I discuss a puzzle that shows there is a need to develop a new metaphysical interpretation of mathematical theories, because all well-known interpretations conflict with important aspects of mathematical activities. The new interpretation, I argue, must authenticate the ontological commitments of mathematical theories without curtailing mathematicians' freedom and authority to creatively introduce mathematical ontology during mathematical problem-solving. Further, I argue that these two constraints are best met by a metaphysical interpretation of mathematics that takes mathematical entities to be (...) constitutively constructed by human activity in a manner similar to the constitutive construction of the US Supreme Court by certain legal and political activities. Finally, I outline some of the philosophical merits of metaphysical interpretations of mathematical theories of this type. (shrink)

By the nineteenth century the struggles in Europe against those forms of authority which go back to the Middle Ages resulted in giving everyone a standard of freedom perhaps without precedent in history.

Power is one of the key ideas in management, and so is the concept of authority. However, most studies on power are rather instrumental, dealing with the place of power in management, and how to achieve it. Less attention has been paid to the essential concepts of power and authority themselves in management thought and how they have evolved. To clarify these concepts, and to better understand the notions of power and authority in management and their proper (...) use in organisations, this paper goes back to one of the pioneers in management thought: Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933). She had an original vision of power, holding that genuine power is not ‘power-over’, but ‘power-with’. At the same time, she defended an authority based on function and responsibility. We explain what her account implies for management in theory and practice. (shrink)

Man can be ‘good and evil’ in his actions, reasonable and unreasonable— not to say, insane: this is his liberty. Hence his responsibility, which is born of this liberty. There can be no liberty without responsibility.The question: is Man rational in his actions? cannot be answered by a simple ‘yes’: that some of his actions are rational is proved by the very fact of our existence; that not all of these actions are rational is proved by our present situation. On (...) the other hand, if we do not perish, this is no proof of Man's rationality. Nor is it proved by the evolution of all creation, which undoubtedly moves from low to high. But it is not difficult to see that of all living beings Man alone is capable of acting rationally. Where Man's reason does not reach, there rules the law of selection. This latter prevails, likewise, wherever Man acts irrationally. Out of a senseless ‘urge to be’-as Schopenhauer calls it-that being asserts himself who enjoys some kind of primacy, who is superior in no matter what sphere-whether by his force, velocity, protective colouring, or any other way, it does not matter, except in the individual case. (shrink)

It is notorious that great philosophers are apt to be misunderstood. Controversy rages about their work, and sometimes they are credited with completely contradictory views. Consider the sharply contrasted opinions of Plato's political thought by Sir Karl Popper, on the one hand, and G. C. Field and H. B. Acton on the other.

While Hegel’s political philosophy has been attacked on the left by republican democrats and on the right by feudalist reactionaries, his apologists see him as a liberal reformer, a moderate who theorized about the development of a free-market society within the bounds of a stabilizing constitutional state. This centrist view has gained ascendancy since the end of the Second World War, enshrining Hegel within the liberal tradition. In this book, Renato Cristi argues that, like the Prussian liberal reformers of his (...) time, Hegel was committed to expand the scope of a free economy and concurrently to ensure that the social practice of subjective freedom did not endanger political stability and order. Aware that a system of mutual advantage failed to integrate the members of civil society and that profound social disharmonies were ineradicable, Hegel adopted the views of the French liberal _doctrinaires_, who sought to realize the principles of the French Revolution by supporting Louis XVIII’s sovereign assertion of the monarchical principle. Not surprisingly, Hegel hailed the French _Charte_ of June 1814 as a beacon of freedom. Endorsement of the monarchical principle was meant to prevent the atomized individuals of civil society from gaining control of the state through appeals to popular sovereignty. This challenges most conventional interpretations of Hegel’s theory of the state and draws it closer to the conservative-authoritarian end of the political spectrum than is usual. (shrink)

Despite the emphasis on the state in the history of political philosophy, the twentieth century has been characterized by a remarkable lack of philosophical reflection on the concept. Until recently analytical philosophy had eschewed those evaluative arguments about political obligation and the limits of state authority that were typical of political theory in the past in favour of the explication of the meaning of the concept. However, even here the results have been disappointing. Logical Positivist attempts to locate some (...) unique empirical phenomenon which the word state described proved unsuccessful, and indeed led to the odd conclusion that there was nothing about the state that distinguished it from some other social institutions. For example, its coercive power was said to be not unique: in some circumstances trade unions and Churches exercised similar power over their members. Ordinary language philosophers were far more interested in the complexities that surround words such as law, authority and power than in the state. In all this there was perhaps the fear that to concentrate attention on thestatewas implicitly to give credence to the discredited doctrine that it stood for some metaphysical entity; propositions about which could not be translated into propositions about the actions ofindividuals, and which represented higher values than those of ordinary human agents. (shrink)

