Some legal theorists deny that states can conceivably act extra-legally, in the sense of acting contrary to domestic law. This position finds its most robust articulation in the writings of Hans Kelsen, and has more recently been taken up by David Dyzenhaus in the context of his work on emergencies and legality. This paper seeks to demystify their arguments and, ultimately, contend that we can intelligibly speak of the state as a legal wrongdoer or a legally unauthorized actor.

In this article, I ask whether the state, as opposed to its individual members, can intelligibly and legitimately be criminalized, with a focus on the possibility of its domestic criminalization. I proceed by identifying what I take to be the core objections to such criminalization, and then investigate ways in which they can be challenged. First, I address the claim that the state is not a kind of entity that can intelligibly perpetrate domestic criminal wrongs. I argue against it by (...) building upon an account of the modern state as a moral agent proper, capable of both culpable moral and legal wrongdoing. I then consider objections to the intelligibility and legitimacy of subjecting states to domestic criminal processes, which primarily find their source in the assumption that such subjection would necessarily involve the state prosecuting, judging, and punishing itself. I argue that whether this (questionable) assumption is sound or not, it does not create the kinds of unsolvable quandaries its exponents think it does. I then move on to reject the distinct, yet related, objection that, at least in aspiring liberal jurisdictions, treating the state as a criminal objectionably involves extending to it various substantive and procedural guarantees that, given its nature and raison d’être, it should not have. Finally, I discuss three central objections to punishing the state. First, that organizations like states do not have the phenomenal consciousness required to suffer punishment. Second, that the constant possibility of dispersion of state punishment amongst individual members stands in the way of its justification. Lastly, that whatever justification there may be for making things harder for the state in response to its culpable wrongdoing, such treatment need not be understood as punishment. While partially conceding the strength of these objections, I strive to loosen their grip in ways that show that justified punishment of the state, meaningfully understood as such, remains a distinct possibility. I conclude by contrasting supposed alternatives to the criminalization of states, and by contending that my analysis leaves us with enough to keep the possibility of state criminalization on the table as a justifiable response to state wrongdoing. (shrink)

Scholars of the emotions maintain that all anger requires an object of blame. In order to be angry, many writers argue, one must believe than an actor has done serious damage to something that one values. Yet an individual may be angered without blaming another. This kind of emotion, called situational anger, does not entail a corresponding object of blame. Situational anger can be a useful force in public life, enabling citizens to draw attention to the seriousness of social or (...) political problems, without necessarily vilifying political officials. (shrink)

The book under review offers a novel approach to politicizing the "animal issue." Drawing on liberal citizenship theory, the authors argue that key concepts of international justice such as "citizen," "denizen," and "sovereignty" may be mapped onto human-animal relations in order to protect individual animal rights as well as ecosystem integrity. The ambition is also to overcome some well-known problems of traditional animal rights theory in relation to ecological concerns. Yet the argument that ecosystems, like human states, ought to be (...) seen as sovereign communities entails problematic concept-stretching that may undermine the individual rights it was meant to protect. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 190-227, May 2022. There is a sense of fairness that is distinctive of markets. This is fairness among economic competitors, competitive fairness. We regularly make judgments of competitive fairness about market participants, public policies and institutions. However, it is not clear to what these judgments refer, or what moral significance they have. This paper offers a rational reconstruction of competitive fairness in terms of non-domination. It first identifies competitive fairness as a (...) distinctive claim, advanced within markets in turn characterized as antagonistic, instrumental and procedural. It distinguishes competitive fairness from a number of familiar ideals with which it might be confused: legitimate expectation, equality of opportunity, sporting fairness and economic efficiency. While many exponents likely assume competitive fairness can be explained in terms of one of these ideals, in each case there are significant objections to doing so. Instead, the paper argues that the most promising justification of competitive fairness is under the republican ideal of non-domination, which can reconstruct many of the intuitive judgments of competitive fairness that we make in particular cases. However, it concludes, this explanation makes it difficult for exponents to continue to emphasize competitive fairness, given diverse other risks of domination, and to other values, in markets. (shrink)

