Showing papers in "Ethics in 1992"

Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty

Abstract: The human future suddenly seems open. This is an inspiration; we can step back and think more freely. Instead of containment or detente, political scientists are discussing grand pictures: the end of history, or the inevitable proliferation and mutual pacifism of capitalist democracies. And politicians are speaking of a new world order. My inspiration is a little more concrete. After developing a rough, cosmopolitan specification of our task to promote moral progress, I offer an idea for gradual global institutional reform. Dispersing political authority over nested territorial units would decrease the intensity of the struggle for power and wealth within and among states, thereby reducing the incidence of war, poverty, and oppression. In such a multilayered scheme, borders could be redrawn more easily to accord with the aspirations of peoples and communities.

Superseding Historic Injustice

Abstract: The history of white settlers' dealings with the aboriginal peoples of Australia, New Zealand, and North America is largely a history of injustice. People, or whole peoples, were attacked, defrauded, and expropriated; their lands were stolen and their lives were ruined. What are we to do about these injustices? We know what we should think about them: they are to be studied and condemned, remembered and lamented. But morality is a practical matter, and judgments of just' and 'unjust' like all moral judgments have implications for action. To say that a future act open to us now would be unjust is to commit ourselves to avoiding it. But what of past injustice? What is the practical importance now of a judgment that injustice occurred in the past? In the first instance the question is one of metaethics. Moral judgments are prescriptive in their illocutionary force; they purport to guide choices.1 But since the only choices we can guide are choices in front of us, judgments about the past must look beyond the particular events that are their ostensible subject matter. The best explanation

Distributive Justice: What the People Think

Abstract: This article attempts to bring together in a creative way two bodies of literature that often seem to run on parallel tracks with only the barest mutual acknowledgment. One is the steadily expanding range of works in political theory on social or distributive justice.' The other is the body of empirical work on people's beliefs aboutjustice and the expression of these beliefs in practice. One might expect there to be a fruitful symbiosis between these two bodies of research, with political theorists setting the agenda for empirical studies of justice, while the results of these studies were fed back into the theoretical literature as data against which more abstract claims about the nature ofjustice could be tested. But this is not the case. There is a small amount of traffic across the border in one direction. Most empirical researchers are aware of the major landmarks in the field of theory-they have heard of Rawls's A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971), for instance, and a few experiments (discussed below) have been devised to test its claims. But almost without exception political theorists have failed to consider the bearing that empirical findings might have on their formulations.2 There are several reasons for this neglect, of greatly differing character and strength. One is simply the insularity of academic disciplines. Much of the research I shall consider is found in journals that no political theorist would look at as a matter of course. Along with this goes an unfamiliar academic jargon and a style of presentation which (in the case of the social psychology literature, especially) is likely to seem unusually wooden and ponderous. Then there is the view that empirical studies of justice are of little value in getting at

Strawson's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility

Abstract: In this article I am concerned with a central strand of Strawson's wellknown and highly influential essay "Freedom and Resentment."'' One of Strawson's principal objectives in this work is to refute or discredit the views of the "Pessimist." The Pessimist, as Strawson understands him (or her), claims that the truth of the thesis of determinism would render the attitudes and practices associated with moral responsibility incoherent and unjustified. Given this, the Pessimist claims that if determinism is true, then we must abandon or suspend these attitudes and practices altogether. Against the Pessimist Strawson argues that no reasoning of any sort could lead us to abandon or suspend our "reactive attitudes." That is to say, according to Strawson responsibility is a "given" of human life and society-something which we are inescapably committed to.2 In this article I will argue that Strawson's reply

Changing One's Heart

Abstract: "Why should I forgive him?"-a perfectly normal question, but what kind of answer does one expect? Presumably, a reason good enough morally to justify forgiving. That reason must also make forgiving psychologically possible by providing a description of the wrongdoer under which he becomes an appropriate object for a changed heart. Being shown that he deserves forgiveness would do this. So would realizing that continued resentment is causing too much harm. The problem is that forgiveness offered because it is deserved or to avoid the costs of resentment is disappointing. Such forgiveness is not, perhaps, what one aspired to get or to become able to give. This is an essay about stories of forgiveness. The person who succeeds in forgiving us by appealing to good reasons typically tells a story that distances our misdeed from the biography of the "true" self. In some stories, we are excused, or we repented. Sometimes the story forgetfully omits the misdeed altogether, dwelling instead on our better side. But aspiringly, we hope for a different story, one that shows some understanding of our whole self, complete with nasty, unrepentant, knowing choices to hurt others. We don't want to be pared down to some pure, good core. What puzzles me about forgiveness is that, on the one hand, insisting that a person must deserve forgiveness or, at the very least, that there is some justification for overlooking an injury seems cheap. It dodges the hard task of forgiving while keeping the injury's inescapable connection to the agent in full view. On the other hand, forgiving unrepentant people for inexcusable injuries seems repugnant, if not impossible. In the first two parts of this article, I try to explain the inadequacy and attraction of insisting that forgiveness be deserved or consequentially justified. When looked at carefully, forgiving for these reasons does not, really, look like forgiveness at all, because appealing to good

