Prelude: for those who were paying close attention to my haiku last week: yes, I did have the procedure done and, yes, things turned out well. There is nothing nasty growing inside my butt. Prelude complete. Anyway: I don't want to say much here about the ROYAL CARRIBEAN case issued by the US Supreme Court last week, in part because I may have something to say about it two months from now, as part of my annual round-up of all things SCOTUS. I'll only for today note that the case has Justice Thomas writing for the court, as one of an eight-member majority thereof, with Justice Kagan the sole standout. And my only point is to ask a question. Does anyone know of another decision within the last couple of years that came down just that way? In many politically sensitive cases, one gets a 6-3 lineup. Sometimes the split consists of appointees of Presidents of the Republican Party versus those of Presidents of the Democratic Party, as in LOUISI...
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Book I of The Republic has four parts. Plato doesn't name them, but we may call them the Cephalus, the Polemarchus, the build-up of Thrasymachus, and the critique of Thrasymachus. Let us take them one at a time. I. The Cephalus. Cephalus is an old and wealthy man, who owns the home in which the disputants have gathered. He and Socrates have a brief and courteous conversation, which establishes that there are consolations of old age. One of these is that the passions (the desire for sex, for example) die down and allow reason to govern one’s actions unchallenged. That is an important foreshadowing of later elements in the book. Cephalus and Socrates briefly discuss the issue of what is justice. But the old man doesn’t want to get too deeply into the question and says goodbye. II. The Polemarchus . Polemarchus is Cephalus’ son and heir, and Socrates says only half-jokingly that he may have inherited his father’s part in this discussion. Asked what it is to be just: Polemarch...
As the importance of east Asia (not just China and/or Japan) in the global picture increases, it may behoove is to learn a little something about Pancasila. That is an Indonesian term, derived from Old Javanese words for "five" and "principles." It has become a political philosophy central to discourse in that country. The principles are: Belief in the One and Only God; A just and civilized humanity; The unity of Indonesia; Representational democracy as an expression of collective wisdom, and Social Justice for all Indonesians. Sukarno presented these principles in a speech on June 1, 1945, when the war in Europe was over and the end of the war in Asia, too, was in sight. Sorry to sound neocolonialist and all that, but ... is that list of principles as vacuous as it sounds?
A new take on Plato's politics, GLAUCON'S FATE, will be available from Paul Dry Books in about a month. A new take on Plato's politics? A novel take on a subject that has been under debate for two and a half millennia? This speaks to a good deal of confidence on the part of the author, Jacob Howland, in the possibility that he really has something new to say. And the newness consists in looking to the frame story. The Republic begins thus (Socrates is speaking): I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess (Bendis, the Thracian Artemis.); and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the so...
Grant John Rawls a lot of assumptions. Grant his moral epistemology of "reflective equilibrium," to start. Grant that justice consists of the broad institutional features of a society, and grant that THESE should be what hypothetical negotiators would cook up behind a "veil of ignorance." All those concessions still won't lead us to the conclusions that Rawls is set upon, unless we also agree with him about whether the negotiators would adopt the conclusion that Rawls thinks they will adopt? Would they adopt the equal liberty principle and difference principle, and would they do so in a lexical ordering? The decades since Rawls' elaboration of his views in A Theory of Justice have given people plenty of opportunities to spill out alternative outcomes of those negotiations. But James Mirrlees (pictured above) didn't need a lot of time. He did so almost instantly. I haven't read Mirrlees' paper, but a secondary source describes him as sayi...
Just a brief quote today, from John Rawls. "To say that a political conviction is objective is to say that there are reasons, specified by a reasonable and mutually recognizable political conception (satisfying those essentials) sufficient to convince all reasonable persons that it is reasonable." Yes, in context Rawls had also listed the "essentials" to which he makes reference here. But we don't need them for today's point. I think this illustrates the sort of circular reasoning to which constructivists in moral philosophy often fall prey. This is part of the argument behind his theory of justice as a matter of the principles that would be adopted behind a veil of ignorance by, yes, reasonable people. The problem is that such work ends up presuming in a word like "reasonable" the whole of its eventual conclusions. So ... my theory is in accord with reason because it is the one with which reasonable people would agree. The people who do ...
