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The debate around whether novel beings should be legally recognized as legitimate rights holders is one that has produced a vast amount of commentary. This paper contributes to this discourse by shifting the normative focus of moral rights away from criteria possessed by the novel beings in question, and back toward the criterion upon which we ourselves are able to make legitimate rights claims. It draws heavily on the moral writing of Alan Gewirth’s identification of noumenal agency as the source of all legitimate rights claims. Taking Gewirthian ethical rationalism as providing a universally applicable hypothetical imperative which binds all agents to comply with its requirements, the paper argues that it is at least morally desirable that any legal system should recognize the moral rights claims of all agents as equally legitimate. By extension, it is at least morally desirable that the status of legal personhood should be granted by a legal system to all novel beings who are noumenal agents, insofar as this status is necessary for rights’ legal recognition. Having established the desirability of this extension, the paper closes with an examination of recent cases involving both biological and nonbiological novel beings in order to assess their conformity with the desirable approach outlined above. The paper demonstrates that such recognition is conceptually possible, thus requiring us to move beyond the current anthropocentricity of legal systems and recognize the legitimate moral claim for legal personhood for all novel beings who possess noumenal agency.

This chapter explores how revelation functions in German Idealism, especially in the case of G. W. F Hegel (1770–1831) and F. W. J. Schelling (1775–1854), both of whom were hospitable to the idea of revelation in a way that J. G. Fichte (1762–1814) was not. Against the background of a general questioning of the standard theistic account of revelation, and of Fichte’s violent rejection of it and Kant’s moral reduction, both Hegel and Schelling attempted to revise revelation to take into account the dynamic self-manifesting character of the divine such that, at the very least, the creation of nature and human being is not accidental. After a synopsis of the development of the thought of each, the chapter focuses on representative texts: Hegel’s Phenomenology (1807) and Schelling’s Philosophie der Offenbarung (1841–1842). While structurally speaking in their philosophies of revelation Hegel and Schelling have much in common, there is much that divides them both methodologically and substantively. When it comes to explaining revelation, Hegel is confident in a way that Schelling is not. When it comes to register, in the case of Hegel the register is reason, in the case of Schelling, will. Finally, when it comes to constructing the relation between God and world, Hegel emphasizes their logical and ontological reciprocity, whereas Schelling asserts a measure of independence of God from the world, even if the world makes a real difference to a Trinitarian God who can no longer be thought to be self-sufficient without remainder.

One of the most striking developments in the penal system in England and Wales is the increasing use of the polygraph by probation services. Despite severe criticism from scientific institutions and academic discourse, the legal order increasingly deploys the long-discredited polygraph in order to extract adverse statements from released offenders. Our article is structured as follows: First, we summarise the statutory and regulatory framework for the current use of the polygraph in the monitoring of sex offenders released on licence, and the proposed expansion of the polygraph testing regime as set out in the Domestic Abuse Bill and the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill respectively. We then review our findings in respect of governing policies and procedures uncovered by our FOI-based research, highlighting the concerning lack of consistency in respect of both practice and procedure. In the subsequent sections we set out the main arguments deployed by polygraph proponents, and posit our view that none of these arguments can withstand scrutiny. We conclude by proposing a moratorium on any further use of the polygraph by the State, in order to thoroughly evaluate its effect on the integrity of the legal order, human rights and, more generally, the Rationalist aspirations of the penal system. In addition, and given already existing law, we propose a process of independent oversight and scrutiny of the use of the polygraph in licence recall decisions and other situations impacting individual rights, especially police investigations triggered by polygraph test results.

This paper draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Friedrich Hayek to understand threats to personal and enterprise freedom, arising from public health governance. Whereas public choice theory examines the incentives these institutions provide to agents, the analysis here understands those incentives as framed by discursive social constructions that affect the identity, power, and positionality of different actors. It shows how overlapping discourses of scientific rationalism may generate a ‘road to serfdom’ narrowing freedom of action and expression across an expanding terrain. As such, the paper contributes to the growing literature emphasising the importance of narratives, stories and metaphors as shaping political economic action in ways feeding through to outcomes and institutions.

