International library of philosophy

The Facts of Causation covers all kinds of causing and affecting, of both events and facts; deterministic and indeterministic, mental and physical, transparent and opaque. It shows how the chances a cause gives its effects enable it to explain, be evidence for and a means to them, and why it must precede and be (when immediate) contiguous to them. It explains how we detect causation and what embodies it, and why it entails laws of nature that determine the properties and kinds of facts our world contains. Finally it shows how causation distinguishes time from space, makes it linear, gives it a direction and explains our perception of it.

Mill on Liberty: A Defence was first published in 1983 and has become a classic of Mill commentary. The second edition reproduces the text of the first in full, and in paperback for the first time. To this, John Gray adds an extensive postscript that defends the interpretation of Mill set out in the first edition, but develops radical criticisms of the substance of Millian and other liberalisms. The new edition is intended as a contribution to the current debate about the foundations of liberalism. It looks closely at the recent seminal contributions to liberal thought by Raz, Feinberg, Rawls and Berlin. Central to its argument is Gray's contention that, like other liberalisms which ground themselves in an ideal of autonomy or individuality, Millian liberalism has a europocentric bias that cannot be given rational justification. Gray addresses the question of whether any form of liberal theory can, in fact, avoid this bias, and concludes that it cannot.