BackgroundNeuroimaging studies have shown a complex pattern of brain activation during perception of a pleasant odor and during its olfactory imagery. To date, little is known regarding changes in motor cortex excitability during these tasks. Bergamot essential oil is extensively used in perfumes and cosmetics for its pleasantness. Therefore, to further our understanding of the human sense of smell, this study aimed to investigate the effect of perception and imagery of a pleasant odor on motor cortex using Transcranial magnetic stimulation.Materials (...) and MethodsWe examined the primary motor cortex excitability during perception of a pleasant odor or perception of odorless saline. Furthermore, we tested the effect of olfactory imagery of BEO on corticospinal excitability. The increase in motor evoked potential amplitude was correlated with personality dimensions scores, pleasantness, vividness, and general imagery ability.ResultsThe results indicate that the corticospinal excitability changed after both perception and imagery of a pleasant odor. The correlation analysis shows an association with neuroticism personality trait and with general olfactory imagery ability.ConclusionBoth perception of a pleasant odor and its olfactory imagery modulate motor cortex excitability. The enhanced brain activation is affected by specific individual characteristics. Overall, our findings provide physiological evidence for a complex interaction between the olfactory and motor systems. (shrink)

In the eyes of his own contemporaries and successors, as well as many today, Giordano Bruno is something of an ‘outsider’ because of his views in metaphysics, ontology, cosmology, and theology. Concentrating on his central theses, I will show how, with an immense speculative energy, Bruno escaped the ordinary philosophical, scientific, and theological traditions. He conceived of himself, as it were, as a mirror reflecting an unending universe without a center, and through the power of language and ingenium (...) transfers the structure of this universe to the human mind. Bruno’s philosophy, which he himself referred to as ‘new’ or as a «philosophia nolana», required a semantic transformation of traditional terms, because he, no more than any other thinker, could start completely afresh. Although his views initially appear to place him outside of traditional discussions, they in fact touch, in each case, on central problems of traditional philosophical and theological discourse. (shrink)

Este artigo discute o significado e desenvolvimento do conceito de religião no cenário histórico e teórico do início da filosofia moderna. Considerando especialmente as contribuições dos mais importantes filósofos do Renascimento, dentre os quais Nicolau de Cusa, Marsílio Ficino, Maquiavel, Cardano e Bruno, discute as bases metafísicas e antropológicas da religião, bem como sua função política no alvorecer do pensamento filosófico moderno.

ABSTRACTAnxiety and depression diagnoses are associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviours. However, a categorical understanding of these associations limits insight into identifying dimensional mechanisms of suicide risk. This study investigated anxious and depressive features through a lens of suicide risk, independent of diagnosis. Latent class analysis of 97 depression, anxiety, and suicidality-related items among 616 psychiatric outpatients indicated a 3-class solution, specifically: a higher suicide-risk class uniquely differentiated from both other classes by high reported levels of depression and anxious arousal; (...) a lower suicide-risk class that reported levels of anxiety sensitivity and generalised worry comparable to Class 1, but lower levels of depression and anxious arousal; and a low to non-suicidal class that reported relatively low levels across all depression and anxiety measures. Discriminants of the higher suicide-risk class included borderline personality disorder; report... (shrink)

Dualistische Ansichten über den Menschen galten bis vor kurzem als veraltet oder gar als tot. In neuester Zeit sind sie aber von namhaften Philosophen zu neuem Leben erweckt worden. Warum vertreten sie dualistische Positionen? War Platon Dualist? Brauchte Aristoteles einen Dualismus? Müssen Christen, die an die Auferstehung glauben, den Menschen dualistisch deuten? Gibt es eine aristotelische Mittelposition zwischen Naturalismus und Dualismus? Teilen Naturalisten und Dualisten ein problematisches Körperverständnis? Antworten auf diese Fragen finden Sie in den Beiträgen des vorliegenden Buches. Mit (...) Beiträgen von Eleonore Stump, Richard Swinburne, Uwe Meixner, Edmund Runggaldier, Bruno Niederbacher, Josef Quitterer, Anselm Winfried Müller, Michael Bordt, Uwe Voigt, Marianne Schark, Michael-Thomas Liske. (shrink)

Attempts a faithful account of Bruno's thought as expressed in his writings and to give an analysis of his thought as he developed it in regard to the issue of the infinitive.

