William Sweet

One of the concerns in the modern democratic state is what place there should be, if any, for the recognition of cultures and cultural identities. Should a democratic state concern itself with the preservation of culture? Should it recognize or promote a national culture – a German culture in Germany, for example, – or should it recognise or promote some kind of national cultural pluralism or multiculturalism? Should a culture or one’s cultural identity have special protections or rights in the state? In this paper, work towards answers to some of these questions. I begin with a brief statement of what I call the ‘modern’ liberal democratic view, and present how it generally understands the place of cultural identity and culture. I then consider a response to it – a view that has been called ‘communitarian.’ Following this, I present an alternative to both views that situates itself within ‘postmodern’ liberal democratic tradition and, again, see how it understands the place of cultural identity and culture. I argue that this latter view, and indeed all three views, neglect some key issues on the nature of identity and, by extension, culture. It is only by being attentive to these key issues that we can arrive at a plausible and practicable statement of the place of cultural identity and of culture in the modern democratic state.

The British idealists of the late 19th and early 20th century are best known for their contributions to metaphysics, logic, and political philosophy. Yet they also made important contributions to social and public policy, social and moral philosophy and moral education, as shown by this volume. Their views are not only important in their own right, but also bear on contemporary discussion in public policy and applied ethics. Among the authors discussed are Green, Caird, Ritchie, Bradley, Bosanquet, Jones, McTaggart, Pringle-Pattison, Webb, Ward, Mackenzie, Hetherington, Muirhead, Collingwood and Oakeshott. The writings of idealist philosophers from Canada, South Africa, and India are also examined. Contributors include Avital Simhony, Darin Nesbitt, Carol A. Keene, Stamatoula Panagakou, David Boucher, Leslie Armour, Jan Olof Bengtsson, Thom Brooks, James Connelly, Philip MacEwen, Efraim Podoksik, Elizabeth Trott and William Sweet.

