Pluralism, Kant and Progress
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Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy
1 Introduction Yong Huang and Yang Xiao It is only quite recently that moral relativism has become a central topic among moral philosophers. About thirty years ago, in 1979, Philippa Foot had the following to say: Because moral relativism is “one of those natural philosophical thoughts . one might therefore expect that mor- al relativism would be a central topic among those discussed in classes and in the journals. Surprisingly, however, the truth has for long been quite otherwise. Many recent books on moral philosophy ignore the problem or give it perfunctory treatment, and it is only in the last two or three years that strong, interesting articles have begun to appear in print” (Foot 2002, 20). In 1984, David Wong’s Moral Relativity, the first book-length study of moral relativism appeared (Wong 1984). Since then, there have been many books and journal articles on the topic.1 It is a significant fact that, in contrast to most of the people who have aimed at establishing its falsity, Wong is among a handful of contemporary philosophers in the English-speaking world who are willing to defend certain forms of relativism.2 In his second book on moral relativism, Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (Wong 2006), which is the focus of this edited volume, Wong gives new arguments for an ambitious, sophisti- cated, and original version of moral relativism, which was first sketched out in his 1984 book. As one of the reviewers remarks, Wong’s new book is “the most systematic and persuasive defense of moral relativism that has yet been written” (Gowans 2007). -
'History, Method and Pluralism: a Re-Interpretation of Isaiah Berlin's
HISTORY, METHOD, AND PLURALISM A Re-interpretation of Isaiah Berlin’s Political Thought Thesis submitted to the University of London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by HAOYEH London School of Economics and Political Science 2005 UMI Number: U205195 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U205195 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 S 510 Abstract of the Thesis In the literature on Berlin to date, two broad approaches to study his political thought can be detected. The first is the piecemeal approach, which tends to single out an element of Berlin’s thought (for example, his distinction between negative liberty and positive liberty) for exposition or criticism, leaving other elements unaccounted. And the second is the holistic approach, which pays attention to the overall structure of Berlin’s thought as a whole, in particular the relation between his defence for negative liberty and pluralism. This thesis is to defend the holistic approach against the piecemeal approach, but its interpretation will differ from the two representative readings, offered by Claude J. -
Religious Freedom and Public Argument: John Courtney Murray on “The American Proposition”
Loyola University Chicago Law Journal Volume 50 Issue 1 Fall 2018 Article 6 2018 Religious Freedom and Public Argument: John Courtney Murray on “The American Proposition” Robin W. Lovin Follow this and additional works at: https://lawecommons.luc.edu/luclj Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Robin W. Lovin, Religious Freedom and Public Argument: John Courtney Murray on “The American Proposition”, 50 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 25 (). Available at: https://lawecommons.luc.edu/luclj/vol50/iss1/6 This Symposium Article is brought to you for free and open access by LAW eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Loyola University Chicago Law Journal by an authorized editor of LAW eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Religious Freedom and Public Argument: John Courtney Murray on “The American Proposition” Robin W. Lovin* In his classic essays in We Hold These Truths, John Courtney Murray developed an understanding of “the American proposition” that integrated a theological account of human good with the search for public consensus in a constitutional democracy. While this understanding of the relationship between religious freedom and political life was incorporated into Catholic social teaching at the Second Vatican Council, subsequent developments in both political theory and theology call Murray’s understanding of public discourse into question. This essay examines these challenges and argues that Murray’s reconciliation of moral truth and political choice is still an important resource for discussion of religious freedom and other moral issues in today’s polarized politics. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 25 I. MURRAY’S LEGACY .................................................................... 26 II. THE PUBLIC ARGUMENT ........................................................... -
Lawyers, Justice and the Challenge of Moral Pluralism
Scholarly Commons @ UNLV Boyd Law Scholarly Works Faculty Scholarship 2005 Lawyers, Justice and the Challenge of Moral Pluralism Katherine R. Kruse University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub Part of the Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons Recommended Citation Kruse, Katherine R., "Lawyers, Justice and the Challenge of Moral Pluralism" (2005). Scholarly Works. 36. https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub/36 This Article is brought to you by the Scholarly Commons @ UNLV Boyd Law, an institutional repository administered by the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Article Lawyers, Justice, and the Challenge of Moral Pluralism Katherine R. Kruset Some of the most compelling questions of legal ethics de- fine the lawyer's professional role in the gap between what is legally permitted and what is just.' Perhaps for that reason, professional responsibility hypotheticals are replete with cli- ents who want to use the law for arguably immoral purposes- from criminal defendants who want to avoid punishment to corporate executives who want to avoid government regula- tion. 2 Because these clients do not want to break the law out- right, ethical standards do not clearly indicate whether lawyers should be professionally obligated to represent them or ethi- cally restrained from doing so. Instead, questions about the lawyer's role rest in larger issues of justice. t Associate Professor, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Ne- vada Las Vegas. -
On Berlin's Liberal Pluralism
