This paper highlights John Stuart Mill’s views on the problem of gender equality as expressed in The Subjection of Women, which is commonly regarded as one of the core texts of Enlightenment liberal feminism of the 19th century. In this paper, the author outlines the historical context of both Mill’s views and his personal biography, which influenced his argumentation for the emancipation of women, and considers Mill’s utilitarianism and liberalism, as the main philosophical background for his criticism of social conditions (...) that subordinated women. She reflects on some of the philosopher’s ideas and arguments for equality and friendship between women and men which may still be considered noteworthy and relevant. Attention is also given to the main lines of contemporary reception of Mill’s liberal feminism from the perspective of current feminist philosophy, within which certain critical views predominate. Despite some problematic points in Mill’s considerations, his essay on women’s subjection may be regarded as one of the philosophically most interesting conceptions of liberal feminist thinking. (shrink)

The article argues that it is important to offer children ideals. Ideals are defined as imagined excellences, which are so desirable that people will try to actualise them. These characteristics show the importance of ideals for people: ideals give direction and meaning to their lives. The motivating power of ideals can, however, also lead to fanaticism. Education should therefore involve several worthy ideals that children can commit themselves to as well as critical reflection on the ways in which people are (...) committed to and try to actualise them. (shrink)

Utilitarianism has dominated media ethics for a century. For Mill, individual autonomy and neutrality are the foundations of his On Liberty and System of Logic, as well as his Utilitarianism. These concepts fit naturally with media ethics theory and professional practice in a democratic society. However, the weaknesses in utilitarianism articulated by Ross and others direct us at this stage to a dialogic ethics of duty instead. Habermas's discourse ethics, feminist ethics, and communitarian ethics are examples of duty ethics rooted (...) in the dialogic relation that enable us to start over intellectually. (shrink)

: This essay considers the important role attributed to education in the writings of nineteenth-century feminist Harriet Taylor Mill. Taylor Mill connected ignorance to inequality between the sexes. She called up the specter of regression into lowness and ignorance when she associated feminism with progress. As she stressed the importance of education, she constructed an 'other' to feminism, variously associated with lowness, poverty, and the primitive. She made a case for the advantages of civilization (education, enfranchisement, equality) to be opened (...) up to women. Yet Taylor Mill's position that the ignorant poor, like all humans, should be in a position of so-called "perfect equality" drifted intermittently into the view that the elevation of women to perfect equality would refine and elevate the lower classes. (shrink)

Too little attention has been paid by philosophers to the cognitive and epistemic dimensions of emotional disturbances such as depression, grief, and anxiety and to the possibility of justification or warrant for such conditions. The chief aim of the present paper is to help to remedy that deficiency with respect to depression. Taxonomy of depression reveals two distinct forms: depression (1) with intentionality and (2) without intentionality. Depression with intentionality can be justified or unjustified, warranted or unwarranted. I argue that (...) the effort of Aaron Beck to show that depressive reasoning is necessarily illogical and distorted is flawed. I identify an essential characteristic of that depression which is a mental illness. Finally, I describe the potential of depression to provide credal contact with important truths. (shrink)

It is widely thought that we have good reason to try to be important. Being important or doing significant things is supposed to add value to our lives. In particular, it is supposed to make our lives exceptionally meaningful. This essay develops an alternative view. After exploring what importance is and how it might relate to meaning in life, a series of cases are presented to validate the perspective that being important adds no meaning to our lives. The meaningful life (...) does need valuable projects, activities, and relationships. But no added meaning is secured by those projects, activities, and relationships being especially significant. The extraordinary life has no more meaning than the ordinary life. (shrink)

In the final sentence of the "Preliminary Remarks" to the Principles of Political Economy, John Stuart Mill declaresThe laws of Production and Distribution, and some of the practical consequences deducible from them, are the subject of the following treatise. It is almost two hundred pages before Mill asserts thatThe laws and conditions of the Production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them. … It is not so with the Distribution of (...) wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. (shrink)

