Philosophical Controversy Research Articles

A Study on The Philosophical Controversy of Kingly Way-Rule by Force

A Study on The Philosophical Controversy of Kingly Way-Rule by Force

History, Imagination, and the Performance of Music (review)

Reviewed by: History, Imagination, and the Performance of Music David Dolata History, Imagination, and the Performance of Music. By Peter Walls . Rochester, NY: Boydell and Brewer, 2003. [ xiv, 184 p. ISBN 1-84383-005-1. $70.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Until twenty or so years ago, many traditional performers and musicologists viewed performance practice (a.k.a. Historically Informed Performance or HIP) with suspicion, despite its official designation as one of musicology's subspecialties. Recently the gap between the two camps has begun to narrow, partly due to the realization that the "authenticity police" do not represent mainstream HIPsters, but also in some measure as a result of recent works by well respected scholars and performers who address specific performance practice issues in a balanced and thoughtful manner. Among the most notable of these practical sources are Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell's introduction to The Historical Performance of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Performance Practice (for music before and after 1600), edited by Howard Mayer Brown and Stanley Sadie (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), and the Early Music America series of performance practice guides for Medieval, Renaissance, and Seventeenth-century Music edited respectively by Ross Duffin (APerformer's Guide to Medieval Music [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000]), Jeffery Kite-Powell (A Performer's Guide to Renaissance Music [New York: Schirmer, 1994]), and Stewart Carter (A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music [New York: Schirmer, 1997]), the last two with revised editions in preparation. To this list should be added Clive Brown's Classical and Romantic Performing Practice from 1750- 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Several other books treat the broader philosophical controversies that performance practice seems to excite. These include Nicholas Kenyon, et. al.'s Authenticity and Early Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), Richard Taruskin's Text and Act (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), Paul Henry Lang's Performance and Musicology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), and Peter Kivy's Authenticities: [End Page 451] Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). Two other volumes directly address the charges of those who feel threatened enough by performance practice that they go so far as to question its value: John Butt's Playing with History: The Historical Approach to Musical Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), and the book under review here, Peter Walls's polemic, History, Imagination, and the Performance of Music. The book is based on a series of lectures Walls presented in 2000 under the auspices of Magdalen College and calls to mind the conversational style of Stravinsky's lectures, Poetics of Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947), and other such similar collections. While Butt's Playing with History appeals to the musical philosopher, Walls's book, by no means lacking in philosophical perspective, is directed toward the performing musician, the person at the center of the vortex who must ultimately make the decisions. Full of wit, humor, and clever turns of phrase, the book is a pleasure to read. Walls's direct personal style and engaging manner draws the reader into his world, and the copious musical examples bring abstract issues into sharp focus, even if many of the facsimiles appear blurred as if they were actually faxed across the ages. In his introduction, Walls evenhandedly articulates the main criticisms leveled at HIP. The chapters that follow, relatively concise, to the point, and well-organized, are devoted to detailed individual discussions of various aspects of the debate. Through an examination of Johann Sebastian Bach's Adagio from the G Minor Sonata for Solo Violin, BWV 1001, the second chapter, "Escaping Tradition, Embracing History," demonstrates the role changing personal taste plays in reception history. Cutely titled "Measure for Measure or As You Like It?," the third chapter is comprised of several case studies in support of Walls's assertion that performance practice research and actual music making are and should be entirely distinct and separate activities. On a less controversial note, chapter 4, "What's the Score?," describes the benefits of even the most minimal primary source score study and demonstrates that scores with few performance indications can still offer a great deal of useful information...