In this article, I sketch a Kant-inspired liberal account of human rights: the freedom-centred view. This account conceptualizes human rights as entitlements that any political authority—any state in the first instance—must secure to qualify as a guarantor of its subjects' innate right to freedom. On this picture, when a state (or state-like institution) protects human rights, it reasonably qualifies as a moral agent to be treated with respect. By contrast, when a state (or state-like institution) fails to (...) protect human rights, it loses its moral status and becomes liable to both internal and external interference. I argue that this account not only steers a middle course between so-called natural-law and political approaches to human rights but also satisfies three important theoretical desiderata— explanatory power, functional specificity, and critical capacity. (shrink)

Art and Authority explores the sources, nature, and limits of artistic freedom. K. E. Gover draws upon real-world cases and controversies in contemporary visual art to offer a better understanding of artistic authorship and authority. Each chapter focuses on a case of dispute over the rights of an artist with respect to his or her artwork.

This extended essay joins an old conversation at the intersection of freedom and necessity. Though it takes place at the beginning of the twenty-first century by the "Christian" reckoning that has become an integral part of European identity, it will at times read like a conversation between classical Greece and nineteenth-century Europe. The cast consists of characters drawn from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Plato as well as the authors themselves - Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, MacIntyre, and Nussbaum. (...) Some of these writers have been associated with displaced, displacing claims of universality; but each is in place and in time in ways that are instructive for ethics. Myth, the matter of stories, becomes also the matter of critical reflection, which in turn is subjected to critical reflection. Every fragment of philosophy is a contribution to the reflection, and it is nothing if it is separated from the matter - the stories, the myths, and the characters (including us) who both make them and live in them. (shrink)

Based on Foucault's discourse on freedom and empowerment, this article addresses his understanding of power and knowledge. By critically examining the negative impact of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 on education, the author discusses the transformative power of Foucault's pedagogy for educational reform in which students, teachers, parents, and scholars are agents of change.

As many authors have acknowledged in these pages, Will Kymlicka has produced an admirable attempt to reconcile the differences of communitarians and liberals. However, Kymlicka's synthesis ignores the aspects of each theory which make his task impossible. Particularly, his analysis rests upon a misleading picture of communitarian community and an incomplete appreciation of the divergent liberal and communitarian understandings of freedom and pluralism. In the process of demonstrating the incompatibility of these theories, the similarities between communitarianism and nationalism are (...) explored. (shrink)

This book offers a cutting-edge interpretation of the philosophy of F.W.J. Schelling by critically reconsidering the interpretations of some of his "successors". It argues that Schelling's philosophy should be read as an ontology of immanence, highlighting its relevance for ongoing debates on ethics and freedom. The book builds on a key notion from Schelling's Philosophy of Revelation where he outlines the process through which transcendence must return to immanence in order to be grasped and understood. The author identifies Jaspers, (...) Heidegger, and Deleuze as the main interpreters of Schelling's philosophical activity, highlighting their relevance for subsequent Schelling scholarship. Heidegger and Jaspers refer to Schelling's philosophy in negative terms, namely as an incomplete and unviable philosophical system, whereas Deleuze holds the immanent core of Schelling's ontological discourse in high regard. The author's analysis demonstrates that reading Schelling's philosophy as an ontology of immanence not only avoids Heidegger's and Jaspers's criticisms but is also more fitting to Schelling's original meaning. Accordingly, his reading allows us to fully grasp Schelling's thought in all its strength and consistency: as a philosophy that avoids metaphysical abstractions and maintains the concreteness of concepts like God, nature, freedom by binding them to a solid and material account of Being. Finally, the author uses Schelling to propose an innovative reading of freedom as a matter of resistance, and of philosophy as an activity whose main purpose is that of seeking the actual extent and place of (human) life and freedom within nature. The author originally emphasises the relevance of these conclusions on contemporary debates in Postcolonial Critical Theory and Environmental Ethics. Schelling, Freedom, and the Immanent Made Transcendent. From Philosophy of Nature to Environmental Ethics will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in 19th-century Continental philosophy, German idealism, and Postcolonial Critical Theory and Environmental Ethics. (shrink)

