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Toleration
by Andrew Jason Cohen
(Polity Press, 2014)
176 pages
Description
Beginning with some key insights into what we mean by toleration, Andrew J. Cohen goes on to investigate what should be tolerated and why. We should not be free to do everything: Murder, rape, and theft, for clear examples, should not be tolerated. But should we be free to take drugs, hire a prostitute, or kill ourselves? Should our governments outlaw such activities or tolerate them? Should they tolerate “outsourcing” of jobs or importing of goods or put embargos on other countries? Cohen examines these difficult questions, among others, and argues that we should look to principles of toleration to guide our answers. These principles tell us when limiting freedom is acceptable - that is, they indicate the proper limits of toleration. Cohen deftly explains the main principles on offer and indicates why one of these stands out from the rest.
Contents [preview]
Introduction
1. The Topic and its Historical Relevance
2. Two Approaches to the Normative Issues
3. The Harm Principle
4. Other Principles
5. Extending the Harm Principle
6. Children and the Paradoxes of Toleration and Liberalism
7. General Defences of Toleration
8. Conclusion
Andrew Jason Cohen is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Georgia State University. See his blog post on his new book here.
See also two of his papers:
* "What Tolerance Is" [pdf].
* "What the Liberal State Should Tolerate Within Its Borders"
[pdf].
Jürgen Habermas's speech at a SPD meeting in Potsdam (February 2, 2014) is published in "Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik" 2014/3:
»Für ein starkes Europa« – aber was heißt das?
You can hear the speech on SoundCloud here [37 minutes].
Excerpt:
"Schritte nach vorn
(a) Die bestehenden EU-Institutionen müssen so ausdifferenziert werden, dass sich eine Euro-Union, die für weitere Beitritte anderer EU-Staaten (vor allem Polens) offen steht, herausbildet. Eine Union, die über Kern und Peripherie verfügt, kann sowohl britischen Wünschen nach Rückübertragung bestimmter Kompetenzen wie auch umstrittenen Beitrittswünschen (beispielsweise der Türkei) eher entgegenkommen, als das im Rahmen der bestehenden Verträge möglich ist. Eine Änderung des Primärrechts, für die es gut durchdachte Vorschläge gibt, würde aber erst im Zuge der Durchführung eines zunächst innerhalb der Eurogruppe zu beschließenden Politikwechsels fällig.
(b) Mit dem im Verlauf der Krise noch verstärkten Vorrang der intergouvernementalen Methode muss zugunsten der Gemeinschaftsmethode gebrochen werden. Während die Versammlung von Regierungschefs, die sich allein vor nationalen Wählern legitimieren, auf das Aushandeln von Kompromissen zwischen unbeweglichen nationalen Interessen zugeschnitten ist, macht es die politische Willensbildung in einem nach Fraktionen gegliederten Europäischen Parlament möglich, dass die nationalen Interessen durch eine Interessenverallgemeinerung über nationale Grenzen hinweg aufgewogen werden.
(c) Die bevorstehende Europawahl bietet vor dem Hintergrund des europaweit lebhaft umstrittenen Krisenmanagements zum ersten Mal die Gelegenheit einer Politisierung der Agenda. Ohne eine solche Politisierung kann es eine Europawahl, die den Namen einer demokratischen Wahl verdient, überhaupt nicht geben – und hat es bisher in der Tat nicht gegeben. Erst gemeinsame Kandidaten und Listen können über nationale Grenzen hinweg verschiedene Programme – und damit überhaupt Wahlalternativen – erkennbar machen. Diesem Anfang muss ein europäisches Wahlrecht folgen. Und aus den lockeren Parteienfamilien muss sich ein europäisches Parteiensystem entwickeln.
