Gordon Graham

The fame of thinkers such as David Hume, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid has led to philosophy being widely acknowledged as the jewel in the intellectual crown of the Scottish Enlightenment. But the Scottish tradition of philosophy extends much further than the 18th century. Its origins are to be found in the Middle Ages when Scotland's ancient universities were founded, and its central themes continued to be explored well into the twentieth century. This collection of readings, the first of its kind, has been chosen with a view to displaying the variety, richness and strength of the Scottish philosophical tradition. Beginning with the Philosophical Theses of Gershom Carmichael, the first person in Scotland to hold a University Chair expressly devoted to philosophy, the extracts offer readers an entry to the examination of topics as diverse as the nature of laughter, the possibility of miracles, and the foundations of psychology.

This paper aims to show how philosophical debates about the nature of music as an art can throw light on one of the problems raised by Plato’s Euthryphro—how can human beings serve the gods?—and applies this to the use of music in worship. The paper gives a broad overview of expressivist, representationalist and formalist philosophies of music. Drawing in part on Hanslick, Nietzsche and Schleiermacher, it argues that formalism as a philosophy of sacred music can generate an answer to Plato’s problem

'It's all in the genes'. Is this true, and if so, _what_ is all in the genes? _Genes: A Philosophical Inquiry_ is a crystal clear and highly informative guide to a debate none of us can afford to ignore. Beginning with a much-needed overview of the relationship between science and technology, Gordon Graham lucidly explains and assesses the most important and controversial aspects of the genes debate: Darwinian theory and its critics, the idea of the 'selfish' gene, evolutionary psychology, memes, genetic screening and modification, including the risks of cloning and 'designer' babies. He considers areas often left out of the genes debate, such as the environmental risks of genetic engineering and how we should think about genes in the wider context of debates on science, knowledge and religion. Gordon Graham asks whether genetic engineering might be introducing God back into the debate and whether the risks of a brave new genetic world outweigh the potential benefits. Essential reading for anyone interested in science, technology, and philosophy, _Genes: A Philosophical Inquiry_ is ideal for those wanting to find out more about the ethical implications of genetics and the future of biotechnology

Deftly combining political science and philosophy, Graham systematically examines the central political ideologies of the Western world, including liberalism, socialism, democracy, nationalism, fascism, anarchy, and conservatism. He provides a clear account of the place of ideology in politics, touching on various sociological explanations as well as Marxist definitions. He explores the ideas of Mill, Marx, Locke, Luther, Fanon, Mussolini, and Burke as well as those of recent writers such as Robert Nozick, Roger Scruton, and Michael Oakeshott.

It is well known that we owe the term ‘aesthetics’ in its philosophical sense to the 18th century German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten. The eighteenth century's interest in aesthetics, however, pre-dated the invention of the term. In 1725, Francis Hutcheson published an Inquiry into the Original of Our Idea of Beauty and Virtue. This may be said to be the first sustained and significant work in philosophical aesthetics as we now know it. Hutcheson's volume preceded Baumgarten's by 10 years, and within Scotland it inaugurated a series of philosophical writings on taste and beauty that continued for almost a century. Contributors included major philosophical figures like David Hume, Thomas Reid and Adam Smith, as well as influential figures less well known today such as Alexander Gerard, George Turnbull and Lord Kames.

This essay is not a further contribution to the debate about liberal individualism, the chief topic of discussion in political and social philosophy for the last twenty-five years or more. Nevertheless it is necessary to begin by rehearsing some features of that debate, claims that will be very familiar to contemporary political philosophers. Inspired largely by John Rawls, the modern version of political liberalism has tried to make coherent a conception of politics according to which political affairs should be separated, or at least seriously distanced, from the various moral and religious loyalties and programmes of individuals and groups of citizens. This central contention of Rawlsian liberalism has been expressed in different ways, but according to one of the commonest versions, it is to be interpreted as the view that the right must take precedence over the good. That is to say, in the political sphere, the implementation and application of impartial rules of social justice and civil liberty must take precedence over competing conceptions of what is or is not a valuable way of spending a human life . Another familiar way of expressing the same doctrine says that the state must be neutral with respect to the moral alternatives with which a modern pluralistic society presents its members. This claim about state neutrality is most easily illustrated by a notable example; whether homosexuality is morally wrong or not is not the business of the legislator, and thus the goodness or badness of a gay lifestyle is a matter on which the law should be neutral

This paper draws on some lines of thought in Kant’s Critique of Judgment to construct an aesthetic counterpart to the moral argument for the existence of God that Kant formulates in the Critique of Practical Reason. The paper offers this aesthetic version as a theistic way of explaining how the natural world can be thought valuable independently of human desires and purposes. It further argues that such an argument must commend itself to anyone who is as deeply committed to the preservation of nature as to the promotion of justice.