This review assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Peter Thomas’s long-awaited study ofThe Prison Notebooks, based on his extensive research and philological reconstruction of the critical edition. I distinguish three senses in which the ‘moment’ in the book’s title can be understood: as the historical moment around 1932 in which Gramsci proposed the outline of his distinct brand of the philosophy of praxis; as the moment or momentum that still lies in wait for a future research programme in Marxist (...) philosophy; and as a methodological principle for understanding the dialectic as a theory in which entities such as state and civil society, but also coercion and consent, far from allowing the kind of Eurocommunist or post-Marxist instrumentalisations in which they are seen as part of a chain of binaries, are actually moments of a unified larger structure that in Gramsci’s work comes to be associated with the idea of the integral state. This impressive reconstruction of Gramsci’s notebooks, however, also reveals some major lacunae, above all, in terms of the lack of attention given to Gramscian developments in the non-European world, in places such as India or Latin America. This omission is all the more surprising given the longstanding tradition, particularly in Latin America, of viewing Gramsci as a theorist of the integral state more so than of hegemony. (shrink)

In 1971, priest, theologian, and philosopher Ivan Illich wrote Deschooling Society, a plea to liberate education from schooling and to separate schooling from the state. On occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of its publication, Ivan Illich Fifty Years Later looks at the theological roots of Illich's thought and the intellectual and ideological strands that contributed to his ideas. Guided by the central question of how Illich reached the point of writing Deschooling Society, the book sheds light on how Illich produced (...) a critique of schooling that can be defined by its eclecticism. Bruno-Jofré and Igelmo Zaldívar explore how this controversial book was framed by Illich's early neo-scholastic and anti-modern foundation, his discovery of St. Thomas through Jacques Maritain, and the existential turning points that influenced his public life and intellectual direction in moving from a critique of the Church as institution to a critique of schooling. Drawing from the interpretative theories of Quentin Skinner, Reinhart Koselleck, and William H. Sewell and from concepts such as educationalization, transnationality, and configuration, among other heuristic tools, the authors provide an original and cross-disciplinary analysis of Deschooling Society and its place in Illich's journey. (shrink)

What conclusions do the facts of cosmic and organic evolution require or permit on the origin and destiny of the world and the individual? From 1881 to 1925 Thomas Whittaker, an Oxford-trained scientist turned philosopher, grappled with this question, which he tried to answer by metaphysical interpretation of the sciences. The majority of the essays in this volume first appeared in Mind, and a few in other journals, while three had not been previously published. Whittaker ranges widely over some (...) of the most daring theories of the past, from the early centuries of the common era (including Apollonius of Tyana and Origen), to the middle ages (including John Scotus Erigena and Nicholas of Cusa), the renaissance (Giordano Bruno, Shakespeare) and the early modern period. Whittaker's own view is that hypothesis and imagination are legitimate aids in the search for truth in both science and philosophy in a new synthesis. (shrink)

ResumoO argumento do milagre afirma que o realismo científico é a melhor explicação para o sucesso da ciência:teorias científicas são bem-sucedidas porque são verdadeiras, e cientistas são bem-sucedidos em encontrarteorias verdadeiras porque se baseiam em normas metodológicas confiáveis. A tese da incomensurabilidademetodológica afirma que teorias científicas não são escolhidas através de um algoritmo neutro de normas epistêmicas. Isso revela uma lacuna na explicação realista: normas epistêmicas confiáveis não são suficientes para conduzir a escolhas de teorias verdadeiras, pois tais escolhas também (...) são determinadas por outros fatores além de normas epistêmicas. A introdução de fatores adicionais como subdeterminando a escolha de teorias engendrou argumentos relativistas e antirrealistas contra o realismo. A explicação realista pode ser reabilitada se postular que os cientistas possuem autoridade epistêmica para aprimorar as normas metodológicas da ciência, sendo aptos a tomar decisões autônomas em vez de regidas por regras.AbstractThe no miracles argument claims that scientific realism is the best explanation to science’s success: scientifictheories are empirically successful because they are truthlike, and scientists are successful in theory-choices because they rely on reliable methodological norms. The methodological incommensurability thesis claims that there is no neutral algorithm for theory-choice. It reveals a gap in the realist explanation: reliable epistemic norms are not sufficient to guarantee successful theory-choices, because theory- choices are also determined by other factors besides epistemic norms. The introduction of additional factors as underdetermining theory-choices motivates relativist and antirealist positions. But the realist explanation can be rehabilitated if it postulates that scientists have epistemic authority to develop methodological norms, being apt to take decisions which are autonomous rather than rule-driven. (shrink)