In this popular text, Joel Spring provocatively analyzes the ideas of traditional and non-traditional philosophers, from Plato to Paulo Freire, regarding the contribution of education to the creation of a democratic society. Each section focuses on an important theme: “Autocratic and Democratic Forms of Education;” “Dissenting Traditions in Education;” “The Politics of Culture;” “The Politics of Gender;” and “Education and Human Rights.” This edition features a special emphasis on human rights education. Spring advocates a legally binding right to an education (...) that includes an education in human rights. His argument is that until schools are required to fulfill a duty to protect human rights and teach others to protect human rights, government-operated schools will remain authoritarian rather than democratic institutions. Wheels in the Head: Educational Philosophies of Authority, Freedom, and Culture From Socrates to Human Rights, Second Edition , a critically original work, is widely used as a text for courses across the fields of philosophical, social, political, and historical foundations of education, and critical issues in education. Reflecting its global relevance, a Chinese translation was published by the University of Peking Press in 2005. (shrink)

Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility brings together nine substantial essays on determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility in antiquity by Susanne Bobzien. The essays present the main ancient theories on these subjects, ranging historically from Aristotle followed by the Epicureans, the early Stoics, several later Stoics, and up to Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE. -/- The author discusses questions about rational and autonomous human agency and their compatibility with a large range of important philosophical issues, including (...) their compatibility with divine predetermination and other theological questions; with atomism and continuum theory and with the physical sciences more generally; with the determination of character and its development from childhood through nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with theories of necessity, possibility and contingency; with external or internal preceding causes and impediments; and with folk theories of fatalism. Room is also given to the questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, to virtue and wisdom, and to blame and praise. -/- Historically unified, philosophically profound, and methodologically rigorous, Bobzien’s essays show that in Classical and Hellenistic philosophy these topics were all debated without reference to freedom to do otherwise or to a free will, and that the latter two notions were fully developed only later. The volume will be of interest both to philosophers and to historians of philosophy, with more than half of the essays accessible to advanced undergraduates. (shrink)

- Whitehead The novelist is still God, since he creates. . . . What has changed is that we are no longer the gods of the Victorian image, omniscient and decree­ing; but in the new theo­logical image, with freedom our first principle, not authority. . . . There is only one good definition of God: one freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.

This article provides a brief explanation of Robert Kane's indeterministic, event‐causal libertarian theory of freedom and responsibility. It is noted that a number of authors have criticized libertarian theories, such as Kane's, by presenting the problem of luck. After noting how Kane has tried to answer this problem in his recent writings, the author goes on to explain Ishtiyaque Haji's recent version of the luck argument. The author considers three possible Kanian replies to Haji's luck argument and argues that (...) the third reply can adequately answer the luck objection. It is also noted that the third reply requires making some significant alterations to Kane's theory that would also help him resolve certain problems with his views about responsibility for character. (shrink)

Can any of us ever really be free? Do we follow the rules our society gives us because we want to, or because we are forced to? Discipline, Freedom, Resistance challenges the received wisdom that discipline and freedom are opposite and mutually exclusive. Though it is typically argued that a well-ordered liberal society must discipline its more unruly citizens to maintain freedom for all, Flathman shows how resistance to rules can mean more than criminals breaking laws. Resistance (...) can also mean political protest and political dialogues about what the rules can be. Discipline, Freedom, Resistance draws on Foucault's theories of the self to describe the inner discipline it takes to resist authority-declaring that individuals must sometimes resist forces that wish to destroy freedom, to ensure freedom. (shrink)

Ethics of Christian Freedom and Discipleship is written for teachers and students of Christian ethics within the English-speaking world. It demonstrates the basis of Christian ethics in Christian theology. Twenty-nine years ago, before leaving the Nigerian theological college where the author had been teaching, Between Two Worlds: An Ethic of Christian Freedom was privately printed. In Kenya, at what became St. Paul's University, the author primarily used copies of this book for eleven years of teaching Christian ethics. Ethics (...) of Christian Freedom and Discipleship manifests continuity with the author's earlier book, but is a distinctly different work. (shrink)

This book brings together people's intuitions, philosophical theories, and principles of Jewish ethics to suggest where our values should lead us. The author argues that a moral freedom of respect upholds freedom of the Self and respect for the Other.

The present paper is an attempt to show that Kolakowski's contention is fundamentally correct. But Part I begins by distinguishing, as here he does not, two very different senses of ‘freedom’. In one freedom is a possible but not a necessary condition and objective of human activity: it is a condition which may or may not obtain on particular occasions; and an objective which particular people may or may not choose to pursue. In the other freedom is (...) indeed inescapably ‘rooted in the very quality of being human’. So the remainder of Part I is devoted to the elucidation of this second sense, and to showing that any study of human behaviour which is to deserve the diploma description ‘science’ must start by recognizing rather than denying this definitive fact of our nature. It is argued that no one would be able even to understand such a denial unless they were equipped with premises sufficient for a demonstration of its falsity. Part II goes on to make an example of a widely read work by a leading behavioural scientist. The author starts by insisting, contrary to the contentions of Part I, that any true science of human psychology must presuppose the truth of that denial. He then proceeds to make it clear that, in consequence, he himself places no value upon freedom in the first sense. (shrink)