This article aims to compare notions of progress and evolution in the social theories of Freud and Spencer. It argues 1) that the two authors had similarly complex theories that contained mixed elements of positivism and teleology; 2) In its positivist elements, both authors made use of unified natural laws and, in its teleological aspect, they made use of notions of final cause in that progress and the evolution of civilization was understood as a linear path of progressive development with (...) an aim, 3) that that aim was both ethno- as well as - in Freud?s case in particular? self-centric and, finally, 4) that such understanding of natural law led to ethical commitments to the individual. (shrink)

This paper explores potential points of synthesis between two leading theorists in Critical Theory and Critical International Relations Theory, Axel Honneth and Andrew Linklater. Whereas Linklater's recent work on the harm principle has turned away from the critical social theory of the Frankfurt School in favour of Norbert Elias and process sociology, the paper observes a fundamental complementarity between harm and the precepts of recognition theory that can bridge these otherwise disparate approaches to emancipation. The paper begins with a brief (...) overview of Linklater's emancipatory vision before examining his recent turn to the harm principle and Eliasian process sociology. It is argued that Honneth's work, particularly the ideas of mutual recognition and the diagnosis of social pathologies, clearly resonant with Linklater's defence of ethical universalism and can help further the emancipatory project of Critical International Relations Theory. In particular, Honneth's intersubjective concept of autonomy is argued to provide a normative and empirical standard for emancipation premised on the historically progressive expansion of attitudes of recognition, born out of social struggles, toward the ideal institutionalisation of mutual recognition in world politics. (shrink)

It is an open question whether well-being ought to primarily be understood as a temporal concept or whether it only makes sense to talk about a person’s well-being over their whole lifetime. In this article, I argue that how this principled philosophical disagreement is settled does not have substantive practical implications for well-being science and well-being policy. Trying to measure lifetime well-being directly is extremely challenging as well as unhelpful for guiding well-being public policy, while temporal well-being is both an (...) adequate indirect measure of lifetime well-being, and an adequate focus for the purposes of improving well-being through public policy. Consequently, even if what we ought to care about is lifetime well-being, we should use temporal measures of well-being and focus on temporal well-being policies. (shrink)

