Larmore aims to recover three forms of moral complexity that have often been neglected by moral and political philosophers. First, he argues that virtue is not simply the conscientious adherence to principle. Rather, the exercise of virtue apply. He argues - and this is the second pattern of complexity - that recognizing the value of constitutive ties with shared forms of life does not undermine the liberal ideal of political neutrality toward differing ideals of the good life. Finally Larmore agrues (...) for what he calls the heterogeneity of morality. Moral thinking need not be exclusively deontological or consequentialist, and we should recognize that the ultimate sources of moral value are diverse. The arguments presented here do not attack the possibility of moral theory. But in addressing some of the central issues of moral and political thinking today thay attempt to restore to that thinking greater flexibility and a necessary sensitivity to our common experience. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume all explore the problem of the relation between moral philosophy and modernity. Charles Larmore addresses this problem by attempting to define the way distinctive forms of modern experience should orientate our moral thinking. Charles Larmore wonders whether the dominant forms of modern philosophy have not become blind to important dimensions of the moral life. The book argues against recent attempts to return to the virtue-centered perspective of ancient Greek ethics. As well as (...) exploring the differences between ancient and modern ethics, the author examines such topics as the roles of reason and history in our moral understanding, the inadequacy of philsophical naturalism, and the foundations of modern liberalism. There are also extended discussions of a number of leading contemporary philosophers: Rawls, Habermas, Williams and Rorty. (shrink)

This book intends to introduce readers to the work of Charles E. Butterworth, and thereby to introduce students to Medieval islamic political philosophy, of which Butterworth is one of the world's most prominent scholars. In a wider sense, the Festschrift introduces its readers to the current debates on Medieval islamic political philosophy, related as they are to the questions of the relationship between islam and Christianity, the Medieval to the Modern world, and reason and revelation. Butterworth's scholarship spans six (...) decades, primarily translating, editing, and interpreting the works of the Muslim political philosopher Alfarabi (d. 950) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d. 1198). He began his studies of Muslim political philosophy at a time when the Middle East and islam did not have the political salience they have acquired in more recent years. instead, Butterworth's reason for engaging with islam was rooted in the question of the relationship between reason and revelation. While one possible answer was pursued in the Christian, latin West, the islamic borderlands of Greek, Roman, and Muslim civilization offered another. By exploring Averroes, who provides the possibility of an Aristotelian-Islamic political philosophy, and Alfarabi, who pursues a Platonic-islamic political philosophy, Butterworth showed how islamic civilization provided a viable alternative to the theologico-political question reason v revelation, as well as serving as an inspiration to the latin West. (shrink)

A new understanding of political philosophy from one of its leading thinkers What is political philosophy? What are its fundamental problems? And how should it be distinguished from moral philosophy? In this book, Charles Larmore redefines the distinctive aims of political philosophy, reformulating in this light the basis of a liberal understanding of politics. Because political life is characterized by deep and enduring conflict between rival interests and differing moral ideals, the core problems of political philosophy are the regulation (...) of conflict and the conditions under which the members of society may thus be made subject to political authority. We cannot assume that reason will lead to unanimity about these matters because individuals hold different moral convictions. Larmore therefore analyzes the concept of reasonable disagreement and investigates the ways we can adjudicate conflicts among people who reasonably disagree about the nature of the human good and the proper basis of political society. Challenging both the classical liberalism of Locke, Kant, and Mill, and more recent theories of political realism proposed by Bernard Williams and others, Larmore argues for a version of political liberalism that is centered on political legitimacy rather than on social justice, and that aims to be well suited to our times rather than universally valid. Forceful and thorough yet concise, What Is Political Philosophy? proposes a new definition of political philosophy and demonstrates the profound implications of that definition. The result is a compelling and distinctive intervention from a major political philosopher. (shrink)

I mean by the phrase "taking differences seriously" freeing differences from the conceptual and linguistic formations that promote recognitions based on categorical grouping and what we might call domination by images of familiar normalcy and global similarities. 1 I have in mind a discipline of turning out of those ways of speaking and thinking that intend to bring unity and essential harmony to highly diverse events and entities. Those are ways of thinking and speaking that assume that original identities define (...) basic resemblances among classes of things. I understand this claim to mean that many current and established ways of thinking are dangerous for this country's diverse culture and for our .. (shrink)

"Like Foucault and Levinas before him, though in very different ways, Scott makes an oblique incision into phenomenology... [it is] the kind of book to which people dazed by the specters of nihilism will be referred by those in the know." —David Wood "... refreshing and original." —Edward S. Casey In The Lives of Things, Charles E. Scott reconsiders our relationships with ordinary, everyday things and our capacity to engage them in their particularity. He takes up the Greek notion (...) of phusis, or physicality, as a way to point out limitations in refined and commonplace views of nature and the body as well as a device to highlight the often overlooked lives of things that people encounter. Scott explores questions of unity, purpose, coherence, universality, and experiences of wonder and astonishment in connection with scientific fact and knowledge. He develops these themes with lightness and wit, ultimately articulating a new interpretation of the appearances of things that are beyond the reach of language and thought. (shrink)

An examination of split-brain syndrome, and whether split-brain patients have two minds.

In theCompanion to Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophyan international group of fourteen Heidegger scholars shares strategies for reading and understanding this challenging work.