(d) Schließlich müssen sich die politischen Eliten zu einem Ende der Bequemlichkeit bereitfinden: Sie müssen die Abschottung ihrer Europapolitik vom heimischen Wählerpublikum (die undemokratische Entkoppelung der policies von politics) ebenso aufgeben wie die zu Hause geübte populistische Mischung aus Brüssel-Bashing und unverbindlich-europafreundlicher Sonntagsrhetorik. Abweichend von ihren Routinen dürfen sie den Kampf der Meinungen nicht nur im Schlepptau demoskopischer Umfragen, sondern mit dem Ziel strukturieren, öffentliche Meinungen überhaupt erst zu bilden. Denn bisher bestehen in den nationalen Öffentlichkeiten überwiegend Vorurteile zu „Brüssel“, aber keine belastungsfähig informierten Meinungen, die ernsthaft miteinander konkurrieren.
In Europa haben wir heute glücklicherweise intelligente Bevölkerungen und nicht jene Sorte von emotional zusammengeschweißten nationalen Großsubjekten, die uns der Rechtspopulismus einreden möchte. Für eine nach wie vor in Nationalstaaten verankerte supranationale Demokratie brauchen wir kein europäisches Volk, sondern Individuen, die gelernt haben, dass sie beides, Staatsbürger und europäische Bürger, in einer Person sind. Und diese Bürger können, wenn auch die Medien ihrer Verantwortung gerecht werden, sehr wohl in ihren jeweils eigenen nationalen Öffentlichkeiten an einer europaweiten politischen Willensbildung teilnehmen. Dafür brauchen wir nichts anderes als die bestehenden nationalen Öffentlichkeiten und die vorhandenen Medien. Diese politischen Leitmedien müssen allerdings eine komplexe Übersetzungsaufgabe übernehmen, sobald sich die nationalen Öffentlichkeiten weit genug füreinander öffnen; sie müssen wechselseitig auch über Diskussionen berichten, die in den jeweils anderen Ländern zu den relevanten und alle Unionsbürger gemeinsam betreffenden Themen stattfinden."
Abridged versions of the speech have been published in
* La Repubblica (February 7: La nuova Europa in quattro mosse
* Le Monde (February 25: Repolitisons le débat européen
[See also here]
The German sociologist Ulrich Beck and several other European intellectuals have published a joint statement on the coming elections for the European Parliament in May:
"Wählt Europa"
"Vote for Europe"
The statement is signed by Ulrich Beck, Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Delors, Bruno Latour, Zygmunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, Harold James, Robert Menasse, Agnes Heller, Alain Touraine, and many others.
Jürgen Habermas says:
"“Die deutsche Bundesregierung darf die politische Verantwortung nicht länger verleugnen, die sie durch das von ihr bestimmte Krisenmanagement für die geradezu obszön ungleichen Krisenschicksale in der Eurozone übernommen hat. Weil sie selbst ein ‚deutsches Europa‘ am meisten fürchten muss, sollte sie diese Art von Führungsrolle in einer Politischen Union, die ihren Namen verdient, überflüssig machen."
“The German federal government must no longer deny the political responsibility that it has assumed for the almost obscenely unequal crisis outcomes in the Eurozone, through the crisis management that it has imposed. Since it has itself most to lose from a “German Europe”, it should make this type of leadership role superfluous, through a political union worthy of the name.”
A Natural History of Human Thinking
by Michael Tomasello
(Harvard University Press, 2014)
192 pages
Description
Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. In this much-anticipated book, Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Once our ancestors learned to put their heads together with others to pursue shared goals, humankind was on an evolutionary path all its own.
Tomasello argues that our prehuman ancestors, like today’s great apes, were social beings who could solve problems by thinking. But they were almost entirely competitive, aiming only at their individual goals. As ecological changes forced them into more cooperative living arrangements, early humans had to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborative partners. Tomasello’s “shared intentionality hypothesis” captures how these more socially complex forms of life led to more conceptually complex forms of thinking. In order to survive, humans had to learn to see the world from multiple social perspectives, to draw socially recursive inferences, and to monitor their own thinking via the normative standards of the group. Even language and culture arose from the preexisting need to work together. What differentiates us most from other great apes, Tomasello proposes, are the new forms of thinking engendered by our new forms of collaborative and communicative interaction.