Plausibly, one important part of a good life is doing work that makes a contribution, or a positive difference to the world. In this paper, however, I explore contribution pessimism, the view that people will not always have adequate opportunities for making contributions. I distinguish between three interestingly different and at least initially plausible reasons why this view might be true: in slogan form, things might become too easy, they might become too good, or we might be too late. Now, (...) one response to these problems might be to deliberately attempt to undo them. However, I claim that this solution is intuitively misguided, and argue that explaining this supports a holistic approach to the value of contributions. Finally, I argue that if contribution pessimism is correct, it could provide an explanation of some widely held intuitions about issues in population ethics, with implications about the practical issue of how much priority we should give to addressing risks of human extinction. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A new ‘political philosophy’ is indispensable to the ‘post-Corona world,’ and this paper tries to analyze the future of ‘liberal democracy’ in it. It shows that ‘liberal democracy’ faces a ‘global crisis’ that has begun before, but the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic,’ as a setback for it, strongly encourages that crisis. ‘Liberalism’ and ‘democracy,’ which had long been assumed by ‘political philosophers’ to go together, are now becoming decoupled, and the ‘liberal values’ of ‘democracy’ are eroding. To find why and (...) how, this paper analyzes ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘totalitarianism,’ and the evils and propensities of ‘democracy’ that bring about further erosions of ‘liberal values.’ There may be difficult trade-offs to be made between ‘liberal’ and ‘authoritarian’ ‘values’ - and, after the experience of ‘Coronavirus,’ this paper shows the ‘illiberal or authoritarian democracy’ may become stronger. -/- KEYWORDS: democracy, liberalism, liberal democracy, illiberal democracy, the novel Coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19, authoritarianism, totalitarianism. -/- EXTENDED ABSTRACT For almost a century in West, ‘democracy’ has meant ‘liberal democracy’-a political system marked not only by ‘free and fair elections,’ but also by ‘liberal values.’ ‘Liberalism’ applied to the problem of the limits of the criminal law would require commitment to the presumption in favor of ‘liberty.’ If the word ‘liberal’ is to have any utility in this context, it should refer to one who has so powerful a commitment to ‘liberty’ that she is motivated to limit the number of acknowledged liberty-limiting or coercion-legitimizing principles as narrowly as possible. So, she only believes in ‘harm-principle’ as the morally relevant reason for criminal prohibitions. ‘Offense principle’ and ‘paternalistic’ and ‘moralistic’ considerations, when introduced as support for penal legislation, have no weight at all. So, it means ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-regarding vs. other-regarding actions distinction’ based on which the human is the owner of her mind and body and everything consenting adults do is beyond the realm of morality and law. It leads to ‘individual’ ‘basic rights and liberties’ such as ‘basic rights and liberties’ of ‘speech,’ ‘religion,’ and ‘property’ and ‘collective’ ‘basic rights and liberties’ such as ‘basic rights and liberties of assembly,’ ‘civil society,’ ‘political pluralism,’ ‘democratic institutions,’ and ‘non-governmental organizations.’ ‘Liberalism’ also believes in ‘equality of conditions, ‘equal and free participatory rights in political decision making,’ and ‘collective self-governance.’ It also believes in the ‘rule of law,’ a ‘separation of powers,’ and ‘checks and balances.’ However, even under fair and free elections, the elected leaders can be ‘populists,’ ‘ultra-nationalists,’ ‘racists,’ ‘fascists,’ and ‘authoritarians’ who do not respect ‘inviolable basic rights and liberties,’ and suppress ‘minorities.’ Democratically elected leaders can routinely ignore constitutional limits on their power and deprive their citizens of ‘basic rights and liberties.’ The two strands of ‘liberal democracy’ have been coming apart in the world, and the ‘liberal’ elements of ‘democracy’ have been fraying and eroding even before the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic.’ Even before the Coronavirus hit, there was already much discussion of a crisis of ‘liberal democracy.’ In particular, there has been a debate about whether ‘liberalism’ and ‘democracy,’ which had long been assumed to go together, were becoming decoupled. This paper shows ‘liberal democracy’ faces a ‘global crisis’ that had begun before the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic.’ It also analyzes ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘totalitarianism,’ ‘liberalism,’ and ‘democracy’ and shows that Covid-19 is a setback for ‘liberal democracy.’ What is striking about the current moment is that many of the ‘liberal’ elements of ‘democracy’ are so far holding up under immense pressure. ‘Illiberal democracies’ seemed to be emerging in many countries. This model of ‘illiberal democracy,’ in which elections continue to be held but some individual rights and liberties are curtailed, may emerge stronger from this new crisis. In that sense, the ‘pandemic’ may become a challenge not only to ‘democracy’ as such but also to ‘liberal democracy’ in particular – in other words, a system of popular sovereignty together with guaranteed basic rights, such as freedom of association and expression and checks and balances on executive power. ‘Authoritarian’ procedures may succeed in mitigating the spread of the ‘Coronavirus,’ but the world now faces another problem: that when the virus recedes, many ‘liberal democracies’ will be far less ‘liberal’ or ‘democratic’ than they were before. In times of crisis, ‘liberal values’ have been ignored temporarily in the name of executive power. However, the ‘temporary’ can become ‘permanent.’ In addition, if citizens lose their faith in the legitimacy of ‘liberal democracy’ as the best form of government, and think ‘liberal democracy’ cannot function effectively during a crisis, and ‘authoritarian regimes’ manage the crisis more decisively, the world will slide towards ‘illiberal or authoritarian democracy,’ and many ‘liberal democracies’ will be at grave risk of failure. There may now be difficult trade-offs to be made between those basic rights and security - and, after the experience of Covid-19, many citizens may choose security. (shrink)

