Thomas Hobbes: a Philosopher of War or Peace?

Along with Machiavelli, Hobbes is usually regarded as the pre-eminent representative of the ‘power-politics’ school of classical realism. He is frequently quoted for his pessimistic depiction of the state of nature that he so famously described as a brutal and anarchic arena in which each individual seeks his own advantage to the detriment of all other individuals, in a perpetual struggle for power. As reflective of this, political realism is sometimes even named the ‘Hobbesian tradition’. Yet there is reason to question whether the standard characterization of realism as a form of moral scepticism which ‘resists the application of morality to war’ provides an accurate description of Hobbes’s political philosophy. In this essay I examine Hobbes’s conception of war, in order to show how, in some fundamental respects, it deviates from this ‘realism’.

Prudential Normativity, Moral Scepticisms, and Metaethics

In earlier chapters it was argued that prudential value gives agents normative, prudential reasons and that prudential judgements are normative judgements on a par with moral judgements. This chapter spells out some ramifications of these theses by examining four different areas of inquiry about morality and moral discourse, showing how the theses hitherto defended in this book affect them. It begins with the form of moral scepticism found within the ‘why be moral?’ debate. It then examines hermeneutic moral error theory and proposes a companions-in-guilt argument based on the normativity of prudential discourse. Third, it examines arguments given within the literature on revisionary metaethical views, pointing out and questioning their commitment to prudential justifications. Finally, it is shown how the normativity of prudential properties applies to a central debate about thick concepts, that between reductionists and non-reductionists about such concepts.

Aristotle and Moral Scepticism

This chapter continues to look for evidence of moral reinforcement in the NE. My attention focuses initially on the function argument of NE I 7, which shows remarkable similarities to an argument used at the end of Republic I to convince the moral sceptic Thrasymachus that justice is necessary for happiness. I show how Aristotle synthesized this argument with the doctrine of the mean to provide a new argument that what we intuitively think of as virtues are indeed the qualities required for eudaimonia. Again, he is not attempting to convert an actual sceptic, but targeting the sceptical position in order to reinforce the moral convictions of his audience. In the second part of the chapter, I contrast the approach of the NE with Politics VII, where Aristotle does appear interested in the more ambitious task of converting the sceptic.

Constitutionalism and transcendental arguments

In his A Theory of Legal Argumentation, Robert Alexy lists four modes of justification for his rules of practical discourse. Of these, the only one that to him seems to have a true foundationalist capability is Apel’s transcendental-pragmatic mode of justification. But there is another strategy, which Alexy calls 'definitional', based on the concept of language game, that seems to have been employed by Ronald Dworkin, in his 'Objectivity and truth. You’d better believe it', in order to reject moral scepticism. In this paper I will argue that these two modes of justification can be traced back, from a logical and genealogical perspective, to one form of argument, the transcendental argument. But I will also argue that there is a peculiar circularity in the way this kind of argument develops, a circularity possibly ascribable to certain idealising presuppositions.

Containing the Self-Interested Individual: Moral Scepticism of Political Parties in Myanmar

In this article, I examine a persistent set of concerns regarding the political party system in Myanmar that I read as emerging in response to a Theravāda Buddhist-grounded conception of human nature as inherently self-centred, biased, and morally ignorant. Although these critiques come from political actors anchored in different ideologies and situated in different historical periods (including the early twentieth-century politician U Ba Khaing, contemporary military leaders, and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy), I argue that the resonance of their critiques with this understanding of human beings has imparted a consistent disciplining and delegitimising effect on opposition and minority parties. However, the same conception of human nature has led other Burmese political commentators (including the independence hero General Aung San and the nineteenth-century minister U Hpo Hlaing) to construct opposing arguments that present collective, participatory political action or engagement as the necessary response to human moral deficiencies. Putting these arguments in conversation helps to reveal the disciplining aspects of the critiques of parties and offer alternative justification – still in accordance with this conception of human nature – for a robust and inclusive party system.

Philosophy and Constitutional Theory: The Cautionary Tale of Jeremy Waldron and the Philosopher’s Stone

This article considers the relationship between moral philosophy and constitutional theory through a detailed examination of the work of Jeremy Waldron—an unavoidable voice in contemporary constitutionalist debate. Through a rigorous, original and holistic deconstruction of his work and its philosophical implications, I argue that Waldron’s engagement with core philosophy within his constitutional scholarship is wholly problematic, containing a number of ambiguities and apparent inconsistencies. These issues, I suggest, may stem from an at times rather casual treatment of the realist/anti-realist issue of core philosophy, perhaps owing something to his view that it is in fact safely irrelevant to his constitutional pursuits. In any case, this view, I argue, is misguided, and the problems which result are real: they not only create issues of theoretical consistency and clarity; they put Waldron’s constitutional theory in danger. Like all good tales, I suggest there are lessons to be learned from this: one must think, and think carefully, about the philosophical background of one’s work, and take care in setting this out in a clear, thorough and coherent way—the stakes are too high not to. With this in mind, this article also lays some groundwork for a path into constitutional theory firmly grounded in my own anti-realist moral scepticism.

Moral scepticism

Scepticism in general is the view that we can have little or no knowledge; thus moral scepticism is the view that we can have little or no moral knowledge. Some moral sceptics argue that we cannot have moral knowledge because we cannot get the evidence necessary to justify any moral judgments. More radical moral sceptics argue that we cannot have moral knowledge because in morality there are no truths to be known. These radical sceptics argue either that moral judgments are all false because they erroneously presuppose the real existence of ‘objective values’, or that moral judgments aim to express feelings or influence behaviour instead of stating truths. Critics of moral scepticism, in turn, argue that in at least some cases moral judgments aim to state truths, some of these judgments are in fact true, and we have enough evidence to say that we know these moral truths.