Distinctions Of Reason And Reasonable Distinctions

An intellectual biography of John Wallis (1616-1703), professor of mathematics at Oxford. Despite war, church upheaval, and a revolution in science, Wallis advanced mathematics and natural philosophy within the university, bridging old and new.

Is it ever possible for people to act freely and intentionally against their better judgement? Is it ever possible to act in opposition to one's strongest desire? If either of these questions are answered in the negative, the common-sense distinctions between recklessness, weakness of will and compulsion collapse. This would threaten our ordinary notion of self-control and undermine our practice of holding each other responsible for moral failure. So a clear and plausible account of how weakness of will and self-control are possible is of great practical significance. Taking the problem of weakness of will as her starting point, Jeanette Kennett builds an admirably comprehensive and integrated account of moral agency which gives a central place to the capacity for self-control. Her account of the exercise and limits of self-control vindicates the common-sense distinction between weakness of will and compulsion and so underwrites our ordinary allocations of moral responsibility. She addresses with clarity and insight a range of important topics in moral psychology, such as the nature of valuing and desiring, conceptions of virtue, moral conflict, and the varieties of recklessness (here characterised as culpable bad judgement) - and does so in terms which make their relations to each other and to the challenges of real life obvious. Agency and Responsibility concludes by testing the accounts developed of self-control, moral failure, and moral responsibility against the hard cases provided by acts of extreme evil.

In identifying a number of ‘fuzzy border’ cases (notably where pensionable age, pregnancy, residence, and marriage, are proxies for unlawful discrimination), Equality, Discrimination and the Law argues that the traditional notions of discrimination and victimisation are inadequate to implement equality policy and cannot represent fully the reality of discriminatory practices. When Mr and Mrs James - each aged 61 - went swimming, Mr James was charged for entry, while Mrs James was admitted free. The reason was that the local authority offered free swimming to those of ‘pensionable age’ (at the time, 65 for men and 60 for women). The House of Lords found that Mr James had suffered direct sex discrimination. This majority plurality decision indicated that sometimes a given set of facts does not neatly accord to traditional definitions of discrimination. This in turn encourages the judiciary to shape the law to fit the facts, which results in an inconsistent body of law full of ‘fuzzy borders’. Starting with the James case, this book investigates a number of ‘fuzzy border’ cases in the EU and UK based on nationality discrimination, notions of indirect discrimination, pregnancy and sex discrimination, marriage and sexual orientation discrimination, perceived discrimination, and victimisation. The argument concludes that fixed notions such as ‘direct and indirect discrimination are mutually exclusive’ do not stand up to scrutiny and that it must be recognised that the traditional concepts of discrimination and victimisation do not reflect the reality of practice. This work is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners in all EU and English-speaking jurisdictions, particularly post-graduates, Policy/Law-makers, and those on dedicated equality undergraduate courses.

In this major new work, philosopher of religion Nancy Levene examines the elemental character of religion and modernity. Deep in their operating systems, she argues, are dualisms of opposition and identity that cannot be reconciled with the forms of life they ostensibly support. These dualisms are dead ends, but they conceal a richer position—another kind of dualism constitutive of mutual relation. This dualism is difficult to distinguish and its concept of relation difficult to commit to. It risks contention and even violence. But it is also the indispensable support for modernity’s most innovative ideals: democracy, criticism, and interpretation. In readings from Abraham to the present, Levene recovers this richer dualism in its difference from the alternatives—other dualisms, nondualism, multiplication. From Abraham we get the biblical call to give up tribal belonging for a promised land of covenantal relation. Yet modernity, inclusive of this call, is also the principle that critiques the promise when it divides self from other, us from them. Drawing on a long tradition of thinkers and scholars even as she breaks new ground, Levene offers here nothing less than a new way of understanding modernity as an ethical claim about our world, a philosophy of the powers of distinction to include rather than to divide.

Taking in a century of change, this work focuses on how the Supreme Court brought the juvenile court system under constitutional control. It describes the case of Gerald Gault, an Arizona teenager who was sent to reform school for making an obscene phone call.