This article examines the nineteenth-century debate about scientific method between John Stuart Mill and William Whewell. Contrary to standard interpretations (given, for example, by Achinstein, Buchdahl, Butts, and Laudan), I argue that their debate was not over whether to endorse an inductive methodology but rather over the nature of inductive reasoning in science and the types of conclusions yielded by it. Whewell endorses, while Mill rejects, a type of inductive reasoning in which inference is employed to find a property or (...) cause shared by the observed members of a class, which is generalized to all its members, including the unobserved ones. Because of this, Whewell’s inductivism, unlike Mill’s, is able to yield theoretical hypotheses referring to unob-servables such as molecules and light waves. This is contrary to the claims of some critics of inductivism who argue that inductivism is unable to yield such hypotheses. Moreover, I suggest that Whewell’s view of induction conforms more closely than Mill’s view to the practice of scientists such as Kepler, Newton, and Fresnel, who do attempt to discover laws involving unobservables. (shrink)

Envisioning the future of positive psychology requires looking at its past. To that end, I first review prior critiques of PP to underscore that certain early problems have persisted over time. I then selectively examine recent research to illustrate progress in certain areas as well as draw attention to recurrent problems. Key among them is promulgation of poorly constructed measures of well-being and reliance on homogeneous, privileged research samples. Another concern is the commercialization of PP, which points to the need (...) for greater oversight and quality control in profit-seeking endeavors. Looking ahead, I advocate for future science tied to contemporary challenges, particularly ever-widening inequality and the pandemic. These constitute intersecting catastrophes that need scientific attention. Such problems bring into focus “neglected negatives” that may be fueling current difficulties, including greed, indifference, and stupidity. Anger, which defies easy characterization as positive or negative, also warrants greater scientific study. Going forward I advocate for greater study of domains that likely nurture good lives and just societies – namely, participation in the arts and encounters with nature, both currently under study. Overall, my entreaty to PP is to reckon with persistent problems from its past, while striving toward a future that is societally relevant and virtuous. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill claims that free institutions are next to impossible in a multinational state. According to Will Kymlicka, this leads him to embrace policies kindred to those of Friedrich Engels, aimed at promoting mononational states in Europe through coercive assimilation. Given Mill’s harm principle, such coercive assimilation would have to be justified either paternalistically, in terms of its civilizing effects upon the would-be assimilated, or non-paternalistically, with reference to the danger that their non-assimilation would pose to others. However, neither (...) possible interpretation is plausible; Mill takes Europe’s civilized status to shield Europeans from paternalistic coercion, and he opposes coercive assimilation where it could conceivably be justified in the name of defense. Although this much suggests that Kymlicka misinterprets Mill by ignoring his definition of nationality, it leaves scope for Kymlicka to argue that Mill favors policies that promote mononationality through neglecting the languages and cultures of national minorities. (shrink)

Mill thinks our attitudes should be held in a way that’s active and ‘alive’. He believes attitudes that lack these qualities—those held dogmatically, or in unreflective conformity—are inimical to our well-being. This claim then serves as a premiss in his argument for overarching principles of liberty. He argues that attitudinal vitality, in the relevant sense, relies upon people experiencing attitudinal conflict, and that this necessitates a prioritization of personal liberties. I argue that, pace Mill, contestation isn’t required for attitudinal vitality. (...) I describe one species of attitudinal vitality that isn’t reliant upon conflict. (shrink)

