Poetry has to do with reality in its most individual aspect. It is thus at the opposite pole to science, and out of its reach. Studies like The Road to Xanadu, highly valuable though they may be in one way, do not help us in any measure to understand what poetry in itself is; nor do they heighten substantially our appreciation of poetry. This may seem rather obvious, but it is not in fact idle to say it. For our thought is apt to be unduly coloured to-day by the progress of science, and some of the votaries of science are prone to regard it, in the Biblical phrase, as ‘profitable unto all things.’ These are less naïve to-day than their prototypes a century ago, and they have a subtler psychology at their disposal when they turn to art. But their view is no less pernicious for that reason. Science has very certain limits, and we only bring it into contempt by forcing upon it a forlorn and unnatural enterprise beyond its own terrain. Some scientists, and they include eminent persons like Julian Huxley, have made that mistake in regard to our ideas of right and wrong, and have endeavoured to develop a science of ethics. It is not to the purpose here to expose the confusions involved in this particular act of aggression on the part of science. Science has nothing to do, in the final analysis, with our ideas of right and wrong. And it is also true, quite apart from ultimate questions about the meaning of value, that we cannot give a scientific analysis of art. Science may indeed help us to understand matters incidental to the pursuit of artistic activities.

Is the State organic? Does it, or should it, in some way transcend the individual natures of its citizens, so as itself to be an individual more complete and of higher value than the singular individuals who compose it? Is it thus in some sense an organism, and are its citizens in some sense organs of it which gain for themselves a higher value and significance in subserving it?

In his recent paper on Aristotelian dialectic, Professor Hamlyn claims that ‘what may be important for Aristotle's purposes is not the truth but the acceptance of the truth’ (p. 474). Dialectic is protreptic, and not strictly philosophical, spadework: ‘[t]he appeal to endoxa is, as it were, a setting of the scene, providing the context for argument out of which, it is hoped, will emerge the insights from which demonstration and thus further understanding can follow’ (p. 475).

This fact about the grammar of selfhypenreference doesn't answer the ontological question, however, of what sort of entity I am in so far as I am a speaker. Thinking about what is presumed in my understanding the concepts ‘one’ and ‘one who is speaking’ tells us this much, that I must be able to differentiate myself from other speakers at the same time as I must be like them. If I cannot differentiate myself from you then of course I cannot refer to myself to begin with. But I must be like you enough to be intelligible to you, and I must know that I am. Otherwise I could not know myself as ‘the one who is speaking’, speaking in the first person to others who also speak in the first person.

There were 180 applications from prospective contestants of the StawellGift in 1978. The race limit, imposed in the interests of safety, is just 60 runners. Of the 60 acceptances Richard Roe was the hotfavourite, but healong with six others fell victim to the great oyster poisoning, and had towithdraw on the day of the race, along with five of the others; the sixth died of the poisoning just as the race was run. In the event the winner was John Doe, the second favourite according to the bookmakers.

The present state of ethical theory and practice is disquieting. Objectivism, in all its varieties, is unconvincing, and subjectivism, hedonic or emotive, is intellectually incredible and socially intolerable. No one is ethically content—except the dogmatist and the sceptic, who act willy nilly with the exponents of “might-cum-persuasion makes right.” Can we find a happier middle region between these inhospitable poles? Perhaps the very limitations of human valuation will provide the ground that ethics requires.

Let us begin by considering the conditions which must hold if ethical action is to be possible:

1. Only if the agent can provide a justifying reason for his choice of action can he claim to act ethically. For ethical action is a species of purposive action, and to act purposively entails the ability to give justifying reasons for one's choice of action. (“Justifying” here is to be understood as “putatively justifying”). Thus ethical action presupposes putatively grounded ethical judgment.

