To get us started this week, here’s a fascinating piece I found via Bookforum.com a few weeks ago — “John Rawls: On My Religion: How Rawls’s political philosophy was influenced by his religion,” by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel.

VERY interesting, especially if you are studying Rawls.  Do check it out.

Update 4/8/2009: Here’s a follow-up piece, from the New Republic, “Driven Up the Rawls,” by William Galston.

Here are the January 2009 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Though collection development is on hold for the time being at Robbins, are any of these worth considering for purchase at a later date?

Aesthetics

• Alexander Nehamas, Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art, Reviewed by Martin Donougho, University of South Carolina-Columbia
• Noël Carroll, On Criticism, Reviewed by Alan H. Goldman, College of William & Mary
• Richard Eldridge, Literature, Life, and Modernity, Reviewed by Robert Pippin, University of Chicago
• Garry L. Hagberg (ed.), Art and Ethical Criticism, Reviewed by Richard Eldridge, Swarthmore College
• John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, Luca Pocci (eds.), A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge, Reviewed by Allen Speight, Boston University

Philosophers

• Michael Frauchiger, Wilhelm K. Essler (eds.). Representation, Evidence, and Justification: Themes from Suppes, Reviewed by Kenny Easwaran, University of Southern California/Australian National University
• Robert Wicks, Schopenhauer, Reviewed by Robert Guay, Binghamton University
• Thomas Parker, Volition, Rhetoric, and Emotion in the Work of Pascal, Reviewed by Michael Moriarty, Queen Mary, University of London
• Andrew Janiak, Newton as Philosopher, Reviewed by Richard Arthur, McMaster University

Metaphysics

• Joanna Hodge, Derrida on Time, Reviewed by Linnell Secomb, University of Greenwich
• Jacqueline Mariña, Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Reviewed by C. Jeffery Kinlaw, McMurry University
• Marc A. Hight, Idea and Ontology: An Essay in Early Modern Metaphysics of Ideas, Reviewed by Monte Cook, University of Oklahoma

Epistemology

• Daniel N. Robinson, Consciousness and Mental Life, Reviewed by Sam Coleman, University of Hertfordshire
• Sanford C. Goldberg, Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification, Reviewed by Jonathan E. Adler, Brooklyn College/CUNY Graduate Center
• Marc Djaballah, Kant, Foucault, and Forms of Experience, Reviewed by Johanna Oksala, University of Dundee

History of Philosophy

• Pauliina Remes, Neoplatonism, Reviewed by Peter Adamson, King’s College London
• Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Philosophical Legacies: Essays on the Thought of Kant, Hegel, and Their Contemporaries, Reviewed by James R. Walker, Union College

Moral & Political Philosophy

• Christopher O. Tollefsen, Biomedical Research and Beyond: Expanding the Ethics of Inquiry, Reviewed by John McMillan, University of Hull
• David Owen, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Reviewed by Peter Poellner, University of Warwick
• Ronna Burger, Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean Ethics, Reviewed by Steven Skultety, University of Mississippi
• Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics, Reviewed by Thomas Hurka, University of Toronto
• Tamsin Shaw, Nietzsche’s Political Skepticism, Reviewed by Brian Leiter, University of Chicago
• Mark E. Button, Contract, Culture, and Citizenship: Transformative Liberalism from Hobbes to Rawls, Reviewed by Anna Stilz, Princeton University
• Stephen R. Brown, Moral Virtue and Nature: A Defense of Ethical Naturalism, Reviewed by Emer O’Hagan, University of Saskatchewan
• Philip Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Reviewed by Alan Nelson and Matthew Priselac, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Philosophy of Law

• Larry Alexander, Emily Sherwin, Demystifying Legal Reasoning, Reviewed by Dan Priel, University of Warwick

Philosophy of Religion

• Adam C. English, The Possibility of Christian Philosophy: Maurice Blondel at the Intersection of Theology and Philosophy, Reviewed by Oliva Blanchette, Boston College

Philosophy of Science

• David Bostock, Space, Time, Matter, and Form: Essays on Aristotle’s Physics, Reviewed by Inna Kupreeva, University of Edinburgh

Here is the abstract of the paper:

This paper investigates the cogency of Rawls’s hostility towards ‘welfare-state capitalism’ and his advocacy of ‘property-owning democracy’ as an alternative to capitalism. I argue that the strongest arguments in support of property-owning democracy are connected to the demands of Rawls’s difference principle. I argue that Rawls’s overall argument against the acceptability of ‘welfare-state capitalism’ is ultimately successful, but it is best understood in relation to his account of the badness of inequality. I nevertheless raise a number of problems for those lines of argument for
‘property-owning democracy’ that work through the principles of fair equality of opportunity or of fair value of the political liberties.

