The theme of this volume is natural beauty, landscape and the arts. The first question for a philosopher to ask is what does philosophy have to say now particularly about natural beauty. I emphasize now, because, as is well known, historically philosophers, for example, Plato and the eighteenth-century British, and especially Scottish, philosophers, were interested in the topic of beauty. At the present day there has also been some revival of interest in this subject, but when it comes to what (...) philosophers past and present have had to say about beauty, I am doubtful how much relevance it has to the question of how we should think about natural beauty. We must be careful then in an inquiry into natural beauty not to begin by taking up some question within the traditional philosophy of beauty – such as for instance whether beauty is a real quality, or whether judgments of beauty are subjective or objective – for it is difficult to see what such metaphysical lucubrations could do for the question in hand, other than offering, what is not to be underestimated, an innocent form of academic pleasure.In any case, the modern world takes a short cut with the question of beauty: everyone, unless having a distinct reason for believing the contrary, such as a specific religious faith, unhesitatingly takes it for granted that an extreme subjectivism and relativism must hold sway. (shrink)

In this article aesthetics is treated purely as a branch of philosophy, and the points made are intended to apply both to philosophy more generally and aesthetics more specifically. The manner in which internationalism obviously has to do with the organization of the disciplines is discussed. Does it have any bearing on their content or substance? The distinction between organization and content is probed and seen to be much less obvious than at first sight apparent and is doubtfully tenable. Nations (...) are foreign to philosophy in two respects. First we would remain philosophically impoverished if we attended only to the philosophy produced in our own nation. Secondly, and more interestingly, nations cannot be the subject of philosophy since they are individuals. Individuals can only be of philosophical interest in so far as they can be identified under general categories; then what matters is the category, not the individual. Philosophy, including philosophy of art, can only be interested in individuals as first‐order examples or illustrations of more general second‐order claims or theses. So nations must be excluded from the domain of philosophy. It does not follow that such exclusion amounts to internationalism. Indeed though internationalism itself might be a philosophical idea the dismissal of nations as philosophically irrelevant more obviously represents a commitment to universalism than to internationalism. Internationalism and universalism should not be confused though they overlap. Universalism is the ideal of the so‐called enlightenment project which is defended in this paper against post‐modernist criticism and also against the charge that it constitutes a view from nowhere. The view from nowhere is in the strictest sense utopian and for that reason is to be championed as a means for criticising our current assumptions and beliefs and not dismissed. Overt bias including national bias is not a problem, though the writer of philosophy must strive against it on pain of failing to write philosophy. A writer, however, can only guard against overt prejudice and bias. But a text, whether or not philosophical, is also silently exclusionary, that is, there are groups it silently excludes. At a later date the reader can often detect examples of silent exclusion. Since these silences are indefinitely many, it is always possible for a group to feel excluded. The important philosophical point is to concede the possibility of linguistic and indeed conceptual exclusion, to study its mechanisms and to consider on what principles, if any, a moral charge of exclusion is justified and when not. (shrink)

If the idea of morality is approached by way both of common sense views about morality and common philosophical accounts of it, then the meaning of the term "moral" as this is sometimes used in literary criticism must seem puzzling. the puzzle is illustrated rather than solved, but some tentative suggestions are made. for instance common notions about what morality is may be too narrow.