Gordon Kaufman's theology is characterized by a heightened tension between transcendence, expressed as theocentrism, and immanence, expressed as theological naturalism. The interplay between these two motifs leads to a contradiction between an austerity created by the conjunction of naturalism and theocentrism, on the one hand, and a humanized cosmos which is characterized by a pivotal and unique role for human moral agency, on the other. This paper tracks some of the influences behind Kaufman's program (primarily H. Richard Niebuhr and Henry (...) Nelson Wieman) and then utilizes the flat ontology that emerges in the work of philosopher/sociologist of science Bruno Latour and of environmental philosopher Timothy Morton in order to point toward a reconstructed immanent theocentrism that no longer stakes meaning and value on the unique place of the human. Such a theology remains theocentric, but is now fully ecological. (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)

Nous n’avons jamais été modernes : ce livre de Bruno Latour qui, considéré d’un point de vue philosophique, fut probablement son ouvrage le plus substantiel, porte un titre aussi évocateur que succinct. La formule met d’une part l’accent sur l’ampleur de ce qui fut défini, sous des rapports historiques autant que systématiques, comme « moderne », ou encore comme « les modernes ». Elle remet d’autre part en question à qui ou à quoi – c’est-à-dire à quelles entités naturelles (...) autant qu’artifici... (shrink)

Peter Sloterdijk turns his keen eye to the history of western thought, conducting colorful readings of the lives and ideas of the world's most influential intellectuals. Featuring nineteen vignettes rich in personal characterizations and theoretical analysis, Sloterdijk's companionable volume casts the development of philosophical thinking not as a buildup of compelling books and arguments but as a lifelong, intimate struggle with intellectual and spiritual movements, filled with as many pitfalls and derailments as transcendent breakthroughs. Sloterdijk delves into the work and (...) times of Aristotle, Augustine, Bruno, Descartes, Foucault, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl, Kant, Kierkegaard, Leibniz, Marx, Nietzsche, Pascal, Plato, Sartre, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Wittgenstein. He provocatively juxtaposes Plato against shamanism and Marx against Gnosticism, revealing both the vital external influences shaping these intellectuals' thought and the excitement and wonder generated by the application of their thinking in the real world. The philosophical "temperament" as conceived by Sloterdijk represents the uniquely creative encounter between the mind and a diverse array of cultures. It marks these philosophers' singular achievements and the special dynamic at play in philosophy as a whole. Creston Davis's introduction details Sloterdijk's own temperament, surveying the celebrated thinker's intellectual context, rhetorical style, and philosophical persona. (shrink)

In this paper, I engage with the motif of “the pluriverse” such as it has increasingly been used in the past few years in several strands of critical humanities pertaining to the so-called “ontological turn”: science and technology studies (Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers), critical geography and political ontology (Mario Blaser), cultural anthropology (Marisol de la Cadena, Arturo Escobar, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro), decolonial thought (Walter Mignolo), or posthuman feminism (Donna Haraway). These various iterations of the figure of the pluriverse (...) constitute a loose network of textual traces, a supposedly new scene for ‘humanities’, organized around what is understood as a pluralistic ontology. In political terms, the discourse of the pluriverse presents itself as a strategic response to the violence of universalism. It advocates for a multiversal ethics, a pluriversal cosmopolitics based on interspecies and multi-natural kinships, and more aware of the multiplicity of worlds and world-making practices that make up the post-globalization scene. Based on readings of Bruno Latour, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Arturo Escobar and Marisol de la Cadena among others, I argue that the notion of pluriversality remains self-contradictory and self-defeating as long as it relies on an ontological representation of world/worlds in the form of copresence. Drawing on Derrida’s deconstruction of the concept of world (cosmos, mundus) in his late writings, I propose to think an exorbitant plurality, before the pluriverse and before being. Beyond ontological pluralism, Derrida’s “infinity of untranslatable worlds” also signifies an irreducible interruption, the end of the world, of any “world-in-common”, thus raising the stakes for the ethical demand towards the other. (shrink)

