The aim of this article is to discuss the transcendental status of Kant's moral philosophy. Despite what is usually thought among scholars, we intend to demonstrate that morality for Kant is not part of transcendental philosophy. We shall at first recall the reasons that have driven Kant to separate morality from the transcendental philosophy. Kant's position seems both firm and clear: morality, although involving a priori concepts such as the moral law, is not a transcendantal knowledge because its major concept, the will, is not pure enough; it refers somehow to experience. On the other hand, after considering the positions of renowned scholars such as Gueroult, Delbos, and Höffe, who claim that Kant's morality became partially or totally transcendantal since the writing of the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, we suggest that Kant had then found the right way to establish on a critical basis a future metaphysics of morals.

Slippery slopes crop up with startling frequency when controversial moral issues are debated. Generally, those who mount this line of argument appeal to some grim, highly undesirable state of affairs which would—they allege—inevitably ensue were society to sanction certain activities. Their reasoning is often fallacious, offering little more than an easy out for those reluctant to address problematic moral issues with the care and honesty they demand.

« L'égalité, parce que la liberté ne peut subsister sans elle … » réclamait Rousseau. Lorsqu'il pense la Révolution, tout philosophe politique voudrait tenir tous les bouts de la chaîne qui relie l'éthique au politique. L'ouvrage récent de Kai Nielsen, qui propose la thèse de l'égalitarisme radical comme nerf du processus d'institution de la cité juste, ne manque précisément pas de se confronter aux problèmes concomitants des relations entre égalité et liberté. Le philosophe albertain s'y montre comme à l'accoutumée cet humaniste sensible et généreux dont la « raison et la pratique » sont orientées par l'idéal égalitaire. Le credo (belief) fondamental auquel il nous dit souscrire: « the interests of every one matter and matter equally », serait pour Nielsen comme le postulat indispensable à la relance du contrat social démocratique. Etre un égalitariste radical signifierait, si j'ai bien compris les implications de son discours, que Ton s'engage dans la cause du bien, que l'on croit à l'homme socialiste, vertueux et perfectible de même qu'au renouvellement des rapports sociaux dans l'équité. C'est aussi et surtout soutenir la force émancipatoire de l'égalité civile, sociale et politique, ou, autrement dit, dans les termes de Nielsen, supputer que l'égalité des conditions, conçue tout ensemble «comme un but et comme un droit», une fois inscrite dans les structures, dans les institutions sociales, déterminera la véritable liberté, celle de tous et de chacun au sein des rapports intersubjectifs et sociaux. Enfin, c'est penser que ce concept d'égalité ainsi réévalué jouerale rôle de condition nécessaire et suffisante pour changer le moi, le monde et la vie. Equality and Liberty est un vivant plaidoyer en faveur de la dignite morale autant que de l'efficace socialiste d'un modèle politique, l'égalitarisme radical, tel que Nielsen se le représente.

ABSTRACT: In the search for a more fine-grained criterion of propositional identity in order to provide an adequate analysis of sense and thought, I propose a revision of the ontology of the Frege and Church theory of types of sense and denotation, and I set up a natural predicative propositional logic that explains their logical form in terms of acts of predication. I also define a more subjective notion of truth according to an agent and a new strong propositional implication. The intensional logic thus set forth explains why human agents possess a minimal rationality. I conclude by proposing a new axiomatisation of a minimal epistemic logic.

The flurry of debates on mental causation in recent years has largely been occasioned by Donald Davidson's original and controversial views on the role of mind in the causation and explanation of behaviour. In his classic 1963 paper, “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” Davidson argued, against the prevailing opinion of the Ryleans and later-Wittgensteineans, that in order to be genuinely explanatory of human behaviour, reasons must be causes; and in his equally influential and far more controversial 1970 paper, “Mental Events,” he undertook to show how reasons can be causes—how it is possible for our beliefs, desire, intentions, and the like, in terms of which we “rationalize” our behaviour, to be at the same time causes of our behaviour. While the basic thesis of the 1963 paper was widely accepted, setting a trend for much of the work on action theory for the following three decades, the account of the causal efficacy of mind in “Mental Events” generated a great deal of controversy. The debates continue, involving scores of participants but seldom Davidson himself. What makes the present collection of previously unpublished papers particularly interesting is that it contains Davidson's own reply to some of his most notable critics, together with their rejoinders; so we now have a contemporary perspective on the mental causation debate that Davidson initiated, unwittingly, a quarter of a century ago.

Foucault appears now and again in the work of Charles Taylor, but fleetingly, almost hauntingly. This is not surprising because Taylor and Foucault share many ideas and yet remain starkly opposed. This is especially true of Taylor's most recent work, his monumental Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. In it he is characteristically brilliant, in the sense that he attempts to illuminate a great many things all at once. Foucault is mentioned here and there in that work, along with a great many others. However, I would claim that Foucault's presence is much more sustained than the index would have us believe. In fact, one might say that Foucault is the shadow cast by Taylor's brilliance.

