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Secularism and shared valuesIn John Cornwell & Michael McGhee (eds.), Philosophers and God: at the frontiers of faith and reason, Continuum. 2009.
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3Does equality destroy liberty?In Keith Graham (ed.), Contemporary political philosophy: radical studies, Cambridge University Press. 1982.
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41'I did it my way': Some thoughts on autonomyJournal of Philosophy of Education 28 (1). 1994.This paper addresses three questions raised by recent literature on the concept of ‘autonomy’. (I) Should the value of autonomy more properly be seen as a moral constraint or as a goal of action? (2) Is autonomy either possible or desirable, given the ways in which human beings are located within a situation and a community? (3) If autonomy is a desirable goal, is it a universal value or merely one appropriate to modern liberal-democratic societies? Use is made of the distinction between ‘weak’ …Read more
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218Hegel, Marx, and dialectic: a debateHumanities Press. 1980.A direct and explicit definition of dialectic is given and by sustained debate the dialectical idea of the fruitfulness of contradiction is exemplified in practice.
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97The Case for PacifismJournal of Applied Philosophy 5 (2): 197-210. 1988.ABSTRACT I present the case for pacifism by formulating what I take to be the most plausible version of the idea of respect for human life. This generates a very strong, though not necessarily absolute, moral presumption against killing, in war or any other situation. I then show how difficult it is for this presumption to be overridden, either by the considerations invoked in ‘just war’theory, or by consequentialist claims about what can be achieved through war. Despite the strength of the mora…Read more
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10Marxism and the Moral Point of View By Kai Nielsen Westview Press, 1989, viii + 302 pp., £30.00 (review)Philosophy 65 (254): 530-. 1990.
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19Marxism and Morality By Steven Lukes Oxford: Clarendon Press, 163 pp., £12.50Philosophy 61 (236): 272-. 1986.
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16Self and Others: the Inadequacy of UtilitarianismCanadian Journal of Philosophy 9 (sup1): 181-201. 1979.
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4Marxism and the Moral Point of View By Kai Nielsen Westview Press, 1989, viii + 302 pp., £30.00 (review)Philosophy 65 (254): 530-532. 1990.
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16No end to equalityJournal of Philosophy of Education 29 (3). 1995.John White argues that ‘egalitarianism, in education as elsewhere, is a will-o'-the-wisp’.1 He claims that recent defences of egalitarianism, among which he kindly includes my own along with those of Thomas Nagel and Kai Nielsen, have failed to answer the basic question of why a more equal society should be regarded as valuable. I shall try to show that the positive philosophical commitments contained in his argument may point the way to an answer.
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3Marxism and Morality By Steven Lukes Oxford: Clarendon Press, 163 pp., £12.50 (review)Philosophy 61 (236): 272-274. 1986.
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82Good without GodThink 7 (20): 35-46. 2008.In the fifth of our articles on , Richard Norman explains why he believes we can be good without God
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198Can there be a just war?: Norman Can there be a just war?Think 3 (8): 7-16. 2004.Richard Norman examines justifications for war that are rooted in the right of self-defence
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18Reasons for Actions: A Critique of Utilitarian RationalityPhilosophical Review 82 (4): 545. 1973.
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20Reasons for Actions: A Critique of Utilitarian RationalityPhilosophical Quarterly 22 (89): 377. 1972.
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60Particularism and reasons: A reply to KirchinJournal of Moral Philosophy 4 (1): 33-39. 2007.Valency switching can appear especially puzzling if we think of moral reasons as pushes and pullsconsiderations whose job it is to get us to act or to stop us acting. Talk of default valency doesn't remove the puzzle, it merely restates it. We need a different picture of reasonsperhaps as providing a map of the moral terrain which helps us to see which actions are appropriate to which situations, and who the appropriate agents are. The role of virtue concepts in particular is more complex …Read more
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62Practical reasons and the redundancy of motivesEthical Theory and Moral Practice 4 (1): 3-22. 2001.Jonathan Dancy, in his 1994 Aristotelian Society Presidential Address, set out to show ''why there is really no such thing as the theory of motivation''. In this paper I want to agree that there is no such thing, and to offer reasons of a different kind for that conclusion. I shall suggest that the so-called theory of motivation misconstrues the question which it purports to answer, and that when we properly analyse the question and distinguish it clearly from other questions with which it shoul…Read more
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Religion |
Normative Ethics |