On Berlin’s Liberal Pluralism An examination of the political theories of Sir Isaiah Berlin, concentrated around the problem of combining value pluralism and liberalism. Dag Einar Thorsen Cand. Polit. Thesis Department of Political Science, University of Oslo April 2004 2 Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Isaiah Berlin’s thought and the ensuing debate..................................................................................... 4 1.2 About this study...................................................................................................................................... 9 1.2.1 Questions – and the reasons for asking them.............................................................................. 9 1.2.2 Theory and method ................................................................................................................... 11 1.2.3 Outline ...................................................................................................................................... 13 2. ISAIAH BERLIN IN POLITICAL THEORY...................................................................... 15 2.1 Introduction: La théorie politique, existe-t-elle? ................................................................................. 15 2.2 Elusive concepts and categories .......................................................................................................... 17 2.2.1 Pluralism ................................................................................................................................. -
Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science by Dr
Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science By Dr. Charles Wallis Last revision: 1/23/2013 Chapter 2 Greek Metaphysical Speculation: Philosophical Materialisms and Dualisms 2.1 Introduction It may seem odd to the contemporary thinker to suppose that people did not always have a clear conception of the mind and of mental phenomena. Nevertheless, like most contemporary western concepts the development of the notion of the mind and of mental phenomena actually occurs over the course of centuries. Indeed, the development of the notion of “the mind” arguably traces back to the development of the Greek notion of the soul. For most of Greek history the conception of the soul bears little resemblance to its contemporary western counterpart. In fact, the Greeks develop their notion of the soul as part of the development of general ontological frameworks for scientific and metaphysical speculation. Three features of the development of the Greek notion of the soul figure prominently in this rather superficial history. First, the development of the Greek notion of the soul represents a slow accretion of properties and processes associated with three different contemporary distinctions into a single ontological entity; living vs non-living, animate vs inanimate, and mental vs non-mental. Second, as the soul becomes more distinct both in its nature and in its functions, the Greeks begin to more actively debate whether the soul constitutes a fundamental kind of stuff (a distinct substance) or merely one of many permutations of more fundamental kinds of stuff (substances). For instance, early Greek thinkers often supposed that the universe consists of various permutations of one or more fundamental elements. -
Original Monotheism: a Signal of Transcendence Challenging
Liberty University Original Monotheism: A Signal of Transcendence Challenging Naturalism and New Ageism A Thesis Project Report Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Divinity in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Ministry Department of Christian Leadership and Church Ministries by Daniel R. Cote Lynchburg, Virginia April 5, 2020 Copyright © 2020 by Daniel R. Cote All Rights Reserved ii Liberty University School of Divinity Thesis Project Approval Sheet Dr. T. Michael Christ Adjunct Faculty School of Divinity Dr. Phil Gifford Adjunct Faculty School of Divinity iii THE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY THESIS PROJECT ABSTRACT Daniel R. Cote Liberty University School of Divinity, 2020 Mentor: Dr. T. Michael Christ Where once in America, belief in Christian theism was shared by a large majority of the population, over the last 70 years belief in Christian theism has significantly eroded. From 1948 to 2018, the percent of Americans identifying as Catholic or Christians dropped from 91 percent to 67 percent, with virtually all the drop coming from protestant denominations.1 Naturalism and new ageism increasingly provide alternative means for understanding existential reality without the moral imperatives and the belief in the divine associated with Christian theism. The ironic aspect of the shifting of worldviews underway in western culture is that it continues with little regard for strong evidence for the truth of Christian theism emerging from historical, cultural, and scientific research. One reality long overlooked in this regard is the research of Wilhelm Schmidt and others, which indicates that the earliest religion of humanity is monotheism. Original monotheism is a strong indicator of the existence of a transcendent God who revealed Himself as portrayed in Genesis 1-11, thus affirming the truth of essential elements of Christian theism and the falsity of naturalism and new ageism. -
Value Pluralism and Liberal Democracy
Value Pluralism and Liberal Democracy Yao Lin Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Yao Lin All rights reserved ABSTRACT Value Pluralism and Liberal Democracy Yao Lin As the title indicates, this three-essay dissertation explores the relations between value pluralism and liberal democracy. The first essay, “Negative versus Positive Freedom: Making Sense of the Dichotomy,” starts with the puzzling appeal of the negative-versus-positive-freedom dichotomy. Why has this distinction, despite forceful criticisms against it, continued to dominate mainstream discourses on freedom in contemporary political theory? Does it grasp something fundamental about the phenomenology of freedom? In this essay I examine four main approaches to making sense of the appeal of this dichotomy, and the challenges they each face. Both the conventional, naive contrast between “freedom from” and “freedom to,” and the revisionist strategy to distinguish between the “opportunity-concept” and the “exercise-concept” of freedom, upon close scrutiny, fail to survive MacCallum’s triadic argument against all dichotomous views on the concept of freedom. The third account, which reduce the negative/positive dichotomy of freedom to the divide between “phenomenal” and “nounemal” conceptions of the self, or of the range of preventing conditions, is both interpretively misleading and conceptually uninformative, as I illustrate by using Berlin’s discussion on self-abnegation as an example. In the fourth place, I analyze why both the historical bifurcation account that take the negative/positive dichotomy of freedom as merely genealogical, on the one hand, and the republican critique of it based on the presumably sublating conception of non-domination, on the other hand, are unsatisfying. -