An objectivist's guide to subjective value

Abstract: Oedipus killed his father and made love to his mother. Accepting Greek, and conventional, views on the morality of patricide and incest, Oedipus acted wrongly on both counts. But that is not the whole of the story. For it was precisely in the attempt to avoid these very wrongs that Oedipus so acted, believing in the light of the best evidence available to him that he was successfully avoiding them. Cases like this lead us naturally to a familiar distinction: between the objective and subjective notions of moral rightness. But which, if either, of these two notions is the primary one for moral theory, and what exactly are the relations between them? We address this question from within a broadly consequentialist framework, arguing for a version of objectivism which explains and justifies subjectivism where it is right and corrects it where it is wrong. According to the consequentialist, the moral rightness of an option is related in some way to the value of its consequences. A major problem for the consequentialist is to explain the nature of this relation. In particular, is the morally right action the one with the best consequences, or is the morally right action the one which is best in the light of the agent's beliefs? The subjectivist claims that the primary notion for moral theory is given by what is best by the agent's lights (or, as we will say, what has greatest subjective value) regardless of what is actually the best. 1 The objectivist claims that the primary notion for moral theory is given by what is best (or, as we will say, what has greatest objective value) regardless of how things seem to the agent.2

Conceptions of choice and conceptions of autonomy

Abstract: Freedom of choice is an important liberal ideal, both in itself and as a constituent of the ideal of autonomy. Choice and autonomy in this way mutually reinforce one another: we value autonomy in part because of the freedom to choose that it validates, and we value free choice in part because it contributes to our autonomy. However, the conception of choice that plays this normative role largely originates in the theory of rational choice, the area in which choice received greatest attention and was given the most detailed and rigorous articulation. That conception of choice, at least in its broad outline, is often taken for granted in normative discourse in general, and in discussions of autonomy in particular. The basic tenets of rational choice theory have been subjected to thorough and well-known criticisms,' but these focus for the most part on the descriptive inadequacies of that approach.2 My interest is rather with the normative aspect of rational choice-with the kind of ideal of free choice it projects and with the role it plays in shaping conceptions of autonomy. I begin by observing some "inherent frustrations" that are bound up with the dominant conception of choice. In the second section I point to a number of familiar experiences from which I extrapolate a conception of choice I call 'willing', that is diametrically opposed to the dominant conception. In the third section I present some considerations that make 'willing' a more suitable con-

John Stuart Mill and the Harm of Pornography

Abstract: Many feminists argue that pornography should be censored because it harms women.1 While there is growing opposition to this procensorship position within feminism,2 it is liberals who resist censorship as a matter of principle. In this essay, I suggest that liberals should not adopt a stance of principled opposition to censoring pornography. This liberal stance is made up of three main ingredients.3 First, liberals argue that the state is entitled to intervene coercively in individuals' lives on the basis of a narrow harm principle which permits governments so to act only in order to protect the physical integrity of individuals. Since the evidence that pornography causes attacks on physical integrity is nowhere near conclusive, liberals suppose that pornography generally satisfies harmless male preferences. The harm principle cannot justify coercion in this case.4

Plural Values and Indeterminate Rankings

Abstract: It is often said that there is no common scale for measuring and comparing our basic values such as liberty, equality, justice, happiness, and security. Such values are said to be incommensurate or incommensurable.' How do we rank these values for making our choices? It appears that they do not fit into the standard way of ranking our preferences. Our purpose is to examine two nonstandard ways of ranking competing values or alternatives.