National responses to a pandemic require populations to comply through personal behaviors that occur in a cultural context. Here we show that aggregated cultural values of nations, derived from World Values Survey data, have been at least as important as top-down government actions in predicting the impact of COVID-19. At the population level, the cultural factor of cosmopolitanism, together with obesity, predict higher numbers of deaths in the first two months of COVID-19 on the scale of nations. At the state level, the complementary variables of government efficiency and public trust in institutions predict lower death numbers. The difference in effect between individual beliefs and behaviors, versus state-level actions, suggests that open cosmopolitan societies may face greater challenges in limiting a future pandemic or other event requiring a coordinated national response among the population. More generally, mass cultural values should be considered in crisis preparations. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43545-021-00080-2.

People seem to regard some norms (e.g., about the wrongness of armed robbery) as universally true, and other norms (e.g., about which side of the road to drive on) as true relativized to some context or group. This chapter considers whether such meta-evaluative beliefs are rational. There are reasons to doubt that the belief in universalism about norms is evidentially rational. Nonetheless, universalism seems to be a default setting in normative cognition. That is, when we acquire norms, we tend to presuppose that they hold universally. This chapter argues that even though the default assumption of universalism might not be evidentially rational, it is ecologically rational to have a bias in favor of universalism. However, people are not completely locked into universalism. Under conditions of low consensus regarding some norm, people do move away from universalism and adopt some form of relativism, at least at a reflective level. And this is plausibly an evidentially rational response to low consensus.

This chapter analyses the logic of ethnic antagonism as it is manifested in the new nations which have sprung up on the territories of what was Yugoslavia in order to suggest that ethnic nationalism cannot be understood in the terms of the modernist rationalism of its analysts. The politicians who took power in these elections did so in contests in which they claimed that the programmes they wished to enact were the programmes 'the people' really desired. In a situation in which the people had previously had little if any say in what was enacted by the State, there were no elaborated 'popular platforms' which could be appropriated by political candidates. When new states separate themselves off from an old state in which their peoples had been consolidated, the problem of how to determine which people belong to which new nation is problematic.

There is some irony in the triumph of legal rationalism and the demise of the ius commune, as European countries carried out the codification of their national laws, because once natural law is enacted by the sovereign and turned into positive law—this is at least what many among the drafters of the codes thought they were accomplishing—it soon loses much of its former appeal. In this context, those who believe in the sanctity of the codes—and who now find themselves in the position of defenders of the status quo—would soon regard equity, as it was understood at the end of the eighteenth century, with the same suspicion with which they viewed natural law. In France, for example, as a symbol of the arbitrariness of justice under the Ancien Regime.

This article offers a perspective on the debate about experts and their value. It considers why expert claims for attention are often regarded as suspect. It does so by reflecting on the work of Arendt, Oakeshott, and Scruton. It notes that decision makers can easily find themselves in a bind - sometimes railing against experts, like those presumed to inhabit an education ‘Blob’ in the UK - and at other times seemingly becoming dependent upon them, as in ‘the Science’ and public health. It draws attention to the character of the distaste for scepticism about experts within education, and to the intellectual origin of that scepticism itself. It highlights the alleged contradictions in the minds of sceptics especially where they want to conserve or draw strength from inherited social norms, and yet at the same time regard them as a dehumanising trap. It suggests that the contradiction can be overcome by distinguishing between their concerns about the dangers of rationalism, and their rooted attachment to reason and reasonableness. It invites practitioners to take a principled interest in risk and in its resistance to elimination. It suggests that ridicule can be healthy in so far as it deftly challenges complacency amongst experts and practitioners alike.

Since the end of the twentieth-century majority of humankind is allegedly living under conditions of modernity. This all-embracing shift has resulted in different effects and different phenomena. In some cases, the government-led modernization of traditional societies led to the destabilization of some institutions. However, it would be a mistake to assert that modernization became a denominator for the unfavorable processes. The result of the large-scale transformations brought about an emergence of compensatory reactions. Specifically, irrational aspirations became active in society. In recent years, once tabooed occultism has become popular, which entailed intense yet expected attention from academia. Despite transition to modern forms of social structure, such as the strengthening of rationalism, technologization, the advancement of science, a certain layer in society is inclined to believe in the “miraculous powers of occultism” or takes it quite seriously as a science. Observed interest in society for the irrational is analyzed in the context of the chosen path of the country’s development. It is also assessed as concurrently transpiring multicomponent and contradictory trends in the global arena. The study examines the question of the significance of the statement “collective neurosis” in modern society. It argues that whether revitalization, if any, of occultism reflects societal tensions related to dissatisfaction with reality and distrust towards certain state institutions.

