Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half dead (...) and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

Although they were never to meet and corresponded only briefly, Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft shared a mutual admiration and a strong intellectual bond. Macaulay’s work had a profound and lasting effect on Wollstonecraft, and she developed and expanded on many of Macaulay’s ideas. While she often took these in a different direction, there remains a great synergy between their ideas to the extent that we can understand Wollstonecraft’s own feminist arguments by approaching them through the frameworks and ideas (...) that Macaulay provided. These included the principles of classical republicanism, particularly in its understanding of the values of freedom, equality and virtue, and an understanding of reason as grounded in immutable principles that apply equally to both sexes. On the question of women’s freedom and social equality with men, I argue that though Macaulay sets up the problem in far richer and more detailed philosophical terms, in the end it is Wollstonecraft that has the more compelling account of its far-reaching social implications and of how this might be addressed. (shrink)

This book brings together different intercultural philosophical points of view discussing the philosophical impact of what we call the ‘appropriated’ religions of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is home to most of the world religions. Buddhism is predominantly practiced in Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Singapore, Laos, and Cambodia; Islam in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei; and Christianity in the Philippines and Timor-Leste. Historical data show, however, that these world religions are imported cultural products, and have been reimagined, assimilated, and appropriated by (...) the culture that embraced them. In this collection, we see that these ‘appropriated’ religions imply a culturally nuanced worldview, which, in turn, impacts how the traditional problems in the philosophy of religion are framed and answered—in particular, questions about the existence and nature of the divine, the problem of evil, and the nature of life after death. Themes explored include: religious belief and digital transition, Theravāda Buddhist philosophy, religious diversity, Buddhism and omniscience, indigenous belief systems, divine apology and unmerited human suffering, dialetheism and the problem of evil, Buddhist philosophy and Spinoza’s views on death and immortality, belief and everyday realities in the Philippines, comparative religious philosophy, gendering the Hindu concept of dharma, Christian devotion and salvation during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines through the writings of Jose Rizal, indigenous Islamic practices in the Philippines, practiced traditions in contemporary Filipino celebrations of Christmas, role of place-aspects in the appropriation of religions in Southeast Asia, and fate and divine omniscience. This book is of interest to scholars and researchers of philosophy of religion, sociology of religion, anthropology of religion, cultural studies, comparative religion, religious studies, and Asian studies. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor has argued that a modular mind must include central systems responsible for updating beliefs, and has defended this position by appealing to shared properties of belief fixation and scientific confirmation. Peter Carruthers and Stephen Pinker have attacked this analogy between science and ordinary inference. I examine their arguments and show that they fail. This does not show that Fodor’s more general position is correct.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Catharine Macaulay's Republican Enlightenment by Karen GreenAlan CoffeeKaren Green. Catharine Macaulay's Republican Enlightenment. London: Routledge, 2020. Pp. 276. Hardback, $160.00.Though she was once one of the most recognizable and celebrated public intellectuals in Britain and was read avidly in both revolutionary America and France, after her death in 1791, Catharine Macaulay's work fell into almost total obscurity for around two hundred years. This began to change in the (...) 1990s, since which time interest in Macaulay from historians, philosophers, and feminist scholars has gathered pace. In the last decade and a half, no one has likely done more to advance this scholarship than Karen Green, who has published numerous journal articles and book chapters probing deeply into Macaulay's thought and intellectual context, and who helpfully edited The Correspondence of Catharine Macaulay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), which had not previously been easily available to readers. As one would expect, Green's Catharine Macaulay's Republican Enlightenment builds on this depth of research. For a relatively slim volume, this is the most complete and detailed intellectual biography of Macaulay that I know of, an impressive feat given Macaulay's voluminous output.The aims of the book are twofold: first, to provide a narrative biography following Macaulay's life and the development of her works as they unfolded across her life, and second, to offer an overview and exposition of her ideas in their social and political context (4). These aims are important to bear in mind, since they establish what the book [End Page 158] is able to do and what it stops short of giving us. The volume is organized chronologically, divided into seven main chapters, each representing a short period in Macaulay's life, with an introduction and concluding chapter that considers her legacy, bringing the total chapters to nine. In each of the substantive chapters, Green mixes a biographical account of Macaulay's life with an often detailed analysis of one or more of her main works written during that period, as well as an assessment of how these works both engaged with, and were received within, some of the political and intellectual debates at the time. This is expertly done, with Green drawing on her intimate acquaintance with Macaulay's correspondence with many of the key figures of the period. The book, therefore, would make an excellent companion to anyone reading through the Correspondence as well as for those studying any of Macaulay's historical volumes, treatises, and tracts.An especially strong aspect of Green's book is the way she weaves an ongoing dialogue between Macaulay and several influential figures from her intellectual world across the chapters. One of these is David Hume, who, like Macaulay, had written an ideologically situated—even if both authors claimed impartiality—multivolume History of England. Though Hume's series was completed before Macaulay's had begun, hers can be seen as a philosophical and political rival to his. While the two would only correspond directly once on the subject, Green compares the impact that their respective philosophies have on their resulting political positions. In the 1760s, Green argues, Hume's naturalism, empiricism, and skepticism gave rise to a social conservative politics, whereas Macaulay's theological rationalism provided the basis for her optimistic and radical politics (50). By the 1790s, however, when Macaulay was writing her Letters on Education, Green detects some elements of a Humean philosophy of mind coming to influence Macaulay, albeit likely through David Hartley, particularly concerning the importance of sympathy on our moral psychology, even if there remain important differences between them (180–82). Green also analyzes Macaulay's engagement with Thomas Hobbes in her Loose Remarks and her two formal Observations on writings by Edmund Burke. Of particular value to historians of republicanism is Green's tracing and examination of Macaulay's ongoing intellectual relationship with key political figures, such as John Wilkes in Britain; Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, John and Abigail Adams, James Otis, Mercy Otis Warren, and George Washington in America; Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot and Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville in France, among many others. Though Macaulay's reputation as an influential political writer... (shrink)

Abstractabstract:When the writings of Nancy Kingsbury Wollstonecraft surfaced in 2019, having been almost wholly neglected by scholars since their publication in the 1820s, they invited an inevitable and tantalizing comparison with her far more famous sister-in-law, Mary Wollstonecraft, especially since Kingsbury had written an article on "The Natural Rights of Woman." Irrespective of the Wollstonecraft connection, however, Kingsbury's writing stands on its own merits as deserving of serious scholarship by historians of women in philosophy. Nevertheless, reading Kingsbury in the light (...) of her predecessor is highly instructive and helps both bring out what is distinctive about her conclusions and place her in the context of post-Wollstonecraftian thought in the nineteenth century. Kingsbury draws on a similar set of foundational principles as Wollstonecraft, which I place within the republican tradition of political philosophy—freedom, equality, virtue, the common good. Together, these make up an ideal of freedom as independence. Focusing on the issue of education, she argues that increasing women's access to education will do little to improve their intellectual development unless there is an accompanying and extensive restructuring of social and economic norms. In applying the logic of freedom as independence, Kingsbury takes further this aspect of Wollstonecraft's thought and anticipates and prefigures some of the later arguments of feminists and abolitionists writing in the same tradition, including especially Frederick Douglass. (shrink)

Independence is a central and recurring theme in Wollstonecraft’s work. Independence should not be understood as an individualistic ideal that is in tension with the value of community but as an essential ingredient in successful and flourishing social relationships. I examine three aspects of this rich and complex concept that Wollstonecraft draws on as she develops her own notion of independence as a powerful feminist tool. First, independence is an egalitarian ideal that requires that all individuals, (...) regardless of sex, are protected to a comparable extent in all areas of social, political and economic life, no matter whether this is in the public or private sphere. Secondly, so long as this egalitarian condition is not compromised, independence allows for individuals to perform differentiated social roles, including along gendered lines. Finally, the on-going and collective input of both women and men is required to ensure that the conditions necessary for social independence are maintained. In Wollstonecraft’s hands, then, independence is a powerful ideal that allows her to argue that women must be able to act on their own terms as social and political equals, doing so as women whose perspectives and interests may differ from men’s. (shrink)

In Chapter 1 I discuss the basic problem which made me undertake the issue of human death. That problem was the dualism in the depiction of human nature which has not been fully overcome yet, the dualism which leads to the emergence of new difficulties in contemporary attempts at adequately solving the problem of human death. They include the separation of soul from the body in the moment of death, and the borderline between the moment of death and the (...) moment of resurrection. Chapter 2 is devoted to the presentation of a new anthropological perspective, of an anthropology build “from the bottom up”, that is “from foundations”, and taking into account man’s rooting in the biological environment, and thus also in the genetic heritage taken over from our pre-human ancestors. That anthropology brings new aspects into traditional anthropology by extending it to include new ways of explaining the genesis of the human body and spirit, and new depictions of man’s death. In Chapter 2 I will also present the concept of evolution proposed by P.T. de Chardin, which I appreciate for its comprehensive evolutionary perception of the world. This concept has provoked various responses, but it certainly provides a creative inspiration for further attempts at applying the idea of evolution to various issues. The general framework of the evolutionary model proposed by the French researcher turns out to be useful also when applied to the evolutionary understanding of human death. Chapter 3 contains a discussion of the principal premises of the evolutionary concept of human death taken from analyses carried out by T. Wojciechowski concerning the issue of time, space, and the structure of variable material beings. A being is variable because it has a temporal structure, and the changes that occur are the derivatives of that structure. The temporal structure may be seen as endless, in which a being, even though its existence had a beginning, will exist for ever. Material substance should not be seen statically, but in dynamic and evolutionary terms. In evolution, time becomes a driver of development, an element shaping and directing the evolution of the entire cosmos. Man’s substance has been made capable of two levels of being and acting: the spatial and temporal level, and the endless and immanent level. Together, they form the one essence of man. Thus, the human person is partially immersed in the material cosmos, and partially elevated above it. Chapter 4 presents the evolutionary approach to the moment of man’s death. The views of T. Wojciechowski will be presented in which the moment of death is seen as a moment of transformation and perfection of the structure of the essence of human existence. Furthermore, the issue of the relationship existing, according to T. Wojciechowski, between man’s death and resurrection will be discussed. Understood in evolutionary terms, the moment of death is the time when the structure of human existence is transformed. Death transfers man fully into eternity and enables his life on a higher level of existential being. The element of flesh is retained, but changes its nature. Such view of death allows it to be understood as the moment of resurrection and the culmination of the evolutionary process of life. Death is therefore an “invention” of the evolution and should be seen as a natural and positive phenomenon. At this point, I also propose a solution to the question about reconciliation between temporal and endless existence. In Chapter 5 I take up the issue of consequences flowing from the postulated understanding of human death. They have been pointed to by T. Wojciechowski, but need to be further developed and clarified. He believed two lines in man’s development need to be recognized: that of natural and that of supernatural evolution. Both have the same direction, while occurring on different planes. In each of these lines, death is a natural element of life, pre-planned and, so to say, “encoded” in the cosmic matter. Therefore, the treatment of biological death as the consequence of sin is not only contrary to the evolutionary understanding of life, but in addition artificially combines that which is natural with that which is supernatural. Man’s authentic experience of his own present is a condition of his achieving full existential perfection in the moment of this death. Full engagement in the present is, in a way, a harbinger of the future; thus, the life “here” and “there” may not be inherently inconsistent. In the light of the evolutionary concept, death is not a punishment, but the most positive experience of man’s life in that it enables him to achieve full existential perfection. Chapter 6 is devoted to a substantiation of the possibility of evolutionary transformation of the structure of human existence in the moment of death. An adequate cause needs to be identified which could substantiate that transformation and achievement of perfection. I believe an appropriate substantiation can be found in God’s creative act, interpreted in evolutionary terms. The process of evolution, with its subsequent stages, is only a necessary condition for that “transformation” and “elevation”. The sufficient condition is fulfilled by the continuous creative intervention of God. The concept of God’s creative activity in the moment of man’s death finds its continuation in Chapter 7, where I present a detailed analysis of God’s activity at the time of man’s death. The concept of God’s creative activity extended over the entire process of evolution makes it possible to consider the moment of death as the moment of man’s resurrection. The moment of death is thus a moment of creation in evolutionary terms. Thus, as long as man is related to temporal and spatial elements, his development, or creation, continues. Death is only the completion of the final stage of creation, which may be painful and evoke fear, but in fact should give hope, for it involves resurrection. I also propose that the creative act in the moment of man’s death-resurrection be considered a basic action of God, which explains the manner in which God’s activity is contained within the framework of the creative act, encompassing also the moment of death-resurrection. The final Chapter 8 describes a didactic model illustrating the concept proposed here. I use the analogy of white light dispersion effect in the prism, and compare the incident ray to the creative act, and the dispersed rays going through the prism to the line of man’s natural and supernatural evolution. This model also shows the difference in the perspectives from which the phenomenon of death is seen by God and by man. (shrink)

