Constructivism, Intuitionism, and Ecumenism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron James
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Henry Sidgwick ◽  
The Way

Constructivism and intuitionism are often seen as opposed methods of justification in political philosophy. An “ecumenical” view sees them as different but unopposed: each style of reasoning can yield fundamental principles, for different questions of distributive justice, and we can rightly take up different questions, with different, equally valid, theoretical objectives, in hopes of cultivating a thousand blooming flowers. This chapter develops this position with special interest in Rawls’s constructivism, his treatment of reflective equilibrium, self-evidence, and “moral geometry,” and his evolving dialogue with the intuitionist Henry Sidgwick. Rawls’s main difference from Sidgwick lies in the way he frames the question of right or justice in the first instance. This brings out both the possibility and the attractions of the ecumenist conception in political philosophy.

Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Dombrowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Static View ◽  
Process Oriented ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

In this work two key theses are defended: political liberalism is a processual (rather than a static) view and process thinkers should be political liberals. Three major figures are considered (Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne) in the effort to show the superiority of political liberalism to its illiberal alternatives on the political right and left. Further, a politically liberal stance regarding nonhuman animals and the environment is articulated. It is typical for debates in political philosophy to be adrift regarding the concept of method, but from start to finish this book relies on the processual method of reflective equilibrium or dialectic at its best. This is the first extended effort to argue for both political liberalism as a process-oriented view and process philosophy/theology as a politically liberal view. It is also a timely defense of political liberalism against illiberal tendencies on both the right and the left.

Systematicity and Normative Justification

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Normative Justification ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines systematicity as a form of normative justification. Thompson’s contention is that the Hegelian commitment to fundamental presuppositionlessness and hence to methodological immanence, from which his distinctive conception of systematicity flows, is at the core of the unique form of normative justification that he employs in his political philosophy and that this is the only form of such justification that can successfully meet the skeptic’s challenge. Central to Thompson’s account is the distinction between systematicity and representation and the way in which this frames Hegel’s relationship to the traditional forms of justification and the creation of his own distinctive kind of normative argumentation.

Politics and Kingship in the Historical Books, with Attention to the Role of Political Theory in Interpretation

2020 ◽  
pp. 186-200
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Parsons Miller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Abstract Ideas ◽  
Theological Message

This chapter explores the thesis that the historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible address abstract ideas about politics, government, and law. Taking issue with critics who view the Bible’s spiritual and theological message as incommensurable with political philosophy, the chapter argues that the stories of politics and kingship in the Hebrew Bible’s historical books set forth set forth an impressive political theory that rivals, in some respects, the work of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers. The key is to bring out the general ideas behind the specific narrative elements. The chapter illustrates this thesis by examining the Hebrew Bible’s treatment of a number of classic problems of political theory: anarchy, obligation and sovereignty, distributive justice, and the comparative analysis of political organizations.

scholarly journals A DEFENSE OF HUMEAN PROPERTY THEORY

Legal Theory ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Ira K. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Humean Theory

ABSTRACT Two rival approaches to property rights dominate contemporary political philosophy: Lockean natural rights and egalitarian theories of distributive justice. This article defends a third approach, which can be traced to the work of David Hume. Unlike Lockean rights, Humean property rights are not grounded in pre-institutional moral entitlements. In contrast to the egalitarian approach, which begins with highly abstract principles of distributive justice, Humean theory starts with simple property conventions and shows how more complex institutions can be justified against a background of settled property rights. Property rights allow people to coordinate their use of scarce resources. For property rules to serve this function effectively, certain questions must be considered settled. Treating existing property entitlements as having prima facie validity facilitates cooperation between people who disagree about distributive justice. Lockean and egalitarian theories endorse moral claims that threaten to unsettle property conventions and undermine social cooperation.

