Dans cet essai, nous cherchons à ressaisir le sens politique du structuralisme à la lumière d’un rapprochement inattendu, présenté à la fin de Tristes Tropiques, entre le bouddhisme et le marxisme. On s’est beaucoup interrogé sur ce que le marxisme a apporté en propre à l’anthropologie structurale de Lévi-Strauss, et cela dès la parution du livre de Lucien Sebag, Marxisme et structuralisme, en 1964. Dans le même temps, le marxisme officiel, dans ses différentes tendances, avait attaqué une approche des (...) structures de l’esprit comme une dérive idéaliste. Nous avons voulu déplacer complètement la question en prenant à la lettre la comparaison audacieuse que risque Lévi-Strauss, en quelques pages, où le marxisme comparaît comme ce qui, en Occident, fait écho à un processus de transformation du monde social dont l’Orient, en son propre sein, a inscrit par avance la possibilité. Ainsi, c’est une différence interne à l’Orient qui sert, en bonne méthode structurale, à penser une différence significative, mais inaperçue, dans notre propre culture. Et la pensée marxiste, inscrite sous le signe d’une volonté de transformation du monde plutôt que d’interprétation, est replacée dans un cadre qui la modalise, en même temps qu’elle en révèle la portée réellement critique. (shrink)

Résumé Partant du principe que les raisons de la politisation (ou non) de la référence théorique « Leo Strauss » ne peuvent être élucidées qu’en considérant ensemble les écrits du philosophe et les processus de réception dont ils font l’objet, cette contribution propose quelques éléments de biographie intellectuelle, distinguant six « séquences » puis elle met en lumière l’aspect « polyphonique » de l’oeuvre straussienne, semblant autoriser les lectures les plus contradictoires. Suit une exposition de deux paradigmes opposés de (...) réception : la réception étatsunienne, rythmée par les polémiques depuis les années 1980, la réception française, assez consensuelle. À la fin du texte, nous tentons d’expliquer comment Strauss a pu devenir une figure canonique en France dans le contexte du « retour de la philosophie politique » des années 1980-1990. (shrink)

Cet essai analyse le sens que donne Leo Strauss à l’argument de l’élection des juifs, et tente à partir de là de comprendre sa position à l’égard des différentes options qui s’offrent aux juifs modernes (le retour à la tradition, l’assimilation, le sionisme politique). Le sens politique que Strauss confère à l’élection dans son diagnostic de la modernité et de la place que les juifs y occupent n’exclut pas, mais au contraire éclaire d’une manière nouvelle l’acception théologique du (...) terme. Ce sens s’éclaire par la reprise de la formule talmudique « Si je ne me bats pas pour moi, que suis-je? ». La question finale est alors de savoir quelle signification peut revêtir cette formule dès lors que le juif moderne se voue à la philosophie. (shrink)

