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# Julius Kovesi

His Life and Works

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## Pages

- [Welcome](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/) - Julius Kovesi This website is dedicated to the life and work of Julius Kovesi. We think he deserves to be better known, and here we are making his writings and ideas more readily accessible. Kovesi was born in Hungary in 1930, moved to Perth, Australia, in 1950, and died in Perth in 1989. He taught
- [Against the ritual of 'is' and 'ought'](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/against-the-ritual-of-is-and-ought/) - Julius Kovesi However much the preoccupations and problems of moral philosophy have changed in the last decade or so, we retain, with a ritual observance, a basic conceptual framework. Apart from a few bold spirits who disregard the ritual, most moral philosophers, before they can say anything, have to re-enact the moves of trying to justify
- [The temptation of absolute truth](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/the-temptation-of-absolute-truth/) - Julius Kovesi Twentieth Century 16 (1962), pp. 216–222 One of the many lessons we can learn from C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters is that it is through our most noble sentiments that we are most vulnerable to temptation. Screwtape’s advice to his nephew is to work on his patient’s good feelings and keep them thoroughly abstract
- [Bernard Mayo, Review of Moral Notions](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/bernard-mayo-review-of-moral-notions/) - Mind, 1969. VII.-CRITICAL NOTICES Moral Notions. BY Julius Kovesi. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967. Pp. vii+166. 20s. CERTAIN ways of stating a distinction between matters of fact and matters of value have become firmly entrenched in English-speaking philosophy since at least the time of Hume and Kant. A handful of guerrillas (Miss Anscombe, Mrs. Foot,
- [Julius Kovesi](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/introduction-and-sketch-of-his-life/) - Alan Tapper and Janet Kovesi Watt Janet Kovesi in 1988 Julius Kovesi, who died in 1989, published only one book, Moral Notions, which appeared in 1967. This present book brings together most of his published and unpublished papers. It is a substantial collection, covering a variety of topics, and it will help to assuage the feeling many of
- [Contact Us](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/contact/)
- [Moses Hess, Marx and money](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/moses-hess-marx-and-money/) - Julius Kovesi1[1] Moses Hess I The aim and scope of this discussion is limited. I wish to explore a few themes within the Young Hegelian conceptual framework, in order to place within it Hess’s essay On the Essence of Money. However, I prefer to talk of a 'triadic framework' instead of the 'Young Hegelian conceptual framework', for several
- [Nature and convention](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/nature-and-convention/) - Julius Kovesi Arthur Lovejoy quotes Friedrich Nicolai as saying: 'Der Begriff und das Wort "Natur" ist ein wahrer Scherwenzel': the concept of 'nature' is the Jack of all trades of moral and political philosophy. This remark may serve as a warning against constructing yet another theory on this basis. However it is not a warning, but rather
- [Principia Ethica re-examined: The ethics of a proto-logical atomism](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/principia-ethica-re-examined-the-ethics-of-a-proto-logical-atomism/) - Julius Kovesi One of the questions that any future history of British moral philosophy in the twentieth century should investigate and document is how it came about that Moore's Principia Ethica was appropriated by what we can call the Humean tradition of moral philosophy.1 I shall not trace the development now but only argue that there was no
- [The place of France in the symbolism of Marx and the Young Hegelians](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/the-place-of-france-in-the-symbolism-of-marx-and-the-young-hegelians/) - Julius Kovesi To study Marx one has to be a geologist. To look on his thought-world as if it presented a contemporaneous landscape is to miss the complexity of his thought. One has to dig to find the different layers and different strata; one has to identify the ages of the different strata, veins and deposits even
- [Will the Aborigines confound Marx?](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/will-the-aborigines-confound-marx/) - Julius Kovesi It was over thirty years ago that Karl Popper in an ingenious article ‘What is Dialectics?’ argued that the theory of dialectics is not scientific because it is irrefutable. A theory is scientific, in his view - and many shared and still share his view on this - if, although it is not
- [Why?](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/why/) - Why?—edited by Julius Kovesi and Anthony Kenny at Oxford between 1958 and 1959 (this collection selected and edited by Janet Kovesi Watt in 1988)—is available here as a PDF [10MB]. In addition, the Philosophy Snakes and Ladders board is available as a single-page PDF [475KB]. (Both were released to mark the publication of Values and
- [Three Silver Spoons](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/three-silver-spoons-2/) - Three Silver Spoons, by Irèn Kovesi, being 'a true history of a border crossing in 1949 and of what happened afterwards' is available as a PDF here [690KB]
