The concept of a society is central to several areas of philosophy, including social and political philosophy, philosophy of social science and moral philosophy. Yet little attention has been paid to the concept and we do not have an adequate philosophical account of it. It is a concept that is difficult to explain systematically, and it is subject to distortion or simple-minded attacks whenever it plays a major role in a philosophical theory. Methodological individualists have raised metaphysical or ontological concerns about the idea that there are such things as societies, and other philosophers have found the concept of a society to be unacceptably vague. For these reasons, I believe it worthwhile to devote this essay to an attempt to explain the concept.

Dès son origine, la réflexion philosophique sur le droit a été confrontée questions du raisonnement juridique et du rapport du juge à la règle. Ces questions engagent celle du rôle de la Raison dans l'agir humain (moral, politique et juridique) et done ultimement celle du statut de la Raison.

Le renouveau actuel de la philosophie du droit et de la réflexion sur le jugement juridique s'inscrit dans le cadre du nouvel essor du débat philosophique sur la Raison.

In his paper “Fanciful Arguments For Realism,” Alan H. Goldman offers what he terms a “local case” argument as part of a more general defence of “semantic realism” against the anti-realist manoeuvres of Michael Dummett and Hilary Putnam. Semantic realism, here, is the thesis that sentences in a natural language L may have content that transcends any verification or assertability conditions associated with these sentences by competent speakers of L: an adequate semantics, the realist maintains, must equate the content of an assertoric sentence with its realist truth-conditions. Goldman contends that his local case argument demonstrates both the need to accord a central role to a realist conception of truth in an account of linguistic meaning, and the manner in which we acquire such a conception. He further maintains that the argument cannot be countered by any of the strategies that anti-realists are wont to deploy against “global case” arguments for realism (“evil demon” and “brain in a vat” scenarios, for example), and that, given the local case argument, we can recognise the fallacy in such anti-realist strategies and thereby rehabilitate the global case arguments that a full-blown semantic realism requires. I argue that Goldman's local case cannot fulfil its intended function in the overall economy of his argument, and that his strategy for defending semantic realism is fundamentally flawed. In so doing, I attempt to curb the realist's flight of fancy before it leaves the ground.

La confrontation Kant/Wittgenstein qui se dessine ici n'a pas pour objectif principal de présenter les doctrines des deux auteurs. Il s'agit plutôt de marier ces pensées qui ne le désirent pas, de profiter de la confrontation pour faire avancer le débat. Quel débat? Contrairement à I'ordre historique, il tire son origine de Wittgenstein: comment faut-il comprendre les prorèmes que soulève Wittgenstein, les interdits qu'il pose (bien que la grammaire n'«interdise» rien)? Certaines de ses affirmations ne peuvent tout simplement pas être des jugements analytiques, aurait dit Kant (en admettant que Wittgenstein n'aurait jamais prétendu énoncer autre chose que des jugements analytiques). Nombre de ses «remarques grammaticales» (et déjà les Erklärungen du Tractatus) ne sont évidemment pas des tautologies (puisqu'elles rendent nécessaire une réflexion), et la question se pose au moins de savoir comment elles sont possibles comme jugements analytiques.

Human rights claims rely on both utilitarian and deontological perspectives of the moral universe. The persuasiveness of these claims depends on the extent to which they resonate harmoniously with a person's other moral opinions. If these opinions cannot be grounded in a larger structure of ra-tionally defensible moral principles, differences of opinion cannot be satis-factorily resolved. When this happens, action protective of rights —about which there may be not only different but diametrically opposed opinion — will be hard to achieve.

Michel Serres vient de nous préserter un livre qui promet de susciter de nombreux débats extrêmement intéressants. Ce penseur versé dans l'histoire de la philosophie mais aussi dans celle des sciences, passionné également par rétat actuel des savoirs et des sociétés, nous a habitués depuis plus de vingt ans à une réflexion multiforme et originale, assortie un style qui témoigne élégamment de son souci litteraire. Le contrat naturel prolonge cette démarche, cette fois-ci en tentant de fournir aux préoccupations écologiques une assise philosophique. renjeu est de taille. Il exige que soient repensés non seulement nos rapports pratiques au monde, à la «nature», à l'«environnement», mais d'abord et avant tout la représentation que nous nous faisons de ceux-ci. Il s'agit bien d'une question philosophique: à sa façon, elle reprend le débat avec la rationalité moderne dont on dit souvent que sa teneur (exclusivement?) technique et scientifique nous a menés au désastre actuel. Par-delà l'indiscutable pertinence d'une réflexion philosophique consacrée à la question de eécologie, c'est donc le statut de la raison et de la nature qui est ici questionné.

Steven Stich's The Fragmentation of Reason will get the adrenalin pumping. At least it will for-reactionaries (like me) who cling to truth, reason and knowledge as cognitive values.

Steve Stich sets himself to undermine the entire analytic tradition in epistemology. His book is infused with the spirit of the “radical epistemic reformer.” I do not think he succeeds. Reformations are hard to launch in philosophy. Nonetheless, he raises some deep and troubling issues.

Philosophers need not be located in departments of philosophy in order to be worth reading. Here is a work eminently warranting attention from professional philosophers, perhaps all the more because its author, William Leiss (who earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1969 but has never held a formal faculty position in that subject) writes from a variety of alternative perspectives. His first academic position was in Political Science and Environmental Studies at the University of Regina. From there he travelled to York University as Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, taking a year out to serve as Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto before returning to York and again adding Political Science to his duties in Environmental Studies. Since 1980 he has been Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Although originally a New Yorker, with academic credentials from south of the border, he now writes with distinctly Canadian examples, outlook and style.

David Sanford's If P, Then Q is an ambitious book, aimed at two difficult tasks and addressed to two audiences. It combines a survey of historical and contemporary work on-conditionals with a presentation-of, Sanford's personal views. And it is addressed to both undergraduate students, without, logical training, and professionals seriously interested in conditionals. It is marred by the impossibility of achieving both aims in a book this size, and by the strains of simultaneously addressing audiences with such different needs and interests.