Philosophy may have universalist pretensions; at least it may if its goal is still truth (absolute); goodness (for all) and beauty (as surviving a history-transcending test of time). No doubt such ideals are subject to accusations of Platonism, logocentrism and much else, though it is hard to see what philosophy is without least a taint of such ideals. An accusation these ideals is not properly subject to is ‘Eurocentrism’. Whatever the Eurocentric faults of individual philosophers, the fault lies in the practice, not in the ideal.

No doubt there have been faults. At times there has been culpable ignorance of other traditions; at times shouting down of other voices (and this is not confined to other voices from non-Western cultures). One response to such faults is muticulturalism; a subject recently much in the news. Are we multiculturalists? Has multiculturalism failed? What is multiculturalism? These questions increasingly and not before time occupy public discussion; unfortunately generating in the answers given much heat and much confusion.

Whatever multiculturalism is, given its Herderian roots, it is at the very least a sense that other cultures, all other cultures, should receive recognition and should be heard. Recognition of others as others, in their otherness, is at the heart of it. And this is, in a sense, a universalist ideal. But it is one which may sit ill with the universalism of philosophy. If recognition is our ideal, what place in our activity is there for the search for truth, which has been defined as culture blind and culture transcendent?

The questions considered are whether colours are relative to systems of colour concepts, to the conditions in which they are observed, or to observers or communities of observers; and whether the relativity of colours, such as it is, implies that they are less real than shapes or intervals in time. The argument is based on the thought that Special Relativity provides the best available intellectual framework for thinking about the supposed relativity of qualities of physical things.

The current transatlantic debate over multilateralism reveals that the traditional understanding of liberal internationalism is being transcended in favor of “globalism.” The latter is a doctrine that goes well beyond favoring international cooperation among states; in fact, the new globalism is intrinsically hostile to the sovereignty of the nation-state. Thus it runs counter to the basic liberal understanding of the nature of the political order, as reflected in the American Declaration of Independence and, on a more philosophical level, in the political teaching of John Locke. The Declaration and the Lockean teaching proclaim universal principles, but hold that the implementation of these principles should be the business not of some international authority but of democratically elected and accountable national

If Wittgenstein's later account of language is applied to music, what seems to follow is a version of musical formalism. This is to say that the meaning of music is constituted by the rules of a given system of music, and the understanding of music is the ability to follow these rules. I argue that, while this view may seem unattractive at the outset, Wittgenstein actually held this view. Moreover, his later notion of a rule gives us resources to answer some of the traditional criticisms directed against formalism.

Solving the problem of moral luck—the problem of dealing with conflicting intuitions about whether moral blameworthiness varies with luck in cases of negligence—is like repairing a dented fender in front of two kinds of critic. The one keeps telling you that there is no dent, and the other sees the dent but keeps warning you that repairing it will do more harm than good. It is time to straighten things out. As I argue elsewhere, the solution to the problem of moral luck is finally revealed. Our task now is twofold: to hold a magnifying glass up to the initial problem, so that all might finally see it; and to dismiss unfounded fears about solving that problem, so that all might finally stop grinning and bearing it.

The author argues that faith survives as a rational option, despite science rendering improbable distinctively theological claims about the world and history. After rejecting justifications of faith from natural theology and natural law, he defends a seemingly weaker strategy, a corrected version of Pascal's wager argument. The wager lets one's desires count toward showing one's faith to be rational, and the faith requires that oneÕs desires undergo radical transformation to protect the faith, making the wager argument really quite strong. As Nietzsche insisted, to be an atheist in the face of this challenge, one would have to become superhuman and transform one's values radically in the opposite direction.

The paper criticises a number of accounts of freedom, including those which analyse freedom in terms of affording individuals ever widening opportunities, those which mistake liberties for rights and those which identify freedoms with duties imposed on others. All these inflated notions of freedom are liable to produce a shrinkage of of freedom in its basic sense of referring to areas of life in which there are rules preventing others from interfering with individuals or groups in doing things which are feasible for them.

The paper aims to explain and illustrate why Einstein and Kant, relativity and transcendental idealism, came to be discussed in one breath after the Special theory of relativity had emerged in 1905. There are essentially three points of contact between the theory of relativity and Kant's objective idealism. The Special theory makes contact with Kantian views of time; the General theory requires a non-Kantian view of geometry; but both relativity theories endorse a quasi-Kantian view of the nature of scientific knowledge. The paper shows that Einstein is a Kantian in his insistence on the synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, but not in the details of his physics.