Questions concerning evidence and facts pervade almost the “whole of philosophy”! Evidence-e.g., rationalism versus skepticism, and the ongoing epistemological discussion: what do we know?

The main aim of the chapter is to outline how political beliefs are related to citizens’ views on the role of the state and the conduct of economic policy, rationalism and human happiness. More specifically, the chapter presents the voting intention per political party. In addition, the voting intention is distinguished based on the level of rationality of the voters. Also, the chapter presents the levels of happiness of Greek society based on the voting intention. Citizens’ views on the state and taxation are also reflected in the analysis. Finally, we combine the voting intention with the economic policy.

Controversies rage over the siting of industrial wind turbines. Beyond the caricature of Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) opponents are serious arguments made by critics of industrial wind as well as its defenders. Who, exactly, are these critics? What is their gravamen? Is the legal and regulatory deck stacked against them? At which level of government should siting decisions be made? Site-specific debates are also examined, such as that regarding Cape Wind, a proposed offshore wind development that roused the Kennedy family and others on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket to vigorous protest. The pro-wind movement seems determined to cast all opposition as fundamentally irrational, superstitious, fact-free, and entirely subjective. It is as if this was a good-versus-evil struggle between the forces of science and rationalism versus ignorance and savagery. No common ground exists; no compromise is possible—all that can be done is to roll over the recusants. The NIMBY smear has proven remarkably effective in rebutting critics and fostering widespread elite disapprobation toward those who would rather not have large, usually government-subsidized projects shattering the nature of their places.

According to rationalists, the ability to make moral judgments depends on reason, while according to sentimentalists, it depends on affect. A recent development in this debate is the usage of empirical evidence to support rationalist and sentimentalist positions. This raises two questions, which will be addressed in this thesis. First: Can empirical evidence contribute to the debate between rationalism and sentimentalism? I will argue that empirical evidence is relevant for at least the question whether the process that results in moral judgments depends on reason or affect. Moreover, I will argue that empirical research can use a concept of ‘moral judgment’ that both rationalists and sentimentalists will likely accept. Such empirical research can be used to adjudicate the debate between the two sides. Second: How can we compare rationalist and sentimentalist positions on empirical support? To answer this question, I make use of causal graph theory. We can compare the empirical support of different positions by representing them as causal models and consequently inferring predictions from these models. It turns out that there is currently a lack of empirical data to compare the empirical support of even straightforward positions. Moreover, this method illuminates which issues prevent us from making clear predictions. For instance, the distinction between rationalism and sentimentalism can be made in two different ways: on basis of causal structure and on basis of causal impact. In the conclusion, I propose a research program to further examine the link between empirical evidence and philosophical debates.

Chinese philanthropy has the cultural characteristics of emotionalism, rationalism, and inclusion, resulting from the stark impact of China’s philanthropic culture throughout the ages. Internet philanthropy inherits and promotes the rationalism of traditional philanthropic culture, encouraging the general public to participate in philanthropy in a more rational way. Finally, it strives to solve the issue of information asymmetry and promote the development of a rational philanthropic culture in China.

In 960, ZHAO Kuang-yin (赵匡胤, 927–976) usurped the throne of Later Zhou Dynasty in a mutiny and established the Song Dynasty (宋, 960–1279), which then witnessed the rise and prosperity of the ideology of Rationalism in philosophy and ethics.

We are experiencing the birth pangs of a new era in the lives of the Homos sapiens: how AI, robotics, and automation is changing industry dynamics, socio-economic fundamentals, and what it means to compete. The central lesson we derive in this paper is that a rapid rate of progress or too much connectivity comes at a price one may not always want to pay or even know how to manage.

