Sean Sayers

Since 1972, the journal _Radical Philosophy_ has provided a forum for the discussion of radical and critical ideas in philosophy. It is the liveliest and probably the most widely read philosophical journal in Britain. This anthology reprints some of the best articles to have appeared in the journal during the past five years. It covers topics in social and moral philosophy which are central to current controversies on the left, focusing on theoretical issues raised by the socialist, feminist and environmental movements. Topics covered include feminist perspectives on a range of traditional philosophical issues and contemporary problems; theoretical questions involved in the rethinking of socialism and Marxism; and questions about the relation between humanity and nature raised by environmental debates. The pieces included engage with contemporary issues in critical terms, and represent the best of recent philosophical work on the left. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the current state of radical thought.

Since 1972, the journal _Radical Philosophy_ has provided a forum for the discussion of radical and critical ideas in philosophy. It is the liveliest and probably the most widely read philosophical journal in Britain. This anthology reprints some of the best articles to have appeared in the journal during the past five years. It covers topics in social and moral philosophy which are central to current controversies on the left, focusing on theoretical issues raised by the socialist, feminist and environmental movements. Topics covered include feminist perspectives on a range of traditional philosophical issues and contemporary problems; theoretical questions involved in the rethinking of socialism and Marxism; and questions about the relation between humanity and nature raised by environmental debates. The pieces included engage with contemporary issues in critical terms, and represent the best of recent philosophical work on the left. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the current state of radical thought.

Sidney: Court Maxims. Edited and introduced by Hans Blom, Eco Haitsma‐Muller and Ronald Janse. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press: 1996). xxxix + 216 pp., £35.00 cloth, £12.95 paper.The Politics of Women's Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750–1915. By Judith G. Coffin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 289 pp., $35/£28.50 cloth.Rethinking the Political: Gender, Resistance, and the State. By Barbara Laslett, Johanna Brenner, and Yesim Arat, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 498 pp., $39.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background. By Paul Avrich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 265 pp., $14.95.Changing the Rules: Psychology in the Netherlands 1900–1985. By Trudy Dehue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ix + 204 pp., £30.00/$49.95 cloth.The Love Affair as a Work of Art. By Dan Hofstadter (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), xxii + 314 pp., $24.00.Music in the Castle: Troubadours, Books and Orators in Italian Courts of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries. By F. Alberto Gallo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 147 pp., $45.00/£35.95 cloth, $19.95/£15.95 paper.Imperialism and Its Contradictions. By V. G. Kiernan, ed. by Harvey J. Kaye (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), xii + 218 pp., £11.99 paper.Cholera in Post‐Revolutionary Paris, A Cultural History. By Catherine J. Kudlick, Studies in the History of Society & Culture, 25 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), xiv + 293 pp., $40.00/£30.00 cloth.Legal Medicine in History. Edited by Michael Clarke and Catherine Crawford, Cambridge History of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xi + 364 pp.,£40.00 cloth.The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety. Edited by Diarmaid MacCulloch (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), pp. vii + 313 pp., $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud: Four Activist Intellectuals and Their Strategies for Peace, 1945–1989. By Michael Bess (Chicago/London: Chicago University Press, 1993), xxviii + 322 pp., £15.95/$22.95 paper.Focus: Margarete Steffin, The Brecht Yearbook 19. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994, vii + 387 pp., n.p.g. paper.After MacIntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair Maclntyre. Edited by John Horton and Susan Mendus (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), x + 322 pp., £45.00 cloth, £12.95 paper.Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States and Citizenship. Edited by Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 308 pp., $16.95 paper.Liberalism's Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnik. By Ira Katznelson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), xx + 192 pp., n.p.g.After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. By Clifford Geertz (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 198 pp., $22.95.French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti‐Semitism, and the Ideology of Culture. By David Carroll (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), ix+ 299 pp. £29.95.Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, Edited by Richard Schacht, Philosophical Traditions Series, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), xxl + 479pp.Critical Heidegger. Edited by Christopher Macann (London/New York: Routledge, 1996), 284pp., £40.00/£12.99.The God Within: Kant, Schelling, and Historicity. By Emil L. Fackenheim, edited by John Burbidge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 252 pp., $75.00/£56.00 cloth.The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848. By Paul W. Schroeder (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), xxii + 894 pp., £45.00/$49.95.Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin‐de‐Siècle Germany. By Kevin McAleer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xiii + 268 pp., H.B., n.p.g.Hegel's Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation. By Michael O. Hardimon (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), vii + 278 pp., $18.95 paper.The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England. By William Calin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), xvi + 508 pp., $29.95 paper.Extreme‐Occident: French Intellectuals and America. By Jean Philippe Mathy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) 305 pp., U.K. and Eire, $13.50 paper/£39.50 cloth. All other countries except U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, $19.50 paper/$56.25 cloth.The Combing of History. By David William Cohen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), xxv + 264 pp., £38.25/$55.25 cloth, £14.25/ $20.75 paper.Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. By Theodore M. Porter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), xiv + 310 pp., $24.95/£19.95 cloth.Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States. By Matthew Frye Jacobson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 321 pp., $45.00 cloth.The Confessions and Correspondence, including the Letters to Malesherbes. The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Volume 5. Edited by Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters and Peter G. Stillman, translated by Christopher Kelly (Hanover/London: University Press of New England, 1995), xxxvi + 700 pp., $60.00 cloth.Heidegger, Dilthey and the Crisis of Historicism. By Charles R. Bambach (Ithaca/London: Cornell University, 1995), xii + 297 pp., $46.75 cloth, $20.85 paper.Three Discourses: A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes. Edited by Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene Saxonhouse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) pp. ix + 181 pp., $27.50/£21.95. cloth.Telemachus: Son of Ulysses. By Francois de Fenelon, edited and translated by Patrick Riley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 340 pp., £40.00/$59.95 cloth, £14.95/$19.95 paper.Nietzsche's Case: Philosophy as/and Literature. By Bernd Magnus, Jean‐Pierre Mileuv, Stanley Stewart (London: Routledge, 1994), xi + 284 pp., £12.99 paper.Maltese Political Development 1798–1864, A Documentary History. By Henry Fredo (Malta: Interprint, 1993) xv+ 921 pp., n.p.g.Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain, 1000–1300. By Janet Burton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xi + 354 pp., $69.95 cloth, $18.95/£12.95 paper.Louis VIII: Le Lion. By Gerard Silvery (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 473 pp., 150.00 FF, paper.The Music of the Heavens: Kepler's Harmonic Astronomy. By Bruce Stephenson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 260 pp.The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. Edited by David Cesarani (London: Routledge, 1994) 318 pp., £35.00 cloth, ISBN 0415–09954–4.Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. By William H. McNeill (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), viii + 198 pp., $22.00 cloth.Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. By Pierre Hadot, translated and edited by Arnold Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), viii + 309 pp., n.p.g.Appetites and Identities: An Introduction to the Social Anthropology of Western Europe. By Sara Delamont (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), 254 pp., $59.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.Reformation to Revolution: Politics and Religion in Early Modern England. Edited by Margot Todd (London: Routledge, 1995), xiii + 279 pp., £11.99 paperback.Novalis: Signs of Revolution. By William Arctander O'Brien (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1995), viii + 376 pp., £47.95 cloth/£ 17.95 paper.Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History and Musical Genre. By Jeffrey Kallberg (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 301 pp., $45.00.Holland and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: the Politics of Particularism. By J. L. Price (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 312 pp., $52.00/£35.00 cloth.Aspects of British Political History, 1815–1914. By Stephen J. Lee (London/New York: Routledge, 1994), viii + 375 pp., n.p.g.Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1760–1820. By David L. Denby (Cambridge Studies in French, 47) (Cambridge University Press, 1994), xi + 281 pp., £37.50. ISBN 0 52143086 0Platonism and the English Imagination. Edited by Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xv + 357 pp., £40.00/ $59.95 cloth. ISBN 0–521–40308–1.Art and Eloquence in Byzantium. By Henry Maguire 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 111 figs. + xxiii + 148 pp., $18.95 paper.Money and Magic: A Critique of the Modern Economy in the Light of Goethe's Faust. By H.‐ C. Binswanger, with a postcript by Irving Fetscher, translated by I. E. Harrison. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 132 pp. $24.75 cloth.Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue. By Heinrich Meier, translated by J. Harvey Lomax (Chicago/ London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 156 pp., $19.95/£15.95 cloth, ISBN: 0–226–51889–2Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939. By J. P. Harris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), viii + 342 pp., £40.00 cloth, £14.99 paper.Une histoire du paradis, II: Mille ans de bonheur. By Jean Delumeau. (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 496 pp., 150.00 FF, paper.Narrative Ethics. By Adam Zachary Newton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), xi + 335 pp., $39.95.War and Economy in the Third Reich. By R. J. Overy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 390 pp., n.p.g.Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan‐Protestantism: Jean‐Alphonse Turretin (1671–1737) and Enlightened Orthodoxy at the Academy of Geneva. By Martin I. Klauber (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994), 244 pp., £29.95.The Writing of Melancholy. Modes of Opposition in Early French Modernism. By Ross Chambers, translated by Mary Seidman Trouille (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), xiv + 239 pp., $29.95 cloth.Idle Hands: The Experience of Unemployment, 1790–1990. By John Burnett (London/New York: Routledge, 1994), ix + 368 pp., £14.99 paper.The American Radical. Edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Harvey J. Kaye (New York/London: Routledge, 1994), 380 pp., £14.99 paper.