Freedom as an authentic and willed process, characteristic of man as a human rational being, enables the individual to act in accordance with the principles of morality, since the individual can choose between good and evil, and in this way to get out of the sphere of the given to which the rest of the living world is limited. We should recall the forgotten Marx and his famous text on the essential difference between the animal world and humanity as (...) a genus: "The animal is immediately united with its vital activity. It does not differ from it. It is vital activity. Man makes his own vital activity the subject of his will and consciousness. He has conscious vital activity. This is not a determination with which he merges immediately. Conscious vital activity distinguishes man directly from animal vital activity. It is exactly in this way alone that he is a generic being. Or a conscious being, i.e. his own life is a subject for him precisely because he is a generic being. It is only for this reason that his activity is free activity...". In other words, while animals live just the life of their species and cannot choose anything else, since the choice has been made by the fact of their belonging to a species, man can choose the world in which to live, overcoming in this way the natural givens. Here lies the core of the anthropological explanation of the principle of morality, inconceivable without man's ability to be an authentic free being. Sloboda kao autenticni voljni proces, svojstven coveku kao ljudskom umnom bicu, omogucuje individui da postupa u skladu sa nacelima moralnosti, buduci da individua moze da bira izmedju dobra i zla i da na taj nacin izadje iz sfere datosti na koju je ogranicen ostali zivi svet. Podsetimo se zaboravljenog Marxa i cuvenog teksta o sustinskoj razlici izmedju sveta zivotinjskih vrsta i coveka kao roda:?zivotinja je neposredno jedinstvena sa svojom zivotnom delatnoscu. Ona se od nje ne razlikuje. Ona je zivotna datost. Covek cini samu svoju zivotnu delatnost predmetom svoga htenja i svoje svesti. On ima svesnu zivotnu delatnost. To nije odredjenost s kojom se on neposredno stapa. Svesna zivotna delatnost razlikuje coveka neposredno od zivotinjske zivotne delatnosti. On je upravo samo na taj nacin genericko bice. Ilije samo svesno bice, tj. njegov vlastiti zivot mu je predmet upravo zato sto je genericko bice. Samo zato je njegova delatnost slobodna delatnost...". Drugim recima, dok zivotinjski svet zivi samo zivotom svoje vrste i ne moze da izabere nista drugo, on je srastao sa vrstom kojoj pripada, covek moze da bira svet u kojem ce ziveti prevazilazeci na taj nacin prirodnu datost. Ovde je sadrzana bit antropoloskog objasnjenja principa moralnosti, koji se bez sposobnosti coveka da bude autenticno slobodno bice ne bi mogao pojmiti.. (shrink)

On the whole, we continue to believe firmly both that we have free will and that we are morally responsible for what we do. Here, the author argues that there is a fundamental sense in which there is no such thing as free will or true moral responsibility (as ordinarily understood). Devoting the main body of his book to an attempt to explain why we continue to believe as we do, Strawson examines various aspects of the "cognitive phenomenology" of (...) class='Hi'>freedom--the nature, causes, and consequences of our deep commitment to belief in freedom. (shrink)

This text reflects on the theme of freedom and its relationship with values. To do this, it shows the original approach to this issue present in the thought of the current Spanish philosopher J. M. Méndez. According to the characteristic thinking of this author, freedom does not represent a value but the gateway or the very possibility of participation in any ethical value, as postulated by his _axiological liberalism_.

(Unpublished writing, 2007) This article briefly introduces a new argument concerning corporate social responsibility, based in an analysis of values expressed by the recent and contemporary liberal economists Milton Friedman and Michael Jensen. I will provide the gist of the argument by considering implications of Friedman’s very familiar view, that “…there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules (...) of the game.” Harvard professor Michael Jensen has argued from slightly different premises to a similar conclusion, that “social welfare is maximized when all firms in an economy attempt to maximize their own total firm value.” Vestiges of such influential argument are also easily spotted in American corporate culture (See Palmer, 2007). I suggest that these authors’ positions allow for possibilities that undermine their broader fundamental values, however. I will concentate especially on Friedman’s classic treatment of liberal politics and capitalist economics, Capitalism and Freedom, in which he alludes to the importance of accepting and promoting individual freedom. Such values demand governmental and social stability, and so, in some cases, particularly where business activity may destabilize society, it would appear that freedom may be seriously threatened by corporate activity that follows Friedman’s narrow prescription. Nowhere is this more evident, at present, than in the Niger River Delta, where the promise and profits of oil have produced a society in great disarray. A case study of the delta situation indicates the problems of the narrow view of business goals and business responsibility, and this article will go on to consider possible solutions to those problems that delineate general sorts of responsibilities. The solutions require corporations to take a much broader view of their activity: I suggest that Friedman’s flaw reflects a general weakness of liberal individualism, nicely exposed in Amartya Sen’s arguments that lead to the conclusion that, “we have to see individual freedom as a social commitment.” That social commitment includes the goal of promoting individual freedom, but reaching for the goal may proceed along lines that are not so narrowly economic as Friedman would have, indicating new roles for business and government cooperation even in less extreme cases than that of the Niger Delta. (shrink)