In spite of its everyday connotations, the term independence as republicans understand it is not a celebration of individualism or self-reliance but embodies an acknowledgement of the importance of personal and social relationships in people’s lives. It reflects our connectedness rather than separateness and is in this regard a relational ideal. Properly understood, independence is a useful concept in addressing a fundamental problem in social philosophy that has preoccupied theorists of relational autonomy, namely how to reconcile the idea of (...) individual human agency with the inevitable and necessary influence of other people, both directly and indirectly. I derive my account from the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay, whose contributions have remained largely overlooked by current republican theorists. I have three purposes in this chapter. First, I set out the relational character of independence. Secondly, I outline a republican approach to the problem of structural social threats to agency. Finally, I hope to establish the basis for a fruitful dialogue between republicans and relational autonomy theorists on the requirements and dynamics of individual agency and freedom in oppressive social situations. I identify three distinctive features of the internal logic of freedom as independence that give it a relational character: it always locates the person within a community; there is a mediating role played by the notion of arbitrariness in connecting individual and collective perspectives; a causal relationship exists linking each person’s freedom as independence such that that the dependence of one class of persons jeopardizes the independence of the whole community. (shrink)

"Advocates of the evolutionary analogy claim that mechanisms governing scientific change are analogous to those at work in organic evolution - above all, natural selection. By referring to the works of the most influential proponents of evolutionary analogies (Toulmin, Campbell, Hull and, most notably, Kuhn) the authors discuss whether and to what extent their use of the analogy is appropriate. A careful and often illuminating perusal of the theoretical scope of the terms employed, as well as (...) of the varying contexts within which the analogy is appealed to in contemporary debates, leads to the conclusion that such general theories of selective processes are either too sketchy or eventually not persuasive, if not altogether based on flawed views of evolutionary biology. By clarifying what is at stake, the analysis carried out in the book sheds new light on one of the dominant theories of scientific progress. It also invites criticism, of course - but that is the very fuel of philosophical confrontation." - Stefano Gattei, IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca "This book presents a serious challenge to those, like David Hull, who seek to model scientific change as an evolutionary process. The authors point out that although there are similarities between the processes of scientific change and organic evolution, the dissimilarities present formidable difficulties to construing the relation as anything more than a weak analogy. Their argument employs what they call a 'type hierarchical' approach that promises to be a powerful tool for the classification of similarities between theories in all fields." - Michael Bradie, Department of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University "This is a most interesting discussion of the analogy between biological and scientific change. Particularly commendable is the close attention paid to the thinking of the late David Hull and his pathbreaking work on this issue." - Michael Ruse, History and Philosophy of Science, Florida State University. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Primacy of Christ: The Patristic Patrimony in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Analogy in Theology by Vincent C. AnyamaRoland MillarePrimacy of Christ: The Patristic Patrimony in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Analogy in Theology by Vincent C. Anyama (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021), xii + 263 pp.In the famous dispute between Erich Przywara and Karl Barth, Przywara held the view that the analogy of being is the "formal principle (...) of Catholic thought," whereas Barth maintained the position that the analogy of being is the "invention of the Antichrist." The recent work of Fr. Vincent Anyama presents how the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, with this emphasis on the primacy of Christ, under the influence of the Church Fathers, contributes to the discussion revolving around the role of analogy within theology. Gottlieb Söhngen, one of Ratzinger's mentors and teachers, had appeased Barth with his argument of a Christocentric "analogia entis within an analogia fidei" (2–3). Anyama argues that Ratzinger has taken up the mantle of his mentor in appropriating his Christocentric synthesis of the analogy of faith and reason via his study of Augustine. The unique contribution of Anyama's work is that his study of Ratzinger takes the reader beyond the typical presentation of Ratzinger as an Augustinian and Bonaventurian theologian. Anyama's work engages the patristic influence of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tyconius, Justin Martyr, and Maximus the Confessor in addition to the significance of Augustine in Ratzinger's theology.Anyama's study is concerned with addressing Ratzingerian scholarship in two different areas. First, he wants to address what is an inadequate assessment of the patristic influence upon Ratzinger's theology in the scholarship of Peter Fletcher and Peter Kucer. Second, he intends to address varying questions relating to Ratzinger's use of analogy in the work of Peter McGregor, Justin Kizewski, Peter Kucer, and Gabino Bilbaco (235). Anyama explicitly notes that he relies upon a "hermeneutic of continuity" that is limited to the continuity between the patristic heritage and Ratzinger's theology (13). Anyama limits the scope of his study on Ratzinger's use of analogy by adopting the patristic categories utilized by Justin Kizekski in work God-Talk: (1) faith and reason, (2) image and participation, and (3) God-talk (12). These categories will frame the structure for part two of the book (chapters 3–5), whereas the first part of the book (chapters 1–2) focuses on the general patristic understanding of analogy and the Church Fathers quoted by Ratzinger.Jesus Christ is the Incarnation of the logos of the Father. The Church Fathers use "wisdom" and logos in reference to both philosophy and the Christian faith. In the thought of Origin, Christ is the one unique Logos, [End Page 307] who is both the source and ultimate end of the many words (logoi) of natural reason (26). As the eternal Logos, Jesus Christ is the consummate Image, whereas the human person is an "image of the Image" via the rational soul in the theology of Clement of Alexandria (33–34). This line of patristic thought will become important later on in Anyama's work as he addresses the theme of the primacy of Christ within Ratzinger's thought. Creation in the image of God is distinct from the notion of likeness to God within much of patristic thought. In the thought of Irenaeus and other Fathers, likeness is "understood as assimilation of creatures into God," which is a participation of the creature in the life of God via the gift of grace and the life of the Spirit (46–47). The notions used by the Fathers, which are underscored by Anyama, are the identification of reason as "seeds of wisdom" (Origen) and "Seeds of the Word" (Justin Martyr). The analogy between pre-Christian philosophy and the Christian faith will be a frequent theme in the writings of Ratzinger, who will begin his inaugural lecture at the University of Bonn with an insightful reflection upon the God of philosophy and the God of faith.When Anyama begins the second part of the book, he focuses on the thought of Bonaventure because of the prominent influence he... (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 6–21. The French philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia was born in Toulouse in 1981. This makes him rather young to have written such an imaginative work of systematic philosophy as Forme et objet , 1 the latest entry in the MétaphysiqueS series at Presses universitaires de France. But this reference to Garcia’s youthfulness is not a form of condescension: by publishing a complete system of philosophy in the grand style, he has already done what none of us (...) in the older generation of speculative realists has done so far. His book is sophisticated, erudite, rigorous, imaginatively rich, and abundant in worldly wisdom– despite the author’s conclusion that wisdom does not exist. The quality and scope of Forme et objet took few observers by surprise, since Garcia has been treated as an emerging philosopher to watch across half a decade of Parisian oral tradition. But Garcia was not just the subject of rumor, being already well known to the French public as a writer of fiction. His debut novel, La meilleure part des hommes , 2 was awarded the 2008 Prix de Flore 3 and has already appeared in English as Hate: A Romance . 4 His follow-up novel, Mémoires de la jungle , 5 made clever use of a chimpanzee narrator. Nor was Garcia only published as a novelist before last November: his philosophical study L’Image 6 had already appeared when the author was just twenty-six, a year before he was crowned by the muses at the historic Café de Flore. And then in 2011, just months before the appearance of Forme et objet , Garcia published a widely distributed work entitled Nous, animaux et humains , 7 with its focus on Jeremy Bentham’s ideas about animals. Given this prolific and versatile track record, an optimistic scenario might envisage the young Garcia as one of those combined literary/philosophical talents who appear intermittently in France across the centuries: Jean-Paul Sartre is merely the most famous recent case. While more time is needed to see how Garcia will channel his impressive mental energies, Forme et objet displays such breadth of insight that its author has a good chance to emerge as one of the leading philosophers of his generation. If we accept Aristotle’s dictum that the peak mental age is fifty-one, then to read Garcia’s massive book is to gain some idea of what European philosophy might look like in the futuristic-sounding 2030’s. The present article is confined to Forme et objet . At 486 pages, the work is obviously daunting in size. Indeed, it is even longer than it sounds, given that many of its early sections are printed in a smaller typeface to designate them as supplemental commentary to the main flow of the argument. But while the length of the book reportedly led to delays in French publication, and will probably slow the inevitable appearance of an English translation, the length of the book should not deter interested readers– much of it results from Garcia’s teacherly writing style. Whereas Quentin Meillassoux’s prose displays an arctic economy of means, Garcia’s style is reminiscent of the repeated lessons of oral classroom proceedings. Rarely is the reader given fewer than three or four chances to master an idea before the author moves on to the next. In practice, the style feels welcoming rather than long-winded. Otherwise, the structure of Forme et objet is surprisingly simple. There is a useful Introduction of less than twenty pages. Then comes Book I: Formally , running to approximately 135 pages. Here Garcia outlines the most basic features of a thing “no matter what it is,” or n’importe quoi , an everyday phrase that Garcia shapes into a technical term. This part of the book feels at times like a more amiable version of Hegel’s Science of Logic , a parallel emphasized further by the threefold articulation of its theme: 1. Thing; 2. Thing and World; 3. Being and Understanding. This is followed by the much longer Book II: Objectively , totaling more than 300 pages. It contains sixteen essay-like meditations on specific kinds of objects—including time, animals, humans, history, gender, and death. Here each chapter rolls smoothly into the next, making this second part of the book feel more like a different work of Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit . But these are merely analogies. Garcia is no Hegelian, even if the book contains a few dialectical flourishes that seem to reflect his early enthusiasm for the Frankfurt School. Forme et objet ends with a six-page Coda, followed by the usual page of acknowledgments. In what follows, I will briefly summarize each of these four parts of the book before ending with some more general remarks. Before doing so, it will be useful to situate Garcia biographically (as much as I am able) and philosophically. Though Toulouse is his native city, his formative years were spent largely in Algeria, where his family has deep roots. During our sole private conversation, Garcia mentioned that his parents are professors of literature. 8 As a student of philosopher Garcia flourished so early that many of his current ideas date to his teenaged years: “There are sentences in Forme et objet that I wrote when I was seventeen,” he said in response to a question on that cold night on the Canal St.-Martin. I recalled that remark when reading his brilliant account, late in the book, of the central role of adolescence in contemporary culture. While many prodigies blow through their formal academic training without serious obstruction, Garcia’s student memories are rich in tales of isolation and struggle, though equally rich in gratitude for a half-dozen or so exceptional teachers who provided the intellectual space he needed: Meillassoux and Alain Badiou are simply two of the most prominent figures on that list. Though there are many points of agreement between Garcia’s philosophical position and my own, he not only reached his position years before reading my work, 9 he arrived along a rather different path: not through phenomenology, but via the Frankfurt School, which may be one of the reasons for his profound fascination with aesthetics. Garcia’s cultural background is as broad as one could wish: he is no less informed about punk rock and European football leagues than about the spiritualist roots of Bergson’s philosophy. Curious about everything and contemptuous towards nothing, Garcia can be expected to write insightfully on dozens of topics in the years to come. Given that his philosophy is so personally tantalizing in its agreements and disagreements with my own, and given the great internal richness of Forme et objet itself, the present review is no better than a first effort at coming to terms with the challenges posed by this minstrel from the rising generation. This is especially intriguing for older Generation X’ers like me, since confrontation with the younger generation is one of the many themes treated insightfully in Garcia’s book. 1. Introduction Garcia begins in defense of a so-called “flat ontology,” in which all things are equally things. While Roy Bhaskar 10 used this term pejoratively to refer to anti-realist philosophies that flatten everything onto an epistemic plane of human access, Manuel DeLanda 11 (an admirer of Bhaskar) reversed it into the positive principle that all realities are equally realities. Similar notions can be found in the “absistence” of Alexius Meinong, 12 the “irreduction” of Bruno Latour, 13 and my own critique 14 of the undermining/overmining pair. Also noteworthy is Levi Bryant’s use of the term “flat ontology” throughout The Democracy of Objects 15 and his earlier essay “The Ontic Principle.” 16 But for Garcia, flatness is only one face of the cosmos, and one that he ultimately declares to be rather impoverished. Even so, he always remains an advocate of a flat ontology. Insofar as everything is equally something, no matter what it is ( n’importe qui ), everything is equally a thing, equally solitary in its relation with world. This is why his book abounds in those long lists of random, ontologically equivalent entities that Ian Bogost has playfully termed “Latour Litanies.” 17 The first litany in Garcia’s book runs as follows: “We live in this world of things, where a cutting of acacia, a gene, a computer-generated image, a transplantable hand, a musical sample, a trademarked name, or a sexual service are comparable things.” (7) Yet Garcia is frankly dualistic; his flat ontology only lasts until page 159 and the end of Book I (entitled “Formally”), which deals entirely with things that are equally things. Thereafter Garcia turns his attention from things to objects, which are not flat in the least, but engage in hierarchical relations with one another. In agreement with both DeLanda and the speculative realists, Garcia proclaims that his book “proposes to put to the test a thought about things rather than a thought about our thought about things .” (8) Just as ducklings are “imprinted” (9) after hatching and treat the first creature they see as their mother, philosophers are imprinted by the idea with which they begin. Hence, philosophies that begin with human access will never truly find their way back to things. This makes Garcia rather suspicious of twentieth century philosophy, since “the twentieth century—to which in some way this work proposes to bid adieu—has been a period of theorizing modes of access to things rather than things...” (9) Among other possible benefits of the philosophy of things that Garcia proposes, it is fully able to account for thought as a special variant of things, while the reverse is not possible.