At Physics IV,8, 216a26-7, Aristotle cracks a joke. It is one of the relatively few deliberate jokes in the corpus, and its occurrence here is not without significance. Aristotle in these chapters is arguing against those who believe in the existence of the void, or vacuum, or empty space; he says, ‘even if we consider it on its own merits the so-called vacuum will be found to be really vacuous.'

To be sure, this is not a very funny joke; what is interesting about it, though, is that it underlines the general attitude of dismissive flippancy that seems to run through Aristotle's consideration of the void. He seems to refuse to take the hypothesis of the void at all seriously. He never argues directly that the void does not or cannot exist, but contents himself with criticizing the arguments that other thinkers had advanced in its favour.

In this paper I will deal with two questions. One is the relatively specific issue of whether mandatory retirement is unjust discrimination against the aged. The position taken is that it is not. But in the development of this argument a principle is advanced which appears to have the consequence that nothing, or at least very few of the practices that we are intuitively inclined to regard as unfair discrimination, are discriminatory with respect to age.

In recent years, philosophers trained in the techniques and constrained by the style of what is known in the Anglo-American world as ‘analytic philosophy’ have in growing numbers undertaken to include within their methodological ambit the theories and insights of Karl Marx.

Heterosexuality, which I define as a romantic and sexual orientation toward persons not of one's own sex, is apparently a very general, though not entirely universal, characteristic of the human condition. In fact, it is so ubiquitous a part of human interactions and relations as to be almost invisible, and so natural-seeming as to appear unquestionable. Indeed, the 1970 edition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘heterosexual’ as ‘pertaining to or characterized by the normal relation of the sexes.’

In two passages of A Theory of Justice Rawls suggests that, as a consequence of his egalitarian theory, the natural talents of persons are common property.

There is an interpretation of Parmenides’poem which has not yet had, but deserves, a hearing. It reconciles two of the most prominent views of the meaning of the verb ‘to be’ (‘ε ἷναι’) as it occurs in the poem. It agrees with the spirit of those who interpret ‘εἷναι’ as‘existence.’ It agrees with the letter of those who interpret ‘εἷν αι’ as the copula.

In In Contradiction, Graham Priest shows, as clearly as anything like this can be shown, that it is coherent to maintain that some sentences can be both true and false at the same time. As a consequence, some contradictions are true, and an appreciation of this possibility advances our understanding of the nature of logic and language.

Envy involves the wish to have something that someone else has; jealousy involves the wish not to lose something that the subject has and someone else does not. Envy and jealousy would seem to involve a similar emotional attitude. Both are concerned with a change in what one has: either a wish to obtain or a fear of losing. This is not a negligible distinction, however. The wish not to lose something is notably different from the wish to obtain something and this difference has significant implications.

A familiar tradition in Plato scholarship has it that self-predication is one of the most important issues to be settled in an attempt to understand Plato‘s metaphysical views. Perhaps only latent in the initial formulations of the theory of Forms, the problem becomes manifest in the Parmenides, especially in the Third Man Argument where the assumption that a Form can have the property that it is helps to generate a vicious regress destructive of the notion of a single Form over many particulars.

Common sense morality contains a concept of openness and accords positive value to behavior that exemplifies it. But it is unclear what morally valuable openness is and what sort of value it has in ordinary moral thinking.

Though consequentialist theories of political obligation have been widely criticized in recent years, a series of arguments presented by Derek Parfit, in Reasons and Persons, are now believed to have given this position new life.

Once again it is becoming fashionable to ask ‘What character traits are virtues?’ Naturally, it behooves us to try to recapture the insights of our predecessors, as well as forging ahead on our own. In this paper I shall examine one such insight.

According to the ideal of tolerance, the state is supposed to be neutral or evenhanded in its dealings with religious sects and doctrines. The tolerant state does not pursue policies aimed at favoring one sect over another.

Part of Berkeley's strategy in his attack on materialism in the Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous is to argue that the epistemological distinction between ideas of so-called primary qualities and ideas of secondary qualities, especially as this distinction is found in Locke, is untenable. Both kinds of ideas-those presenting to the mind the quantifiable properties of bodies (shape, size, extension, motion) and those which are just sensations (color, odor, taste, heat)-are equally perceptions in the mind, and there is no reason to believe that one kind (the ideas of primary qualities) represents true properties of independently existing external objects while the other kind does not.

In this paper I pursue two closely related objectives. First, I articulate and describe the nature and character of Hume‘s theory of punishment. Second, in light of this account, I offer an assessment of the contemporary interest and value of Hume‘s theory.

Ever since the appearance over ten years ago of G.A. Cohen‘s path breaking book, Karl Marx‘s Theory of History: A Defence, a number of philosophers have continued the extensive reconsideration of historical materialism launched by Cohen‘s work. These efforts have largely recast the debates about Marx‘s theory of history, and they have done so from the premise that historical materialism embodies a set of substantive claims as appropriately subject to analytical scrutiny as those of any other viable theory.

Kant defined ‘sensation’ (Empfindung) as ‘the effect of an object on the representative capacity, so far as we are affected by it.’ This is, to put it mildly, not one among his more elegant, clear or helpful sayings. And it is merely an instance of a more general malaise. Kant did not say as much about sensation as he should have, and his account-or lack of it-can be seen at the root of many of the difficulties that have plagued his readers.

While Friedrich Schleiermacher‘s thought has been of overwhelming importance for theology during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his influence as a philosopher is much more circumscribed and as a social and political thinker it is almost nil.