As an Israeli writing at the turn of the twenty-first Century, I have become accustomed to hearing the word ‘settlement’ used by liberals almost invariably as a derogatory term. The Jewish settlements to the west of the Jordan river, now populated by close to a quarter of a million Jews, are often said to be a central obstacle to peace in the Middle East, as well as being immoral in and of themselves. Consistent liberals realize that this attitude poses a problem for the endorsement of the Zionist effort altogether, since settlement has been a central tenet of this doctrine from the start and the main practical tool for achieving its goals within contested territories. It was also the primary apparatus for achieving Western control over North America, Australia, and New Zealand, wholly at the expense of the aboriginal inhabitants of those places. This, too, is the source of a great deal of contemporary liberal breast-beating.

It is sometimes suggested that Descartes’ version of the so-called ontological ‘argument’ should be read not as a formal proof but as a seif-evident axiom, grasped by intuition. If correct, this Suggestion would enable us to answer finally one of the vexed questions of Cartesian scholarship, namely what relation holds between the ontological argument, as presented in the Fifth Meditation, and the causal argument of the Third Meditation. The ontological argument has the appearance of being an afterthought but, given the elegant and tightly ordered structure of the Meditations, this cannot be. Still, commentators have wondered why Descartes separates his theistic proofs in this way, and why the ontological argument emerges later in the ‘order of reasons.’ If the ontological ‘argument’ were intended as the report of an intuition, then these long-standing difficulties would be easily resolved. One could argue that rather than being an afterthought, it is the culmination of the meditator's efforts to achieve perfect knowledge (scientia) of God's existence.

If we were to look caref ully at recent commentary on Descartes's theories of ideas and Sensation, we would find that a large number of commentators hold that he believes the following:.

1. (1) Ideas are representational,

2. (2) Sensations are ideas,

3. (3) Sensations are not representational.

This is an inconsistent triad: any two of the above claims can be true together, but they cannot all be true together. The inconsistent triad can be avoided if we reject one of the claims. Some have argued that Descartes did not hold (l).1 Some have argued that he did not hold (3). I believe that Descartes held (1) and (3), and will argue that he did not hold (2).

Generally, any account of Cartesian Sensation at the very least must account for sensations in terms of the ontology. The account must say whether they are modes or not, and if modes, modes of what — mind, body, both, the union, and so on. Moreover, how sensations are cast in terms of the ontology must agree with how they are cast in terms of the epistemology.

The moral right to act in self-defense seems to be unproblematic: you are allowed to kill an aggressor if doing so is necessary for saving your own life. Indeed, it seems that from the moral Standpoint, acting in self-defense is doing the right thing. Thanks, however, to works by George Fletcher and Judith Thomson, it is now well known how unstable the moral basis of the right to self-defense is. We are in the dark with regard to one of the most basic problems raised by this right, namely: the problem of the innocent aggressor. The disturbing question is simple enough: Is a potential victim allowed to kill, in self-defense, a morally innocent aggressor?