Possibly to become another quasi-regular feature.
So far I have noticed two things.
1. There are (at least) ten separate references to dogs in the first seven books of Plato’s Republic – and possibly eleven if you count a reference to Cerberus, who was of course the three-headed dog guarding the way into Hades. There’s uniformly one reference per book, up until the seventh, where it all gets canine-mental. I haven’t had time to read eight through ten thus far, but will keep you all posted on this exciting development. If anyone possesses hypotheses as to why Plato talks about dogs a lot – surely some connection to Guardians and guardian attributes? – please submit in the comments section.
2. It appears that G.A. Cohen probably got the inspiration for his attack on Rawls expressed in Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice from reading Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia. It is Nozick who points out that the family is a problem for institutionally-based (Nozick thinks pattern-based generally) theories of justice. Further, Nozick at several points expresses the idea that a social ethos is required for certain kinds of justice: for example, a worker’s factory where the labour is made less mind-numbing but correspondingly costs increase may survive in a society where there is a social ethos encouraging people to pay more for the products from this sort of factory. Of course, Nozick uses this to criticize a Socialist ‘patterned’ conception of justice, but it appears Cohen took these things to heart, probably when writing Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality, which anyone hearing the seductive siren-song Anarchy, State and Utopia would do well to read.
Over and Out.
7 January, 2008 at 2:35 pm |
On the subject of revision/academic stuff, I was talking to Rob O yesterday, and found out that Manchester PPEists write 3 essays. “3 essays a week?”, I hear you cry. No – 3 per term!
*grumbles*
7 January, 2008 at 6:07 pm |
Haha, i know i know.
An essay per subject. How rigorous, how challenging.
7 January, 2008 at 6:07 pm |
and don’t forget their terms are longer than ours.
8 January, 2008 at 2:44 pm |
I only do five essays a term. Suits me fine.
8 January, 2008 at 5:18 pm |
That’s cos you are a lazy bastard.
8 January, 2008 at 5:48 pm |
how many do you baliol types have to do?
8 January, 2008 at 5:49 pm |
a term is 10 weeks though, so im doin a 2500 word essay every two weeks, plus seminar work, and maths problem sets. I find myself fairly busy to b honest.
8 January, 2008 at 10:31 pm |
HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHA
In second and third year:
8 week terms, which means 12 essays if you are lucky (one term I had 14).
In first year you can expect:
First Term:
8 sets of Logic problems (take 20+ hours to do)
4 UK politics essays
4 Micro economics worksheets (20+hours)
8 maths worksheets (depending on how good you are at maths this can either be easy or impossible – for me it was the latter)
Second term:
4 French Politics Essays
4 Political Theory Essays
4 Macro economics essays PLUS worksheet-style questions + reading Keynes’ General Theory in 4 weeks
4 General Philosophy Essays
In Third Term (which is 7 weeks, because 8th week is given over for exams sat on Monday and Tuesday of the 9th):
4 Political Theory OR US Politics Essasys
4 General Philosophy Essays OR Mill’s Utilitarianism Essays
4 Microeconomics and 4 Macroeconomics essays/worksheets.
And bear in mind that reading lists for first year will look like this (for one topic, naturally):
6.1 The concept of liberty
Basic reading:
*Berlin, Isaiah, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Berlin, Isaiah, Four Essays on Liberty, 1969.
Gray, Tim, Freedom, 1990.
Green, T.H., ‘Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract’, in David Miller, ed., Liberty, 1991.
Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, chapter 21, 1651 (for example, the Penguin edition edited by C.B. MacPherson, 1968).
* MacCallum, Gerald, ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’, in Miller, ed., Liberty, 1991, also in The Philosophical Review, 76:3, 1967, pp. 312-334.
* Miller, David, ‘Introduction’, in Miller, ed., Liberty, 1991.
Pettit, Philip, ‘Republican Freedom and Contestatory Democracy’, in Shapiro, Ian and Hacker-Cordón, Casiano, eds., Democracy’s Value, 1999.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, 1762, Book 1, chapters 6-8 (for example, in the Penguin edition edited by M. Cranston, 1968).
Skinner, Quentin, Liberty Before Liberalism, 1998, especially chapter 2..
Steiner, Hillel, ‘Individual Liberty’, in Miller, ed., Liberty, 1991.
Taylor, Charles, ‘What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty’, in Miller, ed., Liberty, 1991.
Waldron, Jeremy, ‘Homelessness and the issue of freedom’, in Waldron, Jeremy, Liberal Rights: Collected Papers, 1981-1991, 1993.
