Table Of ContentFreedom, Power and
Political Morality
Essays for Felix Oppenheim
Edited by
Ian Carter and Mario Ricciardi
carter/ricciardi/94236/crc 8/1/01 3:27 pm Page 1
Freedom, Power and Political Morality
carter/ricciardi/94236/crc 8/1/01 3:27 pm Page 2
carter/ricciardi/94236/crc 8/1/01 3:27 pm Page 3
Freedom, Power and
Political Morality
Essays for Felix Oppenheim
Edited by
Ian Carter
Research Fellow
University of Pavia
Italy
and
Mario Ricciardi
Research Fellow
University of Milan
Italy
carter/ricciardi/94236/crc 8/1/01 3:27 pm Page 4
Editorial matter and selection © Ian Carter and Mario Ricciardi 2001
Chapter 3 © Mario Ricciardi 2001
Chapter 6 © Ian Carter 2001
Chapters 1,2,4,5,7–14 © Palgrave Publishers Ltd 2001
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90 Tottenham Court
Road,London W1P 0LP.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified
as the authors of this work in accordance with the
Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2001 by
PALGRAVE
Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVEis the new global academic imprint of
St.Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and
Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd).
ISBN 0–333–76332–7
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and
made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freedom,power,and political morality :essays for Felix
Oppenheim / edited by Ian Carter and Mario Ricciardi.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–333–76332–7
1.Liberty.2.Power (Social sciences) 3.Political ethics.
4.International relations—Moral and ethical aspects.
I.Oppenheim,Felix E.,1913– II.Carter,Ian,1964–
III.Ricciardi,Mario,1967–
JC585 .F743 2000
172—dc21
00–066574
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd,Chippenham,Wiltshire
Contents
Notes on the Contributors vii
Introduction ix
Ian Carter and Mario Ricciardi
Part I. Normative Analysis and Political Concepts
1. Felix Oppenheim’s Deontics 3
Paolo Di Lucia
2. From Hobbes to Oppenheim: Conceptual
Reconstruction as Political Engagement 20
Terence Ball
3. Essential Contestability and the Claims of Analysis 39
Mario Ricciardi
4. Freedom and Bivalence 57
Hillel Steiner
5. Dimensions of Nomic Freedom 69
Amedeo G. Conte
6. ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Practical Possibility’ 79
Ian Carter
7. Clarifying the Science Wars: the Concept of Scientific
Authority 96
Mark R. Weaver
Part II. Political Morality and International Relations
8. On Public Moral Appeals and Identification 121
Jean Bethke Elshtain
9. ‘Anarchical Fallacies’: Bentham’s Attack on Human
Rights 134
Hugo Adam Bedau
10. Pre-empting Humanitarian Interventions 153
Thomas Pogge
v
vi Contents
11. Oppenheim’s Realism and the Morality of the
National Interest 171
Luigi Bonanate
12. Oppenheim and the National Interest 188
George Kateb
Part III. Coda
13. Oppenheim in Italy: a Memoir 207
Norberto Bobbio
14. Afterthoughts 218
Felix E. Oppenheim
Bibliography of the Publications of Felix E. Oppenheim 234
Index 237
Notes on the Contributors
Terence Ballis Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University.
He is the author of Rousseau’s Ghost: a Novel (1998), Reappraising
Political Theory (1995) and Transforming Political Discourse (1988), and
co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century
Political Thought.
Hugo Adam Bedauis Austin Fletcher Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
at Tufts University. An honorary fellow with the Bentham Project at
University College London, he is also the author or editor of several
books, including The Death Penalty in America(1964, 1982, 1997) and
Making Mortal Choices(1997).
Norberto Bobbio is Emeritus Professor of Political Philosophy at
the University of Turin, Italy, and has written extensively on legal
and political philosophy. English translations of his works include
Democracy and Dictatorship (1989), Thomas Hobbes and the Natural
Law Tradition (1993), The Age of Rights (1996) and Left and Right
(1996).
Luigi Bonanateis Professor of International Relations at the University
of Turin, Italy, and has written on strategy, nuclear deterrence, inter-
national terrorism and the general theory of international relations. He
is the author of Ethics and International Politics(1995).
Ian Carter is a Research Fellow in Political Philosophy at the
University of Pavia, Italy. He has written on the concepts of freedom
and equality, and is the author of A Measure of Freedom(1999).
Amedeo G. Conteis Professor of Philosophy of Law at the University
of Pavia, Italy. He is the author of Filosofia del linguaggio normativo,
volume I (studi 1965–81) and volume II (studi 1982–94), both pub-
lished in 1995, and of Filosofia dell’ordinamento normativo. Studi
1957–1968, published in 1997.
Paolo Di Luciais Professor of Philosophy of Law at the University of
Camerino, Italy. He is the author of Deontica in von Wright(1992) and
vii
viii Notes on the Contributors
L’Universale della promessa(1997). He is currently working on a book on
legal ontology and the philosophy of action.
Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of
Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago. Her books
include Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political
Thought(1981),Democracy on Trial(1995) and Real Politics: at the Centre
of Everyday Life(1997).
George Kateb is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at
Princeton University. His most recent book is Emerson and Self-Reliance
(1995).
Thomas Poggeis Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and
has written extensively in moral and political philosophy and on Kant.
He is currently at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, complet-
ing a book entitled Real World Justice.
Mario Ricciardi is a Research Fellow in Jurisprudence at the University
of Milan and Lecturer in Jurisprudence at the ‘C. Cattaneo’ University,
Castellanza, Italy. He has written on collective rights, the philosophy
of action and causation in the criminal law. He is currently working on
a book on responsibility.
Hillel Steineris Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of
Manchester. He is the author of An Essay on Rights (1994) and (with
Matthew Kramer and Nigel Simmonds) A Debate Over Rights:
Philosophical Enquiries (1998), and editor (with Peter Vallentyne) of a
two-volume anthology on left-libertarianism (2000).
Mark R. Weaver is Professor of Political Science at the College of
Wooster. His most recent written work has focused on Machiavelli’s
conception of political leadership, civic republicanism as a model of
political reform, and Weber’s formulation of the proper role of the
social scientist.
Introduction
Ian Carter and Mario Ricciardi
Felix Oppenheim began his long intellectual career as one of the most
forceful representatives of a new philosophical movement which used
the sharp instruments of logical analysis and semantic reconstruction
to model new ways of thinking about politics and law. His first main
work, published in 1944, is one of the earliest examples of the applica-
tion of Carnap’s logical analysis to the field of law. More than fifty
years of subsequent research have seen the publication of numerous
articles and four books devoted to the analysis of fundamental political
concepts like freedom, equality, power and interests, to metaethics
applied to political issues, and to international relations. Much time
has passed, but Felix has continued to work with patience and intellec-
tual honesty per metter ordine al gran disordine.
Commentators in earlier years rightly considered Oppenheim’s
approach a revolutionary one, while many now see it as outdated and
of purely antiquarian interest. Logical analysis and conceptual recon-
struction are today often perceived as the annoying fixations of pipe-
smoking philosophers interested only in preliminary or purely
academic questions. All too often we hear it said that conceptual analy-
sis is too abstract, that all forms of rationality are ‘context-dependent’,
and that the most we can do is struggle to bring about change
(if change happens to be what we desire).
The idea of dedicating a collection of essays to Felix Oppenheim is
certainly no tribute to these recent tendencies. Its realization is
testimony to an intellectual debt felt by many colleagues and former
students both to Oppenheim’s work and, no less, to the dedication and
generosity with which he has contributed to their philosophical deve-
lopment – commenting, dissenting, suggesting alternative hypotheses
ix