Depuis l'entrée dans l'âge moderne de l'émancipation, c'est-à-dire depuis l'époque des Lumières et de la Révolution française, on admet en général que les juifs ont brisé un carcan qui les confinait dans des communautés fermées pour participer à la modernité européenne sans se renier et tout en restant juifs. Comment ce cheminement a-t-il eu lieu? Qu'a-t-il réellement impliqué, à la fois pour les juifs et pour les sociétés auxquelles ils s'intégraient? Bruno Karsenti reprend le fil de ce récit. Sous (...) l'angle philosophique, il examine les opérations intellectuelles par lesquelles certaines figures d'exception écrivain (Heine), sociologue (Durkheim), historiens (Salvador, Bloch), philosophe (Strauss) et linguiste (Benveniste) sont entrées dans cette modernité, au prix de quelles tensions et de quels efforts : comment ces hommes ont-ils pensé les liens entre judaïsme et modernité, et comment par là ont-ils éclairé les principes des sociétés démocratiques qui sont aujourd'hui les nôtres? À l'heure où les juifs d'Europe sont inquiets de leur avenir jusqu'à être parfois poussés au départ, à l'heure aussi où théologie et politique, loin de régler leurs rapports, se conjuguent en menace pour les démocraties elles-mêmes, ce livre cherche à redonner tout son sens à l'émancipation sociale et politique qui est notre héritage."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Le débat qui partage les partisans et les détracteurs de l'humanisme n'est pas seulement dicté par l'ampleur des événements planétaires. La question de l'humanisme est d'abord l'héritière de toute l'histoire de la pensée. Qu'il ait cependant appartenu à Martin Heidegger, à peine arraché à un temps d'inhumanité radicale, de transformer, dans sa fameuse Lettre sur l'humanisme de 1947, le simple recours aux " valeurs ", de l'humanisme en l'affaire par excellence de la pensée, constitue une énigme sur laquelle il valait (...) la peine de s'arrêter. Depuis lors, le débat sur l'humanisme a occupé la pensée française à travers les contributions majeures de Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault ou, récemment encore, hors de France, de Sloterdijk. Des philosophes appartenant à plusieurs générations ont voulu proposer une nouvelle lecture de la lettre fondatrice de Heidegger. On trouvera dans cet ouvrage toutes les facettes du dossier, les circonstances de la publication de la lettre, sa réception européenne jusqu'à nos jours, le débat avec la pensée de la Renaissance qu'elle implique, ainsi que les différentes voies pour dialoguer avec un texte aussi ambigu que les événements auxquels il se mesure. Bruno Pinchard est professeur à l'Université jean Moulin-Lyon 3 Ont également contribué à ce volume Pierre Aubenque, Alain Boutot, Pierre Coye, Pascal David, Emmanuel Faye, Marc Foglio, Thierry Gontier, Dominique Janicoud, jeanFrançois Marquet, Jean-François Mottéi, Rita Messori, Henri Mongis, Roger Munier, Alexis Pinchard, Alexandra Roux, Luco Salzo, Alain Séguy-Dtrclot, Jean-Marie Voysse et Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron. Themis la Titanide, née de Ciel et de Terre, incarnait chez Hésiode la figure de la Justice qui réunissait les dieux sur l'Olympe et les hommes au caeur de la cité. En un temps de dispersion du sens, "Thémis" s'ouvre à la philosophie pour recueillir ses interrogations sur notre partage commun. Au carrefour de l'éthique, de la politique, de l'art et des sciences, cette collection présente des essais originaux qui explorent les voies obscures de notre avenir à la lumiere de notre plus ancienne tradition. Repenser la philosophie à partir de ce commencement qui était, pour Hésiode, l'exigence éternelle de la justice, c'est découvrir, en un autre mode que l'éclaircie grecque, ce que donne à voir la naissance de Thémis, pF. M. (shrink)

questão do bom governante pode ser analisada a partir da perspectiva conservadora,que pretende retomar os ensinamentos da filosofia política antiga, bem como deum ponto de vista em defesa do projeto moderno. Leo Strauss e Alexandre Kojève propuseram-se, cada qual à sua maneira, o desafio de encontrar no diálogo Hierão de Xenofonte osaspectos “tirânicos” que, por um lado, aprimoram e, por outro, rebaixam a possível realizaçãode uma vida política perfeita. Nosso objetivo aqui é percorrer a polêmica dessedebate entre amigos que (...) sustentam posições distintas, porém, complementares. (shrink)

