Imagine this sequence of events. I am at the wheel of my car at an intersection, waiting for the lights to change. Suddenly, a stranger runs out of the bank building at the corner, makes his way into the car, puts a gun to my head and orders me to drive off, on the double. Eventually there's a chase and we are caught.

A stranger runs out of a bank while I am sitting at the wheel of my car waiting for the lights to change; he jumps in beside me, points a gun at me, and says, “Drive me to St. Bruno.” This is Andre Gombay's example, from his excellent paper on duress. The question that interests Gombay and me is: Could I refrain from doing what the gunman asks?

The disagreement between André Gombay and Storrs McCall can be summed up in terms of the distinction between liberty of spontaneity and liberty of indifference. This distinction is actually used by Professor McCall in his paper. Thus, it would seem that both speakers agree that a person acting under duress cannot exercise liberty of spontaneity—he (or she) does not act according to his (or her) wishes. However, Gombay also claims, at least according to McCall, that liberty of indifference is also lacking in cases of duress—persons under duress have no other choice than to obey when threatened. McCall takes an opposite view. He thinks that the only genuine cases of compulsion belong either to various types of physical coercion or to a certain number of pathologies of the mind.

Andre Gombay gives a penetrating, accurate account of the functioning of duress as a defence in current Canadian law, and puts forward an intelligent and very appealing suggestion as to how the law on duress might be reformed. As part of the underpinnings for his reform proposals, he attempts to unravel the elements of justification and excuse that intertwine in duress and provides his analysis of how duress is distinguishable from other excuses or defences. I agree with him that the present working conception of duress in law falls far short of its appropriate moral potential as a defence, and I wish in these comments to support his proposals for reform. However, I think his arguments regarding the nature of duress, and its bearing on our responsibility for what we do under duress, are less persuasive, and it is here that I will begin.

The Editor has very kindly offered me a last word; and I avail myself of the offer not so much to defend, improve or retract what I wrote a year ago as to acquaint the readers of Dialogue with a legal development that has occurred since then. That is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in the so-called Perka case.

Nous appelons «thèse des descriptions multiples» l'opinion qui veut qu'une seule et même action peut etre decrite de plusieurs façons différentes selon que Ton prend en considération ou non les différentes conséquences, plus ou moins lointaines, de cette action. Cette thèse joue chez certains penseurs un rôle essentiel dans la solution du problème de l'individuation des actions. Chez D. Davidson notamment, elle intervient de façon décisive dans la démonstration de sa fameuse thèse que toute action se réduit à des mouvements corporels. Nous entendons montrer, premièrement, que la thèse des descriptions multiples, à supposer même qu'elle soit vraie, ne saurait remplir le rôle que lui assigne Davidson dans le contexte de l'individuation des actions; deuxièmement, que cette thèse est fondée en fait sur l'ignorance de certaines distinctions importantes concernant l'action et le langage de l'action.

Partagées entre ceux qui, séduits par les succès des sciences pures, tentent d'expliquer l'agir humain en le subsumant sous des lois générales (néo-positivistes), et ceux qui, insistant sur la spécificité de l'objet à saisir, essaient de rendre compte des sociètès humaines en termes de critique ou de légitimation (marxistes), les sciences sociales semblent dans une impasse.

Le dernier livre du Professeur Guy Bouchard est remarquable à bien des égards. C'est d'abord un livre qui arrive à un bon moment, il me semble, pour faire le point sur la fameuse controverse opposant Ricoeur et Derrida. Cette controverse, relative à la possibilité de définir la métaphore et surtout à son rôle dans le discours philosophique, sert de fil conducteur à l'ouvrage. Cette polémique a pris beaucoup d'ampleur au cours des dernières années, en raison du très large auditoire dont jouissent depuis longtemps ces deux philosophes français. Et ce n'est pas un mince mérite que de s'attaquer, comme l'a fait G. Bouchard, à des questions qui intéressent aujourd'hui un nombre impressionnant de philosophes, linguistes, rhétoriciens, poéticiens, psychologues, pédagogues, etc. Ceux et celles qui connaissent déjà « La mythologie blanche » (Derrida), La métaphore vive (Ricoeur) et « Le retrait de la métaphore » (Derrida) apprécieront, j'en suis sûr, le très important travail de « correction » qu'a fait Bouchard des conceptions présentées par Ricoeur et Derrida, et particulièrement des « lectures » que fait Ricoeur d'un grand nombre d'auteurs dans La métaphore vive. Je trouve un peu malheureux que ce travail de correction se retrouve surtout sous forme de notes placées à la fin du volume (il y a soixantehuit pages de notes dans cet ouvrage), ce qui ne contribue pas tellement à le mettre en valeur. Ces corrections me semblent souvent fort éclairantes et permettent de nuancer beaucoup les thèses philosophiques de Ricoeur et Derrida.

In Abortion and Moral Theory, L. W. Sumner develops a moderate view of abortion, having dispatched as “indefensible” (ix) “two equally prominent and extreme positions: the liberal view … and the conservative view” (ix). It is a distinctive feature of the book that, having formulated what he regards as the correct intuitive position, the author seeks for it “the needed foundation for a moderate view of abortion” (ix), since “the defense of a moderate position must ultimately be grounded in moral theory” (ix), in which the position acquires “theoretical depth”, and without which it would lack “philosophical justification” (ix). The moral theory in which Professor Sumner seeks to lodge his moderate position is the “classical version of utilitarianism” (x), which “can serve as the deep structure of a moderate view of abortion” (195). Thus, a central task for the appraisal of Abortion and Moral Theory is to ascertain whether classical utilitarianism can be made to accommodate “common-sense morality [which] plainly regards murder as wrong principally because of its central effects …”, that is, because murder causes “its victim some form of harm” (201).

Much of the abortion debate has revolved around questions of the ontological status of the fetus: many liberals and conservatives agree that if the fetus is a person in the fullest sense of “person”, it would require very weighty reasons to justify killing it; if, on the other hand, the fetus is not a person in the fullest sense, considerations of less moment should suffice to justify killing it. Resolution of questions about the morality of abortion, thus, should be quite straightforward: stipulate criteria of personhood and determine whether fetuses, in general, or some particular fetus satisfies those criteria. If a fetus satisfies them, it is a person in the fullest sense and has the same right to life as any other person; if it fails to satisfy those criteria, it is not a person in the fullest sense and, thus, does not have the same right to life as a person. Unfortunately, such a programme is easier envisaged than achieved. The literature is laden with controversial analyses of personhood, none of which are acceptable to all parties to the abortion controversy, and, thus, discussions of the morality of abortion continue at a shrill level; unable to find any common ground from which to initiate reasoned discourse the two sides talk past each other and no progress is made.

I am grateful to John Woods and David Soles for the careful attention they have given to some of the central arguments of Abortion and Moral Theory, though I wish that they had revealed fewer respects in which those arguments were seriously underdeveloped. In what follows I will try to supply some (though not all) of the needed further development. I address the main points at issue in what I conceive to be their order of ascending importance.