Philosophy and Public Affairs (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements)

215 Pages·2000·5.95 MB·English

by  John Haldane

Philosophy,
and
Public Affairs
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY SUPPLEMENT: 45
EDITED BY
John Haldane
CAMBRIDGE
W UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2000
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
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A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 0 521 66784 4 paperback
ISSN 1358-2461
To Greta and Struther Arnott
m

Contents
Introduction 1
JOHN HALDANE
In Defence of Individualism 7
SAMUEL BRITTAN
Market Boundaries and Human Goods 23
RUSSELL KEAT
A Tale of Three Karls: Marx, Popper, Polanyi and
Post-Socialist Europe 37
DAVID MARQUAND
Liberty's Hollow Triumph 51
JOHN SKORUPSKI
Politics, Religion, and National Identity 73
GORDON GRAHAM
Contemporary Art, Democracy, and the State 85
GEORGE WALDEN
Popular Culture and Public Affairs 97
BRYAN APPLEYARD
Welfare and the State 105
MELANIE PHILLIPS
Questions of Begging 121
TONY SKILLEN
Philosophy and Educational Policy 135
ANTHONY O'HEAR
What did John Dewey Want? 157
ALAN RYAN
Contents
Educating for Citizenship 175
DAVID ALTON
Being Human: Science, Knowledge and Virtue 189
JOHN HALDANE
Index 203
VI
Notes on Contributors
David Alton is a Member of the Upper House in the UK Parliament
having previously served as an MP for eighteen years. He was formerly
Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council and founder of the Jubilee
Campaign. Currently Director of the Foundation for Citizenship at
Liverpool John Moores University, he is the author of six books, includ-
ing Citizen Virtues (Harper Collins, 1999).
Bryan Appleyard is a journalist and cultural commentator who writes
regularly for, among other publications, The Sunday Times. He is the
author of a number of books including Understanding the Present
(Picador, 1992) and Brave New Worlds: Genetics and the Human
Experience (Harper Collins, 1999), which was highly commended in the
BMA Medical Book Competition.
Samuel Brittan is a writer on political economy He has a regular col-
umn on The Financial Times and contributes to other journals. His most
recent books are Capitalism with a Human Face (Fontana/Harper
Collins, 1996) and Essays, Moral, Political and Economic (Edinburgh
University Press for David Hume Institute, 1998).
Gordon Graham is Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy at the
University of Aberdeen where he also directs the Centre for Philosophy,
Technology and Society. He is a frequent contributor to academic jour-
nals as well as radio and the press. His most recent books are The
Internet: a Philosophical Inquiry (Routledge, 1999), and Evil and
Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for
Philosophy and Public Affairs in the University of St Andrews. He co-
authored Atheism and Theism in the Great Debates in Philosophy series
(Blackwell, 1997) and a collection of his papers entitled Faithful Reason
will be published by Routledge. Besides being widely published academi-
cally he contributes to the press and broadcasting
Russell Keat is Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of
Social and Political Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He co-edited
Enterprise Culture (Routledge, 1992) with Nicholas Abercrombie, and
The Authority of the Consumer (Routledge, 1994) with Nigel Whitely and
Nicholas Abercrombie. A collection of his essays, Cultural Goods and the
Limits of the Market is shortly to be published by Macmillan.
David Marquand was MP for Ashfield from 1966-1977 and is now
Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford and Honorary Professor of
Politics at the University of Sheffield. His books include Ramsay
Vll
Notes on Contributors
MacDonald (second edition, Cohen Books, 1997), The New Reckoning:
Capitalism, States and Citizens (Polity Press, 1997), and the recently
republished The Progressive Dilemma (second edition, Phoenix Press,
1999).
Anthony O'Hear is Professor of Philosophy in the University of
Bradford and Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. His most
recent books are Beyond Evolution (Oxford University Press, 1997) and
After Progress (Bloomsbury, 1999). From 1989 to 1997 he was a govern-
ment advisor on education and teacher training.
Melanie Phillips is a Sunday Times columnist who writes about social
policy and political culture. She is also the author of The Sex-Change
Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male, published by the
Social Market Foundation, 1999; and All Must Have Prizes, published
by Little Brown, 1996.
Alan Ryan is Warden of New College, where he teaches philosophy and
politics. His most recent books are Liberal Education and Liberal
Anxieties (Profile Books, 1999), John Dewey and the High Tide of America
Liberalism (Norton & Co., 1995) and Bertrand Russell: A Political Life
(Oxford University Press, 1993). He has written extensively on J.S. Mill,
property rights, and liberal politics generally, for both an academic and a
more general audience.
John Skorupski is Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of St
Andrews. He is the author of John Stuart Mill in the Arguments of the
Philosophers series (Routledge, 1989) and of English-Language
Philosophy 1750-1945 in the OPUS History of Western Philosophy
(Oxford, 1993). He edited the Cambridge Companion to Mill (1988) and a
collection of his essays is published under the title Ethical Explorations
(Oxford, 2000).
George Walden is a journalist and writer. A former Russian and
Chinese specialist in the Foreign Office, he became a Conservative MP
but resigned his seat at the last election and is no longer a member of a
political party. His latest book is Lucky George: Memoirs of an Anti-
Politician (Penguin, 1999). Other books include Ethics and Foreign Policy
(Weidenfeld, 1989), We Should Know Better: Solving the Education Crisis
(Fourth Estate, 1996). He is currently completing a book on Anarchism.
vm
Introduction
JOHN HALDANE
Whoever promotes the common good of the community simulta-
neously promotes their own good; first, because individual well-
being cannot exist without the well being of the family, the city or
the realm ... and second because being part of the family or of the
city it is right to consider personal well-being in the light of what
is prudent with regard to the common good.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ha, Ilae, q. 47, a. 10
It is sometimes said that philosophy begins with curiosity; but it
would be as true to say that it starts in confusion (where any partic-
ular enquiry ends up depends on the gifts of those involved).
Typically one finds oneself faced with a conflict between experience
and reflection, or within thought itself. Certain things seem obvi-
ously morally impermissible say, but it appears impossible to con-
ceive how anything could be, in and of itself, always and everywhere
absolutely wrong. Justice seems to require redistributing wealth for
the sake of welfare, yet compulsory taxation can also appear a para-
digm of injustice: state-organised theft. Society represents itself as
a voluntary association of free individuals, yet our sense of our-
selves as voluntary agents is something formed by society not some-
thing antecedent that we bring to it.
So it continues. Natural rights may be as Bentham suggested
'nonsense on stilts', yet the liberal, political sensibility that he did
much to form, finds 'rights' talk not just convenient but compelling.
Conservatives frequently argue that tradition is the embodiment of
social wisdom, yet often denounce entrenched collective practices as
inimical to sound policy making. Those preoccupied with social jus-
tice often urge the need to adapt social norms to the interests of
immigrant minorities while pursuing general policies that are in
direct opposition to the most deeply held beliefs and values of these
minorities.
Such notions and conflicts are the concerns of moral, social and polit-
ical philosophy. It is tempting to say 'such are their starting points';
but the truth of the matter is that conflicts and confusions of these
sorts are as much the effects as they are the causes of philosophy.
There is a recurrent idea that first thoughts are best, because
somehow closer to the facts. One version of this notion is the belief