The year 2015 marked the 10th anniversary of Raymond Klibansky’s death. As a tribute to this prominent Canadian philosopher and historian of ideas, Dialogue is proud to publish the following intervention by Ethel Groffier, Raymond Klibansky’s widow and Emeritus scholar at McGill University’s Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law. Groffier reminds us of the importance of engagement—understood in the strong, philosophical sense—in this philosopher’s life and works.

Born in France in October 1905 to a German family, raised in Germany from World War I to 1933, and then forced to move to the United Kingdom, Klibansky settled in Montreal in 1946 following an invitation from McGill University. His academic career in Canada and abroad is admirable and has been acclaimed on numerous occasions. He left behind an impressive body of work in philosophy and in the history of modern ideas; among these ideas, freedom and tolerance inspired his entire life.

Luc Langlois

Many have thought that libertarian accounts of free action succumb to a problem about luck. Recently, it has been proposed that compatibilist accounts, which unlike libertarian ones, maintain that free action and determinism are compatible, are also vulnerable to a problem about luck. In this paper, I argue that the problem of compatibilist luck is not novel insofar as it is one manifestation of a more general concern to which compatibilists and libertarians have responded. Furthermore, these responses are not effective responses to the problem of libertarian luck.

In his paper published in this issue, Ishtiyaque Haji argues that the challenge to compatibilism from luck is not novel. Rather, the challenge is identical to that from manipulation cases, and compatibilists already have responses to that challenge. In response, I distinguish two different luck problems for compatibilism. One challenge is seen in manipulation cases, but the challenge he identifies is different from the challenge from manipulation. The luck problem is therefore novel, and the existing solutions to the challenge from manipulation fail to address it.

Since the late twentieth century, republicanism has been the subject of renewed interest in contemporary political theory. In France, subsequent to 1989, this revival brought debates about cultural and religious diversity to the philosophical forefront. Thus, it is now possible to distinguish between a plurality of perspectives, each claiming specific interpretations of republicanism and each positioning itself differently to meet these cultural and religious challenges. This article situates the Report of the Committee of Reflection on the Application of the Principle of Secularity in the Republic with regard to these issues.

In this inquiry, I testify to the central place of signs in Peirce’s cosmology, and to the power of entertaining novel propositions (complementary and conflicting) through dialogue to foster the unity necessary to weld members of his continuum. Peirce’s concept of dialogue becomes the conduit to weld each member of the continuum. Peirce’s primary mover in bringing about this ‘welding’ is chance/habit in sign use itself. Although the self’s place as an expression of all components of the physical world will be addressed, primary focus will be accorded to logical shifts ascertained via transition from inter- to intra-actional dialogue.

Rainer Forst’s constructivism argues that a right to justification provides a reasonably non-rejectable foundation of justice. With an exemplary focus on his attempt to ground human rights, I argue that this right cannot provide such a foundation. To accord to others such a right is to include them in the scope of discursive respect. But it is reasonably contested whether we should accord to others equal discursive respect. It follows that Forst’s constructivism cannot ground human rights, or justice, categorically. At best, it can ground them hypothetically. This opens the door wide for ethical foundations of human rights.

I here defend the thesis that the best life is the life that one plays as a game—specifically, a ‘Suitsian’ game that meets the definition proposed in The Grasshopper by Bernard Suits. Even more specifically, it is a nested, open, role-playing game where the life’s quality as a game partly depends on there being no more people than players. To defend this thesis I refute two powerful challenges to it, one from Thomas Hurka (2006) and another from within The Grasshopper itself. In the process, I offer a new interpretation of that enigmatic and challenging book.

The following claims are independently plausible but jointly inconsistent: (1) epistemic deontologism is correct (i.e., there are some beliefs we ought to have, and some beliefs we ought not to have); (2) we have no voluntary control over our beliefs; (3) S’s lack of control over whether she φs implies that S has no obligation to φ or to not φ (i.e., ought-implies-can). The point of this paper is to argue that there are active and passive aspects of belief, which can come apart, and to argue that deontological epistemic evaluations apply to the active aspect of belief.

Animals in Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics can neither respond to the ethical demand, nor can they be the Other from whom the demand emanates. Levinas’ characterisation of the Other as human seems to be incompatible with his description of the Other as infinitely transcendent and of the face as refusing to be contained. A corrective can be found in Martin Buber’s two-dimensional account of the encounter. Buber widens the scope of entities with which morally demanding encounters are possible. Complementing the Levinasian account of the encounter with Buber’s provides a way of recognising non-human animals as the Other in the moral encounter.