Cet article se demande si un dialogue entre la civilisation chinoise et Leo Strauss est possible et à quelles conditions. Il décrit le contexte d’introduction de Strauss en Chine, en se concentrant sur Liu Xiaofeng, l’un des straussiens les plus influents de la Chine contemporaine. L’analyse de son interprétation de la critique straussienne de la modernité occidentale fait ressortir deux distorsions fondamentales : là où Strauss considérait l’« enseignement tyrannique » comme quelque chose de théorique, Liu en (...) fait un plan d’action politique ; au lieu de reconnaître la modernité des bases idéologiques de l’État fondé par Mao Zedong, il les interprète au crible de la tradition. Cette double déformation contredit l’intention de Strauss en tant que philosophe zététique et socratique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Persecution of Writing: Revisiting Strauss and CensorshipGeorges Van Den Abbeele (bio)In the 1542 edition of Pantagruel, Rabelais’s narrator terminates a long tirade extolling the Gargantuan Chronicles’ extraordinary virtues (curing toothaches, relieving the pain of treatments for syphilis, and so on) with the proviso that he will maintain the absurd truth of these claims “jusques au feu exclusive (to any point short of the stake)” [215]. This clause, (...) absent from earlier editions, while implicating the comic cowardice of the narrator also adumbrates a tragic sense of prudence. In the early years of the sixteenth century, not just Rabelais but the rest of his Renaissance world had come increasingly to know the heavy hand of censorship and persecution. Bookburning, of course, had lost its traditional source of terror with the invention of the printing press: no longer could a single bonfire extinguish all versions of a single manuscript. Instead, Church and State authorities had in the course of the Renaissance to invent new practices for controlling and regulating the circulation of dangerous words: bans on publication, excision of offensive passages prior to printing, indices of prohibited books, and so on. When left with no other alternative, however, one could still burn not just sample copies of the book but the offending author too, such as in the case of Giordano Bruno, whose auto-da-fé menacingly lit up the skies in the very first year of the seventeenth century. 1Today, with the advent of electronic media and the virtual extirpation of texts from the materiality of print and paper, it is even more difficult to abolish or even regulate the spread of refractory discourses. In the last decade, though, we have seen renewed attempts at censorship, not just of modern visual, aural, and electronic modes of representation (as is commonly recognized and debated), but also of that reputed cornerstone of liberal democratic rights, the printed text. And while in the contemporary American context it may seem that the debate over censorship has “become an argument almost exclusively about pornography and obscenity” [McGrail 51], there is also a critical need for reflection on the renewed onslaught today in virtually every part of the planet against the freedom of writers and that of the press per se. The gravity of the situation best emblematized by the case of Salman Rushdie should not blind us to the parallel stories of Taslima Nasrin, Wole Soyinka, Farag Fuda, Nawal el Saadawi, and others sadly too numerous to list. 2 [End Page 3]In this context, Leo Strauss’s 1941 essay “Persecution and the Art of Writing” retains a remarkable currency on the subject and remains a crucial point of departure from which to reflect on the contemporary crisis of censorship and the writer. Written at a time, over half a century ago, when another wave of explicit attacks on writers shocked the intellectual world, Strauss’s essay, on the one hand, struck a hopeful chord by evoking the kinds of techniques available to writers in their efforts to evade or foil censorship, that is, by demonstrating that no censorship can fully succeed in terroristically bringing about an end to heterodox forms of expression. On the other hand, he posits at least the possibility for every text that it has an inexorable core that is esoteric. No censorship can be total, but there is also no such thing as a pristine state of letters prior to censorship. As Michael Holquist has written in a more recent venue, “censorship is” [16], and all discussion must begin from that understanding if we are ever to approach the magnitude of the contemporary debacle.It is perhaps no small irony, too, that a certain Straussianism begs the question of censorship, complaining about the strictures of “political correctness” while seeking to restore a canon that not only would deny many forms of alternative discourse but also the very historicity of such constructs as canons and approved reading lists as well as indices of “forbidden books.” A useful approach might be to consider whether more recent forms of censorship have historically exceeded the terms of Strauss’s argument or whether the Straussian version of history is not itself an... (shrink)