Contents [preview]
1. The Shared Intentionality Hypothesis [preview]
2. Individual Intentionality
Evolution of Cognition
Thinking like an Ape
Cognition for Competition
3. Joint Intentionality
A New Form of Collaboration
A New Form of Cooperative Communication
Second-Personal Thinking
Perspectivity: The View from Here and There
4. Collective Intentionality
The Emergence of Culture
The Emergence of Conventional Communication
Agent-Neutral Thinking
Objectivity: The View from Nowhere
5. Human Thinking as Cooperation
Theories of Human Cognitive Evolution
Sociality and Thinking
The Role of Ontogeny
6. Conclusion
Michael Tomasello is Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. He is the author of "The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition" (Harvard University Press, 1999), "Origins of Human Communication" (MIT Press, 2008), and "Why We Cooperate" (MIT Press, 2009).
Many of Tomasello's recent papers are available here.
His Tanner Lectures from 2008 are available here: "Origins of Human Cooperation" [pdf].
See also some of my previous posts on Michael Tomasello:
* Interview with Michael Tomasello (video) [2008]
* Michael Tomasello wins the Hegel Prize 2009
* Habermas's laudatio to Michael Tomasello [2009]
An article by Jürgen Habermas in "Le Monde" (February 25, 2014):
"Repolitisons le débat européen" [+ the complete text here]
La vie démocratique et l’Etat social ont pour cadre l’Etat-nation, attaqué par la mondialisation.L’Europe supranationale peut être le modèle alternatif.
The article is an abridged version of Habermas's speech in Potsdam on February 2, 2014. See my post on the event here.
Update
The speech is published in "Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik" 2014 no. 3: "Für ein starkes Europa – aber was heißt das?".
Essays and Reviews: 1959-2002
by Bernard Williams
(Princeton University Press, 2014)
456 pages
Description
Bernard Williams was one of the most important philosophers of the last fifty years, but he was also a distinguished critic and essayist with an elegant style and a rare ability to communicate complex ideas to a wide public. This is the first collection of Williams's popular essays and reviews, many of which appeared in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. In these pieces, Williams writes about a broad range of subjects, from philosophy and political philosophy to religion, science, the humanities, economics, socialism, feminism, and pornography. No matter the subject, Williams probes and challenges arguments, teases out their implications, and connects them to the wider intellectual scene. At the same time, readers see a first-class mind grappling with landmark books in "real time", before critical consensus had formed and ossified.
Contents
Foreword [pdf] by Michael Wood
1. Plato Today, by R.H.S. Crossman (1959)
2. English Philosophy since 1900, by G. J. Warnock (1959)
3. Thought and Action, by Stuart Hampshire (1960)
4. The Theological Appearance of the Church of England (1960)
5. The Four Loves, by C. S. Lewis (1960)
6. Discourse on Method, by René Descartes (1960)
7. The Individual Reason: L'esprit laïc (1961)
8. What Is Existentialism? (1962)
9. Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, by Jean-Paul Sartre (1962)
10. Sense and Sensibilia, by J. L. Austin, (1962)
11. The Concept of a Person, by A. J. Ayer (1963)
12. Two Faces of Science (1963)
13. The English Moralists, by Basil Willey (1965)
14. Universities: Protest, Reform and Revolution (1968)
15. Has "God" a Meaning? (1968)
16. Russell and Moore, by A. J. Ayer (1971)
17. Immanuel Kant, by Lucien Goldmann (1972)
18. A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls (1972)
19. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, by B. F. Skinner (1972)
20. What Computers Can't Do, by Hubert L. Dreyfus (1973)
21. Wisdom, edited by Renford Bambrough (1974)
22. The Socialist Idea, ed. by S. Hampshire & L. Kolakowski (1975)
23. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick (1975)
24. The Ethics of Fetal Research, by Paul Ramsey (1975)
25. The Moral View of Politics (1976)
26. The Passions of Bertrand Russell (1976)
27. Where Chomsky Stands (1976)
28. The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins (1976)
29. The Fire and the Sun, by Iris Murdoch (1977)
30. The Logic of Abortion (1977)
31. On Thinking, by Gilbert Ryle (1979)
