Prima Facie Case Research Articles

Vonnisbespreking: Deliktuele aanspreeklikheid vir beserings veroorsaak deur ’n gevange wilde beer

Delictual liability for injuries caused by a captive wild bear The plaintiff was bitten by a captive wild bear while visiting the bear’s cage. In the trial court she claimed damages from the owners of the bear based on the actio de feris and the actio legis Aquiliae but absolution from the instance was granted. She then applied for permission to appeal against this decision, which was granted, and the full bench of the High Court thereupon dismissed the decision of the trial court. The plaintiff initially relied on the actio de feris to impose strict liability on the owners of the bear for bringing it to a place where members of the public have access (cf. Van der Westhuizen v Burger 2018 2 SA 87 (SCA) par. 3). Two defences may be raised against the action, viz. negligence on the part of, and voluntary assumption of risk by, the plaintiff. The trial court by implication accepted the defences, as the plaintiff did not provide any evidence to the contrary, and dismissed the claim. However, on appeal the court found that the plaintiff had not voluntarily assumed the risk of injury by the bear, but declined to make a final determination regarding the question whether the plaintiff had acted negligently as it merely had to apply the test for absolution from the instance. When the court a quo has to make this final determination and finds that the plaintiff had not been negligent, the actio de feris may perhaps have succeeded if the plaintiff had provided for it in her particulars of claim. The plaintiff did not rely on the actio de feris in the next two cases, so all three cases considered the defendants’ liability on the basis of the actio legis Aquiliae where the issue of their negligence was of primary significance. The trial court held that the defendants had not acted negligently. But the subsequent cases did not agree. According to them the defendants were negligent in allowing members of the public, and the plaintiff in particular, to come and be in close proximity to the bear’s cage in circumstances in which they had failed to take adequate, reasonable and necessary steps to protect her against the bear. The full bench held that the plaintiff had made out a prima facie case to which the defendants had to respond, failing which the plaintiff may succeed in her action, and dismissed the decision of the trial court to grant absolution from the instance. However, this was not necessarily the end of the matter, as it was not this court’s task to make a final determination regarding the question whether the defendants had in fact acted negligently and/or whether the plaintiff herself (also) had acted negligently. This would be the task of the court a quo. The decision of the full bench can be supported.

Vonnisbespreking: Deliktuele aanspreeklikheid vir beserings veroorsaak deur ’n gevange wilde beer

Delictual liability for injuries caused by a captive wild bear The plaintiff was bitten by a captive wild bear while visiting the bear’s cage. In the trial court she claimed damages from the owners of the bear based on the actio de feris and the actio legis Aquiliae but absolution from the instance was granted. She then applied for permission to appeal against this decision, which was granted, and the full bench of the High Court thereupon dismissed the decision of the trial court. The plaintiff initially relied on the actio de feris to impose strict liability on the owners of the bear for bringing it to a place where members of the public have access (cf. Van der Westhuizen v Burger 2018 2 SA 87 (SCA) par. 3). Two defences may be raised against the action, viz. negligence on the part of, and voluntary assumption of risk by, the plaintiff. The trial court by implication accepted the defences, as the plaintiff did not provide any evidence to the contrary, and dismissed the claim. However, on appeal the court found that the plaintiff had not voluntarily assumed the risk of injury by the bear, but declined to make a final determination regarding the question whether the plaintiff had acted negligently as it merely had to apply the test for absolution from the instance. When the court a quo has to make this final determination and finds that the plaintiff had not been negligent, the actio de feris may perhaps have succeeded if the plaintiff had provided for it in her particulars of claim. The plaintiff did not rely on the actio de feris in the next two cases, so all three cases considered the defendants’ liability on the basis of the actio legis Aquiliae where the issue of their negligence was of primary significance. The trial court held that the defendants had not acted negligently. But the subsequent cases did not agree. According to them the defendants were negligent in allowing members of the public, and the plaintiff in particular, to come and be in close proximity to the bear’s cage in circumstances in which they had failed to take adequate, reasonable and necessary steps to protect her against the bear. The full bench held that the plaintiff had made out a prima facie case to which the defendants had to respond, failing which the plaintiff may succeed in her action, and dismissed the decision of the trial court to grant absolution from the instance. However, this was not necessarily the end of the matter, as it was not this court’s task to make a final determination regarding the question whether the defendants had in fact acted negligently and/or whether the plaintiff herself (also) had acted negligently. This would be the task of the court a quo. The decision of the full bench can be supported.

