Research Articles Craig Yirush, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

Rawls's “public reason” has not been without its critics. One criticism is that public reason is “conservative.” Public reason must rely on those beliefs that are “widely shared” among citizens. But if public reason relies on widely shared beliefs, how can it change without departing from those beliefs, thus violating public reason? In part one of my essay, I introduce the conservatism objection and describe two unsatisfactory responses to it. Part two argues that there are aspects of public reason which (...) diminish the force of the conservatism objection: first, that public reason is historical, and second, that it is mutable. (shrink)

This paper examines the dynamics of hostile takeovers as a form of corporate warfare. There are a number of compelling reasons for believing this to be an accurate approximation to corporate reality and therefore an appropriate analogy. In circumstances where it is all-too easy for either of the protagonists to act unethically, there is an evident need for an appropriate template through which to analyse and evaluate the ethical dilemmas that HT's inevitably raise —whilst also, where possible, employing its prescriptions (...) as a means of corporate conflict resolution. This paper evaluates just war theory as one such template. In seeking a conceptually adaptable framework for analysing, interpreting and articulating antagonistic behaviour during a HT, it became apparent in the course of the research that JWT provided a potentially useful and viable template within which to pursue the above. The research questions centre not necessarily on whether this template could in some way be a substitute for statutory and regulatory constraints on unethical conduct but, rather, whether it might better inform all stakeholders of the importance of ethically informed restraint in the interest of the greater good. (shrink)

What is commonly called a right has since about 1980 increasingly come to be called a subjective right. In this paper the origin and rise of this solecism is investigated. Its use can result in a lack of clarity and even confusion. Some aspects of rights-concepts and their history are also discussed. A brief postscript introduces Leibniz's Razor.

In my dissertation, I engage in a political history of waste; in particular I look at modern philosophers from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and the way that waste functions alongside narratives of civilization, progress, and perfection. I analyze the political, pedagogical, and other theories of John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. I use Julia Kristevaâs concept of abjection to trace the legacies of these philosophers to the continued and continuing practices of wasting life their work (...) supports and maintains. Social contract theory must have its others, those wasted and abjected to limn the boundary of the âclean and properâ civilized order. Locke abjects waste in his theory of property and I link the use of his term âwastelandâ to the wastelanding of Native Americans. As Kristeva says the forgetting, repressing, or disavowal of abjection leads to the return of its repressed in the form of our âapocalypses.â I discuss Rousseauâs treatment of waste and the way it is ambivalently embraced, which I think is a more appropriate treatment of waste. I also compare Emile and Sophieâs education and argue that his education of women makes waste of their lives. Last, I discuss Kantâs theory of waste and race together, arguing that he redeems all waste and that he makes waste of all races except the white race. He assents to the use of people of color as means for the white raceâs ends, rather than treating them as ends in themselves. Thus, I conclude that social contract theories are wasteful of life and lives and that contract theory should be garbaged for a new political principle: to not make waste of life or lives. (shrink)

Dan Edelstein is a prolific author. In less than two years he has produced not one but two books. His first, The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution, was published by The University of Chicago Press in October 2009. Its Irish twin, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy, appeared with the same press in the fall of 2010. Each of these books deals with a much-studied subject—respectively the Terror and the Enlightenment—the kind of subject, in (...) other words, about which even the most recent literature alone can fill entire libraries. Yet in both cases, Edelstein manages to make a contribution of startling originality and importance. It is clear that this literary scholar—Edelstein is a professor of French and Italian at Stanford University—is one of the most important new voices in the field of eighteenth-century French intellectual history. In this review, I will start by discussing both of his books separately. I will then conclude with some reflections on what Edelstein's work contributes to our understanding of eighteenth-century intellectual history when read as a whole. (shrink)

Research Articles Thomas G. West, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

It has become a commonplace in neo-republican thinking to claim that if the notion of rights can be allowed a place in republican political theory, it can never achieve the prominence that liberalism allegedly grants it. Philip Pettit’s book, Republicanism, provides several arguments to buttress this thesis. This article aims at examining these arguments in order to show that once properly stated, they must on the contrary be considered as powerful arguments to the effect that republicans take rights very seriously.