While Risse and Wollner make an important contribution to theorising global justice and trade, I identify certain concerns with their approach and suggest an alternative that addresses these. First, I query their emphasis on subjection to the trade regime as a morally salient feature, suggesting their argument trades on an ambiguity, and fails to connect the trade regime, as a trigger, with their preferred account of trade-justice-as-non-exploitation. Second, I examine their treatment of the WTO, how they understand international organisations as (...) inheritors of states’ obligations, and how far an organisation like the WTO can or should be self-consciously reoriented towards justice-as-non-exploitation. Third, I ask how their account is distinct from existing approaches, and whether it makes sense to apply the same conception of justice across diverse agents and institutions. I conclude by sketching an alternative approach, which makes the justification of states’ policies to outsiders the central problem of trade justice. (shrink)

Modern management reporting on its company''s performance is influenced by individuals ethical considerations. Stakeholders philosophies have continued to change over the last 75 years affecting reporting systems for companies reporting information internally and externally. These fundamental changes in philosophy have affected how information is conveyed. We are not claiming that only one philosophical viewpoint dominates companies reporting practices, but there does appear to be a changing trend of philosophies building on one another. We use resource dependence theory in relationship to (...) a decision-making model to explain changing stakeholders positions over time. This paper argues that six dominant philosophical theories have influenced the way individuals and organizations report financial and other information. Further, these philosophies then are depicted in a model that helps us to understand what influences companies to present themselves to the outside world. A vignette is used to depict changing philosophical views for several companies management report over 75 years. (shrink)

The second-wave feminist critique of privacy defies the liberal opposition between the public-political and the private-personal. Feminist thinkers such as Hanisch, Young or Fraser note that, according to this liberal conception, public institutions often keep asymmetric power relations between private agents away from political discussion and action. The resulting subordination of some agents to others tends, therefore, to be naturalised and redefined as a «personal problem». Drawing on these contributions, this article reviews the social and political implications of big data (...) exploitation and questions whether personal data protection must remain a matter of «privacy self-management». It aims to show that feminist political theory can decidedly help to identify and tackle the root causes of what I call «data domination».La crítica feminista de segunda ola a la privacidad desafía la oposición liberal entre lo público-político y lo privado-personal. Pensadoras feministas como Hanisch, Young o Fraser señalan que, de acuerdo con esta concepción liberal, las instituciones públicas a menudo dejan fuera de la discusión y la acción política las relaciones de poder asimétricas entre agentes privados. La resultante subordinación de unos agentes a otros tiende, por tanto, a ser naturalizada y redefinida como un «problema personal». Basándose en estas contribuciones, este artículo revisa las implicaciones sociales y políticas de la explotación de datos masivos y cuestiona si la protección de los datos personales debe continuar siendo una cuestión de «auto-gestión de la privacidad». Su objetivo es mostrar que la teoría política feminista puede ayudar decididamente a identificar y enfrentar las causas de lo que llamo «dominación a través de los datos». (shrink)

This article argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Xunzi’s and Hobbes’s understandings of human nature are qualitatively different, which is responsible for the difference in their respective normative political theory of a civil polity. This article has two main theses: first, where Hobbes’s deepest concern was with human beings’ unsocial passions, Xunzi was most concerned with human beings’ appetitive desires ( yu 欲), material self-interest, and resulting social strife; second, as a result, where Hobbes strove to transform the pathological (anti-)politics (...) of resentment into the politics of recognition by creating rational egalitarian citizenship under the all-encompassing constitutional sovereign power, Xunzi attempted to nourish human beings’ basic appetitive desires ( yu 欲) by instituting a li 禮 ordered civil entity. This article concludes by showing how Confucian civility that Xunzi reconstructed by means of the li 禮 can effectively deal with unsocial passions. (shrink)

This paper proposes a concept of intentional cooperation for mutual benefit. This concept uses a form of team reasoning in which team members aim to achieve common interests, rather than maximising a common utility function, and in which team reasoners can coordinate their behaviour by following pre-existing practices. I argue that a market transaction can express intentions for mutually beneficial cooperation even if, extensionally, participation in the transaction promotes each party’s self-interest.

