•  9
    Book reviews (review)
    with Peter Groves, Thomas Anderson, Richard Sheldon, Frederick M. Schweitzer, Cynthia Patterson, Jutta Birmele, J. H. Reid, Gary K. Browning, John Morrow, John Peacock, Donna Landry, Anne E. Brownlow, Tim Harris, Richard G. Hodgson, Brigitte Glaser, David W. Lovell, Gary Kates, Marilyn J. Boxer, Nikolina Sretenova, Jennifer Johnston, James L. Boren, Richard S. Findler, Gerard Delanty, Fabienne‐Sophie Chauderlot, Edna Hindie Lemay, Stephen George, Albert Rabil, Lee C. Rice, Augustinus P. Dierick, Eleanor Ty, Michael James, David A. Warner, Michele Frucht Levy, John Gascoigne, Fredric S. Zuckerman, Janine Maltz Perron, Hans Derks, Marcel Cornis‐Pope, Brayton Polka, Nancy Hudson‐Rodd, Joseph Femia, Mike Hawkins, Maurice Larkin, Kevin J. Hayes, Gabriel P. Weisberg, Louise A. Tilly, Gerald Seaman, Graeme Gill, Manfred B. Steger, Jonathan S. Myerov, Laurie M. Johnson Bagby, and Julius R. Ruff
    The European Legacy 2 (6): 1040-1108. 1997.
    The World on Paper. By David R. Olson xix + 319 pp. £17.95/$24.95 cloth. Milton and the Revolutionary Reader. By Sharon Achinstein xv + 272 pp. £27.50/$35.00 cloth. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. By Rodney Stark xiv + 246 pp. £16.95/$24.95 cloth. The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation. By Christopher J. Berry xiv + 271 pp. £45.00/$69.95 cloth, £17.95/$24.95 paper. Will to Live: One Family's Story of Surviving the Holocaust. By Adam Starkopf 24…Read more
  •  29
    This paper explores the metaphysical foundations of critical theory in Marcuse and Habermas's postmetaphysical alternative. It argues that Habermas's attempt to free critical theory from a normative conception of life‐activity deprives it of the conceptual tools required to accurately diagnose the fundamental structure of social problems today. It thus concludes that Marcuse's efforts towards specifying a life‐grounded foundation to critical theory must be renewed if the project of human freedom…Read more
  •  9
    Materialist ethics and life-value
    McGill Queens university press. 2012.
    Current patterns of global economic activity are not only unsustainable, but unethical - this claim is central to Materialist Ethics and Life-Value. Grounding the definition of ethical value in the natural and social requirements of life-support and life-development shared by all human beings, Jeff Noonan provides a new way of understanding the universal conception of "the good life." Noonan argues that the true crisis affecting the world today is not sluggish rates of economic growth but the mo…Read more
  •  8
    Democratic society and human needs
    McGill Queens university press. 2006.
    About the Author:Jeff Noonan is associate professor, philosophy, the University of Windsor. He is the author of Critical Humanism and the Politics of Difference
  •  3
    Critical humanism and the politics of difference
    McGill Queens university press. 2003.
    The most influential theories of oppression have argued that belief in some shared human essence or nature is ultimately responsible for the injustices suffered by women, First Nations peoples, blacks, gays and lesbians, and colonised people and have insisted that struggles against oppression must be mounted from the unique and different perspectives of different groups. Jeff Noonan argues instead that such difference must be seen to be anchored in a conception of human beings as self-creative. …Read more
  •  24
    MacIntyre, Virtue and the Critique of Capitalist Modernity
    Journal of Critical Realism 13 (2): 189-203. 2014.
    This paper is a review essay of two collections of essays focused on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. The review focuses on three core themes. First, it discusses those papers that explore the central role that the relationship between practices and institutions plays in MacIntyre’s critique of modernity. Second, it turns to those papers that examine the foundational role that human needs play in MacIntyre’s ethics. Third, it places in dialogue those papers that defend MacIntyre’s politics as a f…Read more
  •  21
    Kant, Marx, and the Origins of Critique
    Historical Materialism 14 (2): 203-214. 2006.
  •  25
    Action, Ethics, and Responsibility
    The European Legacy 18 (6): 789-790. 2013.
    No abstract
  •  8
    Death, life; war, peace
    Philosophy Today 48 (2): 168-178. 2004.
  •  25
    The Clash of Ideas in World Politics. By John M. Owen IV
    The European Legacy 17 (5). 2012.