The books’ goal is to answer the question: Do the weaknesses of value-free economics imply the need for a paradigm shift? The author synthesizes criticisms from different perspectives (descriptive and methodological). Special attention is paid to choices over time, because in this area value-free economics has the most problems. In that context, the enriched concept of multiple self is proposed and investigated. However, it is not enough to present the criticisms towards value-free economics. For scientists, a bad paradigm is better (...) than no paradigm. Therefore, the author considers whether value-based economics with normative approaches such as economics of happiness, capability approach, libertarian paternalism, and the concept of multiple self can be the alternative paradigm for value-free economics. This book is essential reading to everyone interested in the current state of economics as a discipline. (shrink)

The growing appreciation of the global environmental crisis has generated what should have been a predictable response: those with power are using it to appropriate for themselves the world’s diminishing resources, augmenting their power to do so while further undermining the power of the weak to oppose them. In taking this path, they are at the same time blocking efforts to create forms of society that would be ecologically sustainable. If there is one word that could bring into focus what (...) is wrong with this response it is ‘democracy’. Democracy means power in the hands of the people, which, by definition, means opposition to the concentration of power. It is inconceivable that if we had genuine democracy, where people were fully informed of the issues, they would not choose to share the burdens of scarcity and organize to live in accordance with the limits of their environment. Yet the notion of democracy is problematic. Those striving to concentrate power are pursuing this in the name of democracy. They have identified democracy with the imposition of free markets and the freedom of people to use their wealth to dominate others. In this paper I will show how process philosophy provides the basis for justifying and further developing the traditional notion of democracy to counter this reformed notion, providing a vision of a democratic form of society that could address environmental problems. To achieve this, I will argue, it is necessary to reformulate the grand narrative of civilization on the basis of human ecology, a science which, construing humans as participants in a creative nature, can replace economics as the master science for formulating public policy. (shrink)

Several authors have recently argued that intelligibility, rather than value, constitutes life’s meaning. In this paper I criticize the intelligibility view by offering examples of cases in which i...

In recent discussions of the so-called “value of truth,” it is assumed that what is valuable in the relevant way is not the things that are true, but only various states and activities associated with those things: knowing them, investigating them, etc. I consider all the arguments I know of for this assumption, and argue that none provide good reason to accept it. By examining these arguments, we gain a better appreciation of what the value of the things that are (...) true would be, and why it would matter. We also encounter three indications that what is true really is valuable, each of which provides a promising starting point for a serious argument with that conclusion. (shrink)

I discuss the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences, in order to reach also in the domain of morality the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the apriori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of (...) humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was really worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of the naïve positivist starting point Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. -/- . (shrink)

I review evidence from published and unpublished sources on Ricardo’s theological ideas. The main focuses of interest are the existence of a natural morality independent of religious confessions, morality as the essence of religion, useless of theological speculation, justification of toleration for everybody, including atheists, and the miscarriage of any attempt at a philosophical theodicy. The paper explores also the connection between Ricardo’s interest for theodicy and his views on the scope and method of political economy and suggests that his (...) opinion that political economy should be a secular and value-free science close to mathematics depends precisely on theological reasons. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between the fields of moral and political philosophy and the study of ideology. It begins by addressing a number of reservations philosophers usually have regarding the scholarly status of ideology research. It then proceeds to highlight the distinct style of philosophical inquiry, namely, its seamless continuity between the study of philosophy and the arguments it examines, which contrasts with the professional language of the study of ideologies, clearly distinguished from that of ideologues. The paper then (...) presents a conceptual perspective for the study of ideologies that complements the contributions from moral and political philosophy. Arguably, moral and political philosophy and ideology studies can fruitfully share methods and insights. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill didn’t take his life; but he could have done it. Had he done it when he was twenty, we would have never known what he thought about it. But he didn’t. And many years later he wrote about nature, God, religion and autonomy. My aim in this article is to show how his thoughts about nature and theism affect in fact his stance about autonomy to commit suicide.

