Metaphysics is often understood as an inquiry into the fundamental structures of reality. Collingwood, by contrast, defends a view of metaphysics on which its role is not to advance knowledge of fundamental reality but to deepen our understanding of the presuppositions on which knowledge rests. On Collingwood’s view, knowledge requires explanation, explanations are answers to questions, and questions rest on presuppositions. The metaphysician’s task is to trace the entailment relations that hold between answers, the questions they seek to answer, and the presuppositions that give rise to the questions characteristic of different forms of knowledge. This exposes misunderstandings which arise when answers to a question of one kind are erroneously taken to be in conflict with answers to questions of a different kind, ones resting on different presuppositions and pursuing different explanatory goals. This chapter outlines Collingwood’s conception of presuppositional analysis and his distinctive views of the role of conceptual analysis in metaphysics. It also explores affinities between Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics and Wittgenstein’s hinge epistemology.

In ‘The Place of Concepts in Socratic Inquiry’, Terence Irwin examines Socrates’ question ‘What is F?’, which is often taken to be a request for some sort of definition or account of what F is. When Socrates asks, ‘What is courage?’, ‘What is piety?’, ‘What is temperance?’, does his discovery that everyone, including himself, cannot answer such questions in a satisfactory manner imply that these answerers do not know what the words mean? If one cannot answer the ‘What is F?’ question, does it follow that one lacks the concept of F? Irwin argues that conceptual argument has an indispensable role in the arguments that lead to Socratic definitions, but it will not take us all the way to them. To understand Socratic definitions, Irwin compares them with Aristotelian real definitions, and with Epictetus’ views on the articulation of preconceptions.

I develop an account of Kant’s technical notion of “exposition” and, in particular, “metaphysical” exposition. This involves explaining his distinction between concepts that are “made” and those that are “given,” as well as his murky notion of “original acquisition.” I then turn to Kant’s account of exposition as conceptual analysis. I argue that apperceptive reflection is the principal vehicle of conceptual analysis and, thus, the nervus probandi of Kant’s arguments in the Expositions. This yields a general picture of the Expositions as advancing the critical project of reason’s self-knowledge. An attractive consequence of my account en passant is that the discussion of original acquisition provides a novel and tidy explanation of the much-discussed distinction between formal intuition and the form of intuition in terms of the tripartite Aristotelian distinction between first potentiality, second potentiality (first actuality), and second actuality.

Interpreters often cite Kant’s Stufenleiter of representations (A320/B376) as providing a “definition” of intuition. This misunderstands the peculiar logic of Porphyrian classification, which I clarify by reviewing its history. Porphyrian trees do offer conceptual analyses, I argue, but do not purport to provide a uniquely correct, much less exhaustive, account of the analysand. Different orderings of differentia, as well as different differentia, are often possible. Which terms and which kinds of terms appear as differentia in the analysis depends on the goals and constraints on the philosophical inquiry to which the analysis contributes. It is therefore illegitimate to extract a “definition” of intuition from Kant’s Stufenleiter. First, its analysis targets <idea of reason> (not <intuition>), and, second, it does not purport to give a uniquely correct account of that concept (much less of <intuition>), as a definition must.

Chapter 3 makes the case for classifying five grey area examples as hate speech in the ordinary sense of the term based on the global resemblance test. We also argue that Facebook’s community standard on hate speech is ambiguous, inconsistent, and incomplete in relation to these examples, and so recommend specific reforms. Section 3.2 looks at hybrid attacks, which, like personal insults, target specific individuals, but, like prototypical hate speech, also attack the groups to which targeted individuals belong and, go beyond standard protected characteristics. Section 3.3 investigates selective attacks, which are derogatory or insulting words that refer to only a subset of a group or else to an amalgamated set of people who belong to multiple groups. Section 3.4 scrutinises reverse attacks, which involve words used by members of groups typically perceived as victims against groups more usually considered perpetrators. Section 3.5 examines righteous attacks, which we associate with attacks in pursuit of some righteous cause. Finally, Section 3.6 assesses indirect attacks, wherein the speaker intentionally uses a derogatory word to address or target someone whom the speaker knows or presumes to be not a member of the group referred to by the word under its literal or primary meaning.

Chapter 1 establishes the context of our project and defends its theoretical and practical importance. Section 1.2 outlines the basic conceptual framework employed in the book, including the distinction between two concepts of hate speech and our twin-track approach to analysing them. We also highlight some of the pay-offs that flow from this conceptual framework. Section 1.3 explains what we mean by ‘grey areas of hate speech’ including identifying three underlying reasons or explanations why certain phenomena might end up falling into these areas, namely moral, semantic, and conceptual. We also try to motivate the significance and value of working to clear up the grey areas. Finally, Section 1.4 introduces and attempts to respond to the sceptical challenge that says, because the term ‘hate speech’ is linked to conceptual ambiguities, misleading connotations, an explosion of applications, and politicisation, it would be better to dispense with both the term and its concepts. We critically examine five main ways of responding to this sceptical challenge: rehabilitation, downsizing, abandonment, replacement, and enhanced understanding. We defend the final response as being the most promising and the overarching goal of the book.

