David S. Owen

ABSTRACT: The focus of this essay is on the crisis in critique, that is, the crisis that critique aims to produce through its questioning of what is given to us as 'natural, necessary or obligatory' limits, a crisis in the subjectivity of the audience to which the act of criticism is addressed. Starting with Foucault's reflections on the critical attitude and the distinction that he draws in comparative historical terms between two modes of the relationship of critique and Aufklärung, I offer an account of the distinction between the two modes by distinguishing two types of confidence questions that can be addressed to our outlooks: "can it be justified?" and "can it be vindicated?" I go onto to argue that these two ways of problematizing confidence can be related to "ideological captivity" and "aspectival captivity" respectively, with the two modes of critical attitude exemplified in ideology-critique and genealogy. I conclude by showing how these confidence questions also arise for each of the two modes of critical attitude and with some reflections on the politics of these forms of critical attitude.

This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to, and overview of, the development of Foucault's thought and demonstrates its enduring significance on our understanding of how we have become what we are. The essays and articles are written by many of the most important of Foucault's interpreters and interlocutors and show the range of Foucault's influence as well as the subsequent debates over Foucault's own approaches and in relation to substantive areas of social philosophy and social science.

A landmark work of western philosophy, "On the Genealogy of Morality" is a dazzling and brilliantly incisive attack on European "morality". Combining philosophical acuity with psychological insight in prose of remarkable rhetorical power, Nietzsche takes up the task of offering us reasons to engage in a re-evaluation of our values. In this book, David Owen offers a reflective and insightful analysis of Nietzsche's text. He provides an account of how Nietzsche comes to the project of the re-evaluation of values; he shows how the development of Nietzsche's understanding of the requirements of this project lead him to acknowledge the need for the kind of investigation of "morality" that he terms "genealogy"; he elucidates the general structure and substantive arguments of Nietzsche's text, accounting for the rhetorical form of these arguments, and he debates the character of genealogy (as exemplified by Nietzsche's "Genealogy") as a form of critical enquiry. Owen argues that there is a specific development of Nietzsche's work from his earlier "Daybreak" (1881) and that in "Genealogy of Morality", Nietzsche is developing a critique of modes of agency and that this constitutes the most fundamental aspect of his demand for a revaluation of values. The book is a distinctive and significant contribution to our understanding of Nietzsche's great text.

In the early modern period, reason was considered to be one of the higher cognitive faculties, and could be considered to function independently of the other cognitive faculties, such as the senses, the imagination, and memory. The faculty psychology of the period centrally involved ideas, rejected scholastic formalism, and was both psychologically descriptive and logically normative. The primary function of reason was to account for inference. Hume's account must be understood against this background, as he uses its vocabulary and shares many of its perspectives. He departs from the tradition in rejecting faculty psychology, at least to the extent of treating reason as an independently functioning faculty. The inferential activities of reason, both demonstrative and probable, are given a distinctively new treatment in terms of the properties of the imagination.

This article considers the question of the value and limits of the concept of discrimination for the ethics of migration by drawing attention to the need for a conceptualization of discrimination that can encompass forms of group-based disadvantage that are enabled and reproduced by the three central norms of our contemporary regime of global migration governance: the state’s right to unilateral control over its border regime, birthright citizenship and rights of (re)entry to one’s own state, and the individual right to leave a state. I sketch an historical account of the forging and yoking together of these norms as bound up with the history of European imperialism and argue that they function to enable the reproduction of the advantage of states of the Global North. I illustrate this argument by reference to the example of the transnational migration of medical professionals from sub-Saharan Africa and argue that this may amount to structural discrimination against the human right to health of the populations of these states of emigration before considering two responses to this condition: ‘no recruitment’ and ‘no disadvantage’.

Locke usually uses the term “judgment” in a rather narrow but not unusual sense, as referring to the faculty that produces probable opinion or assent.2 His account is explicitly developed in analogy with knowledge, and like knowledge, it is developed in terms of the relation various ideas bear to one another. Whereas knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas, judgment is the presumption of their agreement or disagreement. Intuitive knowledge is the immediate perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, e.g., white is not black. If we perceive the idea of white, and the idea of black, nothing more is needed to perceive that white and black disagree with respect to identity. We just see or intuit it. Demonstrative knowledge is more complicated. Suppose we have or perceive the idea of the internal angles of a triangle, and also the idea of two right angles. Unless one is a prodigy, we can’t just “see” that these two ideas agree with respect to equality; we require a demonstration. For Locke, such a demonstration requires that we find another idea, such as 180 degrees, so that we can intuit that this idea stands in the relation of equality both to the internal angles of a triangle, and to two right angles. Thus a demonstration, for Locke, is a chain of ideas

Two large issues dealt with here are the scope of Hume's negative arguments and the warrant of probable reasoning. What Hume means when he says that we are not determined by reason when we make inferences from the observed to the unobserved is expanded and clarified. He is claiming that such inferences cannot be explained as the result of the faculty of reason considered as one that functions only by reasoning from one idea to another via an intermediate idea. Hume's own conception of reason explains reasoning in terms of a subset of properties of the imagination. Similarly, the arguments of scepticism with regard to reason are directed against reason considered as a faculty functioning independently of those properties; it is only because of these properties that beliefs survive in the face of sceptical arguments. Concerning the second issue, a suggestion is made regarding just where in fact Hume does face the issue of warrant and an explanation is given of how he deals with it. Although Hume was not primarily concerned with issues of warrant and justification, he does, in Part 4, begin to face the issue of just why we prefer the results of reason to those of other belief‐forming mechanisms, such as superstition. Although the beginnings of Hume's answer can be found in this part of the Treatise, the answer is much better formulated and more ably presented in the first Enquiry. Hume explains our preference for reason in the same way as he accounts for our preference for virtue: the reasonable person, like the virtuous person, is more useful and pleasing to herself and others.