The iconoclastic Brazilian anthropologist and theoretician Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, well known in his discipline for helping initiate its “ontological turn,” offers a vision of anthropology as “the practice of the permanent decolonization of thought.” After showing that Amazonian and other Amerindian groups inhabit a radically different conceptual universe than ours—in which nature and culture, human and nonhuman, subject and object are conceived in terms that reverse our own—he presents the case for anthropology as the study of such “other” metaphysical (...) schemes, and as the corresponding critique of the concepts imposed on them by the human sciences. Along the way, he spells out the consequences of this anthropology for thinking in general via a major reassessment of the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, arguments for the continued relevance of Deleuze and Guattari, dialogues with the work of Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Marilyn Strathern, and inventive treatments of problems of ontology, translation, and transformation. Bold, unexpected, and profound, Cannibal Metaphysics is one of the chief works marking anthropology's current return to the theoretical center stage. (shrink)

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness leads (...) only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)

Throughout his life Kierkegaard was an engaged student of German philosophy. He was especially exercised by the German philosophy of his own day, which was dominated by the popularity of the Hegelian system and the critical discussions surrounding it. This chapter explores Kierkegaard's use of Hegel and of a number of lesser‐known Hegelians (Marheineke, Daub, Erdmann, Rosenkranz, Hotho, Werder, Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and Strauss) and Hegel critics (Baader, I.H. Fichte, Schopenhauer, Trendelenburg, and Schelling). This study shows that Kierkegaard's (...) interest in the other figures traditionally associated with Hegelianism in fact goes far beyond this sole aspect of their thought. (shrink)

The iconoclastic Brazilian anthropologist and theoretician Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, well known in his discipline for helping initiate its “ontological turn,” offers a vision of anthropology as “the practice of the permanent decolonization of thought.” After showing that Amazonian and other Amerindian groups inhabit a radically different conceptual universe than ours—in which nature and culture, human and nonhuman, subject and object are conceived in terms that reverse our own—he presents the case for anthropology as the study of such “other” metaphysical (...) schemes, and as the corresponding critique of the concepts imposed on them by the human sciences. Along the way, he spells out the consequences of this anthropology for thinking in general via a major reassessment of the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, arguments for the continued relevance of Deleuze and Guattari, dialogues with the work of Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Marilyn Strathern, and inventive treatments of problems of ontology, translation, and transformation. Bold, unexpected, and profound, _Cannibal Metaphysics_ is one of the chief works marking anthropology’s current return to the theoretical center stage. (shrink)

Mimmo Paladino’s artistic research is characterized by an interest in the language and the relationship between “individual” and “community”. The idea of “individual” Paladino focuses in his work on is placed in the Mediterranean culture, and carries with itself the request of social emancipation — that can be ascribable to some Marxist topics — and the faith in the magical power. Along this route Paladino meets Ernesto De Martino’s South and Magic, Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s works. With the (...) same naturalness he makes coincide his sign with those of Matisse and Beuys, overlaps conceptually Spinoza to Jarry, Giordano Bruno to Beuys by getting the common trait in the transgressive dimension. It would be misleading trying to get a unitary route at all costs because only in the idea of the “encounter” apparently causal, that recalls the impracticable and audacious routes of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, we can get the meaning of the Paladino’s contaminations with philosophy. (shrink)

De 1815 - avec le Congrès de Vienne qui inaugure une ère de Restauration - à mars 1848, avec les répercussions de la révolution de février en Europe, la période du Vormârz ("avant mars") se caractérise, au sein du monde germanique, par une vie intellectuelle d'une particulière effervescence. Les grandes philosophies qui se sont construites pour dépasser Kant, avec Fichte, Schelling et Hegel, autorisent bon nombre de penseurs allemands à considérer l'Allemagne comme étant philosophiquement en avance sur son temps, ou (...) tout au moins à la pointe de la modernité. Cette avance théorique tranche pourtant avec la réalité politique et sociale de l'époque, façonnée par Metternich. Une solution de cette contradiction dans laquelle se trouve l'Allemagne semble alors résider, aux yeux de certains auteurs, dans l'idée suivant laquelle il ne resterait plus à l'Allemagne qu'à réaliser sa philosophie. Le présent ouvrage entend contribuer à l'analyse de la façon dont le thème de la réalisation de la philosophie est élaboré par, ou à partir des réflexions de plusieurs auteurs de l'époque. Il s'agit des Jeunes Hégéliens, et principalement : Eduard Gans, Heinrich Heine, Arnold Ruge, Ludwig Feuerbach, Max Stirner, David Strauss, les frères Bruno et Edgar Bauer, Moses Hess, Michel Bakounine, August von Cieszkowski, Karl Marx et Friedrich Engels."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