32. Rubbish Theory, by Michael Thompson (1980)
33. Lying, by Sissela Bok (1980)
34. Logic and Society / Ulysses and the Sirens, by Jon Elster (1980)
35. The Culture of Narcissism, by Christopher Lasch (1980)
36. Religion and Public Doctrine in England, by Maurice Cowling (1981)
37. Nietzsche’s Centaur (1981)
38. After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre (1981)
39. Philosophical Explanations, by Robert Nozick (1982)
40. The Miracle of Theism, by J. L. Mackie (1983)
41. Offensive Literature, by John Sutherland (1983)
42. Consequences of Pragmatism, by Richard Rorty (1983)
43. The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. I (1984)
44. Reasons and Persons, by Derek Parfit (1984)
45. Wickedness: A Philosophical Essay, by Mary Midgley (1984)
46. Secrets, by Sissela Bok (1984)
47. Choice and Consequence, by Thomas C. Schelling (1985)
48. Privacy, by Barrington Moore, Jr. (1985)
49. Ordinary Vices, by Judith Shklar (1985)
50. The Right to Know, by Clive Ponting (1985)
51. Taking Sides, by Michael Harrington (1986)
52. A Matter of Principle, by Ronald Dworkin (1986)
53. The View from Nowhere, by Thomas Nagel (1986)
54. What Hope for the Humanities? (1987) [preview]
55. The Society of Mind, by Marvin Minsky (1987)
56. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by Alasdair MacIntyre (1989)
57. Intellectuals, by Paul Johnson (1989)
58. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, by Richard Rorty (1989)
59. Sources of the Self, by Charles Taylor (1990)
60. The Need to Be Sceptical (1990)
61. The Saturated Self, by Kenneth J. Gergen (1991)
62. Realism with a Human Face, by Hilary Putnam (1991)
63. Political Liberalism, by John Rawls (1993)
64. Inequality Reexamined, by Amartya Sen (1993)
65. The Therapy of Desire, by Martha Nussbaum (1994)
66. Only Words, by Catharine MacKinnon (1994)
67. The Riddle of Umberto Eco (1995)
68. On Hating and Despising Philosophy (1996)
69. The Last Word, by Thomas Nagel (1998)
70. Wagner and the Transcendence of Politics (2000)
71. Why Philosophy Needs History (2002)
See also Roger Scruton's review of the book in "The Telegraph".
Ronald Dworkin passed away a year ago. The "Harvard Law Review" (December 2013) features an article on Dworkin with contributions by Richard H. Fallon Jr., Charles Fried, John C. P. Goldberg, Frances Kamm, Frank I. Michelman, Martha Minow, and Laurence H. Tribe.
See the contributions here: "In Memoriam: Ronald Dworkin" (pdf).
In "The Nation" (March 3, 2014) Professor Michael Rosen reviews "Religion Without God" by the late Ronald Dworkin:
"Beyond Naturalism: On Ronald Dworkin"
Excerpt
If morality were just a matter of God’s will, then presumably whatever God willed would be good for that reason and no more. But if God is indeed just, it must be possible for human beings to recognize independently why his commands are good. Of course, goodness is essential to God, so he could not conceivably will anything that was not good—but, still, it is not his willing something that makes it good. As Seneca once wrote, “I do not obey God; I agree with him.” So, Dworkin argues, any reasonable religion must acknowledge the priority of value over the will of the Deity. But in that case, the supernatural narrative of creation, revelation and prophecy that surrounds the moral teachings of religion is dispensable.
Dworkin still wants to call his attitude “religious” because, although he does not believe in the existence of God, he “accepts the full, independent reality of value” and hence rejects the naturalistic view that nothing is real except what is revealed by the natural sciences or psychology.
Yet if values exist as “fully independent,” how can we have access to them? As Dworkin admits, there are no experiments we can conduct to confirm their existence. Dignity—the “God particle” that sustains the existence of human rights—will not be detected by any scientist. On the contrary, the realm of value is “self-certifying,” so the only evidence for the existence of values is the truth of the things that we say about them. And the evidence for that truth is what, exactly—that we agree about values? But disagreement about values is where we came in. Even if we accept that we carry within ourselves an inner kernel of transcendental value, would it give us a way of telling where the claims of the collective end and the prerogatives of the individual begin?