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for this article.

In my travels around cyberspace last week, I discovered four great articles on philosophical practice:

• From Eurozine: Daniel Gamper and Mercè Rius interview Catalan philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventós, and Jonathan Barnes, Myles Burnyeat, Raymond Geuss, and Barry Stroud debate the nature and place of philosophical practice
• Roger Davidson considers the humanism offered by Emmanuel Levinas
• Emanuel L. Paparella writes, “Emmanuel Levinas’ Challenge to the Modern European Cultural Identity“
• Simon May reviews Simon Critchley’s new book, The Book of Dead Philosophers

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for these links.

Good morning, readers! Happy Friday!

For those interested in political philosophy, John Rawls (at left) is one of the most important figures of the late 20th century. Justice as Fairness, A Theory of Justice, The Law of Peoples, and Political Liberalism are important texts for students of political philosophy. For those readers unfamiliar with Rawls’ work, Leif Weinar provides an excellent overview of Rawls’ work in the heading to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Rawls:

[Rawls] was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition. His theory of justice as fairness envisions a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights cooperating within an egalitarian economic system. His account of political liberalism addresses the legitimate use of political power in a democracy, aiming to show how enduring unity may be achieved despite the diversity of worldviews that free institutions allow. His writings on the law of peoples extend these theories to liberal foreign policy, with the goal of imagining how a peaceful and tolerant international order might be possible.

Likewise, Robert Nozick (at right) is also of interest for contemporary students of political philosophy. (For those readers who do not know, Rawls and Nozick were colleagues here in the philosophy department at Harvard.) Nozick’s book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a libertarian response to Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Readers interested in learning more might want to read Peter Vallentyne’s entry on libertarianism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

From the little that I have read, and through conversations I’ve had here with members of the department over the last few years, Rawls and Nozick are usually viewed as having two different approaches to political philosophy. So, when I was skimming through Bookforum.com a few days ago, this article by David Lewis Schaefer, comparing Rawls’ and Nozick’s political philosophy caught my attention. Schaefer makes the claim that Rawls and Nozick do not differ as much as they are sometimes made out to differ. In fact, Schaefer claims, they are similar in many respects.

I have not read much by either Rawls or Nozick, so I am in no position to judge the accuracy of Schaefer’s claims. What do my readers who are better versed in these matters think of Schaefer’s claims?

At right: Cy Young baseball card, 1911; a public domain image from the Library of Congress

Opening day for baseball season is less than two weeks away. Thus, it seems appropriate to include Owen Fiss’ introduction and inclusion of a letter by John Rawls on baseball. (The text of the letter, along with a PDF facsimile of the original, can be found in the Boston Review.)

In this letter, Rawls recounts a conversation that he had with the legal scholar, Harry Kalven, in which Kalven speaks about why baseball is the best of all games. It is an amazing letter to read. Furthermore, as Fiss notes in his introduction, how both Rawls and Kalven used baseball examples to make technical points in some of their work.

And now, for something completely different – In an earlier post, I wrote about philosophical autobiography. Continuing the thread of the idea in that post, I include, for your viewing pleasure today, Alain Badiou’s fascinating discussion of philosophy as biography as found in the most recent issue of The Symptom.

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for these articles.

On Bernard Williams

Lisa Hague (University of Kent) reviews Alan Thomas (ed.), Bernard Williams, Cambridge University Press, 2007, for Metapsychology Online Reviews.

Hague outlines the seven essays included in this volume, whose authors are, respectively: Adrian Moore, Alan Thomas, John Skorupski, Robert B. Louden, Michael Stocker, Tony Long, and Edward Craig. She writes, “The seven papers assess his work on moral realism, moral objectivity, the nature of practical reason, moral emotion, the critique of the ‘morality system’, Williams’ assessment of the ethical thought of the ancient world, and his work on Nietzsche’s method of ‘genealogy’.”

On John Rawls

Arthur Kuflik (University of Vermont) reviews Thomas Pogge’s John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for both of these reviews.

Enjoy your weekend, folks!