The headline of this blog entry is the title of a newly published book by Colleen Murphy, out from Cambridge University Press. Murphy is a professor of law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Here is a link to the amazon page for her book. If I understand it, the question that concerns Murphy is the old one -- how should revolutionaries, who have taken power on a promise to pursue broader social transformation, understand their job? What do they do next? The constitution established in South Africa in 1993, with the success of negotiations to end apartheid, was specifically called the "Interim Constitution." Two years later the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, passed by the parliament pursuant to that interim constitution, created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was both truth finding and amnesty granting. That TRC is at the heart of what Murphy has in mind by "transitional justice." But she doesn't want ...
As I believe I've mentioned in this blog before, I contend that there are four components that must go into an complete and accurate ethical (and metaethical) philosophy, but to my dismay, few if any contemporary philosophers combine them. Such a successful ethics would be cognitivist, intuitionist, teleological, and pluralist. That is: it would see right and wrong, good and bad, as issues open to knowledge, not mere taste; it would allow room for intuition (a direct apprehension analogous to but not in fact sensory perception) at the base of this cognition; it would see the right as the way to get to the good; it would allow for more than one goodness, and perhaps then more than one right, too. I believe that Isaiah Berlin combined all these features But he's been dead for 20 years, and his period of "flourishing" requires that one go back somewhat further than that. A figure of more recent vintage? The Indian philosopher Amartya Sen, who is still with us, ...
John Rawls saw himself as an heir of Immanuel Kant. I have long had this tidbit of knowledge stuck in the back of my head, a remnant of my law school days when Rawls was a common subject of discussion. But I've never bothered to document it. Recent interests have led me to do so, and among supporting texts I'll offer only three. One comes from the Preface, where he states clearly, that his theory is "highly Kantian in nature. Indeed, I must disclaim any originality for the views I put forward." A little later, in his Chapter One, he invokes Kant to explain the "original position," his reworking of the old idea of the "state of nature." This original position "is not, of course, thought of as a an actual historical state of affairs, much less as a primitive condition of culture. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice." That phrasing seems to admit that the ...
Might as well push my luck, and apply this six-point template again. 1) In anthropology, Aristotle dissented from Plato's dualism, treating the human soul as the form of the human body. 2) In metaphysics, he is remembered for a modified realism about universals. He held that appleness is one and the same fact whether I am speaking of this apple or that apple. BUT he denied that appleness is a fact metaphysically separate from any and all of the particular apples. 3) In epistemology, Aristotle added a note of empiricism to his teacher's critical rationalism. He sought for example to collect what was known about living organisms in his day before drawing conclusions about life processes. 4) In ethics, Aristotle believed that the virtuous man (the great-souled man) will do what is right. The task of ethics is neither laying down duties or deliberating over consequences, but cultivating virtue. 5) In politics, Aristotle believed that the best city is likely to be ...
Just to practice concision. 1) In anthropology, Plato was the first of the great dualists. He emphasized the sharp distinction between a physical man and the real eternal man. 2) In metaphysics, Plato is remembered for his clear statement of the realist position on universals. A concept such as "justice" or "beauty" is not merely a notion inside someone's mind, nor is it merely a resemblance between the different acts we call just, the different objects we consider beautiful;, etc. It is more than that. The Idea or Form of Justice is a reality, one of the supreme realities, and specific examples are real by virtue of their participation in their universals, not vice versa. 3. In epistemology, Plato believed in critical rationalism. The way to approach truth is to begin with someone's naïve notions and cross-examine them ruthlessly. A philosopher thus becomes a midwife to a truth that will come out of others. (Those unlucky enough to run into him in ...