Samuel Clark

Living Without Domination: the possibility of an anarchist utopia.

Contents: Preface Introduction Primitivism The human landscape Living with domination Living without domination Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Love, Poetry, and the Good Life: Mill's Autobiography and Perfectionist Ethics

Abstract I argue for a perfectionist reading of Mills account of the good life, by using the failures of development recorded in his Autobiography as a way to understand his official account of happiness in Utilitarianism. This work offers both a new perspective on Mills thought, and a distinctive account of the role of aesthetic and emotional capacities in the most choiceworthy human life. I consider the philosophical purposes of autobiography, Mills disagreements with Bentham, and the nature of competent judges and the pleasure they take in higher culture. I conclude that Millian perfectionism is an attractive and underappreciated option for contemporary value theory.

No Abiding City: Hume, Naturalism, and Toleration

This paper rereads David Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as dramatising a distinctive, naturalistic account of toleration. I have two purposes in mind: first, to complete and ground Humes fragmentary explicit discussion of toleration; second, to unearth a potentially attractive alternative to more recent, Rawlsian approaches to toleration. To make my case, I connect Dialogues and the problem of toleration to the wider themes of naturalism, scepticism and their relation in Humes thought, before developing a new interpretation of Dialogues part 12 as political drama. Finally, I develop the Humean theory of toleration I have discovered by comparison between Rawlss and Humes strategies for justification of a tolerant political regime.

Kicking against the pricks : anarchist perfectionism and the conditions of independence.

The distinguished moral philosopher Philippa Foot begins her recent book Natural Goodness with the following story: Wittgenstein [in an Oxford philosophy seminar, probably in the 1940s] interrupted a speaker who had realised that he was about to say something that, although it seemed compelling, was clearly ridiculous, and was trying (as we all do in such circumstances) to say something sensible instead. ‘No,’ said Wittgenstein. ‘Say what you want to say. Be crude and then we shall get on.’ (Foot, 2001: 1)