Ruth Abbey

Most of Christine Swanton’s quotations from and references to Nietzsche are drawn The Genealogy of Morals, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Beyond Good and Evil. I suggest that Human, All too Human and Daybreak, two of Nietzsche’s most neglected works, provide rich resources for Swanton’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s view of self-love and its defining role in genuinely ethical action. Self-love assumes a central place in these writings, as do its cognate concepts of egoism and vanity. I outline some of the reasons why these two middle period writings recommend themselves powerfully for Swanton’s philosophical purposes. I examine to what extent passages on self-love from these neglected works nourish, but also to what extent they challenge or upset, the central place accorded to self-love in Swanton’s recalibration of virtue ethics.

One important and consistent thread of Charles Taylor’s thought that has not yet received the attention it deserves is his philosophy of freedom. Taylor’s 1979 defense of positive liberty in response to Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Conceptions of Liberty” is, of course, well known. But there is a way of seeing reflection on freedom as a thread that runs, sometimes silently but always significantly, through his whole body of work. Taylor can be seen as asking what freedom means, how many varieties it has, what it (or they) require, how it (or they) are supported and promoted, or threatened and diminished. Throughout his work, Taylor tacitly encourages us to think about what types of freedom are possible and desirable for embodied entities.

This article engages Friendship: A Central Moral Value by Michael H. Mitias. It questions Mitias’ distinction between friendship as a moral and theoretical concern as opposed to a practical one. It distinguishes the narrow from the wide meanings of philia in Aristotle’s approach. It looks at the resonances of classical approaches in later theories of friendship, while also attending to the innovations of later thinkers. It suggests that the moral paradigms Mitias delineates might not be as hegemonic nor as hermetically sealed as he suggests. Mitias’ contribution is better understood as an addition to moral philosophy than to friendship studies.

A combination of social forces has thrown marriage into question in westernised societies at the end of the millennium. This uncertainty creates space for new ways of thinking about marriage. In this context, we examine the idea of marriage as friendship. We trace its genealogy in the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor and then subject it to critical scrutiny using some of Michel de Montaigne’s ideas. We ask how applicable the ideal of higher friendship is to marriage and what might be gained and lost by a synthesis of marriage and friendship. Grounding the discussion in historical sources is valuable because the topic is so little explored in the contemporary philosophical literature. This approach also allows any enduring value in these historical texts to be elicited.

One of the major purposes of this article is to show that friendship was one of Nietzsche's central concerns and that he shared Aristotle's belief that it takes higher and lower forms. Yet Nietzsche's interest in friendship is overlooked in much of the secondary literature. An important reason for this is that this interest is most evident in the works of his middle period, and these tend to be neglected in commentaries on Nietzsche. In the works of the middle period, Nietzsche suggests that there is a close connection between friendship and selfhood, contending that an individual's friendships reflect something about his or her identity. Following Aristotle, he believes that friendship can make a significant contribution to self-knowledge and self-improvement, which are both closely associated with his notion of self-overcoming. Nietzsche encourages individuals to adopt an aesthetic approach to the self: they should refashion themselves by consolidating their strengths, minimising their weaknesses and developing themselves in new directions. The works of the middle period suggest, however, that not only can friendship foster self-overcoming, but that the talent for friendship is one of the marks of a higher human being. Recognising this requires some reconsideration of Nietzsche's putative individualism and the belief that he holds great individuals to be utterly independent and indifferent to the judgements of others. It also requires a revision of the common interpretation that he is unremittingly sceptical about pity and other forms of fellow-feeling. Yet while Nietzsche generalises about friendship in the works of the middle period and contrasts its superior and inferior forms, he remains sensitive to its particularity. He never adopts a wholly formulaic approach to this relationship, but recognises that difference and responsiveness to particularity are among its central characteristics.