En este artículo se quiere trazar una teoría política de la insurrección en el pensamiento de Max Stirner, en tanto alternativa ética y política a la revolución. Se mostrará cómo, según el pensador alemán, la revolución es en última instancia una estrategia fallida de emancipación en tanto en cuanto no libera al individuo de las formas de subjetividad que lo mantienen dependiente del poder. Más en general, se enseñará como el orden liberal post-revolucionario, detrás del lenguaje secular de los derechos, las libertades y la igualdad, engendra técnicas más sutiles de gobernabilidad del individuo. La insurrección, en cambio, puede ser vista como un rechazo de las identidades y de los roles que disciplinan al individuo. Al respecto, se prestará una atención especial al concepto stirneriano de Eigenheit (propiedad de sí), como estrategia ética de auto-determinación y liberación de las formas rígidas de la subjetividad. En última instancia, se querrá mostrar cómo todo el proyecto político de la insurrección stirneriana se basa en un anarquismo ontológico que rechaza la lógica teleocrática del racionalismo moderno y pone en entredicho la misma noción de realización. The aim of this article to outline a political theory of insurrection in Max Stirner’s thought as an ethical and political alternative to revolution. I will show that revolution is ultimately a failed strategy of emancipation as it does not free the individual from the forms of subjectivity that keep her dependent on power. Insurrection, on the other hand, can be seen as a rejection of the identities and roles that discipline the individual. In this regard, special attention will be paid to the Stirnerian concept of Eigenheit as an ethical strategy of self-determination and liberation from rigid forms of subjectivity. Ultimately, I will show how the whole political project of the Stirnerian insurrection is based on an ontological anarchism that rejects the teleocratic logic of modern rationalism and calls into question the very notion of realization.

Italian colonial architecture began with styles directly transplanted from Italy to Eritrea—Italy’s first African colonial territory—in the 1890s. By the late 1920s, when Italy also held Libya and Italian Somalia, it had already created a substantial set of buildings (cathedrals and banks, for instance) in any number of unmodified Italian styles ranging from the classical to the neo-medieval and neo-Renaissance. Moorish (or “Oriental”) effects were also abundant, in another transplant from Europe, where they were extremely popular. Following the rise of design innovations after World War I, though, at the end of the 1920s, Italian Modernist architects—particularly the theoretically inclined Rationalists—began to protest. In conjunction with the fascist regime’s heavy investment in farming settlements, prestigious city centers, and new housing, architecture proliferated further, increasingly incorporating Rationalist design, which was the most thoughtfully syncretistic, aiming as it did to reflect particular sites while remaining Modernist. After Ethiopia was occupied in 1936, designers’ emphasis gravitated from the particulars of design theory to the wider canvas of city planning, which was driven by new ideas of racial segregation for colonial prestige and control.

This chapter turns to the Germanic tradition of comparative administrative law (CAL). It shows that, although the diversification of epistemic and practical interests of comparative public law can be perceived as a phenomenon associated with the processes of Europeanization and globalization, a look back into legal history reveals that essential elements of modern comparative law can already be seen much earlier. In the Germanic tradition, as in the traditions of other European countries, comparative approaches to public law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are of special interest. It was then that rationalism and, later, legal positivism gave rise to the first forms of ‘universalist’ and ‘culturalist’ approaches to legal comparison. While universalist approaches focus on generic legal and institutional problems of political communities and, therefore, look for common solutions, culturalist approaches emphasize the historical and cultural imprint of the law and consequently remain suspicious of universal solutions.

The fallacies the author want to expose are of a more important and elusive kind. They are the result of assumptions — for the most part unnoticed or never adequately articulated — which underlie our thinking in areas which do not easily admit of formalization. If unilateralist thinking is flawed by its Apocalyptic assumptions, so is multilateralist thinking by a tendency of quite opposite character: namely a particular form of ‘rationalism’ which dates back to the Enlightenment, Kant and Bentham having been its first and most distinguished exponents. The chapter sets out the most general and decisive reasons for this, and consider, very briefly, one key episode in the history of multilateral nuclear disarmament during the last three decades: an episode brings out more clearly than any abstract argument can what is wrong — or rather what is fatally missing — in CRTMC when conceived as the framework within which nuclear disarmament must be achieved.

A compreensão deste texto ocorre a partir de duas diferentes perspectivas: (1) psicológica, entendendo o conceito de racionalismo como a superioridade da razão sobre outras áreas da vida humana; (2) política, em que a ideia de racionalismo é compreendida a partir, principalmente, de pressupostos do filósofo inglês Michael Oakeshott.