This paper examines and defends a conception of the education of emotions found in the Zhuang-Zi. I begin by exploring four principal features of Zhuang Zi’s philosophy as it relates to the emotions: his epistemological perspectivism, his view of the self, his ethics of wandering and natural spontaneity, and his playful non-seriousness. Together these four features allow us to discern a general orientation to the education of the emotions, including a normative account of a good emotional life as well some (...) suggestions for a pedagogy for the development of such a life. (shrink)

This is lightly edited and referenced version of a presentation given at the 20th International Philosophy of Nursing conference in Quebec on 23rd August 2016. Philosophical texts are not given the same prominence in nurse education as their more valued younger sibling, primary research evidence, but they can influence practice through guidelines, codes and espoused values. John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, found in On Liberty, is not a universal law, and only a thoroughgoing libertarian would defend it as such, though (...) it, or its remnants, can be seen can be seen in policy documents. But its influence is weakening. Smoking bans in enclosed spaces were initially justified with other‐regarding considerations, but judgements from unsuccessful legal challenges from patients in UK psychiatric hospitals rely on preventing harm to the smoker, even when smoking outside, which does not harm others. In the wake of legislation, no‐smoking policies enacted by hospitals are becoming more aggressive, banning smoking both inside and outside, and extending the use of power gained through employment to prevent nurses assisting patients enjoy a lawful habit. Mill’s dictum has been subverted, and this speaks to the fundamental purpose of nursing. Should nurses collude and willingly exert their power for their version of the good of the patient? Or should they instead reaffirm values that support and facilitate life choices made by autonomous people? The paper supports the latter option, and this has wider application for nursing which can be illuminated, if not settled, by revisiting Mill and his famous dictum. (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to make contributions to normative ethics and to the history of philosophy. First, it contributes to the defense of consequentialist ethics against objections grounded upon the value of loving relationships. Secondly, it provides the first systematic account of John M. E. McTaggart’s ethical theory and its relation to his philosophy of love. According to consequentialist ethics, it is always morally wrong to knowingly do what will make the world worse-off than it could have been. Many consequentialists also (...) recognize that love is one of the most important goods worth pursing for its own sake and so this implies a strong duty to promote love. Recently, however, philosophers have outlined what I call the “love-based objection.” It argues that consequentialism ought to be rejected on its own terms because a commitment to maximizing aggregate overall goodness precludes forming the kinds of commitments necessary for highly valuable loving relationships. Other philosophers, however, have argued that a particular kind of consequentialist theory that recognizes the intrinsic value of love and that restricts evaluations based on maximizing goodness to only the most fundamental realms of moral evaluation and guidance overcomes the love-based objection. While philosophers have indicated how to overcome the objection through sophisticated consequentialism, the task of constructing a plausible version of such a system is currently ongoing. This dissertation argues that, more than fifty years before this contemporary debate started, McTaggart outlined a version of consequentialism called “Ideal Utilitarianism” that can overcome recent love-based objections in the way suggested by Railton and Mason. McTaggart’s work in moral philosophy, therefore, has a previously unrecognized relevance to contemporary issues in normative ethics and so his contributions ought to be considered alongside other, currently more prominent, ethicists of his day such as Hastings Rashdall and G. E. Moore. (shrink)

This paper discusses J.S. Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures, and suggests that recent neuroscientific evidence counts against it.

In reaction to Doret De Ruyter’s recent defence of the importance of ideals in education, I advocate cautiousness in three respects. First, I explain the importance of distinguishing ideals more sharply from goals by demonstrating the problems of considering ideals even approximately realisable. Second, I substantiate my doubts about their indispensability in human motivation, and question the desirability of encouraging the motivational use of ideals. Third, I question whether ideals could or should be ‘passed on’ in education, drawing attention to (...) their non-objective, personally created nature. (shrink)