Two Levels of Pluralism

Abstract: Pluralism in ethics, as I understand it, is the view that there is an irreducible plurality of values or principles that are relevant to moral judgment. While the utilitarian says that all morally significant considerations can be reduced to quantities of pleasure and pain, and the Kantian says that all moraljudgment can be reduced to a single principle having to do with respect for rationality and the bearers of rationality, the pluralist insists that morality is not at the fundamental level so simple. Moreover, as many use the term, and as I shall use it in this essay, the pluralist believes that the plurality of morally significant values is not subject to a complete rational ordering. Thus, it is held that no principle or decision procedure exists that can guarantee a unique and determinate answer to every moral question involving a choice among different fundamental moral values or principles. My aim in this article is not to argue for the truth of ethical pluralism but, rather, to explore some implications of its truth, or even of the self-conscious recognition of the possibility of its truth. Specifically, I shall argue that pluralism, or, indeed, even the possibility of pluralism, has implications for the way we understand issues concerning moral objectivity and moral relativism, as well as implications for the positions we take on them. I shall begin by sketching a common pattern of thought about these issues.

Basic income capitalism

Abstract: Slipping back ever more deeply into laissez-faire capitalism, reaching desperately for the Swedish model, clinging defensively to the welfare state: is there any other future worth contemplating for advanced capitalist countries, now that whatever of genuine socialism was still left on the list of political possibilities, has been decisively squeezed out by what happened in Eastern Europe? Along with a growing number of people in Western Europe, I believe that there is, and, moreover, that this further possible future is more desirable than the three I have just mentioned. Basic income capitalism is the expression I shall use to describe this further possibility. It refers to a socio-economic regime in which the bulk of the means of production is privately owned, while each citizen receives, aside from any income she may derive from participation in the labour or capital markets or may owe to some specific status, a substantial unconditional income. The introduction of such an unconditional income is to be viewed, not as the dismantling, but as the culmination of the welfare state, prepared by welfare state achievements in the same way as the abolition of slavery or the introduction of universal suffrage had been prepared, and made possible, by earlier partial conquests. Awareness of the limitations of the protection afforded by associations for mutual aid, next by compulsory social insurance for all waged workers, finally by a conditional form of guaranteed minimum income, has gradually prepared the minds for this radical step, and has helped build the forces required to bring it about.

Honoring and Promoting Values

Abstract: How are we to characterize the distinction between consequentialist and nonconsequentialist moral theories? Philip Pettit has recently suggested that the difference lies in the way in which each theory tell us to respond to values. 1 He distinguishes between honoring a value and promoting it. To honor some value, such as honesty, in one's own life is to strive to be as honest as possible oneself. To promote its general realization is to devote oneself to encouraging as many people as possible to be honest. According to Pettit, this distinction holds for any value. Consequentialism requires us to promote whatever values there are. This will often, of course, involve honoring them in our own lives. Nevertheless, the consequentialist agent should honor those values only so far as honoring them is a way of promoting them. Where honoring conflicts with promoting, the former gives way to the latter. Nonconsequentialist theories, which include deontology, demand, of at least some of these values, that we honor them in our own lives, even if that means that we do not promote them as effectively as we might otherwise have done.2 This intuitively appealing account also appears to fit in well with what is fast becoming the standard method of drawing the distinction between consequentialism and deontology, which employs a contrast between the agent-neutral and the agent-relative. This latter contrast has been drawn in terms of values, rules, aims, theories, or, most commonly, reasons. On the last construal we may say, very roughly, that an agent is acting on an agent-relative reason if that reason makes essential reference to him; otherwise he is acting on an agent-neutral

Pluralism, Determinacy, and Dilemma

Abstract: Talk of pluralism and dilemma is everywhere in the air in contemporary ethics. And everywhere something called "moral theory" is coming in for a thumping. There is, it seems to me, ample reason for taking this talk of pluralism and dilemma seriously, and for trying to be as clear as we can about how it might bear on the enterprise of moral theorizing. Pluralism and dilemma come onto the scene as purported facts of moral experience-and who can wonder? Our moral thought and practice have multiple origins in human history and anthropology, bearing traces of sacred as well as secular conceptual schemes, of changing folk and scientific theories of mind and society, of codes of honor and retribution as well as norms of beneficence and fairness, of expedient social and political compromises hammered out in specific historical circumstances by competing interests under shifting power relations, and even of previous philosophical attempts at unification and legitimation. It is only to be expected that any new effort to find-or developcoherence and system in moral discourse will face some pretty recalcitrant phenomena. Of course, it is typical in philosophy to confront an area of discourse with a complex history. Thus philosophers often find themselves wondering whether to sacrifice some degree of intuitive fit in order to provide more plausible general principles or to furnish explanations that dovetail better with the present state of inquiry at large. But morality strikes many as exceptional: philosophical accounts of morality that achieve generality at the expense of intuitive fit may seem not only counterintuitive but also wrongheaded, crass-as normatively disqualified. Surely there is something to this reaction. Moral language is normative for us in a way that many other elements of natural language are not; for example, moral assessments appear to have an

