencies are intentional, part of a sophisticated rhetorical strategy meant to make man more afraid of death than he naturally is. Hobbes subtly undermined two of the (...) most powerful manifestations of man's desire for immortality: the religious belief in an afterlife and the secular desire for eternal fame through honor. McClure argues that Hobbes purposefully stirred up controversy, provoking his adversaries into attacking him and unwittingly spreading his message. This study will appeal to scholars of Hobbes, political theorists, historians of early modern political thought and anyone interested in the genesis of modern Western attitudes toward mortality. (shrink)

This rich collection will introduce students of philosophy and politics to the contemporary critical literature on the classical social contract political thinkers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A dozen essays and book excerpts have been selected to guide students through the texts and to introduce them to current scholarly controversies surrounding the contractarian political theories of these three thinkers.

The paper presents a critical discussion of Pettit and Skinner's recent treatments of Hobbes on republican freedom, in particular situating Hobbes's attack on the republican politicians from The Elements of Law in the contexts, first, of other contemporary suspicion directed against those politicians who struck a distinctively “Roman” pose, and, second, of Hobbes's wider psychology of politics, before concluding with some reflections on the relationship between Hobbes's political theory and the project of egalitarian republicanism.

Christopher Tilmouth's wide-ranging study of Early Modern ideas of the passions explores a series of philosophical authors in relation to poets and dramatists of the period 1580 to 1680. Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, and Hobbes receive detailed treatment here, alongside Spenser's Faerie Queene, Hamlet and Julius Caesar, the lyrics of Herbert and Crashaw, and Milton's Paradise Lost. Central to this innovative exploration of literary-philosophical relations is a comprehensive reappraisal of the works of the Earl of Rochester.

Theory and practice, reason and revelation, ancients and moderns are the key themes running through the eighteen studies of the literature of political philosophy in Reason's Inquisition. Alfarabi is a pivotal figure, but the range is wide, from Plato and Thucydides to Shakespeare and Hobbes, extending to such contemporary figures as Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin.

This paper maintains that Hobbes grounds right and obligation in self-interest, and opposes a recent argument that for Hobbes obligation is grounded in the agent’s practical deliberation. In addition, it maintains that for Leibniz right and obligation are grounded in the moral-rational capacity of persons, but not in self-interest. It proceeds by distinguishing among the various senses of jus or “right,” and contrasting Hobbes’s and Leibniz’s understanding of the term—though both see it as a kind of freedom they differ fundamentally (...) as to its kind. The little explored treatment of “right” that appears in Leibniz’s New Method for the Learning and Teaching of Jurisprudence is discussed in the course of the article. In conclusion, the article finds that for Leibniz, obligations are grounded in one’s moral capacity. One ought not to harm others because one is a rational being among others who hold the same rights and obligations. For Hobbes, obligations are grounded in self-preservation and maintained by external coercion. For Leibniz, right is the possibility of doing what is just, maintaining the rights and obligations of others; while for Hobbes, right is a problem for doing what is just—a problem for self-interested agents that requires an external solution. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 64 Heft: 2 Seiten: 193-212.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 459-460 [Access article in PDF] Reinhard Brandt. Philosophie in Bildern: Von Giorgione bis Magritte. Hamburg: Dumont, 2000. Pp. 470. Paper, NP. Reinhard Brandt, professor for Philosophiegeschichte, offers in his latest book a multi-faceted history of philosophy and art through his detailed interpretations of major paintings in the European tradition, beginning with Giorgione's "The Three Philosophers" and a young Raphael's "The Dream (...) of the Knight,"and stretching to René Magritte's "La condition humaine." In these paintings, as Brandt claims, different philosophical positions are expounded, which he then, in the role of interpreter, attempts to elucidate.In the introduction Brandt explains how this paradoxical phenomenon of philosophizing paintings can even exist. That one can find not only philosophical themes but well-wrought positions in such paintings, and, most importantly, not read these positions into them, is shown in more than thirty short essays, spanning from ancient Greek philosophy and literature, through the Renaissance and on to present-day Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature/philosophy. In almost every interpretation, Brandt critically reviews previous research, exposing and correcting some deeply rooted mistakes and constantly providing new impulses; in light of his philosophical-philological method, some major paintings in the European tradition are interpreted anew.His detailed analysis of Raphael's "The School of Athens" forces a persuasive revision of previous interpretations; the sitting figure in the foreground is not, as previously assumed, Heraclitus, but Democritus. On account of this carefully proven and convincing allotment, an unnoticed field of vision is discovered between the materialist and solid-state physicist Democritus, who with the gestus melancholicus is concentrating on a problem, and Plato, standing perpendicularly over him. Could this problem be the stone cube, on which the philosopher is leaning? From this conjecture we now have a bridge leading to Albrecht Dürer's engraving "Melancholia."Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas" is interpreted anew on account of the surprising solution to the painting's puzzling construction. Brandt shows that the whole picture is viewed from the vantage point of the princess inside the painting, not of an observer outside it. The princess stands before a mirror and Velazquez paints everything exactly as the princess sees it. So the painting, which hangs in the Prado Museum, is the mirror image of a complete reflection of the Self; perhaps it is no coincidence that the painting belongs to the same historical period as Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum dictum. Or Jacques Louis David's "The Death of Socrates": although the painting has been correctly referred back to Plato's Phaidon, until now a Platonic ground position was falsely attributed to the painting. Brandt shows that the painting was conceived with Stoic philosophical positions in mind: death is portrayed as immanently present, coupled with the un-Socratic maxim mortem spernere. The virtuous stance that Socrates still shows on the threshold of death is decisive. And as an added bonus he includes his influential, previously published essay on the title-page emblem of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is Brandt's technical know-how. He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of the European intellectual tradition with a [End Page 459] fluid, easy-to-read style, which not only instructs the reader, but entertains as well. At no time does this book approach mere philosophical pedantry; his treatment of some of the lesser known, albeit important, figures in the history of philosophy, e.g., Justus Lipsius and Diogenes of Sinope, is not a lesson in obscurity. The reader feels himself taken on a journey through a history of Western philosophy, always being provided with thought-provoking material. His style, however, is in no way used to mask the often shaky scholarship that has a tendency to go hand-in-hand with such interdisciplinary studies. In every essay Brandt exhausts all the sources; he works with razor-sharp exactness, proceeding with the meticulousness of an outstanding and seasoned scholar.A problem which always accompanies such books is the question: Cui bono? Are either the philosophers... (shrink)