This paper analyses J.S. Mill's theory on the relationships between individual autonomy and State powers. It will be argued that there is a significant discrepancy between Mill's general liberal statements aimed to secure individual largest possible autonomy and the specific examples which provide the government with quite wide latitude for interference in the public and private spheres. The paper outlines the boundaries of government interference in the Millian theory. Subsequently it describes Mill's elastic paternalism designed to prevent people from inflicting (...) harm upon others as well as upon themselves, from soft paternalism on issues like compulsory education to hard paternalism on very private matters such as marriage, having children, and divorce by consent. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's crisis of 1826 has received a great deal of attention from scholars. This attention results from reflection on the importance of the crisis to Mill's mature thought. Did the crisis signal rejection or revision of Benthamism? Or did it have little or no effect on Mill's view of his intellectual inheritance? Ultimately, an interpretation of the cause and resolution of the crisis is integral to an understanding of the nature of Mill's moral and social philosophy. Scholars, in (...) their zeal to understand Mill's crisis, have suggested various reasons for both the onset of the crisis and the recovery. Yet Mill's own perception of his crisis has often been overlooked or rejected. (shrink)

This essay considers the important role attributed to education in the writings of nineteenth-century feminist Harriet Taylor Mill. Taylor Mill connected ignorance to inequality between the sexes. She called up the specter of regression into lowness and ignorance when she associated feminism with progress. As she stressed the importance of education, she constructed an‘other’ to feminism, variously associated with lowness, poverty, and the primitive. She made a case for the advantages of civilization to be opened up to women. Yet Taylor (...) Mill's position that the ignorant poor, like all humans, should be in a position of so-called “perfect equality” drifted intermittently into the view that the elevation of women to perfect equality would refine and elevate the lower classes. (shrink)

Building on recent texts, I give a characterization of Richard Shusterman’s specific variant of pragmatism, understood as a melioristic or perfectionist pragmatism, where ethical and political dimensions are deeply intertwined with the epistemological one. To do so, I focus on what seems to be Shusterman’s latest contribution to his inter- rupted dialogue with Richard Rorty in Thinking through the Body.

In this dissertation I examine the topics of ethics, religion, and their relationship in the work of Charles Taylor. I take Taylor's attempt to confront modern disenchantment by seeking a kind of re-enchantment as my guiding thread. Seeking re-enchantment means, first of all, defending an `engaged realist' account of strong evaluation, i.e., qualitative distinctions of value that are seen as normative for our desires. Secondly, it means overcoming self-enclosure and achieving self-transcendence, which I argue should be understood in terms of (...) transcending a `lower' mode of selfhood for a `higher' one in concern for `strong goods'. One of the main issues that Taylor raises is whether re-enchantment requires theism for its full adequacy. He advances - often as `hunches' - controversial claims regarding the significance of theism (1) for defending strong evaluative realism and (2) for motivating an ethic of universal human concern. I seek to fill out his hunches in terms of a theistic teleological perspective that is centered on the `telos of communion'. I argue that such a view is important for overcoming the problem of what Bernard Williams calls the `radical contingency' of ethical beliefs, which seems to undermine their normative authority. However, I argue that if a non-theistic view of cosmic purpose (e.g., Thomas Nagel's view) can be regarded as a viable option, then it could also help to address this problem and support a kind of re-enchantment. Taylor also advances the controversial view that (3) there is an ineradicable draw to `transcendence' in human life in connection to the quest for the meaning of life. Here he opposes certain mainstream theories of secularization that see it as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of the relevance of religion. I seek to fill out and defend Taylor's view in this matter. Besides providing a reading of Taylor's work as a whole and advancing further some of the issues he raises, I also examine his general evaluative framework based on his account of strong evaluation. In doing so I show how he provides a distinct and important perspective among contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

Mental health acts allow for interference with the liberty of the individual. As such, they serve as test cases for theories of liberty, and thus the question of what Mill would think about them arises. My aim is to answer this question. I argue that Mill would embrace mental health acts to protect mentally disturbed individuals from themselves and others from them, and that they should have broad admission criteria, allow capable patients to refuse treatment, and have treatment decisions made (...) by patients or their families on the basis of substituted judgements rather than representatives of the state acting on best interest judgements. This interpretation will show that many writers who claim Mill's support cannot properly do so. It is also a combination of views that cannot be readily found in mental health acts themselves, but which, as Mill's reasons for it show, is a serious candidate for legislative adoption. (shrink)

