‘If another book such as this comes to be written in a hundred years from now, I wonder how many of these questions will then be regarded as settled—and settled rightly.’ The chapter in which these words were printed—exactly fifty years ago—is entitled ‘Some Current Questions’. The author plausibly supports his tentative expectation that the scene will continue to shift

At the beginning of one of his inimitable discourses William James once said, ‘I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers’.1 In his succeeding discourse James himself departed from this theme. And so shall I. I shall not be contradicting other philosophers—at least not very often. What I aim to do is to take a fresh look at one of the main traditions in American philosophy for insight and illumination on a way of dealing with some of the most serious issues of our time. But before I turn to that, my main theme, I want to pursue for a bit some variations on another, the cultural relevance of philosophy, for, as I view the matter, they are related.

R. M. Hare has argued1 that there are conceivable (though unlikely) circumstances in which it would be right not to abolish the institution of slavery: in the imaginary land of Juba established slave-plantations are managed by a benevolent elite for the good of all, no ‘cruel or unusual ’ punishments are in use, and citizens of the neighbouring island of Camaica, ‘free ’but impoverished, regularly seek to become slaves. Hare adds that it is unlikely, given human nature, that ‘masters ’would treat ‘slaves ’humanely, and avoid a gradual corruption of their moral consciousness which would cancel out any possible advantages of the system. Slavery is wrong, he argues, not because it violates ‘fundamental human rights’, but I because it would in practice generally increase misery.

There is a strong tendency in the scholarly and sub-scholarly literature on terrorism to treat it as something like an ideology. There is an equally strong tendency to treat it as always immoral. Both tendencies go hand in hand with a considerable degree of unclarity about the meaning of the term ‘terrorism’. I shall try to dispel this unclarity and I shall argue that the first tendency is the product of confusion and that once this is understood, we can see, in the light of a more definite analysis of terrorism, that the second tendency raises issues of inconsistency, and even hypocrisy. Finally, I shall make some tentative suggestions about what categories of target may be morally legitimate objects of revolutionary violence, and I shall discuss some lines of objection to my overall approach.

What are we moved to when we are moved by something? Sometimes to tears; other times to action; and, on other occasions, to quiet contemplation. When a member of the Sierra Club is moved by something, he or she may be moved to tears or to political activism; but ‘being moved by’ in such circumstances just might consist in feelings of awe. ‘Moved by’ carries an obvious suggestion of causality on its semantic face. What I am moved by is what brings it about that I feel or act the way I do. To be ‘unmoved’ is to be unresponsive; or, at times, to lack compassion. To be moved by something or someone often involves having care or concern for that which is found moving. A variety of this sort of concern just could be an essential ingredient in the stance of the environmental preservationist.

Hilary Putnam has recently observed that the fact/value distinction has acquired a strength and pervasiveness in our culture that make it akin to an institution.1 I take it he meant an institution in the sense that Taboo is an institution in some cultures, not in the sense that the Church is an institution in ours. Invoking the distinction is a widespread conversational gambit in social life, not only in academic discussions. ‘That's a value judgment’ and ‘That's emotive’ are to be heard at dinner parties more often than ‘Pass the salt’.

As ideas and feelings succeeded one another, and heart and head were brought into play, men continued to lay aside their natural wildness; their private connections became ever more intimate as their limits extended. They accustomed themselves to assemble before their huts round a large tree; singing and dancing, the true offspring of love and leisure, became the amusement, or rather the occupation, of men and women thus assembled together with nothing else to do. Each one began to consider the rest, and to wish to be considered in turn; and thus a value came to be attached to public esteem. Whoever sang or danced best, whoever was the handsomest, the strongest, the most dexterous, or the most eloquent, came to be of most consideration; and this was the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice. From these first distinctions arose on the one side vanity and contempt and on the other shame and envy; and the fermentation caused by these heavens ended by producing combinations fatal to innocence and happiness.

P. T. Mackenzie's article is remarkable and challenging in several ways. It is, for instance, noteworthy that he reaches the surely correct conclusion that personal identity cannot be analysed in terms of memory without so much as entertaining Bishop Butler's terse and decisive objection to any such analysis: ‘… one should really think it self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity; any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes’.