Equality and Human Need

1977 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 983-998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin Zetterbaum

This paper has the twofold purpose of exploring how and whether it may be said that value arises from human need and, in particular, how the value of equality may arise from an alleged human need for recognition. It traces two opposite dispositions toward recognition, one seeing it as destructive of the minimum conditions for political life, the other viewing it as the principal agency through which men achieve their humanity. The concept of a basic human need is then exposed to the criticism of “social apperception,” which apparently renders meaningless the concept altogether. Nevertheless, two “faces” of recognition are explored – one affirming that common human nature in virtue of which all men are said to be equal, and the other, affirming the concrete specificity of each individual. The paper concludes by arguing that this second aspect of the drive for recognition, which is viewed by some as the primary political obligation, is actually not a legitimate aspiration of political life.

Moreana ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (Number 207) (1) ◽  
pp. 36-56
Author(s):  
Gerard Wegemer

After establishing a context of More's lifelong engagement with the “calculus” of pleasure, this essay shows how the section devoted to the Utopians' pleasure philosophy is structured around five formulations of a “rule” to calculate “true and honest [honesta]” pleasure in ways that playfully imitate and echo the “rule” Cicero formulates several times in De officiis to discern one's duty when there seems to be a conflict between honestas et utilitas. When followed, the Utopian pleasure calculus shows the necessary role of societas, officii, iustitia, caritas, and the other aspects of human nature, most importantly friendship, that Cicero stresses in his rule and that he argued Epicurus ignored. Much of the irony and humor of this section depends on seeing the predominance of Ciceronian vocabulary in Raphael's unusual defense [patrocinium] of pleasure, rather than a Ciceronian defense of duty rooted in honestas. Throughout, however, this essay also shows how More goes beyond Cicero by including Augustinian and biblical allusions to suggest ways that our final end is not as Epicurus or the Stoics or Cicero claim; the language and allusions of this section point to a level of good cheer and care for neighbors and for God in ways quite different from any classical thinker.


Author(s):  
Richard Dagger

This book aims to develop a unified theory of political obligation and the justification of punishment that takes its bearings from the principle of fair play. Much has been written on each of these subjects, of course, including numerous essays in recent years that approach one or the other topic in fair-play terms. However, there has been no sustained effort to link the two in a fair-play theory of political obligation and punishment. This book undertakes such an effort. This introduction explains why such a theory is an attractive possibility and how the argument for it unfolds in the succeeding chapters.


2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Mittag

If one is to believe that p justifiably, then one must believe p for, or because of, one's evidence or reasons in support of p. The basing relation is exactly this relation that obtains between one's belief and one's reasons for believing. Keith Allen Korcz, in a recent article published in this Journal, has argued that two conditions are each sufficient and are jointly necessary to establish basing relations between beliefs and reasons. One condition is formulated to account for basing relations that can obtain in virtue of causal relations between one's belief and reasons, and the other condition is supposed to account for basing relations which can be established independently of the instantiation of any such causal relation.


1969 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-198
Author(s):  
Robert B. Duke

To study the function of personality variables in the perception of other people, 52 undergraduate males were administered the Philosophies of Human Nature Scale and the Embedded-figures Test. Relatively low but significant positive correlations were found between field independence and trustworthiness, altruism, and the positive view of human nature. There was no significant correlation between field independence and strength of will, independence, complexity, and variability. Apparently, the personality of the one perceiving is relevant to what is perceived in the other person.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
EkramBadr El-din ◽  
Mohamed Dit Dah Ould Cheikh

The current study tries to examine the military coups that have occurred in Turkey and Mauritania. These coups differ from the other coups that occurred in the surrounding countries in the phase of democratization as these coups served as a hindrance to the process of democratization in Turkey and Mauritania. The problem of the study revolves around the analysis of the coups that happened in Turkey and Mauritania in the phase of democratic transition. The research is designed to answer the following question: what are the reasons that prompted the military establishment to intervene in political life in the shadow of the process of democratization in Turkey and Mauritania? The study aims at understanding reasons that pushed the military establishment to intervene in the political life. To discuss this phenomenon and achieve the required results, the analytical descriptive approach is adopted for concluding key results that may contribute to understand reasons that pushed the military establishment to intervene in the political life in Turkey and Mauritania in the aftermath democratization occurred in the two countries. The study concluded that the military establishment in both countries engaged in the political action and became ready to militarily intervene in the case of harming its interests and acquisitions. 


PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 381-388
Author(s):  
William Park

But the Discovery [of when to laugh and when to cry] was reserved for this Age, and there are two Authors now living in this Metropolis, who have found out the Art, and both brother Biographers, the one of Tom Jones, and the other of Clarissa.author of Charlotte SummersRather than discuss the differences which separate Fielding and Richardson, I propose to survey the common ground which they share with each other and with other novelists of the 1740's and 50's. In other words I am suggesting that these two masters, their contemporaries, and followers have made use of the same materials and that as a result the English novels of the mid-eighteenth century may be regarded as a distinct historic version of a general type of literature. Most readers, it seems to me, do not make this distinction. They either think that the novel is always the same, or they believe that one particular group of novels, such as those written in the early twentieth century, is the form itself. In my opinion, however, we should think of the novel as we do of the drama. No one kind of drama, such as Elizabethan comedy or Restoration comedy, is the drama itself; instead, each is a particular manifestation of the general type. Each kind bears some relationship to the others, but at the same time each has its own identity, which we usually call its conventions. By conventions I mean not only stock characters, situations, and themes, but also notions and assumptions about the novel, human nature, society, and the cosmos itself. If we compare one kind of novel to another without first considering the conventions of each, we are likely to make the same mistake that Thomas Rymer did when he blamed Shakespeare for not conforming to the canons of classical French drama.


Human Affairs ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Skowroński

AbstractIn the present paper, the author looks at the political dimension of some trends in the visual arts within twentieth-century avant-garde groups (cubism, expressionism, fauvism, Dada, abstractionism, surrealism) through George Santayana’s idea of vital liberty. Santayana accused the avant-gardists of social and political escapism, and of becoming unintentionally involved in secondary issues. In his view, the emphasis they placed on the medium (or diverse media) and on treating it as an aim in itself, not, as it should be, as a transmitter through which a stimulating relationship with the environment can be had, was accompanied by a focus on fragments of life and on parts of existence, and, on the other hand, by a de facto rejection of ontology and cosmology as being crucial to understanding life and the place of human beings in the universe. The avant-gardists became involved in political life by responding excessively to the events of the time, instead of to the everlasting problems that are the human lot.


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA HUNEEUS

AbstractThis article argues that human rights law – which mediates between claims about universal human nature, on the one hand, and hard-fought political battles, on the other – is in particular need of a richer exchange between jurisprudential approaches and social science theory and methods. Using the example of the Inter-American Human Rights System, the article calls for more human rights scholarship with a new realist sensibility. It demonstrates in what ways legal and social science scholarship on human rights law both stand to improve through sustained, thoughtful exchange.


1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Frank I. Michelman

Prescriptive political and moral theories contain ideas about what human beings are like and about what, correspondingly, is good for them. Conceptions of human “nature” and corresponding human good enter into normative argument by way of support and justification. Of course, it is logically open for the ratiocinative traffic to run the other way. Strongly held convictions about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of certain social institutions or practices may help condition and shape one's responses to one or another set of propositions about what people are like and what, in consequence, they have reason to value.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Rosângela Tenório de Carvalho

Este artigo tem como objeto o discurso sobre alteridade em articulação com experiência docente. Pretende-se dar visibilidade à expressão material, conceitual e pedagógica desse discurso em suas relações. A reflexão está sustentada nos estudos pós-colonialistas e pós-estruturalistas. Problematiza-se a interpretação da alteridade como uma possibilidade de acessar a experiência do outro, sentir como o outro em sua essencia, pois entende-se que não há uma natureza humana, mas, sim, humanos produzidos culturalmente e linguisticamente. O enfoque recai sobre a alteridade como uma relação de interdependência permeada por relações de poder, a versão da afirmação da diferença e a dignidade nas relações. AbstractThis article has as its object the discourse on otherness in articulation with teaching experience. It is intended to give visibility to the material, conceptual and pedagogical expression of this discourse in their relations. The reflection is sustained in postcolonialist and poststructuralist studies. The interpretation of otherness as a possibility to access the experience of the other is problematized, to feel as the other in its essence, because is understood that there is no human nature, but human beings produced culturally and linguistically. He focus is on otherness as a relation of interdependence permeated by power relations, the version of affirmation of difference and dignity in relationships.KeywordsOtherness; Cultural difference; Teaching.


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