Moral and theoretical deficiencies of the main foundation strategies in social and political systems (Social Engineering, Foundationalism and Invisible Hand theories) are explained by the necessity of a synthesis of different kinds of rationality, i.e., goal-rationality, norm-rationality and rightness and weighing rationality. The anthropological basis of the theory is a distinction between homo finalis and homo socialis. At the institutional level, this conception leads to a synthesis of the rule of law and the welfare state. At the political level, this (...) implies a retonsideration of the principles of democracy and political planning. (shrink)

The central claim of Kant's political philosophy is that rational agents sharing a territory can justifiably be forced to live under a state; they have, in Kant's words, a duty of right to leave the state of nature. Perhaps something along these lines is entailed by any theory of state legitimacy, but the point raises special difficulties for Kant. He believes that rational agents have a right to freedom; that is, he believes that a rational agent's external freedom - her (...) ability to set and pursue ends for herself without being subject to the choices of others - can justifiably be restricted only for the sake of external freedom itself. To establish that human beings can be forced to join a civil condition, it will therefore not do to show that the state promotes security, prosperity or any other such value: Kant has to show that human beings living side by side need a state to be free. (shrink)

Hobbes held distinctive views about the role of power in organizing and directing human life and posing the central problems of politics. His English vocabulary (unlike his Latin vocabulary) conflates conceptions of force, instrumental capacity, right and entitlement in a single term. It remains controversial how far he changed his conception of human nature over the last four decades of his intellectual life from a more to a less egoistic version, and how far, if he did, any such change modified (...) his recipe for pacifying human collective life. The best way of tracking the development of Hobbes?s political thinking is to trace the ways in which he saw the shifting contributions of power to human life in assisting, enabling or impeding human beings in living and acting as they wish. (shrink)

Abstract Inspired by Rawls?s admission that his twentieth?century contract theory builds in the parochial horizon of modern constitutional democracy, this essay critically examines two truisms about seventeenth?century contract theory. The first is the stock view that the English case is irrelevant to the logic of Leviathan and the Second Treatise. To the contrary, I argue that their political conclusions depend on introducing constitutional and legal ?facts?, in particular, facts about the constitution of the English monarchy. Second, I challenge the Whiggish (...) characterization of contract theory as an important step in the development of democratic sovereignty. I draw on Hume?s famous critique of the genre to make the case that seventeenth?century contract theory addressed a peculiarly ancien?regime issue ? namely, resistance to legitimate rulers. In both respects, Hobbes?s and Locke?s social contracts are properly regarded as ancien?regime theories of politics. They are, as Rawls would put it, ?political not metaphysical? theories. (shrink)

Democracy is prone to what may be called presentism – a bias in the laws in favor of present over future generations. I identify the characteristics of democracies that lead to presentism, and examine the reasons that make it a serious problem. Then I consider why conventional theories are not adequate to deal with it, and develop a more satisfactory alternative approach, which I call democratic trusteeship. Present generations can represent future generations by acting as trustees of the democratic process. (...) The general principle is that present generations should act to protect the democratic process itself over time. They should try to make sure that future citizens continue to have competent control over their collective decision‐making. (shrink)

This article presents a discussion of how postmodernist, poststructuralist and critical educational thinking relate to different theories of power. I argue that both Critical Theory and some poststructuralist ideas base themselves on a concept of power borrowed from a modernist tradition. I argue as well that we are better off combining a postmodern idea of education with a postmodern idea of power. To this end the concept of power presented by the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe is introduced. (...) This concept controverts a number of major educational concepts, i.e. concepts such as causality, autonomy, subjectivity and originality. In other words, it allows us to take a fresh look at old concepts. Finally, I relate the discussion to a number of recent theories of learning. (shrink)

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)

Trust is a kind of risky reliance on another person. Social scientists have offered two basic accounts of trust: predictive expectation accounts and staking (betting) accounts. Predictive expectation accounts identify trust with a judgment that performance is likely. Staking accounts identify trust with a judgment that reliance on the person’s performance is worthwhile. I argue (1) that these two views of trust are different, (2) that the staking account is preferable to the predictive expectation account on grounds of intuitive adequacy (...) and coherence with plausible explanations of action; and (3) that there are counterexamples to both accounts. I then set forward an additional necessary condition on trust, according to which trust implies a moral expectation. The content of the moral expectation is this: W hen A trusts B to do x, A ascribes an obligation to B to do x, and holds B to this obligation. This moral expectation account throws new light on some of the consequences of misplaced trust. I use the example of physicians’ defensive behavior to illustrate this final point. (shrink)

