Rex Martin

Explanation and Understanding in History

One of the main themes of von Wright’s book Explanation and Understanding is the claim that “the practical syllogism provides the sciences of man with… an explanation model in its own right [and one] which is a definite alternative to the subsumption-theoretic covering law model”. He continues, “Broadly speaking, what the subsumption-theoretic [or Hempelian D-N] model is to causal explanation and explanation in the natural sciences, the practical syllogism is to teleological explanation and explanation in history and the social sciences” (EU, 27).1

A Bibliography on the Nature and Foundations of Rights, 1947-1977

This bibliography attempts to canvass writings on rights since World War 11. It focuses specifically on: (1) the concept (or nature) of rights, (2) what makes righ@ (and the use of rights) distinctive, and (3) the foundations of rights. In general it does not include analyses of the content of particular rights such as the right to life or the right to privacy. For writings in English the bibliography is quite comprehensive, but for writings in other languages we cannot make that claim. Annotations have by and large been restricted to chapter references. I t should be noted, however, that abstracts of most recent articles in this area are available in The Philosopher’s Index, and of books in The Bibliography of Philosophy. Anthologies of previously published pieces and collections of original papers have been identified in each case with a brief annotation; a few noteworthy items have been singled out as separate entries in the articles section of the bibliography. Those wishing to explore the literature on human rights and their international protection should consult Ian Brownlie. Editor. BASIC

The Metaphysics and Ethics of T. H. Green’s Idea of Persons and Citizens

Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882) was White’s (sometimes Whyte’s) Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford; he held that chair (from 1878) until his sudden death at the age of 45. The publication of his major book-length treatises was posthumous.1 Nonetheless, Green’s reputation and his influence at the time of his death were considerable and continued so for years afterwards. But they had waned markedly by the time of the beginning of the 20th century and had dissipated by the end of the First World War in 1919.

Von Wright and Collingwood on Causation and the Explanation of Human Action

In my judgment R.G. Collingwood and Georg Henrik von Wright have done some of the most interesting and creative work, in our time, on the theory of action explanation and of causation. The present paper sets out to explore and contrast their main contributions in these areas.1

The Problem of Other Cultures and Other Periods in Action Explanations

This essay develops a general account of one type of explanation found in history in particular: that an individual action is conceived as an exemplification of a rather complex schema of practical inference, under the provision that the facts which instantiate the various terms of the schema have an intelligible connection to one another. The essay then raises the question whether historians, anthropologists, and their contemporaneous audience can have an internal understanding of the actions of others, where those others come from radically different cultures or times from the historians or anthropologists. An account is offered that, arguably, can resolve this problem and do justice to both the claim of internal understanding and the presumed cultural differentness between the agents studied and the historians and anthropologists who do the study.

Three Dimensions of T.H. Green’s Idea of the Self

T.H. Green has a rather extended notion of the self, by which is meant that he thinks persons have affiliations with others that take them beyond their own individual self or family and the interests of that self or family. This paper considers that notion of an extended self under three main themes. Metaphysics and Ethics. First, the paper examines some recent work on Green’s notions of the ‘eternal consciousness’ and ‘self-realization.’ Rights and the Common Good. The paper next examines Green’s thoughts regarding the relationship between a common good among fellow citizens, on the one hand, and the rights of individuals, on the other. Reciprocity and Citizenship. Finally, the paper turns to Green’s account of the state (which includes an emphasis on democracy).

Rights and the American Constitution: The Issue of Judicial Review and Its Compatibility with Democracy

This chapter deals with American judicial interpretation of two key constitutional ideas—the idea of ‘due process’ and the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment selectively brings in or ‘incorporates’ many of the rights of the Bill of Rights and applies these rights as a standard for assessing the laws not only of the federal union but also of the various states in the USA. This sketch provides both a rationale for one line of development of American law in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (to date) and a template for examining the role courts (in a number of countries as well as the EU) have taken, or might take, in identifying and protecting, through judicial review, important basic constitutional rights. The chapter turns (in its final section) to a discussion of judicial review and attempts to provide a principled resolution of the problematic that judicial review poses within a democratic system of rights.

Rights and Economic Justice in Nozick’s Theory

In his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) Robert Nozick developed a well-known theory of natural rights understood as side constraints. In a situation in which there was no government (a state of nature, so to speak), individuals would have to protect their fundamental rights on their own, typically by utilizing mutual-protection associations. These ideas, side constraints and protection agencies, are discussed in Sect. 7.2. In the course of his argument Nozick introduces a second kind of natural right—the procedural right (the right to protect or enforce one’s basic natural rights on one’s own). But such rights are very different from the side-constraint protected natural rights that Nozick had discussed initially. Procedural rights are discussed in Sect. 7.3.

Book ReviewsMarcus G. Singer,The Ideal of a Rational Morality: Philosophical Compositions.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. xix+333.

Marcus Singer is emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin. He will be well known to readers of Ethics as the author of the highly regarded book Generalization in Ethics (New York: Knopf, 1961) and editor of Henry Sidgwick’s Essays on Ethics and Methods (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000). The book under review is a collection of essays he wrote and published on topics in ethics (twelve essays) and in philosophy of law (one essay). Most of the essays were written in the 1980s, though three are somewhat earlier (1963, 1976, 1978), and two are more recent (1993, 2000). All have been published elsewhere, but most have been revised for the present issue, sometimes thoroughly so (x). In every case Marcus Singer has added a brief note or set of notes at the end of each essay, giving its provenance and providing some “afterthoughts and responses to comments” (x). The essays exhibit a commendable erudition, especially in the history of ethical theory. Insightful comments can be found at various points in the essays about such thinkers as Aristotle or Kant or Mill but also about important but less-studied figures like James or Dewey. But I did at times find the footnoting a bit dense. Individual notes are sometimes arch in tone, but just as often the gruff (even curmudgeonly) comments, scattered throughout, are amusing. From cover to cover its tone is urbane, and the book suggests wide reading, sometimes in unexpected places, by its author. Marcus Singer identifies several themes that serve to unify or provide leitmotif to the essays: “Rationality, justification, proof, truth, and principle . . . and the indispensability of certain necessary and ineradicable presuppositions of moral thought and enquiry” (ix). These themes stand out and are addressed particularly in the first four essays. The first essay is Marcus Singer’s presidential address at the American Philosophical Association (APA) Central Division meeting in 1986; it bears the same title as the book, “The Ideal of a Rational Morality.” The next two essays are short outtakes from the presidential address, both of them published independently of it. And the fourth essay is a detailed critique of certain aspects of John Rawls’s book A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1971), in a chapter rather whimsically entitled “The Methods of Justice.” Let me comment on these essays as a set, emphasizing the themes that Marcus Singer had identified earlier. In the presidential address (chap. 1) Marcus Singer distinguishes three distinct modes or kinds of morality: positive morality, that is, the particular morality of a given society or culture; personal morality; and what he calls ideal or rational morality. This tripartite analysis is taken up again and adumbrated in chapter 5. Two important claims about these modes of morality are made in the first

65.00 (cloth).

One of the familiar kinds of explanation is that in which an action of an agent is accounted for by reference to certain thoughts — beliefs or motivations — that the agent has. We often call these the “reasons” for the action. In the present paper I will be concerned principally with just this one kind of explanation, with intentionalist explanation, as it is often called.