Blocked Exchanges: A Taxonomy

Abstract: In Spheres ofJustice Michael Walzer lists fourteen "blocked exchanges": things which in the United States cannot be bought or sold. 1 He does so out of concern about domination; although his title refers tojustice, his target is oppression rather than inequality as such. It lessens domination, Walzer argues, to recognize different spheres-aspects of life in which different principles of distribution are appropriate. Separating these spheres limits the power any one person can acquire; even the greatest wealth, for instance, should not be able to buy human beings, political office, criminal justice, and so on. But in fact, of course, money is vastly powerful. If not human beings, it can buy us servants; if not political office, the attention of elected officials; if not criminal justice, the best lawyer in the country. And every day, it seems, there is more and more that money can buy. Some of the new commodities are inventive: singing telegrams, timeslices of condos; even the mortgage itself could be sold. Other commodities, actual or suggested, are more frightening. In Europe one can sell one's own kidney: for a few thousand dollars some people will have one kidney surgically removed and implanted in someone else's body.2 Richard Posner and William Landes have suggested a market in babies in the United States.3 Walzer would impede this march toward commodification. His list of blocked exchanges is rough and unorganized, suggestive rather than conclusive. It includes human beings; political power and influence;

Responsibility, Freedom, and Reason

Abstract: Freedom within Reason is a book which, in its own words, is \"unabashedly devoted to solving\" the problems of free will and moral responsibility (p. 4). Yet, as Susan Wolf is quick to caution, the \"solution\" offered in this intelligent and provocative book is not intended to \"put these problems, once and for all, to rest\" (p. 4). Rather, the hope is more modest-to provide a new way of interpreting and understanding these age-old worries, one which, if successful, will provide \"some degree of relief\" from the problems of free will and responsibility which have long exercised philosophers (p. 15). In this review, we first summarize briefly the background and structure of Wolf's argument; then we raise a number of critical questions concerning several of the central moves in that argument. In advancing these criticisms, we hope to question whether, and to what extent, the freedom Wolf finds within reason can provide the type of relief and new understanding that is needed, if not to silence, then at least to quiet traditional worries about free will and moral responsibility.

Coping with Moral Conflict and Ambiguity

Abstract: A complete ethic should address the question of how people are to act toward one another when they are in serious moral disagreement. 1 Some recent attempts to address the question have endorsed the idea of accommodating moral differences. I shall argue that their conceptions of accommodation are inadequate or incomplete, and that a more adequate conception must discuss the problem of how people in moral conflict are to live with one another. I shall explain how accommodation is a moral value rooted in the fact that serious conflict is a regular feature of our ethical lives, involving people with whom continuing relationships are both necessary and desirable. We already have in practice strategies of accommodation that constitute our practical commitment to this value. What we have lacked is the philosophical commitment to articulating and defending it.

Egalitarianism and Personal Desert

Abstract: To the extent that what people deserve is unequal, any distribution of benefits and burdens in accordance with individual deserts is apt to work against equality in that distribution. Not surprisingly, therefore, those who emphasize the place of desert in the determination of fair or just distributions see it as discrediting any thoroughgoing egalitarianism. Egalitarians have responded in various ways to the attempts of desert theorists to discredit egalitarianism but two in particular have been prominent. Some have argued that desert should at best have a relatively insignificant place in the determination of fair distributions; others, more extremely, that desert should have no place at all in such determinations. In this article I shall defend the former sort of response against objections and then go on to outline how the response can be made applicable to some fundamental distributional questions (or, at least, as applicable as a philosophical theory is likely to be). Proper consideration of these issues obviously requires being clear about the nature of desert. A comprehensive discussion is not feasible here so I shall simply restate those points which seem agreed as a result of the careful considerations of the concept of desert by, among others, Joel Feinberg (1970), John Kleinig (1971), and George Sher (1979, 1987). First, to deserve to be given some specified form of treatment a person, nonhuman animal, institution, or object must possess some characteristic or, objects excepted, have done, or refrained from doing,