Many classic philosophical debates converge on the twin questions ‘What is man?’ and ‘What is his place in nature?’, in the sense that taking up a position in those debates normally commits one to a certain range of answers to these questions. Such answers typically lie near the centre of one's web of belief, deeply entrenched in the structure of one's concepts, and thus remain remarkably resistant to the standard techniques of confirmation and refutation.

Argues that philosophy can solve the midlife crisis, at least in one of its forms. This crisis turns on the exhaustibility of our ends. The solution is to value ends that are ‘atelic,’ so inexhaustible. Topics include: John Stuart Mill's nervous breakdown; Aristotle on the finality of the highest good; and Schopenhauer on the futility of desire.

The paper attempts to highlight some under-researched aspects of the interaction between British and French radical political thinkers and activists during the period between the July Revolution of 1830 in France and the early years of the Third Republic. It focuses in particular on the decisive impact that the aftermath of the July Revolution of 1830 had for the perception of French politics by the most Francophile British radical, John Stuart Mill. In this context, Mill's astonishingly dense coverage of French (...) affairs in The Examiner and the relation between that coverage and Mill's radical agenda at home are explored. The Revolution of February 1848 and the establishment of a Republic in France raised new hopes and led to a new round of Anglo-French radical co-operation and manifestations of fraternity. However, it was the frustration of the expectations raised by 1848 that had the most profound effect on the perception of French radicalism outre-Manche. A detailed analysis of which French ‘radical’ parties, factions and personalities attracted Mill's sympathies and support from 1830 to the beginnings of the Third Republic is offered, along with the reasons why Mill was attracted by some of the people and factions in question and not by others. The paper winds up with a few comments on Mill's strenuous efforts to contribute to Anglo-French mutual understanding and fellow-feeling and his strategies to that effect. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Mill employs a tacit concept of competence in On Liberty. I will focus on the role of truth and individuality in On Liberty. Competence is a precondition for individuality, and as such, it is a threshold concept: those above the threshold are sensitive to rational argument and should be free to pursue happiness in their own way (because they are guided by the truth), whereas those who fail to meet this threshold should be (...) educated and paternalistically be kept out of harm's way until they are able to find the truth for and by themselves. (edited). (shrink)

An encyclopedia entry on hedonistic theories of value and welfare -- the view, roughly, that pleasure is the good.

It is commonly thought that mental disorder is a valid concept only in so far as it is an extension of or continuous with the concept of physical disorder. A valid extension has to meet two criteria: determination and coherence. Essentialists meet these criteria through necessary and sufficient conditions for being a disorder. Two Wittgensteinian alternatives to essentialism are considered and assessed against the two criteria. These are the family resemblance approach and the secondary sense approach. Where the focus is (...) solely on the characteristics or attributes of things, both these approaches seem to fail to meet the criteria for valid extension. However, this focus on attributes is mistaken. The criteria for valid extension are met in the case of family resemblance by the pattern of characteristics associated with a concept, and by the limits of intelligibility of applying a concept. Secondary sense, though it may have some claims to be a good account of the relation between physical and mental disorder, cannot claim to meet the two criteria of valid extension. (shrink)

The German theory of education refers mainly to what is called Bildung. The historical sense of Bildung is not cultivaion , but cultivation for inwardness. This concept has two sources, the neo-platonic inner soul on one hand, pietistic piety on the other hand. The article shows that these sources had been part of European discussions before the development of national cultures after 1750. So the German concept of Bildung, famous for the German Sonderweg in culture and politics, had been composed (...) out of non-German sources. The nationalizaiton of inwardness began at the end of the 18th century and was established in 19th century German Higher Education. (shrink)