The essay investigates the proposition that economic questions are a fit subject for science. This investigation will involve a selective examination of seventeenth-century writings before looking at again selective Enlightenment texts. The essay is deliberately wide ranging, but it aims to pick out the emergence or crystallization of political economy by noting how theorists sought to establish it as a subject matter and in the process develop ways of studying it that aimed to uncover regularities and exhibit generality, systematicity, and (...) precision. Together these supported its pretensions or claims to be a science that would in a Baconian manner be useful and free of the perceived shackles of a moralistic classical disparagement of economic activity. (shrink)

Abstract. Revelations in the United States of secret legal opinions by the Department of Justice, dramatically altering the conventional interpretations of laws governing torture, interrogation, and surveillance, have made the issue of "secret law" newly prominent. The dangers of secret law from the perspective of democratic accountability are clear, and need no elaboration. But distaste for secret law goes beyond questions of democracy. Since Plato, and continuing through such non-democratic thinkers as Bodin and Hobbes, secret law has been seen as (...) a mark of tyranny, inconsistent with the notion of law itself. This raises both theoretical and practical questions. The theoretical questions involve the consistency of secret law with positivist legal theory. In principle, while a legal system as a whole could not be secret, publicity need not be part of the validity criteria for particular laws. The practical questions arise from the fact that secret laws, and secret governmental operations, are a common and often well-accepted aspect of governmental power. This paper argues that the flaw of secret law goes beyond accountability and beyond efficiency to the role that law plays, and can only play, in situating subjects' understanding of themselves in relation to the state. Secret law, as such, is inconsistent with this fundamental claim of the law to orient us in moral and political space, and undermines the claim to legitimacy of the state's rulers. (shrink)

Initiation de l'amitié -- En lisant en écrivant -- Le dérèglement originel de l'amour de soi humain -- Au démêlé avec Pascal -- Montaigne législateur? -- "Mointaigne a tort" -- "La justice est sujette à dispute" -- L'injustice du moi -- Pascal et Hobbes -- Le règlement de la dispute -- Une vraisemblance de justice.

