To the question ‘Why do you try to realize this?’ your answer may be ‘Because I desire that and I think that the realization of this would involve the realization of that.’ Or your answer may be ‘Because I desire this.’ If ‘Why?’ is interpreted as ‘Desiring what?’ the question ‘Why do you desire this?’ is improper. The word ‘desire’ is, however, frequently used in such a way as to countenance the impropriety. It is so used not only when what is pursued only as a means is said to be desired, but also when a desire for what possesses one character is said to be a desire for what possesses a a concomitant character. Strictly, perhaps, an object of desire is describable in terms only of the character immediately relevant to the desire. The expression ‘to desire what is X qua X’ is perhaps redundant; and the expression ‘to desire what is X qua Y’ is perhaps self-contradictory. But those who think, so must admit that such expressions are current among even careful speakers.

In Book VII, p. 520, Socrates describes the arguments by which the philosophers must be induced to “return to the cave,” that is to say, to resume the practical business of politics from which they have escaped into the better life of contemplation. They must be shown that this sacrifice is a debt which they owe to the city in return for the opportunity which it has afforded them of becoming philosophers. “Will our pupils,"1 he continues, “when they hear this, refuse to share in turn the toils of state, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of their time with one another in the heaven of ideas?” “Impossible,” Glaucon replies; “for they are just men, and the commands which we impose on them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of them will take office as a stern necessity, and not like our present ministers of state’.

Mr. T. H. Mcpherson has given, in a recent article in PHILOSOPHY (Vols. XXIII, 1948, and XXIV, 1949), various reasons for supposing that there was a development in Butler's ethics from the Sermons to the Analogy. He argues that Butler was in the Sermons a “rational egoist” or “Ethical Eudaemonist,” and in the Analogy an Intuitionist. By “Ethical Eudaemonism” he seems1 to mean that “the ground or criterion of rightness is conduciveness to the agent's interest” (XXIII, pp. 327, 330, 331; XXIV, p. 18, etc.) or that “it is the happiness-producing character of acts that makes them right” (XXIII, p. 327). I shall use the phrase “McPherson's view” to denote the theory that this was Butler's view in the Sermons.

The political writings of Kant and of Hegel present two contrasts, whose connection and explanation have (so far as I know) never been adequately explored. The first contrast is in respect of the quality of their discussions of ‘home’ politics—in Kant's language, the ‘problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution’. Here Hegel shines. However much one may dislike the tone of voice, the vocabulary, the style and the arrangement of its arguments, his Philosophy of Right, especially when supplemented by his more topical political writings, presents an array of dicta, judgments and arguments of notable penetration, balance and prescience. Consider for instance his account of the very different political functions of free associations and of representative bodies, and his perception of the symbolic—but crucially symbolic—role of head of state. On these, as on many other issues, Hegel's views deserve the credit that has of late begun to be restored to them. Whatever his philosophical failings, he had a remarkable sense of the key junctures of different strands in the life of politics; so that, although the kind of state he describes and admires retains little practical relevance today, his exposition of it remains a valuable training-ground in political appreciation. By contrast Kant's philosophy of the state, as we find it in Part II of his Philosophy of Right (itself being Part I of his Metaphysics of Morals), in Part II of Theory and Practice and in Appendices I and II of Perpetual Peace, is at first sight little more than an academic exercise. It amounts to a restatement, in dehistoricized terms and in accordance with Kant's rationalist theory of morals, of Rousseau's central political teachings, viz. that an original, unanimous, unrescindable contract explains political allegiance, and that the idea of a General Will is a sufficient criterion of political justice within the state. From these two basic positions Kant develops a theory of civic obedience far more restrictive than that of Rousseau or indeed than that of Hobbes. Throughout, Kant accepts—in the spirit which one might accord to revelation—Rousseau's assumptions that government can be confined to issues that fall under a General Will, and that such a Will can be ‘found’ for the resolution of every political issue, so that honest men need never disagree about what the General Will is. But to say this is to say that Kant's concern with home politics is little more than academic.

In actual practice the relation between history and sociology is very close. The sociologist of necessity derives his material from the data furnished by anthropology and history. On his side the historian, however eager he may be to confine himself to detailed and close narration of actual fact, cannot avoid reference to problems of causation or assumptions regarding human nature or the general course of human evolution, and so is a sociologist malgré lui. Again, though there are still not wanting some historians, such as v. Below, who deny sociology any status, most writers on the theory and methodology of history have come to regard the two disciplines as Hilfwissenschaften to each other. Closer examination, however, reveals considerable uncertainty and hesitation. This is due, firstly to widely prevalent doubts as to the scope of sociology, with regard to which it is said, not without some exaggeration, the sociologists themselves are not in agreement. It is due, secondly, to the fact that the issues raised involve reference to difficult problems in the theory of knowledge generally, in regard to which, in the present position of epistemology, agreement is hardly to be expected. In this paper I shall attempt firstly to define briefly the scope of sociology and discuss the bearing of my definition upon some recent representative views of the nature of historical investigation. Secondly, in the light of this discussion, I will endeavour to restate the fundamental points of our problem in the hope of bringing out more clearly the main issues involved.

Plato's dialogues can be read as a carefully staged exhibition and investigation of paideia, education in the broadest sense, including all that affects the formation of character and mind. The twentieth century textbook Plato — the Plato of the Myth of the Cave and the Divided Line, the ascent to the Good through Forms and Ideas — is but one of his elusive multiple authorial personae, each taking a different perspective on his investigations. As its focused problems differ, each Platonic dialogue exhibits a somewhat different model for learning; each adds a distinctive dimension to Plato's fully considered counsel for education. Setting aside the important difficult questions about the chronological sequence in which the dialogues were written and revised, we can trace the argumentative rationale of Plato's fully considered views on paideia, on who should be educated by whom for what, on the stages and presuppositions of different kinds of learning. Those views are inextricably connected with his views about the structure of the soul, about the virtues and the politeia that can sustain a good life; and about cosmology and metaphysics.