    The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 704-705, August 2012
  •  46
    Duties to the Dead and the Conditions of Social Peace
    The European Legacy 17 (5): 593-605. 2012.
    This essay focuses on the purported duty—defended by Walter Benjamin but widely assumed in much political theory and practice—of the living to redeem the suffering of those who died as a consequence of oppression, exploitation, and political violence. I consider the cogency and ethical value of this duty from the perspective of a politics grounded in the equal life-value of human beings. For both metaphysical and ethical reasons I conclude that this duty does not obtain, first because the dead c…Read more
  •  29
    Subjecthood and Self-Determination
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (sup1): 147-169. 1999.
  •  47
    This essay is a review ofKarl Marx and Contemporary Philosophy. While the text will provide even knowledgeable Marxist readers with new insights on key texts and concepts in Marx, it nevertheless fails to intervene in crucial contemporary philosophical debates. The book is concerned less with the contemporary significance of Marxist philosophyas philosophyand more with re-reading classical Marxist texts in a contemporary context. This job it does well, but leaves the more important question of w…Read more
  •  11
    Philosophy in a Fragmented World
    International Studies in Philosophy 29 (1): 99-109. 1997.
  •  48
    Free time as a necessary condition of free life
    Contemporary Political Theory 8 (4): 377-393. 2009.
    Human life is finite. Given that lifetime is necessarily limited, the experience of time in any given society is a central ethical problem. If all or most of human lifetime is consumed by routine tasks then human beings are dominated by the socially determined experience of time. This article first examines time as the fundamental existential framework of human life. It then goes on to explore the determination of time today by the ruling value system that underlies advanced capitalist society. …Read more
  •  69
    Human Needs: A Realist Perspective
    Journal of Critical Realism 6 (2): 173-198. 2007.
    This article argues for a realist conception of human needs. By ‘realist’ we mean that certain fundamental needs are categorically distinct from consumer wants, holding independently of people's subjective beliefs as objective life requirements. These basic needs, we contend, are baseline measures of social justice in the sense that no society that does not prioritise their satisfaction can be legitimate. The paper concludes with a comprehensive response to seven core objections to our position.
  •  56
    Can Only Religion Save Us?
    The European Legacy 15 (1): 1-13. 2010.
    This paper will examine the loss of confidence in secular bases for the normative understanding of, and response to, the fundamental social and political problems. The recent arguments of Richard Falk in favour of a religious foundation for a humane globalization will be taken as paradigmatic. While the paper agrees that the normative core of major world religions supports Falk's particular conclusion that religion can provide the content for a universal critique of inhumane global governance, i…Read more
  •  24
    The essay argues that the most influential liberal accounts of moral theory (utilitarianism and deontology) assume that human material nature is the seat of desire, and that desire is essentially unsociable. Moral systems are then interpreted as a means of counteracting the essentially self-interested desires that are assumed to ordinarily drive human beings. The essay challenges the normative presuppositions of these arguments. It maintains that liberal moral philosophy must be interpreted in t…Read more
  •  32
    Marcuse, human nature, and the foundations of ethical norms
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 34 (3): 267-286. 2008.
    The article is a critical examination of Marcuse's speculations about the possibility of determining a biological foundation for ethical norms. It considers three key objections to this project: that Marcuse fails to adequately define needs, that he misinterprets Freud, and that, details aside, he fundamentally misunderstands what a `biological' foundation for ethics would entail. The objections are accepted, to varying degrees, as regards the content of Marcuse's argument. The article concludes…Read more
  •  31
    Cosmopolitan Globalism and Human Community
    Dialogue 45 (4): 697-712. 2006.
    ABSTRACTThis article argues that the normative foundations and political implications of David Held's cosmopolitan social democracy are insufficient as solutions to the moral and social problems he criticizes. The article develops a life-grounded alternative critique of globalization that roots our ethical duties towards each other in consciousness of our shared needs and capabilities. These ethical duties are best realized in political projects aimed at fundamental long-term transformations in …Read more
  •  61
    Jürgen Habermas’s discourse-theoretic reconstruction of the normative foundations of democracy assumes the formal separation of democratic political practice from the economic system. Democratic autonomy presupposes a vital public sphere protected by a complex schedule of individual rights. These rights are supposed to secure the formal and material conditions for democratic freedom. However, because Habermas argues that the economy must be left to function according to endogenous market dynamic…Read more