(10) In Book I of Forme et objet , Garcia’s “things” are so flat, so de-determined, that he is forced to renounce some of the most basic features ascribed to things by most realists. As he tells us in his foreboding third footnote: “We will maintain that the solitude [of things] is less than unity, less than identity, and that it does not imply acceptance (any more than refusal) of the principle of non-contradiction.” (11) In a contemporary world cluttered with too many things, Garcia’s flat and formal plane provides us with some breathing room: “The formal plan of thought enables or re-enables us to cut short all accumulation—whether of knowing, experience, or action—by a simplicity, an impoverished surface...” (13) As Garcia says elsewhere in responding to a Deleuzian critic of the book, his starting point in flat ontology is designed to obstruct the claims of both analytic philosophy and Hegelianism: “Hence, this work seeks to protect each thing—real, imaginary, inconsistent, contradictory—both against Ockham’s Razor and against the Aufhebung or dialectical process.” 18 Yet contrary to the equalizing spirit of many flat ontologies, “we will add to our formal ontology of the equal, an objective ontology of the unequal.” (13) But initially, Garcia joins all flat ontologists in holding that everything is irreducible: “this irreducibility, which we will term the ‘chance’ of each thing... also marks the refusal of a positive thought that reduces things exclusively to natural things, or social things, or historical things, etc.” (15) This irreducible “chance” of a thing emerges as an important technical term in the book, always paired with its inverted brother, the “price to pay” ( prix à payer ). On pages 17-19, we find the only diagrams in the book. What they illustrate is that Garcia wishes to avoid two equally dangerous extremes. The first is the philosophy of substance, featuring the thing-in-itself as a mighty river fed by attributes as if by subordinate tributary streams. This model can be found in many of the classic thinkers of West and East alike. In it, “there is obviously a hierarchization between that which is dragged towards something other than itself, and this other which serves it as an ontological support while supporting its proper being.” (16) For Garcia, the second extreme worth avoiding is the philosophy of events: “One thus conceives trajectories of being, identified as events, facts, powers, intensities, or intentionality. These vectors of being come first, bearing and supporting being, displacing it, but without ever finding a stopping point, a buffer, an objective consistency.” (17) The first model gives us a thing too wrapped up in itself, too compact . This word “compact” (the French and the English are the same) is another technical term for Garcia. But if the “compact” model of things leads us to something more than things, the philosophy of events gives us less than things, by dissolving them into a play of vectors. Garcia’s alternative lies midway between these two extremes: Being enters the thing, being comes out of it. And a thing is nothing other than the difference between the enters and the being that comes out. Thus, the circuit of being is never halted. In the thing, there is never the thing-in-itself. And the thing is never in-itself, but outside of itself. Nonetheless, being is not eventally “pollinated” by vectors: it possesses an objecting halting-point... (19) This single idea is the key to Garcia’s book: the thing is neither a self-contained durable lump nor some sort of evental flux. Instead, the thing is the difference between its various components and its relations with its environment. Or stated differently: “the price to pay for this disposition is a circulation of being that systematically distinguishes two senses of things: that which is in the thing , and that in which the thing is , or that which encompasses it and that which it encompasses,” (19) translating comprendre here as “encompass.” 19 In a beautiful description of a piece of black slate, Garcia sums up the various minerals, qualities, and shapes that compose [ comprend ] it, and calls them “that which is in the thing,” (20) noting that this tells us nothing about “that in which [the slate] is”—namely, all the various situations in which the black slate can be found. Instead, the slate is the difference between these two: the most characteristic principle of Garcia’s philosophy. 2. Formally Book One of Forme et objet , “Formally,” is concerned with the formal equality of all things in a flat world. “Two questions mark the boundaries of reflection: of what is everything composed [ composé ], and: what do all things compose?” (27) Looking downward, we wish to know what everything is made of; looking upward, we want to know the ultimate result of the combination of all things. Here we must turn our attention to the thing n’importe quoi— no matter what it is. (30) Anything with finite qualities is obviously too specific to be relevant to global ontological questions. To an equal degree, something possessing all qualities (think of Whitehead’s God) 20 would not be n’importe quoi either, since it would still be too definite, even if incredibly vast. The same holds for contradictions, since these all differ from each other. The square circle, the non-white black white, and the non-city city are all too distinct to count as the thing no matter what it is. The n’importe quoi must be devoid of all specific qualities, including contradictory ones. In one of the more intriguing points in his book, so reminiscent of Meinong, Garcia proclaims that “the ‘no matter what it is’ is neither a reality nor an abstract construction, nor both of these at once; the ‘no matter what it is’ is simply the plane of equality of that which is real, that which is possible, that which is inexistent, that which is past, that which is impossible, that which is true, that which is false, that which is bad.”(39-40) Since everything has two faces, it would be a grievous mistake to focus on just one of them at the expense of the other, as physicalism or materialism do when reducing the world to minuscule physical underpinnings. For scientistic materialism, “it is either atoms, particles, or fields of force... which are the things.” (47-48) Moreover, “these more-than-things are accompanied by less-than-things: for example, ideas or facts of consciousness are determined by the state of matter and are not autonomous things, but manifestations reduced to secondary effects of material processes...” (48) On this point, Garcia’s position is in complete accord with my own critique of undermining and overmining. 21 Where we disagree is that Garcia is more deeply suspicious of the notion of substance, which I view as salvageable with a few needed changes, while Garcia sees this operation as hopeless: “A substance, in the history of philosophy, is the more-than-thing par excellence.” (51) Another agreement between our positions is visible when Garcia claims (correctly, in my opinion) “that it is vain to distinguish between things which are material and those which are not.” (52) Yet we also find an even more important disagreement, since for Garcia withdrawal cannot be the quality of a thing. Instead, the absence of a thing is simultaneous with it, embodied in all that is not it– the absence of the sculpture of a woman is to be found in the mold that appears at the same time as it, and thus withdrawal must be viewed as an “event” rather than as something pertaining to an object. For Garcia, nothing withdraws beyond access. Since we must distinguish between “that which is something” and “that which something is,” and since the former is identified with “no matter what it is is” and the latter with “ not no matter what it is,” we can say that “everything is thus a milieu, a fragile link between ‘no matter what it is’ and ‘ not no matter what it is.’” (62) And here we find Garcia’s critique of the thing-in-itself: “A thing is never defined en bloc . We can affirm that a thing is this or that, but that does not suffice. It is still necessary to state precisely that which is this thing .” (62) Stated differently, “something is not in itself : for that which is in the thing is not the thing, and that in which the thing is is not the thing.” (62) And here Garcia and I, facing the same evidence, draw opposite conclusions. For me, the fact that nothing can be identified with either its components or its concrete location means that the thing must be something in-itself distinct from both of these. Yet for Garcia, to be in-itself would mean to be identified with just one of these two extreme terms, and hence the thing can only be the difference between them. Garcia is equally suspicious of the classical tendency to view “unity” as a property of the thing, since in his eyes unity is too relational a property to belong to things. (65) While specific things are situated determinately with respect to other things, we are still speaking here about the thing no matter what it is, and this can be viewed only in terms of solitude, which all things share: a human being, a hand, or a chair or all equally things insofar as they are on their own , not insofar as they are one . (64) A thing is alone, and relates only to the one thing that is not another thing: world. In a striking parallel to my own argument for a partial revival of occasionalism, Garcia tells us that “the things communicate only by their solitude: it is because everything is equally on its own in the world that things can be together, enmeshed in one another.” (67) Alone in their solitude, things all relate to world, which serves as a mediator allowing them to become mixed up in one another. As we have seen, one reason that nothing can be in itself is because everything is in something else. For Garcia, “to be in something and to be something are equivalent.” (69) Stated more broadly, “being is thus the difference between the two aspects of each thing: that which is it, and that which it is.” (70) And even more vividly: “a thing is almost like a sack: there is that which one puts in the sack and that which remains outside the sack.” (70) But not quite like a sack, “since a thing is not a thin skin or film. Instead, a thing is comparable to a sack that is immaterial and without thickness: it is nothing other than the difference between that which is this thing and that which thing is, between content and container.” (71) Nothing can be in-itself because everything is two selves at once. For example, we cannot say that our self is defined by our consciousness: “Everything has a self because nothing is in itself. The self is not the quality of that which is related to itself (which is conscious, for example) or which thinks itself related to itself. Nonetheless, for an entity called ‘conscious’ to be related to itself, it is necessary that this very relation should be another thing than the self to which it is related.” (71) Consciousness cannot be the self, precisely because it is other than that of which it is conscious. Nothing is able to grasp itself. The self is “the function by which being and composition [ compréhension ] are mutually excluded...” (72) The self is “the point of shadow of everything that projects some light...” (72) The in-itself faces two opposite dangers: “For something to be in-itself is to be a self. Something which is a self flies out through one of its two sides... Stated differently, being in-itself is simply the possibility of a double failure.” (73) The in-itself can be termed compact : “There remains to us a means of thinking that which does not fully enter into the world, though without exiting from it. This means is what we call the compact.” (76) In a sense, the compact is the opposite of the world. For in the case of the world, everything enters it and it enters nothing; as for the compact, it enters the world (since it is something, after all) while nothing enters it. (77) The compact marks the presence of the impossible in the world. (78) It is not impossible, but possible only on the condition that it fails. (78) The time has come to speak of where a thing is located. “The sole condition of a thing is that of being in another thing than itself, and thus in another thing than something.” (78) A condition is “that which determines something, that which forms something, that in which something is.” (78) As for humans, “the condition of someone is his situation; my social condition is that which socially determines me, my place and my function...” (79) More generally, “to be conditioned is to find oneself reduced to that in which one is.” (79) Everything is conditioned, but nothing is reducible to this condition. To determine the condition of something is to determine in what it is. A thing is located in that which contradicts it, just as a statue exists in its mold, which is precisely that which it is not. Since the thing is finite and definite, its condition or form must be infinite and indefinite. That in which all things are is the world, which Garcia also terms “the whole.” (81) “To try to be in-itself is to attempt to remain outside the world. And indeed, to try to be in-itself is only a path of entry into the world.” (83) For Garcia, “the world is not the pre-existent container of the things it contains, a priori , nor the construction by the mind of a fictional ensemble of all things, a posteriori .” (85) Instead, the world is simultaneous with all things; the two always go together. The world cannot be a determinate world, such as the physical universe or mathematical space, since these are already too specific and limited. “Every determinate world, which is in fact a universe , is a ‘big thing’ [ grosse chose ]: it is a set, however vast, of composite things which itself embodies a thing.” (85) Every determinate world is really just a “big thing.” Stated differently, “it is nothing other than a balanced milieu between the things that compose it and the thing that it composes.” (85) We generally picture the world as a physical univer. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 161-163 [Access article in PDF] Avrum Stroll. Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Pp. ii + 302. Cloth, $32.50. Analytic philosophy has entered the history of philosophy since the greatest twentieth-century philosophers of that tradition are dead or retired. It is appropriate then to have a book that clearly and accurately explains the main (...) theories and identifies its character. Avrum Stroll has written such a book, and more. He explains and evaluates where analytic philosophy is today and speculates about where it might go from here.Reserving the first and last chapters for discussion later, I will begin with the seven intervening ones: 2. "Philosophical Logic," 3. "Logical Positivism and the Tractatus," 4. "G. E. Moore: A Ton of Bricks," 5. "Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: 'The Stream of Life,'" 6. "Ryle and Austin: the Golden Age of Oxford Philosophy," 7. "W. V. O. Quine," and 8."Direct Reference Theories." Chapter 2 deals mostly with Frege and Russell, and Chapter 8 deals mostly with Kripke and Putnam. As the titles and contents indicate, Stroll inclines to a great man understanding of philosophical history, a sensible [End Page 161] approach given the consensus that four or five philosophers have dominated analytic philosophy in the last century, with another four or five being especially talented.Among his expositions of the various philosophical "isms," such as logical atomism and positivism, Stroll intersperses biographical matters that give the book rhythm—he demolishes the widespread idea popularized by Ray Monk that Wittgenstein was anti-Semitic—and charm—he quotes a letter that Wittgenstein wrote to Moore shortly after learning that a certain piece of work could not count as his bachelor's thesis at Cambridge: Dear Moore: Your letter annoyed me. When I wrote Logik I didn't consult the Regulations, and therefore I think it would only be fair if you gave me my degree without consulting them so much either!... If I am not worth you making an exception for me even in some STUPID details then I may as well go to HELL directly... (pp. 91-2). In Chapter One, "The Solera System," Stroll lays out the controlling analogy of his book. The system refers to a way of making sherry. A quantity of wine, drawn from the oldest and best barrel, is replaced by the same quantity drawn from the next oldest, and so one for each successive barrel. The old wine improves the new, and the new refreshes the old. Likewise, "old philosophy has the power to educate and improve new philosophy," according to Stroll. He then continues: "And new philosophy not only preserves the quality and character of old philosophy but has the capacity to refresh it" (246).Also in Chapter One, Stroll observes that "philosophy is essentially a humanistic activity" (3). As such philosophy is tied to its history in a way that science is not. I would put his underlying point differently. Philosophy is humanistic because its problems are timeless and universal; these include what it is to exist, what it is to be conscious, what causation is, and what is the good life. Further, its solutions rarely hang on technical devices.But something has been amiss. Most of the theories distinctive of analytic philosophy, from the theory of descriptions, to modal logic, the causal theory of names, and functionalism, seem to approach these problems obliquely. Also, some of the most respected analytic theories are 'evasion' theories. Eschewing the need to give a substantive account of relations, analytic philosophers hold that relations are n-tuples of objects, which themselves are reducible to unordered sets of objects. Notwithstanding its formal adequacy, the substantive issue seems to be left begging. Loving, causing, being taller than, and being the square of are all relations, but is it illuminating to treat all of them in the same way? Moderating his normal optimism, Stroll says, "I wonder whether the very conception of the role of philosophy has not changed recently. It strikes me that the classical problems that the solera model presupposes are... (shrink)