Kant’s anti-humanism: An outline

Kantian ethics is widely associated with a dictum stating that the human being possesses an absolute value. This position is famously articulated by Kant in the formula of the categorical imperative which states that each person should always be treated as an ultimate end – not as a mere means. Arguably, we face here a good prima facie case for reckoning Kant among the humanists. In spite of this, I argue – contrary to the popular view – that Kant’s ethical theory should be understood as “nomocentric”, and to that extent as anti-humanistic. Obviously, human beings are special for Kant in a morally important way, but their unique significance is not due to their nature as such, but consists solely in their capacity to fulfil the demands imposed on them by the moral law. While establishing this thesis, I discuss various examples of anti-humanistic pronouncements from Kant’s texts, ranging from the pre-critical period up to the late writings, and thereby show that e.g. Kant’s (in)famous insistence on the claim that saving an innocent human life does not justify a white lie (On the Right to Lie From Philanthropy, 1797) is anything but a slip of the pen on Kant’s part. In thecourse of the argument I also emphasise the subjective component to all teleology in Kant including the teleological account of the categorical imperative, and suggest that Kant’s apparent ambivalence towards humanism is rendered intelligible by paying close attention to his dualistic anthropology.

Social Inconsistency

Though the social world is real and objective, the way that social facts arise out of other facts is in an important way shaped by human thought, talk and behaviour. Building on recent work in social ontology, I describe a mechanism whereby this distinctive malleability of social facts, combined with the possibility of basic human error, makes it possible for a consistent physical reality to ground an inconsistent social reality. I explore various ways of resisting the prima facie case for social inconsistency. I conclude, however, that the prima facie case survives scrutiny, and draw out some of the ramifications.

Изискването за вероятна основателност на главния иск в процедурите по постановяване на временни мерки пред Съда на Европейския съюз

This article analyzes the powers of the Court of Justice of the European Union to evaluate the prima facie case in the course of proceedings under Articles 278 and 279 of the TFEU when granting interim measures. It examines the CJEU’s case law to determine what “prima facie” means in the context of the prohibition to prejudge the main case.

The moral permissibility of banishment

This essay defends the moral permissibility, as a form of punishment, of banishment, namely the exclusion by a state of a citizen from its territory. I begin by outlining the prima facie case for banishment, consider for whom it may be appropriate, and acknowledge constraints on its permissibility. I then defend banishment against the main objections in the literature to banishment or the related measure of denationalization (stripping citizens of their citizenship): impermissible permanency; excessive severity; ineffectiveness; unfairness to those who are punished and the creation of two classes of citizens; unfairness among states; and that banishment without denationalization is incompatible with the nature of citizenship. I adopt a ‘cantilever strategy’: if incarceration is permissible notwithstanding a certain objection, so is banishment. In concluding, I sympathetically discuss the view that, despite the moral permissibility of banishment, the power to banish should not be instituted because of the risk of abuse.

Forensic Delay Analysis as Evidence of Transaction Costs in Construction Projects

Construction projects are characterised by supply chains with multiple contracts and significant transaction costs. An example of these costs is to be found in the management of project delays. The operationalisation and measurement of transaction costs, especially in the construction context, has hitherto proved difficult. The work reported here is concerned with defining and measuring the resources required for the management of contractual disputes relating to project delays. Its main argument is that concepts from transaction cost economics (TCE) theory (bounded rationality, uncertainty, information asymmetry, and opportunistic behaviour) present serious problems for transaction efficiency. This is exemplified in forensic analysis of construction project delays. Data from twelve case studies are analysed, to reveal that up to 90% of time spent on delay analysis was concerned with searching for and validating information which could, ostensibly, be automatically and reliably captured using digital technologies. This research forms part of a wider study that considers the implications of the identified inefficiencies and makes a case for the exploitation of advances in information technology on the more efficient resolution (or even avoidance) of contractual disputes. It concludes that there is a prima facie case for this, and therefore for the reduction in the transaction costs that relate to the management of construction project delays.

WINNING A CIVIL CASE WITHOUT GIVING ANY KIND OF EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER? Jordaan v Bloemfontein Transitional Local Authority [2004] 1 All SA 496 (SCA), 2004 3 SA 371 (SCA)

The standard of proof in a civil case is the well-known preponderance (balance) of probabilities. This requires of the party on whom the onus lies, in order to be successful, to satisfy the court that he is entitled to succeed on his claim or defence, as the case may be (Pillay v Krishna 1946 AD 946 952-953). The onus of establishing a case in accordance with this standard is on the party who makes the assertion since if a person claims something from another in a court of law, he has to satisfy the court that he is entitled to it (Pillay v Krishna supra 951; and Van Wyk v Lewis 1924 AD 438 444). According to Voet (22.3.10) the position is: “He who asserts, proves, and nothe who denies, since a denial of a fact cannot naturally be proved, provided that it is a fact that is denied and that the denial is absolute.” The person who makes the claim, and accordingly bears the onus of proof, is invariably the plaintiff. However, there are situations in which the defendant bears the onus. This ordinarily happens when the defendant is not content with a mere denial of the claim against him but sets up a special defence. In respect of the special defence the defendant becomes the claimant. For the specialdefence to succeed the defendant must satisfy the court that he is entitled to succeed on it (Pillay v Krishna supra 952; Corpus Juris (D.44.1.1); and Voet 22.3.9).The word “onus”, in this context, refers to the duty which is cast on the particular litigant, in order to be successful, of finally satisfying the court that he is entitled to succeed on his claim or defence, as the case may be. This is the meaning of the word in its true and original (primary) sense. In this sense the onus never shifts from the party upon which it originally rested (South Cape Corporation (Pty) Ltd v Engineering Management Services (Pty) Ltd 1977 3 SA 534 (A) 548A-B). In a secondary sense the word means the duty cast upon a litigant to adduce evidence in order to combat a prima facie case made by the opponent. In this sense the onus refers to the burden of adducing evidence in rebuttal. This may shift or be transferred in the course of the case, depending upon the measure of proof furnished by the one party or the other (South Cape Corporation (Pty) Ltd v Engineering Management Services (Pty) Ltd supra 548).

Constraint-evading surrogacy: the missing piece in Radical Embodied Cognition’s non-representationalist account of intentionality?

Radical Embodied Cognition (REC) is an anti-representationalist approach to the nature of basic cognition proposed by Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin. While endorsing REC’s arguments against a role for contentful representations in basic cognition we suggest that REC’s ‘teleosemiotic’ approach to intentional targeting results in a ‘grey area’ in which it is not clear what kind of causal-explanatory concept is involved. We propose the concept of constraint-evading surrogacy as a conceptual basis for REC’s account of intentional targeting. The argument is developed via a reconsideration of Peter Godfrey-Smith’s ‘environmental complexity thesis’. We show how constraint-evading surrogacy clarifies REC’s account of intentionality by specifying the role of external natural signs and certain internal states (REC’s ‘Local Indexical Guides’). We argue that the resulting view of intentionality can be extended to proto-biotic autocatalytic systems, offering support for the life-mind continuity thesis. We leave open the question of whether it is helpful to consider constraint-evading surrogacy to be a form of (non-contentful) representation, but we suggest that there is a prima facie case for such a view.

Богданов, прагматизм и будущее системного мышления и кибернетики

The paper considers general system theory, cybernetics, and other systems ap­proaches and argues that later systems thinking and cybernetics (systems/cyber­netics) can be seen as a part of the same tradition of thought. There is a prima facie case, therefore, the philosophy of Bogdanov and the Pragmatists can bring unity to the systems movement. Further, it can equip systems thinkers to participate more fully in the major intellectual debates of today. The paper shows the reso­nance of Bogdanov’s ideas with the basic philosophical foundations for the forma­tion and development of systems thinking and cybernetics. Wiener, usually seen as representative of first-order cybernetics, reaffirmed the importance of Bogdanov’s concept of the biregulator. In terms of second-order cybernetics, there is a similar­ity between Bogdanov’s thinking and “constructivism”. Bogdanov’s work is also associated with the concepts of autopoiesis and self-organization. Lepskiy’s pro­posed paradigm of third-order cybernetics, with its emphasis on social values in a self-developing environment, is in tune with the writings of Bogdanov and Dewey. Bogdanov, in his Tectology aimed to demonstrate how the most compli­cated organizational questions faced by humankind could be answered. The paper concludes that the self-conscious embrace of that philosophical tradition, together with its own methodologies and models, can help of the cybernetic movement turn the vague aspirations into the reality of a better future on Earth.

Officer-Created Jeopardy and Reasonableness Reform: Rebuttable Presumption of Unreasonableness Within 42 U.S.C. § 1983 Police Use of Force Claims

This Note analyzes the current state of civil law surrounding police use of excessive force, highlighting the evolution of the “objective reasonableness” test employed in civil police use of force lawsuits brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. This Note also discusses the role that social movements and surveillance technologies have played in furthering police accountability and shifting public opinion surrounding police use of force. After detailing this social and technological context, this Note addresses the numerous problems presented by the “objective reasonableness” test employed within civil police use of force cases, analyzing this problematic test from the perspective of both the public and the police. This Note coins the term “officer-created jeopardy liability loophole” and explains how, under the current test, officer-defendants can escape § 1983 liability when they deliberately or recklessly escalate a situation or create the need for force in the first place. To close this liability loophole and resolve other problems presented by the current “objective reasonableness” test, this Note proposes a rebuttable presumption of unreasonableness, in which a § 1983 plaintiff can present evidence to establish a prima facie case of officer-created jeopardy which, if not sufficiently rebutted by an officer-defendant, presumes the officer-defendant’s use of force unreasonable and in violation of § 1983.

The Case for Philosophy as a General-Education Requirement

I argue that colleges should include philosophy courses as general-education requirements. I begin by explaining the prima facie case against general-education requirements and the need for philosophers to defend their courses’ place in the general-education curriculum. Next, I present two arguments for philosophy as a general-education requirement. The first is the Argument from Content: that philosophy courses’ content tends to match the intended nature and purposes of general-education courses. The second is the Argument from Outcomes: that even if philosophy courses didn’t match the intended purposes of general-education courses, they would still be appropriate as general-education requirements, because there is empirical evidence that philosophy courses produce valuable skills and knowledge in students.

Against Enemies: A Negative Politics for Contentious Times

The world is a contentious place, both politically and personally. As a result, virtually all people have enemies both at home and abroad. This essay argues that we should annihilate these enemies, all of them, future as well as present, and do so forthwith. It begins with a metaphysical sketch of enemies, which reveals how such an annihilation is possible and much easier than we generally suppose. It continues by arguing, first, that general prudential considerations yield a prima facie case that it is in our best interest to annihilate our enemies and, second, that moral reasons require this because enemies are persons. The essay ends by briefly considering some implications of this destructive proposal.

Seeing environmental injustices: the mechanics, devices and assumptions of environmental sustainability indices and indicators

At the heart of any colonization project, and therefore any move to de-colonize, are ways of seeing nature and society, that then allow particular ways of governing each. This is plainly visible in a number of tools that exist to measure progress towards (or regress from) environmental sustainability. The tools use indices and indicators constructed mostly by environmental scientists and ecologists. As such, they are not neutral scientific instruments: they reflect the worldviews of their creators. These worldviews depend on three dimensions: the values they prioritize, the explanatory theories they use and the futures they envision. Through these means different tools produce conflicting notions of the sustainability of our economies and societies. In this article, we shed light onto the theoretical and epistemological assumptions that lie behind key international sustainability indices and indicators: the Environmental Performance Index,Domestic Material Consumption, Material Intensity, the Material Footprint, the Carbon Footprint, the Ecological Footprint and CO2 emissions (territorial). The variables included in these indices, the way they are measured, aggregated and weighted all imply a particular way of understanding the relationships between economy, society and environment. This divergence is most clearly visible in the fact that some indices are negatively correlated with each other. Where one index might plot growing environmental sustainability, another shows its decline. Our results highlight that those devices and the theories informing them are particularly interesting for way how colonialism is materialized. Some of these measurements hide the material roots of prosperity and the ecological (and economic) distributional conflicts exported to the poorer countries by the global North, and others show how its production and consumption levels are reliant upon a socio-ecological 'subsidy' imposed on Southern countries. These subsidies represent injustices that present a primafacie case for decolonizing indices and indicators of environmental governance.

Efobi v Royal Mail Group: Much Ado About Nothing?

Following the Supreme Court's recent decision in Efobi v Royal Mail Group, claimants in employment tribunals must first prove a prima facie case of discrimination before the burden of proof falls on the respondent to provide a non‐discriminatory explanation for the impugned conduct. The two stages are separate. Tribunals cannot draw any inferences from a respondent's explanation (or lack of explanation) when deciding whether there is a prima facie case of discrimination. We argue that, in reaching this decision, the Supreme Court failed to tackle squarely the important normative question at the heart of the dispute: whether there should be constraints on the evidence courts may consider when adjudicating whether there is a prima facie case of discrimination. Had the Supreme Court confronted this normative question, the outcome of the case might have been different.

Betamax: Has The Privy Council Gone Too Far In Seeking To Ensure That The Second Look Test Does Not Become A Second Guess Test?

Questions of public policy often arise in international arbitrations, including, in particular, issues of competition law and corruption. Arbitrators’ power to adjudicate these issues is conditional upon national courts’ power to review such issues when faced with annulment applications and/or objections to enforcement applications (the ‘second look’ test). However, national courts are divided as to whether, when doing so, they should be allowed to second-guess an arbitral tribunal’s decision on whether there has been a breach of international public policy. In its recent decision in Betamax, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (the highest court of appeal for Mauritius, constituted of members of the UK Supreme Court) came down very firmly against second-guessing. After having presented the different approaches that various jurisdictions have adopted on this issue, this article proposes that national courts should be allowed to further inquire into and potentially second-guess arbitrators’ decisions on issues of international public policy, provided that the party applying for the setting aside of the award establishes before the competent court a strong prima facie case that there has been illegality such that recognising or enforcing the award would give rise to a breach of international public policy. Betamax, Public policy, corruption, bribery, money laundering, competition law, illegality, setting aside of arbitral awards, enforcement proceedings

Comment on “Economic Impacts of SARS/MERS/COVID‐19 in Asian Countries”

Tanaka (2022) is a clearly written survey of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Asian economies. It covers the single sector SIR (susceptible, infected, recovered) epidemiological macro-model and discusses results from this class of models for Asian countries. Then, relaxing the model to allow heterogeneity across sectors and workers, the paper examines the impact of the pandemic in Asia. The paper concludes by briefly addressing the policy responses of Asian countries. At this writing, there have been an estimated 212 million COVID-19 cases worldwide (though this is a vast undercount) and more than 4 million deaths (again an undercount of the true excess death associated with the pandemic). The pandemic's severity demands greater attention to those policy issues. East Asia appears to have been uniquely adroit at implementing nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Targeted forms of interventions have mitigated the pandemic without incurring large economic costs. These would include mass masking, widespread testing, extensive contact tracing, systematic quarantines of individuals likely to be infected, border and movement restrictions, and timely, clear, and consistent public health communication. The execution of some of these measures in East Asia has been overly intrusive and subject to abuse, so implementation should be done with the maintenance of civil liberties in mind (Chorzempa & Huang, 2021). In assessing policy effectiveness, the control of borders should not be underestimated: among the few robust cross-country correlates with effective pandemic response has been being an island. (It is no accident that Hawaii has the lowest cumulative case rate among US states.) In this context, South Korea is for all intents and purposes an island. Other robust correlates include previous experience with pandemics such as SARS or MERS, and having a female leader, though this result may be due to outperformance by New Zealand, and possibly, Germany. That said, vaccination is key: the attainment of herd immunity will facilitate the return to normal economic and social life. As of this writing, approximately 2 billion people or about 25% of the world's population have been fully vaccinated. Further progress will be complicated by the apparent need to give booster shots. Thus far, Asia has been relatively strong on NPIs, but relatively weak on vaccine rollout. There are two core issues: first, the social benefit of vaccination exceeds its private benefit at the level of the individual, and the global benefit exceeds the national benefit at the level of the nation-state. Consequently, there is a prima facie case for the subsidization of production and consumption at the national and global levels. A related issue is distributional: we face an emerging “vaccine famine.” In famines, people do not die because there is not enough food to go around in a physical sense; they die because they are too poor to purchase adequate supplies. “Vaccine nationalism” in which a limited number of producer countries impose export controls, or pre-emptively purchase huge stocks for their citizenry, will leave vast swaths of the world's population, including in Asia, exposed. Unvaccinated populations can act as incubators for the development of variants of concern. Bown and Bollyky (2021) propose a COVID-19 Vaccine an Investment Trade Agreement (CVITA) to leverage COVAX; subsidize investment in vaccine production and the related supply chain; eschew export restrictions; create a transparent monitoring system; and create an authority to act as contractor and ombudsman. Tanaka documents the uneven incidence of the pandemic burden across households; similar inequities are arising in vaccine distribution within countries, particularly in countries characterized by high levels of inequality and ethnic or other social tensions. This could prove particularly challenging in parts of Southeast Asia. A related issue is vaccine hesitancy. This phenomenon has been particularly vexing in countries with populist leaders such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro or Rodrigo Duterte. Attainment of herd immunity will determine the length of the pandemic and the magnitude of scarring. As Tanaka observes, duration also is relevant to the preferability of providing support to firms (as has been emphasized by the European Union) or support to individual households and workers (as has been emphasized in the USA). The former preserves the enterprise value of firms at the risk of creating zombies; the latter is advisable if considerable cross-sectoral redeployment of resources is necessary but may incur the cost of firm shutdown needlessly if the shock is temporary. The risk is that without an effective global pandemic response, we could find ourselves in a world of recurrent outbreaks, inevitably prompting the imposition of cross-border impediments to the movement of goods and people, with adverse implications for long-run productivity, economic growth, and poverty alleviation.