In the broadest sense of the term, “Thomism” refers to a set of ideas and principles, both in philosophy and theology that can be considered as derivations or representations of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. However, Thomism should not be considered as a mere conceptual body. It also represents a certain view and way of doing philosophy and theology. Alasdair MacIntyre, in his book Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, argues that the Thomistic approach provides a coherent and skillful (...) point of view for dealing creatively and critically with opposing views, contrasting this approach with the encyclopedic and the genealogical approaches. The former imposes a single worldview, enclosing knowledge and “truth” in a monolithic structure of “progress,” while the latter, following Nietzsche, devalues and relativizes knowledge, reducing it to a multiplicity of perspectives, each with its own claims to truth, leading to incommensurability and the consequent subjugation of “truth” to the law of the strongest. On the other hand, Thomists have adopted, from the end of the thirteenth century to the present day, different styles and ways of thinking while maintaining dialogue with their “predecessors” and at the same time with their contemporaries, that is, Thomists are capable of what MacIntyre called the “rationality of tradition”. (shrink)

Half a century into the digital era, the profound impact of information technology on intellectual and cultural life is universally acknowledged but still poorly understood. The sheer complexity of the technology coupled with the rapid pace of change makes it increasingly difficult to establish common ground and to promote thoughtful discussion. Responding to this challenge, _Switching Codes _brings together leading American and European scholars, scientists, and artists—including Charles Bernstein, Ian Foster, Bruno Latour, Alan Liu, and Richard Powers—to consider how (...) the precipitous growth of digital information and its associated technologies are transforming the ways we think and act. Employing a wide range of forms, including essay, dialogue, short fiction, and game design, this book aims to model and foster discussion between IT specialists, who typically have scant training in the humanities or traditional arts, and scholars and artists, who often understand little about the technologies that are so radically transforming their fields. _Switching Codes_ will be an indispensable volume for anyone seeking to understand the impact of digital technology on contemporary culture, including scientists, educators, policymakers, and artists, alike. (shrink)

© The Authors [2017]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] book Space, Number, and Geometry from Helmholtz to Cassirer is a reworked version of Francesca Biagioli’s PhD thesis. It aims ‘[to offer] a reconstruction of the debate on non-Euclidean geometry in neo-Kantianism between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century’. More precisely, Biagioli concentrates on how the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism dealt with what may be (...) called ‘Helmholtz’s challenge’ to the classical Kantian thesis that the geometry of space is necessarily Euclidean. To be precise, besides the Marburg current, SNG also deals with some other neo-Kantians, among them the realist neo-Kantian Alois Riehl and the South-West German neo-Kantian Bruno Bauch.According to SNG, the Marburg revision of the Kantian theory of space opened the door to a new way... (shrink)

In _The New Order and Last Orientation,_ Eric Voegelin explores two distinctly different yet equally important aspects of modernity. He begins by offering a vivid account of the political situation in seventeenth-century Europe after the decline of the church and the passing of the empire. Voegelin shows how the intellectual and political disorder of the period was met by such seemingly disparate responses as Grotius's theory of natural right, Hobbes's _Leviathan,_ the role of the Fronde in the formation of the (...) French national state, Spinoza's _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,_ and Locke's _Second Treatise,_ the blueprint of a modern middle-class society. By putting these responses and the thought of Montesquieu, Hume, and others in the context of the birth pains of the national state and the emergence of a new self-understanding of man, Voegelin achieves a brilliant mixture of political history and profound philosophical analysis. Voegelin's verdict of modernity is pronounced most powerfully in the opening part of "Last Orientation," in the chapter entitled "Phenomenalism." His discussion of the intellectual confusion underlying the modern project of scientistic phenomenalism is the most original criticism leveled against modernity to date. It is at the same time the first step toward a recovery of reality through philosophy conceived as a science of substance in the spirit of Giordano Bruno. Voegelin's first example of such an effort at recovering reality is the chapter on Schelling, one of the spiritual realists who has not been affected by the prevailing rationalist or reductionist creeds that are part of the modern disorder. Schelling's indirect yet powerful influence on Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud more than justifies Voegelin's interest in his philosophy and character, even though Voegelin would later distance himself from some of Schelling's positions. The volume's concluding chapter, "Nietzsche and Pascal," applies the understanding gained from the study of Schelling to the thought of the most powerful critic of the age, Nietzsche. Nietzsche's self-avowed affinity with Pascal provides the key to an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of his thought and reaffirms the connection that links the beginning of modernity with its most recent crises and the efforts to overcome them. (shrink)