No Case to Answer

Being described as taking a 'quietist' view of a question can be alright, so long as that epithet is properly understood. In the mouth of a social scientist, such a designation may well carry more than a faintly derogatory implication, as though it encouraged looking away from rather than facing up to problems. A quietist will then sound like someone who is rather intimidated by the problem, who refrains from making a difference where one could be made. Properly understood, 'quietism' of the Wittgensteinian persuasion carries no such implication but calls for resolute exploration of the deepest sources of a problem. Far from accepting the status quo ante, Wittgensteinian 'quietism' is actively interventionist in philosophical arguments, but in a thoroughly 'deflationist' manner that seeks to show that philosophical controversies commonly involve much less than meets the eye. Would-be sceptical arguments are leading candidates for deflationist treatment: they take the form of quite profound challenges to our existing preconceptions but, on inspection, the form proves to lack substance. Martin Kusch (2004) re-opens the controversy between David Bloor (1992) and Michael Lynch (1992a, 1992b) over the application of Wittgenstein's philosophy to the problem of rule-scepticism. Kusch comes down on Bloor's side against Lynch's deflationist argument, but opposes Bloor's claim to have answered the sceptic. Bloor and Kusch agree that the sceptic can be answered and they also agree upon the form that an adequate answer needs to take. Kusch denies that Bloor's argument satisfies the requirements: namely, for a non-circular reductive explanation in which 'intentionality' is derived from 'non intentional' causes. Kusch (2004: 584) marks Lynch's disagreement with Bloor in this

Facts, Values and Quanta

Quantum mechanics is a fundamentally probabilistic theory (at least so far as the empirical predictions are concerned). It follows that, if one wants to properly understand quantum mechanics, it is essential to clearly understand the meaning of probability statements. The interpretation of probability has excited nearly as much philosophical controversy as the interpretation of quantum mechanics. 20th century physicists have mostly adopted a frequentist conception. In this paper it is argued that we ought, instead, to adopt a logical or Bayesian conception. The paper includes a comparison of the orthodox and Bayesian theories of statistical inference. It concludes with a few remarks concerning the implications for the concept of physical reality.

NGOs and the Advancement of Economic and Social Rights: Philosophical and Practical Controversies

This article explores controversies surrounding economic and social rights in the context of recent moves by non-governmental organizations, notably Amnesty International, to strengthen their commitment to these ‘second-generation’ rights. Although this move is long overdue, particularly in an era of increasing economic polarization due to globalization, the article argues that these efforts will fail if we simply attempt to ‘add’ economic and social rights to the existing liberal human rights discourse. This article focuses on the contribution that feminist ethics has made to the reconceptualization of rights in theory and practice. Specifically, it argues that, in order to make sense of both the moral imperative of so-called ‘welfare’ rights, and the political work required to realize them, we must rethink rights in terms of relationships and the patterns of responsibility that emerge out of them.

Ruth Glasner. A Fourteenth-Century Scientific Philosophical Controversy: Jedaiah Ha-Penini's “Treatise on Opposite Motions” and “Book of Confutation.” Sources for the Study of Jewish Culture 5. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1998. 255 pp. (Hebrew).

Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of studies devoted to medieval Hebrew science, but few editions and explications of texts. In this book, Ruth Glasner provides a critical edition and exhaustive analysis of two polemical letters pertaining to physics by the fourteenth-century Provençal poet and philosopher Jedaiah ha-Penini (Bedersi) (born ca. 1285). These letters were largely forgotten until S. Pines drew attention to their significance and called for their publication over thirty years ago. That call has been answered in exemplary fashion in the present volume.

Pragmatic Method and Its Rhetorical Lineage

Pragmatic Method and Its Rhetorical Lineage

Justifying Practical Reason: What Chaim Perelman's New Rhetoric Can Learn from Frege's Attack on Psychologism

Chaïm Perelman's new rhetoric represents both the foundation of his normative inquiry into the notion of justice and a fascinating exploration of argumentation that has relevance for philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. Notwithstanding the undoubted merits of the new rhetoric, the process of theorizing by means of which it is formulated is inherently problematic. The problematic nature of this process derives from its pursuit within the unintelligible perspective of a metaphysical standpoint. In order to demonstrate the unintelligibility of this standpoint and of the theorizing that issues from it, I establish a parallel between Perelman's new rhetoric and Frege's views on logic. Specifically, I claim that while Frege wavers between a Kantian and an unKantian (scientific) conception of logic, Perelman wavers between a nonscientific and a scientific conception of practical reason. A scientific conception of logic and practical reason, I argue, makes it seem, respectively, that we can subject the laws of logic to a demand for judgment and that we can justify the ideals of practical reason. The unintelligibility of such a demand is demonstrated by Frege when he challenges the position of psychologism in logic. Indeed, Frege's challenge in this case effectively determines the form of the challenge that I mount subsequently against the intelligibility of Perelman's attempt to justify the ideals of practical reason. Both Frege's and Perelman's approaches fail, I argue, on account of their institution within philosophical inquiry of the methodology of scientific inquiry. Finally, the scientistic nature of the accounts of these theorists is examined in relation to comments by Hilary Putnam concerning the structure of philosophical controversy in general. [End Page 50]