Bertrand Russell in Ethics and Politics

Abstract: It is more or less de rigueur to begin a piece such as this by considering why anyone should take a serious philosphical interest in the ethics and politics of Bertrand Russell. Russell was, of course, one of the most profoundly influential philosophers of the twentieth century, but his most important contributions were, by his own account and almost everyone else's, in the realms of logic and a conglomeration of epistemology, philosophy of language, and ontology. These are the predominant and often overlapping concerns of numerous papers, such as those collected in Logic and Knowledge (Russell 197 ib), and also of a string of books, including the monumental Principia Mathematica (1910-13). Russell's extraordinary works on the logicist program and logical atomism-on the method of logical analysis and ontological economy best represented by his theory of types, his theory of descriptions and his approach to reference, and his various accounts of "our knowledge of the external world"-these are regarded as, if not exactly live options, then at least extremely important milestones on the way to the present state of philosophy and the basis for Russell's title to greatness.' But it was his colleague G. E. Moore who wrote Principia Ethica.

Places for Pluralism

Abstract: Many of the concerns about pluralism that pervade political theory and bedevil practical politics have their sources in remote regions of ethical theory. Political debates about multicultural education, assimilation, tolerance, political realism, diplomatic pragmatism, and the justification of liberal democracy and its critique by communitarians can all be connected to debates in ethical theory about relativism and realism, about the plurality of values, about the unity of the virtues, about conflicting principles of right conduct, and about divergent accounts of human good and the good life. The connection between political and ethical theory on these matters is direct and potent. It is also complex. Ethical relativism, for example, has been used both as a warrant for liberalism and as a reason for rejecting it. One side asserts that if there are several equally good ways of life, then democratic political institutions must be neutral between them; the other insists that if our way of life is as good as any other, then we are not obligated to change it in order to accommodate new members, new fashions, or new ideas. On June 7-9, 1991, a conference on the topic of pluralism and ethical theory was held at Hollins College, under the auspices of the Hollins Institute for Ethics and Public Policy and the editors of Ethics. Funding for the conference came from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund. The articles in the symposium published here are descendants of some of the papers given at the Hollins conference. Since these papers are (appropriately enough) quite diverse, a word or two of general introduction is in order.

Doing the Right Thing in Cross-Cultural Representation

Abstract: Looking back at the "rationality and relativism" debates that have surrounded anthropology in recent decades, one cannot but notice that the distinctively philosophical contributions have tended to lag behind developments in the discipline itself. There too, it seems, the Owl of Minerva takes flight only at dusk. Thus in the 1960s, as the classical realist paradigm was giving way to structuralist approches inspired by linguistics and interpretive approaches drawing on hermeneutics, the philosophical debate centered on questions of epistemic and instrumental rationality-questions concerning the truth and objectivity of beliefs and the efficacy and efficiency of practices. Comparisons of myth with science and of magic with technology, for example, supplied the principal arguments that Popperians brought against Peter Winch's early efforts to steer the discussion toward questions of meaning and intelligibility.' The emphasis on logical, epistemological, and methodological questions continued into the 1970s but was increasingly combined with a concern for problems of translating and interpreting across different languages, systems of belief, and styles of reasoning.2 In the 1980s problems of interpretation, particularly in the form given them by Quine and Davidson, finally came to dominate the philosphical side of the rationality and relativism debates as well.3 But this was happening just as developments in anthropology were

Revisionist Liberalism and the Decline of Culture

Abstract: In this article, I shall consider the question of state involvement in the subsidization of culture, that is to say, those items, such as the arts, the humanities, and higher education, which are intimately connected with a particular community's conception of the good life. The matter is a pressing concern in view of recent developments in political philosophy. What I have in mind are those liberal theories of justice which might be termed revisionist liberal. They are revisionist in the sense that they combine the traditional liberal emphasis on the preservation of individual rights to freedom with an egalitarian concern for the individual welfare rights of each member of society. These include the work of John Rawls and those who have fallen under his influence. With respect to the question of culture, the problem these theories raise is that they call into question the legitimacy of continuing state support or subsidization. First, liberals disagree even among themselves over the role the state should play in the cultural life of the political community. Second, while liberal theories do not necessarily rule out this support, they erect large obstacles in its path. In particular, revisionist liberalism seems to undermine current practices among Western societies where the level of state involvement in the arts is determined by majoritarian democratic political institutions. My principal intention is to dispel the confusion and ambiguity which surrounds the liberal position on culture. I shall begin by introducing the premises affirmed by liberals which bear most closely on the issue (Sec. I). I proceed to discuss Rawls's views on the support of culture and the considerable restrictions which he places on state involvement (Sec. II). I then show why a liberal argument tendered by Ronald Dworkin which foresees a far more robust role for the state

