The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 84 potx

have recently appeared (Grisez, Miller); *teleological arguments are defended in new forms (Swinburne); and the ‘fine tuning’ witnessed to by recent cosmology has ini- tiated a new phase in the dialogue between science and religion. Finally, the theories of *meaning on which philosoph- ical scepticism in the mid-twentieth century heavily relied have been displaced by more complex accounts. If a phil- osophy of language and meaningfulness is complex enough to cope with contemporary scientific theorizing (e.g. with the thought models and paradoxes of quantum theory), it will not also be able to be sharply dismissive of all religious and theological language. The thought models, the metaphors, the paradoxes that arise in that context, will continue to deserve patient and attentive analysis. r.w.h. *God and the philosophers; atheism and agnosticism; religion, history of the philosophy of; religion, prob- lems of the philosophy of. C. F. Delaney (ed.), Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame, Ind., 1979). G. Grisez, Beyond the New Theism (Notre Dame, Ind., 1975). J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford, 1982). B. Miller, From Existence to God (London, 1992). R. Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford, 1979). religion and epistemology. The epistemology of religion is the attempt to solve philosophical problems about *knowledge which arise from religion. For example: Is there mystical knowledge? Is there knowledge by *revela- tion or *natural theology? Can *God be known to exist, for example, if there is a sound proof of God’s existence? Is it possible to have knowledge of the properties of God: omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence, simplicity, and eternity? (Omniscience is arguably a part of omnipotence, if omnipotence is the ability to do anything, and knowing is something that can be done.) Arguably, religion yields ways of experiencing and understanding that exceed the secular powers of the senses and the intellect. Augustine’s claim creo ut scio, ‘I believe in order to know’, rather than a dogmatic reversal of ordinary intellectual priorities, is a principle conducive to non-reductivist explanation. Aquinas main- tains that reason needs to be supplemented by faith in order to obtain a fuller understanding of reality, even if this falls far short of adequate knowledge of God, because we are finite and imperfect beings. Pascal famously said there are two mistakes: to deny reason and to allow only reason. Hume and Kant have argued that in a sense there is no epistemology of religion if this implies knowledge of God. Hume criticizes arguments from design in Dialogues Con- cerning Natural Religion and the likelihood of miracles in the First Enquiry. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that there is no persuasive a priori or a posteriori argu- ment for the existence of God. Nevertheless, in his moral philosophy he allows God, freedom, and immortality as postulates of pure practical reason. All the problems of epistemology are problems for the epistemology of religion. For example, knowing what belief is, is necessary for knowing what belief in God is. Knowing whether there is knowledge is necessary for knowing whether there is mystical knowledge. It could be that once metaphysical problems about ultimate reality and one’s own existence are grasped with clarity, it is seen that their answers have to be theological. For example, ‘Why is a particular person you?’, ‘Why is it now, now?’, ‘Why is there a universe?’, ‘Where is there metaphysical room for what ought to be as well as what is?’ only admit of answers if theism is true. Nevertheless, a God whose existence and nature could be established by human beings with logical certainty would arguably not be the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, the God of faith. s.p. Brian Davies (ed.), Philosophy of Religion (Oxford, 2000). Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford, 1979). Thomas V. Morris (ed.), The Concept of God (Oxford, 1987). religion and morality. Ethical requirements can readily be thought of as commands—with authority behind them. Whose authority? Could it be that the sole ground for moral judgements is their being willed or forbidden by *God? Could his will, alone, constitute moral rightness? That would imply that we can understand moral require- ments only if we believe in God and can know his command. On such a view, to speak of morality is no more than to speak of what, as a matter of fact, God wills or commands: a disquieting view, because it follows that if God were to will a set of imperatives totally at variance with those of morality as we know it, that set would at once have unconditional moral authority, whatever its content. A religious person wants to say (meaningfully, ser- iously) that what God commands is right and good. But if all we mean by ‘morally right and good’ is ‘what God com- mands’, then the statement ‘What God commands is right and good’, means no more than ‘What God commands is . . . what God commands’: no longer news, but only a trivi- ally true statement. We must, then, see moral obligatori- ness and goodness not as constituted by divine command, but as having a distinct and irreducible character of their own, a character that we ourselves have the moral com- petence to recognize, and which requires no further authentication. Perhaps, however, we have not acknowledged with full seriousness what a *divine command is: the command of a being with total power over his universe. How can we speak of appraising the command of such a being? Natural though this response is, it would reduce morality to mere passivity under divine power. The worship of God (in the Judaeo-Christian tradition) has been very different indeed from the worship of sheer power. Supposing, however, that there is no God, no life after the death of the body, and no final vindication of good and defeat of evil, can the moral life still be lived seriously, and altruistic concern sustained? 810 religion, scepticism about A secular moralist will argue that far from morality losing its viability and seriousness in the absence of a God and a future life, the opposite is at least as reasonable: indi- vidual moral agents are more thoroughly responsible for one another. Why should people matter less, on a secular, agnostic view? With their limited life-span, it becomes more urgent and important that they have just and fair treatment in their one life here and now. Removal of promised reward or compensation does not undermine the genuinely moral, though it does undermine the merely prudential; and the prudential often masquerades (even within ‘moral education’) as the moral. But it must be acknowledged, nevertheless, that the religions have played an important role in moral learning. To have (some) moral competence or capability does not mean we are morally omnicompetent, with nothing to learn. Any number of central moral notions, attitudes, qualities of character, have in fact come to general aware- ness only or chiefly through religious teachers. r.w.h. *categorical imperative; moral philosophy, problems of; religion, problems of the philosophy of; slave morality. P. Helm (ed.), Divine Commands and Morality (Oxford, 1981). Plato, Euthyphro. J. Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (New York, 1993), ch. 4. religion, art, and science: see science, art, and religion. religious belief and cosmology: see cosmology and religious belief. religious experience, argument for the existence of God from. This can be considered a special version of the teleo- logical argument, claiming that the widespread occurrence of religious experience, with a common phenomenological core and giving rise to a common core of interpretation, requires explanation. And it is argued (e.g. by C. D. Broad and Richard Swinburne) that the most plausible explan- ation involves the existence and activity of *God. Alternatively, religious experience can be construed as a non-inferential mode of cognition, analogous to sense, which grounds a knowledge of God in a more direct way than argumentation. It is especially important not to treat this sort of appeal to religious experience as if it were an appeal to argument, since that would invite inappropriate sorts of citicism and defence. g.i.m. *holy, numinous, and sacred. W. Alston, Perceiving God (Ithaca, NY, 1991). John Baillie, Our Knowledge of God (New York, 1959). C. D. Broad, Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical Research (London, 1953). George I. Mavrodes, Belief in God (New York, 1981). —— Revelation in Religious Belief (Philadelphia, 1988). Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford, 1979). religious language. What is religious language? It is cos- mogony, historical narrative, myth, moral discourse, as well as blessing and cursing, confessing, adoring. It cru- cially involves metaphor, symbol, analogy, parable, para- dox. It is, typically, language avowing the inexpressible, unconceptualizable nature of its object, or the indescrib- ability of mystical experiences which nevertheless it strives to express! Given the diversity of religious lan- guage, there can be no single way of confirming or rebut- ting its many and complex claims. It should not surprise one that the language we use to describe temporal events, material objects, and our deal- ings with them will not suffice also to describe the *God of Judaeo-Christian theism and our supposed encounters with him. Unlike finite objects, God is thought of as with- out limits: not a constituent of the universe, not the effect of any cause. Obliqueness is uneliminable from discourse about deity. The language of revelation is oblique through and through: likewise the metalanguage in which revelation is affirmed to have occurred. (But then so too is some of our discourse about the life of the mind.) Even attempts to ground all the ‘revealed’ talk and all accounts of religious experience in a cosmologically argued ‘uncaused cause’ requires an analogical extension of that basic category of cause, beyond its home in everyday and scientific explanation. A decision about accepting or rejecting the claims of theistic language to have a real object must be based on a holistic judgement. Do we do more damage to our overall experience of the world if we reject the theistic paradoxes and the perilously stretched analogies than if we retain them? And this is a test we can carry out only roughly, since what we think of as our ‘experience’ cannot be more than partially extricated from the ‘interpreted’—religious or agnostic or atheistic—views of the world, between which we are attempting to make a reasoned decision. r.w.h. *religion, problems of the philosophy of; Logical Positivism. B. Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford, 1993), ch. 2. W. D. Hudson, Wittgenstein and Religious Belief (London, 1975). A. O’Hear, Experience, Explanation and Faith (London, 1984), ch. 1 and index. Religiousness A and B. Kierkegaard’s distinction between two ‘stages’ or ‘spheres’ of existence, the former said to be a necessary preliminary to the latter. As in Kierkegaard’s ethical stage, Religiousness A retains the idealist assump- tion that the eternal truth is humanly accessible, except that, where in the case of ethics self-revelatory social and familial duties provide the access, in this case the relation to truth is established by self-abnegation and is expressed in categories of *inwardness (resignation, suffering, and guilt). Religiousness A conceives the truth as something to be recollected. By confining human knowledge to history Religiousness B makes truth practical, future-orientated, and dependent on the eternal having entered time in human form as an ethical example. This is Christianity, Religiousness A and B 811 and, by having to face the paradox of the Incarnation, Christian faith achieves the highest pitch of inwardness. a.h. S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton, NJ, 1990). remembering: see memory. Renaissance philosophy. That of the West during the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries. The principal concerns of Renaissance writers were philosophy of nature (embrac- ing science, occultism, and metaphysics), psychology (including theory of knowledge), and moral and political philosophy—one of the main contributions to which was the employment of fables of golden ages, past and future, in order to retrieve and refashion personal and social virtues associated with antiquity. Arguably the first major Renaissance philosopher was Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) and the last was Francisco Suarez (1548–1617). Other important figures include Mar- silio Ficino (1433–99), Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1468–1534), Francesco de Vitoria (1480–1546), Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), and Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639). During the same period lived several impor- tant writers, such as Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), and Thomas More (1478–1535), who though not philosophers were influen- tial humanist thinkers. The Renaissance cannot match the medieval and modern periods for the originality and influence of its philosophical ideas. For the most part it was concerned with the elaboration of systems of thought originating in the classical period. The main sources of philosophical inspiration were Plato and Aristotle, and although the trad- ition of *scholasticism was maintained by figures such as Cajetan, de Vitoria, and Suarez, most Renaissance writers regarded the medievals as idle sophisters writing a Latin that appeared barbaric by comparison with the courtly version contrived by Cicero. Throughout the Renaissance, works by classical philosophers were retranslated and new commentaries were produced. This led to the establish- ment of revivalist schools, the most important of which was the Neoplatonic academy in Florence founded by Ficino under the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici. j.hal. *Aristotelianism; Platonism. B. P. Copenhaver and C. B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford, 1992). J. Haldane, ‘Medieval and Renaissance Ethics’, in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Oxford, 1990). Renouvier, Charles Bernard (1815–1903). French personal- ist who used the critical method of Kant to develop a pluralism in which chance, time, novelty, and freedom are irreducible realities while absolutes and infinites do not exist. Although he never held an academic position, he was one of the most prolific philosophers in French history. Renouvier’s *empiricism strongly influenced William James’s ‘radical empiricism’. A fideism in which Renou- vier held that belief is voluntary (a radical form of what today is called *doxastic voluntarism) helped James out of a suicidal depression in 1870, a crisis from which James’s doctrine of ‘the Will to Believe’ emerged. Renouvier’s stress on freedom in belief was buttressed by an indeterminism in which chance is an irreducible aspect of nature, a rejection of determinism James endorsed too. The notion of infinity was also attacked by Renouvier, and James at his death was still struggling with his friend’s claim that infinity is a self-contradictory notion. p.h.h. Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston, 1936), i. 654–710. representation. It is a truism that a representation is any- thing that represents something. Thus words, sentences, thoughts, and pictures may all be considered representa- tions, though the manner in which they represent things is very different. Representation is a philosophically puz- zling relation. To take one simple example, ‘x representsy’ seems to express a relation between two things. But while the existence of a relation between two things trivially entails that they exist, this is not true for the relation of representation: a picture, thought, or sentence can repre- sent the Judgement of Paris even if there was in fact no such event. Yet who can deny that all representations do in fact represent something? Pictorial representation seems initially to be the most straightforward form of representation, since the relation between a picture and what it represents seems so natural and obvious to us. Surely a picture represents something simply by resembling it? And isn’t resemblance a perfectly natural relation? The apparent simplicity of pictorial rep- resentation might suggest that it is the most basic form of representation. A caricature of this position would be: a sentence represents something because it is associated in its user’s mind with a mental picture which represents in virtue of resembling the thing represented. But explaining pictorial representation in terms of resemblance raises many problems. While resemblance is reflexive (everything resembles itself) and symmetric (I resemble my identical twin, and he resembles me), repre- sentation is neither. Even near perfect resemblance between two things doesn’t guarantee representation: my copy of today’s newspaper does not represent any of the million others. These sorts of considerations have led philosophers like Nelson Goodman to deny that resemblance has anything to do with representation at all. (However, Malcolm Budd has recently come to the defence of the resemblance theory of pictorial representation.) Resemblance is, of course, not necessary for representa- tion; words, for example, do not resemble the things they represent. But our caricature theory explains linguistic representation in terms of associating words with mental pictures, which then represent in virtue of resemblance. 812 Religiousness A and B The trouble with this is that even pictures do not repre- sent intrinsically. To take an example of Wittgenstein’s, a picture of a man walking uphill could also be a picture of a man sliding backwards downhill. There is nothing intrin- sic to the picture that determines that it is a picture of the first kind rather than the second. We therefore have three choices: either the picture represents what it does by being interpreted, in which case the explanation of representa- tion is borne by the idea of interpretation, not resem- blance. Or some pictures are ‘self-interpreting’: mental pictures or images, perhaps, determine their own inter- pretation. But this amounts to taking the idea of represen- tation as fundamental and unanalysed, and leaves us without any explanation of representation at all. Finally, we could say that the picture represents everything it resembles—each picture has an indefinite number of rep- resentational ‘contents’. But this too seems to leave the idea of representation entirely unexplained. Even without this difficulty, the idea that representa- tion is based on resemblance is untenable. For many words (‘prime number’, ‘because’) could not have mental pictures associated with them that explain their represen- tational powers; and much thought is not pictorial or imagistic in any case. Pictures too cannot explain the logi- cal structure of thoughts or sentences: how could a purely pictorial representation represent the thought that ‘If it isn’t raining next Saturday, we’ll go to the sea’? So whether or not we can explain pictorial representa- tion in terms of resemblance, we certainly cannot explain all forms of representation in terms of pictorial represen- tation. The various kinds of representation have distinct- ive features which need their own explanation. An account of linguistic representation, for instance, has to explain how the meanings of words systematically com- bine to produce the meanings of sentences. (*Meaning.) In recent philosophy of mind and psychology, the notion of mental representation has become central, and many hope to explain linguistic representation in terms of it. Moreover, the hope that representation can be revealed to be a natural relation has been fuelled by the use of the notion of mental representation in *cognitive science and psychology. t.c. *pictures. H. Clapin (ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation (Oxford, 2002). Robert Cummins, Meaning and Mental Representation (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1989). Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, 1976). representation in art. Visual *art is markedly suited to representing things, and the way in which it does it seems irreducible to any other form of representation. In music, by contrast, representation seems peripheral, while the ability of linguistic artforms such as poetry or novels to represent is inevitably taken up with the larger question of how language itself has meaning. Two conceptual distinctions should be borne in mind. Firstly, some representations refer to particular things, and some refer to no particular thing. For example, a portrait has to relate to some actual person, but another picture can be a picture of a woman reading a book, with- out there being any particular woman or book which it is about. Secondly, there is a difference between a picture’s standing for something as a symbol and its depicting something. In a painting, a lamb may stand for or symbol- ize Christ, but what is depicted in the painting is a lamb. Depiction is an utterly familiar practice which proves hard to analyse. The apparently common-sense idea that the surface of a picture resembles what it depicts is usually rejected by philosophers. They try instead to specify the state of mind of someone who both sees the surface of a picture and understands what it depicts. Different accounts invoke the notions of ‘seeing a woman in’ the painted surface, or making believe that our seeing the picture is our seeing a woman, or experiencing a resem- blance between the picture’s appearance and the two- dimensional appearance which a woman would have if we saw her literally. This is a challenging area of philoso- phy, which has to negotiate the sophistications of con- temporary philosophy of mind, while remaining alive to the history of representation in the arts and the interest which pictures actually have for their audience. c.j. N. Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, 1968), ch. 1. R. Wollheim, Art and its Objects, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1980), suppl. essay v. representative theory of perception. A theory main- taining that in ordinary perception one is directly, and most immediately, aware of subjective representations (*sense-data, *percepts, *sensations) of the external world. Our knowledge of objective (mind-independent) reality is, thus, derived from (based on) knowledge of facts about one’s own subjective experience. Typically this view is contrasted with *naïve realism. A representative theorist need not (and typically does not) maintain that our knowledge of objective conditions is reached by a conscious inference from premisses describing the effects on us of this external reality. In see- ing that there are cookies in the jar (an objective state of affairs), I do not arrive at my belief that there are cookies in the jar by a conscious inference from premisses describing my experience of the cookies. None the less, the belief about the cookies is based on a knowledge of a subjective condition (the sensation the cookies cause in me), in the same way that one’s knowledge of a distant football game (being watched on television) is based on knowledge of what is happening on the nearby TV screen. Even if there is no conscious inference, there is a dependency of one piece of knowledge on another. Arguments for a representative theory of perception typically appeal to hallucinations and illusions. Seeing a white rabbit is (or can be) the same from a subjective standpoint as hallucinating or dreaming of a white rabbit. The causes may be different, but the experiences are the same. Since (it is argued) one is aware of a mental repre- sentation or image in the case of hallucinations and dreams, it is reasonable to infer that in ordinary perception representative theory of perception 813 one is also aware of something subjective. The only differ- ence between seeing a white rabbit (veridical perception) and hallucinating one is the cause of the sensation. In veridical perception, the effect (the internal image of which one is directly aware) represents the cause—the white rabbit—in some more or less accurate way. In the case of hallucination the cause—drugs in the blood- stream, maybe—is misrepresented. Arguments appealing to the fallibility of one’s know- ledge of the external world have also been used to support a representative theory of perception: our knowledge of reality is based on a more certain (infallible?) knowledge of the appearances (the internal representation) of reality. Even if this is, in some sense, true, it does not support a representative theory unless it is combined with the ques- tionable premiss that knowledge of the appearances— that something looks red, for instance—requires an awareness of something that is red. This questionable pre- miss has been called the ‘sense-datum fallacy’. If it is not assumed, the fact that our knowledge of the world’s objects is based on their appearance does not imply that we are aware of anything other than the external objects themselves. Representative theorists typically distinguish between *primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are supposed to be the ones that are shared by the mental rep- resentation and the physical object it represents. The shape of an object, for instance, is represented (sometimes misrepresented) by the shape of the visual image that results from our seeing that object. Colours and sounds, on the other hand, are secondary qualities: these are prop- erties of the sensory experience that do not resemble the objective powers in objects that cause us to experience these qualities. The greenness of grass is in the perceiver, not in the grass. f.d. J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), bks. ii and iv. M. Perkins, Sensing the World (Indianapolis, 1983). republicanism. To contemporary political and historical understanding, it is the doctrine of opposition to mon- archy or any other form of one-person rule. In practice it first emerged in the Greek city-states after the overthrow of the tyrants. Its first fully developed expression was in the form of government of Rome, before Augustus and his imperial successors. As a theory, it is most elaborately set out in James Harrington’s Oceana (1656). It was sup- pressed by Oliver Cromwell, who had by that time become an autocrat. Republicanism, following Roman practice, tends to favour a balancing of separated powers, with a ruling oligarchy mitigating institutions as safety- valves for popular discontent and swift rotation in the higher offices, The US Constitution—the work of enlight- ened English country gentlemen—established a scheme close in spirit to that of the Roman Republic. In Britain, since the overthrow of Stuart absolutism—in the 1640s and then again in 1689—there has prevailed what H. G. Wells called ‘a crowned republic’. The chief objection to one-person rule is the frequent descents of autocrats into megalomania, to which is added, when the post is heredi- tary, incompetent heirs. a.q. James Harrington, Oceana (1656 and later editions). Rescher, Nicholas (1928– ). An amazingly prolific con- temporary American philosopher who has written over 100 books in the process of constructing a synoptic sys- tem: pragmatic idealism. The system aims at knowledge of reality. Its approach is (a) idealistic because it regards the constructive contribution of the inquiring mind as essential to knowledge, and because it regards systematic *coherence as the criterion of truth; (b) fallibilistic because it denies that knowledge can provide more than an imper- fect approximation of reality; and (c) pragmatic because it maintains that the validity of knowledge-claims depends on their utility in furthering human purposes. The epi- stemological part of the system aims at improving human knowledge, while its axiological part aims at deriving values from human needs and purposes and evaluating knowledge-claims in the light of them. As a whole, Rescher’s development of pragmatic *idealism is charac- terized by an unusually wide range of sympathy and information. j.kek. *American philosophy; pragmatism; pseudo- philosophy. Rescher encapsulates his overall position in the trilogy A System of Pragmatic Idealism (Princeton, NJ, 1992–3). The coherentist aspect of his position is presented more fully in The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford, 1973). For biographical information, see his Ongo- ing Journey (Lanham, Md., 1986). Rescher founded and edited the scholarly journals American Philosophical Quarterly, History of Philosophy Quarterly, and Public Affairs Quarterly. res cogitans. Literally, ‘thinking thing’. In the Second Meditation, Descartes uses a process of systematic doubt to reach the conclusion that he is ‘in the strict sense only a thing that thinks, that is, a *mind or intelligence or intel- lect or reason’. In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes con- trasts res cogitans, or mind, with res extensa (‘extended thing’, or body), and argues that the mind is ‘really distinct from the body and could exist without it’. j.cot. *self; dualism. N. Malcolm, ‘Descartes’ Proof that his Essence is Thinking’, in W. Doney (ed.), Descartes (London, 1967). resentment. A bitter emotion based on a sense of injury, inferiority, oppression, or frustrated vindictiveness. It plays a central role in the ethics and philosophical psy- chology of Nietzsche as an ‘act of most spiritual revenge’. The German word Empfindlichkeit, like the French ressen- timent (preferred by Nietzsche), suggests an extreme sen- sitivity. Resentment is a ‘reactionary’ emotion, a bitter but frustrated response to slights, humiliation or oppression, ‘submerged hatred, the vengefulness of the impotent’. In Nietzsche’s view, resentment is the mark of *‘slave moral- ity’, a rejection of what is noble and exceptional. As such, 814 representative theory of perception it originated with and still defines the Judaeo-Christian tradition. According to Nietzsche: ‘the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself, the man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints’ (On the Genealogy of Morals). Early in the twentieth century, the phenomenologist Max Scheler took on Nietzsche’s psychological attack and denied that resentment was essential to Christianity or Judaeo-Christian