"Kant, Kantianism and Idealism" presents an overview of German Idealism, the major movement in philosophy from the late 18th to the middle of the 19th Century. The period was dominated by Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, whose work influenced not just philosophy, but also art, theology and politics. The volume covers not only these major figures but also their main followers and interpreters. These include Kant's younger contemporary Herder, his early critics such as Jacobi, Reinhold, and Maimon, and his readers (...) Schiller and Schlegel - who shaped much of the subsequent reception of Kant in art, literature and aesthetics - as well as Schopenhauer, whose unique appropriation and criticism of theories of cognition later had a decisive influence on Nietzsche. The "Young Hegelians" - such as Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, and David Friedrich Strauss, whose writings would influence Engels and Marx - are also discussed. The influence of Kant and German Idealism also extended into France, shaping the thought of such figures as Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Proudhon, whose work would prove decisive for subsequent philosophical, political, and economic thinking in Europe in the second half of the 19th century. (shrink)

I argue against the interpretation of propositions as intentions and proof-objects as fulfillments proposed by Heyting and defended by Tieszen and van Atten. The idea is already a frequent target of criticisms regarding the incompatibility of Brouwer’s and Husserl’s positions, mainly by Rosado Haddock and Hill. I raise a stronger objection in this paper. My claim is that even if we grant that the incompatibility can be properly dealt with, as van Atten believes it can, two fundamental issues indicate that (...) the interpretation is unsustainable regardless: (1) it is hard to determine, without appealing to propositional intentions on pain of circularity, what intention a proof-object should be understood as a fulfillment of; (2) due to a difficult fulfillment dilemma, it is unclear, at best, what the object of an intention corresponding to a proposition is. (shrink)

Research teams have made considerable progress in treating absolute uterine factor infertility through uterus transplantation, though studies have differed on the choice of either deceased or living donors. While researchers continue to analyze the medical feasibility of both approaches, little attention has been paid to the ethics of using deceased versus living donors as well as the protections that must be in place for each. Both types of uterus donation also pose unique regulatory challenges, including how to allocate donated organs; (...) whether the donor / donor's family has any rights to the uterus and resulting child; how to manage contact between the donor / donor's family, recipient, and resulting child; and how to track outcomes moving forward. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

Fichte argues that the conclusion of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories is correct yet lacks a crucial premise, given Kant’s admission that the metaphysical deduction locates an arbitrary origin for the categories. Fichte provides the missing premise by employing a new method: a genetic deduction of the categories from a first principle. Since Fichte claims to articulate the same view as Kant in a different, it is crucial to grasp genetic deduction in relation to the sorts of deduction that (...) Kant offers. I propose to interpret genetic deduction as the simultaneous fulfillment of two tasks: answering the question quid facti by deriving the categories from the I and answering the question quid juris by establishing our entitlement to the categories as conditions of experience. While the second task represents Fichte’s agreement with Kant’s transcendental deduction, the first reflects his correction of Kant’s metaphysical deduction. (shrink)

This paper argues that we should solve paradoxes for propositions (such as the Russell–Myhill paradox) in essentially the same way that we solve Russellian paradoxes for sets. That is, the standard, iterative approach to sets is extended to include properties, and then the resulting hierarchy of sets and properties is used to construct propositions. Propositions on this account are structured in the sense of mirroring the sentences that express them, and they would seem to serve the needs of philosophers of (...) language and metaphysicians who rely on such propositions. The resulting account has limitations, comparable to those faced by the iterative approach to sets, but it is argued to be in important ways preferable to others that have been proposed. (shrink)

