Philosophical Inquiry

Law, like language, is the product of social evolution, embodied in custom. The conditions for the emergence of law—embodiment, scarcity, rationality, relatedness and plurality—are outlined, and the context for the emergence of law—dispute resolution—is analysed. Adjudication procedures, rules and enforcementmechanisms, the elements of law, emerge from this context. The characteristics of such a customarily evolved law are its severely limited scope, its negativity, andits horizontality. It is suggested that a legal system (or legal systems) based on the principles of archaic law could answer the needs of social order without permitting the paternalistic interferences with liberty characteristic of contemporary legal systems.

The paper focuses on the rivalry between philosophical excellence and Olympic prestige. Plato has philosophers quarrel not only with poets but also with Olympic victors. Epictetus will follow suit. Not sharing Plato's notion of philosophical excellence, Epictetus' Stoic sage rivals not only the Olympic athletes but classical philosophy itself.

This article sets out to establish links between the main concepts of Aristotle's poetics and literary theory, with a view to illuminating some aspects of Aristotle's ethics and also of general ethical theory. We highlight topics such as weak universals (Halliwell), frame-making and free indirect discourse, that seem to us to establish a link between poetics and moral philosophy.

Government, the systematic exercise of command by some over others backed by the allegedly legitimate use of violence, requires justification. All government is predicated upon a distinction between rulers and ruled. Who should occupy the position of ruler and who the position of the ruled is a perennial problem. In thecontemporary world, representative democracy is the only plausible contender for the role of justified government. The key to the justification and popularacceptance of democracy as a (or the) legitimate form of government is the idea of representation, the idea being that in a representative democracy, the people,in some way, rule themselves and thus bridge the gap between the ruler and ruled. However, if a satisfactory account of representation is not forthcoming, thejustificatory status of representative democracy becomes problematic.