Sidney: Court Maxims. Edited and introduced by Hans Blom, Eco Haitsma‐Muller and Ronald Janse. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press: 1996). xxxix + 216 pp., £35.00 cloth, £12.95 paper.The Politics of Women's Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750–1915. By Judith G. Coffin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 289 pp., $35/£28.50 cloth.Rethinking the Political: Gender, Resistance, and the State. By Barbara Laslett, Johanna Brenner, and Yesim Arat, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 498 pp., $39.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background. By Paul Avrich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 265 pp., $14.95.Changing the Rules: Psychology in the Netherlands 1900–1985. By Trudy Dehue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ix + 204 pp., £30.00/$49.95 cloth.The Love Affair as a Work of Art. By Dan Hofstadter (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), xxii + 314 pp., $24.00.Music in the Castle: Troubadours, Books and Orators in Italian Courts of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries. By F. Alberto Gallo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 147 pp., $45.00/£35.95 cloth, $19.95/£15.95 paper.Imperialism and Its Contradictions. By V. G. Kiernan, ed. by Harvey J. Kaye (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), xii + 218 pp., £11.99 paper.Cholera in Post‐Revolutionary Paris, A Cultural History. By Catherine J. Kudlick, Studies in the History of Society & Culture, 25 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), xiv + 293 pp., $40.00/£30.00 cloth.Legal Medicine in History. Edited by Michael Clarke and Catherine Crawford, Cambridge History of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xi + 364 pp.,£40.00 cloth.The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety. Edited by Diarmaid MacCulloch (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), pp. vii + 313 pp., $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud: Four Activist Intellectuals and Their Strategies for Peace, 1945–1989. By Michael Bess (Chicago/London: Chicago University Press, 1993), xxviii + 322 pp., £15.95/$22.95 paper.Focus: Margarete Steffin, The Brecht Yearbook 19. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994, vii + 387 pp., n.p.g. paper.After MacIntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair Maclntyre. Edited by John Horton and Susan Mendus (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), x + 322 pp., £45.00 cloth, £12.95 paper.Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States and Citizenship. Edited by Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 308 pp., $16.95 paper.Liberalism's Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnik. By Ira Katznelson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), xx + 192 pp., n.p.g.After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. By Clifford Geertz (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 198 pp., $22.95.French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti‐Semitism, and the Ideology of Culture. By David Carroll (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), ix+ 299 pp. £29.95.Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, Edited by Richard Schacht, Philosophical Traditions Series, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), xxl + 479pp.Critical Heidegger. Edited by Christopher Macann (London/New York: Routledge, 1996), 284pp., £40.00/£12.99.The God Within: Kant, Schelling, and Historicity. By Emil L. Fackenheim, edited by John Burbidge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 252 pp., $75.00/£56.00 cloth.The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848. By Paul W. Schroeder (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), xxii + 894 pp., £45.00/$49.95.Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin‐de‐Siècle Germany. By Kevin McAleer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xiii + 268 pp., H.B., n.p.g.Hegel's Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation. By Michael O. Hardimon (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), vii + 278 pp., $18.95 paper.The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England. By William Calin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), xvi + 508 pp., $29.95 paper.Extreme‐Occident: French Intellectuals and America. By Jean Philippe Mathy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) 305 pp., U.K. and Eire, $13.50 paper/£39.50 cloth. All other countries except U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, $19.50 paper/$56.25 cloth.The Combing of History. By David William Cohen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), xxv + 264 pp., £38.25/$55.25 cloth, £14.25/ $20.75 paper.Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. By Theodore M. Porter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), xiv + 310 pp., $24.95/£19.95 cloth.Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States. By Matthew Frye Jacobson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 321 pp., $45.00 cloth.The Confessions and Correspondence, including the Letters to Malesherbes. The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Volume 5. Edited by Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters and Peter G. Stillman, translated by Christopher Kelly (Hanover/London: University Press of New England, 1995), xxxvi + 700 pp., $60.00 cloth.Heidegger, Dilthey and the Crisis of Historicism. By Charles R. Bambach (Ithaca/London: Cornell University, 1995), xii + 297 pp., $46.75 cloth, $20.85 paper.Three Discourses: A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes. Edited by Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene Saxonhouse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) pp. ix + 181 pp., $27.50/£21.95. cloth.Telemachus: Son of Ulysses. By Francois de Fenelon, edited and translated by Patrick Riley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 340 pp., £40.00/$59.95 cloth, £14.95/$19.95 paper.Nietzsche's Case: Philosophy as/and Literature. By Bernd Magnus, Jean‐Pierre Mileuv, Stanley Stewart (London: Routledge, 1994), xi + 284 pp., £12.99 paper.Maltese Political Development 1798–1864, A Documentary History. By Henry Fredo (Malta: Interprint, 1993) xv+ 921 pp., n.p.g.Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain, 1000–1300. By Janet Burton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xi + 354 pp., $69.95 cloth, $18.95/£12.95 paper.Louis VIII: Le Lion. By Gerard Silvery (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 473 pp., 150.00 FF, paper.The Music of the Heavens: Kepler's Harmonic Astronomy. By Bruce Stephenson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 260 pp.The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. Edited by David Cesarani (London: Routledge, 1994) 318 pp., £35.00 cloth, ISBN 0415–09954–4.Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. By William H. McNeill (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), viii + 198 pp., $22.00 cloth.Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. By Pierre Hadot, translated and edited by Arnold Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), viii + 309 pp., n.p.g.Appetites and Identities: An Introduction to the Social Anthropology of Western Europe. By Sara Delamont (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), 254 pp., $59.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.Reformation to Revolution: Politics and Religion in Early Modern England. Edited by Margot Todd (London: Routledge, 1995), xiii + 279 pp., £11.99 paperback.Novalis: Signs of Revolution. By William Arctander O'Brien (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1995), viii + 376 pp., £47.95 cloth/£ 17.95 paper.Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History and Musical Genre. By Jeffrey Kallberg (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 301 pp., $45.00.Holland and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: the Politics of Particularism. By J. L. Price (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 312 pp., $52.00/£35.00 cloth.Aspects of British Political History, 1815–1914. By Stephen J. Lee (London/New York: Routledge, 1994), viii + 375 pp., n.p.g.Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1760–1820. By David L. Denby (Cambridge Studies in French, 47) (Cambridge University Press, 1994), xi + 281 pp., £37.50. ISBN 0 52143086 0Platonism and the English Imagination. Edited by Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xv + 357 pp., £40.00/ $59.95 cloth. ISBN 0–521–40308–1.Art and Eloquence in Byzantium. By Henry Maguire 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 111 figs. + xxiii + 148 pp., $18.95 paper.Money and Magic: A Critique of the Modern Economy in the Light of Goethe's Faust. By H.‐ C. Binswanger, with a postcript by Irving Fetscher, translated by I. E. Harrison. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 132 pp. $24.75 cloth.Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue. By Heinrich Meier, translated by J. Harvey Lomax (Chicago/ London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 156 pp., $19.95/£15.95 cloth, ISBN: 0–226–51889–2Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939. By J. P. Harris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), viii + 342 pp., £40.00 cloth, £14.99 paper.Une histoire du paradis, II: Mille ans de bonheur. By Jean Delumeau. (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 496 pp., 150.00 FF, paper.Narrative Ethics. By Adam Zachary Newton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), xi + 335 pp., $39.95.War and Economy in the Third Reich. By R. J. Overy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 390 pp., n.p.g.Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan‐Protestantism: Jean‐Alphonse Turretin (1671–1737) and Enlightened Orthodoxy at the Academy of Geneva. By Martin I. Klauber (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994), 244 pp., £29.95.The Writing of Melancholy. Modes of Opposition in Early French Modernism. By Ross Chambers, translated by Mary Seidman Trouille (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), xiv + 239 pp., $29.95 cloth.Idle Hands: The Experience of Unemployment, 1790–1990. By John Burnett (London/New York: Routledge, 1994), ix + 368 pp., £14.99 paper.The American Radical. Edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Harvey J. Kaye (New York/London: Routledge, 1994), 380 pp., £14.99 paper.