Advertising and other forms of promotional activity have proliferated to such an extent that they may constitute a form of social pollution (Kitchen, 1994). The quantity and tone of communications to which consumers are exposed may have a subtle but pervasive effect on the social ecology of the developed world. Not only are Marketing Communications delivered in unprecedented quantities (Kitchen, 1994); but their tone is increasingly difficult to categorise in the Postmodern Marketing era (Brown, 1994). Notably, there has been very (...) little research conducted on this seeming "Leviathan" (Kitchen, 1994, after Hobbes, 1651) effect. Ethical concerns of professional marketing bodies such as the MRS and CIM are focussed on the conduct of professionals with regard to law and notions of moral decency in human exchange relationships (see MRS code of conduct, ASA and IBA guidelines). There is less emphasis on the ethical implications for society of the totality of Marketing Communication activities. This paper examines the distinctively Postmodern concept of the Communications Leviathan and discusses contemporary ethical issues, drawing perspectives where possible from Postmodern critical theory, Enlightenment philosophy, cognitive psychology and classical ethical works of Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

Contract-based approaches have been a focus of attention in business ethics. As one of the grand traditions in political philosophy, contractarianism is founded on the notion that we will never resolve deep moral disagreement. Classical philosophers like Hobbes and Locke, or recent ones like Rawls and Gaus, seek to solve ethical conflicts on the level of social rules and procedures. Recent authors in business ethics have sought to utilize contract-based approaches for their field and to apply it to concrete business (...) dilemmas. However, the application of contractarianism to management contexts can cause difficulties. Our article discusses this conceptual problem of contractarian business ethics and presents the idea of order ethics as an alternative. Order ethics, as we argue, can make a difference by conceptually bridging the gap between contractarianism and business ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTR. G. Collingwood's New Leviathan presents an account of two ‘dialectical’ political processes that are ongoing in any body politic. Existing scholarship has already covered the first: a dialectic between a ‘social’ and a ‘non-social’ element, which Collingwood identifies in Hobbes. This essay elucidates a second: a dialectic between Liberals and Conservatives, which regulates the ‘percolation’ of liberty and the rate of recruitment into what Collingwood calls ‘the ruling class’. The details of this second dialectic are to be found not (...) in Hobbes, but in the work of Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca, yet Collingwood's connections to these fathers of ‘classical elite theory’ have not previously been discussed. (shrink)

This article traces the radical devaluation of the phantasm throughout Western civilization. With the help of Nietzsche’s critical perspective, I develop a notion of hystery as the series of collective traumas repeated in each individual’s growth, whereby the phantasm changes value from psychosomatic interface, to evil incarnate, to disease of learning. Beginning with the Classical episteme represented by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, then moving up through the Christian era, I focus primarily on Enlightenment thinkers such as Hobbes and Bacon, (...) who represent the last nail in the imagination’s coffin. The next section examines Nietzsche’s rediscovery of the phantasm and the theoretical contributions of post-structuralism that follow in Nietzsche’s wake. Juxtaposing Bataille and Deleuze, I look at Deleuze’s early enthusiasm and ultimate betrayal of the phantasm, and I posit Bataille’s emphasis on the affective force of the mythological phantasm as an insurrection to reclaim our experience and life along with it. The article ends with speculation, offering Bruno’s art of memory as an ontic and epistemic alternative to dominant Western hystery, other pasts opening to other possible futures, an ungrounding that paradoxically leads to a restoration of the human house in a re-enchanted cosmos. (shrink)

Dmitri Levitin's 966-page The Kingdom of Darkness is divided into three parts. In part I, the major theses of the book are presented, whereas parts II and III deal with two key figures, Pierre Bayle and Isaac Newton. The present article is a review of part I of Levitin's tome. In keeping with its title, “Giving up Philosophy. The Transformation of a System of Knowledge,” Levitin there argues that by the end of the seventeenth century, the European mind had emancipated (...) itself from the 'enterprise of philosophy,' which had fallen into disrepute. After praising Levitin's scholarship, this article argues that he is certainly correct with respect to what was at the time decried as 'the sterile teaching of the Schools,' and partly also with regard to the growing distrust of metaphysics, Still, philosophy as such neither was nor could be abolished, one principal reason being that there was not yet such a thing as 'science' to take over from it, nor had the figure of the 'intellectual' been born. In fact, the eighteenth century, the siècle des lumières, presented itself very much as a philosophical age. (shrink)