When Hegel first addresses moral responsibility in the Philosophy of Right, he presupposes that agents are only responsible for what they intended to do, but appears to offer little, if any, justification for this assumption. In this essay, I claim that the first part of the Philosophy of Right, “Abstract Right”, contains an implicit argument that legal or external responsibility (blame for what we have done) is conceptually dependent on moral responsibility proper (blame for what we have intended). This overlooked (...) argument satisfies the first half of a thesis Hegel applies to action in the Encyclopaedia Logic, namely, that the outer must be inner, and thus provides a necessary complement for his more explicit treatment of the second half of that thesis, that the inner must be outer. The claim that agents are only responsible for what they intended to do might appear, at first, to risk conflating legal and moral responsibility and to lack the necessary means to deal with the phenomenon of moral luck, but I argue that if it is properly situated within the whole of Hegel's philosophy of action it can be saved from both of these consequences and so take its place as an essential component of Hegel's full theory of moral responsibility. (shrink)

: As Spinoza presents it, the knowledge of God is knowledge, primarily, of oneself and, secondarily, of other things. Without this know‐ledge, a mind may not consciously desire to persevere in being. That is why Spinoza claims that the knowledge of God is the most useful thing to the mind at IVP28. He claims that the knowledge of God is the highest good, however, not because it is instrumental to perseverance, but because it is also the best among those goods (...) that we seek for their own sakes. It is acquiescentia in se ipso, the highest form of laetitia. (shrink)

This paper argues that many leading ethical theories are incomplete, in that they fail to account for both right and wrong. It also argues that some leading ethical theories are inconsistent, in that they allow that an act can be both right and wrong. The paper also considers responses on behalf of the target theories.

I describe an ethic for business administration based on the social tradition of the Catholic Church. I find that much current thinking about business falters for its conceit of truth. Abstractions such as the shareholder-value model contain truth - namely, that business is an economic enterprise to manage for the wealth of its owners. But, as in all abstractions, this truth comes at the expense of falsehood -namely, that persons are assets to deploy on behalf of owners. This last is (...) "wrong" in both senses of the word - it is factually wrong in that persons are far more than business assets, they are supernatural beings, children of God; and it is morally wrong in that it is an injustice to treat them as the former when they are the latter. I draw upon the social tradition of the Catholic Church to recognize that the business of business is not business, but is instead the human person. Following Church teachings, I describe a person-centered ethic of business based upon eight social principles that both correct and enlarge the shareholder-centered ethic of much current business thinking. I discuss implications of this person-centered ethic for business administration. (shrink)

This paper discusses Bernard Mandeville's (1670–1733) conception of governability. It grounds his key distinction between a submissive and a governable subject in terms of his alternative account of human sociability to demonstrate the nature and structure of relationships that are necessary for upholding stable and flourishing societies. Using Sir William Temple as an interlocutor (1628–1699), it also explores the role played by the cultivation of reverence to authority in Mandeville's analysis of governability.