Evidence Based Resource in Anaesthesia and Analgesia

Evidence Based Resource in Anaesthesia and Analgesia MARTIN TRAMÈR (ed.) BMJ Books: London, UK, 2000, 225 pp. Price £30.00. To make a good soup you need good ingredients, and the complexities and controversies surrounding Evidence Based Medicine definitely lend themselves to a quality intellectual soup. Martin Tramèr sets out his objectives quite clearly. His aim is not to publish another conventional textbook. He has succeeded. This book attempts both to address the philosophical controversies and to explain the statistical and practical complexities involved in performing systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The book is in two parts. The first attempts a balanced discourse of the various aspects of evidence based medicine and the second looks at a few poignant topics. The book starts with an eloquent philosophical preamble by Neville Goodman looking at the various comments made in the medical literature by often polarized protagonists. Things then start in earnest with detailed discussion on the state of anaesthetic literature, the methods involved in systemic reviews and the statistics involved in meta-analysis. These chapters describe clearly, although occasionally repetitively, the difficulties in extracting useful information from often poorly performed and reported primary research. As such, this section makes invaluable reading for any potential researcher over and above any concerns about meta-analysis. We need well-conducted reliable research for all sorts of reasons, and aspiring researchers who want to get their work published would do well to heed the methodological quality lessons which attempting to combine primary studies have taught us. The contributions in the second half of the book vary in style. Chapter 6 is an annotated summary of six systematic reviews, whilst Chapter 7 is a single review in itself (dealing with the effects of intra-articular morphine). Chapter 8 gives a fascinating insight into how the Oxford canon of systematic reviews in postoperative nausea and vomiting were conducted, noteworthy because they considered potential harms as well as benefits. The final chapter considers the control of perioperative bleeding. These areas are all put through the meta-scope, the multiple systemic reviews are dissected and analysed, before concluding where the state of the science is, which is frequently and refreshingly inconclusive. The Editor’s aim of providing a balanced appraisal of evidence based medicine is clearly met, and although the authors include most of the major luminaries of evidence based medicine within anaesthesia, their accounts reflect both its shortcomings and merits. The claim in the title to be a resource is also achieved with a comprehensive list of systemic reviews with brief comment, in the appendix, and several useful websites are also detailed. Unfortunately, the publishers’ claim that there will be regular electronic updates is not expanded upon. Also, because of the lag time between the book’s preparation and its publication, there is no mention of the Cochrane Anaesthesia Review Group, which was formed early in 2000. This book has something for everyone – both reviewers learnt a lot from it, although one is an editor within the Cochrane Collaboration and one a relative novice in the field. We expect this book, and its subsequent editions, will become a favourite for trainees seeking knowledge, and is a must when they start designing their research project, but maybe also for ‘old timers’ to reassure them that science has not yet taken away their art. What it does not do, however, is solve the problem of articulating to nonmedics what we should practise instead of Evidence Based Medicine. We hope subsequent courses live up to this most appetizing starter.

John Stuart Mill Translated by Siegmund Freud

Freud's translation of J.S. Mill involved an encounter with the traditions of British empirical philosophy and associationist psychology, both of which go back to Locke and Hume. The translation of Mill's essay on Plato also brought Freud into contact with the philosophical controversy between the advocates of intuition and faith and the advocates of perception and reason. A comparison of source and translated texts demonstrates Freud's faithfulness to his author. A few significant deviations may be connected with Freud's ambiguous attitude to women's rights, as advocated in the essay The Enfranchisement of Women. Stylistically Freud had nothing to learn from Mill. His model in English was Macaulay, whom he was also reading at this period.

Concept, Individuality and Truth

Philosophers may disagree with unmatched zeal, but no philosophical controversy can free them from their common dependence upon the concept as a privileged vehicle of truth. Even when embracing the most radical empiricism or the most unyielding scepticism, philosophers cannot help but make conceptual arguments. All their efforts may aim at curing themselves of addiction to the concept, but so long as they reason on behalf of experience or the suspension of judgment, thinking remains the element in which their claims live and die.Philosophers' perennial use of conceptual argument might seem a double curse, subverting all of philosophy's equally perennial aspirations to seize the truth. To begin with, if philosophical investigation constitutively employs concepts, how can it possibly establish the validity of conceptual determination? If philosophy cannot fail to use concepts to legitimate reason as a midwife of truth, will philosophical investigation not fall into the vicious circularity of relying upon an instrument that can never be certified without taking its reliability for granted? Secondly, if philosophy must always utilize concepts to arrive at truth, must philosophers not presuppose that the object of true knowledge is what is conceptually determinate? Besides being beyond philosophical justification, will this assumption not limit objectivity to a mortuary of changeless universals from which all becoming, all particulars, and indeed, all actual existence are excluded as some inconceivable illusions? Will the only objectivity that philosophy can conceive be a phantom realm of ideas that can never correspond to genuine reality?

A lesson from the past: Patterns, Processes of Vertebrate Evolution.

No wonder, to begin with, that speculations on fossil vertebrates stimulated some of the best pieces of evolutionary biology. The quality of the fossil record, especially the wealth of information we may often recover from teeth or skeletal remains, together with the subterraneous but generally unconfessed interest for a large and diverse taxon to which we ourselves belong, set the background for some of the most enjoyable and stimulating readings in our ®eld. Think, for instance, of George Gaylord Simpson's Tempo & Mode in Evolution (Simpson, 1944), a book of such an importance as to justify a jubilee (Fitch & Ayala, 1995) 50 years after it appeared in print, or of his later The Major Features of Evolution (Simpson, 1953). No wonder, then, that Robert L. Carroll's book is `dedicated to the work of George Gaylord Simpson, who brought palaeontology into the evolutionary synthesis and established the study of large-scale evolution on a strong scienti®c footing.' Carroll's book, however, is nothing of a celebrative or historical book. It is a sound, well-argued monograph on evolution, using ± as much as Simpson also did ± fossil vertebrates as the main, but not exclusive model for describing and interpreting evolutionary patterns over the scale of geological time. Carroll deals at length with several of the most controversial points in palaeobiology and evolutionary biology at large: topics obviously familiar to any reader acquainted with the evolutionary biology literature of the last couple of decades, but all too often approached through a few selected examples and in terms of philosophical controversy. This was true even of the valuable stimulating pages of the late Antoni Hoffman (1989). Here, on the contrary, the reader is offered a broad range of well-documented examples, and Carroll's conclusions often verge on the pluralistic: in the Preface, he anticipates the general conclusions of his study, which will `differ from those of Darwin, the modern evolutionary synthesis, and the theory of punctuated equilibrium in being much more pluralistic', which is repeated at the end: `[P]atterns, rates, and controlling forces are much more varied than had been conceived by either Darwin or Simpson.' (p. 390). Carroll must be congratulated on his superb ability to provide the reader with a digest of precious information on genetics and developmental biology and in carefully distinguishing between the problems where these disciplines may already help understanding the patterns from the fossil record and other still grey areas, where a similar understanding is likely to be developed, but some key information is still lacking. I dare to say that Carroll succeeded in grasping and summarizing genetics and developmental biology for palaeobiologists better than most geneticists and developmental biologists have been able to do with palaeobiological evidence. A die-hard tradition in palaeobiology is ®lling pages with statistics of ®rst occurrences, extinctions and the like. As poignantly demonstrated by Andrew Smith and the late Colin Patterson (e.g. Smith & Patterson, 1988; Smith, 1994), all those statistics are prone to very strong in uence from subjective taxonomic decisions. In Carroll's book there is still a place for that kind of numerical exercises, but not too much. Instead, the author embraces the cladistic method of counting changes of character states along the branches of a cladogramme: a beautiful example of this kind of analysis provides the backbone for his analysis of the evolution of mosasaurs. What about macroevolution? Carroll soberly rules out the existence of evolutionary mechanisms peculiar to it, but goes on commenting that `On the other hand, macroevolutionary patterns cannot be directly extrapolated from microevolution because there are additional external forces that are undetectable over short time scales and whose force, frequency, and duration are unpredictable. These include plate tectonics, with corresponding changes in climate and routes of dispersal, and mass extinction' (p. 392). To sum up, if Simpson's The Major Features of Evolution `was the latest attempt by a vertebrate palaeontologist to provide a uni®ed picture of evolutionary theory' (p. 60), now it has been replaced, in many ways, by Carroll's Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution. His last chapter includes a section entitled Agenda for the Future: `Counting taxa is never suf®cient to solve the important biological aspects of these events.' (p. 393); we need to differentiate between extinctions and pseudoextinctions, to look for processes underlying the patters, to incorporate into palaeobiology the new spectacular advances in developmental biology. But, to be sure, there is still scope for getting important lessons from the past.