In what particular manner human beings are free moral agents and to what extent they can reasonably expect to attain a good life are two intertwined questions that rose to prominence in antiquity and have remained so to the present day. This book analyzes and compares the approaches of two significant authors from different schools at the turn of the third century CE, Alexander of Aphrodisias and Clement of Alexandria. These contemporaries utilize their respective Peripatetic and Christian commitments in their (...) employment of the shared Greek classics toward these shared ethical questions. (shrink)

The coercive authority of the Kantian state is rationally grounded in the ideal of equal external freedom, which is realized when each individual can choose and act without being constrained by another's will. This ideal does not seem like it can justify state-mandated economic redistribution. For if one is externally free just as long as one can choose and act without being constrained by another, then only direct slavery, serfdom, or other systems of overt control seem to threaten (...) external freedom. Yet Kant endows the freedom-based state with considerable powers of economic redistribution. I argue that recent commentary has misunderstood both Kant's account of why poverty is a form of freedom-threatening dependence and the extent of the Kantian state's powers for remedying poverty. Criticizing Arthur Ripstein and the Kantianism of the “Toronto-School,” I argue that the most salient notion of dependence at issue within the Kantian framework is not the direct control of the choice-making capacities of another but asymmetrical influence in a power relationship. For Kant, poverty is fundamentally a problem of structural disempowerment. (shrink)

Since it was first published in 2011, ‘A Manifesto for Education’ by Gert Biesta and Karl Anders Säfström has received numerous enthusiastic reviews and been hailed as providing ‘an alternative vision for education’. Such enthusiasm, however, is perhaps not purely attributable to the substance of the text but also to the form that it adopts. In this regard, I attempt to explore what the authors refer to as the ironic usage of this genre of writing in relation to its message. (...) The authors diagnose a problem in education related to the modern understanding of time, and they suggest an alternative ‘non-temporality’ in which we ‘stay in the tension between “what is” and “what is not” ’. While I appreciate the Manifesto's attempt to offer criticism based on the link between freedom and temporality in education, I take issue with aspects of their analysis. I discuss temporality and freedom through a reading of Martin Heidegger in which the concept of time in education is understood in terms of human freedom as possibility. (shrink)

This work covers the range of problems from questions about freedom of the will to political liberty. The author shows how the original legal concept of freedom was extended in various ways, the underlying concept being the idea of power to avoid or overcome evil and to do good.

Freedom and unity are the values James most wanted to protect and to extend. Roth agrees with this choice, and recommends James to his readers as the moral philosopher who can best show us how. James is presented as combining a principled morality with the responsiveness to particular cases characteristic of existentialism and situational ethics, and his ethics is found to yield what John Wild would call a "primary existential norm": Act so as to maximize freedom and unity. (...) While the philosophical foundations of James' theory are generally secondary to Roth's advocacy of it, the author shows how the norm is based on the following Jamesian concepts: human consciousness is selective and efficacious; the universe is unfinished; value is rooted in consciousness and choice; and the goal of ethics is to achieve unity or harmony among personal and communal choices. Roth mentions problems for James--for example, pointing out that the principle of satisfying as many value demands as possible while frustrating a few as necessary does not handle qualitative differences in demands, and showing how James' later work emends this principle. He also touches on the tough problem, developed by others following James, of "unity" as an ideal in a system in which both meaning and value are rooted in feeling, and feelings are "owned" by individual selves. The book is simply written and should present no difficulty for the reader with little background in philosophy.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Sheds light on the meaning of human freedom by examining and making clear the relationship between the concepts of anxiety and despair in the writings of Soren Kierkegaard. Drawing on Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death, the author provides detailed accounts on Kierkegaard's concepts of anxiety and despair, and discusses much secondary literature on these topics. What follows is an examination of Kierkegaardian feelings and moods, and freedom and individuality. Annotation copyright by Book News, (...) Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir cited the fairly unknown author Poulain de la Barre in an epigraph for The Second Sex (1949). When reading The Second Sex, one soon realizes that there are profound similarities between the two authors’ discussions of women’s situation. Both Poulain and Beauvoir view the subjection of women as a process that includes choice as well as force. Liberation necessarily requires overcoming opinions rooted in custom and prejudice. The article develops a comparison between the arguments of (...) Poulain and Beauvoir in order to illuminate interesting features in the works of both authors. The focus is on similarities as well as differences. The first section examines how prejudice and the practices of men’s self-interest have contributed to the reification of women. Section 2 discusses the peculiar nature of prejudices about oneself and section 3 focuses on the metaphysical relation between freedom and materiality. Finally, section 4 examines how mutual recognition becomes possible in the context of freedom, the search for truth, and friendship. (shrink)