This article concerns the problems of proportionality in the theory of punishment. The problem is how to determine whether the severity of a punishment for a criminal offense is proportional to the seriousness of that offense. The resolution to this problem proposed in the article is that, first, one understand punishment as pain or loss intentionally and openly inflicted on someone S in retaliation for something S did, by a person or agent who is at least as powerful as S, (...) and, second, one take such retaliatory pain or loss as, within stable social groups, a means for preserving social order. Accordingly, it is argued that, on this proposal, the measure by which the severity of punishment is determined to be proportional to the seriousness of the crime for which it is inflicted is the minimal amount of pain or loss necessary to preserve social order. Sentencing policies that follow this measure, it is then observed, tend to yield less severe punishments than the policies that classical deterrence theory yields. Finally, the article offers an argument for regarding as morally more defensible sentencing policies whose goal is preserving social order than sentencing policies whose goal is that of classical deterrence theory, which is to achieve the smallest incidence of crimes consistent with not diminishing the overall welfare of society. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Ever since Hume raised the problem of induction, many philosophers have tried to solve this problem; however, there still is no solution that has won wide acceptance among philosophers. According to Wilfrid Sellars, the reason is mainly that these philosophers have tried to justify induction by theoretical reasoning rather than by practical reasoning. In this paper I offer a sort of Sellarsian proposal. On the basis of the instrumental principle and the constructivist view of the concept of epistemic justification, (...) I argue that it is reasonable to accept induction.RÉSUMÉ: Depuis que Hume a soulevé le problème de l’induction, nombreux ont été les philosophes qui se sont attaqués à cette question. Aucun, pourtant, n’y a jusqu’à présent apporté de réponse satisfaisante et susceptible d’entraîner l’adhésion générale. Selon Wilfrid Sellars, la raison de cet échec est que les tentatives de justification se fondaient sur des raisonnements théoriques plutôt que pratiques. L’auteur offre ici une sorte de solution «sellarsienne» au problème. À partir du principe instrumental et de la conception constructiviste de la justification épistémique, l’auteur tente de démontrer qu’il est raisonnable d’accepter l’induction. (shrink)

Contemporary virtue ethics was revolutionized by Alasdair MacIntyre’s reconfiguration using practices as the starting point for understanding virtues. However, MacIntyre has very pointedly excluded the professions of the financial world from the reformulation. He does not count these professions as practices, and further charges that virtue would actually hinder or even rule out one’s pursuit of these professions. This paper addresses three tasks, in regard to the financial profession of investment advising. First, the paper lays out MacIntyre’s soon-to-be-published charges against (...) the investment world, as specified to this profession. Second, it sets forth the role function of investment advising and shows that it does possess internal goods—the crucial aspect of practices disputed by MacIntyre in this case—including goods of production and goods of performance. Third, it demonstrates that this function, and the goods tied to it, cannot be achieved apart from the virtuous pursuit of the profession, thereby showing that MacIntyre’s charges are mistaken. Investment advising is shown to be a virtue-based practice, and the groundwork is laid for showing that other financial professions are so, as well. (shrink)

This paper is about Gandhi's critique of politics, of which his ambivalence towards democracy was a part. I argue that for Gandhi the ground of moral action is fearlessness, while that of political reason is security and self-defense. Gandhi sees the context of moral action in the mundane fabric of everyday life, in places such as the family and the village. For that reason he does not believe that moral action requires being supplemented by the particular kind of unity which (...) politics and the state call for and necessitate. (shrink)

There has been a resurgence of interest in cosmopolitanism in contemporary political theory, based upon the hopeful premise that it heralds an ameliorative response to the malignity of sovereignty's lack and the treacherous violence of sovereignty's excess. The promise of cosmopolitanism inheres in the claim that state sovereignty is and should be supplemented by an international system backed by the legitimacy of international law, grounded in the sovereignty of human rights. Drawing upon Foucault and Agamben, my argument in this essay (...) is that the laudable endeavour of liberal cosmopolitans is flawed in two ways: first, cosmopolitanism cannot escape sovereign violence, because it cannot escape sovereignty; and second, cosmopolitans misconstrue the composition of the very sovereignty they aim to escape. This means that cosmopolitan theorists are unable to identify cosmopolitan practices of sovereignty that also entail forms of violence: cosmopolitan exception. Cosmopolitan exception denotes violent sovereign practices that cannot be differentiated from the protection of rights. (shrink)

In its enunciation of “We the people,” the Constitution of the United States of America becomes a constitution of the flesh as it simultaneously invokes a constitution, a nation and a people. Correspondingly, its amendments as a list of rights pertaining to sex and race discrimination, and freedoms of bodily movement and action, assert the Constitution’s authority through the evocation of “natural” human bodies. In this article, I explore the way in which a sovereignty of the United States’ Constitution is (...) realised in the particularlised bodies of its citizens. The fundamental and foundational laws of the United States, and the narratives and myths used to interpret them, are in part rendered legitimate by the Constitution’s embodiment, which extends from its physical manifestation in written documents into the flesh of its citizens. In order to make this argument, I turn to the film The Matrix (1999), the success of which relies on an investment in bodies and the United States’ Constitution as matter through its interwoven narrative themes of human slavery and emancipation, reality and computer-generated simulation. At the same time, The Matrix extends its ideological play into the bodies of its audience, who experience the film’s thrillingly sensorial fantasies of constitutional rights while enjoying its affective special effects. Thus, the sovereign authority of United States constitutional law is experienced as “natural” through the phenomenological experience of cinema. (shrink)

