John Gardner

Although famous as an economist, Amartya Sen is no less distinguished as a philosopher. In this he is far from unique. The same went for the founding father of economics, Adam Smith. But in these days of increased academic specialization the combination of philosopher and economist is rarer than once it was. Moreover the philosophical contributions of contemporary economists, such as they are, tend to be relatively narrow. Some, notably John Harsanyi and Thomas Schelling, are rightly lauded by philosophers for helping to illuminate what Hegel called ‘the cunning of reason’ – the strange twists, loops, and blind alleys that obstruct or divert us, individually or collectively, in the pursuit of value. When it comes to the identification of the value to be pursued, on the other hand, it is harder to think of recent economists who have done important work. The preference-based theory of value treated as axiomatic by many economists is regarded as comic by many moral philosophers, even those with otherwise consilient utilitarian leanings. To break loose from the preference-based theory of value, while continuing to carry credibility for pioneering work in economics, takes a person of truly exceptional imagination, discipline, and versatility

THE ELEMENTARY MORAL DISTINCTION. The ultimate objects of moral assessment are people and their lives. I will call this the "elementary moral distinction." Many today seem to have lost sight of it. How often are we told that we should show respect for other people, only to discover that what we are actually being asked to show respect for is how those other people live? The equation of the two should be resisted. We do not always respect a person by respecting how he lives. Sometimes quite the reverse. If someone is wasting his life but still deserves to be respected, the default way to show him the respect that he deserves is to do something that improves the way he is living- shake him out of it, block his path, change his incentives, shield him from further exploitation, and so forth. Sometimes, of course, there is no action open to us that will yield any improvement in how he lives, while on other occasions the only things we can do are disproportionate. In such cases we have to tolerate his continuing to live as badly he does. But toleration is one thing, and respect is quite another. Toleration is the moral virtue of those who appropriately curb their wish to eliminate what they do not respect. One cannot respect the way someone is living and tolerate it at the same time.

We report key themes arising from a postgraduate workshop organized by the King's Interdisciplinary Discussion Society (KIDS) held in April 2011. KIDS believe that health is a phenomenon that transcends disciplinary boundaries, and therefore issues relating to health care and medical ethics are best addressed with an interdisciplinary approach. The workshop, entitled ‘Everyday Ethics and Primary Healthcare’, included poster presentations and oral presentations from participants from a range of disciplines and occupational backgrounds which highlighted the challenges faced by primary health-care workers. Three common themes emerged: the impersonal and cumbersome work environment that can result from the encroachment of rationalizing tools; the tension between ‘ethical practice as an ongoing sensibility’ and ‘ethical practice as “box-ticking”’; and the contested nature of what constitutes ‘health’. Participants felt that the interdisciplinary perspective was helpful in elucidating the various ethical issues arising in primary health care

This paper has two parts. The first is an exposition of John Foster's argument that ultimate reality, whatever else it might be, is not physical, and could not be. The second part is a somewhat tentative discussion of this argument, in which I consider ways it might be challenged or amended. I suggest that while Foster's argument may not render materialism untenable, at the very least it forces the materialist to adopt certain other controversial views, and so is a force to be reckoned with. I shall use the term physical anti-realism to denote the thesis that ultimate reality does not, and cannot possibly, contain anything material or physical. By physicalism I mean the doctrine that ultimate reality can be physical, at least in part. What Foster means by "ultimate reality" will be explained shortly, but it can be taken roughly to mean: the world as it really is, objectively, as opposed to how it appears to be, or how we conceive it to be. The full-scale version of Foster's argument for physical anti-realism is to be found in the first eleven chapters of The Case for Idealism.2 In the remaining six chapters, he argues that the best way of accommodating this negative result is to adopt a version of phenomenalism, by holding that the physical world exists, but only as a "creation" of contingent constraints on the course of human sensory experience. In what follows, I shall be concerned only with the negative part of Foster's argument, his case against physicalism. Foster himself has recently provided a shorter version of his argument, in "The Succinct Case for Idealism".3 The latter work, henceforth The Succinct Case, as opposed to just The Case, is mainly given over to the anti-realist argument, and provides an excellent introduction to it. The exposition which follows may well be longer than the entire Succinct Case.

How do laws resemble rules of games, moral rules, personal rules, rules found in religious teachings, school rules, and so on? Are laws rules at all? Are they all made by human beings? And if so how should we go about interpreting them? How are they organized into systems, and what does it mean for these systems to have 'constitutions'? Should everyone want to live under a system of law? Is there a special kind of 'legal justice'? Does it consist simply in applying the law of the system? And how does it relate to the ideal of 'the rule of law'?These and other classic questions in the philosophy of law form the subject-matter of Law as a Leap of Faith. In this book John Gardner collects, revisits, and supplements fifteen years of celebrated writings on general questions about law and legal systems - writings in which he attempts, without loss of philosophical finesse or insight, to cut through some of the technicalities with which the subject has become encrusted in the late twentieth century. Taking his agenda broadly from H.L.A. Hart's The Concept of Law, Gardner shows how the key ideas in that work live on, and how they have been and can still be improved in modest ways to meet important criticisms - in some cases by concession, in some cases by circumvention, and in some cases by restatement. In the process Gardner engages with key ideas of other modern giants of the subject including Kelsen, Holmes, Raz, and Dworkin. Most importantly he presents the main elements of his own unique and refreshingly direct way of thinking about law, brought together in one place for the first time.

Forty years after his death, Hans Kelsen (1881-1973) remains one of the most discussed and influential legal philosophers of our time. This collection of new essays takes Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law as a stimulus, aiming to move forward the debate on several central issues in contemporary jurisprudence. The essays in Part I address legal validity, the normativity of law, and Kelsen's famous but puzzling idea of a legal system's 'basic norm'. Part II engages with the difficult issues raised by the social realities of law and the actual practices of legal officials. Part III focuses on conceptual features of legal systems and the logical structure of legal norms. All the essays were written for this volume by internationally renowned scholars from seven countries. Also included, in English translation, is an important polemical essay by Kelsen himself.