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Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 The paradox of trust -- Truth, virtue and happiness -- The problem of trust -- The Enlightenment Trail -- Promises, promises: nature's paradoxicaltask -- 2 The perils of prudence -- Plan of the book -- Fear -- Sympathy -- 3 The centipede's sting -- Three views about moral psychology -- Centipedes and backward induction -- Conclusion: prudence in peril -- 4 A remedy in the judgement and understanding? -- Perils of strategic choice -- Impartiality and fairness -- 5 Fairness and morality -- Playing fair with Kant -- Contractarians -- Morality in trust -- 6 All in the game -- Prelude: Enlightenment football -- The games of sociallife -- Reason and obligation -- 7 The bond of society -- Problems of coordination -- Trust in miniature: teamwork -- 8 Trust in the light of reason -- Reciprocity -- 'A remarkable change in man' -- The moral andpolitical sciences -- Citizens of the world? -- Bibliography -- Index

This book shows how public reason is both central and useful for thinking about legitimacy in constitutional law and theory. It helps academics to understand many important doctrines in constitutional adjudication of some leading constitutional courts around the world and in the supranational sphere.

Our responsibilities for democracy are sharper, more demanding than at any time since my childhood. If we are to renew democracy and secure knowledge, policy schools, as Helmut Anheier insists, must advance democratic policy reason with clarity, dedication, and purpose.

Few philosophers have had a more lasting impact on the philosophy of history than Friedrich Hegel. Reason and Revolution is Herbert Marcuse's brilliant interpretation of Hegel's philosophy and the influence it has had on political thought, from the French Revolution to the twentieth century. In a masterpiece of dialectical thought, Marcuse superbly illuminates the implications of Hegel's philosophy, rescuing it from the taint of reactionary thought that distorted or dismissed it for the early part of the twentieth century. After a masterful survey of the main elements of Hegel's philosophical system, Marcuse argues that it is Hegel the rationalist and progressive who stands in contrast to the irrationalism of Nazism, providing the crucial platform on which Marxist thought would later build and take Hegel's thought in a radical and explosive new direction. A vital book in the development of critical theory and for understanding the great battle between liberal and reactionary thought, Reason and Revolution remains essential reading today. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by J.M. Bernstein.

As a humanitarian worker who was professionally involved for decades in crisis- and war-shaken countries, the author strove to understand the political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors contributing to conflicts. This contextualization, with a focus on Arab countries, confirmed what other thinkers found: the majority of political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and finally humanitarian crises in the Arab world are man-made and can be attributed to both extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Central to the latter appears to be a shared cultural construct that can be termed "Arab reason." This essay tries to present information on various aspects of the crisis; to understand why reform efforts come so late and why are they are more difficult for Arabs than for other Muslims. It continues by looking at the knowledge systems that govern Arab reason and their evolution, including the decisive role of the religious knowledge system. From there, it proposes some reform ideas including a renewed legal reasoning process with the goal of a future-oriented, knowledge-based, and inclusive Arab Islamic vision. A pragmatic way forward could be an additional unifying eighth legal school (madhhab/madhāhib) to counter sectarian conflicts and violence. This essay is built on a targeted literature search and is not a comprehensive review of the growing literature generated by distinguished thinkers on various aspects of Arab Islamic identity.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: The Task before Us -- I. TOWARD A PRAGMATIC THEORY OF POLITICAL JUSTIFICATION -- 1 The Tyranny of Minimalism -- 2 Prospectivism and "The Will to Believe" -- 3 Narrative and Moral Reasoning -- II PRAGMATISM AND DEMOCRACY -- 4 Against a Second Pragmatic Acquiescence -- 5 Against Deweyan Democracy -- III POLI TICAL LIBERALISM -- 6 Political Liberalism and the Limits of the Political -- 7 Public Reason and Public Institutions -- 8 The Fact of Reasonable Pluralism -- Conclusion: Liberalism after Minimalism -- Index