Human rights and sovereignty are generally construed as disputatious, if not entirely incompatible; the liability of the former constrains the license of the latter. This article challenges the certitude of that notion and argues that democratic, isocratic, and humanistic elements, or what may be thought of as precursors of human rights, are actually embedded in early theories of sovereignty, including what I call Bodin’s hierarchical, Althusius’ confederative, Hobbes’ singular, and Hegel’s progressive/constitutional sovereignty. Despite the differences in governmental structure to which (...) each attaches sovereignty, each disassociates sovereignty from its agents (who does the work of supreme authority) and aligns it to its end (the good of citizens). From them I derive eight theses to ground a democratic, human rights friendly conception of sovereignty, which aids in bridging the divide between human rights advocacy and sovereign defenders. (shrink)

This article argues that Thomas Aquinas's virtue ethics approach to just war theory provides a solid ethical foundation for thinking about the problem of war. After briefly indicating some shortcomings of contemporary views of international justice, including pacifism, legalism, progressivism, realism, pragmatism, and consequentialism, the article examines Aquinas's question ?On War? in the Summa Theologiae. It then attempts to show that Aquinas's thinking on war is rooted in his understanding of the virtues by providing a brief overview of how the (...) cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) and theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) are connected to just war considerations. (shrink)

Robert Alexy defines law as including a claim to moral correctness and demonstrating social efficacy. This paper argues that law's social efficacy is not merely an observable fact but is undergirded by moral commitments by rulers that it is possible for their subjects to follow the rules, that the rulers and others will also follow the rules, that subjects will be protected from violence if they act in accordance with the rules, and that subjects will be entitled to legal redress (...) if others act violently towards them otherwise than in accordance with the rules. Alexy is correct in his conclusion that a system of norms that is not by and large socially efficacious is not a valid legal system, but wrong insofar as he follows legal positivism in distinguishing this aspect of law's validity from law's claim to moral correctness. (shrink)

Research Articles Paul A. Rahe, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

An influential tradition in moral philosophy attempts to explain an immoral action by reference to the defect in reasoning on the part of an immoral agent. On this view, the requirements of morality are not only sanctioned by the more general requirements of rationality, but the violations of the moral requirements would be indicative of a rational failure. In this article I argue that ascription of irrationality to amoral individuals (e.g., psychopaths) is either empirically false, or else, conceptually problematic. An (...) interpretation of irrationality in its instrumental sense fails to do justice to the results of the research concerning the intelligence of some amoralists, whereas the suggestion that the alleged cognitive deficiency lies at the level of final ends and ultimate values faces serious theoretical difficulties. All attempts to construe the notion of an external reason for action without reference to the agent's actual goals and values bespeak an objectivist's bias, rest on controversial assumptions, and tend to alienate the agent from the proposed set of reasons. The argument is partly based on the analysis of reasoning of Ted Bundy, a notorious serial murderer, who presents a rather sophisticated justification for his criminal behavior. (shrink)

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke maintains that ?Reason must be our last Judge and Guide in every Thing,? including matters of religious faith, and this commitment to the primacy of reason is not abandoned in his later religious writings. This essay argues that with regard to the relation between reason and religious faith, Locke is primarily concerned not with evidence, but with consistency, meaning, and how human beings ought to respond to their inclinations, including their inclinations to believe. (...) Leibniz, on the other hand, stakes out an alternative conception of the relationship between faith and reason that assigns to faith the role of a primary truth. For Leibniz, some religious propositions can be believed immediately and without an additional examination and evaluation by reason. The essay maintains that the differences between the two regarding faith and reason are tied to a broader disagreement about how much of the human understanding is due, in Locke's words, to ?Labour, Attention and Industry? (shrink)