The volume brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: Legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism. James Griffin and Yael Tamir raise questions concerning Raz's notion of group rights and its application to claims of cultural and political autonomy, while Will Kymlicka and Bernhard Peters examine Raz's theory of multicultural society. Lukas Meyer investigates the (...) applicability of the notion of harm in the intergenerational context. Other papers are devoted to fundamental theoretical tenets of Raz's work. Hillel Steiner and Andrei Marmor examine Raz's account of value pluralism and incommensurability in light of what these authors consider to be goods whose equal distribution must be valued for its own sake. Robert Alexy and Timothy Endicott discuss traditional issues of jurisprudence and legal philosphy with special attention to Raz's contribution. Rüdiger Bittner, Bruno Celano, and J. E. Penner discuss and criticize aspects of Raz's theory of practical reason. Jeremy Waldron presents a critique of Raz's interpretation of authority.This volume concludes with a chapter by Joseph Raz in which he responds to arguments in the foregoing essays. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno’s visit to Elizabethan England in the 1580s left its imprint on many fields of contemporary culture, ranging from the newly-developing science, the philosophy of knowledge and language, to the extraordinary flowering of Elizabethan poetry and drama. This book explores Bruno's influence on English figures as different as the ninth Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Harriot, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Originally published in 1989, it is of interest to students and teachers of history of ideas, cultural (...) history, European drama and renaissance England. Bruno's work had particular power and emphasis in the modern world due to his response to the cultural crisis which had developed - his impulse towards a new ‘faculty of knowing’ had a disruptive effect on existing orthodoxies – religious, scientific, philosophical, and political. (shrink)

Bruno Liebrucks hat eine eigenständige, an Vico, Herder, Hamann, Humboldt und Cassirer anknüpfende Philosophie von der Sprache her“ entwickelt, welche Sprache als Medium der Welterschließung begreift. Zu dieser gelangt er durch eine fundamentalphilosophische Auseinandersetzung mit jenen drei Revolutionierungen im Denken des Denkens, die mit den Namen Platon, Kant und Hegel verknüpft sind. Die Beiträge des Bandes gehen diesen „Revolutionen der Denkart“ nach und entfalten grundlegende Perspektiven, die sich von Liebrucks her für das Verständnis der Logik, der Philosophischen Anthropologie, der (...) Ethik und Politischen Philosophie, der Kunstphilosophie sowie der Philosophischen Theologie ergeben. Die Autoren sind: Leo Dorner, Max Gottschlich, Thomas Sören Hoffmann, Klaus Honrath, Simone Liedtke, Theodoros Penolidis, Brigitte Scheer, Werner Schmitt, Josef Simon, Maria Woschnak, Werner Woschnak und Fritz Zimbrich. (shrink)

The work of Thomas Kuhn has been very influential in Anglo-American philosophy of science and it is claimed that it has initiated the historical turn. Although this might be the case for English speaking countries, in France an historical approach has always been the rule. This article aims to investigate the similarities and differences between Kuhn and French philosophy of science or ‘French epistemology’. The first part will argue that he is influenced by French epistemologists, but by lesser known (...) authors than often thought. The second part focuses on the reactions of French epistemologists on Kuhn’s work, which were often very critical. It is argued that behind some superficial similarities there are deep disagreements between Kuhn and French epistemology. This is finally shown by a brief comparison with the reaction of more recent French philosophers of science, who distance themselves from French epistemology and are more positive about Kuhn. Based on these diverse appreciations of Kuhn, a typology of the different positions within the philosophy of science is suggested. (shrink)

The explicitly psychological works of Siger which are universally accepted as genuine are the Quaestiones in librum tertium de anima, the Tractatus de anima intellectiva, and the De intellectu. Siger’s Quaestiones in librum tertium de anima, which were written sometime between 1265 and 1270, may have been the occasion for Saint Thomas’ De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, which was issued in 1270. Some of the doctrines contained in them are also to be found in Stephen Tempier’s condemnation of the (...) same year. The distinguished Italian historian of medieval and Renaissance philosophy, the late Bruno Nardi, proved that Siger’s immediate reply to Thomas’ attack was his now lost De intellectu, a work that we know primarily from excerpts and paraphrases to be found in various works of the Renaissance philosopher, Agostino Nifo. While this reply was probably written almost immediately after the appearance of Thomas’ opusculum, that is, in 1270 or 1271, Siger authored yet another reply, the Tractatus de anima intellectiva, which Fernand Van Steenberghen has dated as written in 1272 or 1273. A brief examination of these various works and of Siger’s questions on the Liber de causis, which were written between 1273 and 1276, will make evident the evolution of Siger’s ideas on the soul and the intellect that resulted from his careful study of Saint Thomas’ opusculum. (shrink)