morality. He did not, however, question the degrading status of resentment. He only shifted its locus, to the bourgeoisie. More recently still, and in a very different vein, P. F. Strawson has intricately examined the extent to which resentment presupposes free will, and John Rawls, in his Theory of Justice, suggests that resent- ment (as opposed to envy) carries with it a presupposition of *equality and, as such, is related to our sense of *justice. r.c.sol. F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (New York, 1967). M. Scheler, Ressentiment (London, 1961). P. F. Strawson, Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London, 1974). residues, method of: see method of residues. respect. ‘Respect’ is a term which has become central to the Western moral outlook since the Enlightenment. It is basically an attitude or a special kind of feeling. If we con- sider the deference which might be thought appropriately directed to someone of great creative ability or perhaps to a great statesman, we can say that it was the moral insight of the Enlightenment, perhaps especially that of Kant, to suggest that such deference should be accorded to persons as such. In other words, respect is an attitude of deference, or reverence, directed at persons not just for their individ- ual gifts or status, but for being the kind of creatures they are. Kant is often rightly criticized for taking an unduly narrow view of the nature of persons by restricting it to the rational side of human beings. But he also used a more appropriate term for the object of respect—‘human dig- nity’. Respect is not simply a transitory feeling, but, in Kant’s obscure phrase, it is a feeling ‘self-wrought by a rational concept’. In other words, it has both the stability of reason and the motivating force of feeling. As such, respect can plausibly be depicted as expressing the moral attitude which is basic to liberal democracy. Nevertheless, there are two problems with the term ‘respect’. First, the object of respect easily slips from human dignity to human decisions. Yet what is it to ‘respect a decision’? Many writers, e.g. on bioethics, take ‘respecting an autonomous decision’ to mean that they must agree to it or follow it, otherwise they are violating the autonomy or human dignity of the person. More plaus- ibly, other writers take ‘respecting a decision’ to mean ‘taking that decision into account, or taking it seriously’. This ambiguity can have unfortunate consequences. The second problem which arises over the word ‘respect’ is that it tends to make morality a human-centred affair; only human beings are thought to possess the ‘moral status’ of dignity. But there is no reason why the attitude of respect or reverence should not also be accorded to animals and indeed the environment. Just as respecting persons means treating them appropriately in terms of the kind of crea- tures they are—namely, creatures with an essential dig- nity—so treating animals or the environment with respect means treating them according to their essential nature. Perhaps this is all too abstract to generate moral policies but it does identify a basic moral attitude. r.s.d. Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (London, 2001). I. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, tr. H. J. Paton (London, 1948). P. Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton, NJ, 1986). responsibility. A term which covers a number of distinct but related notions, among the most important of which are causal responsibility, legal responsibility, and moral responsibility. To be causally responsible for a state of affairs is to bring it about either directly or indirectly, e.g. by ordering someone else to bring it about. To be legally responsible is to fulfil the requirements for accountability under the law: either the requirements for having a legal obligation, or the requirements for liability to the penal- ties for a particular offence (which may, but need not, con- sist in failing to fulfil a legal obligation). The term ‘moral responsibility’ covers (i) the having of a moral obligation and (ii) the fulfilment of the criteria for deserving blame or praise (punishment or reward) for a morally significant act or omission. These two notions of moral responsibility are linked, in that one can be deemed blameworthy for failing to fulfil a moral obligation. (In what follows, ‘moral responsibility’ will be used in its blame-deserving sense, and ‘legal responsibility’ in its penalty-warranting sense.) Although there are connections between the three main kinds of responsibility, they are not necessary ones. Thus while causal responsibility is usually a criterion for legal responsibility, there are ‘vicarious liability’ offences with which someone can be charged without having either caused or foreseen the event in question. (For example, a tavern-keeper can be charged if, without his knowledge, an employee sells alcoholic drinks after hours.) And although causal responsibility is usually con- sidered an essential criterion for moral responsibility, a person can be held morally responsible for deliberately failing to act. Since not all legal offences are moral wrongs and not all moral wrongs are legal offences, a person who is morally responsible may not be legally responsible and vice versa. On the other hand, one essential requirement for moral responsibility, that the wrong-doer should have known what he was doing and been willing to do it, is, apart from ‘strict liability’ offences, also essential for legal responsibility. (Bigamy and dangerous driving are examples of strict liability offences.) The belief that, in order to be liable for *punishment or deserving of blame, the legal or moral offender needs to have been in the state of mind described above is con- nected with the belief that such offenders need to be responsibility 815 ‘responsible’ in yet another sense, namely that of possess- ing the general ability to understand what they are doing and to control their behaviour. The term ‘diminished responsibility’ is linked with this sense of ‘responsible’. Finally, there is one more commonly used notion of responsibility which, following H. L. A. Hart, can be called that of ‘role responsibility’ (see his book Punishment and Responsibility). This refers to the duties (often cultur- ally determined) which are attached to particular profes- sional or societal or (as in the case of parents) biological roles. Failure to fulfil such duties can expose the role- holder to censure which may—depending on what the roles and duties are—be of a moral or legal kind. It is in connection with moral responsibility that the *free will–determinism debate has traditionally arisen between compatibilists, who believe that such responsi- bility is compatible with the truth of *determinism, and incompatibilists, who deny this. Incompatibilists hold that if determinism is true, then no one can be morally respon- sible, although they acknowledge that people may be treated as if they were, perhaps for consequentialist reasons, such as the need to deter, or to protect others. m.k. *compatibilism and incompatibilism; desert. H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford, 1973). —— and A. M. Honoré, Causation in the Law (Oxford, 1959). F. Schoeman (ed.), Responsibility, Character and the Emotions (Cambridge, 1987). responsibility, collective: see collective responsibility. retribution: see desert. revaluation of values: see transvaluation of values. revelation. The self-disclosure of God to humanity. The body of theological fact which God allows human beings to know unnaturally, especially through his ‘mighty acts’ (magnalia Dei) Acts 2: 11. Revealed theology is distin- guished from *natural theology. Aquinas distinguishes sharply between ‘truths of reason’ and ‘truths of revela- tion’ in knowledge of God. Karl Barth thinks that revela- tion is a necessary condition for any human knowing of God. Revelation is the last book of the New Testament, authored by St John the Divine (who is almost certainly not St John the Apostle). A series of vivid visions is related, culminating in the pouring out of the wrath of God from seven bowls (14–16) and the defeat of Satan (19ff.), fol- lowed by the general resurrection of the dead and the judgement of souls. Revelation raises difficult meta- physical issues: How can a benevolent God be wrathful? What has to exist if good and evil exist? What makes some resurrection my resurrection? What is *heaven? Do angels exist? s.p. Aquinas, Summa Theologica (London, 1963–75). Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1/1 (Edinburgh, 1975), esp. 191, 193–4. revenge. The intentional infliction of *punishment or injury in return for a wrong to oneself or one’s family or close friends. (Compare ‘vengeance’, which is the satisfac- tion of such an intention, and ‘avenge’, which is to take revenge on behalf of someone else who cannot do so for him- or herself.) Revenge and vengeance have a long and controversial history in the development of retributive justice. In Homeric Greece, ‘revenge’ and ‘justice’ were more or less equivalent, but Plato’s Socrates taught that ‘the return of evil for evil’ is always unjust. The Hebrew Bible describes a ‘vengeful God’ and prescribes ‘an eye for an eye’ (a limitation of vengeance, not an exhortation), while the New Testament encourages forgiveness, and reserves vengeance for a loving God. Modern social phil- osophy generally rejects the very idea of revenge as irrational and always unjustified. But among those philosophers who still defend the idea of *retribution (as opposed to deterrence and rehabilitation), the line between revenge and retribution is not obvious. Immanuel Kant declares the latter justified and required by reason, but he dismisses the former entirely. Robert Nozick similarly suggests that revenge is emotional and merely personal, while retribution is justifiable and imper- sonal. In fact, revenge is sometimes justified and often deliberative, and it is a much debated question to what extent revenge should be part of the purpose of punish- ment in the criminal law. Nor should revenge be viewed as simply a raw, unreasonable emotion. Revenge is a dish, says one ancient proverb, which is ‘best served cold’. r.c.sol. M. Henberg, Retribution (Philadelphia, 1989). S. Jacoby, Wild Justice (New York, 1986). J. Murphy and J. Hampton, Mercy and Forgiveness (Cambridge, 1988). revisionary metaphysics. A term coined by P. F. Straw- son to describe the philosophical efforts of Descartes, Leibniz, and Berkeley, who are contrasted with the practi- tioners of *descriptive metaphysics. Revisionary *meta- physics is said to substitute for the actual structure of the world a picture of one which is aesthetically, morally, emotionally, or intellectually preferable. The charge that philosophical systems are so many well-organized and pleasing fictions is anticipated in numerous earlier accus- ations of the visionary character and distance from experi- ence of all metaphysics. Each is nevertheless deserving of study, Strawson maintained, on account of the ‘intensity of its partial vision’ and its utility as a source of philosoph- ical puzzles. The existence of revisionary metaphysics depends upon a metaphilosophical confusion between ‘is, really’ and ‘ought to be’, and between logical and existential con- cerns. Yet the satisfactions it supplies ensure that revision- ary metaphysics remains a permanent temptation of philosophy, not simply a useful term for historical analysis. cath.w. S. Haack, ‘Descriptive and Revisionary Metaphysics’, Philosoph- ical Studies (1979). 816 responsibility P. F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London, 1959), pp. xiii–xvi. revolution. A radical political upheaval or transform- ation. Originally understood through an astronomical metaphor, revolutions were cyclical processes moving through four stages: tyranny, resistance, civil war, and restoration. In modern times, the term has shed that refer- ence and come to designate a change in constitution, regime, and social order. The change is intentional and programmatic, undertaken on the basis of an ideological argument painting the old regime as tyrannical, corrupt, or oppressive, promising a new age, and justifying the (usually high) costs involved. Revolution should be distinguished from coup d’état, where only the rulers are changed, not the system as a whole (‘palace revolution’ is a coup in a monarchist or autocratic état), and also from secession and national liber- ation, where the goal is independence from foreign rule, not or not necessarily a radically new state and society. Hence, the justifications for revolutionary politics, once the cyclical metaphor is dropped, must extend beyond a catalogue of the crimes of a particular ruler or set of rulers, domestic or foreign. If they are to justify what needs justi- fying, they will have to include a detailed defence of the proposed new regime and a description of the transform- ations this regime will effect in society as a whole. A strug- gle for independence can be called revolutionary only when its protagonists defend their enterprise in this large way, aiming, like eighteenth-century Americans, at a ‘new order for the ages’. Given the scope of the changes promised, the newness of the ‘new order’, revolutionary politics is sometimes described as a form of secular messianism, a reproduction in political terms of Jewish and Christian visions of the end of days. Certainly, revolutionaries sometimes adapt and use religious rhetoric, but their programme, while neces- sarily radical in relation to the old regime, is not necessar- ily radical in relation to the whole of human history. It can and often does describe a particular system of oppression, not a fallen humanity, and a particular set of transform- ations, not a singular and universal redemption. Nor is it the case that the transformations must be given a redemptive form in order to justify the costs of over- throwing the old regime and building the new. The stand- ard defence of revolutionary violence probably has more to do with the supposed entrenchment of established ideolo- gies and practices and the strength and stubbornness of the established rulers than with the glories to come. Unhappily, this defence often finds continuing uses after the overthrow of the old regime, when ideologies and practices persist and are sometimes upheld with a new stubbornness by ordinary men and women. The subse- quent course of revolutionary politics is largely deter- mined by the relation of the programmatically committed leaders (the ‘vanguard’) to their own increasingly reluc- tant followers. The hardest question for the leaders (it probably is not hard for anyone else) is whether rule by violence is morally permitted or politically prudent during this period. How much can revolutionary aspiration justify? A modest answer to this last question (‘not much’) points toward a reformist rather than a revolutionary pol- itics. Or, perhaps, it points toward what has been called a ‘long revolution’, where the radical programme is main- tained but a systematic effort is made to hold down the costs of achieving it. But most revolutionaries would probably argue that the changes they intend require a his- torical break—the total defeat of the old regime and the seizure of power by people like themselves—and in fact justify the attendant costs. m.walz. *Marx; Marxism; conservatism; liberalism. Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, rev. edn. (New York, 1952). John Dunn, Modern Revolutions (Cambridge, 1972). Ted Honderich, Violence for Equality (Harmondsworth, 1980). J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York, 1960). revolutions, scientific. An idea most closely associated with Thomas Kuhn, scientific revolutions are shifts from one scientific paradigm to another, where a paradigm is a fundamental research framework that provides common methods, theories, and shared interpretations. Revolu- tions happen because problems arise that resist solution by methods of the existing paradigm. If the failure is per- ceived as serious, a crisis can arise, an alternative paradigm will be constructed, and a large-scale transition to a new paradigm may occur. Well-known examples are the change from classical mechanics to relativistic mechanics, and rule-based artificial intelligence to neural nets. Kuhn held that revolutions were discontinuities in science— paradigms are *incommensurable, the shift is not based on rational inference from data, and cumulative progress towards the truth is destroyed. Historically, the thesis is contentious; Kuhn’s historical sketches suggest less continuity than was actually present. Philosophically, the issue is arguable; one’s theories of reference and meaning play a crucial role in whether the necessary semantic discontinuities exist. p.h. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd edn. (Chicago, 1996). rhetoric. The art of making speeches. Learning rhetoric was prized in the Greek democracies as a means to success in public life, but criticized by Plato for being concerned with the means of persuasion, not with the ends. Aris- totle’s Rhetoric contains a fairly systematic discussion of forms of rhetorical argument (notably the *enthymeme). For the Stoics, rhetoric became a branch of logic, and a proper study for philosophers. r.j.h. G. A. Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (London, 1963). Richard’s paradox, due to Jules Richard, arises from the assumption that expressions of (say) English which denote numbers can be enumerated in an alphabetical (infinite) Richard’s paradox 817 list L. If so, then a diagonal number—one differing from the nth number in L at its nth decimal place—can be defined (as in Cantor’s proof that the reals are non- denumerable) in a finite number of English words. But then this phrase must be in list L as, say, entry k and thus must define a number differing from the one it does define, at the kth place. This contradiction shows there is no such list L. There is an enumeration of all finite strings of English letters. But whether such a string defines a number cannot be specified recursively. j.c. Jules Richard, ‘Les Principes des mathématiques et le problème des ensembles’, Revue générale des sciences pures et appliquées (1905); tr. in J. van Heijenoort (ed.), Source Book in Mathematical Logic 1879–1931 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964). Ricœur, Paul (1913– ). French philosopher and theorist of symbolic forms. Ricœur’s project since the 1950s has been to mediate in the ‘conflict of interpretations’ that has grown up among the various schools of linguistic, hermeneutic, and literary-critical theory. His earliest writ- ings were mainly concerned with the debate between *phenomenology and *structuralism, the one aimed towards interpreting language in its creative (i.e. sym- bolic, metaphorical, or artistic) manifestations, the other premissed on a formal methodology that took for granted, following Saussure, the priority of code and system over expressive content. This work often had a markedly theo- logical cast, most evident in books (like The Symbolism of Evil) where Ricœur sought to establish links between presentday schools of thought and their various precur- sory movements in the history of Jewish and Christian exegetical tradition. If there is one major theme that has preoccupied his thinking since then, it is the idea that all interpretation partakes of a double (‘negative’ and ‘posi- tive’) hermeneutic. Such is the argument of his book Freud and Philosophy. On the one hand psychoanalysis involves an ‘archaeology’ of meanings, motives, and desires, an attempt to delve back into the unconscious layers of repressed or sublimated memory. On the other—on its forward-looking or redemptive side—Freud’s project points a way through and beyond that condition by offering the patient renewed possibilities of self-knowledge and creative fulfilment. Ricœur finds a kindred dialectic at work within Marxist and other politically orientated theories of interpretation. Here also there is a negative (demystifying) moment of Ideologiekritik, joined to a positive—implicitly utopian— hermeneutics of transcendence. Given this approach, it is understandable that Ricœur should avoid the kinds of polarized thinking and attendant polemics that have char- acterized so much recent debate. But he does take issue with structuralism and *post-structuralism for what he sees as their relentlessly negative stance with regard to questions of meaning, subjectivity, and truth. His recent works on metaphor and narrative again show Ricœur treating these issues through a dialogue that patiently engages all sides to the dispute while seeking a perspective atop their (often sterile) antinomies. c.n. *French philosophy today. Paul Ricœur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, tr. Don Ihde et al. (Evanston, Ill., 1974). —— Time and Narrative, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1984–7). right. What it is right to do, as distinct from what it is good to do. One of the traditional problems of moral philoso- phy is that of relating the right and the good. For the utili- tarian, or more generally the consequentialist, the right is instrumental in bringing about good in the form of the best possible consequences. Other philosophers, deontolo- gists, have held that at least some actions are right for reasons intrinsic to their own natures, and independently of ‘the good’. Yet it seems hard to accept that the right has no relation to ‘the good’. One solution is to suggest that the right is indeed a means to ‘the good’ though not an external, instrumental means as the utilitarian suggests, but an internal, component means: the very performance of the right or of duties is itself an expression of ‘the good’. r.s.d. *deontology; moral philosophy, problems of; right action; utilitarianism. W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford, 1930). right, the political: see conservatism. Right, the political New. Vague label for cluster of politi- cal doctrines emerging from *conservatism and contrast- ing with it in their demand for radical change. New Right thinkers believe that political decline can be arrested only by encouraging individual initiatives and competition. This requires a reduction in the welfare provision and redistributive taxation which characterize the state influ- enced by *socialism. The resulting emphasis on a minimal state distinguishes the New Right from Fascism and pushes some thinkers (e.g. Nozick) towards *libertarian- ism. However, the New Right embraces *nationalism, sometimes based, like its *individualism, on a form of *social Darwinism. p.gil. *liberalism. Norman Barry, The New Right (London, 1987). Ted Honderich, Conservatism (Harmondsworth, 1990). right action. No subject is more central to moral philoso- phy or ethics than that of right and wrong action. Although the