While it is widely assumed that greater diversity in corporate governance will enhance a firm’s corporate social performance, this study considers an alternative thesis which relates managerial control to corporate philanthropy. The study empirically evaluates both board diversity and managerial control of the board as possible predictors of corporate philanthropy. The demonstration of a positive relationship between managerial control and corporate philanthropy contributes to our understanding that corporate social performance results from a complex set of economic and social (...) motives. Possible future research and managerial implications are discussed. (shrink)

We often go out to the movies, theater, or ballet, preferring to share the experience with others rather than watch at home alone. We do the same with food and drink, for instance, by going to tasting rooms to sample wines and talk with others. To have these sorts of experiences, we plan, coordinate, and engage in a range of complex social practices. These practices often lead to the formation of audiences, and philosophers since Aristotle have argued that the (...) success of certain art forms depends on audience reactions.1 In addition, many processes of aesthetic education involve individuals learning about aesthetic objects and judgments together. If so, then understanding how groups experience aesthetic objects... (shrink)

Transgender people have among the highest rates of suicide attempts of any group in society, driven strongly by the perception that they do not belong in the sex of their physical body. Gender reassignment surgery is a procedure that can change the transgender person’s physical body to accord with their gender identity. The procedure raises important ethical and distributive justice concerns, given the controversy of whether it is a cosmetic or medical procedure and the economic costs associated with (...) performing the procedure. This paper argues that there is a strong case for funding GRS as a matter of clinical necessity and justice. This paper will be divided in four key sections: First, the state of transgender health will be outlined, including the role of GRS and common objections to it. Second, a number of common objections to GRS will be analysed at the outset and shown to be unconvincing. Third, a constructive argument will be advanced, arguing that publicly funded GRS is clinically necessary, cost-effective, and demanded by principles of justice. Fourth, the paper will briefly discuss moralistic biases and why we demand a higher burden of justification for funding GRS compared with other analogous procedures. (shrink)

In Wollstonecraft’s early writings, she articulates the foundational theological and philosophical principles that would underpin her work throughout her career. One difference between her early and later work lies in the way that the values to which she refers are combined. Whereas Wollstonecraft at first appeals to the separate ideals of independence, equality, and virtue, from the 1790s onwards she integrates these into a characteristic republican framework that was in common use amongst dissenting theorists at the time. (...) The set of values on which Wollstonecraft draws, and the version of the republican framework that she develops, closely resemble those of Richard Price with whose work she was familiar. Examining the structural similarities between their respective models, I argue, gives us an insight into the systematic manner of aspects of Wollstonecraft’s own thought. It also allows us to see how Wollstonecraft goes beyond the republicanism of Price and others as she develops her own feminist solutions to the problems of structural domination. (shrink)

The Eucharist poses a challenge for philosophical discourse. Nevertheless, I suggest that we can speak intelligibly about this deepest of mysteries, without detracting from its mysterious evidence. Instead of resorting to the traditional approaches in discussions of the Eucharist, which attempt to explain it in terms of substance metaphysics, I will deploy a speech act theory, not in order to comprehend, but rather to hold open a space for this mystery to become present in our natural and philosophical lives. (...) I will focus on the speech act of giving thanks or showing gratitude—eucharistein—that is just as much ontological as the ontology of things that accounts for most of the intellectual discourse about the Eucharist. My thesis is that the Eucharist essentially and spiritually concerns persons and a Person more than it concerns things. (shrink)

The cognitive science student deserves our sympathy. It is difficult to think of another area of study where there is so much disagreement amongst the constituent parts, and even within those parts themselves -- neuroscience, AI, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, quantum and evolutionary theory. To illustrate this difficulty for the erstwhile student, imagine cognitive science as a collection of ball games with mind/brain/ consciousness as the ball. Instead of being able to concentrate on the one game as one might expect to (...) in another subject, the student is faced with a disparate range of disciplines. Some participants maintain it is only they who are playing the real game and that other games should be assimilated to their own. Then there are theorists who like to borrow from a number of games to create their own, whilst others suggest there is no common ground at all between games. We could go on further with this part of the analogy but let us now focus on the ball. Notice how it changes shape, material, size and playing surface from one game to the next -- football, hockey, squash, golf, tennis. Yet at least here the balls are round, the surface solid. How about badminton, rugby and water polo? Hardly surprising then that a cognitive science student needs to have special skills to cope with this confusion. (shrink)

A popular argument against the unilateral appropriation of unowned resources maintains that such appropriation is impossible because it implies a power to unilaterally impose novel obligations on others—a power which people cannot have given that they are moral equals. However, Bas van der Vossen has recently argued that initial appropriation does not create obligations in this way; rather, it merely alters the empirical facts that, together with obligations, determine people’s practical moral requirements. This paper argues (...) that van der Vossen is mistaken. Specifically, it contends that the creation of obligations is accompanied by a distinctive kind of variation in the obliged party’s practical requirements across possible worlds. Given that initial appropriation entails such variation, the paper argues that such appropriation does, in fact, create obligations. (shrink)

Kurt Godel was the most outstanding logician of the twentieth century, famous for his work on the completeness of logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency of the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis. He is also noted for his work on constructivity, the decision problem, and the foundations of computation theory, as well as for the strong individuality of his writings on the philosophy of mathematics. Less well-known is his discovery of unusual cosmological models for Einstein's (...) equations, permitting "time-travel" into the past. This second volume of a comprehensive edition of Godel's works collects together all his publications from 1938 to 1974. Together with Volume I (Publications 1929-1936), it makes available for the first time in a single source all of his previously published work. Continuing the format established in the earlier volume, the present text includes introductory notes that provide extensive explanatory and historical commentary on each of the papers, a facing English translation of the one German original, and a complete bibliography. Succeeding volumes are to contain unpublished manuscripts, lectures, correspondence, and extracts from the notebooks. Collected Works is designed to be accessible and useful to as wide an audience as possible without sacrificing scientific or historical accuracy. The only complete edition available in English, it will be an essential part of the working library of professionals and students in logic, mathematics, philosophy, history of science, and computer science. These volumes will also interest scientists and all others who wish to be acquainted with one of the great minds of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Brand begins his book with a statement of the philosophical and cultural crisis of contemporary life, a crisis brought about by science. The idealizing methods and technology of contemporary science lead to a loss of self-understanding, and to a replacement of ordinary lived experience by scientific constructs; science in its turn has lost its human and philosophical meaning. An exploration of the life-world that provides the basis for science may help remedy this situation. Brand then explores the theme of (...) a concrete, lived world in Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. In these sections he examines themes appropriate to each author: essence, intuition, evidence and intentionality in Husserl; hermeneutics, world, sensibility and authenticity in Heidegger; en soi, pour soi, and negativity in Sartre; the body, science, and dialectics in Merleau-Ponty. These are not just introductory analyses; in each case Brand comes to terms with major interpretations and critics, and is able to show the unity of philosophic inspiration behind each man. In the second section of the book he presents his own analysis of the life-world. He begins with a long study of the nature of philosophical reflection. This includes a treatment of the formal process of distinguishing and reuniting into wholes. He analyzes conceptualization, the experience of wonder, meaning and expression, metaphor, communication, sensibility and the body. Action, value, need, choice, scarcity, and motives are among the themes treated next, and also social dimensions like the family, authority, conflict and friends. Finally he examines private dimensions like personal mythos, one's personal career, sex, eros and love, and the inner life. Throughout these pages Brand uses not only the four philosophers analyzed in Part One, but also such figures as Gadamer, Derrida, Habermas, Wittgenstein, and many others. His writing is a guide not only to philosophical problems, but also to vast areas of current literature; long quotations abound. The original problem of the life-world comes from Husserl, but Brand is especially aware of the dimension of action, choice and work, so his interpretation of the life-world is able to illuminate aspects that Husserl touched only lightly. Brand's independent mind is able to cut across philosophical schools and uncover common elements in them, such as his excellent comparison of Wittgenstein and phenomenology on the irreducible character of insight as the beginning of philosophy. He considers the life-world as not the final ground of experience; rather the process of distinguishing is more basic, and is the final term beyond which we cannot move. Brand claims Husserl does not go beyond the life-world to this, and that only the late Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein appreciate it; but are not Husserl's doctrines of parts and wholes and empty and filled intentions a treatment of the process of distinguishing and identifying? And don't these themes take Husserl beyond the life-world? The wide range and multitudinous sources of this book make exhaustive treatment of each area impossible, and on some points Brand merely gives sketches of what might be done. Other themes are very thoroughly analyzed, and all sections are interesting and provocative. This book should be not only an important contribution to phenomenology, but also one of the most helpful volumes in the philosophical discussions of the years to come.--R. S. (shrink)