Chapter 2 identifies prototypical examples of hate speech and seeks to explain what makes them such. Section 2.2 lists the original examples of hate speech cited in Mari Matsuda’s seminal article on the legal concept. We then explain how, even though the ordinary and legal concepts of hate speech share paradigmatic examples, the ordinary concept now has its own extended body of exemplars. Section 2.3 attempts to plot the complex pattern of overlapping and criss-crossing similarities among these exemplars. Section 2.4 looks in more depth at one of the paradigmatic examples of hate speech, namely racial slurs such as ‘nigger’. We highlight similarities it shares with other prototypical examples of hate speech. Finally, Section 2.5 defends a particular account of what it means for a new example to have enough similarities with exemplars to count as hate speech. If there are enough similarities across at least four out of five of the distinguishing qualities of target, style, message, act, and effect, then this conceptually justifies applying the phrase ‘x is also hate speech’ to the new example. We dub this the global resemblance test.

Chapter 4 defends classifying a further five grey area examples as hate speech in the ordinary sense of the term under the global resemblance test. We shall also critically examine Facebook’s community standard on hate speech in relation to its handling of these kinds of attacks, and make specific recommendations to address relevant weaknesses. Section 4.2 looks at what we call identity attacks. Section 4.3 investigates existential denials, namely statements denying the very existence of people identified by a protected characteristic. Section 4.4 scrutinises identity denials, by which we mean statements denying that certain people are who they take themselves to be, based on protected characteristics. Section 4.5 examines identity miscategorisations, which go one step further and attribute identities to people that do not match the identities they take themselves to possess, based on protected characteristics. Finally, Section 4.6 assesses identity appropriations, wherein people adopt elements of the identities of other people, based on protected characteristics, but without claiming to possess the relevant identities.

This chapter analyzes Cavell’s interpretive methods to show how he generates novel insights into traditional political philosophy concepts. It argues that methodologists in political theory answer three crucial questions. What texts should one read? Why should one read those texts? How should one read those texts? I contend that Cavell is neither a textualist nor a contextualist. Instead, he is an intertextualist interested in how texts relate to each other and what effect the text has on the reader. Cavell understands political theory as a practice of responding to political texts. To demonstrate the salience of Cavell’s approach, the chapter identifies three interpretive techniques within his work. First, the technique of creative reading juxtaposes at least two disparate texts to draw out a previously neglected dimension in both. Second, through conceptual analysis of the ordinary use of terms such as “democracy,” Cavell can resolve longstanding debates in political theory. Third, through an attention to the authorial voice, Cavell can identify how a text provokes a change in political attitude in its readers.

This book delves into the four concepts of parenthood – social, biological, legal, and moral – at play in our understandings of parental rights and obligations, reproductive ethics, governance of parenthood, and ontologies of kinship. Our view of what it means to be a parent in any given context is shaped by all of these concepts, which are themselves subject to the influence of changing expectations, as new technologies are produced, cultural views of the family are transformed, and laws shift in response. These changes give rise to questions: who has the right to raise a child? What do we owe our children? Who should the law recognise as a parent, and what is the meaning of that recognition? Many of these questions are not questions about some independent notion of ‘parenthood’ but about the relationships between different concepts of parenthood. In doing so, I highlight newer but no less important questions for philosophical attention, including the scope of rights to become a biological parent (or to avoid that state), the impact of gendered norms on the social role of ‘parent’, and the legal difference between having a child and acquiring one.

This book delves into the four concepts of parenthood – social, biological, legal, and moral – at play in our understandings of parental rights and obligations, reproductive ethics, governance of parenthood, and ontologies of kinship. Our view of what it means to be a parent in any given context is shaped by all of these concepts, which are themselves subject to the influence of changing expectations, as new technologies are produced, cultural views of the family are transformed, and laws shift in response. These changes give rise to questions: who has the right to raise a child? What do we owe our children? Who should the law recognise as a parent, and what is the meaning of that recognition? Many of these questions are not questions about some independent notion of ‘parenthood’ but about the relationships between different concepts of parenthood. In doing so, I highlight newer but no less important questions for philosophical attention, including the scope of rights to become a biological parent (or to avoid that state), the impact of gendered norms on the social role of ‘parent’, and the legal difference between having a child and acquiring one.

By mixing conceptual clarification and semantic probes, we seek to underscore the problematic nature of characterizing law as a universal concept. We intend to show that law, in the sense by which it is globally understood today, is the outcome of a contingent experience whose extension to other historical and cultural contexts has been achieved at a huge price: heuristic weakness, analytical vacuity, grammatical incoherence, pluralist dogmatism. First, we examine works dealing with “legal pluralism” and “legalism” to identify the reasons why the term “law,” its conceptual extension, and the attribution of its predicative quality are problematic and badly reflect the gap that can exist between a “legalistic way of thinking” about the world and the existence of law in its contemporary meaning. Second, we specifically address works dealing with “Islamic law” and law in Muslim contexts to try to see what law can be at the margin but also what people make it into, often abusively. Third, we seek to outline the contours of a conceptual inquiry, delimiting its relevance, specifying its limits, taking advantage of its analytical razor, clearing the mist, opening the domain of grammar.

The introductory chapter provides a theoretical exposition of belonging and identity, the two central themes of this book. It accentuates the fundamental conception of belonging as sameness, which underlies various expressions of the idea of belonging. The chapter also signposts the conception of belonging as essential or as socially constructed, which comprises the two major axes of the discussion to follow, and the distinction and interplay between belonging and identity