Introductory courses in political philosophy would benefit from the incorporation of material on the Iroquois Great Law of Peace, including the story of the foundation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Classroom study of this tradition will serve several purposes: introducing a valuable account of political phenomena such as negotiation, consensus, veto, and rational communication; contributing to the diversity of syllabi; tracing the influence of Iroquois law on Western political institutions; and comparing the Haudenosaunee story to early modern social contract theory, especially (...) Hobbes’ Leviathan. This paper draws connections to relevant topics in a standard, historically-oriented course and suggests learning resources and objectives. (shrink)

According to a common reading of Thomas Hobbes, fear is the most philosophically important passion, responsible for the founding and sustaining of the commonwealth. I argue that this common reading is incorrect by focusing on the necessary and important role of hope in human action as well as in the founding and sustaining of the commonwealth. Life in the Hobbesian commonwealth, on the reading defended in this paper, is less fearful and more hopeful than scholars have noticed.

Using Smith’s own references to thinkers he identifies as significant pioneers, the chapter presents a synoptic and necessarily gross-grained selective survey. It pays particular attention to the thought of Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf and also to Shaftesbury, Mandeville, and Hutcheson. Newton, because he is the chief subject of another chapter, is not here considered but Harrington, though not mentioned by Smith in this context, is included. While Smith can be seen to take something from all these thinkers, without exception (...) this is done critically. This duality recurs as the survey proceeds. (shrink)

Mill was receptive to all sorts of ideas, both plausible and implausible, which did not fit well with utilitarianism. He was, for example, inclined to think of equality, not just pleasure, as. He was able to think of himself as a utilitarian only by grossly expanding that notion to cover any doctrine which did not entirely rely, without the possibility of further explanation, on or God's commands. It is even doubtful whether he was a consequentialist in any sense. Mill's account (...) of moral obligation is not a maximizing, nor even a satisficing, one. And the account emphasizes the place of supererogation. There is no suggestion in Mill that one is obliged to do something merely because a teaching to that effect would be felicific. Far from there being an obligation to maximize, it would sometimes be wrong merely to make Pareto-improvements. Sympathetically understood, the account of obligation in Mill is more or less the same as one finds in Hobbes, with his theorems. (shrink)

Plato’s Socrates holds that we always have reason to be just, since being just is essential for living a happy and successful life. In Book II of Plato’s Republic, Socrates’ main interlocutor, Glaucon, raises a vivid and powerful challenge to this claim. He presents the case of Gyges, a Lydian shepherd who possesses a ring that gives him the power of invisibility. Glaucon’s contention is that Gyges does not have reason to be just in this circumstance, since being just will (...) not promote his happiness. Thus, the argument poses the following challenge: what reason do we have to be just, particularly in circumstances where we can get away with injustice? In this essay, we describe Glaucon’s challenge, highlight its similarity to challenges offered by other skeptical figures in the history of philosophy, namely, Hobbes’ Foole and Hume’s sensible knave, and present three broad lines of response. (shrink)

Reprint of the ed. published by C. F. Osiander.

Gregory S. Kavka was a prominent and influential figure in contemporary moral and political philosophy. The essays in this volume are concerned with fundamental issues of rational commitment and social justice to which Kavka devoted his work as a philosopher. The essays take Kavka's work as a point of departure and seek to advance the respective debates. The topics include: the relationship between intention and moral action as part of which Kavka's famous 'toxin puzzle' is a focus of discussion, the (...) nature of deterrence, the rationality of morals, contractarian ethics, and the contemporary relevance of Hobbes' political thought. Incorporating important philosophical statements of problems and fresh contributions to the ongoing debate about rational intention this volume will interest not just philosophers but also political scientists and economists. (shrink)

