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2 results

  • Introduction - Who Is the Devil and What Is He Due?

  • Michael Shermer, Chapman University, California
  • Book:
    Giving the Devil his Due
    Published online:
    28 February 2020
    Print publication:
    09 April 2020, pp 1-16

  • Summary

    Introduces the central thesis of the book: that freedom of thought, conscience, inquiry, and speech is inviolable for science and politics and sacrosanct to civilization. Who the devil is and what he is due is stated: The devil is anyone who disagrees with you or someone else, and what he is due is the right to speak his mind. The reason we must give the devil his due is explained: for our own safety’s sake. Why? Because my freedom to speak and dissent is inextricably tied to your freedom to speak and dissent. If I censor you, why shouldn’t you censor me? If you silence me, why shouldn’t I silence you? Once customs and laws are in place to silence someone on one topic, what’s to stop people from silencing anyone on any topic that deviates from the accepted canon? The tyranny of censorship must be combatted with the bulwark of freedom.

  • 11 - H. L. A. Hart: a twentieth-century Oxford political philosopher

  • Edited by Catherine H. Zuckert, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
  • Book:
    Political Philosophy in the Twentieth Century
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    29 August 2011, pp 170-184

  • Summary

    Herbert Hart's significance can be understood only when his work is measured against conceptions of political philosophy that were dominant in Oxford in the years between his postwar return and the publication of The Concept of Law. In Hart's own terminology, the central case of morality understood from the internal point of view is critical, that is, justified, morality. Hart's exclusive focus on positive morality cut the debate off from the main political-philosophic tradition, and from reason. That Hart had a political philosophy at all was an act of conscious resistance to skepticism. Yet the resistance was itself shaped and limited by Hart's own skepticism about something more foundational: the truth-value, and truth, of moral judgments intended as critical because asserted as true, sound, really justified. Hart criticized On Liberty for relying on a presumption of middle-aged psychological caution and stability to justify rejecting paternalism.