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33Moral Matters - Second EditionBroadview Press. 1999._Moral Matters_ is a concise and accessible look at such ethical issues as euthanasia, animal rights, abortion, and pornography. It provides a focused set of views from the unified perspective of one of North America’s leading libertarian thinkers, and aims to provoke thought and discussion as well as to enrich understanding. For the new edition the text has been revised throughout, the introduction has been greatly expanded, and a new chapter on environmental issues has been added.
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4That old‐time religion: Reply to HerzogCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 5 (4): 573-582. 1991.
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6McDonald and McDougal, Pride and Gain, and Justice: Comment on a Criticism of GauthierDialogue 27 (3): 503-. 1988.David Gauthier's impressive new book, Morals by Agreement, attempts to resuscitate something like Lockean natural rights on an essentially Hobbesian basis—a project eminently worth doing, if it can be done. Hubin and Lambeth offer some interesting criticisms of his project, and as they also raise some fundamental questions about the character and derivation of rights, it is important to see whether those criticisms hold up. I wish to comment on the one I think to be most crucial.
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19A Theory of the Good and the Right (review)International Studies in Philosophy 12 (1): 107-108. 1980.
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22Professor Heath’s CanadaDialogue 42 (2): 363-. 2003.Professor Heath’s thesis that Canada is “The Efficient Society” has shock value. In contemplating our country, the image of efficiency is not the first one that comes to mind. But in this engagingly—indeed, breezily—written book, that is just what we are told. The claim is that we have discovered the virtues of good government, and other more hapless places such as the United States, have not. Contrary to what we might suppose, government is efficient! The idea certainly tickles the intellect, a…Read more
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21Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1): 227-234. 1987.
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2Are Liberty and Equality Compatible?Cambridge University Press. 2012.Are the political ideals of liberty and equality compatible? This question is of central and continuing importance in political philosophy, moral philosophy, and welfare economics. In this book, two distinguished philosophers take up the debate. Jan Narveson argues that a political ideal of negative liberty is incompatible with any substantive ideal of equality, while James P. Sterba argues that Narveson's own ideal of negative liberty is compatible, and in fact leads to the requirements of a su…Read more
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11Shopping‐mall liberalism: Reply to LegutkoCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 5 (1): 129-134. 1991.No abstract
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58The agreement to keep our agreements: Hume, Prichard, and SearlePhilosophical Papers 23 (2): 75-87. 1994.Does it make sense, and is it at all plausible, to view the moral obligation to keep particular promises and do what is called for by particular agreements such as contracts as being founded on a general "Social Contract" -- i.e., to give a contractarian account of promise-keeping? This paper argues that it does. Borrowing from Hume, David Lewis, Gilbert Harman, and David Gauthier, I provide a sketch of what the "social contract" is (not, e.g., either a real or a hypothetical meeting of all with…Read more
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189Cohen’s RescueThe Journal of Ethics 14 (3-4): 263-334. 2010.G. A. Cohen's Rescuing Justice and Equality proposes that both concepts need rescuing from the work of John Rawls. Especially, it is concerned with Rawls' famous second principle of justice according to which social primary goods should be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution is to the benefit of the worst off. The question is why this would ever be necessary if all parties are just. Cohen and I agree that Rawls cannot really justify inequalities on the basis given. But he also thi…Read more
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19Bastiat's great contribution to economics, in his own view, was his identification of service as the source of economic value. What is anything worth to anybody? In the cases where we are not dealing with what our fellow men do for us, the answer is to be found in its utility - how much the thing contributes to our satisfaction. In the case where we deal with our fellows, we are interested specifically in what they can do for us, that is, how much service they can render us - how much they can o…Read more
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27Gewirth's Reason and Morality – A Study in the Hazards of Universalizability in EthicsDialogue 19 (4): 651-674. 1980.
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20Moral issues (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1983.Though this moderately-priced anthology dates back to 1983, its lively articles are as relevant as ever. Topics covered include suicide, euthanasia, war, punishment,world hunger, abortion, sexual relations, equality, affirmative action, and future generations.
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20Communication and Human Good: The Twentieth Century's Main AchievementSocial Philosophy Today 17 91-102. 2001.The invention of computers, and especially their communication capabilities is revolutionary in several ways. They show the paramount importance of communication in human life, as well as facilitating revolutionary improvements in virtually all areas of social life: business, the arts, agriculture, and others. They put in perspective the erroneous outlook of "materialism" -the idea that human well-being is a matter of accumulating material objects, with a corollary that we must be using up the m…Read more
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37Present Payments, Past Wrongs: Correcting Loose Talk about Nozick and RectificationLibertarian Papers 1 1. 2009.It is widely thought that Robert Nozick’s views on rectification of past injustices are of critical importance to his theory of distributive justice, even perhaps justifying wholesale redistributive taxes in the present because of the undoubted injustices that have pervaded much past history. This essay undertakes to correct this impression—not mostly by disagreeing with Nozick’s claims, but nevertheless proceeding on basic libertarian theory. Of enormous importance is the role of putative innoc…Read more
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13The Evaluation of Ethical Theories. By Charles B. Daniels. Halifax, Dalhousie University Press 1975. pp. 87 + viii. $3.00 (review)Dialogue 19 (2): 349-359. 1980.
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225Libertarianism vs. Marxism: Reflections on G. A. Cohen‘s Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality (review)The Journal of Ethics 2 (1): 1-26. 1998.Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality is G.A. Cohens attempt to rescue something of the socialist outlook on society from the challenge of libertarianism, which Cohen identifies with the work of Robert Nozick in his famous book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Sympathizing with the leading idea that a person must belong to himself, and thus be unavailable for forced redistribution of his efforts, Cohen is at pains to reconcile the two. This cannot be done – they are flatly contrary. Moreover, equalit…Read more
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University of WaterlooDepartment of Philosophy
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |