Book Description

A New Theory of Justice and Other Essays consists of four articles, each of which attempts to break new ground in philosophy. Altogether, it runs to just over 40,000 words - just over half the length of an average novel. The title chapter argues that the 'war of all against all' described in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is the best starting point for a coherent theory of justice. We have no real conception of a state of nature (nor any possibility of reaching one), yet the question of how justice might arise from a situation of complete anarchy is crucial. The next, 'What is Culture?' speaks for itself, but its conclusions are surprising and disturbing. 'A New Approach to the Philosophy of Religion' contends that we can no longer do the kind of thinking about God that past ages took for granted: our living in a Hubble universe changes everything, and yet 'non realist' approaches to the subject are also dead-ends. We must pass from asking about the sufficient characteristics of God to the necessary ones. The last chapter, 'On the Possible Varieties of Consciousness in the World', argues that some animals - sadly, we can never know which - might possess advanced minds. The author adopts an analytic approach to the subject - his aim throughout is to say everything as clearly as possible - but he does not shy from requisitioning arguments from continental philosophers. Locke, Rousseau, Rawls, Nozick, Hegel, Foucault, Aquinas, Augustine, Dennett, Churchland, Searle, and others, are brought in to shed light on areas that might otherwise remain obscure. This is not 'philosophy' in the loose sense of spiritual rumination, but in the harder sense of premise and conclusion. The author has a master's degree and a DPhil, both in Philosophy from Sussex University. His doctoral thesis was examined in viva and passed unconditionally by David McLellan, Emeritus Professor of Political Theory at the University of Kent and author of many standard texts about Marx in English. In 1998, JJ Ward won joint first prize (along with Martha Nussbaum and Lars G�rding) in a philosophical dialogues competition organised by the Humanities Research Centre at Oxford University and the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. Its subject was S�ren Kierkegaard. The dialogue was performed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, in front of an invited audience, and subsequently published in Comparative Criticism vol. 20 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).