Novel Beings and Assisted Nonexistence.

This article engages with the legal regulation of end-of-existence decisionmaking for novel beings, specifically assisted nonexistence for such entities. The author explains the concept of a legal model for assisted death by reference to the substantive features of legal regimes in three jurisdictions in which assisted suicide or euthanasia is lawful. He considers how these models might fit novel beings who may require or prefer assistance to end their own existence by reference to the constituent features-abstract legal ingredients-that models for assisted death share. The author argues that extant models may block some novel beings' access to end-of-existence assistance or fail to track what matters to them. He then examines the merits of adopting a universal model for assisted nonexistence, that is, a legal framework whose substantive features capture the end-of-existence concerns of both human and novel beings. Consideration of a unified legal framework may illuminate the discussion of assisted nonexistence for humans and novel beings. However, the paper proposes that whereas novel beings may have similar interests to humans, they may be relevantly different also. The prima facie case for adopting a one regime to rule us all approach to assisted nonexistence may be defeated by reasons for divergent regulation.

The Wrong in Negligence

Abstract The elements of the tort of negligence are well known: injury, duty, breach, and actual and proximate cause. It is uncontroversial that the plaintiff must establish each of these elements to make out the prima facie case of negligence. Accordingly, there is no tort unless all of these elements are established. As torts are understood to be wrongs, it seems to follow that there is a wrong if and only if all of the elements of the tort of negligence are satisfied. It seems to follow, then, that the wrong of negligence is constituted by the completed tort of negligence. This is the conclusion that I wish to challenge here. I shall contend that the wrong of negligence does not require the kind of legally cognisable injury that the tort of negligence plainly requires. Causing a material harm to another is not a prerequisite for wronging them. Instead, one wrongs another when one breaches the duty of care that one owes to them.

Embedded rationality and the contextualisation of critical thinking

Abstract The present article addresses the question of whether, and to what extent, critical thinking should make attunement to current social and political landscapes central to its practice. I begin by outlining what I consider to be the basic positions in the debate about the political contextualisation of critical thinking, which are referred to as the crypto-Enlightenment and the critical pedagogical models. I argue, on the basis of various strands of research, that there is a prima facie case to be made in favour of the critical pedagogical position that favours forefronting the social and political context of critical thinking and thinking in general. I then draw attention, however, to problems of coherence and justification in the critical pedagogical position, before turning, finally, to an alternative grounding of critical thinking that takes seriously the historical and social contextualisation of thinking without the coherence problems of critical pedagogy. My conclusion is that while the critical pedagogical model is right to point to the fatal incompleteness of Enlightenment-style critical thinking due to its failure to properly acknowledge the norm-saturated nature of historical consciousness, critical pedagogy itself fails to offer a coherent alternative to the problem of integrating value and rationality in a more full-blown grounding of critical thinking. I suggest that a hermeneutical model that integrates the rational, axiological and historical moments in consciousness provides a more satisfying foundation for understanding the trajectory and purpose of critical thinking.