This book brings together people’s intuitions, philosophical theories, and principles of Jewish ethics to suggest where our values should lead us. The author argues that a moral freedom of respect upholds freedom of the Self and respect for the Other.

From the perspective of Christian theology, divine freedom is the paradigm of human freedom, but it is also completely unlike ours in its infinity. This is the paradox of the analogy of being: in its infinity, the Archetype of our being is also completely other. In contrast, likeness between contingent beings is limited in that each being is individuated yet similar to those of like species. No matter how alike beings are, “unlikeness” increases with generic distance. At the (...) asymptotic limit, the Archetype is infinitely unlike us, but remains the ultimate blueprint for each being. If as Archetype, God’s infinite freedom is qualitative of infinite being, then all finite beings must possess freedom to some finite degree. Herein lies the problem treated in this paper: how can bothanimate and inanimate being possess freedom? To answer this question, the author draws upon the first volume of part two of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s sixteen volume trilogy, Theo-logic: The Truth of the World. (shrink)

In "Kant on Freedom and the Appropriate Punishment," the author begins by noting that in The Metaphysics of Morals , Kant asserts that a wrongdoer should be given a punishment that is similar to his wrongdoing. He then makes two interpretive claims with regard to this assertion.First, he claims that the best way to understand this assertion in the context of other things Kant says is that the state is obligated to punish a wrongdoer in a way that imposes (...) on the wrongdoer an amount of suffering equal to what he caused and through an action that is similar in type to the wrongdoer's offense. The argument in support of this claim occurs in section II and rests on two more specific interpretive claims about Kant's theory: that state punishment should resemble the wrongdoer's acts and should involve the same level of suffering as was involved in the original wrongdoing and that punishment in accordance with these constraints is an obligatory duty.Second, the author claims that on Kant's theory this principle of appropriate punishment is justified because it restores equality in the distribution of freedom for members of the state. The argument in support of this claim occurs in section III. The argument rests in part on Kant's justification of the state and coercion in terms of the value of equalized freedom. By applying this same justification to Kant's principle of appropriate punishment, the author claims to be able to account for the principle as well as to relate the principle to Kant's political theory. Der vorliegende Beitrag beginnt mit der Feststellung, daß Kant in der Metaphysik der Sitten geltend macht, ein Übeltäter solle eine Bestrafung erleiden, die mit seiner Tat vergleichbar ist. Im Hinblick auf diese Forderung Kants werden zwei Thesen aufgestellt.Erstens wird behauptet, die genannte Forderung sei vor dem Hintergrund sonstiger Äußerungen Kants am besten dahingehend zu verstehen, daß der Staat verpflichtet sei, einen Übeltäter in einer Weise zu bestrafen, die diesem ein Maß von Leid zufügt, das dem von ihm selbst verursachten gleichkommt. Geschehen müsse dies durch eine Handlung, die in ihrer Art dem vom Übeltäter begangenen Verbrechen entspricht. Die Begründung dieser These erfolgt in Abschnitt II und stützt sich wiederum auf zwei mehr in die Einzelheiten gehende Thesen zu Kants Theorie: Staatliche Bestrafung sollte den Handlungen des Übeltäters ähneln und Leid in einer Größenordnung mit sich bringen, wie es auch die ursprüngliche Tat zur Folge hatte. Bestrafung in Übereinstimmung mit diesen Bedingungen ist eine Pflicht.Zweitens wird die Auffassung vertreten, dieses Prinzip angemessenen Strafens sei im Rahmen der Theorie Kants gerechtfertigt, weil es für die Mitglieder des Staates die Gleicheit in bezug auf die Verteilung der Freiheit wiederherstelle. Die Begründung dieser These findet sich in Abschnitt III und beruht zum Teil auf Kants Rechtfertigung von Staat und Zwang durch den Verweis auf den Wert gleichmäßig verteilter Freiheit. Die Übernahme eben dieser Rechtfertigung auch für Kants Theorie angemessenen Strafens soll sowohl dazu dienen, das Prinzip selbst zu begründen, als auch dazu, es in Kants politische Theorie einzuordnen. (shrink)