The article analyses the components of the presumption of innocence and tries to clarify some of the conceptual and logical difficulties surrounding the notion of ‘innocence’ and the structure of legal presumptions. It is argued that all conceivable literal interpretations of the maxim make little or no sense, and that the presumptions form is, as such, devoid of original content: presumptions do not explain nor justify anything but are auxiliary norms which refer to the legal consequences spelled out in other (...) norms. Therefore, the presumption of innocence can be used to express any kind of requirement and standard for the criminal process and the treatment of suspect citizens only in a tautological, albeit rhetorically forceful, way. This instrumental use of the presumption of innocence is theoretically without merit but can be practically beneficial as long as there is no developed system of fundamental rights and protections of individual freedoms in a given legal order. Finally, a functional understanding of the presumption of innocence is proposed which gives it an original, though limited field of application as a guarantee of the procedure itself, in particular of the openness of the outcome. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that it cannot be the case that a person ought to perform an action if this person cannot perform this action. However, most of these philosophers do not give arguments for the truth of this claim. In this paper, I argue that it is plausible to interpret this claim in such a way that it is entailed by the claim that there cannot be a reason for a person to perform an action if it is impossible that (...) this person will perform this action. I then give three arguments for the truth of the latter claim, which are also arguments for the truth of the former claim as I interpret it. (shrink)

Psychological Altruism (PA) is the view that everyone, ultimately, acts altruistically all the time. I defend PA by showing strong prima facie support, and show how a reinterpretive strategy against supposed counterexamples is successful. I go on to show how PA can be argued for in ways which exactly mirror the arguments for an opposing view, Psychological Egoism. This shows that the case for PA is at least as plausible as PE. Since the case for PA is not plausible, neither (...) is that for PE. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Spinoza’s political theory gives us a model for how he might have approached a treatise on moral education. Indeed, his account of the method and aims of politics resembles Renaissance humanist rhetorical approaches to pedagogy – particularly, the work of sixteenth century Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives – so strongly that it is hardly an exaggeration conclude that, for him, politics is education writ large. For Spinoza and for Vives, the governor-or-instructor must study the (...) prevailing character, or ingenium, of the subject and adopt means that promote the cognitive and emotional development of the subject, which can be accomplished only to the extent that subjects willingly participate in their own governance-or-instruction. Spinoza joins this rhetorical procedure to a Hobbesian scientific approach to studying ingenia, resulting in a political method that is part science, part art. (shrink)

This is an attempt to clarify the relation between Schmitt and Hobbes by examining Hobbes's thinking about enemies and enmity. On the one hand, Hobbes shares a strong war/crime distinction with Schmitt. On the other hand, Hobbes never suggests that lethal enmity gives a ?meaningful? tension to human life. Hobbes also describes the way feverish human minds may imagine enemies where none exist. This is another non?Schmittian theme. Although Schmitt was a profoundly anti?Hobbesian thinker for these and other reasons, an (...) examination of Hobbes with the Schmittian question (?who is the enemy??) in mind, proves exceptionally fruitful, opening up aspects of Hobbes's political theory that have hitherto lingered in obscurity. (shrink)

One of the most striking and underexplored points of difference between care ethics and other normative theories is its reluctance to offer a theory of right action. Unlike other normative ethical frameworks, care ethicists typically either neglect right action or explicitly refuse to provide a theory thereof. This paper disputes that stance. It begins with an examination of right action in care ethics, offering reasons for care ethicists not to oppose the development of a care ethical theory thereof. It then (...) considers some potential formulations of a first premise of a theory of right action, both demonstrating the diversity of possible first premises and arguing for a monistic subset of these. It subsequently presents some potential second premises, arguing that a care ethical theory of right action ought to adopt a eudaimonistic approach to care. The paper thereby makes several inroads into a care ethical account of moral evaluation. (shrink)

This paper attempts to square libertarian principles with the reality of formal education by asking how far we should and can allow people to do as they wish in educational settings. The major focus is on children in schools, as the concept ‘childhood’ ipso facto implies restrictions on doing as one wishes, and schools as institutions entail inevitable constraints. Children by definition tend to enjoy stronger protection rights but weaker liberty rights than adults. A local preferential calculus is developed as (...) a guide for teachers, suggesting wishes should be granted where feasible and at least welfare neutral. In the case of teachers, employers set the parameters for the feasibility criterion but should also ensure at least welfare neutrality, while students in adult and higher education should be responsible for the feasibility and welfare outcomes of their own choices. (shrink)

The classical social contract tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has come under significant scrutiny from those interested in the place of women in the philosophical canon, and Thomas Hobbes has been indicted along with John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Jean‐Jacques Rousseau. These philosophers have been accused of holding misogynistic beliefs and, more damningly, founding their theories on sexist and patriarchal assumptions. This paper explores the extent to which Hobbes deserves his place on the list of the condemned.