- [An obituary for Julius Kovesi](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/an-obituary-for-julius-kovesi/) - Tibor Janak[1] Radio Free Europe 29th September 1989 Tata, Hungary It is a great and bitter pain to write an obituary of an old and good friend. I am forced to write it though, because I do not think anyone in the Hungarian-speaking communities will remember Julius Kovesi, a philosopher from Western Australia, professor of the
- [From Meaning to Morality in Kovesi and Harrison ](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/from-meaning-to-morality-in-kovesi-and-harrison/) - Alan Tapper 1. Introduction It is stating the obvious to say that Ludwig Wittgenstein looms large in Bernard Harrison’s philosophical world. A little less obvious is the influence of Peter Geach’s attack on an abstractionist account of concept-formation in his Mental Acts (Geach 1957; Geach was one of Harrison’s teachers). Two Australian philosophers also play a part in
- [Bob Ewin’s speech launching Values and Evaluations](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/bob-ewins-speech-launching-values-and-evaluations/) - R.E. Ewin 30th October 1998 When I first came to Western Australia in 1970, it was because I had read Moral Notions and I wanted to work with the person who wrote it. It wasn’t that the book was of exemplary clarity: the Preface contains Julius’s example of what he describes as a typical dialogue between himself and
- [Was Marx a “True Socialist”?](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/was-marx-a-true-socialist/) - Julius Kovesi In the 1890 edition of The Communist Manifesto Engels added the following footnote to the section dealing with ‘The True Socialists’: ‘The revolutionary storm of 1848 swept away this whole shabby tendency and cured its protagonists of the desire to dabble further in Socialism ...’ If there is any truth in this remark it is
- [Valuing and evaluating](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/valuing-and-evaluating/) - Julius Kovesi In a lecture-seminar at Oxford a few months ago I heard the following turn of argument. After some discussion of the similarities and differences between the good or virtuous man and the good carpenter or good musician, it was suggested that perhaps similar comparisons could be made to elucidate our social virtues. For these similarities
- [Three essays on "natural law"](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/three-essays-on-natural-law/) - Julius Kovesi Natural law A morality which is based on Nature—in some sense of "nature"—does not necessarily need to be described by the term "Natural Law Morality". The use of this term creates special problems of its own and we should investigate these before we turn our attention to the claim that morality should be
- [Preface for 2004 edition Julius Kovesi’s Moral Notions](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/preface-for-2004-edition-julius-kovesis-moral-notions/) - Philippa Foot It was with real pleasure that I heard that Julius Kovesi’s Moral Notions was to be reissued, and I felt honoured to be asked to write a preface for the new edition. I had known Julius when he was at Oxford when he and I were allies - members of a small band of guerrillas
- [Moses Hess: On the essence of money](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/moses-hess-on-the-essence-of-money/) - Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, The signet of its all-enslaving power Upon a shining ore, and called it gold: Before whose image bow the vulgar great, The vainly rich, the miserable proud, The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, And with blind feelings reverence the power That grinds them to the dust
- [Moral Notions, with Three Papers on Plato](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/moral-notions-with-three-papers-on-plato/) - JULIUS KOVESI Edited by R.E. Ewin and Alan Tapper With a Preface by Philippa Foot CONTENTS Acknowledgements Preface: Philippa Foot Biography Moral Notions Three Papers on Plato Did Plato Turn Himself Upside Down? Theaetetus I Theaetetus VI Afterword: R.E. Ewin and Alan Tapper Index PREFACE Philippa Foot It was with real pleasure that I heard
- [Moral Notions (1967)](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/moral-notions-1967/) - JULIUS KOVESI LONDON ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL NEW YORK: HUMANITIES PRESS First published 1967 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd Broadway House 68-74 Carter Lane London EC4V 5EL Reprinted and first Published as a Routledge Paperback 1971 Printed in Great Britain by Unwin Brothers Limited The Gresham Press Old Woking Surrey England ©Julius Kovesi 1967 No part of this book may be reproduced in
- [Marxist ecclesiology and biblical criticism](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/marxist-ecclesiology-and-biblical-criticism/) - Julius Kovesi My theme is not Marx. I intend to outline the conceptual framework of a large variety of attitudes towards Marx, which in spite of their variety share a common set of characteristics. These attitudes towards Marx have acquired over the last hundred years just as much historical reality as the life, activities, and writings of
- [Marx and alienation](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/marx-and-alienation/) - Julius Kovesi To be a Marxist is no longer fashionable as it used to be. I say as it used to be, for we meet a new type of Marxist nowadays who appears terribly fashionable. He is a Marxist, not a Communist; his interests are cultural, not political; he is a humanist, not a terrorist.
