J. Cox

We can conceive of peace in many different ways, and these differences are related to a variety of assumptions and practices we can adopt in our culture. This book is about those differences. Part I describes the ways in which we usually talk about peace. It argues that our conception is fundamentally obscure. We do not know what peace is and we do not know how to promote it. Part II develops an explanation of how peace has been obscured. It has been obscured by a network of beliefs and institutions in our culture. Part III critically evaluates some key parts of this cultural web and argues that there is an alternative cluster of assumptions and practices which we ought to adopt. It is a cluster which is intrinsically better—regardless of whatever it may imply about peace. Part IV argues that it happens to imply that we should think of peace as an activity—a practice we can cultivate at high levels of excellent performance. It draws on Gandhian satyagraha, Quaker process and practices of "principled negotiation" using the Harvard model to illustrate.

Gordon Nagel’s Kant differs sharply form Berkeley. More importantly, he offers a powerful and systematic account of perception and understanding which can be argued to be a serious contender in contemporary discussions of epistemology and cognitive psychology. Readers tempted to think that Kant may be dismissed because of his commitments to the myths of the given and the analytic/empirical distinction are forced to think again. Here we have a Kant for whom the given is analyzable and who is a species of holist—and yet who also defends a detailed account of a priori structures of experiences. Nagel offers us all this and more including illuminating discussions of Kant’s departures from the Modern tradition, a suggestive discussion of analogies between twentieth-century accounts of language and Kant’s account of cognitive synthesis, and a distinction between interpretation and understanding that helps demystify the phenomena/noumena distinction.

This work systematically explicates and defends four key claims in Kant's moral philosophy: The human will is some form of practical reason. The supreme criterion for determining the morality of our choices is provided by an a priori moral law. We find this law to be a source of felt value; it commands unqualified respect. We must suppose the human will is free. ;Traditionally, Kant has been read as holding that these claims imply that the responsible moral agent is a noumenon whose will is a pure practical reason structured completely a priori by the moral law. I show that this position must be rejected on philosophical grounds because it implies that the agent is not free, has an impotent and vacuous will, and is neither obligated nor capable of acting out of a sense of respect for the moral law. ;I argue an alternative reading of Kant is textually sound and philosophically superior. This alternative view, which is explicated and defended in detail, holds that: The human will is empirical practical reason. The moral law is an a priori structure which is always applied a posteriori. It is not constitutive but regulative. The feeling of respect is an intuition of the formal pattern of the subjective time order which results insofar as the a priori structure of empirical practical reason directs or commands the movement of our attention. The responsible moral agent is neither a phenomenal object or a noumenal object but rather a subject, a being of a third and distinct ontological kind. ;In working out such an interpretation, I also reconstruct Kant's account of the relations between the faculties of imagination, understanding, reason, and will, holding them to be simply alternative employments of a single, underlying power of synthesis. I also recharacterize the fundamental project of Kant's critical enterprise in order to locate his moral philosophy within it, arguing that his central concern is with how judgment is possible.

This article challenges the assumption that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires persons with disabilities to undergo corrective surgery as a precondition to membership in the ADA's protected class. This issue is ripe for discussion because current efforts to amend the ADA, although not focused on the corrective surgery issue, will unsettle the current doctrine underpinning many courts' conclusions that an individual's decision to forgo available medical technology bars her from relief under the ADA. The article aims to make two contributions. First, it argues that the ADA's focus on reshaping cultural responses to disability suggests that individuals need not acquiesce to all available medical efforts to eliminate their disability before they may challenge disability discrimination. Instead, the ADA's conceptual congruence with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race and gender, suggests that the ADA provides individuals with disabilities the opportunity to argue that their physical differences should be accepted and accommodated rather than erased. Second, it argues that reading the ADA's nondiscrimination mandate to cover persons who decline corrective surgery is consistent with the ADA's text. The Supreme Court's Sutton v. United Air Lines decision, which has contributed to many courts' conclusions that the ADA requires individuals to undergo corrective surgery, in fact prevents courts from excluding persons from the ADA's protected class based on the hypothetical benefits of forgone corrective surgery.

Written by a distinguished international team of contributors, this volume explores Shakespeare's vivid depictions of moral deliberation and individual choice in light of Renaissance debates about ethics. Examining the intellectual context of Shakespeare's plays, the essays illuminate Shakespeare's engagement with the most pressing moral questions of his time, considering the competing claims of politics, Christian ethics and classical moral philosophy, as well as new perspectives on controversial topics such as conscience, prayer, revenge and suicide. Looking at Shakespeare's responses to emerging schools of thought such as Calvinism and Epicureanism, and assessing comparisons between Shakespeare and his French contemporary Montaigne, the collection addresses questions such as: when does laughter become cruel? How does style reflect moral perspective? Does shame lead to self-awareness? This book is of great interest to scholars and students of Shakespeare studies, Renaissance studies and the history of ethics.

Although the apparent purpose of the January 1, 2009 amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act is solely to broaden the ADA's protected class, the manner in which the amendments achieve this purpose erodes the statute's explicit textual support for understanding persons with disabilities as a politically subordinated minority. The amendments also strengthen the statutory link between the biological severity of a person's disability and that person's right to sue for ADA accommodations. Accordingly, for some courts, the amendments will reinforce the perception that the ADA differs from traditional civil rights law. Federal courts' understanding of ADA's relationship to traditional civil rights law will shape courts' resolution of unresolved questions about the ADA's scope. Because the ADA, as amended, will now enable more plaintiffs to proceed past the preliminary question of membership in the ADA's protected class, federal courts will soon be forced to confront broad questions relating to the ADA's application. Resolution of these questions will largely turn on courts' understanding of the conceptual relationship between the ADA and traditional civil rights statutes, an underlying question which the recent amendments will unintentionally shape.