A draft for unifying controversies in philosophy of science

The basic (negative and positive) methodological maxims of three currents of philosophy of science (logical empiricism, falsificationism, and postpositivism) are formulated. Many of these maxims (stratagems) are controversial, e.g., the stance about the nonsense of metaphysics, and that of its indispensability. The restricted validity of these maxims allows for their unification. Within the framework of most of them there may be a relationship of (synchronic, or diachronic) subordination of the contradicting desiderata. In this vein ten stratagems are formulated.

Assimilating sociology: critical reflections on the 'sociology in nursing' debate.

We are witnessing the emergence of a 'new nursing'. In part, this has been associated with the adoption of a 'holistic' model of health and a commitment to a holistic curriculum within nurse education. The role of sociology within the nursing enterprise has been the subject of much debate. This paper seeks to further this debate by arguing that sociology is invaluable to nursing for many reasons but that its value may be undermined as a consequence of being overly constrained within the nursing arena, at the mutual expense of both sociology and the long term interests of nursing itself. This paper will suggest that central to an understanding of how this 'surplus constraint' of sociology occurs in an understanding of the manner in which the holistic model has been adopted in much of nursing and nurse education. The 'indeterminacy' of the holistic model is such that is has empowered a questionable eclecticism, marginalized philosophical controversies within nursing theory, disguised difficult epistemological and ontological conflicts associated with competing claims to truth and facilitated the operation of a form of power whereby sociology has been excluded, at the very moment of its apparent inclusion. This paper goes on to argue that the value of sociology to nursing is dependent upon: firstly, a more systematic and rigorous discussion of its relationship to, and role within, nursing and secondly, a movement away from an implicit 'assimilation' model regarding the incorporation of sociology into nursing towards a more 'multi-cultural' approach. Only under such circumstances may sociology's value to nursing be realized but in a manner that places an importance on maintaining the ontological and epistomological integrity of the sociological tradition.

Intellectual independence for nonscientists and other content-transcendent goals of science education

Many theories of science education try to justify teaching science on the basis of goals that transcend learning the content of science. The main purpose of this article is to examine in detail one such content-transcendent goal, namely, the goal of intellectual independence for nonscientists from science. The article first provides a brief overview of some content-transcendent goals for science education other than intellectual independence, and indicates certain irremediable problems with particular formulations of these goals, but also suggests why such goals are offered by science education theorists and needed by science education. Second, some formulations of, and philosophical motivations for, the goal of intellectual independence are reviewed and some of the philosophical controversies over the reachability of that goal are examined. Finally, a research agenda directed toward obtaining evidence pertinent to the resolution of many of the controversies is outlined. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 81:239–258, 1997.

The Case Against Arbitral Awards of Specific Performance in Transnational Commercial Disputes