This chapter examines one of the sources of Montaigne’s use of skepticism against the Reformation in his Apology for Raymond Sebond, namely, Augustine’s deployment of Academic skepticism against Manicheanism. The particular kind of religious rationalism combatted by Montaigne and the political danger it posed in his time required a radicalization of the kind of skepticism employed. Montaigne thus used Pyrrhonism instead of Academic skepticism.

Nas décadas de 1960 e 1970, F. A. Hayek demonstrou, por meio de seus escritos, certa preocupação com o esvaziamento dos fundamentos da doutrina do Estado de Direito. Era necessário retomar e preservar os fundamentos dessa doutrina, a fim de assegurar a liberdade dos indivíduos face a seus pares e ao Estado. Parece que, hoje em dia, as sociedades livres passam por um processo similar de questionamento e relativização da doutrina do Estado de Direito. Os fundamentos do Estado de Direito defendidos por Hayek abrangem a liberdade individual e negativa, o evolucionismo social, e o império da lei aplicável de forma imparcial. O presente artigo visa a estudar os fundamentos da doutrina do Estado de Direito para F. A. Hayek. Em uma sociedade aberta tem-se um estado de liberdade em que todos podem usar seu conhecimento para seus próprios propósitos, limitados por normas gerais de aplicação universal. O Estado deve ser limitado por princípios gerais a que a comunidade tenha se comprometido prévia e constitucionalmente. Sem os fundamentos do Estado de Direito, como ensinou Hayek, têm-se a discricionariedade administrativa do Estado, a servidão da vontade e o racionalismo construtivista das normas.

This paper explores UK public sector outsourcing to offer a critique of the theory of liberal institutional convergence. The latter argues that NPM is a case of empiricist scientific rationalism but the neoclassical economics that justifies public sector outsourcing operates with a closed-system ontology of the economy that has more affinities with Stalinist central planning than to empirical political economic science, and this has real institutional consequences. The argument sets out the neoclassical logic behind outsourcing, the unanticipated risks in its conception and the deepening problems with its intensification as practice. It shows how, when we put the market rhetoric of NMP to one side, outsourcing necessitates the central planning of private actors, and the success of this venture hinges on the viability of the outsourcing contract as an effective junction of instruction and control. If there is institutional convergence in New Public Management it is with Soviet enterprise planning. It follows that it is not simply ‘second-best-world’ neoclassical theories that can shed light on outsourcing's chronic failures but also the critiques of Soviet central planning. The latter help explain why incomplete contracts in outsourcing are just the start of bargaining games that the state cannot win.

Muslim, ex-Muslim as well as converted Muslim intellectuals are increasingly prominent figures in the West European far-right movement. By analysing their publications and online presence, we observe that concepts utilized by Muslim-background intellectuals popular in the German far right build on two seemingly contradictory tropes of German national identity—rationality and spirituality—and a civilizationism that oscillates between notions of rational liberalism and an illiberalism based on spiritualism. As these intellectuals combine the tropes of German nationhood and European civilisation, the far right builds connections with the growing Muslim demographic in Germany. The movement provides space for a variety of Muslim-background intellectuals: those who embrace a secular-liberal self-description emphasize how rationalism is synonymous with Germanness, while those who embrace a religious self-description critique liberal rationalism as lacking spirit. In so doing, Muslim public intellectuals help the far right to simultaneously spiritualize national reason and rationalize national spirit.

This chapter addresses secular humanism in Europe and the way it is “lived” by and within its major institutions and organizations. It examines how national and international secular humanist bodies founded after World War II took up, cultivated, and transformed free-religious, free-thought, ethical, atheist, and rationalist roots from nineteenth century Europe and adjusted them to changing social, cultural, and political environments. Giving examples from some selected national contexts, the development of a nonreligious Humanism in Europe exemplifies what Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt call “Multiple Secularities”: different local or national trajectories produced a variety of cultures of secularity and, thus, different understandings of secular humanism. Apart from this cultural historization, the chapter reconstructs two transnational, ideal types of secular humanism, the social practice type, and the secularist pressure group type. These types share similar worldviews and values, but have to be distinguished in terms of organizational forms, practices, and especially policy.