The Morality and Efficiency of Market Socialism

Abstract: One can defend the moral legitimacy of the institution of public property in two ways: on grounds of rights and on egalitarian grounds. An argument against public ownership on grounds of rights is presented by Robert Nozick, and rebutted by G. A. Cohen.' Nozick's argument is well known and hardly need be rehearsed here. A person has a right to appropriate part of the natural world ashis private property, as long as the consequences of the appropriation are such that no one is worse off than he would have been had the property remained in its natural state. In this way, one can conceive of a scenario in which eventually no part of the natural world remains unowned and all objects that are made from it and labor belong to individuals. Cohen responds that Nozick has an implicit assumption that the natural world is, morally speaking, originally unowned and, hence, up for grabs. But why not postulate that, morally speaking, the natural world is originally publicly owned? What would this mean? That no one would have a right to appropriate part of it as his own unless the public so agreed (by whatever decision-making procedure it has). But would not the public approve appropriations if Nozick's condition held, that is, if an appropriation would leave no one worse off-or, to sweeten the pot, let's say if it would leave everyone better off-than before the appropriation? No. The public might only approve the appropriation if it could think of no better way of using the land, say, than the candidate appropriator proposes. Or, it might approve the appropriation only if 80 percent of the gains from the appropriation are distributed to the public and 20 percent to the appropriator, while Nozick would

Is Socialism Dead? A Comment on Market Socialism and Basic Income Capitalism

Abstract: Is socialism dead? It all depends on what one means by 'socialism'. In his contribution to this symposium John Roemer defends the ethical desirability and practical feasibility of a particular version of market socialism.' Philippe Van Parijs's "Basic Income Capitalism" appeals to an egalitarian libertarian principle in order to support a radical variant of a negative income tax policy.2 Echoing the Rawlsian Difference Principle, Van Parijs proposes as a standard of distributive justice for a society the level of basic unconditional income grant enjoyed by the least free citizens. From this standpoint the issue of socialism versus capitalism is transformed into the question: Which type of economic system maximizes the level of unconditional basic income? Both articles are rooted in contemporary theory of justice rather than in principled hostility to market exchange. Arguably the latter was the basis for the critique of capitalism in classical Marxism. To this extent both Roemer and Van Parijs are engaged in the enterprise of revising and rethinking this classical left-wing critique of capitalism, which has fallen on hard times in popular opinion-perhaps most strikingly in the tide of current opinion among Scandinavians against social democracy, and most obviously in the attitudes of citizens of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union against authoritarian communism. What Roemer calls the "amazing events of the autumn of 1989," along with much of the rest of twentieth-century history, infuses a sense of urgency into his revisionist project. Roemer and Van Parijs strike me as agreeing quite substantially in the fundamental ethical principles that underlie their recommendations, even though their institutional recommendations are quite

Hedonism and Butler's stone

Abstract: Hedonism is a species of egoism. Egoism holds that all of our ultimate desires are self-directed. Hedonism goes further; it says that our only ultimate desire is the self-directed desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. 1 Although psychological egoism is fundamental to every major school of twentieth century psychology,2 many philosophers believe that decisive objections have been developed against that position. My goal in this article is not to review these various philosophical arguments, but to focus on just one of them. Bishop Butler is widely regarded as having refuted hedonism. His argument is succinctly stated in the following passage: "That all particular appetites and passions are towards external things themselves, distinct from the pleasure arising from them, is manifested from hence; that there could not be this pleasure, were it not for that prior suitableness between the object and the passion: there could be no enjoyment or delight from one thing more than another, from eating food more than from swallowing a stone, if there were not an affection or appetite to one thing more than another."3 I'll call this argument "Butler's stone." Echoes of Butler's reasoning can be heard when subsequent philosophers explain why hedonism is mistaken. C. D. Broad claims that misers and "almost any keen politician" give the lie to hedonism, since they desire money and power even when these items conflict with the attainment of happiness. He then remarks:

