Martin Hollis (philosopher)

James Martin Hollis (14 March 1938 – 27 February 1998) was an English rationalist philosopher. Quotes I see no way to secure liberalism by trying to put its core values beyond any but internal or consensual reasoning. The resulting slide into relativism leaves a disastrous parallel between 'liberalism for the liberals!' and 'cannibalism for the cannibals!' "Is Universalism Ethnocentric?", in C. Joppke and S. Lukes (eds.) Multicultural Questions (Oxford: OUP, 1999) p. 36. Quoted in Steven Lukes, "Liberalism for the liberals, cannibalism for the cannibals", Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 4, no. 4 (2001) p. 35 The games we play become open-textured and our motives or real reasons for making our moves can be distinguished from the intentions expressed in the act of making them. But this leaves an ambiguity, if we, the actors, hoped to emerge as persons whose identity is not defined by any or all of the games of social life. Talk of motives or real reasons may signal only a deeper level of intentions, as when a chess master who seems to be merely defending against a threat is really setting a trap. Or where motives are external to the game of the moment, they may still belong to another game.https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/365/115p245.pdf Self-direction becomes the moral independence which goes with individuality in Mill, especially if Kant’s connection is made between a free will and a will made under moral laws.https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/365/115p245.pdf Quotes about Hollis Some philosophers – I am again thinking particularly of Martin Hollis – have objected that it will only be rational to hold such a belief if it was in turn rational to hold the core beliefs from which this specific item is said to follow. But this image of a rational bedrock strikes me as confused. What does it mean for a purportedly core belief to be rationally held? On the one hand, it can hardly mean that we are capable of giving good reasons for holding it. For in that case it would be a derivative rather than a core belief. But on the other hand, I cannot see – as I have already conceded – what else it can mean to describe a belief as being held in a rational way. I cannot see, in short, that Hollis’s proposal can be deployed in such a way as to set limits to the kind of holism I am trying to expound. Even in the most primitive perceptual cases, even in the face of the clearest observational evidence, it will always be reckless to assert that there are any beliefs we are certain to form, any judgements we are bound to make, simply as a consequence of inspecting the allegedly brute facts. The beliefs we form, the judgements we make, will always be mediated by the concepts available to us for describing what we have observed. But to employ a concept is always to appraise and classify our experience from a particular perspective and in a particular way. What we experience and report will accordingly be what is brought to our attention by the range of concepts we possess and the nature of the discriminations they enable us to make. We cannot hope to find any less winding a path from experience to belief, from observational evidence to any one determinate judgement. Quentin Skinner, "Interpretation, rationality and truth", Visions of Politics (2002) A believer in the cunning of reason, he often led me, wandering and peripatetic, up the Enlightenment Trail, aiming for the pub at the top, The Triumph of Reason. I fear we never reached it. Malcolm Bradburyhttps://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/365/115p245.pdf He was not without intellectual aggression, but he was totally devoid of malice. Steven Lukes & Quentin Skinnerhttps://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/365/115p245.pdf External links Category:Academics from the United Kingdom Category:Philosophers from the United Kingdom Category:Non-fiction authors from England Category:Cultural critics Category:Game designers Category:1938 births Category:1998 deaths Category:People from London Category:Rationalists Category:University of Oxford alumni