> In the case of a binding promise that it shall rain tomorrow , the immediate legal effect of what the promisor does is, that he takes the risk of the event, within certain defined limits, as between himself and the promisee. He does no more when he promises to deliver a bale of cotton. … The only universal consequence of a legally binding promise is, that the law makes the promisor pay damages if the promised event does not come to pass. > > [Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, The Common Law (ed. M. Howe, 1963) (1881) at pp. 235–236] THESE WORDS about the limitations of the concept of promise, written by Justice Holmes in a commercial age characterized by the horse-drawn carriage and the steamship, represent one side in a doctrinal and philosophical controversy over the nature of contractual obligation that is at least a century old. Their characterization of the remedial device available to an injured promisee highlights particularly well a fundamental incongruence between contractual rights and moral entitlements: is a contracting party entitled to demand that it receive the benefit of its bargain by exacting an enforced performance from its promisor, or is the contract, as Justice Holmes would argue, merely a promise in the alternative - either to perform or to pay damages? It is a testament to the hardiness of this intellectual dispute about the proper nature of contractual relief that in today's world, where commercial relations are increasingly described by near-instantaneous transfers of capital and resources across national boundaries, the debate has not been resolved. But the continuing vitality of this perennial question in the transnational commercial context should give thoughtful lawyers pause: the issue has not been settled definitively in the various fora where international commercial relations are played out. Contracts of a transnational nature are …

對《白馬論》的邏輯分析

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
 白馬論的論旨是“白馬非馬”。此説一向以來引起了不少爭議。其實，“白馬非馬”這命題是可以有多種不同的語意詮釋的。本文通過邏輯分析的方法，把其中不同的語意詮釋分析清楚，以揭示並由此消解白馬論的誤導性。The main thesis of the “Theory of White Horse”, namely that white horse is not horse, has aroused a large number of philosophical controversies. The present paper is an attempt to show that the thesis just mentioned is semantically ambiguous, such that the technique of logical analysis can be employed to clarify the ambiguity of the thesis concerned and accordingly to reveal the misleading nature of the Theory of White Horse.

Memoirs of a Scientist-HistorianA Skeptical Biochemist. Joseph S. FrutonEighty years. Joseph S. Fruton

Taking his inspiration from Robert Boyle (The Sceptical Chymist [1661]) and Joseph Needham (The Sceptical Biologist [1929]), Joseph Fruton, in A Skeptical Biochemist, engages in a critical conversation with scientists, philosophers, sociologists, and historians of the biochemical sciences since 1800. He speaks as one who, for over half a century, actively participated in the burgeoning field of protein chemistry and is also a widely read scholar of the history and philosophy of the sciences. In four major chapters Fruton deals with the methodology, the history and philosophy, the historiography, and the language of the biochemical sciences. He uses the term biochemical sciences not in a strictly disciplinary sense, but to describe all those efforts that are situated at the intersection of chemistry and biology. In his perceptive discussion of the scientific method as it applies to the biochemical sciences (Ch. 2), Fruton defends Baconian inductivism by taking issue with Claude Bernard, Justus von Liebig, and Popperian positivism. He stresses the importance of experimentation, observation, and craftsmanship in practice and warns against the search for simplicity through numerical and geometrical representations. In the third and most voluminous chapter of the book, Fruton sketches the interplay of chemical and biological sciences since 1800, showing mastery over a wide range of topics. His analysis ranges from earlier studies on respiration, metabolic conversion of foodstuffs, vision, muscular contraction, and microbial fermentation to later developments in cytology, embryology, microbiology, and, after 1950, molecular biology and evolutionary theory. Focusing on philosophical controversies such as the debate between proponents of mechanism and vitalism and the ongoing debate about reductionism and the autonomy of biology that has accompanied chemical descriptions of the phenomena of life, Fruton emphasizes that biological practice and theorizing have always been limited by the available

Am anfang war die tat

First, the paper argues that Tarski's theory of language levels is best understood not only as a method for avoiding semantic paradoxes by rigidly restricting the expressive power of a language, but as a natural expression of an epistemological process of reflection which is more adequately understood as a process and not by its result. Second, it is argued that the apparent philosophical controversy between materialism and idealism dissolves whithin this process of reflection. If one has raised above the lowest level, one always is a materialist as well as an idealist; however, one is so in relation to different levels.

The public moralist versus ethnocentrism: John Stuart Mill's French enterprise

ABSTRACT This article connects Mill's experience with France and the French with his theoretical vindication of the significance of studying foreign cultures and peoples, and offers an assessment both of the way in which he applied his views on this matter to his life‐long connection with France and of the overall part this enterprise had in his conception of his role as one of the ‘moral teachers of England’. It is argued that, whatever the merits of Mill's theory of half‐truths might be with regard to a number of philosophical or epistemological controversies, his application of it in the realm of the disputes and misunderstandings between nations is defensible and commendable.