Arthur Kaufmann is one of the most prominent figures among the contemporary philosophers of law in German speaking countries. For many years he was a director of the Institute of Philosophy of Law and Computer Sciences for Law at the University in Munich. Presently, he is a retired professor of this university. Rare in the contemporary legal thought, Arthur Kaufmann's philosophy of law is one with the highest ambitions — it aspires to pinpoint the ultimate foundations of law by explicitly (...) proposing an ontology, a general theory of knowledge and concept of a person. Kaufmann's work derives, first of all, from the thinking of Gustav Radburch, his teacher, and then from ideas of Karl Engish and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The philosophy undertakes to pursue the ultimate foundation of law, law which is understood by Kaufmann, first of all, as a "concrete judgement" that is, what is right in a concrete situation. Justice belongs to the essence of law and "unjust law" is contradictio in adiectio. Kaufmann opposes all those theories, which as the only foundation for establishing just law (Recht) adopt legal norms (Gesetz). In Kaufmann's opinion , such theories are powerless in the face of all types of distortions of law rendered by political forces. He suggests that the basic phenomenon which needs to be explained and which cannot be disregarded by a philosopher of law is so-called "legal lawlessness" ("Gestzliches Unrecht"). "Legal lawlessness" which forms a part of life experience for the people of twentieth century totalitarian states. It proved "with the accuracy of scientific experiment" that the reality of law consists of something more than bare conformity with legal norms. The existence of lex corrupta indicates that law contains something "non-dispositive" which requires acknowledgment of both law-maker and judge. Kaufmann, accepting the convergent concept of truth and cognition, assumes that "non-dispositive" content, emerging as the conformity of a number of cognitive acts of different subjects (inter-subjective communicativeness and verifiability), indicates the presence of being in this cognition. The questions "What is law?" and "What are the principles of a just solution?" lead straight to the ontology of law, to the question about the ontological foundations of law. Kaufmann discerns the ontological foundations of law in the specifically understood "nature of things" and, ultimately, in a "person". He proposes a procedural theory of justice, founded on a "person". In my work, I undertake to reconstruct the train of thought which led Kaufmann to the recognition of a "person" as the ontological foundation of law. In the first part, the conception of philosophy adopted by Kaufmann, initial characteristics of law — of reality which is the subject of analysis, as well as, the requirements for proper philosophical explanation of law posed by Kaufmann are introduced. In the second, Kaufmann's reconstruction of the process of the realisation of law is presented. Next, the conception of analogy which Kaufmann uses when explaining law is analyzed. In the fourth part, Kaufmann's conception of ontological foundations of law is discussed. A critical analysis is carried out in which I demonstrate that the theory of the ontological foundation of law proposed by Kaufmann and the concept of a person included in it do not allow a satisfac¬tory explanation of the phenomenon of "legal lawlessness" and lead to a number of difficulties in the philosophical explanation of law. Finally, the perspectives of a proper formulation of the issue of the ontological foundations of law are drafted in the context of the analyzed theory. My interest is centered on the conception of philosophy adopted by Kaufmann, according to which the existence of the reality is inferred on the basis of a certain configuration of the content of consciousness, whereas at the point of departure of philosophy of law, the data to be explained is a certain process, which is, basically, a process of cognition, while the reality appears only as a condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process. I wish to argue that the difficulties which appear in the explanation of law are a consequence of the assumed fundamental philosophical solu¬tions, which seem to be characteristic, though usually not assumed explicitly, in philoso¬phy and theory of law dominant at present in continental Europe. Thereby, I wish to show the significance of ontological and epistemological solutions to the possibility of a proper formulation of the problems posed by philosophy and theory of law. Kaufmann proclaims himself in favour of a philosophy which poses questions about the ultimate foundations of understanding of the reality. In epistemology, he assumes that answers to the questions "What is reality like?" and ultimately "What is real?" are inferred on the basis of uniformity of a cognitive acts of different subjects. Cognition of the reality is accomplished exclusively through the content of conceptual material. The two fundamental questions posed by philosophy of law are "What is just law?" and "How is the just law enacted?" The latter is a question about the process of achieving a solution to a concrete case. Since, in Kaufmann's opinion, law does not exist apart from the process of its realisation, an answer to the question about the manner of realisation of law is of fundamental significance to answering the question: "What is law?" and to the explanation of the question about the ontological grounding of law, which is, as well, the foundation of justice. The proper solution has to take into account the moment of "non-dispositive" content of law; its positiveness understood as the reality and, at the same time, it has to point to the principles of the historical transformation of the content. Law, in the primary meaning of the word, always pertains, in Kaufmann's opinion, to a concrete case. A legal norm is solely the "possibility" of law and the entirely real law is ipsa res iusta, that which is just in a given situation. Determination of what is just takes place in a certain type of process performed by a judge (or by man confronted with a choice). Kaufmann aims to reconstruct this process. A question about the ontological foundation of law is a question about the ontological foundations of this process. In the analyzed theory it is formulated as a question about the transcendental conditions, necessary for the possibility of the occurrence of the process: how the reality should be thought to make possible the reconstructed process of the realisation of law. Kaufmann rejects the model for finding a concrete solution based on simple subsump¬tion and proposes a model in which concrete law ensues, based on inference by analogy, through the process of "bringing to conformity" that which is normative with that which is factual. Kaufmann distinguishes three levels in the process of the realisation of law. On the highest level, there are the fundamental legal principles, on the second legal norms, on the third — concrete solutions. The fundamental principles of law are general inasmuch as they cannot be "applied" directly to concrete conditions of life, however, they play an important part in establishing norms. A judge encounters a concrete situation and a system of legal norms. A life situation and norms are situated on inherently different levels of factuality and normativeness. In order to acquire a definite law both a norm (system of norms) and a life situation (Lebenssachverhalt) should undergo a kind of "treatment" which would allow a mutual conformity to be brought to them. Legal norms and definite conditions of life come together in the process of analogical inference in which the "factual state" ("Tatbestand") — which represents a norm, and in the "state of things" ("Sachverhalt") — which represents a specific situation are constructed. A "factual state" is a sense interpreted from a norm with respect to specific conditions of life. The "state of things" is a sense constructed on the basis of concrete conditions of life with respect to norms (system of norms). Legal norms and concrete conditions of life meet in one common sense established during the process of realisation of law. Mutatis mutandis the same refers to the process of composition of legal norms: as the acquisition of concrete law consists in a mutual "synchronization" of norms and concrete conditions of life, so acquisition of legal norms consists of bringing to conformity fundamental principles and possible conditions of life. According to Kaufmann, both of these processes are based on inference through analogy. As this inference is the heart of these processes it is simultaneously a foundation finding just law and justice. How does Kaufmann understand such an inference? As the basis for all justice he assumes a specifically interpreted distributive justice grounded on proportionality. Equality of relations is required between life conditions and their normative qualification. Concrete conditions of life are ascribed normative qualification not through simple application of a general norm. More likely, when we look for a solution we go from one concrete normative qualified case to another, through already known "applications" of norms to a new "application". The relation between life conditions and their normative qualifica¬tion has to be proportional to other, earlier or possible (thought of) assignments of that which is factual to that which is normative. Law as a whole does not consist of a set of norms, but only of a unity of relations. Since law is a, based on proportion, relative unity of a norm and conditions of life, in order to explain law in philosophical manner, the question about ontological base of this unity has to be asked. What is it that makes the relation between a norm and conditions of life "non-dispositive"? What is the basis for such an interpretation of a norm and case which makes it possible to bring a norm and conditions of life into mutual "conformity"? This is a question about a third thing (next to norms and conditions of life), with respect to which the relative identity between a norm and conditions of life occurs, about the intermediary between that which is normative and that which is factual and which provides for the process of establishing of norms, as well as, finding solutions. It is the "sense" in which the idea of law or legal norm and conditions of life have to be identical to be brought to mutual "conformity". In Kaufmann's opinion such a sense is nothing else but the "nature of things" which determines the normative qualification of the reality. Since establishment of this "sense" appears to be "non-dispositive" and controlled inter-subjectively (namely, other subjects will reach a similar result) so, in conformity with the convergent concept of truth, the "nature of things" must be assigned a certain ontological status. According to Kaufmann this is a real relation which occurs between being and obligation, between the conditions of life and normative quality. However, it should be underlined that from the point of view of the analyzed system the "nature of things" is a correlate of constructed sense, a result of a construction which is based on the principle of consistent understanding of senses ("non-normative" and "normative") and is not a reality which is transcendent against the arrangement of senses. In Kaufmann's theory, inference from analogy appears to be a process of reshaping the concepts (senses) governed by tendency to understand the contents appearing in relations between that which is factual and that which is normative in a consistent way. The analogical structure of language (concepts) and recognition of being as composed of an essence and existence is an indispensable requirement for the possibility of the realisation of law, based on specifically understood inference from analogy. It is necessary to assume a moment of existence without content which ensures unity of cognition. Existence emerges thus as a condition of the possibility of cognition. According to Kaufmann, the "nature of things" is the heart of inference through analogy and the basis for establishment of finding of law. Inference from the "state of things" to a norm or from a norm to the "state of things" always means inference through the "nature of things". The "nature of things" is the proper medium of objective legal sense sought in every cognition of law. In Kaufmann's view, the question whether the "nature of things" is ultima ratio of interpretation of law or is only a means of supplement gaps in law or whether it is one of the sources of law, is posed wrongly. The "nature of things" serves neither to supplement the gaps nor is it a source of law as, for example, a legal norm may be. It is a certain kind of "catalyst" necessary in every act of making law and solving a concrete case. Owing to "nature of things" it is possible to bring to a mutual conformity the idea of law and possible conditions of life or legal norms and concrete conditions of life. In Kaufmann's conception the "nature of things" is not yet the ultimate basis for understanding the "non-dispositiveness" of law. The relation between obligation and being is determined in the process of the realisation of law. Both the process itself and that which is transformed in this process are given. A question about the ontological bases of "material" contents undergoing "treatment" in the process of the realisation of law and about being which is the basis of regularity of the occurrence of the process arises. Only this will allow an explanation that the result of the process is not optional. Thus, a question about reality to which law refers and about the subject realising the law has to be formed. To this, Kaufmann gives the following answer: that which is missing is man but not "empirical man" but man as a "person". A "person" understood as a set of relations between man and other people and things. A "person" is the intermediary between those things which are different — norm and case are brought to conformity. A "person" is that which is given and permanent in the process of the realisation of law. It determines the content of law, is "subject" of law; this aspect is described by Kaufmann as the "what" of the process of realisation of law. A "person" consists of precisely just these relations which undergo "treatment" in the process. On the other hand, a "person" is "a place" in which the processes of realisation of law occur, it is the "how" of normative discourse, a "person" is that which determines the procedure of the process, being "outside" of it. This aspect of a "person" is connected with the formal moment of law. A "person" being, at the same time, the "how" and the "what" of the process of the realisation of law, is also, to put it differently, a structural unity of relation and that which constitutes this relation (unity of relatio and relata). According to this approach a "person" is neither an object nor a subject. It exists only "in between". It is not substance. Law is the relation between being and obligation. That which is obligatory is connected with that which is general. That which is general does not exist on its own, it is not completely real. Accordingly, a "person" as such is also not real. It is relational, dynamic and historical. A "person" is not a state but an event. In Kaufmann's opinion, such a concept of a "person" helps to avoid the difficulties connected with the fungibility of law in classical legal positivism. A "person" is that which is given, which is not at free disposal and secures the moment of "non-dispositiveness" of law. Kaufmann concludes: "The idea (»nature«) of law is either the idea of a personal man or is nothing". Theory points at the structure of realising law and explains the process of adoption of general legal norms for a concrete situation. The analysis has shown however, that in this theory a satisfactory answer to the question about the ultimate foundations of law is not given. It seems that in the analyzed theory the understanding of human being takes place through understanding of law. What is good for man as a "person", what is just, what a "person" deserves may be determined only against the existing system of law. A "per¬son" adopted as a basis of law is the reality postulated in the analysis of the process of the realisation of law. It is a condition of possibility of this process ( explaining, on one hand, its unity and, on the other hand, the non-dispositive moments stated in this process). A "person" in the discussed theory is entirely defined by the structure of law, it can be nothing more than that which is given in law, what law refers to, what law is about. Being, which is a "person", is constituted by relations between people and objects, the relations which are based on fundamental links between norms and conditions of life established in a process of bringing them to conformity. It has to be assumed that man as a "person" is a subject of law only as far as realising law "treats" given senses according to their current configuration. The system of law is a starting point and it describes in content what man is as a "person". Moreover, being a "person" is the condition for entering legal relations. Consistently, Kaufmann writes that "empirical man" is not the subject of law, man is not "out of nature" a "person". People become "persons" due to the fact that they acknowledge each other as "persons" — acknowledging, at the same time, law. This acknowledgement is a con¬dition of existence, of the possibility of the occurrence of process of realisation of law and of constituting legal relations which ultimately constitute a "person". Kaufmann assumes, that law tends towards a moral aim: it may and must create an external freedom, without which the internal freedom to fulfil moral obligations cannot develop. However, this postulate is not based on the necessary structure of human being. From the point of view of his system, it is nothing more than only a condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process of the realisation of law — lack of freedom would destroy the "how" of this process. Thus, the postulate to protect the freedom of personal acts has to be interpreted, in accordance with the analyzed theory, as a postulate, the fulfilment of which aims ultimately at the accomplishment of the very same process of realisation of law itself and not the realisation of a given man. Kaufmann considers a "person" to be an element which unites the system of law as a whole. Law is a structure of relations, which are interdependent and inter-contingent. Consequently, a "person" which is to form the ontological basis of law has to be entity consisting of all relations. Being also the "how" of the process of realisation of law, if a "person" is to warrant its unity, it has to be a common source for all procedures. Hence, a single "person" would constitute a subject of law. Man appears to be only a moment of a certain entirety, realisation of which should be an aim of his actions. Law, creating a "person" as an object and subject of law becomes a primary entity. In the analyzed theory, the basis for determination of aims which law sets to man is not the allocation of man-subject to something which improves him but rather, such relation is only just constituted by law. A question appears, why should aims set in law also be the aims of "empirical man"? Why is this "empirical man" to be punished in the name of a "person" understood in such a way? If, however, it is assumed that what is man is determined by a system which is superior to him, then man has to be understood only as a part of a whole and there are no grounds to prohibit istrumental treatment of man and so the road to all aspects of totalitarianism might be opened. A problem of the application of created theory to the reality arises, the reality which the theory pretends to explain. Ultimately in his theory Kaufmann does not give any systemic grounds for a radical questioning of the validity of any legal norms. Every new norm becomes an equal part of system of norms. It is only its interpretation and application to given conditions of life that may be disputable, however, this refers to all norms without exception. Cohesive inter-pretation of norms and applications is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of just law. New norms have to be interpreted in the light of others, correspondingly, the other norms require reinterpretation in the light of the new ones. Contradiction in interpretation of a norm does not form a basis for questioning norms but may serve only to question the manner of their interpretation (understanding). Therefore, no grounds exist to assume any legal norm as criminal or unjust, and in consequence, to question any consistently realised system based on formally, properly established norms, as "legal lawlessness". As law and a "person" do not exist without the process of realisation of law, the role of legal safety becomes crucial as the condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process of realisation of law. Denying legal safety would be tantamount to negation of law in general (also of moral law) as negation of safety takes away, at the same time, the basis for occurrence of the process of realisation of law. Moreover, any lack of legal safety would also mean lack of a basis for the existence of man as a "person". Kaufmann's thesis, that civil disobedience is legalized only when it has a chance to lead to success, consistent with his concept of the foundations of law, seems to point directly to conclusions which deny the facts taken under consideration and doubtlessly Kaufmann's own intentions, since it would have to be assumed that accordingly there are no grounds to question a legal system in force based on violence which secures its operation. Force finally seems to determine which one of the mutually irreconcilable normative systems constitute law and which does not. A legitimate position is one which leads to success, it is the weaker system which is negated. If so, then basically violent imposition of law is not an act directed against the law in force but, to the contrary, realisation of law. In the context of the new system the former system of law may be talked about as unjust solely in the sense of being incapable of being consistently united with the new. However, at the base, ultimately, lies force which reaffirms differences and excludes from the process of realisation of law certain norms and their interpretations. Kaufmann was aiming at grounding of that which is "non-dispositive" in a certain given framework of interpretation. Nevertheless, he does not provide foundations for the understanding of phenomena, which he undertakes to explain at a point of departure. Instead of explaining them the theory negates the possibility of their existence. The reality postulated in regard to "non-dispositive" moments of the reconstructed process of acquiring law consist of a specifically understood "person", which appears in Kaufmann's conceptions as a condition of the possibility of the realisation of law. According to this approach understanding of a "person" may be only a function of law. To understand "legal lawlessness" and foundations of justice it is necessary to look for such theory of law in which understanding of man as a "person" and being is not a function of understanding of law (in which a "person" is not only a condition for possibility of reconstructed process of realisation of law; for possibility of cognition processes). It seems necessary to start from theory of being and a "person" based on broader experience than the one assumed by Kaufmann and reconstruct the ontological foundations of the process of realisation of law only in such perspective. Kaufmann points out that that to which law refers is ipsa res iusta a concrete relation of man to other people and things. This relation, in his theory, appears to be basically only just constituted by law (normative senses "applied" to conditions of life). Therefore, understanding the relation between a given man and other people and things which constitute the aim of his actions, that is understanding of good, is enacted against the background of constitution of senses; constitution which is a result of a process aiming towards consistent understanding of particular contents (of nor¬mative and non-normative senses). "Being" is secondary towards constructed senses it is only their correlate. The primary relation consists of relation of a man to law (system of norms), while the secondary relation is one of man to something which is the aim of his action (relation between man and good). Considering such approach it is difficult to envision a satisfying answer to the fundamental question: why does law put concrete man under any obligation to obey it? The source of this problem can be seen in reduction of the base for understanding good to content of obligation formulated in auto-reflection. Such reduction seems to be a consequence of Kaufmann's adoption of "convergent concept of truth" and in con¬sequence his recognition of indirect, essentialistic grasp of reality formulated in concepts as the basic and only foundation of theory of being and of law. In view of such an approach, analogy of law, concepts and being is the condition for the possibility of the process of transformation of senses which aims at consistent interpretation of all law. Existence is postulated with respect to the possibility of unity of experience and cognition. However, also a different approach to understanding of the problem of being and good is possible. In spontaneous cognition being is affirmed, first of all, not as a certain, non-contradictory, determined content, but as something existing. Together with a cer¬tain content (passed indirectly through notions) existence of being is co-given. The basis for unity of being is not formed by the consistence of content, as it is in the case of the theories departing from the analysis of cognition processes, but by an act of existence realising content (essence). Such an approach makes it also possible to go beyond the convergent concept of truth. It is worth mentioning that allocation of an agent to good is realised not only by the content of duty. A statement that something is good is primary with respect to determination of this good in content. The recognised good always bears some content, however, there are no reasons to base the concept of good exclusively on indirect, formulated in concepts cognition. As primary, can be adopted the relation of man to good and not of man to law. Determination in content appears to be only an articulation of aspectual cognition of being, as an object of action. In such a case the basis for relative unity of norm and conditions of life is not the "nature of things" understood as correlate of sense but it is relation to good based on internal constitution of man as potential, not self-sufficient being. It does not mean, that the moments of the process of realisation of law singled out by Kaufmann are not important to determination of what is just. He, quite rightly, points to significant role played by norms in the evaluation of concrete situations, in man's search for closer specification in content of good innate to him. The structure of process of determining law for a concrete situation, to a great degree corresponds to the processes of determining law which take place not only in the legal sciences. Kaufmann's analyses of the process of realisation of law show the complexity of the structure of these processes and point towards important moments allowing a better understanding of law and man. Nevertheless, these analyses cannot be a basis for construction of philosophical theory of law, theory which hopes to point out the ultimate, ontological foundations for understanding law. Kaufmann's results may become fully valid only in a more general perspective including broader experience at the point of departure. (shrink)