Knowing Novels: Nussbaum on Fiction and Moral Theory

Abstract: Love's Knowledge is two things-a collection of "Essays on Philosophy and Literature" pulled together from papers written over a period of about ten years and also an attempt to craft out of this material a unified position that will serve to reorient moral philosophy and to introduce and defend a distinctive approach to moral thinking and judgment that has ancient roots but has been largely neglected in modern thought. This review will focus on this second project and try to place and evaluate some of its central conceptions. I find myself in the perhaps odd position of sharing Nussbaum's sense of what is important for moral philosophy and reflection, including the need to take literature and the narrative arts in general as partners in a common enterprise and the view that emotion (affectivity) and love are key moral phenomena, while disagreeing with her major conclusions. But first, some remarks about the volume itself. As a collection, Love's Knowledge consists of fifteen essays, the earliest published in 1983. Three have been "expanded and revised," and two, plus a long introduction, are entirely new. This is an important body of work, valuable to have together in one place. Nussbaum's examinations of Henry James are by now well known and have occasioned much discussion; those of Proust, Dickens, and Beckett are equally fine. There are insights on every page, both for the study of philosophy and for the study of literature. As in her other work, Nussbaum relates present concerns to classical predecessors, particularly Aristotle, but also the Stoics, in ways that are both illuminating and challenging. In what is perhaps the finest essay in the book, "Steerforth's Arm: Love and the Moral Point of View" (new to this volume), there is a particularly informative discussion of Adam Smith which suggests several ways to reenter eighteenth-century moral philosophy and rewrite

The Moral Legislature: Contractualism Without an Archimedean Point

Abstract: Contract theory seems to have two strains. One strain relies on hypothetical consent; the other, on actual consent. In law, actual consent has always been dominant, arguments from hypothetical consent being used only in special circumstances to bring certain noncontract relations under ordinary contract law. The reverse seems to be true in political and moral theory. The great theorists of the social contract, especially Rousseau and Kant, seem to rely on hypothetical consent.1 The recent revival of contract theory has not changed that. The chief figure in that revival is, of course, John Rawls. His use of hypothetical consent is (more or less) limited to political theory, the principles of justice governing a particular society. But his example has led others, most notably David Gauthier, to use hypothetical consent to construct a moral theory. Like Gauthier, I shall be concerned here with moral theory. Theories of hypothetical consent are fundamentally Cartesian. Their purpose is-as Gauthier says-to identify an \"Archimedean point, ... that position one must occupy, if one's own decisions are to possess the moral force needed to govern the moral realm.\"2 In

Conflict and Inquiry

Abstract: Thus, John Dewey begins his Human Nature and Conduct. The theme Dewey means to press is familiar enough in his work. Morality seeks to control human nature which resists regulation and so comes to be regarded as a source of evil to be mastered. But given the intractability of human nature, pressure builds to identify some aspect of human nature which is subject to moral control. Dewey writes: "The severance of morals from human nature ends by driving morals inwards from the public open out-of-doors air and light of day into the obscurities and privacies of an inner life. The significance of the traditional discussion of free will is that it reflects precisely a separation of moral activity from nature and the public life of men."2 Dewey sought to draw the contrast between the moral and the nonmoral in a way which avoids "the severance of morals from human nature." He granted that morality is concerned with the regulation of human conduct. Perhaps it would be better to say that Dewey granted that moral questions are questions concerning human conduct, for, on his view, the notion of there being a morality consisting of a system of normative principles which are distinctively moral is part and parcel of the severance of morals from human nature he sought to avoid. Dewey wrote: "Conduct as moral may thus be defined as activity called forth and directed by ideas of value or worth where the values concerned

The Utilitarian Response: The Contemporary Viability of Utilitarian Political Philosophy

Abstract: Utilitarianism - Lincoln Allison What is it and Why Should it Respond? The Utilitarian Ethics of Punishment and Torture - Lincoln Allison Justice and Utility in Health Care - John Day A Stage in Moral Development - Paul Lucardie Choice and Utility - Samuel Brittan Individual Choice and the Retreat from Utilitarianism - Andrew Reeve Utilitarianism, Conservatism and Social Policy - John R Gibbins Government House Utilitarianism - Robert E Goodin Utilitarian Ethics and Democratic Government - Jonathan Riley Benthamism as 'Positive', Rational Choice, Theory of Democracy. Does it Work? - Ian Budge