In the last few years, researchers have begun to investigate the emergence of novel forms of human communication in the laboratory. I survey this growing line of research, which may be called experimental semiotics, from three distinct angles. First, I situate the new approach in its theoretical and historical context. Second, I review a sample of studies that exemplify experimental semiotics. Third, I present an empirical study that illustrates how the new approach can help us understand the socio‐cognitive underpinnings of (...) human communication. The main conclusion of the paper will be that, by reproducing micro samples of historical processes in the laboratory, experimental semiotics offers new powerful tools for investigating human communication as a form of joint action. (shrink)

Are there different sizes of infinity? That is, are there infinite sets of different sizes? This is one of the most natural questions that one can ask about the infinite. But it is of course generally taken to be settled by mathematical results, such as Cantor’s theorem, to the effect that there are infinite sets without bijections between them. These results settle the question, given an almost universally accepted principle relating size to the existence of functions. The principle is: for (...) any sets A and B, if A is the same size as B, then there is a bijection from A to B. The aim of the paper, however, is to argue that this question is in fact wide open: to argue that we are not in a position to know the answer, because we are not in one to know the principle. The aim, that is, is to argue that for all we know there is only one size of infinity. (shrink)

Latour in this essay criticizes and abandons the approach to science studies—in which the object of study is presumed to be inert and passively circulating amid networks of practices, institutions, authorities, and historical events — that he took in “The ‘Pédofil’ of Boa Vista,” an article published in the spring 1995 issue of Common Knowledge. Here he argues that Whitehead’s neglected text Process and Reality offers the possibility of a radical historical realism that puts the scientific object and the scientist’s (...) laboratory on the same footing. His case study is of the Lille laboratory where, in 1858, Pasteur identified a yeast responsible for lactic fermentation. Even as Pasteur acted to cause the yeast to emerge, he felt—in a way that practicing scientists often attest—that he was “led” to do so by the propensity of things. Whitehead enables us to understand that it was not Pasteur alone who altered the representation of fermentation; the fermentation itself modified its manifestation. Hence there is historicity not only on the human side of scientific discovery—the story of Pasteur and his yeast—but also historicity on the nonhuman side—the story of the yeast and its Pasteur. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for Fit, a prudential version of the claim that attitudes must fit their objects, the claim that there is an extra benefit when one's reactions fit their objects. I argue that Fit has surprising and powerful consequences for theories of well-being. Classic versions of the objective list theory, hedonism, desire views, and loving-the-good theories do not accommodate Fit. Suitable modifications change some of the views substantially. Modified views give reactions a robust role as sources of (...) well-being, and they accept that objects call for some attitudes but not others. I argue that objective list theories and loving-the-good theories require the most minimal changes to accommodate Fit, so we have a pro tanto reason to favor these views over alternatives. (shrink)

Our understanding of Schelling’s internal critique of German idealism, including his late attack on Hegel, is incomplete unless we trace it to the early “Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism,” which initiate his engagement with the problem of systematicity—that judgment makes deriving a system of a priori conditions from a first principle necessary, while this capacity’s finitude makes this impossible. Schelling aims to demonstrate this problem’s intractability. My conceptual aim is to reconstruct this from the “Letters,” which reject Fichte’s claim (...) that the Wissenschaftslehre is an unrivalled system. I read Schelling as charging Fichte with misrepresenting a system’s livability or commensurability with our finitude. My historical aim is to provide a framework for understanding Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, which argues that a system’s liveability depends on its incompleteness or limitation by our finitude. On my reading, Schelling is early and continually committed to systematicity within the bounds of human finitude. (shrink)

Brain imaging studies suggest that truth telling constitutes the default of the human brain and that lying involves intentional suppression of the predominant truth response. By manipulating the truth proportion in the Sheffield lie test, we investigated whether the dominance of the truth response is malleable. Results showed that frequent truth telling made lying more difficult, and that frequent lying made lying easier. These results implicate that the accuracy of lie detection tests may be improved by increasing the dominance of (...) the truth response and that habitual lying makes the lie response more dominant. (shrink)