Whereas by second/third year they look like this:
7. Kant’s ethics (for example)
Kant, I Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals ed Paton, H, under the title The Moral Law (Hutchinson, 1948)
Kant, I. Critique of Practical Reason ed Abbott, T.K. (Longmans, 1948) or reprint, for example, Kemp Smith, N. ed (Macmillan, 1933)
Kant, I. The Metaphysics of Morals ed Gregor, M. (Cambridge UP, 1991)
Kant, I. Political Writings, H. Reiss (ed.), 2nd ed, (CUP, 1991)
Winch, Peter ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgements’, The Monist, (1965), vol 49 pp 196-214
Walker, R.C.S. Kant, (Routledge, 1978), ch 11
Wolf, Susan ‘Moral Saints’, Journal of Philosophy, (1982), vol 79, pp 419-39
Williams, Bernard Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, (Fontana, 1985), ch 4
Mackie, J.L. ‘Three Stages of Universalization’, in his Persons and Values, (OUP, 1985)
Wiggins, David ‘Universalizability, Impartiality, and Truth’, in his Needs, Values, Truth, 3rd edition (Clarendon, 1998), ch 2
O’Neill, Onora ‘Kantian Ethics’, in Singer, P. (ed.), A Companion to Ethics, (Blackwell, 1991)
Schneewind, J.B. ‘Autonomy, Obligation, and Virtue: An Overview of Kant’s Moral Philosophy’, in Guyer, Paul (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant, (CUP, 1992)
Herman, Barbara The Practice of Moral Judgement, (Harvard, 1993), ch 4
Baron, Marcia Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology, (Cornell, 1995)
Korsgaard, Christine The Sources of Normativity, (CUP, 1996), especially lectures 3, 4
O’Neill, Onora Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reason, (CUP, 1996)
Baron, Marcia ‘Kantian Ethics’, in Baron, Marcia, Pettit, Phillip and Slote, Michael Three Methods of Ethics, (Blackwell, 1997)
Darwall, Stephen Philosophical Ethics, (Westview, 1998), chs 14, 15
And in either case, you have THREE AND A HALF DAYS to do as much as possible, and understand.
Simply no comparison, i’m affraid. Of course, Peter is at Corpus, where they probably do about half as much work and spend the rest of the time bumming.
8 January, 2008 at 10:48 pm |
P.S. don’t forget that we don’t have ‘modules’ or any such nonesense.
We have 8 finals papers; 3 hours each, 3 essays. No re-sits. Coursework is optional, one dissertation/thesis at most.
9 January, 2008 at 2:38 am |
alright calm down. I wasnt trying to suggest that the workload at warwick is the same as at oxford. Just that i dont have loads of doss time, and that if i do doss it comes back to bite me on the arse.
9 January, 2008 at 9:47 am |
If you are writing 5 essays in 10 weeks, you do have loads of doss time, trust me.
9 January, 2008 at 12:56 pm |
try 15 essays in 8 weeks (two every week but one). That was my last term
9 January, 2008 at 1:18 pm |
Well last term I wrote 8 Foundations essays, because twice i wrote two essays in one week (cos i had loads to say, innit) and 7 post-Kantian ones too.
So that’s a draw.
Then again, you were doing Kant and Later Wittgenstein, which I imagine was much harder.
23 January, 2008 at 1:39 am |
Animal references are common throughout Republic, not only dogs. Of course the Guardian-guard dog analogy may be part of it. Also perhaps seeing the polis as a kind of unity much like the herd or beehive? (Something denied by Aristotle). Sure there are plenty of other conjectures out there.
As for where Cohen derived his influences, I’d guess his Marxist upbringing had something to do with it…
23 January, 2008 at 9:50 am |
Oh those gregarious bees, they’re just not *political*….
As for Cohen, I expect living in a Communist commune in Canada probably did have an influence. It’s just his specific attacks on Rawls seem forshaddowed by Nozick. I’m starting to think more and more that he did get the original ideas for the basic structure attack from Nozick, becuase in Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality he develops the emphasis on Social Ethos and the challenge about unreflectively accepting the post-utilitarian rational-economic atomistic take on human nature, whilst specifically dealing with Nozick. It would make sense to turn to Rawls after having dealt with Nozick, and deploy the same sort of attack.
23 January, 2008 at 12:42 pm |
Racism is one of his main examples against the basic structure though, and I think that’s clearly derived from anti-Semitism in Canada. Of course, his experiences may have led him to certain beliefs that influenced his thought on both Rawls and Nozick.
23 January, 2008 at 1:26 pm |
Oh sure, racism is definitely in there and almost certainly this has deep roots in the anti-semitism he suffered as a young boy (as detailed in ‘If you’re an egalitarian…’)
But racism can’t do all that much work, because the first part of the second difference principle (fair equal opportunity) rules out any social institutions practising racism, and that’s going to cover and rule-out an awful lot of the most severe and life-disabilitating racist practices.
The family is a far more problematic case for Rawlsian justice (as I think is widely recognised): and the first place i’ve spotted somebody pointing this out is Anarchy, State and Utopia. Cohen uses the example of the family more than of racism, and I suspect he got his original ideas there when he was trashing Nozick.