A central feature of David Gauthier's impressively searching version of social contract theory is the principle of maximin relative advantage. Given certain assumptions—more than he originally thought—this principle may be described as calling for maximum equal advantage, which is easier to talk about; and I shall refer to the principle under this description. Maximum equal relative advantage is equivalent to minimum equal relative concession; hence the principle of maximum equal relative advantage has a twin and mirror, the principle of minimum equal relative concession. Relative advantage and relative concession are ratios with the same denominator, the difference for a given agent between the maximum utility (umax) that she might get from the societyt o be contracted for and the minimum utility (umin) that would give her an incentive to cooperate in establishing the society and in keeping it up. The numerator for the one ratio—relative advantage—is the difference between the utility that she is actually going to gain from society (ua) and her minimum cooperative utility (umin). The numerator for the other ratio—relative concession—is the difference between her maximum utility (umax) and the utility that she is going to get (ua), in other words, the amount of utility that she foregoes in not getting her maximum.

The overall objective of my current researches is to formulate and defend a variant of contractarian moral and social theory. Only a contractarian theory is, I claim, compatible with—and indeed required by—the theory of rational choice. I say “a variant” of contractarian theory because, for reasons I sketch in my paper “The Social Contract as Ideology”, there is a deep danger inherent in contractarian theory, the danger that it may be supposed that all human relationships are to be rationalized as contractual. The prevalence of this view—and it is, I believe, increasingly prevalent—would return us to the natural condition of humankind envisaged by Thomas Hobbes, the war of all against all. But this is contractarianism carried to excess; I want to argue, although assuredly not here, that satisfaction of a contractarian requirement is not only rationally necessary, but also necessary if our moral and social practices are to yield that true and complete human sociability integral to any life worth living, and fundamental to a community of free and equal persons.

Gauthier's thinking about the social contract continues to develop vigorously. Had I aimed my criticisms at the stage of his thinking that he had reached at the time of his reply to them, rather than at earlier stages already in print, I would have organized my argument differently. Yet the earlier stages were interesting enough—and remain so—to deserve attention for their own sake. Moreover, my criticisms, even as they stand, have some effects that transcend those stages. They undermine the assumption that there is some uniquely attractive principle, whether Gauthier's principle of maximin relative advantage or any other, for determining what bargain is going to be struck on entering the social contract. They also, I persist in thinking, expose the difficulty of bringing home the maximum claims, as matters requiring respect, to agents who may lose out by accepting them as such matters.

Le texte qui suit est la seconde tranche d'un article dont la publication a commencé dans la dernière livraison de Dialogue. Dans les trois sections numérotées respectivement 1.1,1.2 et 1.3 de la tranche déjàpubliee, je présente un modéle des déterminations principales d'un problème en contexte de recherche, modèle que j'appelle, par abréviation, « ERPC », pour rappeler que le modèle érotétique PC est une partie du modèle ER qui articule le système des déterminations d'une enterprise de recherche et pour évoquer les deux premières catégories du modèle PC, à savoir: « ce qui est posé » et « ce qui est cherché ».

Des contraintes qui relèvent du conformisme moral et idéologique s'imposent là où il n'y a pas de pouvoir étatique. La survie de l'humanité et la culture ne requièrent pas nécessairement l'Etat, contrairement à ce que pensait Hobbes, mais elles ne vont pas sans normes contraignantes. Celles-ci s'imposent d'autant mieux qu'elles paraissent liees à l'ordre du monde. Dans cet article, j'envisagerai d'abord comment les sociétés sans Etat conservent scrupuleusement les coutumes qui les régissent. C'est le conservatisme des traditions qui permet à ces sociétés de se passer d'un pouvoir séparé d'elles-mêmes. C'est leur refus de reconnaître un tel pouvoir qui les oblige au conservatisme. Je verrai ensuite comment Rousseau qui voulait établir un contrat social sans Léviathan, en arrive également à refuser l'évolution historique et à vouloir instituer ou maintenir une organisation sociale et morale capable d'auto-régulation.

The architectonic of the Nicomachean Ethics, as that has come down to us, corresponds closely to that of Plato's Republic. That the substance of the Aristotelian ethic, both in its main orientations and in the texture of its argumentation, is Platonic through and through, is of course not in dispute. What appears not to have been noticed is the correspondence between the ways in which the two works are organized. The correspondence is so extensive that it seems hard to doubt that Aristotle (or whoever put the Ethics together) hung his work on Plato's armature. If that is the case, much light should be shed on the later project by divergences between the tactics of the two works at the main points of coincidence. On the assumption that the Republic is a highly structured work and the Ethics is not evidently so, the procedure followed is analogous to that recommended and followed by Socrates in the Republic (368D): confronted by two apparently similar messages, one hard and one easy to read, we should read the easy one first and then look to see if the hard one says the same.

La première partie de la grande étude de Husserl sur le thème de la Krisis a pour titre «La crise des sciences comme expression de la crise radicale de la vie de l'humanité européenne». Par cette formulation, on pourrait être porté à croire que Husserl voit dans la crise de la science la simple conséquence secondaire d'une crise beaucoup plus profonde se situant à l'échelle de l'humanité européenne entière. Et pourtant il n'en est rien. Dans la suite du texte, Husserl s'applique à démontrer que le rapport d'implication entre l'humanité en crise et les sciences doit plutôt être considéré à l'inverse. Le problème de l'humanité européenne réside au premier chef dans cette crise des sciences; si bien qu'il est sans doute possible, dans un premier temps, de voir dans la crise des sciences une simple «expression » de la détresse de l'Europe, mais à y regarder de plus près, c'est celle-là qui est cause de la crise radicale de la vie de l'humanité européenne.

Inclassable. C'est le qualificatif qui vient à l'esprit de celui qui s'interesse à l'oeuvre de Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Pierre Vidal-Naquet est et se veut avant tout historien. Mais il ne s'agit pas là d'une étiquette qui l'enferme dans une période donnée, dans un genre déterminé. S'attachant à des domaines aussi différents que l'économique, le social, le politique, le religieux et le philosophique, l'intérêt de Pierre Vidal-Naquet va de l'antiquité aux derniers rebondissements de l'actualité, de la Grèce ancienne à la France actuelle et à l'Etat d'Israël.

Egoism, the subject of this book, is of unending interest to moral philosophers. Campbell reasonably compares it to scepticism in epistemology: just as it is a touchstone of a good epistemological theory that it should show us why scepticism is unsatisfactory, so it is often taken to be a touchstone of a good moral theory that it shows us what is wrong with egoism. The parallel is imperfect in an interesting way, though; for while scarcely anyone in epistemology ends up rejecting the “touchstone” and outrightly advocating scepticism, this does happen in moral philosophy with egoism. In attempting to expose the deficiencies of egoism, we are not tilting against windmills, nor pushing over straw men. And I think it clear that inquiries such as this could have very real implications for practice as well; in this, as in many things, I concur fully with the author.