Charles Taylor's work has recently taken a religious turn, with Taylor becoming more explicit about his own religious faith and its influence on his thinking. Ian Fraser offers a systematic, critical exploration of the nature of Taylor's Catholicism as it appears in his writings. This reply to Fraser endorses his belief in the importance of looking carefully at Taylor's religious views. However, it raises doubts about some of Fraser's particular arguments and conclusions, and aims to foster a clearer understanding of Taylor's religious beliefs. It poses questions for Fraser about what Taylor is setting out to do in A Catholic Modernity?; why he invokes the figure of Matteo Ricci; whether he believes that acts of practical benevolence are impossible without a religious foundation; and whether his religiously-inspired pluralism suffers an inherent contradiction

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on age and the digital divide by examining the uses of and attitudes toward information and communication technologies by 26 politically senior citizens.Design/methodology/approachThe approach taken involved in‐depth face‐to‐face interviews.FindingsThe majority of the respondents are informed and balanced cyber‐enthusiasts who have embraced the opportunities afforded by ICTs to enhance their lives in general, including their political activities.Originality/valueThese findings destabilize the dominant image of older people and their attitudes to and experiences of ICTs that appears in most of the literature on age and the digital divide. Those aged 65 and over represent the last cohort, in Western societies at least, for whom age as such is likely to be a decisive factor in their relationship to ICTs. It is therefore vital to get some insight into their views.

First published in 1990, Charles Taylor’s essay ‘Comparison, History Truth’ is an extended reflection on some of the problems involved in interpreting other cultures and eras. This essay’s explicit focus is the work of historians and anthropologists. Taylor mentions students of religion in the same breath, but I infer that by this he means students of comparative religions or the history of religions. I suggest that for all its emphasis on conversation, Taylor’s depiction of the comparativist’s enterprise is ultimately one-sided, depicting those who are interpreted as hermeneutic patients rather than hermeneutic agents. I raise some problems with the language of distortion employed throughout the essay. I identify a number of ways in which Taylor’s thought on cross-cultural understanding dovetails with that of Anthony Kwame Appiah in his recent book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. I conclude, however, that there is an important issue addressed by Taylor which Appiah neglects. This is the question of how western comparativists, who according to Taylor proceed from some belief the equal validity of all cultures, engage cultures that do not share this belief.

Charles Taylor is one of the most prolific and wide-ranging philosophers in the English-speaking world today. He writes with authority in the fields of moral theory, political philosophy, theories of language, the history of western thought, epistemology and hermeneutics.1 Currently an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, he has enjoyed a distinguished academic career which includes being Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford University. He has also been active and influential in the politics of his native Quebec, arguing passionately for recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, but against the province’s secession from Canada. For many years he has been a member of the New Democratic Party. The American philosopher Richard Rorty described him as ‘among the dozen most important philosophers writing today’ and one of North America’s ‘most thoughtful politicians’. He is interviewed here by Ruth Abbey. Ruth Abbey: There can be no doubt that the theories and practices of management would benefit from the contributions of philosophers: as the editors of this journal contend, many of the terms and ideas used by managers are philosophical ones, yet there is little awareness of this and their uses and meanings in management practices remain undertheorised. Management therefore rests on a host of unarticulated but constitutive beliefs and ideas. One of the ideas that has recurred in your writings over the years has been just how significant the unsaid is, and how valuable it can be to articulate this. Could you say something about this?

This article examines the attempts by John Rawls in the works published after Political Liberalism to engage with some of the feminist responses to his work. Rawls goes a long way toward addressing some of the major feministliberal concerns. Yet this has the unintended consequence of pushing justice as fairness in the direction of a more comprehensive, rather than a strictly political, form of liberalism. This does not seem to be a problem peculiar to Rawls: rather, any form of liberalism hospitable to feminist concerns must be, at the very least, a partly comprehensive, rather than a strictly political, doctrine.

While it is uncontroversial to point to the liberal roots of feminism, a major issue in English-language feminist political thought over the last few decades has been whether feminism's association with liberalism should be relegated to the past. Can liberalism continue to serve feminist purposes? This book examines the positions of three contemporary feminists - Martha Nussbaum, Susan Moller Okin and Jean Hampton - who, notwithstanding decades of feminist critique, are unwilling to give up on liberalism. This book examines why, and in what ways, each of these theorists believes that liberalism offers the normative and political resources for the improvement of women's situations. It also brings out and tries to explain and evaluate the differences among them, notwithstanding their shared allegiance to liberalism. In so doing, the books goes to the heart of recent debates in feminist and political theory