The Morality of Happiness By Julia Annas, Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. x + 502. ISBN 0–19–507999‐X. £45.00 (hbk), £13.99 (pbk).Dimensions of Creativity By Margaret A. Boden (ed.) MIT Press, 1994. Pp. 242. ISBN 0–262–02368–7. £24.95.Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue By David Boonin‐Vail, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 219. ISBN 0–521–46209–6. £37.50.Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes By Quentin Skinner, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 477. ISBN 0–521–55436–5. £35.00.Being and the Between By William Desmond, State (...) University of New York Press, 1995. Pp. 557. ISBN 0–7914–2271–2. $19.95.Perplexity and Ultimacy By William Desmond, State University of New York Press, 1995. Pp. 263. ISBN 0–7914–2387–5. $19.95.Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology By Susan Haack, Blackwell Publishers, 1994. Pp. x + 259. ISBN 0–631–19679‐X/£14.99 (pbk).Kant's Intuitionalism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic By Lorne Falkenstein, University of Toronto Press, 1996. Pp. xvii + 465. ISBN 0–8020–2973–6. $70.00.The Metaphysics of Free Will By John Martin Fischer, Blackwell, 1995. Pp. ix + 273. ISBN 1–55786–8573. £14.99.Identification Papers By Diana Fuss, Routledge, 1995. Pp. 179. ISBN 0–415–90886–8. $16.95.Rorty and Pragmatism: The Philosopher Responds to his Critics Edited by Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., Vanderbilt University Press, 1995. ISBN 0–8265–1263–1 $24.95.Nietzsche's French Legacy: a Genealogy of Poststructuralism By Alan D. Schrift, Routledge, 1995. Pp. xviii + 198. ISBN 0–415–91146‐X. £40.00.Causal Cognition ‐ A Multidisciplinary Debate Edited by Dan Sperber, David Premack, and Ann James Premack, Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. 670. ISBN 0–19–852314–9. £00.00. (shrink)

This article examines Hobbes’s conception of mathematical method, situating his methodological writings in the context of disputed mathematical issues of the seventeenth century. After a brief exposition of the Hobbesian philosophy of mathematics, it investigates Hobbes’s attempts to resolve three important mathematical controversies of the seventeenth century: the debates over the status of analytic geometry, disputes over the nature of ratios, and the problem of the “angle of contact” between a curve and tangent. In the course of these investigations, Hobbes’s (...) account of mathematics and its method is contrasted with the those of Descartes, Isaac Barrow, John Wallis, and Christopher Clavius. (shrink)

Christopher Herbert, provoked by the Alan Sokal affair and by bullying critiques of “relativism,” has written this study to demonstrate the prominence of relativistic thought in the sciences of the last two centuries. Although he draws back from any claim that relativity and its opposite, philosophical realism, lead of necessity to particular political positions, he associates the former with liberal tolerance and the latter with mandatory worship in a repressive “church of ‘absolute truth’”. Nazi physicists such as Philipp Lenard, (...) he argues, “knew better than to regard relativity as a ‘purely scientific matter,’ seeing it instead as a mode of awareness implacably hostile to their own”, and for him it is no less consequential.Herbert runs the risk, he allows, of incurring Sokal's laughter. “For the benefit of any reader who will be reassured by the admission, I will concede the methodological dangers of proceeding as I do in this book, constructing intellectual history out of a congeries of remote‐seeming texts on the strength of what may seem like freely interpretive reading, unbuttressed by claims of demonstrable direct ‘influence’”. His concession, however, is off the mark. Does anybody now regard “influence” as the only legitimate category of explanation in intellectual history? A serious argument for a common discourse, rooted perhaps in a shared reaction to contemporary events or circumstances, can provide sufficient justification for a wide‐ranging cultural account. But his study is held together by little more than a word, “relativity.” Did it really, as he implies, have the same meaning in the writings of Herbert Spencer as in those of Albert Einstein?Although it seems unpromising, the possibility cannot be excluded in principle. To make it plausible would require a searching investigation of their scientific aims, their philosophical positions, and perhaps also their political purposes. Einstein was a German, a mathematical physicist, whose political views tended to pacifism and socialism. Spencer, who worked at the intersection of biology and social science, sought a unifying principle in a progressive cosmic tendency to advance from homogeneity to heterogeneity and by the 1880s had grown bitterly resentful about the growth of the social state in Britain. It seems at first comical to construe them as allied in advocacy of the doctrine of Protagoras, as Herbert labels it, that man is the measure of all things. Herbert simply ignores considerations of this kind, and there is nothing deeper in the book to alter one's initial reaction. Instead, he reaches more widely, enlisting on the same relativistic team an improbable alliance of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, marginalist economics, Ernst Mach, Karl Pearson, quantum theory, Saussurean linguistics, and, in our own time, Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida. Few opponents of this Victorian relativity are identified, for almost everyone has said something that can be associated with one or another meaning of “relativity.” In asides and footnotes, Herbert reaches back to the Enlightenment philosophes, and even to Hobbes, as relativistic progenitors. Well may Sokal laugh.Herbert is not a historian, but a literary theorist. He has this in common with the intolerant scientific realists he chastises: that he has composed a work of history—to which he indeed applies the name “intellectual history”—without bothering to canvass the historical scholarship. Would a great university press publish a book on the rise of the novel by an author who had never looked to literary scholarship, or on landscape painting by one who disdained to read art history? Herbert seems a perfectly decent fellow, but his book suggests that the arrogance of theory is fully a match for the arrogance of science. (shrink)

