David Rondel

In this article, I argue that G. A. Cohen’s defense of the feminist slogan, “The personal is political”, his argument against Rawls’s restriction of principles of justice to the basic structure of society, depends for its intelligibility on the ability to distinguish—with reasonable but perhaps not perfect precision—between those situations in which what Nancy Rosenblum has called “the logic of congruence” is validly invoked and those in which it is not. More importantly, I suggest that the philosophical shape of Cohen’s critique makes it difficult for him to supply the required criterion, and that the methodological “intuitionism” he claims to be committed to is at odds with his larger argument against Rawls concerning the subject of justice.

This paper critically examines Richard Rorty’s “justice as larger loyalty” proposal. While Rorty is right, I argue, to reject the Kantian idea of a strict bifurcation between justice and loyalty, the former corresponding to reason the latter corresponding to sentiment, my argument is that it is nevertheless a mistake to follow Rorty in conceiving of justice as he recommends we should. This is not an endorsement of the rationalistic Kantian view Rorty rejects. Rather, I argue that there are compelling Rortyan reasons for rejecting the “justice as larger loyalty” proposal, and that the argument against that proposal is paradoxically very much in the spirit of Rorty’s moral and political thought.

This book, one of the most recent in Cambridge University Press's large and growing companion series, provides a well-rounded overview of American pragmatism's beginnings, its "revival" in the mid to late twentieth century, and some of the ways in which it might be "put to work" in addressing questions about aesthetics, politics, religion, law, and education. The volume begins with an introduction by editor Alan Malachowski, which helpfully sets out American pragmatism's "orientation," a few of its guiding themes, along with a summary of several issues on which pragmatists have tended to diverge. One of these has to do with narrating the recent history of pragmatism itself. On the so-called "dominant" or "eclipse" story, pragmatism was "eclipsed by analytic philosophy" and "became a historical curiosity, residing as a dim relic in the museum of ideas." (3) While Malachowski wants his volume to offer "a relatively neutral overview of pragmatism" (xiii), and thus tries to avoid "taking a stand on issues concerning the respective merits of different forms of pragmatism" (xiv), he nonetheless agrees with other pragmatist commentators like Cheryl Misak and Robert Talisse in thinking that the "dominant narrative is badly mistaken." (9) When "the development of analytic philosophy . . . is examined more carefully," Malachowski writes, "it . . . becomes clear that rather than remaining dormant, or being discarded, in the face of that development, pragmatist ideas exerted a good deal of influence."

In this paper I describe how Kant’s idea about the impossibility of moral luck has come to influence, via Rawls, recent writings in egalitarian theory. I argue that this influence has been detrimental for the study of equality. Further, I claim that the major deficiencies of this post-Rawlsian egalitarianism (nicely described by Elizabeth Anderson’s title “luck egalitarianism) are both effectively critiqued and corrected by the understanding of equality and its value located in John Dewey’s writings.

Kai Nielsen is one of Canada’s most distinguished political philosophers. In a career spanning over 40 years, he has published more than 400 papers in political philosophy, ethics, meta-philosophy, and philosophy of religion. He has engaged much of the best work in Anglophone political philosophy, shedding light on many of the central debates and controversies of our time but throughout has remained a unique voice on the political left. _ Pessimism of the Intellect _presents a thoughtful collection of Nielsen’s essays complemented by an extended reflective interview with Nielsen. This collection allows the reader to grasp the systematic scope of his thought and methodology