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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
A Defense Of Soft Positivism: Justice And Principle Processes, Keith William Diener
A Defense Of Soft Positivism: Justice And Principle Processes, Keith William Diener
Philosophy Theses
This thesis addresses the historic debate between natural law theorists and positivists. After providing a foundation for the debate by discussing the thirteenth century natural law theory of St. Thomas Aquinas and the criticisms of it by positivist philosopher John Austin, this thesis turns to the theory of H.L.A. Hart. My primary aim is to outline a defense of the soft positivism of H.L.A. Hart in face of the criticisms of Ronald Dworkin by appealing to two nonexclusive roots of moral principles in the law: justice and criminal law.
Affinities In The Socio-Political Thought Of Rorty And Levinas, Eduard Jordaan
Affinities In The Socio-Political Thought Of Rorty And Levinas, Eduard Jordaan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article considers the affinities in the socio-political thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Rorty. The writings of both display considerable concern for the suffering of others. Both authors note the importance of a self-critical subject becoming more aware of its own injustice as very important for recognizing our responsibilities to others. Furthermore, both stress the importance of recognizing the other outside of the usual, objectifying categories, since it is the uniqueness of the other that reminds us of our responsibility for the other. Both writers view the liberal state as the best political forum in which to realize a …
Introduction: Comparative Ethics And The Crucible Of War, G. Scott Davis
Introduction: Comparative Ethics And The Crucible Of War, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Michael Howard takes the title of his recent essay, The Invention of Peace, from the nineteenth-century jurist and historian of comparative law Henry Maine, who wrote that "war appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modem invention."' We moderns tend to assume that the great wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were aberrant eruptions marring the peaceful status quo, but the opposite better describes the long view. Outside the Garden of Eden, human communities have always been involved in political conflict and that conflict has regularly escalated to the use of lethal force, both …