Interaction, Satisfaction, and the PCC

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-80
Author(s):  
Amy Rose Deal
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Dynamic Interaction ◽  
Agree Ii ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Testing Ground ◽  
Person Case Constraint ◽  
Satisfaction Theory ◽  
The Way

Abstract The person-case constraint (PCC) is a family of restrictions on the relative person of the two objects of a ditransitive. PCC effects offer a testing ground for theories of the Agree operation and of syntactic features, both those on nominals and (of special interest here) those found on agreement probes. In this paper, I offer a new theory of PCC effects in an interaction/satisfaction theory of Agree (Deal 2015a) and show the advantages of this framework in capturing PCC typology. On this model, probes are specified for interaction features, determining which features will be copied to them, and satisfaction features, determining which features will cause probing to stop. Applied to PCC, this theory (i) captures all four types of PCC effect recognized by Nevins (2007) under a unified notion of Agree; (ii) captures the restriction of PCC effects to contexts of “Double Weakness” in many prominent examples, e.g. in Italian, Greek, and Basque, where PCC effects hold only in cases where both the direct and indirect object are expressed with clitics; (iii) naturally extends to PCC effects in syntactic environments without visible clitics or agreement for one or both objects, as well as the absence of PCC effects in some languages with clitics or agreement for both the direct and indirect object. Two refinements of the interaction/satisfaction theory are offered. The first is a new notation for probes’ interaction and satisfaction specifications, clarifying the absence from this theory of uninterpretable/unvalued features as drivers of Agree. The second is a proposal for the way that probes’ behavior may change over the course of a derivation, dubbed dynamic interaction.

Feminism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Hirschmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
The Way

The topic of feminism within the history of political philosophy and political theory might seem to be quite ambiguous. Feminists interested in the history of political philosophy did not urge the abandonment of the canon at all, but were instead protesting the way in which political philosophy was studied. They thus advocated “opening up” the canon, rather than its abolishment. There have been at least five ways in which this “opening” of the canon has been developed by feminists in the history of political philosophy. All of them do not only demonstrate that the history of political philosophy is important to feminism; they also demonstrate that feminism is important to the history of political philosophy. A two-tiered structure of freedom, with some conceptualizations of freedom designated for men and the wealthy, and other conceptualizations designated for laborers and women, shows that class and gender were important dimensions to be explored when examining the history of political philosophy. One way in which feminism has opened up the canon is its relevance to contemporary politics.

Rawls, Reciprocity and the Barely Reasonable

Utilitas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER MCMAHON
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Political Cooperation ◽  
The Way

The concept of the reasonable plays an important role in Rawls's political philosophy, but there has been little systematic investigation of this concept or of the way Rawls employs it. This article distinguishes several different forms of reasonableness and uses them to explore Rawls's political liberalism. The discussion focuses on the idea, found especially in the most recent versions of this theory, of a family of liberal conceptions of justice each of which is regarded by everyone in a polity as reasonable, even if only barely so. The idea of such a family is central to Rawls's notion of reciprocity and the view of political cooperation associated with it. This article questions whether the concept of the reasonable can play the role that Rawls intends.

Liberdade e Direitos Humanos no Pensamento de Richard Price

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
pp. 119-145
Author(s):  
José Gomes André ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

This paper is concerned with the political philosophy of Richard Price, analysing the way this author has developed the concept of liberty and the problem of human rights. The theme of liberty will be interpreted in a double perspective: a) in a private dimension, that sets liberty in the inner side of the individual; b) in a public dimension, that places it in the domain of a manifest action of the individual. We will try to show how this double outlook of liberty is conceived under the optics of a necessary complementarity, since liberty, which is primarily understood as a feature of the subject taken as an individual, acquires only a full meaning when she becomes efective in a comunitary field, as a social and political expression. The concept of human rights will appear located in this analysis, being defined simultaneously as condition and expression of the human dignity and happiness, at the same time natural attributes of an individual that should be cultivated and public effectiveness that contributes to the development of society.

Beyond Practicalism

Utopophobia ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 304-315
Author(s):  
David Estlund
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Intellectual Work ◽  
Math And Science ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Mathematics

This chapter argues against “practicalism.” It shows that it is very plausible that some things must be of intrinsic value, that is, apart from what they can be used to produce. A narrower practicalism might hold that intellectual work in particular is never of intrinsic value, and so is worthless unless it is of practical value. The chapter contends that this flies in the face of some robust views about the value of some intellectual work in science and mathematics. This leaves two problems of special interest here: first, so far, even if that point makes general intellectual practicalism appear implausible, it has no tendency to show that nonpractical philosophy, or in particular political philosophy, might be of intrinsic value. They might lack whatever it is about nonpractical yet important math and science that makes them important. This leads to the second problem, which is that even if those examples tend to refute practicalism, they do not yet provide any account of what is valuable about them.

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