Axelrod (The evolution of cooperation, 1984) and others explain how cooperation can emerge in repeated 2-person prisoner’s dilemmas. But in public good games with anonymous contributions, we expect a breakdown of cooperation because direct reciprocity fails. However, if agents are situated in a social network determining which agents interact, and if they can influence the network, then cooperation can be a viable strategy. Social networks are modelled as graphs. Agents play public good games with their neighbours. After each game, they (...) can terminate connections to others, and new connections are created. Cooperative agents do well because they manage to cluster with cooperators and avoid defectors. Computer simulations demonstrate that group formation and exclusion are powerful mechanisms to promote cooperation in dilemma situations. This explains why social dilemmas can often be solved if agents can choose with whom they interact. (shrink)

Contemporary Christian ethics encounters the challenge to communicate genuinely Christian normative orientations within the scientific debate in such a way as to render these orientations comprehensible, and to maintain or enhance their plausibility even for non-Christians. This essay, therefore, proceeds from a biblical motif, takes up certain themes from the Christian tradition (in particular the idea of social justice), and connects both with a compelling contemporary approach to ethics by secular moral philosophy, i.e. with Axel Honneth's reception of Hegel, as (...) based on Hegel's theory of recognition. As a first step, elements of an ethics of recognition are developed on the basis of an anthropological recourse to the conditions of intersubjective encounters. These conditions are then brought to bear on the idea of social justice, as developed in the social-Catholic tradition, and as systematically explored in the Pastoral Letter of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice For All (1986). Proceeding from this basis, aspects of a Christian ethics of community service with regard to long-term care can be defined. (shrink)

Collective action is a much-discussed topic today, but not in the historiography of philosophy. Therefore, I would like to contribute a little bit to our understanding of the history of this concept by exploring the political philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. A compelling interpretation of his treatise On Kingship emerges when we read it not, as is often the case, in terms of his moral perfectionism, but as expressing the idea that the political community is an artificial and distinct subject of (...) agency. Thus, the political philosophy of On Kingship turns out to be congenial to contemporary approaches to collective action. (shrink)

I argue in this article (i) that Karl Olivecrona's legal philosophy, especially the critique of the view that law has binding force, the analysis of the concept and function of a legal rule, and the idea that law is a matter of organized force, is a significant contribution to twentieth century legal philosophy. I also argue (ii) that Olivecrona fails to substantiate some of his most important empirical claims, and (iii) that the distinction espoused by Olivecrona between the truth and (...) the correctness of legal statements is problematic but not needed in Olivecrona's legal philosophy. (shrink)

This paper is part of a broader argument that seeks to offer a justification for political authority. It aims to investigate the role of truth in political argument and to place the problem of reasonable disagreement. The argument focuses on the possibility of political deliberation, that figures as a stage of political decision-making. It has to do with a confrontation between incompatible substantive beliefs which, however, all seem to be reasonable. How can citizens holding incompatible beliefs engage in an enterprise (...) of justifying them to one another? That is the question. (shrink)

Contemporary experimental philosophers sometimes use versions of an argument from the history of philosophy to defend the claim that what they do is philosophy. Although experimental philosophers conduct surveys and carry out what appear to be experiments in psychology, making them methodologically different from most analytic philosophers working today, techniques like theirs were not out of the ordinary in the philosophy of the past, early modern philosophy in particular. Or so some of them argue. This paper disputes the argument, citing (...) important differences between early modern philosopher-scientists – Descartes, Hobbes and Boyle – and their supposed modern counterparts. Although there is some continuity between early modern philosopher-scientists and the contemporary experimentalists, it is mostly a continuity of interest in empirically informed philosophy, not a distinctively experimental philosophy. (shrink)

By his definition of them, David Gauthier's co-operative constrained maximizers are not necessarily unsharing and disposed to exclude straight maximizers from benefits of their co-operation. Here is Gauthier's full and exact account, his official account, of constrained maximization.