The prominence of David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in contemporary philosophy of religion has led it to overshadow his other short work, The Natural History of Religion, and thus obscure the fact that the social psychology of religion was in many ways of greater interest and more widely debated among the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment than philosophical theology. This paper examines and compares the social psychology of religion advanced by Hume and Adam Smith. It argues that Hume's account of the psychological sources and social significance of religion is less satisfactory than Smith's.

Anscombe claims that whenever a subject is doing something intentionally, this subject knows that they are doing it. This essay defends Anscombe's claim from an influential set of counterexamples, due to Davidson. It argues that Davidson's counterexamples are tacit appeals to an argument, on which knowledge can't be essential to doing something intentionally, because some things that can be done intentionally require knowledge of future successes, and because such knowledge can't ever be guaranteed when someone is doing something intentionally. The essay argues that there are apparently sensible grounds for denying each of these two premises.

I. Logic, rationality and ideology

Herbert Marcuse once claimed that the ‘“rational” is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.’ He echoed a widespread folk belief that a world in which people were rational would be a better world. This could be taken as an optimistic empirical conjecture: if people were more rational then probably the world would be a better place (a trust that ‘virtue will be rewarded’, so to speak). However, it is also worth considering a stronger hypothesis: that if something did not reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression then it would not constitute rationality. On this view there is no mere correlation between rationality and a propensity toward reduction in ignorance and the rest, it is the propensity to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality and oppression which in part constitutes rationality. Call this a broad conception of rationality, because it expands beyond the epistemic goal of reducing ignorance, and reaches out to moral concerns like oppression.

The debates about human free will are traditionally the concern of metaphysics but neuroscientists have recently entered the field arguing that acts of the will are determined by brain events themselves causal products of other events. We examine that claim through the example of free or voluntary switch of perception in relation to the Necker cube. When I am asked to see the cube in one way, I decide whether I will follow the command (or do as I am asked) using skills that reason and language give to me and change my brain states accordingly. The voluntary shift of perspective in seeing the Necker cube this way or that exemplifies the top-down control exercised by a human being on the basis of the role of language and meaning in their activity. It also indicates the lived story that is at the centre of each human consciousness. In the third part of this essay, three arguments are used to undermine metaphysical objections to the very idea of top-down self control.

Hegel, in offering his account of Other Minds, claims that his way of conducting the enquiry is the only philosophically significant way. I shall attempt to bring out certain profound insights in this area on Hegel's part, but I shall also argue that his view of Man leaves out of consideration some of the most important aspects of what is essentially human.

A theory of laws is developed that takes from E. J. Lowe the claim of natural laws being consistent with certain classes of exceptions. Neither abnormal cases, such as albino ravens, nor miracles falsify covering laws. This suggests that law statements cannot have the form of a universally quantified conditional. Lowe takes it that this is best explained by natural laws having normative force in the same way as moral laws and laws of the land. I argue that there is a non-normative, descriptivist account that also explains the exception cases and which is preferable, given our reservations about normative laws of nature. I also suggest an improved account of miracles within the descriptivist account.

Peter Geach's distinction between logically predicative and logically attributive adjectives has become part of the technical apparatus of philosophers, but no satisfactory explanation of what an attributive adjective is has yet been provided. Geach's discussion suggests two different ways of understanding the notion. According to one, an adjective is attributive just in case predications of it in combination with a noun fail to behave in inferences like a logical conjunction of predications. According to the other, an adjective is attributive just in case it cannot be applied in a truth-value-yielding fashion unless combined with a noun. The latter way of understanding the notion yields both a more defensible version of Geach's arguments that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are attributive and a more satisfactory explanation of attributivity.

A defence of the possibility of amoralism is important to discussions about the foundations of ethics and the justification of morality. I argue against Michael Smith's attempt to show, through a defence of internalism, that amoralism is incoherent. I argue first, that a de dicto reading of the externalist's explanation of changes in motivation which are pursuant upon changes in judgement is not objectionable or implausible as Smith contends; and second, that internalism cannot account for the effort of the will required to make such changes in motivation. I also argue that the internalism/externalism debate can be diffused by considering the epistemic difficulties associated with identifying motivating states and by rejecting the notion that motivation can be understood in terms of psychlogical states.

A number of recent writers have expressed scepticism about the viability of a specifically moral concept of obligation, and some of the considerations offered have been interesting and persuasive. This is a scepticism that has its roots in Nietzsche, even if he is mentioned only rather rarely in the debate. More proximately, the scepticism in question receives seminal expression in Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 essay, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, a piece that is often paid lip-service to, but—like Nietzsche's work—has only rarely been taken seriously by those wishing to defend the conception of obligation under attack. This is regrettable. Anscombe's essay is powerful and direct, and it makes a forthright case for the claim that, in the absence of a divine law conception of ethics, any specifically moral concept of obligation must be redundant, and that the best that can be hoped for in a secular age is some sort of neo-Aristotelianism. Anscombe is right about this, we think. And, among those who disagree, one of the very few to have taken her on at all explicitly is Christine Korsgaard, whose Kantianism of course commits her to the view that the concept of moral obligation is central, with or without God. Here, we try to show that Korsgaard loses the argument.

Ulrich Meyer's objections to Dummett's arguments on the time continuum fail because he takes Dummett to endorse Hume's atomistic doctrine that events are ‘loose and separate’, In fact, Dummett rejects this doctrine. He used it in his original article only to indicate that certain implications which are conceptually possible fom the point of view of the classical model of time are not actually conceptually possible.