Today, when systematic philosophy - and reason itself - are challenged both outside of and within philosophy, is it still possible to do metaphysics? This volume provides a broad perspective on contemporary approaches to the nature and the fundamental questions of metaphysics. Drawing on scholars from continental Europe, Asia, Canada, the United States, and Great Britain, and representing a variety of philosophical cultures and traditions, this volume surveys and extends work in metaphysics and its implications for broader philosophical concerns (e.g., in ethics and social philosophy, in mathematics and logic, and in epistemology). It also addresses such questions as the role of history and historicity in undertaking metaphysics, the nature of metaphysics, the priority of metaphysics over epistemology, and the challenges of empiricism and postmodernism.

I discuss some of the features of the analysis of culture provided by the Britist idealist philosopher, Bernard Bosanquet. It has been suggested that Bosanquet's philosophical views, especially on topics related to culture, were determined by the 'absolutist' metaphysics he inherited from Hegel and F. H. Bradley, and that one can see a shift in his work from an early humanism, contemporary with his studies in logic, to a late anti-humanism. I argue that this account is problematic, that Bosanquet's discussion of cultural phenomena in fact consistently reflected principles present in his logic, and that these were articulated long before his explicitly absolutist metaphysical views. Specifically, I briefly outline three elements constitutive of a discussion of culture — aesthetics, religion and social life — and show how Bosanquet's account of each of them displays characteristics that are typically found in his logic. Since Bosanquet never abandoned the idealist logic of his youth — indeed, he wrote on the topic throughout his philosophical career — there is reason to doubt that he ever gave up the humanist values associated with them. This, I conclude, obliges us to reevaluate the standard assessments of Bosanquet's philosophy.

In this paper I focus on one of the fundamental democratic freedoms – freedom of conscience – and see to what extent Catholicism is compatible or consistent with it and, by extension, with democracy in civil or political institutions. I draw primarily on recent ecclesial statements on the issue, but also on the philosophical views of Jacques Maritain. First, I outline briefly the view of democracy and freedom of conscience that putatively undergirds modern democratic societies, as well as the understanding of this freedom in Catholic thought. Next, I present the claim that there are some important differences in the way in which this freedom is described in Catholicism as distinct from dominant, secular democratic views. Third, I suggest that these differences, while real, do not sustain the claim of a radical difference in principle between freedom of conscience in recent Catholic thought and that found in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I conclude that not only is the Catholic approach to freedom of conscience compatible with democracy in civil institutions, but democratic government may be an important way to develop values recognized by Catholicism as fundamental.

Since the time of the Enlightenment in Western Europe, discussions of faith and reason have often pitted the believer against the skeptic, the theist against the atheist, and the person of one faith against the person of no professed faith. But the relation of reason to faith has been a matter of debate among believers as well. There are those who hold that religious faith can be proven or supported by rational argument. Others say that to try to give reasons and arguments does violence to religious faith, or opens it to misunderstanding and doubt, or trivializes it. Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith, and Community is a dialogue between Hendrik Hart and William Sweet, two philosophers who identify themselves as Christians, and who seek to respond to the challenges of the Enlightenment and its legacy. The authors approach the relation of faith to reason, however, in very different ways: Hart from the perspective of the Calvinian tradition and postmodern philosophy, Sweet from the Catholic tradition and analytic philosophy. Among the topics discussed are the nature of religious faith and of reason, liberalism and orthodoxy in religion, the relation of religious experience and rationality, and building community in a religiously and culturally pluralistic world. This exchange presents two distinctive perspectives to some of the major challenges of the reason to religious belief, but seeks to find common ground between them

Content Description The origins and uses of the classical moral theories / Roger Sullivan -- Wisdom as foundational ethical theory in Thomas Aquinas / Lawrence Dewan -- Descartes and the ethics of generosity / Leslie Armour -- Is pity the basis of ethics? : Nietzsche versus Schopenhauer / T.L.S. Sprigge -- Jacques Maritain and Karol Wojtyla : approches to modernity / Kenneth Schmitz -- On the foundations of ethics / Hugo Meynell -- Ethics, the humanities, and the formation of persons / Thomas De Koninck -- Personal identity and the sense of duty / Elizabeth Trott -- Passing through : women's experiences and ethics / Monique Dumais -- Ladri'ere's eschatology of reason and the foundations of ethics / Louis Perron -- The foundations of ethics and moral practices / William Sweet.