Welfare is at least occasionally a temporal phenomenon: welfare benefits befall me at certain times. But this fact seems to present a problem for a desire-satisfaction view. Assume that I desire, at 10am, January 12th, 2010, to climb Mount Everest sometime during 2012. Also assume, however, that during 2011, my desires undergo a shift: I no longer desire to climb Mount Everest during 2012. In fact, I develop an aversion to so doing. Imagine, however, that despite my aversion, I am (...) forced to climb Mount Everest. Does climbing Mount Everest benefit me? If so, when? A natural answer seems to be that if in fact it does benefit me, it benefits me at no particular time, and hence the desire-satisfaction view cannot accommodate the phenomenon of temporal welfare. In this paper, I argue, first, that a desire-satisfaction view can accommodate the phenomenon of temporal welfare only by accepting what I call the “time-of-desire” view: that p benefits x at t only if x desires p at t . Second, I argue that this view can be defended from important objections. (shrink)

According to contemporary legal positivism, law claims to create obligations. In order for law to be able to create obligations, it must be capable of having authority. Legal positivism claims that for law to be capable of having authority, it only has to meet non-moral or non-normative conditions of authority. In this paper it is argued that law can only be capable of having authority if it also meets certain normative conditions. But if something must meet certain normative conditions in (...) order to be capable of having authority and if it must be capable of having authority in order to be law, then it is only law if it is conceivable that it meets these normative conditions and this can only be ascertained by means of an evaluation. Therefore, legal positivism's claim that determining what the law is does not necessarily, or conceptually, depend on moral or other evaluative considerations (the separation thesis) is incompatible with its claim that law must be able to create obligations. Further, an analysis of Hart's concept of law shows that it is not only possible that the identification of the law depends on moral evaluation, as Hart claims, but that it is conceptually necessary that it does. (shrink)

Adaptationists explain the evolution of religion from the cooperative effects of religious commitments, but which cooperation problem does religion evolve to solve? I focus on a class of symmetrical coordination problems for which there are two pure Nash equilibriums: (1) ALL COOPERATE, which is efficient but relies on full cooperation; (2) ALL DEFECT, which is inefficient but pays regardless of what others choose. Formal and experimental studies reveal that for such risky coordination problems, only the defection equilibrium is evolutionarily stable. (...) The following makes sense of otherwise puzzling properties of religious cognition and cultures as features of cooperative designs that evolve to stabilise such risky exchange. The model is interesting because it explains lingering puzzles in the data on religion, and better integrates evolutionary theories of religion with recent, well-motivated models of cooperative niche construction. (shrink)

Liberal political thought is underwritten by an enduring fear of civil and state violence. It is assumed within liberal thought that self?interest characterises relations between individuals in civil society, resulting in violence. In absolutist doctrines, such as Hobbes?, the pacification of private persons depended on the Sovereign's command of a monopoly of violence. Liberals, by contrast, sought to claim that the state itself must be pacified, its capacity for cruelty (e.g., torture) removed, its capacity for violence (e.g., war) reduced and (...) controlled. A core tension within liberal thought thus arises between containing civil violence by empowering the state and containing state violence by constraining the state. One result of this tension is the highly selective conception of ?pacification? within liberalism, which, historically, has accommodated indifference to endemic violence, both within civil society, and beyond civil society ? as in (past) arguments licensing imperialism and in (present) arguments for disciplining ?rogue? states. (shrink)

In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith observed that we live in a fundamentally conflictual world. Although he held that we are creatures who sympathize, he also observed that our sympathy seems to be constrained by geographical limits. Accordingly, traditional theories of cosmopolitanism were implausible; yet, as a moral philosopher, Smith attempted to reconcile his bleak description of the world with his eagerness for international peace. Smith believed that commercial intercourse among self‐interested nations would emulate sympathy on a global (...) scale, balancing national wealth and international peace without a coercive apparatus to enforce compliance with international law. (shrink)