In common with other forms of nonreductive materialism, emergent materialism of this sort is accused of trying to have its cake and eat it. Ontological physicalism, it is said, necessarily implies reductionism which rules out the idea that there are irreducible emergent mental properties and laws. For according to such physicalism, everything is composed of physical constituents whose behaviour is governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. It follows that, in theory at least, every particular mental process is describable and explainable in purely physical terms, without recourse to mental descriptions. Description in terms of emergent properties and laws seems superfluous. Nothing save the complexity of the task prevents us from describing and explaining everything that exists or happens in purely physical terms.

other approaches. The first of these is `material thinking' (das materielles Denken): `a contingent consciousness that is absorbed only in material stuff', a form of thought which is rooted in existing conditions and cannot see beyond them. At the `opposite extreme' is the transcendent critical method of `argumentation' (das Räsonieren), which involves `freedom from all content and a sense of vanity towards it'. The dialectical method, Hegel maintains, must `give up this freedom'. It refuses `to intrude into the immanent rhythm of the Notion, either arbitrarily or with wisdom obtained from elsewhere'. Instead, it `sink[s] this freedom in the content, letting it move spontaneously of its own nature ... and then ... contemplate[s] this movement' (Hegel 1970 p. 56; Hegel 1977 pp. 35-6).

According to Plato, the true philosopher will take on political power only with great reluctance. Onora O’Neill is a prominent political philosopher: specifically, a latter day Kantian and a follower of Rawls. She is also Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge and, as Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve, a crossbench Peer in the House of Lords. I have no idea whether she was at all reluctant to take on these positions. Happily, on the evidence of the present book, they do not appear to have compromised her philosophy.