Digitalization affects the relation between human agents and technological objects. This paper looks at digital behavior change technologies (BCT) from a deontological perspective. It identifies three moral requirements that are relevant for ethical approaches in the tradition of Kantian deontology: epistemic rationalism, motivational rationalism and deliberational rationalism. It argues that traditional Kantian ethics assumes human &lsquo, subjects&rsquo, to be autonomous agents, whereas &lsquo, objects&rsquo, are mere passive tools. Digitalization, however, challenges this Cartesian subject-object dualism: digital technologies become more and more autonomous and take on agency. Similarly, human subjects can outsource agency and will-power to technologies. In addition, our intersubjective relations are being more and more shaped by digital technologies. The paper therefore re-examines the three categories &lsquo, subject&rsquo, &lsquo, object&rsquo, and &lsquo, intersubjectivity&rsquo, in light of digital BCTs and suggests deontological guidelines for digital objects, digital subjects and a digitally mediated intersubjectivity, based on a re-examination of the requirements of epistemic, motivational and deliberational rationalism.

Rationalists (including Butler, Price, and Reid) defend an alternative to the sentimentalist position, in three main areas: (1) Against the view that practical reason is subordinate to non-rational desire, they argue that some of our actions result from desires that are responsive to reason, so that we are guided by the apparent merits of different course of action, not just by our non-rational preferences. (2) Against the view that moral judgments depend on our emotions, and moral facts are partly constituted by our emotional reactions, they argue that moral judgments cannot be understood unless we recognize that they are rational judgments about objective facts. (3) Against the view that our moral outlook is utilitarian, they argue that utility is only one relevant moral consideration, and that we have good reason to attend to justice, generosity, and other aspects of morality that are not subordinate to utility.

A review of the book: Cyrus Rohani & Behrooz Sabet (eds.), Winds of Change: The Challenge of Modernity in the Middle East and North Africa. (London: Saqi Books, 2019)

E. V. Ramasamy “Naicker” (1879–1973), better known as “Periyar” (literally “the big man”; figuratively “the revered one”), is an iconic figure in the history of Tamil Nadu. In Tamil Nadu all governments of the state since 1967 have been formed by two parties—Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)—both of which split from Periyar’s Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) and claim his legacy. Periyar is primarily known as a social reformer, anti-caste crusader, champion of non-Brahmin political and social interests, advocate of women’s rights, and atheist and rationalist. At an all-India level his reputation is that of an “anti-national” who demanded secession from the Indian Union, an atheist who rejected god, religion, and rituals. In 1990, in the context of the Indian government’s move to introduce reservation (affirmative action) for backward castes in education and employment, and the upper-caste protest against it, Periyar’s role in empowering backward castes has received attention. Further, with the renewed rise of Hindu fundamentalism from the 1990s, Periyar’s critique of religion, especially Hinduism, has been recognized politically and intellectually. The dominance of intermediary castes in south India, and Dalit political and cultural assertion since the 1990s, has triggered a re-evaluation of Periyar’s ideas on caste and their impact on the empowerment of backward castes. The renewed political interest in Periyar’s ideas and a longstanding academic interest in the history of the non-Brahmin movement have come together in recent times. This has resulted in the proliferation of new compilations, editions, and reprints of Periyar’s writings. Analytical studies of his life and politics is a growing field. Though undertheorized by scholars, Periyar’s ideas on caste, religion, women’s rights, and language provide a window into understanding and conceptualizing non-mainstream ideological trends in modern Asian history.

A residual realism acknowledges the existence of an external world to which we are, as it were, causally connected. A residual realism has been taken for granted in the course of rejecting a stronger realism; indeed strong realism has been rejected as incompatible with the general outlines of residual realism. Historically, realism has developed in opposition to idealism; relativism has developed in opposition to rationalism. Realist usually adhere to a notion of truth as correspondence; indeed the correspondence theory of truth has been taken as close to a definition of realism in the philosophy of science. To the extent that it serves merely to facilitate specific predictions about appearances, realism is reduced to instrumentalism. Finitism may seem like the very antithesis of realism. It is incompatible with a correspondence theory of truth. It denies that concepts have extensions, even if they are putative natural kinds or real universals.