Interest in the contribution made by women to the history of philosophy is burgeoning. At the forefront of this revival is Mary Wollstonecraft. While she has long been studied by feminists, and later discovered by political scientists, philosophers themselves have only recently begun to recognise the value of her work for their discipline. This volume brings together new essays from leading scholars, which explore Wollstonecraft's range as a moral and political philosopher of note, both taking a historical perspective and (...) applying her thinking to current academic debates. (shrink)

Republicans understand freedom as the guaranteed protection against any arbitrary use of coercive power. This freedom is exercised within a political community, and the concept of arbitrariness is defined with reference to the actual ideas of its citizens about what is in their shared interests. According to many current defenders of the republican model, this form of freedom is understood in strictly negative terms representing an absence of domination. I argue that this assumption is misguided. First, it is internally (...) inconsistent. The central republican focal point of arbitrariness is a necessarily socially constructed ideal that only exists as the creation of the citizens themselves. Second, republican freedom operates in two distinct realms or spheres. There is freedom under a law that is required to uphold the collective good as reflected in society’s norms, and there is freedom within that very system of norms. The threats to freedom from within each sphere are different and must be addressed accordingly. The negative approach, however, conflates the two and emphasises only the dangers faced under the law. This exposes citizens – especially those from marginalised social groups – to domination in the second realm from oppressive social norms. Only by clearly recognising the nature of both kinds of threats can a comprehensive republican freedom be formulated. (shrink)

Although ‘virtue’ is a complex idea in Wollstonecraft’s work, one of its senses refers to the capacity and willingness to govern one’s own conduct rationally, and to employ this ability in deliberating about matters of public concern. Wollstonecraft understands virtue to be integral to the meaning of freedom rather than as merely instrumentally useful for its preservation. It follows, therefore, that a free republic must be a virtuous one. The first virtue of social institutions, we might say, is ‘virtue’ (...) itself. In a virtuous republic all citizens, from no matter which social group, are able to represent themselves in law and in public debate. This is a demanding condition, requiring not just suitably robust republican institutions but an open and accommodating public culture in which sufficient numbers of citizens are positively engaged in ensuring that the available stock of background ideas and values is representative, diverse and inclusive. (shrink)

The cultural, economic and political crisis affecting the European Union (EU) today is manifested in the political community’s lack of enthusiasm and cohesion. An effort to reverse this situation – foster ‘EU identity’ – was the creation of EU citizenship. Citizen- ship implies a people and a polity. But EU citizens already belong to national polities. Should EU citizenship override national citizenship or coexist with it? Postnationalists like Habermas have suggested EU citizenship can overcome nationalisms, grounding political belonging on (...) the body of laws that members of the post- national polity generate in the public sphere. Cosmopolitan communitarianists like Bellamy, by contrast, think that EU citizens should form a mixed commonwealth, with political belonging based on national citizenship. I will argue in favour of the second option, and submit an analogical reading of the ensuing ideas of citizenship, identity and polity. Cosmopolitan communitarianist EU citizenship promises to better foster the great richness of European national cultural, religious, historical, political, legal and linguistic diversity in a ‘mixed’ polity. Its main challenge is how to keep the diverse, mixed polity together. (shrink)

Republicans are divided on the question of whether domination is best understood in terms of capacities to act intentionally or of certain structural aspects of society. I offer a model combining each aspect derived from Frederick Douglass’s philosophy. Douglass referred to slavery in both interpersonal terms (to individuals) and structural (to the community), focussing on the unique and pervasive role played by social prejudice which distorts public reason thereby disabling the functioning of republican institutions. While Douglass’s insights constitute a significant (...) contribution to neo-republican theory in their own right, they also offer a slave’s perspective on the central republican concept of domination and shows how historic African American writers made innovative theoretical contributions to republicanism. Both of these have long been overlooked by republican scholars to the philosophical detriment of the tradition. (shrink)

