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Susan Wolf On The Meaning Of Life: A Review, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The book comprises the two Tanner Lectures given by Susan Wolf at Princeton in 2007; helpful comments by John Koethe, Robert M. Adams, Nomy Arpaly, and Jonathan Haidt;Wolf ’s replies; and a brief introduction by Stephen Macedo. Wolf writes elegantly and thoughtfully, and the book, which seems to preserve in length and style its origins as two lectures, is full of sensible, suggestive ideas. The Tanner Lectures are meant to reach a nonspecialist audience, and some specialist readers may wish to have more on less, a desire likely to affect especially those who, like myself, share Wolf ’s basic approach …

On Respect, Authority & Neutrality: A Response, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

I owe a great debt to Professors Wall, Darwall, and Green for their willingness to challenge, develop, and question some of my publications, which forced me to confront a few of the shortcomings in my views and, I hope, to clarify and improve some of them. Given the diversity of the topics, I respond to each separately. I aimed to avoid minor points and to write only on matters which affect the cogency of my views or theirs on important issues.1 For that reason, as well as for reasons of space, not all the issues they raise are dealt …

Philosophical Legal Ethics: Ethics, Morals, And Jurisprudence, Alice Woolley, W. Bradley Wendel, William H. Simon, Stephen Pepper, Daniel Markovitz, Katherine R. Kruse, Tim Dare

Faculty Scholarship

The authors and moderator David Luban participated in a plenary session of the International Legal Ethics Conference IV, held at Stanford. Each author answered and discussed questions arising from short papers they had written about the principal concern of legal ethics was the morality of lawyers, the morality of clients, or the morality of laws?

Those papers, which are to be published in Legal Ethics, are compiled here, along with the question and background information with which the panelists were provided.

Being In The World, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Actions for which we are responsible constitute our engagement with the world as rational agents. What is the relationship between such actions and our capacities for rational agency? I take this to be a question about responsibility in a particular use of that term, which I shall call ‘responsibility’. We are not responsible for all our intentional actions (actions under hypnosis, for example), but we can nevertheless be responsible for actions we do not adequately control, for negligent actions, and for non‐intentional omissions. Appreciating this helps show that familiar principles of responsibility are false: those which delimit responsibility to intentional …

Human Rights Without Foundations, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

This is a good time for human rights. Not that they are respected more than in the past. The flagrant resort to kidnapping, arbitrary arrests, and torture by the United States of America (USA), and the unprecedented restriction of individual freedom in the USA, and in Great Britain (GB), cast doubt about that. It is a good time for human rights in that claims about such rights are used more widely in the conduct of world affairs than before. There are declarations of and treaties about human rights, international courts and tribunals with jurisdiction over various human right violations. They …

The Consequence Of Human Differences, Jospeh Vining

Articles

This essay explores the ways in which the recognition of individual and person in the legal form of thought distinguishes it from forms of thought in evolutionary biology and mathematics that are put forward as means to a complete picture of the world. The essay observes that the legal form of thought is in fact deeply involved in our modern understanding of Nature itself.

On The Guise Of The Good, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The chapter examines the main argument for, and the presuppositions of the claim that intentional actions are actions taken in, and because of, a belief that there is some good in them. An analysis of intentional actions, and of action for a (normative) reason, followed by a consideration of a number of objections to the thesis of the Guise of the Good force various revisions and refinements of the thesis yielding a defensible version of it. It is argued that the revised thesis is supported by the same argument that inspired the Guise of the Good from the beginning and …

Rescuing Jerry From (Basic) Principles, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

I will say something on two or three related but distinct topics. First, something on the grounding of normative beliefs, a topic – as I see it – in moral epistemology, and then after a brief remark on explanation, something against a certain understanding of basic principles. My observations were prompted by reflection on Jerry’s desire to rescue justice from the facts.

Matthew S. Weinert On Hegel’S Laws: The Legitimacy Of A Modern Legal Order. By William E. Conklin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. 381pp., Matthew S. Weinert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Hegel’s Laws: The Legitimacy of a Modern Legal Order. By William E. Conklin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. 381pp.

The Creation Of Authority In A Sermon By St. Augustine, James Boyd White

Articles

My way of honoring Joe today will not be to describe or extol his achievements directly but to try to show something of what I have learned from him, particularly in the way I approach a new text and problem, in this case the creation of authority in one of Augustine's sermons.