Bohmian mechanics represents the universe as a set of paths with a probability measure defined on it. The way in which a mathematical model of this kind can explain the observed phenomena of the universe is examined in general. It is shown that the explanation does not make use of the full probability measure, but rather of a suitable set function deriving from it, which defines relative typicality between single-time cylinder sets. Such a set function can also be derived directly (...) from the standard quantum formalism, without the need of an underlying probability measure. The key concept for this derivation is the quantum typicality rule, which can be considered as a generalization of the Born rule. The result is a new formulation of quantum mechanics, in which particles follow definite trajectories, but which is based only on the standard formalism of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Scholars agree that Schelling’s critique of Hegel consists in charging reason with an inability to account for its own possibility. This is not an attack on reason’s project of constructing a logical system, but rather on the pretense of doing so with complete justification and so without presuppositions, as if it were obvious why there is a logical system or why there is anything meaningful at all. Scholars accordingly cite the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ as emblematic (...) of Schelling’s critique and the source of his claim against Hegel that reason is bounded by something other than itself. But what sort of claim is this? For what sort of argument could it be the conclusion? On these questions, the literature is lacking. I propose that the question ‘why something’ motivates Schelling to give a transcendental argument to the effect that past and future are a priori conditions of the possibility of reason. As I reconstruct it from the Weltalter, this argument construes the past as the pre-rational decision to construct a logical system, while the future represents the purpose that guides the construction of the same. Schelling’s claim against Hegel that reason is bounded by something other is thus the discovery of inescapable presuppositions that condition the possibility of reason as such. (shrink)

This paper discusses the prospects of a comprehensive philosophical account of promising that relies centrally on the notion of trust. I lay out the core idea behind the Trust View, showing how it convincingly explains the normative contours and the unique value of our promissory practice. I then sketch three distinct options of how the Trust View can explain the normativity of promises. First, an effect based-view, second, a view drawing on a wider norm demanding respect to those whom one (...) has invited to something, and finally, as a new suggestion, a Normative Interest View. This view holds that promising is a normative power that serves our interest in facilitating or enabling the relationship of trust between promisor and promisee. I argue that only those embracing the third view can fully account for the distinctive obligation that results from the giving of a valid promise in all cases. (shrink)

During his Jena period, Fichte endorses a curious dictum: ‘the kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of person one is’. How can Fichte’s dictum support a vindication of German idealism over Spinozism, which he also calls ‘dogmatism’? I will show that the answer to this seemingly straightforward question reveals a rather complex series of metametaphysical objections that shape the development of the entire German idealist tradition. Ultimately, as I will suggest, the series of metametaphysical questions that shape (...) the German idealist tradition must culminate in the question of how to understand the relation between philosophy and its presuppositions. I will conclude by briefly considering a hermeneutical response to this question. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that blameworthiness is epistemically constrained. If one lacks sufficient epistemic access to the fact that some action harms another, then one cannot be blamed for harming. Acceptance of an epistemic condition for blameworthiness can give rise to a worry, however: could agents ever successfully evade blameworthiness by deliberately stunting their epistemic position? I discuss a particularly worrisome version of such epistemic shirking, in which agents pre-emptively seek to avoid access to potentially morally relevant facts. As Roy (...) Sorensen and Jan Willem Wieland have argued, we seem to be faced with a potentially troubling regress when trying to explain what goes wrong in such situations. I argue that the solution to this so-called Shirker Problem is not to be found in complicated and demanding anti-shirking-principles with universal scope and potentially self-reflexive content. Instead, careful consideration of the necessary motivational make-up of genuine shirkers reveals their ignorance to lack the necessary depth to be exculpatory. Since shirkers by definition react to the possibility of the revelation of morally relevant facts with acts of epistemic self-limitation, they necessarily prove guilty of a form of culpable moral recklessness. Epistemic shirking thus does not pose a worrisome problem for ethical theory. (shrink)

