13 quotes
Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
The idea that all problems either have a solution or can be shown to be pseudo-problems is not one I share.
Outside Ethics (2005)
One way … in which a political philosophy can be ideological is by presenting a relatively marginal issue as if it were central and essential.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
A major danger in using highly abstractive methods in political philosophy is that one will succeed merely in generalizing one’s own local prejudices and repackaging them as demands of reason. The study of history can help to counteract this natural human bias.
Outside Ethics (2005)
Neither the good nor the true is self-realizing, so it is not generally a sufficient explanation of why people believe that X that X is true, or of why people do Y that Y is good.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
The Kantian philosophy is no more than at best a half-secularized version of such a theocratic ethics, with “Reason” in the place of God. This does not amount to much more than a change of names.
Outside Ethics (2005)
The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
When Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia, he is not obviously voicing a wish to rid himself of one or the other of these two sentiments. Not all contradictions resolve into temporal change of belief or desire.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral?
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
It would be a mistake to believe that one could come to any substantive understanding of politics by discussing abstractly the good, the right, the true, or the rational in complete abstraction from the way in which these items figure in the motivationally active parts of the human psyche, and particularly in abstraction from the way in which they impinge, even if indirectly, on human action.
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)
Nietzsche seems sometimes to replace the “transcendence” which stands at the center of traditional accounts—the existence of a transcendent God, or, failing that, a transcendental viewpoint—with that of a continually transcending activity. … There is no single, final perspective, but given any one perspective, we can always go beyond it.
Outside Ethics (2005)
One of Nietzsche’s most important legacies to us … is his claim that it is desirable and possible to dismantle the Platonic apparatus of Forms, Absolute Truth, the Idea of the Good, etc. and its historical derivatives, such as Kant’s transcendental philosophy, and that this can be done without fear of falling into “relativism.”
Outside Ethics (2005)
The point of one of [Rawls’] main constructions—the introduction of the “veil of ignorance”—is precisely to exclude from consideration empirical information that might prejudice the overriding normative force of the outcome. It is, then, extremely striking, not to say astounding, to the lay reader that the complex theoretical apparatus of Theory of Justice, operating through over 500 pages of densely argued text, eventuates in a constitutional structure that is a virtual replica (with some extremely minor deviations) of the arrangements that exist in the United States.
Outside Ethics (2005)