Thomas Hurka's brilliant study on the nature and value of virtue and vice opens with a puzzle. Hurka tells us that as consequentialism defines “all other moral properties in terms of goodness and evil” (p. 8), a fully consequentialist characterization of virtue and vice should define these things by appeal to goodness and evil as well. However, it has traditionally been thought that the most promising analysis of virtue, in terms of what is intrinsically good or evil, embarks from the fundamental claim that virtue is a disposition to promote good and prevent evil (p. 8). But then this been concluded, the bedrock truth that virtue is intrinsically good cannot be captured successfully by any consequentialist approach.

La distinction de deux Wittgenstein est-elle mythique, ainsi que le voudrait R. J. Bernstein? Mythe créé involontairement par un penseur aussi peu mythomane que possible, B. Russell, quand, dans sa préface au Tractatus, il assigna à l'auteur l'intention d'établir les « conditions d'un langage logiquement parfait ». Prenant le contre-pied d'un Wittgenstein-I lancé à la poursuite d'un langage idéal, Wittgenstein-II aurait, dans Investigations philosophiques, opéré un retour au langage naturel et au sens commun.

Il est sans doute possible d'exagérer la distance qui sépare le Tractatus des Investigations philosophiques (dorénavant dénotés par T et IP). Mais on ne saurait la nier. Quelques rétractations expresses enregistrées dans le second ouvrage nous en empêcheraient (par exemple IP 23, 46, 97, 114). Le problème est plutôt de déterminer l'ampleur et la nature de la transformation, de la mesurer.

Philosophers speak of ‘what it’s like to’ have an experience without taking account of how semantically various the phrase is. ‘Blindsight’ visual perception lacks detail.

In §6 of Book 1, Part 4 of the Treatise, Hume appears to be inconsistent in his comments about ascriptions of identity to series of successive, significantly related items or to purported single things whose temporal stages are qualitatively different or temporally discontinuous. For example, in the first few pages of §6, Hume explicitly labels such ascriptions “mistakes” and “confusions” (THN, 1. 4. §6, 253–254). Later on in the same section, however, he deals with the alleged identity-preservation of minds, churches, rivers, and so forth and no longer remarks that these attributions of identity are confused or mistaken. Hume claims that the idea of identity is the idea of an item which is (1) invariable, i.e., serially uniform, and (2) uninterrupted, i.e., temporally continuous, which seems to last through time (THN, 1. 4. §2, 200–201; 1. 4. §6, 253). Thus, on page 255 he states that “identity” is used “in an improper sense” if attributed to a series of related items which are either different in kind or temporally discontinuous, viz., to a purported identity-preserving thing whose temporal stages are different in kind or temporally discontinuous. Yet, on page 258, he comments that calling a church which has been rebuilt of different materials and in a different architectural style the same church as the former one can be done “without breach of the propriety of language”. Presumably, this use of “same” is a proper sense of “same”.

According to Barry Stroud, Wittgenstein thought that language is social only in this minimal way: we cannot make sense of the idea of someone having a language unless we can describe her as using signs in conformity with the linguistic practices of some community. Since a solitary person could meet this condition, Stroud concludes that, for Wittgenstein, solitary languages are possible. I argue that Wittgenstein in fact thought that language is social in a much more robust way. Solitary languages are not possible because we cannot make sense of the idea of someone having a language unless we can think of her as actively participating in the linguistic practices that fix the standards governing the applications of her words.

In this paper, I engage with the works of Richard Bodéüs about Aristotle’s understanding of the relationship between law, virtue, and education. I argue that there is an important difference between the demands of the law and those of reason, especially in the defective, but more common, regimes. This difference is also found in the best regime possible for most cities, the mixed regime Aristotle calls ‘polity’ (or, in Greek, politeia), insofar as it represents a balance between oligarchy and democracy. To educate citizens in this regime requires what Aristotle calls “political philosophy.”

An Old and continuing tendency amongst critics of Kant's thought on ethics has been to maintain that since the categorical imperative merely provides a formal condition for the rightness of actions – that the principle of the action be universalizable without contradiction – it is inadequate as a test for the rightness of actions. Such critics as Hegel, Mill, and recently, R.P. Wolff, have suggested the same fundamental objection to Kant's doctrine: the requirement that a maxim be universalizable is formally compatible with any action whatsoever being right.

In a famous passage in volume three of Capital, Karl Marx distinguishes between a “realm of freedom” and a “realm of necessity”. The passage has attracted attention as seeming to register a dismal perception by Marx of the productive labour that will be necessary even under communism. “Dismal perception” is G. A. Cohen's verdict in his lucid essay “Marx's Dialectic of Labour”. Cohen has now softened the charge to “a somewhat gloomy perception”. But he continues to hold that the passage reveals Marx viewing even post-capitalist labour “as bound always to be unsatisfying”, a marked shift from Marx's optimistic 1840s view that under communism labour would be unalienating. The debate has recently been joined by James Klagge, who has argued against Cohen (and others) that the volume three passage does not disclose a shift in view, and so does not register a “deep pessimism” or “negative appraisal” by Marx of post-capitalist labour.