This paper deals with the issue of self-determination and agency in moral action. On the one hand, it seems that where possible, the moral agent should use their practical reason to identify what it is right for them to do, and act accordingly; on the other hand, this seems to leave little room for the agent to decide for themselves how to act, where this is often said to be a marker of freedom and how the will is exercised. (...) In response to this difficulty, Ruth Chang has argued recently that at least some reasons themselves need to be seen as being created through an act of will. Looking at the work of Iris Murdoch, it is argued that this response is problematic. At the same time, it is also argued that Murdoch can provide a fruitful way of dealing with this problem through her account of the imagination. This gives a role to the will of the agent, not in creating reasons, but in attuning us to those reasons, thereby locating the will within practical reasoning itself and showing how the authority of the good can be made compatible with human freedom. (shrink)

Whatever may be said about contemporary feminists’ evaluation of Descartes’ role in the history of feminism, Mary Astell herself believed that Descartes’ philosophy held tremendous promise for women. His urging all people to eschew the tyranny of custom and authority in order to uncover the knowledge that could be found in each one of our unsexed souls potentially offered women a great deal of intellectual and personal freedom and power. Certainly Astell often read Descartes in this way, and (...) Astell herself has been interpreted as a feminist – indeed, as the first English feminist. But a close look at Astell’s and Descartes’ theories of reason, and the role of authority in knowledge formation as well as in their philosophies of education, show that there are subtle yet crucial divergences in their thought – divergences which force us to temper our evaluation of Astell as a feminist. -/- My first task is to evaluate Astell’s views on custom and authority in knowledge formation and education by comparing her ideas with those of Descartes. While it is true that Astell seems to share Descartes’ wariness of custom and authority, a careful reading of her work shows that the wariness extends only as far as the tyranny of custom over individual intellectual development. It does not extend to a wariness about social and institutional customs and authority (including, perhaps most crucially, the institution of marriage as we see in her Reflection on Marriage). The reason for this is that Astell’s driving goal is to help women to come to know God’s plan for women – both in their roles as human and in their roles as women. According to Astell, while it is true that, as individuals, women must develop their rational capacities to the fullest in order to honor God and his plan for women as human, as members of social institutions, including the institution of marriage, women must subordinate themselves to men, including their husbands, in this case so as to honor God and his plan for women as women. Once we understand the theological underpinnings of her equivocal reaction to authority and custom, we can see that Astell may be considered a feminist in a very tempered way. -/- My second task is to use these initial conclusions to re-read her proposal for single-sexed education that we find in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. It is true that Astell encourages women to join single-sexed educational institutions for the unique and empowering friendships that women can develop in such institutions. Still, my argument continues, the development of such friendships is not entirely an end in itself. Rather, Astell encourages women to develop such friendships such that they can re-enter the broader world armed with the tools that will help them endure burdensome features of the lives that await them in the world, including their lives as subordinated wives –burdens that Astell does not, in principle, challenge. (shrink)

