the intelligible contract

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Plotinian Henadology

Plotinus’ famous treatise against the Gnostics (33), together with contemporary and thematically related treatises on Intelligible Beauty (31), on Number (34), and on Free Will and the Will of the One (39), can be seen as providing the essential components of a Plotinian defense of polytheism against conceptual moves that, while associated for him primarily with Gnostic sectarians overlapping with Platonic philosophical circles, will become typical of monotheism in its era of hegemony. When Plotinus’ Gnostics ‘contract’ divinity into a single God, they not only devalue the cosmos for its multiplicity and diversity, but also multiply intelligible principles unreasonably. This is because they have foreclosed the distinction, which is to become increasingly explicit in the later antique Platonists, between the intelligible and that which is given existentially, the domain belonging to Plotinus’ indeterminate multiplicity of ‘intelligible Gods’, as opposed to the dialectically determinate number of intelligible principles. Plotinus is prescient in recognizing that incipient monotheism threatens to erase the distinction between philosophy and theology, and between both of these and psychology, the final outcome of which can only be solipsism or nihilism. The defense of polytheism is seen in this fashion to be essential to the preservation of the space for philosophical discourse

The Internal and External Analysis of Concepts

In Abstract Right and the Possibility of a Nondistributive Conception of Contract: Hegel and Contemporary Contract Theory, Peter Benson criticizes the authors presentation of a consent theory of contract, in part, on the ground that it refers only to the empirical facts of the requirements of human needs and fulfillment. Like [Charles] Fried\u27s [account], his conception of the consensual basis of a contract does not preserve the required standpoint of abstraction. On this basis Professor Benson concludes that the author\u27s approach fails to provide an adequate elucidation of a nondistributive conception of contract. By explaining contractual obligation as intelligible ownership based in a relation of wills, independent of the content of those wills, Professor Benson\u27s approach can be viewed as formal or abstract. In contrast, the author\u27s account of a consent theory of contract has been twofold: (a) by understanding contractual obligation as arising when persons manifest an intention to transfer alienable rights, a consent theory of contract (as compared with other available theories) helps us to better understand and sometimes to modify such problematic contract doctrines as the objective interpretation of consent, promissory estoppel, specific performance, and undisclosed agency; (b) this criteria of contractual obligation plays an important social function and is ignored at our peril. Benson does not address the first more explanatory and reformatory aspect of the author\u27s presentation of a consent theory of contract; it is the second of these two aspects of the author\u27s presentation that Benson characterizes as empirical and insufficiently abstract. Professor Benson takes a Hegelian approach that the author states he is not qualified to evaluate from within. In this essay the author assumes arguendo that both Hegelian legal theory and Benson\u27s use of it are sound. However, without questioning either the merits of Benson\u27s analysis or the methodology he employs, the author thinks that elaborating a distinction between internal and external conceptual analyses will permit him to put both Benson\u27s presentation and his criticism of the author\u27s in perspective

Assessing plain and intelligible language in the Consumer Rights Act: a role for reading scores?

Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 consumer contracts and consumer notices are required to be expressed in plain and intelligible language. This is a difficult concept to capture. Determining whether a contract is expressed in plain and intelligible language involves resource intensive work by regulators and difficult adjudications by courts. This paper explores whether reading scores present a viable alternative. Can a simple computer program tell a consumer, a business, a regulator or the court that a particular contract is not expressed in plain and intelligible language? The paper begins by exploring the concept and role of plain and intelligible language in the Consumer Rights Act, before considering the ways that reading scores have developed and been used in legal contexts. We then report on the findings of an experimental examination of insurance contracts using a basket of reading scores, using our findings to draw conclusions about the utility of reading scores in determining whether a contract is expressed in plain and intelligible language. We find that reading scores can play a role in such determinations, but that further work is needed to provide appropriate tools for business, regulators and courts to use in assessing plain and intelligible language

Crystal Clear? The Transparency Requirement in Unfair Terms Legislation

In this paper, the transparency requirement, regulated in Article 5 UCTD, is discussed. This provision requires traders to draft terms that are to be incorporated into contracts with consumers in plain and intelligible language. The paper discusses the function of the transparency requirement, the different elements, and the consequences of a breach of the requirement: should the contra proferentem rule be applied, is the term lacking transparency unfair, or could it be argued that such term never was incorporated into the contract to begin with? And does it actually matter

"On Anger, Silence and Epistemic Injustice"

Abstract: If anger is the emotion of injustice, and if most injustices have prominent epistemic dimensions, then where is the anger in epistemic injustice? Despite the question my task is not to account for the lack of attention to anger in epistemic injustice discussions. Instead, I argue that a particular texture of transformative anger – a knowing resistant anger – offers marginalized knowers a powerful resource for countering epistemic injustice. I begin by making visible the anger that saturates the silences that epistemic injustices repeatedly manufacture and explain the obvious: silencing practices produce angry experiences. I focus on tone policing and tone vigilance to illustrate the relationship between silencing and angry knowledge management. Next, I use María Lugones’s pluralist account of anger to bring out the epistemic dimensions of knowing resistant anger in a way that also calls attention to their histories and felt textures. The final section draws on feminist scholarship about the transformative power of angry knowledge to suggest how it might serve as a resource for resisting epistemic injustice

Kant's Mature Theory of Punishment, and a First Critique Ideal Abolitionist Alternative

This chapter has two goals. First, I will present an interpretation of Kant’s mature account of punishment, which includes a strong commitment to retributivism. Second, I will sketch a non-retributive, “ideal abolitionist” alternative, which appeals to a version of original position deliberation in which we choose the principles of punishment on the assumption that we are as likely to end up among the punished as we are to end up among those protected by the institution of punishment. This is radical relative to Kant’s mature theory of punishment, but arguably it conforms better to the spirit of Kant’s first Critique remarks on imputation and punishment than his mature theory does