I Theories of Action -- 1. Prichard's Theory of Voluntary Activity -- 2. Prichard, Davidson, and the Notion of Agency -- 3. Objections and Qualifications -- 4. Secondary Uses of Action Language -- 5. Three Theories of Action -- 6. The Metaphysics or Ontology of Action -- 7. Concluding Remarks -- II The Springs of Action -- 1. Preliminary Remarks on Volition -- 2. Intentions and Other Pro Attitudes -- 3. Intention, Belief, and Action -- 4. A Conception of Volition -- 5. Reasons and Purposive Explanations -- 6. Voluntary and Intentional Action -- 7. Concluding Remarks -- III Deliberation -- 1. Aristotle on Deliberation -- 2. Decision and Choice -- 3. Deliberation and Ends -- 4. The Question of Validity -- 5. Deliberation and Choice -- 6. Bayesian Deliberation -- 7. Concluding Remarks -- IV The Logic of Practical Reasoning -- 1. Sellars's Theory of Practical Inference -- 2. Binkley's Theory of Practical Reasoning -- 3. Castañeda's General Theory of the Language of Action -- 4. Normative Statements and Practical Reasoning -- 5. Concluding Remarks.

We consider ourselves to be rational beings. We feel that our choices, decisions, and actions are selected from a flexible array of possibilities, based upon reasons. When we vote for a political candidate, it is because they share our views on certain critical issues. When we hire an individual for a job, it is because they are the best qualified. However, if this is true, why does an analysis of the direction of shift in the timbre of the voice of political candidates during an exchange or debate, predict the winner of American presidential elections? Why is it that while only 3% of the American population consists of white men over 6′4″ tall, 30% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are white men over 6′4″ tall? These are examples of "instinctual biases" affecting or modulating rational thought processes. I argue that existing theories of reasoning cannot substantively accommodate these ubiquitous, real-world phenomena. Failure to recognize and incorporate these types of phenomena into the study of human reasoning results in a distorted understanding of rationality. The goal of this article is to draw attention to these types of phenomena and propose an "adulterated rationality" account of reasoning as a first step in trying to explain them.

An exploration of Maimonides, the medieval philosopher, physician, and religious thinker, author of The Guide of the Perplexed, from one of the world's foremost bibliophiles Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides (1138-1204), was born in Córdoba, Spain. The gifted son of a judge and mathematician, Maimonides fled Córdoba with his family when he was thirteen due to Almohad persecution of all non-Islamic faiths. Forced into a long exile, the family spent a decade in Spain before settling in Morocco. From there, Maimonides traveled to Palestine and Egypt, where he died at Saladin's court. As a scholar of Jewish law, a physician, and a philosopher, Maimonides was a singular figure. His work in extracting all the commanding precepts of Jewish law from the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, interpreting and commenting on them, and translating them into terms that would allow students to lead sound Jewish lives became the model for translating God's word into a language comprehensible by all. His work in medicine--which brought him such fame that he became Saladin's personal physician--was driven almost entirely by reason and observation. In this biography, Alberto Manguel examines the question of Maimonides' universal appeal--he was celebrated by Jews, Arabs, and Christians alike. In our time, when the need for rationality and recognition of the truth is more vital than ever, Maimonides can help us find strategies to survive with dignity in an uncertain world.

This book provides a historical and ethnographic examination of gender relations in Malay society, in particular in the well-known state of Negeri Sembilan, famous for its unusual mixture of Islam and matrilineal descent. Peletz analyzes the diverse ways in which the evocative, heavily gendered symbols of "reason" and "passion" are deployed by Malay Muslims. Unlike many studies of gender, this book elucidates the cultural and political processes implicated in the constitution of both feminine and masculine identity. It also scrutinizes the relationship between gender and kinship and weighs the role of ideology in everyday life. Peletz insists on the importance of examining gender systems not as social isolates, but in relation to other patterns of hierarchy and social difference. His study is historical and comparative; it also explores the political economy of contested symbols and meanings. More than a treatise on gender and social change in a Malay society, this book presents a valuable and deeply interesting model for the analysis of gender and culture by addressing issues of hegemony and cultural domination at the heart of contemporary cultural studies

Public reason liberals expect individuals to have justificatory reasons for their views of certain political issues. This paper considers how groups can, and whether they should, give collective public reasons for their political decisions. A problem is that aggregating individuals' consistent judgments on reasons and a decision can produce inconsistent collective judgments. The group will then fail to give a reason for its decision. The paper considers various solutions to this problem and defends a deliberative procedure by showing how it incentivizes information sharing and leads to outcomes most acceptable to the group members.