Truth and Relativity: An Exchange: 1. Sean Sayers' Relativism; 2. Once more on Relative Truth: A Reply to Skillen

TRUTH & RELATIVITY: AN EXCHANGE Sean Sayers’ Relativism Tony Skiffen For some years Sean Sayers has been urging, against empiricism and anal ytical philosophy, the virtues of dialecticallogic. Such logic, he believes, is essential to a proper understanding. I take issue with this view at the level of ‘logic and language’. It seems to me […]

Replies to Richard Rorty’s ‘Feminism and Pragmatism’: 1. How Did the Dinosaurs Die Out? How Did the Poets Survive? 2. Richard Rorty: Knight Errant

REPLIES TO RICHARD RORTY’S ‘FEMINISM AND PRAGMATISM’ I How Did the Dinosaurs Die Out? How Did the Poets Survive? Catherine Wilson In ‘Feminism and Pragmatism’ (Radical Philosophy 59, pp. 3-14), Richard Rorty offers feminists an arrangement of convenience. In exchange for their support of his philosophical programme, which involves the rejection of a representationalist account […]

Active Citizenship as Political Obligation: + Community as Compulsion? A Reply to Skillen on Citizenship and the State

Active Citizenship as Political Obligation Tony Skiffen Rousseau says in The Social Contract: As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the state is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to […]

Politics Re-entered: The State in its Place

Politics Re-entered: The State in its Place Tony Skillen Though we cannot turn our backs on it or imagine, or wish, that it will wither away, the idea that the state is by definition the sole locus of politics seems Increasingly archaic. The price of retaining ‘the statist conception of politics’ seems to me that […]

41 Reviews

REVIEWS Young Hegels H.S. Harris, Hegel’s Development, Volume 11: Night Thoughts (Jena 1.801-6), Oxford University Press, 1983, £35 hb, lxx + 627pp Robert C. Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel, Oxford University Press, New York, 1983, £25 hb, xxiv + 646pp M.J. Inwood, Hegel, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983, £24 hb, xv + 582pp In […]

40 Editorial

EDITORIAL ” Environmental politics has so far remained organisationally fragmented and limited in its effects in Britain, compared, for example, with Australia or West Germany. This is also .true of the scale and quality of theoretical contributions on environmental questions in the literature of the Left in Britain. Radical Philosophy has itself so far :nade […]

39 Editorial

Editorial Radical Philosophy has never had radical political philosophy at its centre. This stark fact, contrary to the aims and to the self-consciousness of the ‘Group’, requires explanation. It was as if, in the heady early days, the validi ty of some socialist political philosophy or other (untainted by the evils of actually existing socialism) […]

38 Reviews

REVIEWS Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism, Basil Blackwell, 1982 .Bryan Wilson’s anthology of essays on ‘Rationality’, first published in 1970, has become something of a minor classic in recent analytical philosophy, bringing together the main contributions to a lively and accessible debate, and providing the starting-point for a host of subsequent […]

RP Dayschool, Scientists and Disarmament, Belgrade Maintains Intellectual Repression

NEWS R P Dayschool Over 50 people attended a lively and stimulating RP sponsored dayschool held at Sussex University on a rather cold and snowy November Saturday. The topic was ‘Recent Issues in Marxist Philosophy’. The day began with John Mepham and David Ruben discussing the recent Harvester series which they edited, with Jonathan Ree […]

Post-Marxist Modes of Production

POST-MARXIST M I ‘) .. or PRODUCTION According to whoever wrote the editorial ‘notes’ for Radical Philosophy 17, ‘The present upsurge of fundamental Marxist researches may indicate an exit route from the circle of philosophy’s –deaths and re births , via which the problem of the specificity of “the philosophical” might be both subverted and […]

20 Reviews

HERMENEUTICS Bc BEYOND Dilthey: Selected Writings, edited, translated and introduced by HP Rickman, CUP, £8.75 The main philosophical project of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833 -1911) was to establish the possibility of knowledge in the human sciences, or ‘human studies’ as Rickman prefers to translate the term Geisteswissenschaften, thus marking a difference between these and the natural […]

14 Reviews

Reviews Anarchy, State and Utopia R A Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Blackwells, 1974 367pp £5.50 By elaborating A theory of Justice in terms of a general social, political and moral theory, and by arguing specifically for a form of welfarestate liberalism, John Rawls brought political philosophy back to the academic groves from the wilderness. […]

Supplement: Philosophy From Below

PHIEOSOPHY FROM PH I L 050 PHI CAL ADVicE 1”’£ t!.Ec.N “PlVIIII& Gc~f:~ J)~’c.uL:T’f 25p S,’-uA-r,NC’:r MY Wl11- f>R.o~I-E….,,,..ftc~ SU~Cll<.m- R.IGo~!! I I PHILOSoPHIC.A-L ADvicE -rAKE AN EPI’SfEtllol.O&/CAL BREAK. ‘2.5 PENCE Pt..EA~. 25 P aDDlaDls Out of the Depths GLASGOW SUSSEX ~IDDX. POLY PXFORD (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) Reds in the Bed Into the Unknown […]

Marxism and Morality

Ma..xism and mo..alily Tony Skillen You just about need a pass to piss. Tha t a.in’ t no joke. You raise your little hand i f you want to go wee-wee. Then wait maybe half an hour ’till they find a relief-man. And they write it down every time too – cause you’re supposed to […]

5 Reviews

REVIEWS The new journal Economy and Society declared its stand under the banner of serious scholarship. Its editorial statement noted that ‘The search for new orientations (in social science) has led to a revived interest in ~Iarxism, Structural i sm, and Phenomenology in its various forms, to attempts to create a ‘critical’ theory. Thesd’new interests, […]

Symposium: What is Radical Philosophy?

WHAT IS RADI[AL PHILOSOPHV? BEGINNING FROM COMMITMENT Peter Binns [Reprinted with permission from Times Higher Educational Supplement. 5th May, ]972] The recent conference of radical philosophers in London attracted hundreds of dissident intellectuals. Yet it became apparent that there was no single clearly defined direction in which the philosophers wanted to move as a whole. […]

The Statist Conception of Politics

THE STADSI [On[EPTIOn OF POLITI[S Tanv Skillen philosophically sanctified. Moral and Political Philosophy are taught as separate fields: evidently the problems of the politician (the Statesman) are not the problems of the ordinary chap, save at such times when the ordinary chap goes to the po:ls or lobbies his M.P. (the Citizen) or marches to […]

A Reaction to Radical Philosophy; Response to Sanity, Madness & The Problem of Philosophy: With Reply to Hinton

noTES A REACTION TO RADICAL PHILOSOPHY J.M.Hinton No one, I believe, can yet say with any confidence to what extent the ‘mere’ attempt to uproot perennial forms of falsehood from our ways of thinking may itself change the world. If only for this reason, it is a mistake to reach the conclusion that contemporary British […]

On seeing Things Differently: With reply by Tony Skillen

on SEEIIIIi tHlnliS DIFFEREmlY RiEhard Donnan •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Some moral disagreements are more fundamental than others. This is obvious. In particular, some moral disagreements are so fundamental that t~ey are to be regarded not simply as conflicts between particular moral beliefs hut as conflicts between distinct moralities. This, though less ohvious, has heen increasingly recognised hy […]

86 Reviews

Kinds of Minds provides an introduction to, and refinement of, the position Dennett has developed to increasing acclaim over nearly thirty years, and which is now sufficiently important to require engagement from those aligned with different philosophical traditions. For he deals with a crucial topic – the place of intentionality in a material world – […]