"... stimulating and insightful... a thoroughly researched and timely contribution to the secondary literature of ethics... " —Library Journal "His important new work establishes Scott... as one of the foremost interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition of the US.... Necessary for anyone working in ethics or the Continental tradition." —Choice "... a provocative discourse on the consequences of the ethical in the thought of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Heidegger." —The Journal of Religion Charles E. Scott's challenging book advances the broad (...) claim that ethics as a way of judging and thinking has come into question as philosophers have confronted suffering and conflicts that arise from our traditional systems of value. (shrink)

Constitutes a thoughtful survey of contemporary hermeneutics in its historical context.

Living with Indifference is about the dimension of life that is utterly neutral, without care, feeling, or personality. In this provocative work that is anything but indifferent, Charles E. Scott explores the ways people have spoken and thought about indifference. Exploring topics such as time, chance, beauty, imagination, violence, and virtue, Scott shows how affirming indifference can be beneficial, and how destructive consequences can occur when we deny it. Scott’s preoccupation with indifference issues a demand for focused attention in (...) connection with personal values, ethics, and beliefs. This elegantly argued book speaks to the positive value of diversity and a world that is open to human passion. (shrink)

Uses interviews with one hundred twenty-five leading male executives to determine how companies can be managed both profitably and ethically.

Foucault's genealogies and archeologies provide occasions in which one may come to know the powers, accidents, and influences that have structured a particular knowledge or discipline. The Birth of the Clinic shows the development of modern medicine in a process by which rational inference and emphasis on the history of a disease are replaced by pathological anatomy. In modern anatomy, the corpse, not reason, became the “space” of modern medical knowledge. In this “space” developed a confederation of dead body, knowledge, (...) trained and noninferential gaze, organic unity, and the increased importance of bodily space instead of physical time. The discussion shows how Foucault's genealogy of modern medicine is influenced by and overcomes the knowledge that it describes. In this context, his genealogy is also shown to be self-overcoming and to raise important questions for medical ethics when ethical thought is conceived within the structures of knowledge that have been exposed by the genealogy. (shrink)

These essays on the way medieval Arabic philosophy was first introduced into European universities explain their formal working and provide fascinating accounts of the hardy souls who first ventured, literally, into hitherto unknown terrain.

ABSTRACT In his 1981–82 lectures The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault claims that a significant portion of the modern historiography of ancient philosophy tends to discredit the ethical framework of epimeleia heautou (“care of the self”). The thematic analysis of knowledge in the historiography of ancient philosophy overshadows the theme of care of the self. Taking Foucault’s claim as a point of departure, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, the paper provides a genealogy of the early Hellenistic (...) Academy, from Polemo to Arcesilaus. Second, the paper demonstrates that for Arcesilaus, the alleged pioneer of what modern historiography has designated the Academy’s epistemological scepticism, philosophy is not restricted to a continual search for knowledge at a theoretically rarefied level of challenging arguments or discursive statements. This paper situates Arcesilaus’ opposition to early Stoic epistemology within the framework of Academic epimeleia heautou, and defends the thesis that under Arcesilaus the Hellenistic Academy undergoes a shift in the practice of care of the self. (shrink)

This paper explores the notions of hope and how individual patient autonomy can trump carefully reasoned ethical concerns and policies intended to regulate stem cell transplants. We argue that the same limits of knowledge that inform arguments to restrain and regulate unproven treatments might also undermine our ability to comprehensively dismiss or condemn them. Incautiously or indiscriminately reasoned policies and attitudes may drive critical information and data underground, impel patients away from working with clinical researchers, and tread needlessly on hope, (...) the essential motivator of patients, advocates and researchers alike. We offer recommendations to clinicians and health care providers to help balance the discourse with individuals seeking treatment while guarding against fraud, misconception, and patient harm. (shrink)

Victor Turner's comparative symbology provides a description of liminality, marginality, and liminoid genres that can be usefully applied to positioning theology in a theory of practice, determining its social location, and assessing its future meaning. This paper argues not only that theological marginality is a result of the secularization of culture but also that the breach with theology's pubiics reflects a more significant internal breach that is essential to theology as a liminoid form of public reflexivity. The paper draws from (...) deconstructionist philosophy and defines the interpretive task of theology as a deconstructionist hermeneutic. (shrink)

Roger Schank's research in AI takes seriously the ideas that understanding natural language involves mapping its expressions into an internal representation scheme and that these internal representations have a syntax appropriate for computational operations. It therefore falls within the computational approach to the study of mind. This paper discusses certain aspects of Schank's approach in order to assess its potential adequacy as a (partial) model of cognition. This version of the Language of Thought hypothesis encounters some of the same difficulties (...) that arise for Fodor's account. (shrink)

It is the purpose of this paper to review the present status of discussion concerning the concept of probability. The exposition will consist of six sections: A brief statement of the most important traditional views of the concept of probability: subjective and objective; A brief criticism of two traditionally important conceptions: a priori probability and the Principle of Indifference; A criticism of an outstanding example of the subjective theory of probability, the theory of F. P. Ramsey; A criticism of the (...) most widely known of the objective logical theories of probability, the theory of J. M. Keynes; Some remarks concerning the results of the recent work of Reichenbach and von Mises with particular reference to clarification of the concept of probability; A summary of the case for the frequency interpretation of probability, revealing its basic importance in the light of present evidence. (shrink)

This essay begins by providing a new account of wittgenstein's private language argument. Wittgenstein's rejection of a "cartesian" account of mind is examined, And it is argued that this rejection carries no commitment to behaviorism, Or to the view that sensation terms have public meanings and private references. Part ii of the essay attempts to forge a link between the two parts of the "philosophical investigations", By arguing that wittgenstein's discussion of "seeing-As" reinforces and illuminates his account of how sensation (...) language is mastered. (shrink)