Sir Isaiah Berlin, Oral History Interview – 4/12/1965 Administrative Information
Sir Isaiah Berlin, Oral History Interview – 4/12/1965 Administrative Information Creator: Sir Isaiah Berlin Interviewer: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Date of Interview: April 12, 1965 Place of Interview: Washington, D.C. Length: 23 pages Biographical Note Berlin, a professor of social and political theory at Oxford University from 1957 to 1967, discusses conversations he had with John F. Kennedy (JFK) about political theory and Russian politics, and compares JFK to other political leaders throughout history, among other issues. Access Open. Usage Restrictions According to the deed of gift signed June 29, 1971, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. Users of these materials are advised to determine the copyright status of any document from which they wish to publish. Copyright The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be “used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.” If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excesses of “fair use,” that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. The copyright law extends its protection to unpublished works from the moment of creation in a tangible form. -
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, (), – at – )
Offprint from OXFORDSTUDIES INANCIENT PHILOSOPHY EDITOR:BRADINWOOD VOLUMEXLIX 3 MAKINGSENSEOF STOICINDIFFERENTS JACOBKLEIN . Introduction A to the older Stoics, virtue is the only good and the sole constituent of happiness, but certain ordinary objects of desire, such as health and wealth, possess a kind of value that makes them fitting objects of pursuit. These items are indifferent, the Stoics say, but nonetheless promoted. Though health and wealth make no con- tribution to the human good, the Stoics argue that we are to pursue them whenever circumstances allow. Indeed, a failure to maintain one’s health and wealth in ordinary circumstances is a failure of ra- tionality and an impediment to virtue, in their view. This doctrine has provoked criticism in ancient commentators and puzzlement in modern ones. An ancient line of criticism— prominent in Plutarch and Alexander of Aphrodisias—can be © Jacob Klein For help with this paper, I especially thank Terry Irwin and Tad Brennan. Terry patiently read, commented on, and discussed early drafts, helping me formulate and sharpen my claims. Though I have ventured to disagree with him, I am grateful for the skill and patience with which he pressed me to clarify my views. Tad Brennan provided input and guidance at a later stage. I owe much to his work on Stoicism and to our conversations over the years. I am especially grateful for feedback re- ceived from students in his graduate course on Stoic ethics, offered at Cornell Uni- versity in the Spring of . Brad Inwood provided extensive comments on later drafts, correcting mistakes and suggesting improvements. -
Monism and Pluralism: the History of Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Architecture - Part I Paul Guyer
Monism and Pluralism: The History of Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Architecture - Part I Paul Guyer I. Monism and Pluralism in the Early History of Aesthetics One way to think about the history of aesthetics since its inception as a properly named subdiscipline of philosophy in the early eighteenth century is to think of it as a debate about the right way to understand the relations among the terms of the Neo-Platonist triad comprised by the true, the good, and the beautiful: do these terms designate three separate domains of human interest, the theoretical, the practical and moral, and the aesthetic, the boundaries between which must be sharply defined and maintained, or do they designate three aspects of human experience that can and should be fused in practice, indeed do they suggest that the distinctive function of art among human activities is precisely to fuse our natural love of beauty with our theoretical and moral concerns, to provide a kind of unity in human experience that we otherwise do not find?1 Immanuel Kant might be thought to be the foremost of separatists rather than synthesizers in the modern history of aesthetics: his definition in the “Analytic of the Beautiful” in the Critique of the Power of Judgment of the “judgment of taste” as “aesthetic,” where that means that it is neither cognitive nor practical, that on the one hand “In order to decide whether or not something is beautiful, we do not relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition”2 and that on the other hand “The agreeable, -
What Is Jewish (If Anything) About Isaiah Berlin’S Philosophy?
Religions 2012, 3, 289–319; doi:10.3390/rel3020289 OPEN ACCESS religions ISSN 2077-1444 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Article What is Jewish (If Anything) about Isaiah Berlin’s Philosophy? Arie M. Dubnov Department of History, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Building 200, Stanford CA 94305, USA; E-Mail: [email protected] Received: 23 March 2012; in revised form: 28 March 2012 / Accepted: 31 March 2012 / Published: 13 April 2012 Abstract: This paper has two central aims: First, to reappraise Isaiah Berlin‘s political thought in a historically contextualized way, and in particular: to pay attention to a central conceptual tensions which animates it between, on the one hand, his famous definition of liberalism as resting on a negative concept of liberty and, on the other, his defense of cultural nationalism in general and Zionism in particular. Second, to see what do we gain and what do we lose by dubbing his philosophy Jewish. The discussion will proceed as follows: after describing the conceptual tension (Section 1), I will examine Berlin‘s discussion of nationalism and explain why comparisons between him and Hans Kohn as well as communitarian interpretations of him are incomplete and have limited merit. I will continue with a brief discussion of Berlin‘s Jewishness and Zionism (Section 3) and explain why I define this position ―Diaspora Zionism‖. The two concluding sections will discuss Berlin‘s place within a larger Cold War liberal discourse (Section 5) and why I find it problematic to see his political writings as part of a Jewish political tradition (Section 6).