Coercion

By Feinberg, Joel

Coercion (also called ‘duress’) is one of the basic exculpating excuses both in morality and in some systems of criminal law. Unlike various kinds of direct compulsion that ...

Coercion

Coercion is the use of force or threats to control a person’s actions. As such, it is different from persuasion and manipulation, it is allegedly an integral part ...

Hale, Robert Lee (1884–1969)

By Fried, Barbara H.

Hale was an important figure in both the American legal realist movement and the looser association of Institutional and Progressive economists writing in the first part of the ...

Sexuality, philosophy of

By Soble, Alan

The philosophy of sexuality, like the philosophy of science, art or law, is the study of the concepts and propositions surrounding its central protagonist, in this case ‘sex’. ...

Public health ethics

By Giubilini, Alberto

Public health ethics is the branch of bioethics that is concerned with behaviours and policies affecting not only (or even not primarily or not at all) the ...

Consent

Permissive consent releases people from duties. As well as playing a role in a theory of right action, this type of consent is at the centre of sexual ...

Law, limits of

By Smith, G.W.

Questions concerning the proper limits of law are of particular interest to thinkers in the Western political tradition of individualism. In this tradition the law is regarded primarily ...

Sport and ethics

By Hyland, Drew A.

Ethical controversies have formed some of the liveliest debate in the philosophy of sport. Some of the issues arise out of the very nature of sport as a ...

Toleration

By Horton, John

Toleration emerged as an important idea in the seventeenth century, receiving its fullest defence in John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). Initially developed in the context of ...

Socialism

By Oneill, John

While socialist ideas may retrospectively be identified in many earlier forms of protest and rebellion against economic injustice and political oppression, socialism both as a relatively coherent theoretical ...

Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804)

By Guyer, Paul

Immanuel Kant was the paradigmatic philosopher of the European Enlightenment. He eradicated the last traces of the medieval worldview from modern philosophy, joined the key ideas of earlier ...

Consent

By Simmons, A. John

A concept of central importance in moral, political and legal philosophy, consent is widely recognized as justifying or legitimating acts, arrangements or expectations. In standard cases, a person’s ...

International law, philosophy of

By Buchanan, Allen

The philosophy of international law has a long history, reaching back on some accounts beyond the Medieval period to late Hellenistic philosophy. In the twentieth century work in ...

Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804)

Immanuel Kant was the paradigmatic philosopher of the European Enlightenment. He eradicated the last traces of the medieval worldview from modern philosophy, joined the key ideas of earlier ...

Nozick, Robert (1938–2002)

By Wolff, Jonathan

Although Robert Nozick published on an enormous range of topics, he is best known as a political philosopher, and especially for his powerful and entertaining statement of libertarianism. ...

Nozick, Robert (1938–2002)

By Wolff, Jonathan; Blackburn, Simon

Although Robert Nozick published on an enormous range of topics, he is best known as a political philosopher, and especially for his powerful and entertaining statement of libertarianism. ...

Anti-positivist thought in Latin America

By Weinstein, Michael A.

Anti-positivist philosophy arose in Latin America at the turn of the twentieth century in response to the dominance of closed positivistic systems of historical development in the climate ...

Ethics of policing

By Nathan, Christopher

Policing is, historically, relatively new. Accordingly, the study of the proper norms governing the police is also a novel endeavour, especially in comparison with the study of the ...

Socialism

While socialist ideas may retrospectively be identified in many earlier forms of protest and rebellion against economic injustice and political oppression, socialism both as a relatively coherent theoretical ...

War and peace, philosophy of

By Nardin, Terry

The war/peace dichotomy is a recurrent one in human thought and the range of experience it interprets is vast. Images of war and peace permeate religion, literature and ...

Russian philosophy of law

By Walicki, Andrzej

Russian thought is rarely associated with philosophy of law. The intellectuals of pre-revolutionary Russia are known rather for their uncompromising critique of legalism, passing sometimes into a genuine ...

Luther, Martin (1483–1546)

By Higton, M.A.

Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk who found the theology and penitential practices of his times inadequate for overcoming fears about his salvation. He turned first to a ...

Neuroenhancement

By Erler, Alexandre; Forlini, Cynthia

Neuroenhancement is generally defined as the improvement of mental capacities. Such an improvement can be effected via traditional (e.g. education) or biomedical means. The use of the ...

Respect for persons

By Dillon, Robin S.

The idea that persons should treated with respect and that disrespecting someone is wrong is an important element of everyday morality and of moral philosophy and social and ...

Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–86)

By Arkush, Allan

A Jewish disciple of Leibniz and Wolff, Mendelssohn strove throughout his life to uphold and strengthen their rationalist metaphysics while sustaining his ancestral religion. His most important philosophic ...