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Showing papers in "Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement in 1987"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The main link between these concerns is the idea that what people want is a fundamental justification (other things being equal, of course) for their getting it as mentioned in this paper, which is an inevitable consequence of a liberal notion of the individual and liberals' extremely limited conception of harm.
Abstract: I attempt in this paper to do two things: to offer some comments about recent discussions of the suggested institutionalization of surrogacy agreements; and in doing so, to draw attention to a range of considerations which liberals tend to omit from their moral assessments. The main link between these concerns is the idea that what people want is a fundamental justification (other things being equal, of course) for their getting it. I believe that this idea is profoundly mistaken; yet it is an inevitable consequence of a liberal notion of the individual and liberals' extremely limited conception of harm. My intention, then, is to illustrate how unease about a concrete problem—whether or not surrogacy agreements should be institutionalized—might interact with dissatisfaction about liberal individualism to make clearer what the unease consists in and to suggest why liberal individualism is inadequate as a basis for moral philosophy.

3 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In his introduction to a published account of the 1971 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders occupation and work-in, entitled The Right to Work, Mr Harold Wilson (then, significantly, in opposition) declared that what the men of the Clyde proclaimed, and what I went to Clydeside to assert, was "the right to work".
Abstract: There is widespread agreement that the most serious and debilitating contemporary social problem in the developed capitalist world is the problem of enforced or involuntary unemployment. The growth in mass unemployment in the 1970s and 80s has produced a renewal of the demand by the labour and trade union movement1 for the implementation of a ‘right to work’; presumably in the belief that the official recognition and legal enforcement of such a right would lead to the increased availability of jobs. This campaigning slogan has sometimes emanated from the most unlikely sources. In his introduction to a published account of the 1971 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders occupation and work-in, entitled The Right to Work, Mr Harold Wilson (then, significantly, in opposition) declared that ‘what the men of the Clyde proclaimed, and what I went to Clydeside to assert, was “the right to work”. And that principle cannot, and must not, be denied.’

1 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors set themselves the task of commenting on the practice of philosophy in the light of their work as a philosopher in a university postgraduate department of war studies.
Abstract: I have chosen this title to set myself the task of commenting on the practice of philosophy in the light of my work as a philosopher in a university postgraduate department of war studies. I shall begin with some general remarks on how we are to understand ‘philosophy’, then discuss a neglected one-sidedness in the commentary which philosophers have attempted on such topics as the problems of the nuclear age.

1 citations