In order to present a hopefully comprehensive framework of what is the stake of the growing use of robot soldiers, the paper focuses on: the different impact of robots on legal systems, e.g., contractual obligations and tort liability; how robots affect crucial notions as causality, predictability and human culpability in criminal law and, finally, specific hypotheses of robots employed in “just wars.” By using the traditional distinction between causes that make wars just and conduct admissible on the battlefield, the aim (...) is to clarify how advancement of military robotics technology is transforming a 2,000-year-old legal debate on the concept of “just war.” For the first time, legal systems will hold political authorities and military commissioners responsible for what an artificial soldier autonomously decides to do. The paper examines how the new scenario affects both principles of military conduct and notions of justice in resorting to war. (shrink)

The fictionalist paradigm is introduced, and differentiated from other paradigms, using the Lincoln & Guba template. Following an initial overview, the axioms of fictionalism are delineated by reference to standard metaphysical categories: the nature of reality, the relationship between knower and known, the possibility of generalization, the possibility of causal linkages, and the role of values in inquiry. Although a paradigm's ‘basic beliefs’ are arbitrary and can be assumed for any reason, in this paper the fictionalist axioms are supported with (...) philosophical considerations, and the key differences between fictionalism, positivism, and constructivism are briefly explained. Paradigm characteristics are then derived, focusing particularly on the methodological consequences. Towards the end of the paper, various objections and misunderstandings are discussed. (shrink)

Recently, the ‘right to die’ became a major social issue. Few agree suicide is a right tout court. Even those who believe suicide (‘regular’, passive, or physician-assisted) is sometimes morally permissible usually require that a suicide be ‘rational suicide’: instrumentally rational, autonomous, due to stable goals, not due to mental illness, etc. We argue that there are some perfectly ‘rational suicides’ that are, nevertheless, bad mistakes. The concentration on the rationality of the suicide instead of on whether it is a (...) mistake may lead to permitting suicides that should be forbidden. (shrink)

Abstract This article outlines Locke's theory of war as found in his political writings and seeks to redress a perceived imbalance in John Locke's morality of war. Locke's strident rejection of any sense of proportionality in warfare against unjust aggression, as read in the Second Treatise of Government, has to be tempered with his general philosophical programme against extremism of any sort. Arguably, Locke's war ethic when read alone is strict, objective, and emphatic, but when compared with his epistemological work, (...) its righteousness is reduced to extreme circumstances. (shrink)

In The Leviathan in the state theory of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt puts forward the claim that there is a ?barely visible crack? in Hobbes's theory of the state that opened the door to liberal constitutionalism. This essay claims that Schmitt's ?thesis of the crack? is composed of two elements: first, Schmitt argues that Hobbes makes a concession to individual conscience in his discussion of miracles; second, Schmitt points out that Hobbes's individualism undermines his notion of the absolute state. As (...) Schmitt relies on an unconvincing critique of Hobbes's discourse on miracles in order to justify his more general claim against Hobbes's authoritarianism, this essay suggests that Schmitt's ?thesis of the crack? is untenable in the form that Schmitt presented it in 1938. An attempt, however, is made to salvage ?the thesis of the crack? by turning to concepts found in Schmitt's Concept of the political and in Political theology. Although Schmitt openly approved of the so?called protection/obedience principle, this essay claims that there are a number of crucial differences between Schmitt's formulation of that principle and Hobbes's own version; an examination of these differences enables us (i) to appreciate the consequences of Hobbes's individualism on his theory of the state and (ii) to shed new light on Howard Warrender's famous claim that Hobbes's sovereign is inherently weak. The essay concludes that in spite of Schmitt's fallacious formulation of the ?thesis of the crack? of 1938, his political theory affords us a rare vantage point from which we can clearly see a case against the association of Hobbes with authoritarianism. (shrink)

In this introduction, the author argues that Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt can help us rediscover the foundations of politics and political thought. In the years since World War II, the prevailing paradigm of politics has largely centred on the redistribution of resources. Hobbes and Schmitt, by contrast, help us appreciate two other conceptions of politics. Firstly, these thinkers averred that it is the problem of order ? not redistribution ? which is the fundamental concern for any society. Secondly, both (...) were acutely aware of the role played by myth: that is, how shared ideas ? sometimes created for this very purpose ? serve to promote order, social cohesion, and law?abiding behaviour. The author also argues, finally, that normative theory and the social sciences in general have often neglected these two conceptions of politics. (shrink)