Thomas hobbes's papers at chatsworth prove that he had considerable knowledge of legal concepts. apparently he used the chatsworth copy of christopher saint german's "doctor" and "student" in developing his concept of contractual obligation. realizing this is useful for a careful analysis of hobbes's theory of why contracts oblige. the crucial problem is hobbes attempt to explain why we should perform a disadvantageous contract. he suggests different motives in all three of his major political works. in "leviathan" he finally (...) settles on the argument that it is always to our long-term advantage to fail to keep contracts. this argument is not very satisfactory, but it is the best that he can come up with given his account of human nature. (shrink)

This article wants to propose some reflections on law, power and violence in contemporary political philosophy. My attention will be devoted to a critical analysis of some relevant contribution on these matters by prominent scholars and authors such as Alessandro Ferrara, Christoph Menke, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt. The first part is dedicated to a brief introduction in which the Alessandro Ferrara’s reading of Menke’s Law and Violence will be presented. The second part focuses its attention on the philosophical backgrounds of (...) violence, especially in its relation to liberty, power and government. In this case, the main focus is devoted to some of the classics in political philosophy: Niccolò Machiavelli; Thomas Hobbes; Hannah Arendt. The last two paragraphs are finally dedicated to further reflections on law and violence. On the one hand, giving a deeper description of Ferrara’s remarks on Menke’s work, especially in its connection to Rawlsian political liberalism. The last paragraph, on the other hand, proposes few brief and final reflections on law and violence. (shrink)

I. Pragmatismus und Neukantianismus Marc Rölli: Die Durchquerung des Absoluten. Zur Hegel-Rezeption John Deweys Wolfgang Bonsiepen: Hegel und der Neukantianismus Matthias Wunsch: Phänomenologie des Symbolischen? Die Hegelrezeption Ernst Cassirers II. Phänomenologie - Ontologie - Lebensphilosophie Annette Sell: Das Geheimnis des Anfangs. Die Aufnahme des Hegelschen Anfangsbegriffs in der Philosophie Martin Heideggers Hans-Ulrich Lessing: Hegel und Helmuth Plessner: Die verpaßte Rezeption Walter Jaeschke: Der Geist und sein Sein. Nicolai Hartmann auf Hegelschen Wegen Holger Glinka: Aus Phänomenologie mach Dialektik. Jean-Paul Sartres Anverwandlung (...) Hegels III. Marxistische Tradition und kritische Theorie Andreas Arndt: Lenin liest Hegel Daniel Althof: Das "Geklapper der Triplizität" - Adornos Hegelrezeption Christoph J. Bauer: Mit Hegel gegen den 'Positivismus' - mit Hegel zum 'Wesen des Menschen'. Herbert Marcuses Interpretation der Hegelschen Urteilslehre IV. Postmoderne und Gegenwart Karin de Boer: Differenz: zwischen Hegel und Derrida Robert B. Pippin: Brandoms Hegel. (shrink)

Coherence in conversations and in texts can be partially characterized by a set of coherence relations, motivated ultimately by the speaker's or writer's need to be understood. In this paper, formal definitions are given for several coherence relations, based on the operations of an inference system; that is, the relations between successive portions of a discourse are characterized in terms of the inferences that can be drawn from each. In analyzing a discourse, it is frequently the case that we would (...) recognize it as coherent, in that it would satisfy the formal definition of some coherence relation, if only we could assume certain noun phrases to be coreferential. In such cases, we will simply assume the identity of the entities referred to, in what might be called a “petty conversational implicature,” thereby solving the coherence and coreference problems simultaneously. Three examples of different kinds of reference problems are presented. In each, it is shown how the coherence of the discourse can be recognized, and how the reference problems are solved, almost as a by‐product, by means of these petty conversational implicatures. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of original contributions about the core knowledge in fundamental domains. It includes work on naive physics, such as formal specifications of intuitive theories of spatial relations, time causality, substance and physical objects, and on naive psychology.