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Compromise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

J. P. Day
J. P. Day
Affiliation:
University of Keele
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Extract

Human conflict and its resolution is obviously a subject of great practical importance. Equally obviously, it is a vast subject, ranging from total war at one end of the spectrum to negotiated settlement at its other end. The literature on the subject is correspondingly vast and, in recent times, technical, thanks to the valuable contributions made to it by game theorists, economists, and writers on industrial and international relations. In this essay, however, I shall discuss only one familiar form of conflict-resolution. There is room for such a discussion, because philosophers have lately neglected compromise, despite the interest shown in it by the aforementioned experts, and despite the classic treatments of it by Halifax, Burke and Morley. Truly, ‘…compromise is not so widely discussed by philosophers as one might expect’, and ‘…the idea of compromise has been largely neglected by Anglo-American jurisprudence’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 64 , Issue 250 , October 1989 , pp. 471 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1989

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