Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:03:03.114Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Compromise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

J. P. Day
J. P. Day
Affiliation:
University of Keele
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Human conflict and its resolution is obviously a subject of great practical importance. Equally obviously, it is a vast subject, ranging from total war at one end of the spectrum to negotiated settlement at its other end. The literature on the subject is correspondingly vast and, in recent times, technical, thanks to the valuable contributions made to it by game theorists, economists, and writers on industrial and international relations. In this essay, however, I shall discuss only one familiar form of conflict-resolution. There is room for such a discussion, because philosophers have lately neglected compromise, despite the interest shown in it by the aforementioned experts, and despite the classic treatments of it by Halifax, Burke and Morley. Truly, ‘…compromise is not so widely discussed by philosophers as one might expect’, and ‘…the idea of compromise has been largely neglected by Anglo-American jurisprudence’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 64 , Issue 250 , October 1989 , pp. 471 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Golding, M. P., ‘The Nature of Compromise: A Preliminary Inquiry’, Compromise in Ethics, Law and Politics, Nomos, XXI, Pennock, J. R. and Chapman, J. W. (eds) (New York University Press, 1979), 4.Google Scholar

2 Coons, J. E., ‘Compromise as Precise Justice’Google Scholar, in Pennock, and Chapman, , op. cit., 202.Google Scholar

3 Burke, E., ‘Speech on Moving the Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies’, The Works of Burke, II, Raffety, F. W. (ed.) (London: Oxford University Press, 1906), 226.Google Scholar

4 Burke, , op. cit., 173, 175, 232; emphases added.Google Scholar

5 Morley, J. (Viscount Morley), On Compromise, 2nd edn (London: Chap man and Hall, 1877), 1; emphases added.Google Scholar

6 Braybrooke, D., ‘The Possibilities of Compromise’, Ethics 93, No. 1 (10 1982), 139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 See the entries under ‘compromise’ in James, J. S., Stroud's Judicial Dictionary, 4th edn (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1972)Google Scholar; Saunders, J. B., Words and Phrases Legally Defined, 2nd edn (London: Butterworths, 1969)Google Scholar; Dictionary of Politics and Economics, 2nd edn (Berlin: 1976).Google Scholar

8 Raffety, , op. cit., xi–xii.Google Scholar

9 Braybrooke, , op. cit., 141.Google Scholar

10 Benditt, T. M. ‘Compromising Interests and Principles’Google Scholar, in Pennock, and Chapman, , op. cit., 30.Google Scholar

11 Golding, , op. cit., 13.Google Scholar

12 Bodenheimer, E., ‘Compromise in the Realization of Ideas and Values’Google Scholar, in Pennock, and Chapman, , op. cit., 142, 157.Google Scholar

13 Hart, H. L. A., Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).Google Scholar

14 Savile, G. (Marquis of Halifax), The Character of a Trimmer, The Complete Works of G. Savile, Raleigh, W. (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), 48.Google Scholar

15 Shapiro, M., ‘Compromise and Litigation’Google Scholar, in Pennock, and Chapman, , op. cit., 164; emphases added.Google Scholar

16 Shapiro, , op. cit., 173–174.Google Scholar

17 Woodward, E. L., History of England (London: Methuen, 1947), 152–154.Google Scholar

18 Carens, J. H., ‘Compromises in Politics’Google Scholar, in Pennock, and Chapman, , op. cit., 126.Google Scholar

19 Carens, , op. cit., 140.Google Scholar

20 Carens, , op. cit., 126–128.Google Scholar

21 Carens, , op. cit., 130.Google Scholar

22 Shapiro, , op. cit., 171.Google Scholar

23 Kuflik, A., ‘Morality and Compromise’Google Scholar, in Pennock, and Chapman, , op. cit., 63; emphases added.Google Scholar

24 Carens, , op. cit., 139.Google Scholar

25 Broad, C. D., ‘Ought We to Fight for our Country in the Next War?’, Ethics and the History of Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), 235–236Google Scholar; Ross, W. D., Foundations of Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 315.Google Scholar

26 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism (1863)Google Scholar; Urmson, J. O., ‘The Interpretation of the Philosophy of J. S. Mill’, Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1953).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 MacCormick, D. N., ‘The Obligation of Reparation’, Aristotelian Society Proceedings 78 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Austin, J. L., ‘A Plea for Excuses’, Philosophical Papers, Urmson, J. O. and Warnock, G. J. (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 134.Google Scholar

29 Golding, , op. cit., 7–8.Google Scholar

30 Kant, I., Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).Google Scholar

31 Birley, R. (ed.), Speeches and Documents in American History, II, 1818–1865 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 140.Google Scholar

32 Birley, , op. cit., 32.Google Scholar

33 Nevins, A. and Commager, H. S., A Short History of the United States (New York: Random House, 1945), 219.Google Scholar

34 Birley, , op. cit., 66–80.Google Scholar

35 Birley, , op. cit., 188–192.Google Scholar

36 Birley, , op. cit., 183–187.Google Scholar

37 See e.g. Barry, B., ‘Justice as Reciprocity’, Justice, Kamenka, E. and Tay, A. E. (eds) (London: Arnold, 1979), 50–78.Google Scholar

38 Mill, J. S., On Liberty (1859), Ch. 5.Google Scholar

39 Birley, , op. cit., 77.Google Scholar

40 Birley, , op. cit., 182Google Scholar; cf. 78.

41 Nevins, and Commager, , op. cit., 220.Google Scholar

42 Birley, , op. cit., 217.Google Scholar

43 Birley, , op. cit., 241, 202; emphases added.Google Scholar

44 Nevins, and Commager, , op. cit., 225.Google Scholar

45 Nevins, and Commager, , op. cit., 220.Google Scholar