2. Justifying reasons must be acknowledgeable by all competent judges, i.e. by all persons who (I) are acquainted with all relevant knowledge of the nature and consequences of the alternative courses of action, (2) allow as far as possible for congenital, cultural and idiosyncratic bias, (3) are capable of sane and serious reflection, and (4) are able to make survey of their experience and to draw conclusions from it. For the judgment “the action A is ethically preferable to its alternatives B (in this situation)” entails “A ought to be done” which in turn entails “every competent judge is capable of acknowledging the ground of the judgment ‘A is ethically preferable to B’ and consequently would be able to set himself to perform A as an ethical act, (i.e. an autonomous act for which the agent can provide a justifying reason).” We can assure ourselves of this requirement of acknowledgeability by observing that whenever we resolve, and not merely settle, an ethical disagreement, we have achieved not only a factual, predictive, valuational and attitudinal agreement between the disputants, but a joint acknowledgment of the ground of the ethical judgment. Without this, the agreement could not be said to be ethical, whether the judgment be right or wrong or neither, but merely an agreement to disagree, ethically. Unless ethical disagreement is in principle resolvable, ethical judgment is impossible, for we should be unable to claim that our choice ought to be acted upon.

The Object of this paper is the development of a view of punishment which incorporates what is of importance in retributive and utilitarian justifications of the practice of punishment. This proposed theory was noted and referred to as the plene esse, but not fully worked out, in the course of a discussion paper (‘Mr Quinton on “an odd sort of right”’) in which my concern was to offer an alternative view, to that of Mr Anthony Quinton, by construing ‘the right to punishment’ as meaning that ‘the offender has the right to be regarded as responsible for his actions’.

Readers of the Journal may know little of Melchior Palágyi (pronounced Pallargee) (1860–1924). Even on the Continent his work has been very inadequately recognized. It is not that he has written little: he published some books and many articles during his lifetime, in German as well as in Magyar, and since his death, Barth of Leipzig has issued an edition of his selected works, including his most important contribution, Naturphilosophische Vorlesungen, also the Wahrnehmungslehre and Zur Weltmechanik. He has many enthusiastic admirers, and those who care to look up the Preussische Jahrbücher, March 1926, will find there a most informative and highly appreciative article on his general philosophy by Werner Deubel, who in the same journal, some two years previously (October 1924), discussed the work of a kindred spirit, Ludwig Klages. It was Deubel's article that first roused my interest in Palágyi and led me to study his more important writings.

Following the practice of human beings everywhere historians distinguish the real or most significant cause(s) of an occurrence or state of affairs from ‘less important considerations’, ‘precipitating circumstances’, or ‘mere conditions’. I shall term claims that some phenomenon is most basically to be attributed to some one (or few) of the factors causally necessary for its occurrence attributive causal explanations or causal attributions and discusshere the extent to which moral convictions are constitutive of them.

The Humean legacy in moral philosophy has given rise to the following familiar divergence of views:

1. Moral questions are questions of feeling. Rational discussion can occur given the acceptance of unreasoned commitments to values or principles, but it must not be thought that these values or principles can themselves be justified rationally. Moral disagreements may be resolved through persuasion, but it is appropriate for rational persons to be permanently irreconcilable in their moral views.

2. Moral questions are questions of fact and/or logic. They are therefore in principle resolvable through rational discussion, like any other questions of fact and/or logic. The idea that rational persons should be permanently unable to agree on moral questions, despite indefinitely lengthy discussion and enquiry, is unintelligible.

Susan Lowe's criticism of Freya Mora's argument depends for almost all its force on one admittedly unfortunate word in Mora's article. There are other words there equally unhappy. But some simple verbal substitutions that would cause no unease to W. S. Gilbert's Lord Chancellor are sufficient to disarm Lowe's objection, and restore to Mora's solution of the problem of evil whatever strength it had.

One of the questions that any future history of British moral philosophy in the twentieth century should investigate and document is how it came about that Moore's Principia Ethica was appropriated by what we can call theHumean tradition of moral philosophy. I shall not trace that development now but only argue that there was no excuse or justification for it.