Philosophical understanding of experimental scientific practice is impeded by disciplinary differences, notably that between philosophy and sociology of science. Severing the two limits the stock of philosophical case studies to narrowly circumscribed experimental episodes, centered on individual scientists or technologies. The complex relations between scientists and society that permeate experimental research are left unexamined. In consequence, experimental fields rich in social interactions have received only patchy attention from philosophers of science. This paper sketches a remedy for both the (...) symptom and its root cause. An empirical study of social interactions in an established field of biomedicine grounds a robust account of success in experimental practice. The core idea is the concept of collaboration, of participants working together on a common project toward a shared goal. The interactive social integument of experimental research is both examined and enacted in a study integrating socio-historical research and philosophical investigation. The two approaches are used in concert to explicate the concept of scientific objectivity. Their joint explication of this contested epistemic ideal demonstrates that philosophical and sociological approaches can work together toward a social epistemology of scientific practice. The explication is in three stages. First, a minimal framework for investigating collaborative activities is established. Social action is understood and evaluated in terms of the connection between shared goals that participants hope to accomplish together, and the coordinated means by which they try to do so. This connection is explicated as participation, a relation mediating between a group and its members, which includes minimal constraints of instrumental rationality. Second, this framework is fleshed out via empirical study of scientific practices. The focal case examines the intersection of immunology and stem cell research in mid-20th century biomedicine, tracing the key social interactions within and among laboratory groups, as the field of blood stem cell research emerged in the 1960s and advanced throughout the next four decades. The study yields a robust empirical result. Participants consistently recognize two aspects of scientific success: construction of improved models of blood cell development, and formation of new boundaries among scientific groups. In the third and final stage, this result is generalized to other experimental episodes and shown to fit with recent accounts of models in scientific practice. The generalized result approximates a familiar normative view of scientific knowledge. An epistemic ideal of scientific objectivity in practice is then derived from this robust general result, using the minimal constraints on rational participation. The derivation is analogous to specification of ends in moral philosophy; given the means taken and assuming some hope of success, what must the goal of scientific inquiry be like? The aim of science so conceived corresponds to a classic conception of scientific objectivity: knowledge independent of epistemic criteria specific to particular persons or groups. This result weaves together sociological and philosophical accounts of science, explicating the epistemic ideal of objectivity in relation to social aspects of scientific practice. This undercuts the entrenched dualism between normative, vs. descriptive approaches to scientific knowledge. Socio-historical study of science does not deflate, but vindicates, scientific objectivity. Philosophy and sociology are recast as collaborating participants in articulating social epistemology of science. (shrink)

During the last few years many writers have pointed out that notions like ‘family resemblance’, ‘open texture’ and ‘systematic ambiguity’ which play a considerable role in contemporary philosophy are akin to Aquinas' concept of analogy. Yet no one has made a thorough comparison between modern linguistic philosophy and the Thomistic doctrine of analogy. In this article I want to explore their relationship and to assess the value of the latter. Just how much has Aquinas to contribute (...) to modern discussions about the nature of language and about God's attributes? And does modern philosophy of language destroy Aquinas' case, or can it rather be used to supplement it? (shrink)

While the image of the slave as the antithesis of the freeman is central to republican freedom, it is striking to note that slaves themselves have not contributed to how this condition is understood. The result is a one-sided conception of both freedom and slavery, which leaves republicanism unable to provide an equal and robust protection for historically outcast people. I draw on the work of Frederick Douglass – long overlooked as a significant contributor to republican theory – to (...) show one way why this is so. Focusing the American Revolution, the subsequent republican government established new political institutions to maintain the collective interests of the whole population. The political revolution was held in place by processes of public reason that reflected the values and ideas of the people that had rebelled. The black population, however, had not been part of this revolution. After emancipation, black Americans were required to accept terms of citizenship that had already been defined, leaving them socially dominated, subject to the prejudices and biases within the prevailing ideas of public discourse. Douglass argued that republican freedom under law is always dependent on a more fundamental revolution, that he calls a ‘radical revolution in thought’, in which the entire system of social norms and practices are reworked together by members of all constituent social groups – women and men, black and white, rich and poor – so that it reflects a genuinely collaborative achievement. Only then can we begin the republican project of contestatory freedom as independence or non-domination that today’s republicans take for granted. (shrink)

Professor Gallie of Queen’s University, Belfast takes his history seriously, in the spirit of R G Collingwood, and like Collingwood, he gives the impression of knowing what the historian is about. He inspires confidence by reference to a wide range of historical writing, instead of the one or two faded examples which tend to turn up again and again in books on the philosophy of history. Gallie’s primary purpose may be seen as a blow against the kind of systematised (...) history which Marxism stands for. He is opposed to this and to all sociological approaches to history because they misrepresent the nature of the task which confronts the historian. For Gallie, history is essentially narrative. Narrative is indeed too weak a word. In Gallie’s view, the historian tells a story. Our attention is held because the element of the unexpected is always present as it is in a story. A rational predictable construction of a Marxist type is ruled out because of the multiplicity of contingent events round which history revolves. History for this reason is distinct from science. The historian, in Gallie’s view, is not concerned with events in so far as they are specific instances of general laws. The scientist who ignores history, however, does so at his peril. Men who assume that scientific progress is inevitable and regard history as irrelevant are disregarding the fact that scientific development has taken place in some societies but not in others. Gallie’s pages on this topic are among the most illuminating in the book. Where he is perhaps open to criticism is in pressing the analogy of history to story telling too far. It may be argued that what the historian is after is surprise. He is trying to show us that the past is not as we thought it was but different. This may be achieved in ways other than story telling. For example, the sociologist or anthropologist may teach us to look at the past in a new light. Place medieval England and twentieth century Africa in juxtaposition and handy dandy, which is the justiciar and which is the thief? This method of illuminating the past is analogous to putting two photographs together or two caricatures. Whatever it is, it cannot be described as story telling. If we regard surprise as our criterion, we may also rule out both the plodding story tellers, who bore us with banalities, and the Namierites who are equally predictable in their own sphere. In a word, we will banish the bores from history. Professor Gallie in this entertaining book may be said to have banished boredom from his own pages. He is an example to philosophers and historians alike. (shrink)

Illustrations and examples have always been deemed rare in the otherwise abundant materials Kant sent to be printed. In this sense, tradition has made out of the Königsbergs philosopher a rather arid writer. He himself advocated for the perks of a proper scholastic method in presenting arguments. It is thus a common place among scholars that Herr Professor valued discursive clarity over any whimsical rhetorical garments the popular thinker could have been tempted to wield in defense of his surely (...) more than dubious reasons. But even with that in mind, in Kants writings there is this persistent and everlasting metaphor regarding the activity of navigation. A metaphor going all through the Kantian philosophical enterprise: either in the form of sailing the thin air and pretending to avoid -- or surf -- any resistance, like the figure of the dove in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781); or better with the picture of the wandering unconcerned under the celestial and immeasurable vault only to discover we were lost in search for the North in What Does It Mean To Orient Oneself In Thinking?(1786), Kants critical philosophy insisted in the depiction of the task of thinking not only as a concrete one depending on facts and experience gathered -- pinpoint locations -- but also as a matter of orientation depending on the necessity of categories -- criteria, cardinal points -- of thought. If fanciful aspirations of ideas happen to take off from the objective ground irresponsibly as if empirical experience and facts had no substance at all -- it is with good reason that due operations of counterbalance should be taking place with help of the sound weight of articulated reasonable concepts based on formal and material reality. Kants theory of mind presupposes a responsibility of a subject in relation to several types of objects. The two of these epistemic extremes are intertwined and in need of each other. When it comes to orientation, leaning on some sort of inner compass, each of us would have both in regard to sensitivity, knowledge, and moral thinking which serves like a guide to the trip within all three domains, and even comes in handy to map them out. This collective volume is precisely devoted to the task of revisiting some landscapes of the Kantian thought-itinerary along the brave seas and deep into the thick forests of justified knowledge, principles of morals and judgement in aesthetics: through its pages this work has put together renowned scholars from very different traditions eager to circumnavigate again the issues and concerns of 18th Century Philosophy and the particular Kantian solution of a new branded type of metaphysical inquiry, one inquiry subject to intellectual global duties as well. (shrink)

This book offers a collection of contemporary essays that explore philosophical themes at work in chess. This collection includes essays on the nature of a game, the appropriateness of chess as a metaphor for life, and even deigns to query whether Garry Kasparov might—just might—be a cyborg. In twelve unique essays, contributed by philosophers with a broad range of expertise in chess, this book poses both serious and playful questions about this centuries-old pastime. -/- Perhaps more interestingly, philosophers have (...) often used chess in discussions of their work. Walter Benjamin compares the marching of history to an automaton playing chess. John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce utilize chess to explain their pragmatism. The linguist Ferdinand de Saussure employs the analogy of chess to explain the exchange of signifiers. There are approximately 181 uses of the word chess or one of its cognates in the published works of Ludwig Wittgenstein. John Rawls explains that one might want to make a distinction between constitutive and regulative rules, which can best be understood by examining a game of chess. John Searle, deeply convinced of this distinction, explains further: "The rules of football or chess are given as an example of constitutive rules because they 'create the very possibility of playing such games.'" Hubert Dreyfus and Daniel Dennett have had extensive public discussions about the issue of artificial intelligence and chess. Dreyfus, utilizing chess examples, has written extensively on what computers still cannot do. Meanwhile, in spite of his protestations, chess-playing computers continue to fascinate those who work in the area of artificial intelligence. -/- The game of chess has endured since at least the sixth century. Its earliest variant, the Indian game of Chaturanga, was from the beginning a game for thinkers. Since its inception, scholars, statesmen, strategists, and warriors have been fascinated by the game and its variants. German philosopher Emmanuel Lasker and famed French artist Marcel Duchamp were both Grandmasters at chess. Karl Marx played chess avidly, as did Sir Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the logical positivist Max Black. Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions in his Confessions that, at the time, he "had another expedient, not less solid, in the game of chess, to which I regularly dedicated, at Maugis's, the evenings on which I did not go to the theater. I became acquainted with M. de Legal, M. Husson, Philidor, and all the great chess players of the day, without making the least improvement in the game." More recently, philosopher Stuart Rachels reports that his father, the late philosopher and prominent ethicist James Rachels, received a bribe from a Russian Grandmaster while he was the chair of the U.S. Chess Federation's Ethics committee. -/- "Whether you’re a professional philosopher, an armchair chess player, or something in between, Philosophy Looks at Chess gives you hours of thought-provoking reading. With chapters on technology, ethics, hip hop, and backward analysis, this book carves out a new space in the literature on both chess and philosophy" -/- —Jennifer Shahade, two-time U.S. Women's Champion and author of Chess Bitch -/- "Chess and philosophy are natural mates that have been awaiting the proper introduction. This wide-ranging collection of stimulating essays is the perfect opening gambit for philosophical chess enthusiasts." -/- —Will Dudley, author of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom. (shrink)

I address David Hull's theses about the process of science from the perspective of an evolutionary biologist, particularly emphasizing phylogenetic systematics, an area that has figured prominently in Hull's work as a source of both sociological data and metatheory. The goal is to carefully explore analogies and disanalogies between scientific process and comparative biology. There do seem to be remarkable analogies, indeed these lead to important insights that might not otherwise have been made, yet some possible analogies present (...) novel problems: Are "memes" like genes or like traits? What is the nature of replication in science? It is argued that the primary need is for some rigorously worked-out case studies. (shrink)

The philosophical concept of analogy is fundamental to the theory of imaging that characterizes Plato’s metaphysics, cosmology, and methodology. While Plato never explicitly conceptualizes the philosophical role of analogy, his dialogues are rife with analogies and images that are often pivotal to the thought expressed there. An analysis of celebrated analogies such as the sun and the good in the Republic, the “second sailing” in the Phaedo, the “receptacle” (chōra) in the Timaeus, and the example of (...) weaving in the Statesman reveals that even if the theory each elucidates is not explicitly concerned with analogy, the theories these images enable are structured by analogy. Thus, although there is no theory of analogy in Plato’s dialogues, the dialogues’ theory is itself analogical. Given this, the broader philosophical point that any account of reflection will have recourse to the structure of analogy because of the unique capacity of the analogical form to reflect the nature of similarity without occluding difference, something a mere likeness is unable to accomplish. It is concluded, therefore, that i) in its thinking, rather than merely in its expression, Plato’s philosophy is analogical and ii) analogy is key to philosophy’s self-reflection. (shrink)

Fearing is a central part of how we relate to each other and the unpredictable world. Fearing badly is a key part of many of our moral failures, and fearing better a central part of our moral repair. We might think that fearing is undesirable and should be avoided whenever possible. In fact, Fearing Together shows that the avoidance of fear causes some of our greatest threats. By understanding fear as a relational practice, we see that (...) our relationships with other fearers shape what we fear, what fear feels like, how we identify and understand our fears, and how we cope with them. Growing as moral agents involves coming to grips with what kinds of fearers we want to be and become, and with what we owe each other when facing what we cannot control. At the heart of this book are the moral quandaries and complexities of relational fearing: the ethics of fearing together. (shrink)

