This paper considers the theoretical and methodological origins of Marx's beliefs and attitudes towards classical moral theories and then their implications for two basic questions: (1) In what way, if any, was Marx suspicious and dismissive of classical moral theories (e.g., utilitarianism or Kantianism), and (2) what sort of moral theory can a proponent of Marx's moral views support? Here it is argued that there is a clear sense in which Marx would not have been automatically suspicious of moral ideas, (...) conceptions, discourse and the rest. But there is an equally clear sense in which he was. It is in the latter respect that Marx’s views must be explicated in terms of his theory of historical development, and it is only here that the full richness and impact of Marx’s views on moral philosophy can be understood and appreciated. (shrink)

Cost-benefit analysis makes the assumption that everything from consumer goods to endangered species may in principle be given a value by which its worth can be compared with that of anything else, even though the actual measurement of such value may be difficult in practice. The assumption is shown to fail, even in simple cases, and the analysis to be incapable of taking into account the transformative value of new experiences. Several kinds of value are identified, by no means all (...) commensurable with one another – a situation with which both economics and contemporary ethical theory must come to terms. A radical moral pluralism is recommended as in no way incompatible with the requirements of rationality, which allows that the business of living decently involves many kinds of principles and various sorts of responsibilities. In environmental ethics, pluralism offers the hope of reconciling various rival theories, even if none of them is universally applicable. (shrink)

The article examines J. S. Mill's views on the significance of the racial factor in the formation of what he called . Mill's views are placed in the context of his time and are assessed in the light of the theories concerning these issues that were predominant in the nineteenth century. It is shown that Mill made strenuous efforts to discredit the deterministic implications of racial theories and to promote the idea that human effort and education could alter beyond recognition (...) what were supposed to be the racially inherited characteristics of various human groups. Finally, Mill's attitude towards race is used as a case-study through which a contribution can be made to broader debates on how to categorize him. (shrink)

Modern biology is ambivalent about the notion of evolutionary progress. Although most evolutionists imply in their writings that they still understand large-scale macroevolution as a somewhat progressive process, the use of the term “progress” is increasingly criticized and avoided. The paper shows that this ambivalence has a long history and results mainly from three problems: (1) The term “progress” carries historical, theoretical and social implications which are not congruent with modern knowledge of the course of evolution; (2) An incongruence exists (...) between the notion of progress and Darwin’s theory of selection; (3) It is still not possible to give more than a rudimentary definition of the general patterns that were generated during the macroevolution of organisms. The paper consists of two parts: the first is a historical overview of the roots of the term “progress” in evolutionary biology, the second discusses epistemological, ontological and empirical problems. It is stated that the term has so far served as a metaphor for general patterns generated amongst organisms during evolution. It is proposed that a reformulation is needed to eliminate historically imported implications and that it is necessary to develop a concept for an appropriate empirical description of macroevolutionary patterns. This is the third way between, on the one hand, using the term indiscriminately and, on the other hand, ignoring the general patterns that evolution has produced. (shrink)

In trying to reach some view regarding the philosophical exchanges that went on between F. H. Bradley and William James at the turn of the century, it is in some respects tempting to endorse Bradley's view that ‘our differences may perhaps on the whole be small when compared with the extent of our agreement’. Indeed, in most of the articles, letters and books in which the debate between these two men was carried on, one finds the protagonists claiming to be (...) mystified as to the grounds of the dispute, and to see no great distinction in their respective outlooks. (shrink)

My purpose in the researching and the writing of this thesis has been to investigate, and to try to explain, Frank Ankersmit's curious shift from his well expressed and firmly held narrativist position of "Narrative Logic", to an arguably contradictory, yet passionately held counter belief in the plausibility of a form of direct historical experience - an authentic unmediated relationship with the past. I am, accordingly, presenting here what I believe to be the most adequate explanatory account of/for Ankersmit's intellectual (...) journey. A journey which, in essence, constituted a substitution of his earlier representational, language centred philosophy of history for what might be taken as a new and mystical non-representational theory. This alternative theory of Ankersmit' s, lacking cognitive foundations, works on the basis of sensations, moods, feelings and therefore a consciousness deemed to be received directly from the past itself, and therein - for this thesis - lies its fatal weakness as a historical theory. Belief in the mystical may be all right at some level, if this is what is wanted, but a mystical experience itself cannot produce a historical re-presentation which is the only way that the past can be presented historically. Thus, I argue that Ankersmit's journey from language to experience - the latter phenomenon being more appropriately situated within the field of sociology/social theory and memory studies - is, in the end, a lost historical cause. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe article explores the reasons for the rise to prominence of Newtonian natural theology in the period following the publication of thePrincipiain 1687, its continued importance throughout the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, and possible explanations for its rapid decline in the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the career of Newtonian natural theology cannot be explained solely in terms of internal intellectual developments such as the theology of Newton's clerical admirers or the (...) impact of the work of Hume or of Charles Darwin. While such intellectual movements are undoubtedly of considerable importance in accounting for the rise and fall of Newtonian natural theology, they do not of themselves explain why British society was more receptive to particular bodies of thought in some periods rather than in others. Hence this article – in common with a number of recent studies – attempts to draw some connections between the growth of Newtonian natural theology and the character of Augustan society and politics; it also attempts to link the decline of this tradition with such nineteenth-century developments as the growing separation between church and state and the secularization of the universities and of scientific and intellectual life more generally. (shrink)

In a paper which examined the ‘simultaneous emergence of evolutionary theories in biology and sociology in the nineteenth century’, J. C. Greene said of Comte that ‘it was not from biology that his inspiration [the inspiration of his evolutionary view] was drawn; his writings and letters in the formative period sing the praises of Bichat and Gall but not of Lamarck. His intellectual debt in social theory lay in a different direction—to Condorcet'sSketch of an historical picture of the progress of (...) the human mind, to the historical writings of Hume and Robertson, and to the ideas of Saint-Simon’. This statement from a paper published almost twenty years ago as an exploratory reconnaissance of virgin territory is representative of the kind of confused judgements which still surround a discussion of the inter-relations between social, biological and medical thought in the century 1750 to 1850. It makes some valid points which a critical examination should not be allowed to overwhelm, the most significant being that Comte is unequivocally identified with the Enlightenment tradition represented here by Condorcet, Robertson and Hume. But since it is a very condensed statement about a complex set of relationships, it invites interpretations which the author did not necessarily intend. (shrink)