The examples and concepts that Shoemaker cites are rather heterogeneous. Some distinctions need to be drawn. An optimality thesis involves not just an ordering of options, but a value judgment about them. So let us begin by distinguishing minimality from optimality. And the concept of minimality can play a variety of roles, among which I distinguish between extremum descriptions, statements hypothesizing an optimizing process, and methodological recommendations. Finally, I consider how the three categories relate to Shoemaker’s question that “Who is (...) optimizing: the scientist or nature?” . (shrink)

A concept of merit is used for spiritual accounting in many religious traditions, seemingly a substantial point of connection between religion and ordinary morality. Teachings of “merit transfer” (as in Buddhism and Roman Catholicism) might make us doubt this connection since they violate the principle that merit must be earned. If we examine the structure of ordinary schemes of desert, however, we find that personal worth is posited for a variety of reasons; the basic requirement in this realm is not (...) earning by individuals but rather a community’s program for cultivating desirable collaboration among its members. There are strong enough parallels between religiously envisioned merit transfer and socially normal conferrals and sharings of worth that we can conclude that the religious posits of transferred merit are indeed comprehensible as merit, whatever other problems of comprehensibility they pose. (shrink)

Environmental political theory poses new challenges to our received political concepts and values. Increasingly, we are reconceptualising nature as a subject rather than solely an object of politics. On one front, we are being challenged to think of natural entities as subjects of justice – as bearers of rights or interests that the political system should accommodate. On a second front, we are being challenged to see nature as a subject of power, constructed and ordered through scientific and political practice. (...) These reconceptualisations have significant implications for our political practices and institutions. (shrink)

This paper calls attention to matsyanyaya, or state of nature theories, in classical Indian thought, and their significance. The focus is on those discussions of matsyanyaya found in the law books, political treatises and the Mahabharata epic. The significance and relevance of matsyanyaya theories are shown through a comparison with early modern state of nature theories and an elaboration on the possible place of rights and dharma in matsyanyaya and the consequences of this for classical Indian political theory.

If it was a matter of hunting a deer, everyone well realized that he must remain faithful to his post; but if a hare happened to pass within reach of one of them, we cannot doubt that he would have gone off in pursuit of it without scruple..." Rousseau's story of the hunt leaves many questions open. What are the values of a hare and of an individual's share of the deer given a successful hunt? What is the probability that (...) the hunt will be successful if all participants remain faithful to the hunt? Might two deer hunters decide to chase the hare? (shrink)

Establishing trust among individual agents has defined a central issue of practical reasoning since the dawning of liberal individualism. Hobbes was convinced that foolish self-interest always threatens to defeat uncompelled cooperation when one can gain by abandoning a joint effort. Against this philosophical background, scientific studies of human beings display a surprisingly cooperative species. It would seem to follow that biologically inherited characteristics impair our reason. The response proposed here distinguishes rationality and reasonableness as two forms of good reasoning. One (...) is consistent with the model of strategic rationality, the other with a model of emotional relationship. From the Hobbesian perspective trusting agents are not rational if their makeup discourages advantageous defection even when one knows it will not be detected or punished. The point is indecisive because reasonable trust insulates cooperative action from the factors that have appeared to make it chancy or unstable without some enforcing power. A critical theme is that trust does not simply rest upon a biological disposition to conform to norms. That would explain but not justify aversion to defection. In fact, trust can survive reasoned challenges to norm-conforming dispositions, displaying the responsible social animal living along with the rational individual. (shrink)

Why has Schmitt's political theology been influential among some Chinese scholars? It is pointed out in this article that this special phenomenon resulted from the Chinese awareness of the deep crisis within modern politics as well as the Chinese hope for the alternative model of modern politics. To these Chinese scholars, Schmitt, by making clear the hidden theological dimension of modern politics, seems to have offered both a sharp criticism of the tendency of mechanization of the state and a creative (...) proposal to save modern politics. Based on the analysis of the reasons for these Chinese scholars' preference for Schmitt's political theology to Marx's criticism of modern politics, it is also argued that this acceptance of Schmitt's political theology could actually hamper the Chinese efforts toward new possibilities of modern politics. (shrink)