The attention of philosophers. linguists and literary theorists has been converging on the diverse and intriguing phenomena of analogy of meaning:the different though related meanings of the same word, running from simple equivocation to paronymy, metaphor and figurative language. So far, however, their attempts at explanation have been piecemeal and inconclusive and no new and comprehensive theory of analogy has emerged. This is what James Ross offers here. In the first full treatment of the subject since the fifteenth (...) century, he argues that analogy is a systematic and universal feature of natural languages, with identifiable and law-like characteristics which explain how the meanings of words in a sentence are interdependent. Throughout he contrasts his with classical and medieval views. (shrink)

Inclusion in research is a question of both scientific validity of research results and just distribution of the benefits of medical research within a community. Therefore, inappropriate exclusions from research can be regulated as a matter of science or a matter of ethics. In this paper we examine the definitions of appropriate/fair inclusion in the Australian and U.S. regulatory systems and discuss the processes for interpreting and implementing these normative standards. In the second part of the paper, we present (...) original results from the first study of sex-specific research in Australia. One hundred and thirteen published papers were examined: 35 percent were classified as inappropriate sex-specific research, where exclusion was not biologically necessary, and/or there was no justification for the exclusion of one sex. Our results indicate that a scientific approach to inclusion, rather than one grounded in ethical review, is likely to be more effective in achieving appropriate sex-specific research. In the absence of effective regulation, we will continue to see research that discriminates unfairly and perpetuates gender stereotyping. (shrink)

There has been a rising interest in the study of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) in philosophy, political theory, literary studies and the history of political thought in recent decades. The Wollstonecraftian Mind seeks to provide a comprehensive survey of her work, not only placing it in its historical context but also exploring its contemporary significance. Comprising 38 chapters by a team of international contributors this handbook covers: the background to Wollstonecraft’s work Wollstonecraft’s major works the relationship between Wollstonecraft and other major (...) philosophers Wollstonecraftian philosophy Wollstonecraft’s legacy Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, Wollstonecraft’s work is central to the study of political philosophy, literature, French studies, political thought, and feminism. (shrink)

While many historians and philosophers have sought to understand the ‘failure’ of the French Revolution to thrive and to avoid senseless violence, very few have referred to the works of two women philosophers who diagnosed the problems as they were happening. This essay looks at how Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges theorised the new tyranny that grew out of the French Revolution, that of ‘petty tyrants’ who found themselves like ‘cocks on a dunghill’ able to wield (...) a new power over those less fortunate than themselves. Both offer diagnoses and prognoses that revolve around education. Wollstonecraft argues that a revolution that is not backed by a previous education of the people is bound to result in chaos and violence. Such education, however, must be slow, and it necessitates the reform of the institutions that most shape the public’s character. A revolution, perforce, is fast, and it often takes several years, or even generations before the spirit of the reforms finds itself implemented into new institutions. Olympe de Gouges shares Wollstonecraft’s worry and she observes that the men who were once dominated quickly become tyrants themselves unless their moral character is already virtuous. But the state of being dominated leaves little room for virtue; hence, newly minted citizens need to be educated in order not to replicate the reign of tyranny onto other. Gouges suggests that the answer to the difficulty she and Wollstonecraft highlighted was to educate the people where they could be found: on the streets, or, where they could easily and willingly be gathered: in theatres. By helping organise revolutionary festivals, highlighting the ways in which citizens could be virtuous, and writing plays to awaken their virtue, and proposing a reform of the theatre, so that the production of such plays would be possible, Gouges offered a plan for the civic education of French citizens in the immediate aftermaths of the Revolution. Unfortunately, the chaos she and Wollstonecraft had sought to remedy, led by the cocks or petty tyrants, ensured that they were unable to see through their plans, with Wollstonecraft having to leave Paris and Gouges being sent to the guillotine. (shrink)

One major facilitator of analogical reasoning is conceptual metaphor: cross-domain mappings that preserve relations and thereby motivate the extension of linguistic terms from the source to the target domain. Their conscious and explicit use in analogical reasoning has been helpful and productive in disciplines ranging from physics to psychology, and philosophy. At the same time, students of metaphor have suggested that partially unwitting use of conceptual metaphors led to unsound but intuitive conceptions of the mind, in philosophy and (...) psychology. This paper develops an explanation of some highly influential intuitions from the philosophy of mind, which helps answer the resulting question: When and why does the frequently helpful use of metaphors in analogical reasoning turn pernicious? In response, the paper brings together two hitherto largely distinct strands of research from cognitive psychology, in a case-study on the philosophy of mind: The paper uses structure-mapping theory to explain how simple analogical reasoning generates conceptual metaphors that facilitate more complex analogical reasoning, which is often non-intentional. Second, the paper examines how such reasoning interacts with partial-matching effects in memory-based processing. Drawing on Budiu and Anderson’s model of “information-based processing”, the paper shows that this interaction leads to predictable fallacies. It brings out the relevance of such fallacies by showing that they shaped introspective conceptions of the mind that dominated philosophical discourse throughout early modernity and retain some cultural influence to this day. On this basis, the paper delineates when and where those fallacies are liable to occur. (shrink)

Aristotle’s chapter on productive mind (De Anima III.5) and its comparison of this mind to light are best understood as a careful revision to Plato’s Sun-Good analogy from Republic VI. Through a rigorous juxtaposed reading of De Anima II.7 on vision and III.5 on thinking, one can see how Aristotle is almost wholeheartedly taking up Plato’s analogy between vision and thought. When one accounts for all the detail of Aristotle’s explanation of light and vision in II.7 by seeing (...) that chapter as anticipating III.5, an interpretation of productive intellect emerges which reconciles the main opposing views on the question that have long divided interpreters: whether the productive intellect discussed in De Anima III.5 is human or divine. (shrink)

The present volume brings together a number of things I have written on the subject of analogy since the appearance of The Logic of Analogy in 1961. In that book I tried to disengage St Thomas' teaching on analogous names from various subsequent accretions which, in my opinion, had obscured its import. The book was widely reviewed, various points in it were rightly criticized, but its main argument, namely, that analogical signification is a logical matter (...) and must be treated as such, was, if often confronted, left finally, I think, standing. The studies brought together now reflect the same concentration on the teaching of Aquinas. I am not of the opinion that everything important on the question of analogy, and certainly not everything of importance on those problems which elicit the doctrine of analogy, was said by Thomas Aquinas. But it was my decision, for my personal work, first to achieve as much clarity as I could with respect to the teaching of Thomas, and then to go on to other writers, both ancient and modern. I am currently engaged in working out the relations among equivo cation, analogy and metaphor in Aristotle. When that study is com pleted, I shall turn eagerly to some quite recent contributions to the nature of religious language. In short, the present work, which is by and large a prolongation of my attempt at an exegesis of Thomistic texts, marks the end of one phase of my research into the problem of analogy. (shrink)

Debunking arguments against both moral and mathematical realism have been pressed, based on the claim that our moral and mathematical beliefs are insensitive to the moral/mathematical facts. In the mathematical case, I argue that the role of Hume’s Principle as a conceptual truth speaks against the debunkers’ claim that it is intelligible to imagine the facts about numbers being otherwise while our evolved responses remain the same. Analogously, I argue, the conceptual supervenience of the moral on the (...) natural speaks presents a difficulty for the debunker’s claim that, had the moral facts been otherwise, our evolved moral beliefs would have remained the same. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) v-vii [Access article in PDF] On Feminizing the Philosophy of Rhetoric Molly Meijer Wertheimer When asked to define his editorial policies in choosing articles to publish in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Henry W. Johnstone Jr. disavowed following any strict editorial guidelines; instead, he gave two examples to show how selection worked as a process. In one case, he agreed to publish an "off the wall (...) article" by a distinguished classicist; in another, he accepted an unusually long article--a "behemoth"--by an eminent rhetorician. These examples demonstrate what was to me one of Henry's most unusual and endearing traits as an editor and scholar: he was willing always to go wherever the argument led. It was probably in this spirit that he agreed to publish a special issue on "Feminizing the Philosophy of Rhetoric." I want to thank him posthumously for that decision. As "guest editor" of the issue, I feel privileged to present four well-written essays and two reviews that lead the readers of Philosophy and Rhetoric to consider some philosophical issues that emerge when we overlap concepts of "gender," "culture," and "rhetoric."The essays in this issue explore tactics women have used to get their messages across to others who would not--even could not--entertain speech seriously if presented by a woman. In the first essay, "Unveiling Esther as a Pragmatic Radical Rhetoric," Susan Zaeske reads the Book of Esther as a rhetorical manual of exile and empowerment. She traces features of the narrative that were useful as a model of rhetorical behavior early on, as well as appropriations that were made throughout the Middle Ages, Antebellum South, and even in our own day. Her essay emphasizes the riskiness to the speaker that is often entailed by the act of speaking, especially when the listener is "all-powerful" (199); when "his decisions are based not on careful deliberation, but on who influences him the most, usually by prodding his sense of power and manliness" (200). In the narrative, the speaker, Queen Esther, is depicted as utterly thoughtful, careful, well planned and well timed. She seems very much in control of an "indirect" rhetoric. Says Zaeske, "[T]he book teaches that direct, resistant rhetoric is ineffective, even dangerous, while clever, indirect, noncon- frontational methods will succeed in gaining the desired end--power" (202). [End Page v] This is a "conciliatory strategy wise women are forced to use in the patriarchal world" (qtd. on p. 202). And this kind of strategy is contrasted to the defiant rhetoric of Vashti, the former queen, Esther's predecessor, who was banished for saying no to one of the king's commands. Silence and supplication, according to Zaeske, when adopted self-consciously as strategies, are effective with hostile, neanderthal-type auditors. They are "radical," at least in the sense that they are "extreme."Nan Johnson, in her essay "Reigning in the Court of Silence: Women and Rhetorical Space in Postbellum America," furthers discussion of women's rhetorical options. In Zaeske's essay, women assume positions of supplicants or petitioners, or they stand defiant in the face of an oppressive listener (the king). The former are idolized; the latter are demonized. Centuries later, in the fifty years following the Civil War, similar representations of women appeared in conduct literature. Johnson describes a media blitz of ideas and images in etiquette and other self-help manuals that sought to define rhetorical behaviors and actions appropriate for men and women. Some of the writings idolized the "quiet woman" of the home, who reigned silently as queen stitching together via indirection a rhetoric of nurturance that moved beyond the home only through the actions of husbands and sons. This kind of rhetoric was viewed as a natural consequence of femininity. Other writings demonized the woman who spoke from the public platform as a teacher, preacher, and advocate, and who needed a rhetorical education to do so effectively. Many writings highlighted the negative consequences of rhetorical experience to women (who risked their femininity and the love of their families) and to their families (who risked the true source of... (shrink)

The book provides the first analysis of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause_s system of philosophy and his panentheism in English. Karl Christian Friedrich Krause has bequeathed to us a system of philosophy which is little recognised in contemporary philosophy. This is both surprising and unfortunate, because Krause_s philosophical system has much to offer: Through transcendental reflection on the nature of the human, Krause understands God as the one infinite and unconditioned reality, and the ultimate necessary condition of knowledge. God makes humanity, (...) nature, and reason ultimately comprehensible as the essential categories of the divine Essence. God is thus the single, primary, object of science that is already logically presupposed even before His discovery. Science presupposes theology, and theology is best read as panentheism. (shrink)

Skeptical theism has as its foundation the thesis that if God permits evil, his reasons for doing so will likely be beyond our ken. The only defense given for this thesis is the Parent Analogy. There is in the literature only one defense of this use of the Parent Analogy and it has never been confronted. I examine it and expose serious flaws, thus exposing a crack in the very foundation of skeptical theism.

Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum is a known figure in philosophy of probability of the 1930s. A previously unpublished manuscript fills in the blanks in the full picture of her work on inductive reasoning by analogy, until now only accessible through a single publication. In this paper, I present Hosiasson’s work on analogical reasoning, bringing together her early publications that were never translated from Polish, and the recently discovered unpublished work. I then show how her late work relates to Rudolf (...) Carnap’s approach to “analogy by similarity” developed in the 1960s. Hosiasson turns out to be a predecessor of the line of research that models analogical influence as inductive relevance. A translation of Hosiasson’s manuscript concludes the paper. (shrink)