Recent discussions about Eucharistic practice in the United States have received increased public attention with stories of pro-life politicians being excluded from participation. In this practice of exclusion, there is a depiction of protecting the Eucharist from impurity, with the priests citing the pro-life framework as the basis for inclusion. Using this site for reflection, this article seeks to interrogate these representations of (im)purity specifically with reference to the abortion debate and the Eucharist. Taking the concept of impurity found in (...) the works of Judith Butler and Bruno Latour and placing it in conversation with ‘purity culture’ and the disproportional focus on bodies of women in cases of abortion, I seek to address constructed boundaries between dualisms such as pure and impure, as well as Church and the world. More specifically, I aim to reconfigure impurity away from being an ‘evil that must be avoided’ (Thomas Bauer) by the Church and instead ask how this can serve as a rich resource for scholars reflecting on religious practices today, rethinking the Body of Christ as one of inherent interdependency and porosity – not a space in need of protection from ‘impurity’, but one that further divides representations of purity and impurity altogether. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DISTINGUISHING CHARITY AS GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS: A KEY TO THOMAS'S SECUNDA PARS JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. Weston School of Theology Cambridge, Massachusetts HE RESPECTIVE functions of charity and prudence Thomas Aquinas's moral theology provide a key to his nderstanding of the virtues. Charity and prudence serve distinct functions. In Thomas's position, a person can have the acquired virtues without having charity; such a person (...) has a virtuous life, but it is unified by prudence, not by charity. But why is such a person without charity? Is this absence of charity due simply to the absence of faith? Is this person with the four acquired virtues but without charity simply an unbeliever? Or is this person simply a rightly-ordered person whose lack of charity is due to the absence of personal moral goodness? Is such a person simply one who, in common parlance, is a well-integrated person but not necessarily a morally good one? In a word, is moral goodness a necessary condition for the acquired moral virtues? To answer this question we will begin with the contemporary distinction between goodness and rightness and then discuss the two virtues and their functions. In the final section we will relate our findings to present-day problems in the ethics of virtue. I. Goodness an_d Rightness Since Democritus we have realized that living rightly is not necessarily an indication of being good. Democritus noted that being good required not only that we act rightly but that we want 407 408 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. to act rightly.1 Over the centuries philosophers and theologians have consistently made reference to the fact that living rightly, or as they called it " doing the good," was not a sufficient condition for describing a person as good. From Ambrose and Augustine to the present, authors have insisted that a moral description of persons is more than a mere deduction from external activity.2 Some writers, however, did not simply make reference to this distinction, but rather spent considerable time in commenting on the insight involved. Kant, for instance, in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals distinguished from the beginning between action!> done out of duty (Handeln aus Pfiicht) and dutiful actions (pfiichtmiissiges H andeln). In attempting to describe the only thing which we can call " good," that is, the will, Kant argued that a dutiful act was only good if the act was done out of duty. For example, a state executioner who executes on account of his duty to execute is good and the action is good. But if the executioner performs the dutiful act on some other account, then the action is not good, though it is dutiful. Interestingly Kant did not consider whether an act not dutiful could be called good: Is an executioner who acts out of duty but botches the job still to be called good? George Moore in his Ethics made a similar point but for different reasons. Unlike Kant's interest in goodness, Moore wanted to describe a right action free of any consideration of an agent's motives and his solution was utilitarianism. In the process of separating the agent's action, Moore realized that the right act of a person with bad motivations involves a paradox: " A man may actually deserve the strongest moral condemnation for choosing an action which is morally right." 3 However, like 1 See his Fragmenta M oralia, no. 109, as cited in Stephen Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 170. 2 Bruno Schuller of Miinster provides ample historical evidence in his Die Begrundung sittlicher Urteile (Diisseldorf: Patmos, 1980), 140. 3 George Moore, Ethics (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1912), 193-5. Cf. H. J. Paton, "The Alleged Independence of Goodness," in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, ed. P. Schilpp (New York: Tudor, 1952), 113-134; Richard Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964). GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 409 Kant, Moore did not discuss a person who sought to act rightly but who failed actually to perform a right action. Contemporary moral theology has carried the distinction further. Moral theologians like Bruno... (shrink)