- [MacIntyre and Kovesi on the nature of moral concepts](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/macintyre-and-kovesi-on-the-nature-of-moral-concepts/) - R.E. Ewin and Alan Tapper Julius Kovesi was a moral philosopher contemporary with Alasdair MacIntyre, and dealing with many of the same questions as MacIntyre. In our view, Kovesi’s moral philosophy is rich in ideas and worth revisiting. MacIntyre agrees: Kovesi’s Moral Notions, he has said, is “a minor classic in moral philosophy that has not
- [How can one wish to have been Napoleon?](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/how-can-one-wish-to-have-been-napoleon/) - Julius Kovesi Does one who wishes to have been Napoleon wish not to be himself? There would be no point in his wish then, for it is he who wants to be Napoleon. How is this possible? I am not challenging the impossibility of someone else than Napoleon being Napoleon, but ask: How, in spite of
- [Descriptions and reasons](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/descriptions-and-reasons/) - Julius Kovesi It might seem unfair to take as my point of departure an isolated argument from Professor Perry's Moral Reasoning and Truth, but although I make some critical comments on that passage I make them in order to continue the struggle with the difficult problems Professor Perry there presents rather than to show imperfections in
- [Julius Kovesi on concepts and moral philosophy](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/julius-kovesi-on-concepts-and-moral-philosophy/) - Alan Tapper Australian Ethics, December 2012 It is widely assumed by philosophers that the main task of moral philosophy is to provide a general theory of morality. Moral philosophy will provide us with the correct distinction between right and wrong action, or between good and bad behavior, or between virtuous and vicious character. Right, wrong,
- [A Multitude of Sins](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/a-multitude-of-sins/) - Alan Tapper Australian Ethics Winter, 2024 Are there some things we should never do? Ordinary folk and some philosophers think there are. What are they? The list seems at first quite short. A typical answer is that we should not commit murder, assault, rape, theft and fraud. These things are “wrong in themselves”, or, more
- [Memories of Julius Kovesi](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/anthony-kennys-memoir-of-oxford/) - A photo of Julius Kovesi from the 1950s ANTHONY KENNY Julius and I first met in Oxford in 1957. I was then a Catholic priest, having been ordained in Rome as a student of the English College in 1955. I had now been seconded to Oxford for an academic year to complete a dissertation on
- [A conversation at Coondle in 2009](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/a-conversation-at-coondle-in-2009/) - Some friends and family at Coondle on another occasion: Alan Tapper, Marion Tapper, Peter Kovesi, Robyn Owen, Ted Watt, Janet Kovesi Watt, Robin Tapper, Moira Harding Alan TapperThis is a recording of a conversation held at Coondle, near Toodyay [in 2009]. Rosemary Hill, that's right. To commemorate 25 years at this place with Julius and
- [A short biography](https://www.juliuskovesi.com/a-short-biography/) - This short biography was written by Alan Tapper for inclusion on the website "Women in parenthesis" (https://www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk), a website dedicated to the "Wartime Quartet" of Elisabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch. The foursome have been the subject of two recent widely-read and excellent books: Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman's Metaphysical Animals