The basic argument is that the consensus debate has not been very meaningful until now because consensus has not been closely studied as a concept, and deliberation has not been studied precisely in terms of the propensity to reach common agreement. In particular, deliberation—as well as issues for deliberation—has not been categorized into different levels with a view to exposing the varying challenges of reaching common agreement and the kinds of deliberative approaches entailed in each category. In this research, I attempt to provide this categorization in order to clarify the debate.

Le concept de banalité du mal, proposé par Hannah Arendt pour décrire le profil psychologique du criminel nazi dans Eichmann in Jerusalem, est intimement lié à ses lectures de Platon. Pour aborder la question du mal, elle a découvert des appuis chez Kant, mais le problème de la culpabilité sous le régime nazi renvoie ultimement au défaut de penser. Le deux-en-un, concept qui décrit la pensée, a été défini sur la base de l’œuvre platonicienne. L’examen de ces sources philosophiques permet de mieux comprendre les possibilités et les limites de la réflexion arendtienne sur le mal.

Locke’s property rights are now usually understood to be both fundamental and strictly negative. Fundamental because they are thought to be basic constraints on what we may do, unconstrained by anything deeper. Negative because they are thought to only protect a property holder against the claims of others. Here, I argue that this widespread interpretation is mistaken. For Locke, property rights are constrained by the deeper ‘fundamental law of nature,’ which involves positive obligations to those in need and confines the right to excess property within circumstances where it is not needed to preserve human life.

In his A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, Kyle Johannsen suggests a theory of disability that holds that to have a disability just is to be worse off, sometimes referred to as the ‘medical’ or ‘individual’ model of disability. I argue that Johannsen’s understanding of disability might force some of his key claims into an uncomfortable position. In particular, for his theory to avoid the thrust of Elizabeth Anderson’s criticisms of luck egalitarianism, the assumption of the medical model of disability must be dropped, but this comes at the cost of his criticism of John Rawls’ difference principle.

Maximizing Hedonism maintains that the most pleasurable pleasures are the best. Francis Bradley argues that this is either incompatible with Mill’s Qualitative Hedonism, or renders the latter redundant. Some ‘sympathetic’ interpreters respond that Mill was either a Non-Maximizing Hedonist or a Non-Hedonist. However, Bradley’s argument is fallacious, and these ‘sympathetic’ interpretations cannot provide adequate accounts of: Mill’s identification with the Protagorean Socrates; his criticisms of the Gorgian Socrates; or his apparent belief that Callicles is misguided to attempt to show that the pleasures of the intelligent can be more valuable than the pleasures of fools without also being more pleasurable.

In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit takes issue with Bernard Williams’ view of the relation between love and identity. Williams thought that, in a world where there were several co-existing replicas of one’s beloved, our current conception of love would begin to crumble. Parfit agrees with Williams in the branching case of replication, but thought that, where replication takes a non-branching form, our ordinary view of love would remain intact. I believe Parfit arrives at this conclusion because he has not fully appreciated the degree to which Williams’ claim is primarily about a view of love rather than one of identity.

One of the central aims of Kyle Johannsen’s monograph, A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, is to defend the idea that we should think of justice as a fundamental value—a value that can come into conflict with other fundamental values. This pluralism is associated in particular with G.A. Cohen’s work and his critique of John Rawls’s theory of justice. In this commentary, I sketch some of the implications of Cohen’s pluralism for a Cohenite ethos of justice.

This study bridges secular philosophical perspectives and Christian theological perspectives by showing how the critique of metaphysical violence is common to certain representatives of both parties. By examining specifically metaphysical, and therefore epistemologically significant, ways of critiquing violence, this study seeks to show that, just as violence cuts across the sacred-secular divide and spans the distance between abstraction and action, so too does the critique of violence.

Descartes believed the extended world did not terminate in a boundary: but why? After elucidating Descartes’s position in §1, suggesting his conception of the indefinite extension of the universe should be understood as actual but syncategorematic, we turn in §2 to his argument: any postulation of an outermost surface for the world will be self-defeating, because merely contemplating such a boundary will lead us to recognise the existence of further extension beyond it. In §3, we identify the fundamental assumption underlying this argument by comparing Descartes’s and Malebranche’s respective conceptions of the ontological status of modes of extension.

Dans une constellation de textes entourant Spectres de Marx, Derrida procède à un geste qui semble contraire à la «déconstruction» et qui paraît s’apparenter plutôt à la méthode phénoménologique. En érigeant la messianicité au statut de structure universelle indéconstructible, ces textes donnent lieu en effet à une radicalisation et une transcendantalisation de la temporalité propre aux messianismes historiques. Cet article entend d’abord mettre en évidence le caractère phénoménologique de cette approche et ensuite en questionner la légitimité et le sens à la lumière de textes ultérieurs, où Derrida analyse le rapport entre médias et christianisme.

This paper provides a critical rejoinder to some themes in Kyle Johannsen’s A Conceptual Investigation of Justice. The discussion focuses on Johannsen’s analysis of fundamental value pluralism and identifies a number of challenges to the form of value pluralism defended by Johannsen. I suggest that Johannsen’s analysis fails to explain how conflicts between fundamental values can be resolved, and that there is greater harmony between fundamental values than Johannsen recognizes.

In A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, Kyle Johannsen maintains that the strongest version of John Rawls’s theory of justice is one that incorporates the luck egalitarian conception of fairness developed by G.A. Cohen. He also contends that, once the theory is modified in this way, it becomes clear that the original position doesn’t yield principles of justice but rather what Cohen calls ‘rules of regulation.’ I argue that the minimal conception of fairness that Rawls favours is the right one for his purposes, and that bringing in luck egalitarian fairness would render the outcome of the original position indeterminate.

This study challenges present-day dualisms and divisions, which are reflected in socio-political and intercultural dialogue. The aim of this study is to connect the philosophical discourse of the ninth-century House of Wisdom to modern conceptions of Islam by extending the dialogical rhetoric of that discourse. This study revisits the House of Wisdom, first, to invoke an inclusive, intercultural Islamic tradition that negates the circumscription of Islam by radical views. Second, it reintroduces the liberal arts as pedagogical tools that are central to the Islamic wisdom tradition. Third, it explores the notions of Aql and Fitrah and how they prescribe Hikmah.

Kyle Johannsen’s conceptual investigation of justice urges us to think of justice as a simple value, which is independent of the exigencies of practice. In what follows, I highlight two methodological issues as a way to raise concerns over whether Johannsen is operating with the ‘correct’ understanding of justice, and to persuade Johannsen that complex problems, such as those of social justice require understanding justice as a complex value. So, while contextualists about justice should embrace the distinction between justice and rules of regulation, justice must be more than an input in our deliberation, and instead constitutes an output.