In general, intuition and demonstration are explained in terms of the class of relations of ideas that remain the same as long as the ideas remain the same. The main negative point is that our concept of a deductively valid argument, even one with necessarily true premises, has little to do with Hume's conception of demonstration. Following Descartes and Locke, the emphasis is on content and certainty, not necessity and formal validity. Two ideas are intuitively related if the relation between them is immediately conceived. Two ideas are demonstratively related if the relation between them is conceived, not immediately, but via other intermediate ideas. The link between each pair of adjacent ideas in the resulting chain must be intuitive. With this background, some of Hume's more infamous claims are explained: we know in advance that two ideas cannot be demonstratively related if we can conceive one without the other; the causal maxim is neither intuitively nor demonstratively known; the only relation capable of sustaining demonstrations is that of quantity and number.

Although they differed about the intellect and the nature of ideas, Locke's account of demonstrative reasoning is very similar to Descartes's account of deduction. Locke's demonstration is unlike both syllogistic and modern versions of deduction. It is not formal; the quality of a demonstration depends on the content of the ideas seen to be related. Like Descartes, Locke has an account of demonstration based on intuition. In some cases, one intuitively perceives the connection between two ideas. In other cases, one constructs a chain of ideas such that one indirectly perceives the connection between two ideas at the ends of the chain by directly or intuitively perceiving the connection between any idea in the chain and its neighbour. There is no probable analogue in Locke to intuition. There are no direct beliefs; all beliefs are the result of probable reasoning or judgement. The connection between two ideas is presumed, rather than perceived, in belief. This presumption is caused by the evidence for the belief.

Hume's treatment of scepticism with regard to reason is analogous to his account of probable reasoning. In neither case is Hume concerned with the justification of beliefs or the warrant of reason as much as with the explanation of the presence of beliefs. In his account of probable reasoning, the issue was the origin of beliefs; in his account of scepticism with regard to reason, the issue is the retention of beliefs in the face of sceptical arguments. The sceptical arguments threaten to lessen the degree of force and vivacity characteristic of our beliefs to the extent that they are in danger of becoming mere ideas and not beliefs at all. We know, as a matter of fact, that this result does not obtain, and Hume attempts to explain this by an appeal to a feature of his account of reasoning: lengthy chains of abstruse reasoning have little effect on us. Hume considers his ability to respond to these sceptical arguments to be a vindication of his theory of belief.

Hume's negative argument about probable reasoning is sometimes called the problem of induction. The modern version of that argument is centrally concerned with the warrant of probable reasoning and the justification of the beliefs that result from such reasoning. It is argued here that Hume is more concerned with the mechanism that produces such beliefs, and that his problem is more one of explanation than justification. What does Hume mean by raising the question whether we are determined by reason in making the inference from a present impression to an unobserved idea? If we were determined by reason, something, such as the idea of necessary connection or the principle of uniformity, would have to serve as the intermediary via which we get from the impression to the idea. But no such idea or principle is available to us prior to our engaging in probable reasoning. So inferences or reasonings from the observed to the unobserved are not explained by an appeal to the faculty of reason. The point about not being determined by reason does not show that such inferences, or the beliefs we thus come to hold, are unreasonable. It shows that our coming to have such beliefs is not explained by an appeal to the proper functioning of the faculty of reason.

After rejecting traditional accounts in terms of reason, Hume presents his own explanation of how we are led from a present impression directly to an idea of something unobserved by the association of ideas set up by past experience. It is this that explains our most basic probable inferences. Hume also has to explain why and how the results of such inferences are believed. What distinguishes belief from mere conception is the very same thing as that which distinguishes impressions from ideas, and ideas of memory from ideas of the imagination: force and vivacity. Once he has an account of these basic inferences and beliefs, he is able to explain how we manage to engage in more complex, reflective reasonings. Such reasonings make use of the uniformity principle and the causal maxim, and Hume is even able to explain how we get the idea of necessary connection. At the end of the story, we have an account of how we manage to perform really difficult and complex feats of reasoning. But this account requires his explanation of the simplest cases of probable reasoning as merely associative, and his account of belief as belonging more to the sensitive than the cogitative part of our natures.

Hume had a particularly rigorous empirical methodology of refusing to go beyond experience. This is first realized in his derivation of all ideas from impressions. But it also results in his refusal to treat an appeal to a faculty as explanatory of the characteristic activity of that faculty. Instead, he traces the observable connections among perceptions of the mind. Ideas stand in certain relations to each other; some of these are the natural relations of association, others are philosophical relations. Hume makes a further distinction between two classes of relations: the members of the class remain the same as long as the related ideas remain the same, while the members of the other class can change even if the ideas do not.

Lucia Rafanelli’s book opens up an important space for reflection on the ethics of ‘reform intervention’. Her purpose is both to demonstrate that the field of foreign influence and its modes is considerably more diverse than often appreciated and to propose a set of ethical guidelines for addressing it. The principles she proposes are cogent and well-supported. My reflections focus on two issues concerning the duty of reform intervention. The first topic that I address concerns the scope of the duty and the distinction between the duty of members to promote justice in their home society and the duty of non-members to reform intervention in foreign societies. The second issue concerns the topic of legitimacy in relation to the character of the duty of reform intervention and whether we are, as Rafanelli proposes, all bound by this duty if we accept a natural duty of justice.