This paper argues that the augmented reality gaming application for smart devices, _Pokémon GO_ shows the fate of the legal subject as a neoliberal monster subjugated to the limitations imposed by hypercapitalism. The game, derived from Nintendo’s iconic Pokémon franchise, reveals the legal subject as a frenzied, diminished and impulsive being, allowed to see, move, catch and accumulate but unable to participate in more meaningful self-narration. It is not that the game is lawless, notwithstanding, anxieties in the semiosphere about users (...) trespassing or engaging in criminal behaviour. Rather the game is over structured and highly limited, both within its game-play which is repetitive and impulsive, and in its absence of narrative. Unlike the classic Nintendo Pokémon games which are within the role-playing game genre, _Pokémon GO_ abstracts the seeing, moving, catching and accumulating features of the classic games without the overarching narrative, questing and competition. In this _Pokémon GO_ manifests the transformation of the liberal legal subject of capitalism to the neoliberal subject of a digital orientated hypercapitalism where seeing, moving, catching and accumulating is immediate and impulsive, obliterating the ‘prudent’ subject participating in their own self-narration. (shrink)

Atheism is skeptical towards gods, and atheology advances philosophical positions defending the reasonableness of that rejection. The history of philosophy encompasses many unorthodox and irreligious movements of thought, and these varieties of unbelief deserve more exegesis and analysis than presently available. Going back to philosophy’s origins, two primary types of atheology have dominated the advancement of atheism, yet they have not cooperated very well. Materialist philosophies assemble cosmologies that leave nothing for gods to do, while skeptical philosophies find conceptions of (...) god to be too unintelligible or unsupported by evidence to warrant credibility. The origins and genealogies of these two atheologies are sketched and compared over many centuries down to present-day atheism, which still displays signs of this internecine divide between confident naturalists and agnostic skeptics. (shrink)

A centipede can walk until it thinks about howit does so. Thereafter it stumbles, over thesheer impossibility of the information andcoordination required. Life in the economy islittle different. Those engaged in productionand exchange discover, pragmatically, ways tomake them work. Those observing the processsee, realistically, the immense improbabilitythat it should do so. That most economies workin practice, but must pass such toughteleological tests to succeed in theory,highlights a difference between players' andspectators' outlook which may help to explainwhy the game has repeatedly (...) been thrown wideopen just when conclusive results seemed withinreach.Section 1 of this paper identifies the fourforms of realism which economists have tendedto adopt. Section 2 considers the pragmatism ofeconomic agents, when observed in action bypsychologists and management scholars notoverly steeped in economic theory. Theconcluding section reviews the ways in whicheconomists have tried to blur the distinction,by reclassifying agents as realistic or theirown views as pragmatic, and suggests that amore pragmatic economics might bridge thedivide. (shrink)

Kinship was one of the key areas of research interest among anthropologists in the nineteenth century, one of the most hotly debated areas of theory in the early and mid-twentieth century, and yet an area of waning interest by the end of the twentieth century. Since then, the study of kinship has experienced a revitalization, with concomitant disputes over how best to proceed. This special issue brings together recent studies of kinship by scientific anthropologists employing evolutionary theory and quantitative methods. (...) We argue that the melding of the evolutionary theoretical perspective with quantitative and ethnographic methodologies has strengthened and reinvigorated the study of kinship by synthesizing and extending existing research via rigorous analyses of evidence. (shrink)

Several writers have recently developed proposals calling for a public policy that would allow a number of individuals to commit suicide if they so choose. Suicide, it is argued, is a fundamental matter of personal liberty and as such only very minimal restrictions should be placed on it. In this essay I offer a critique of these views and the public policies they entail. The result is a defense of the general outlines of current professional and legal policies which permit (...) intervention, even coercive intervention, with suicidal persons in almost every case. (shrink)

In the last decade there has been a pragmatic turn in the work of those doing Christian ethics, especially as represented by the work of Jeffrey Stout and Franklin Gamwell. The pragmatic turn represents a critique of the highly influential work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues for a strongly intra-church ethics. The pragmatists are correct in arguing that Christian ethics must engage the public sphere. However, I argue that they are deeply mistaken in their claim that this (...) engagement must rest on a weak or non-existent theology. I show that the claim that robust theology adds nothing to ethics, and that we can get along without it, is unsustainable. (shrink)

. The concept of bodily health is problematic for mechanists like Descartes, as it seems that they need to appeal to something extrinsic to a machine, i.e., its purpose, to determine whether the machine is working well or badly, and so healthy or unhealthy. I take issue with this claim. By drawing on the history of medicine, I suggest that in the seventeenth century there was space for a non-teleological account of health. I further argue that mechanists can and did (...) appeal to structural integrity, as a non-teleological notion of form, to ground the norms required for ascriptions of health. (shrink)