correlative terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ have important non-moral uses—as, for example, when we speak of the right or wrong way to fix a car—ethicists are primarily interested in moral right and wrong, and they typically regard a theory of right and wrong in this sense as the most important element in any overall conception or view of ethics. To be sure, there are related notions like *‘ought’ and ‘moral *obligation’ that play a role in any complete or overall moral theory. But it is usually assumed that such notions can be defined in terms of rightness and/or wrongness (though the definitions could also proceed in 818 Richard’s paradox the reverse direction). Roughly speaking, an act is (morally) obligatory or ought (morally speaking), to be done if it would be wrong not to perform it, and so a the- ory of right and wrong is tantamount to a theory of obliga- tion and of what morally ought to be done. (The question whether moral goodness and praiseworthiness can also be understood in terms of rightness and wrongness is much more difficult, and some philosophers would hold that explanation should work in the opposite direction, with so-called ‘deontic’ notions like obligation, right, and wrong being understood as derivative from ‘aretaic’ notions like goodness, badness, and admirability. (*Arete¯.)) Of course, one in any event needs to distinguish theor- ies or conceptions of right and wrong (or of moral good- ness) from analyses or definitions of the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (or ‘morally good’). During the heyday of Anglo- American meta-ethics, philosophers were often on prin- ciple more interested in defining ethical notions than in offering a substantive view of what actions are right and what actions are wrong. And one can, therefore, be an emotivist, or prescriptivist, or naturalist about the mean- ing of (sentences or assertions involving) the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, without taking sides on various issues having to do with what actually is right or wrong. But over the longer history of philosophy and certainly nowadays as well, a greater interest has been taken in giving a substan- tive account of rightness, as opposed to simply defining the term, and there currently are and always have been a great many opposing views about what rightness, i.e. the moral rightness of actions, substantively amounts to. (One can also talk about right attitudes and right desires, but moral philosophers have paid much, much more attention to what makes actions right.) To a large extent, philosophers’ views about right action(s) have depended on what they wanted to say about moral rules and principles. It is natural to think of morality as some kind of code containing action-guiding rules or principles and thus to think of valid morality or the true morality philosophers are seeking to formulate or describe as consisting in an appropriately ordered set of such rules or principles. Then different theories of right action would be based in differences about what were the ultimately valid principles or rules of morality. Act- utilitarianism in one standard form holds, for example, that there is one basic principle of morality, the principle of utility, which treats actions as right or wrong depending on whether they maximize the utility or welfare of the people (or sentient creatures) they affect. By contrast, Rossian intuitionism accepts a small set of basic moral principles no one of which always takes precedence over any other and regards (our knowledge of ) the rightness or wrongness of particular acts (I don’t think we need here distinguish actions from acts) as often a matter of delicate balancing among the different ultimate principles that apply in a given situation. However, such a picture, though it covers most cases, is somewhat misleading as a general account of what is at stake in theories of right action, because there are some theories, notably Aristotle’s, according to which know- ledge of right and wrong is not a matter of applying or weighing or balancing general moral rules or principles. The virtuous individual, for Aristotle, is capable of know- ing what is right in particular circumstances by delicate perception unaided by general (even primafacie) prin- ciples. It is also worth pointing out that some principles of right or permissible action are not rules for the guidance of individuals in situ. If it is morally permissible or one has the moral right to defend oneself against deadly force, that is a right one has even and especially in situations where one is too threatened to be paying any attention to moral issues or principles. A theory of right and wrong action is not necessarily a theory of what principles should guide one in daily life, and utilitarians, for example, are fond of saying that the principle of utility is a valid standard of right action, but not a reasonable or useful moral guide for people to use in the course of daily life. People may be more likely to do what maximizes utility, and thus to live up to the principle of utility as a standard of moral evalua- tion, if they don’t try to maximize utility, but instead, for example, try to help those they love or those whose distress or need immediately assails them. Having mentioned Aristotelian, intuitionist, and utili- tarian views of right action, we should complete the overview of the main competing contemporary concep- tions of right action by saying something very briefly about Kantian, contractarian, and agent-based virtue- ethical theories of moral rightness. The last of these treats the rightness of actions as a matter of the motives or inner states of character they express or sustain, acts counting as right if and only if, for example, they come from sympathy or compassion or inner health or strength. Contractarians treat right action as a matter of conformity to the prin- ciples or rules that people would agree upon in some hypothetical or ideal bargaining situation. Finally, Kantians regard the rightness of an action as a matter of whether the maxim or underlying purpose of the action is one which could be consistently willed (or imagined) to govern every- one’s behaviour—though some Kantians may prefer to say, instead, that acts are right if they don’t involve treat- ing anyone merely as a means, which idea has seemed promising to many, but is quite obviously in need of expansion. All the above-named theories have sizable or at the very least vocal followings among contemporary philosophers. m.s. *utilitarianism; deontology. F. Feldman, Introductory Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1978). T. Hill, Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory (Ithaca, NY, 1992). W. D. Ross, The Foundations of Ethics (Oxford, 1939). S. Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford, 1982). J. J. C. Smart and B. A. O. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, 1973). rights. In their strongest sense, rights are justified claims to the protection of persons’ important interests. When rights 819 . intrinsic to their own natures, and independently of the good’. Yet it seems hard to accept that the right has no relation to the good’. One solution is to suggest that the right is indeed a means to. is it to ‘respect a decision’? Many writers, e.g. on bioethics, take ‘respecting an autonomous decision’ to mean that they must agree to it or follow it, otherwise they are violating the autonomy. made to hold down the costs of achieving it. But most revolutionaries would probably argue that the changes they intend require a his- torical break the total defeat of the old regime and the seizure