Meillassoux seeks knowledge of transcendental reality, blaming Kant for the ‘correlationist’ proscription of independent access to either thought or being. For Meillassoux, correlationism blocks an account of the meaning of ‘ancestral statements’ regarding reality prior to humans. I examine three charges on which Meillassoux’s argument depends: (1) Kant distorts ancestral statements’ meaning; (2) Kant fallaciously infers causality’s necessity; (3) Kant’s transcendental idealism cannot grasp ‘the great outdoors’. I reject these charges: (1) imposes a Cartesian misreading, hence Meillassoux’s false assumption that, (...) for Kant, objects don’t exist without subjects; (2) misreads Kant, who infers causality’s necessity from the possibility of experience; (3) casts Kant’s idealism as subjective, ignoring his perspectival portrayal of it. (shrink)

A necessarily true sentence is 'brute' if it does not rigidly refer to anything and if it cannot be reduced to a logical truth. The question of whether there are brute necessities is an extremely natural one. Cian Dorr has recently argued for far-reaching metaphysical claims on the basis of the principle that there are no brute necessities: he initially argued that there are no non-symmetric relations, and later that there are no abstract objects at all. I argue that there (...) are nominalistically acceptable brute necessities, and that Dorr's arguments thus fail. My argument is an application of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. (shrink)

Kripke [1975] gives a formal theory of truth based on Kleene's strong evaluation scheme. It is probably the most important and influential that has yet been given—at least since Tarski. However, it has been argued that this theory has a problem with generalized quantifiers such as All—that is, All ϕs are ψ—or Most. Specifically, it has been argued that such quantifiers preclude the existence of just the sort of language that Kripke aims to deliver—one that contains its own truth predicate. (...) In this paper I solve the problem by showing how Kleene's strong scheme, and Kripke's theory based on it, can in a natural way be extended to accommodate the full range of generalized quantifiers. (shrink)

Ni konstruas nun malbonajn korpojn, kun malfinita Morleya ranko, kiuj estas ricevitaj per memsuficanta amalgameco de korpoj kun unara predikato nomanta sumigan au obligan subgrupon, ciam lau la Hrushovskija maniero. Al uzado de ciuj kiuj la anglujon malkonprenas, tiel tradukigas la supera citajo : "Estas prava ke tiu ci kiu kun la sago interrilatigas, la sagecon rikoltas". Gustatempe, la autoro varmege dankas ciujn kiuj la korektan citajon sendis al li, speciale la unuan respondinton : David KUEKER.

This article proposes a way of doing type theory informally, assuming a cubical style of reasoning. It can thus be viewed as a first step toward a cubical alternative to the program of informalization of type theory carried out in the homotopy type theory book for dependent type theory augmented with axioms for univalence and higher inductive types. We adopt a cartesian cubical type theory proposed by Angiuli, Brunerie, Coquand, Favonia, Harper, and Licata as the implicit foundation, confining our presentation (...) to elementary results such as function extensionality, the derivation of weak connections and path induction, the groupoid structure of types, and the Eckmman–Hilton duality. (shrink)

The phenomenon of resonance is central in the contemporary literature on well-being. Many philosophers accept the Resonance Constraint: if something is good for a person, it must resonate with her. Failing to meet this constraint is often thought to be a forceful blow to a theory of well-being. It is widely assumed that resonance must be motivational. I call attention to and argue for an underexplored aspect of resonance, namely cognitive resonance. I provide arguments for Belief-Resonance, the claim that if (...) a person believes that something is good for her, it resonates with her. The Resonance Constraint allegedly favors subjectivism. I argue that there are facts about people’s well-being and that someone who is fully informed and reasons well would come to have true beliefs about her well-being. Based on these arguments, I formulate and defend a novel strategy for objectivists to respond to alienation objections. I conclude that objectivism is as well equipped to deal with alienation problems as prominent subjectivist views that appeal to idealization. (shrink)