See my post on Ronald Dworkin's book here (with links to reviews by Jeremy Waldron, Stanley Fish and others).
Freedom's Right
The Social Foundations of Democratic Life
by Axel Honneth
(Columbia University Press, 2014)
448 pages
Description
Theories of justice often fixate on purely normative, abstract principles unrelated to real-world situations. The philosopher and theorist Axel Honneth addresses this disconnect, and constructs a theory of justice derived from the normative claims of Western liberal-democratic societies and anchored in morally legitimate laws and institutionally established practices.
Honneth’s paradigm—which he terms “a democratic ethical life”—draws on the spirit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and his own theory of recognition, demonstrating how concrete social spheres generate the principles of individual freedom and a standard for what is just. Using social analysis to re-found a more grounded theory of justice, he argues that all crucial actions in Western civilization, whether in personal relationships, market-induced economic activities, or the public forum of politics, share one defining characteristic: they require the realization of a particular aspect of individual freedom. This fundamental truth informs the guiding principles of justice, grounding and enabling a wide-ranging reconsideration of its nature and application.
Contents [preview]
Introduction [preview]
Part I. Historical Background: The Right to Freedom
1. Negative Freedom and the Social Contract
2. Reflexive Freedom and Its Conception of Justice
3. Social Freedom and the Doctrine of Ethical Life
Transition: The Idea of Democratic Ethical Life
Part II. The Possibility of Freedom
4. Legal Freedom
5. Moral Freedom
Part III. The Reality of Freedom
6. Social Freedom
Axel Honneth is Professor of Philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt and Professor for the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of "The Struggle for Recognition" (Polity Press, 1995), and "The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition" (Polity Press, 2012)
The German edition: "Das Recht der Freiheit. Grundriß einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit" (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2011). See my post on the book here. And my links to reviews here.
"Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy" (2013 no, 1) features essays in English on Axel Honneth's new book and a reply by Honneth. See my post here (with links to pdf-files).
See also a video of Honneth's lecture on "The Normativity of Ethical Life" (September 2013).
The Heart of Human Rights
by Allen Buchanan
(Oxford University Press, February 2014)
320 pages
Description
This is the first attempt to provide an in-depth moral assessment of the heart of the modern human rights enterprise: the system of international legal human rights. It is international human rights law-not any philosophical theory of moral human rights or any "folk" conception of moral human rights-that serves as the lingua franca of modern human rights practice. Yet contemporary philosophers have had little to say about international legal human rights. They have tended to assume, rather than to argue, that international legal human rights, if morally justified, must mirror or at least help realize moral human rights. But this assumption is mistaken. International legal human rights, like many other legal rights, can be justified by several different types of moral considerations, of which the need to realize a corresponding moral right is only one.
Further, this volume shows that some of the most important international legal human rights cannot be adequately justified by appeal to corresponding moral human rights. The problem is that the content of these international legal human rights-the full set of correlative duties-is much broader than can be justified by appealing to the morally important interests of any individual. In addition, it is necessary to examine the legitimacy of the institutions that create, interpret, and implement international human rights law and to defend the claim that international human rights law should "trump" the domestic law of even the most admirable constitutional democracies.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. A Pluralistic Justificatory Methodology for Human Rights
3. The Task of Justification
4. The Case for a System of International Legal Human Rights
5. An Ecological View of The Legitimacy of International Legal Human Rights Institutions
6. The Problematic Supremacy of International Human Rights Law
7. The Challenge of Ethical Pluralism
8. Conclusions
App. 1: Non-Rights Norms in Major Human Rights Documents
App. 2: Results of the Investigation
Allen Buchanan is Professor of Philosophy at Duke University, and Professor of Philosophy of International Law at King’s College, London. He is the author of "Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law" (Oxford University Press, 2003) and "Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force" (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Robert Dahl, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University, passed away on February 5 at the age of 98.
See Robert Dahl in an interview with Margaret Levi, editor of the Annual Review of Political and professor of Political Science at University of Washington:
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