The theory of liberty here propounded by Simon, along with his analysis of authority, democracy, and practical wisdom, contains the elements of a political philosophy that can provide direction to other contemporary political theorists of our times. While the latter have gathered great masses of political facts, they have lacked a normative set of ideas that can make these facts meaningful and useful to political society. Simon's position as a philosopher rather than as a political scientist, is that while (...) there is a science of social and political facts, a normative moral philosophy that knows the ends of human action is necessary because people make good or bad use of their freedom. As always, Simon here writes with a lucidity and moderation that will be satisfying to reasonable people looking for a way out of skepticism and uncertainty. He was no dogmatist, but he knew what he knew and what he did not know. This is the beginning of wisdom and a model for philosophers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 329 I find Farley's theory of tragic existence and divine compassion distressing and depressing. To sufferers, it says: "C'est la vie!" Put more learnedly, "created perfection is fragile, tragically structured.. •. And yet, without creation, divine eros remains merely potential, inarticulate. The fragility of creation and the nonabsolute power of God culminate in the tragedy and rupture of history" (p. 124). Thank God, I can now have (...) God,to blame. Of course, God is trying to repair the damage, but even God's efforts are ultimately vain since "absolute evil " will ever play havoc with history and since God himself is responsible for suffering. Furthermore, since the author does not offer any extensive discussion of the suffering and death of God.on the cross (she dismisses the idea: "The compassionate God is... to he distinguished from the benevolent but impotent deity who ' suffers with ' the world" [p. 112]), nor of the resurrection of Jesus as divine vindication of innocent suffering, nor of hope for a life beyond,· her tragic vision sheds no real light on the problem of suffering nor can it pro-.vide impetus for the struggle against evil or hope for victims-especially when demons whisper that life is futile, suffering meaningless, and the cosmos void. The book is repetitive (suffering: pp. 23-24, 30-31, 51-59, 115-119; tragic vision: pp. 31-37, 78-79, 98-99, 106-110, 124-125; compassion: pp. 37-39, 79-81, 92-94, 110-114, 114-119, 126-128). It is oracular ("theologians have been uncomfortable about directly attributing love to God " [p. 96], self-contradictory (it speaks of God's " aseity " and divine " relationship " in the same breath [p. 105]), and misleading in its use of sources (e.g. its appeal to Thomas for its peculiar understanding of analogical language about God [pp. 101-103]). Mercifully, the hook is brief. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. PETER c. PHAN Time, Freedom, and the Common Good. By CHARLES M. SHEROVER. New York: State University of New York Press, 1989. Pp. xiii+ 314. $59.50 (cloth) ; $19.95 (paper). Guided by the insights of traditional political philosophy and contemporary phenomenology and animated by 'the spirit of Tocqueville, Sherover's book is an attempt " to secure the foundations of a public philosophy adequate for our time" (p. xii). Like Tqcqueville, Sherover is preoccupied with the " universal appeal of freedom," with its com- 330 BOOK REVIEWS plications, its paradoxes, and especially its possibilities. Sherover faults liberalism for its simplistic conception of freedom and its " superficial view of the nature of human existence" (p. 8). In an attempt to find a more adequate account of human experience, Sherover appeals to three existential categories: sociality, temporality, and freedom. The project of the book, which moves from the establishment and articulation of these categories to :their practical application, is ambitious. Yet the argument is lucid and persuasive. Following Aristotle, Sherover argues for the primacy of the social in human life. He effectively argues not only that moral norms and linguistic practices are socially rooted phenomena, but also that " social membership is prior... to any notion of differentiating individuality " (p. 20). Social atomism is but a theoretical abstraction, and individualism is as incoherent as a private language. Sherover points out that the defense ·of the social nature of human existence has at least one negative result: it undermines political theories that are rooted in a radically individualistic conception of human nature. Yet the emphasis on sociality does play a positive role in Sherover's essay: it serves as an initial justification of the relevance of the idea of the common good to political discourse. The existential category of sociality surfaces, for instance, in Sherover's cogent account of rights, wherein he argues that particular rights should not be seen as innate and absolute. The claim that rights are innate renders unintelligible the prevalent notion of "newly dis· covered" rights (p. 79). Instead, particular rights are socially recog· nized, justifiable claims which cannot he isolated from the social and political context in which they are recognized and exercised. Particular r.ights come into being over time and in intimate connection with con· crete... (shrink)

Scholars disagree about whether and how Kant manages to avoid dualistic outcomes in the relation between freedom and sensibility within the moral agent. If he does not – if he portrays a moral agent who must judge and act without taking emotions, sentiments, and passions into account – then authors such as Blackburn can rightly argue that Kantian ethics loses sight of the concrete individual, whose sensibility has a fundamental role, taking part in the definition of her specific identity. (...) I argue that this portrait comes from a disputable and incomplete reading of Kant’s works. There is no dualistic outcome in the relation between freedom and sensibility in Kant. My aim is to show that there is a bridge between the rational and the sensible elements within the Kantian agent and that it can be reconstructed by analysing Kant’s works on ethics, aesthetics, and anthropology. Specifically, those elements must be thought of as in accordance, not in opposition, because sensibility is necessary for Kant’s ethics to be effective, both for the agent’s awareness of the moral law and for the agent’s motivation. (shrink)

The dialogue Bruno of 1802 is arguably the natural starting point for any investigation on the concepts of finitude, evil and human freedom in Schelling’s middle metaphysics. In this dialogue the author elaborates for the first time in his system a concept of freedom and independence of the finite, which extends via his reformulation in Philosophy and Religion of 1804 to the Freedom Essay of 1809 and beyond to the works of 1810 and 1811 – Stuttgart Private (...) Lectures and The Ages of the World. The central ontological problem of the dialogue relates to the possibility of a separation between the absolute and the world as space of finite beings, which, according to the system of identity first presented in 1801, cannot exist as such. The question we will then address concerns the status of the finite as such and how would it be possible to admit both its existence for consciousness and the positing of an absolute and infinite principle of philosophy. We will show how Schelling’s interest shifts, almost unintentionally, from the infinite principle to the finite as such, as a principle of freedom and self-initiation independent of the real. (shrink)