Jeffrie Murphy

(1940 - 2020)

Plato. Crito.--Mill, J. S. Utilitarianism.--Rawls, J. Two concepts of rules.--Kant, I. Fundamental principles of the metaphysic of morals.--Rawls, J. Justice as fairness.--Benn, S. I. and Peters, R. S. Society and types of social regulation.--Hobbes, T. Leviathan, abridged.--Hayek, F. A. The principles of a liberal social order.--Marx, K. Alienation and its overcoming in Communism.--Lukes, S. Alienation and anomie.--Garver, N. What violence is.--Zinn, H. The force of nonviolence.--Caudwell, C. Pacifism and violence; a study in bourgeois ethics.--Bennett, J. Whatever the consequences.--Foot, P. Abortion and the doctrine of the double effect.--Benn, S. I. Punishment.--Mill, J. S. Selection from On liberty.--Mill, J. S. Selection from Considerations on representative government.--Marcuse, H. The new forms of control.--Mill, J. S. The subjection of women, abridged.--Dickinson, J. A working theory of sovereignty, abridged.--Rawls, J. The justification of civil disobedience.

Introduction. For the most part, Kant’s moral philosophy is no longer taught. What is taught instead is a parody of Kant’s moral philosophy. His views, generally used as a foil for some other view like utilitarianism, are summed up in a few popular cliches which have achieved the status of interpretive dogma. Small wonder that undergraduates go away thinking that Kant is, at worst, a moral fanatic or, at best, a well-intentioned bungler who allowed his right-wing political views and Pietist upbringing to get in the way of his philosophical acumen.

The central or dominant intellectual model which provided the structure of social and political thought in the 18th century was the "social contract". Both hume and kant felt obliged to assess it carefully-Hume coming out an opponent and kant a supporter of the model. This opposition is particularly interesting for the following reason: hume's attack on social contract theory is directed primarily against hobbes and locke, And it is interesting to see if post-Humean social contract theories (especially kant's and that of our own contemporary john rawls) succeed in avoiding his very powerful objections to this line of thought

This book focuses on the degree to which certain moral and legal doctrines are rooted in specific passions that are then institutionalised in the form of criminal law. A philosophical analysis is developed of the following questions: when, if ever, should hatred be overcome by sympathy or compassion? What are forgiveness and mercy and to what degree do they require - both conceptually and morally - the overcoming of certain passions and the motivation by other passions? If forgiveness and mercy indeed are moral virtues, what role, if any, should they play in the law?

Internal and External Questions. The most profound questions in ethics, social philosophy, and the philosophy of law are foundational; i.e., they are questions that call the entire framework of our ordinary evaluations into doubt in order to determine to what degree, if at all, that framework can be rationally defended. Such questions, called “external” by Rudolf Carnap, are currently dominating my own philosophical reflections and are forcing me to rethink a variety of positions I have in the past defended.