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71Comment: The Private and Its Problems—Pragmatism, Pragmatist Feminism, and HomophobiaPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 29 (2): 281-305. 1999.The pragmatist revival of recent decades has in some respects obscured the radical emancipatory potential of Deweyan pragmatism. The author suggests that neo-pragmatists such as Richard Rorty have too often failed to grasp the ways in which Dewey's notion of social intelligence was bound up with the case for participatory democracy, and that recent efforts to bring out the potential of pragmatism for supporting certain forms of feminist and gay critical theory make for a more compelling reconstr…Read more
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8Nicholas Capaldi, John Stuart Mill: A Biography:John Stuart Mill: A BiographyEthics 115 (3): 601-605. 2005.
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Kenneth Blackwell and Harry Ruja, A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell (review)Philosophy in Review 15 80-83. 1995.
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30Essays on Henry Sidgwick (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1992.The dominant moral philosophy of nineteenth-century Britain was utilitarianism, beginning with Bentham and ending with Sidgwick. Though once overshadowed by his immediate predecessors in that tradition, Sidgwick is now regarded as a figure of great importance in the history of moral philosophy. Indeed his masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, has been described by John Rawls as the 'most philosophically profound' of the classical utilitarian works. In this volume a distinguished group of philosoph…Read more
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24British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing, by Hurka, Thomas: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. xiv+ 310, £30Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (3): 611-614. 2016.
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51Review essay: John Rawls's last wordPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 39 (1): 107-114. 2009.Although no one can deny the profound importance of John Rawls's work in political philosophy, which covered both an original theory of justice and extensive work and teaching on the history of moral and political philosophy, we are now at the point where his contributions more clearly suggest certain historical limitations. Such topics as gender justice, racial justice, and environmental justice figured in Rawls's work only belatedly and in less than satisfactory ways. Surely the wide influence…Read more
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94Go Tell It on the MountainPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (2): 233-251. 2014.Derek Parfit’s long-awaited work On What Matters is a very ambitious, very strange production seeking to defend both a nonreductive and nonnaturalistic but nonmetaphysical and nonontological form of cognitive intuitionism or rationalism and an ethical theory (the Triple Theory) reflecting the convergence of Kantian universalizability, Scanlonian contractualism, and rule utilitarianism. Critics have already countered that Parfit’s metaethics is unbelievable and his convergence thesis unconvincing…Read more
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9Utilitarianism and Empire (edited book)Lexington Books. 2005.The classical utilitarian legacy of Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill, James Mill, and Henry Sidgwick has often been charged with both theoretical and practical complicity in the growth of British imperialism and the emerging racialist discourse of the nineteenth century. But there has been little scholarly work devoted to bringing together the conflicting interpretive perspectives on this legacy and its complex evolution with respect to orientalism and imperialism. This volume, with contributions by l…Read more
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54Ross Harrison , Henry Sidgwick, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. vi + 122Utilitas 14 (2): 263. 2002.
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103Obama's political philosophy: Pragmatism, politics, and the university of chicagoPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 39 (2): 127-173. 2009.In early work, I argued that Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, often represented, in his political speeches and writings, a form of philosophical pragmatism with special relations to the University of Chicago and its reform tradition. That form of pragmatism, especially evident in the work of such early figures as John Dewey and Jane Addams, and such later figures as Saul Alinsky, Abner Mikva, David Greenstone, Richard Rorty, Danielle Allen, and Cass Sunstein, contributed gr…Read more
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61Eye of the Universe: Henry Sidgwick and the Problem PublicUtilitas 14 (2): 155-188. 2002.Henry Sidgwick has gone down in the history of philosophy as both the great, classical utilitarian moral theorist who authoredThe Methods of Ethics, and an outstanding exemplar of intellectual honesty and integrity, one whose personal virtues were inseparable from his philosophical strengths and method. Yet this construction of Sidgwick the philosopher has been based on a too limited understanding of Sidgwick's casuistry and leading practical ethical concerns. As his friendship with John Addingt…Read more
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22Review essay: Mr. Smith does not go to WashingtonPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 37 (3): 366-386. 2007.A recent spate of books on the life and legacy of the political philosopher Leo Strauss, notably Steven B. Smith's Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, and Judaism , suggests a desperate effort to salvage Strauss and the Straussian school of political philosophy from the wreckage of American neoconservatism. Although a number of these works are quite thoughtful and helpfully counter many of the more extreme (and uglier) charges made concerning the meaning of Straussianism and its political…Read more
Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Interest
19th Century Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |