Ellen Furlong and Laurie Santos helpfully summarize a number of fascinating studies of certain influences on both human and monkey behavior. As someone who works primarily in philosophy, I am not in a position to dispute the details of the studies themselves. But in this brief commentary I do want to raise some questions about the inferences Furlong and Santos make on the basis of those studies. In general, I worry that they may be overreaching beyond what their own data (...) suggests. (shrink)

Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy and (...) presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. -/- Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world. (shrink)

Our aim in this survey article is to provide an accessible overview of some key results and questions in the theory of judgment aggregation. We omit proofs and technical details, focusing instead on concepts and underlying ideas.

This article argues that standard models of person-centred care (PCC) and shared decision making (SDM) rely on simplistic, often unrealistic assumptions of patient capacities that entail that PCC/SDM might have detrimental effects in many applications. We suggest a complementary PCC/SDM approach to ensure that patients are able to execute rational decisions taken jointly with care professionals when performing self-care. Illustrated by concrete examples from a study of adolescent diabetes care, we suggest a combination of moral and psychological considerations to support (...) the claim that standard PCC/SDM threatens to systematically undermine its own goals. This threat is due to a tension between the ethical requirements of SDM in ideal circumstances and more long-term needs actualized by the context of self-care handled by patients with limited capacities for taking responsibility and adhere to their own rational decisions. To improve this situation, we suggest a counseling, self-care, adherence approach to PCC/SDM, where more attention is given to how treatment goals are internalized by patients, how patients perceive choice situations, and what emotional feedback patients are given. This focus may involve less of a concentration on autonomous and rational clinical decision making otherwise stressed in standard PCC/SDM advocacy. (shrink)

While a large social-choice-theoretic literature discusses the aggregation of individual judgments into collective ones, there is much less formal work on the transformation of judgments in group communication. I develop a model of judgment transformation and prove a baseline impossibility theorem: Any judgment transformation function satisfying some initially plausible conditions is the identity function, under which no opinion change occurs. I identify escape routes from this impossibility and argue that the kind of group communication envisaged by deliberative democats must (...) be "holistic": It must focus on webs of connected propositions, not on one proposition at a time, which echoes the Duhem-Quine "holism thesis" on scientific theory testing. My approach provides a map of the logical space in which different possible group communication processes are located. (shrink)

Abstract:Robert Sugden has suggested a normative standard of freedom as ‘opportunity’ that is supposed to help realign normative economics – with its traditional rational choice orientation – with behavioural economics. While allowing preferences to be incoherent, he wants to maintain the anti-paternalist stance of orthodox welfare economics. His standard, though, presupposes that people respond to uncertainty about their own future preferences by dismissing any kind of self-constraint. We argue that the approach lacks psychological substance: Sugden's normative benchmark – the (...) ‘responsible person’ – can hardly serve as a convincing role model in a contractarian setting. An alternative concept is introduced, and some implications are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Reinforcement learning systems usually assume that a value function is defined over all states (or state-action pairs) that can immediately give the value of a particular state or action. These values are used by a selection mechanism to decide which action to take. In contrast, when humans and animals make decisions, they collect evidence for different alternatives over time and take action only when sufficient evidence has been accumulated. We have previously developed a model of memory processing that includes semantic, (...) episodic and working memory in a comprehensive architecture. Here, we describe how this memory mechanism can support decision making when the alternatives cannot be evaluated based on immediate sensory information alone. Instead we first imagine, and then evaluate a possible future that will result from choosing one of the alternatives. Here we present an extended model that can be used as a model for decision making that depends on accumulating evidence over time, whether that information comes from the sequential attention to different sensory properties or from internal simulation of the consequences of making a particular choice. We show how the new model explains both simple immediate choices, choices that depend on multiple sensory factors and complicated selections between alternatives that require forward looking simulations based on episodic and semantic memory structures. In this framework, vicarious trial and error is explained as an internal simulation that accumulates evidence for a particular choice. We argue that a system like this forms the “missing link” between more traditional ideas of semantic and episodic memory, and the associative nature of reinforcement learning. (shrink)

There is much to admire in Michelle Ciurria’s provocative approach to ascribing moral responsibility. Her work is detailed and spells out explicitly her methodological assumptions. In this commentary, my main focus is on the methodological assumptions she makes. Ciurria’s arguments often depend on our reactions to actual cases and thought experiments. She takes it for granted that we need a theory that matches certain of our intuitions. This is not an unreasonable way to proceed. We definitely need a good reason (...) if we are going to adopt a theory that does not fit with well-established moral intuitions. Nevertheless, we need to be cautious in using these cases to guide our theory choice, especially when our .. (shrink)

According to standard rational choice theory, as commonly used in political science and economics, an agent's fundamental preferences are exogenously fixed, and any preference change over decision options is due to Bayesian information learning. Although elegant and parsimonious, such a model fails to account for preference change driven by experiences or psychological changes distinct from information learning. We develop a model of non-informational preference change. Alternatives are modelled as points in some multidimensional space, only some of whose dimensions play (...) a role in shaping the agentís preferences. Any change in these "motivationally salient" dimensions can change the agent's preferences. How it does so is described by a new representation theorem. Our model not only captures a wide range of frequently observed phenomena, but also generalizes some standard representations of preferences in political science and economics. (shrink)

One point that definitions of art experience disagree about is whether this kind of experience is qualitatively different from experiences related to ordinary objects and everyday contexts. Here, we follow an ecological approach assuming that art experience has its own specific quality that is, not least, determined by typical contexts of art presentation. Practically, we systematically observe typical phenomena of experiencing art in ecologically valid or real-world settings such as museum contexts. Based on evidences gained in this manner, we emulate (...) and implement essential properties of ecological contexts (e.g., free choice of viewing distance and time, large scale of artworks and exhibition-like context) in controlled laboratory experiments. We found, for instance, that for large scale paintings by Pollock and Rothko preferred viewing distances as well as distances inducing most intense art experiences including Aesthetic Aha insights were much larger than typical viewing distances realized in lab studies. Following Carbon’s (2019) terminology of measurement strategies of art experience, the combined use of “Path #1” (real-world context) and “Path #2” (mildly controlled, still ecologically valid settings and contexts), enables us to understand and investigate much closer what is really happening when people experience art. (shrink)

Philosophers have long noted, and empirical psychology has lately confirmed, that most people are “biased toward the future”: we prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. At least two explanations have been offered for this bias: belief in temporal passage and the practical irrelevance of the past resulting from our inability to influence past events. We set out to test the latter explanation. In a large survey, we find that participants exhibit significantly (...) less future bias when asked to consider scenarios where they can affect their own past experiences. This supports the “practical irrelevance” explanation of future bias. It also suggests that future bias is not an inflexible preference hardwired by evolution, but results from a more general disposition to “accept the things we cannot change”. However, participants still exhibited substantial future bias in scenarios in which they could affect the past, leaving room for complementary explanations. Beyond the main finding, our results also indicate that future bias is stake-sensitive and that participants endorse the normative correctness of their future-biased preferences and choices. In combination, these results shed light on philosophical debates over the rationality of future bias, suggesting that it may be a rational response to empirical realities rather than a brute, arational disposition. (shrink)

Many seem to think that AI-induced responsibility gaps are morally bad and therefore ought to be avoided. We argue, by contrast, that there is at least a pro tanto reason to welcome responsibility gaps. The central reason is that it can be bad for people to be responsible for wrongdoing. This, we argue, gives us one reason to prefer automated decision-making over human decision-making, especially in contexts where the risks of wrongdoing are high. While we are not the first to (...) suggest that responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed, our argument is novel. Others have argued that responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed because they can reduce or eliminate the psychological burdens caused by tragic moral choice-situations. By contrast, our argument explains why responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed even in the absence of tragic moral choice-situations, and even in the absence of psychological burdens. (shrink)

Around 96 percent of children with hearing loss are born to parents with intact hearing, who may initially know little about deafness or sign language. Therefore, such parents will need information and support in making decisions about the medical, linguistic, and educational management of their child. Some of these decisions are time-sensitive and irreversible and come at a moment of emotional turmoil and vulnerability (when some parents grieve the loss of a normally hearing child). Clinical research indicates that a deaf (...) child’s poor communication skills can be made worse by increased level of parental depression. Given this, the importance of reliable and up-to-date support for parents’ decisions is critical to the overall well-being of their child. In raising and educating a child, parents are often offered an exclusive choice between an oral environment (including assistive technology, speech reading, and voicing) and a signing environment. A heated controversy surrounds this choice, and has since at least the late 19th century, beginning with the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf in Milan, held in 1880. While families seek advice from many sources, including, increasingly, the internet, the primary care physician (PCP) is the professional medical figure the family interacts with repeatedly.The present article aims to help family advisors, particularly the PCP and other medical advisors in this regard. We argue that deaf children need to be exposed regularly and frequently to good language models in both visual and auditory modalities from the time hearing loss is detected and continued throughout their education to ensure proper cognitive, psychological, and educational development. Since there is, unfortunately, a dearth of empirical studies on many of the issues families must confront, professional opinions, backed by what studies do exist, are the only option. We here give our strongly held professional opinions and stress the need for improved research studies in these areas. (shrink)

It’s never too early to give young boys a resource that will help them learn the skills for making right choices in life. A Boy’s Guide to Making Really Good Choices is designed to help boys ages 8-12 learn how to think through their options, realize the possible consequences, and develop good decision-making skills. In this book, Jim George uses helpful stories and illustrations to walk boys through the kinds of choices they are likely to face each day—choices to... listen (...) to their parents do their best in school, sports, and activities select friends with care be kind to siblings and others help out at home and use good manners Through the use of real-life scenarios, Jim George equips boys to build good character—the kind that will stay with them for life and honor God’s standards. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 151-165 [Access article in PDF] Santayana and Buddhism: The Choice between the Cross and the Bo Tree Paul Grimley KuntzEmory UniversitySantayana honors Gotama Buddha as a profound religious genius as well as an original philosopher. Gotama's way is genuine spiritual wisdom, and constantly compared with Christian mysticism as a way of enlightenment. It is therefore understandable that a Spaniard, who learned his catechism in (...) Ávila, and who was educated in the New England of Emerson and other Transcendentalists who honored Oriental wisdom, should have so much to say about the Buddha and Buddhism.The effort of this paper is to gather many of the isolated passages to give a coherent picture of Santayana and Buddhism. One difficulty to be overcome is that the philosopher rarely quotes his sources (the exception is a single quotation from Dasgupta). Although Santayana has numerous opinions, he does not reveal on which translations he has relied. Nor does he contrast different traditions of Buddhists. To overcome the vagueness of scholarship, I have used the volumes found in Widener Library: the sorts of books known to Santayana's dissertation director, Josiah Royce, and those of a sympathetic sort that had led Santayana as early as the writing of his dissertation on Rudolf Hermann Lotze to reject the latter's defiantly Christian and Western contempt for oriental "superstition." The sympathy can be expressed as similar to that of Schopenhauer in reading the Upanishads or Wilhelm von Humboldt in studying the Bhagavadgita. Santayana's study makes him aware of his Catholicism but he is unlike the Jesuit Dahlmann who attacks Buddhism as Nihilism. Santayana is more like his contemporaries who worked in psychology and philosophy of religion. Although Friedrich Heiler's work 1 and writings of James Bissett Pratt 2 were a bit too late to have influenced Santayana, comparison serves to illuminate and strengthen Santayana's conclusions. Perhaps Heiler is even more appropriate because Buddhistic insights remind him of those of St. Theresa. Santayana would support Pratt's view that Nirvana is not the annihilation of all desire but the extinguishing of evil passions. What Santayana finds congenial in Christian Neo-Platonism and in Spinoza, as well as in Buddhism, is the achievement of freedom of the spirit. 3 It has become a commonplace of world history that the two greatest founders of religion whose ways of salvation triumphed in Europe and in Asia respectively are the Christ and the Buddha. Philosophers of religion like Heiler accept both as saviors with a universal message, one, Jesus "the master of prayer" ("der Meister des Gebets"), the [End Page 151] other, Gotama "the master of contemplation" ("der Meister der Versenking"). Santayana is not concerned with the fact of the success of their missions, for there are indeed other triumphs such as Mohammed's Islam, and if it be classified as a religion, Marx's Communism. Santayana is hardly offering his services as a philosophic mediator, as Whitehead tries to do in Religion in the Making, to bring the two communities of faith to a closer approximation of a truly universal religion. 4Santayana reveals great personal depth as he ponders the contrast between the Gospel and the Fourfold Noble Truth. What is the appeal of Christ on the Cross dying "to save us?" What is the appeal of "the serene Buddha, lifting the finger of meditation and profound counsel?" 5 These questions are asked in a meditation in Soliloquies in England in the sympathetic way of those American philosophers who like Pratt have the option of remaining Christian or converting to Buddhism. William James might well have patted Santayana on the back for struggling with the alternatives, for wrestling with a live option. Probably because of Buddha's message of truth, Santayana has shifted from religion as poetry, which James considered "rotten," to how "a general truth about existence and experience" is symbolized poetically, which James would consider healthy.In answering the question "What does the cross signify?" Santayana strips away the "various analogies, legal, sentimental, or chivalrous," and he... (shrink)

Anastasia Philippa Scrutton renders helpful service to philosophers and mental health clinicians by highlighting strongly voluntarist approaches to depression within some present-day Christian writers and communities, particularly Pentecostal and Evangelical Christian communities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Drawing on a number of evangelical Christian books and online resources, she argues that these resources are "voluntaristic because they emphasize the role of libertarian free will and choice in the attitudes and behaviors of people with depression, such that (...) depression is seen to be a sin, or the result of sin, because depression sufferers are able to do otherwise." She counters these... (shrink)

Reviews the books, Emotion and peace of mind: From stoic agitation to Christian temptation by Richard Sorabji and Other minds by Anita Avramides . The two works considered here are deeply serious and composed by scholars who have executed their projects with undeviating integrity. In Emotion and Peace of Mind, based on his Gifford Lectures, Richard Sorabji moves the reader through a veritable course of study on a subject as notoriously protean as it is central to the lived life. The (...) twenty-six chapters range over whole realms of thought on the subject of emotion, beginning with ancient philosophy and reaching the research and theory advanced right now in that congeries of specialties dubbed the brain sciences. Between the covers of this truly estimable work one meets not just the subtle and instructive thought of Seneca and Augustine, Iamblichlus and Epictetus, but insightful commentaries on the work of Damasio, Le Doux, Maclean and others. In all, Emotion and Peace of Mind is a benchmark- volume, an outstanding contribution to the philosophy and psychology of emotion; surely a required work for anyone prepared to approach the subject with the seriousness it demands. The second book of this review, Other Minds, is a work of philosophical rigor and originality, composed by an Oxford tutor who has skillfully shaped other minds with the sharp and sharpening instrument of conceptual analysis. Do computers have minds? Do animals have minds? Are there minds other than my own? And if I know of my own mind in that most basic first-person sense, then clearly there is no other mind that I can thus know. If there is something epistemologically amiss about first-person achievements, then there is surely something suspect about claims to the effect that I know of my mind. If there is nothing less than a required first-person account of minds, then there is something epistemologically suspect about any statement of any other mind. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

St. Augustine’s De Libero Arbitrio is by far the most important of the saint’s philosophical works. Although he wrote it fairly soon after his conversion and before the Pelagian controversy broke out, he had no need to change his views in later life, but continued to recommend that it should be read. In spite of its title, it is not a discussion on the nature of free will, nor an analysis of the psychological circumstances in which choice is exercised. (...) The author himself tells us, in his Retractations, that it was written to answer the Manichaean objection to Christianity that, since the presence of evil is undeniable, it is inconceivable that God can be both almighty and infinitely good. The saint in his reply traced evil to sin, and sin to free will. Hence the title of this book. Since it was written before Pelagianism arose, there was no need to go into the difficulties of grace and free will, so the treatise is philosophical rather than theological. It contains the fullest exposition in any of his writings of his proof from reason for the existence of God, and in setting out the argument he deals with some of the deepest problems in philosophy. (shrink)

Are human beings ever blameworthy for the choices they make? This essay offers a comparative analysis of two systems of thought that argue they are not. The first is Manicheanism, which places blame on a depraved nature within the individual and in competition with a good nature residing within the same person. The good nature is not accountable for the actions of the bad one. The second is situationist psychology, which posits that situations influence behavior more than any alleged (...) robust traits inhering within the personality of the individual. We are thus not to blame for our bad actions which are produced not by our own volition, but by situational stimuli that are beyond our control. This essay critiques both of these systems of thought from an Augustinian perspective. I argue that while situationism does have something to commend, Augustine’s views on the constraining force of a sinful secunda natura, which influences but does not determine behavior, is a preferable alternative to both Manicheanism and situationism. (shrink)

In western cultures, when it comes to places of worship and liturgies, music, acoustics and architecture go hand in hand. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether the emotions evoked by music are enhanced by the acoustics of the space where the music was composed to be played on. We explored whether the emotional responses of western naïve listeners to two vocal pieces from the Renaissance, one liturgical and one secular, convolved with the impulse responses of four Christian (...) temples from the United Kingdom, were modulated by the appropriate piece/space matching. In an alternative forced choice task where participants had to indicate their preference for the original recording of the piece (not convolved with any temple-like acoustics) vs. the convolved one, no significant differences were found. However, in the tasks where participants rated their emotional in response to each piece and acoustic condition, the factorial ANCOVA analyses performed on the results revealed significant effects. We observed that, across pieces and spaces, participants found the temple-like acoustics as more transcendent, compared to the acoustics of the original version of the pieces. In addition, they rated the secular piece as more tender and the liturgical piece as more expressive in its original versions, compared to the convolved ones. We conclude that the acoustic signature of the four Christian temples causes an exaltation of certain emotions on listeners, although this effect is not associated to one or another musical piece. (shrink)

Best known as a philosopher, one of the founders of existentialism, Kierkegaard also wrote books whose themes were primarily religious, psychological or literary. He was opposed to much in organised Christianity, stressing the necessity for individual choice against prescribed dogma and ritual. In this book, he concentrates his penetrating psychological observations on the theme of despair.

2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title The purpose of this book is to fill a gap in contemporary mystical studies: an overview of the basic ways to approach mystical experiences and mysticism. It discusses the problem of definitions of “mystical experiences” and “mysticism” and advances characterizations of “mystical experiences” in terms of certain altered states of consciousness and “mysticism” in terms of encompassing ways of life centered on such experiences and states. Types of mystical experiences, enlightened states, paths, and doctrines (...) are discussed, as is the relation of mystical experiences and mysticism to religions and cultures. The approaches of constructivism, contextualism, essentialism, and perennialism are presented. Themes in the history of the world’s major mystical traditions are set forth. Approaches to mystical phenomena in sociology, psychology, gender studies, and neuroscience are introduced. Basic philosophical issues related to whether mystical experiences are veridical and mystical claims valid, mystics’ problems of language, art, and morality are laid out. Older and newer comparative approaches in religious studies and in Christian theology are discussed, along with postmodernist objections. The intended audience is undergraduates and the general public interested in the general issues related to mysticism. (shrink)

The Islamic psychology (IP) community in Europe has recently witnessed a heated debate about the credentials required to participate in the theoretical substantiation of IP and Islamically integrated psychotherapy and counseling. This debate has provided convenient circumstances for Muslim psychologists and Islamic scholars alike to rethink their roles within the flourishing movement. Specifically, the discussions hint toward the importance of adopting a collaborative research methodology for IP, in particular for basic research. The methodology of choice will need to (...) define the necessary qualifications and responsibilities of scholars and psychologists in a collaborative research process (personal collaboration) and evince its capability to appropriately marry knowledge and data, diverging research methods, and perspectives, concepts, and theories from Islamic studies and contemporary psychology (content‐related collaboration). Here, we devise and offer a case illustration of an Islamic Psychology Basic Research Framework (coined the SALAAM Framework). This framework uses the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS) Model of Interdisciplinary Research, developed by the IIS at the University of Amsterdam. Our first aim is to appropriate the IIS model for the IP literature by applying the model's research process phases and technique for the integration of disparate bodies of knowledge—that is, the identification of common ground—to methodological approaches in the contemporary IP literature. Our second aim is to exemplify the devised SALAAM Framework using the relatively unexplored area of Islamic cognitive theories (ICTs), which remain underdeveloped in contemporary psychological literature, primarily because of a lack of commensurability with the nomenclature of contemporary psychology. We thus provide a primer on the potential scope of ICTs. Toward the end of this article, we discuss the potential of the project of interdisciplinary construction of Islamic psychological theory, and the ability of the SALAAM Framework to establish a research program in IP that centers on cognition. We finally offer our reflections on the distinctiveness of Islamic psychologies in comparison to mainstream and Christian psychology. (shrink)

Through a series of accidents the cowardly potter becomes known as the bravest man in the Rajah's kingdom.

Our approach to counseling and personal ministry is often lopsided—we treat people as minds to be taught or problems to be fixed, moving too quickly toward applying biblical solutions without taking the time to love people well and understand their experiences and hurts. The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life provides a comprehensive view of how the heart works and how Christ redeems it. Pierre’s faith-centered understanding of people combines with a Word-centered methodology to give readers a practical way to help (...) others better understand their tough experiences and who they are in light of who Jesus is. Pierre guides readers through four key activities—reading, reflecting, relating, and renewing—that will consistently position them to understand everyday human experiences in light of Scripture. Pierre exposes the false dichotomy between the spiritual and seemingly unspiritual parts of the human experience, showing how every thought, feeling, and choice actually expresses the spiritual activity of the heart. He shows how faith in Christ is the means by which the heart begins to respond differently. Faith is not only the entry point for heart change, but also an expression of our everyday, ongoing need for Christ. Pierre’s holistic view of counseling—forged by his experiences as a counselor, pastor, and seminary professor—equips readers to understand how everyday beliefs, desires, and commitments shape how we respond to life’s biggest struggles and how an active relationship of trust in God is the foundation for lifelong change. (shrink)

The article examines the peculiarities of Christian personalism of Markellin Olesnitskyi, a professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy, the author of insightful works on Christian ethics, psychology, and pedagogy. There is an analysis of the conceptual approaches of the Kyiv scholar to the concept of the human individuality. Attention is drawn to those conceptual influences which contributed to the personalistic position of Olesnitskyi. They were G. Leibniz and F. Schleiermacher. In his studies, the Kyiv scholar always took into account (...) the ideas of these thinkers concerning a human and his or her individuality. In particular, he liked the idea of Leibniz, who considered a individuality as a “complete whole”, a certain singularity, the conceptual definition of which does not require the treatment of general entities. Also, he was inspired by the ideas of Schleiermacher, for whom individuality was a special modification of mankind. Schleiermacher thought that the human nature could not be considered separately from the individual selfexpression, cultural diversity of people. It was discovered that the Kyiv scholar needed the analysis of the human individuality for the research of the human personality that was considered as an individual having own personality. This makes it possible to consider the personality as a “being-for-itself”, as an independent being that is capable of making a moral choice. Olesnitskyi treats a person as a subjective focus of reason, will, and feelings, as well as the basis of history. In the article, one can see how the Kyiv professor treats attempts to implement mathematical and statistical methods to the study of social life. It is worth mentioning that those attempts were innovative for that period of time. The article includes an analysis of the standpoints of famous European researchers, among whom there were J. Süssmilch, A. Quetelet, H. Buckle, A. Wagner, and A. Oettingen. They demonstrated the efficiency of these methods application for both the analysis of the social and economic life of society and the study of his moral life, which made possible the appearance of social ethics. One can notice the positive as well as the critical attitude of the Kyiv acholar towards the already-mentioned research. (shrink)

The information society is upon us. New technologies have given us back pocket libraries, online discussion forums, blogs, crowdbased opinion aggregators, social media and breaking news wherever, whenever. But are we more enlightened and rational because of it? With points of departure in philosophy, logic, social psychology, economics, and choice and game theory, Infostorms shows how information may be used to improve the quality of personal decisions and group thinking but also warns against the informatonal pitfalls which modern (...) information technology may amplify: From science to reality culture and what it really is, that makes you buy a book like this. "With this brilliant book, we have been warned. It is up to all of us in the world today to be stewards of the common resource that is trustworthy and relevant information". Adam Brandenburger, Stern School of Business, NYU "It is a highly recommended read for social scientists and concerned citizens alike". Christian List, London School of Economic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Concept of Will in EarlyLatin Philosophy NEAL W. GILBERT AN HISTORICALDISCUSSIONOf the concept of will is best begun with an analysis of the use of voluntas in Latin philosophy, from its earliest occurrences in Lucretius and Cicero on down to Augustine and medieval times. This development can be traced without much controversy because the line of transmission and development is more or less unbroken. But the correlating of (...) Latin psychological terms with their Greek originals presents problems. Greek philosophy was indeed the source from which Latin philosophical psychology developed: Lucretius reflects Epicurean doctrine, while Cicero and Seneca were strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy when they discussed moral action. However, many modern scholars are convinced that the Greeks had no word that corresponds to our "will" at all, and so we seem to be left with no choice but to regard the will as an original creation of Latin philosophy. But this would be to overlook the fact that ancient Latin writers sometimes specifically equated voluntas with certain Greek terms, and such evidence ought not to go unexamined. Voluntas was well established in Latin usage before Roman writers began to concern themselves with philosophical problems, but it did not have a technical sense. It meant simply "good will," or "favor," or concretely, a "will, or testament. ''I Clustered around it were other derivatives of "volo," such as "benevolentia" and "malevolentia," "well-wishing" and "ill-wishing." When Roman writers began to deal with philosophical problems, there were a number of different contexts in which voluntas could play a leading role. Chief among them, naturally, was the "freedom of the will" which, then as now, intrigued the ordinary man or the moralist. However, discussions revolving around the determinist-libertarian issue often fail to clarify the concept of the will itself. Major philosophers (Chrysippus, Augustine, or Hume, for example) offer fine distinctions within moral action when considering the determinist-libertarian dispute, but lesser figures are apt to "C'est seulement lots de la creation du vocabulairephilosophiqueque voluntas a pris le sens abstrait et technique de 'volont6'." Ernout, A., and A. Meillet,Dictionnaire Etymologique de la langue latine, 4th ed. (Paris, 1959),sub "volo." [17] 18 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY neglect the detailed analysis of moral action in favor of sweeping metaphysical pronouncements. When a Latin writer wished to say that a person did something of his own accord, the locution most natural to him was "sua sponte," an ablative absolute derived from the same root as our word "spontaneous." The nominative case of "sponte" ("spons") was almost never used, so that dictionaries are perhaps somewhat misleading in suggesting that the word "spons" means "free will": it would be more correct to say that the phrase "sua sponte" means "of his own free will." Latin writers also indicate that someone did something willingly by saying that he did it "non invitus" ("not unwillingly "). Finally, they could apply the adjective "voluntarius" to such an action, or say that it was done "ex voluntate." When the latter term begins to be used as a designation for a separate faculty of the soul distinct from reason or intelligence, it begins to resemble the modern concept of will. Augustine is usually given credit for introducing the concept of will into philosophy, but even the earliest Latin treatment of the free-will problem framed the issue in terms of voluntas. Nevertheless, I think that the received view is substantially correct, although it would be more proper to say that what Augustine introduced into philosophy was not the concept of will in general but the concept of the evil will. What Augustine called the "good" will ("bona voluntas") was closely related to the "reasonable desire" of the Stoic sage, rendered into Latin by Cicero as voluntas, without any adjective. The addition of the evil will altered the outlines of moral analysis considerably, involving among other things the major shift from a Socratic or Platonic psychology and ethics (usually labeled "intellectualistic") to a Christian psychology and ethics (usually labeled "voluntaristic"). Such a characterization is likely to be drawn too sharply, and to overlook anticipations of voluntarism in Greek thought or reminiscences of Greek intellectualism in Christian thought. Hence it may be useful... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 4.1 (1997) 91-93 Concurrent Contents: Recent and Classic References at the Interface of Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology Articles Allen, J. F., J. Hallperin, and R. Friend. 1985. Removal and diversion tactics and the control of auditory hallucinations. Behavior Research and Therapy 23:601-605.Baker, H. D. 1995. Psychoanalysis and ideology: Bakhtin, Lacan, and Zizek. History of European Ideas 20:499-504.Bernet, R. 1994. Derrida-Husserl-Freud: The trace of (...) transference. Southern Journal of Philosophy 32 suppl.:141-158.Boden, M. A. 1996. Commentary on "Towards a design-based analysis of emotional episodes." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:135-136.Castelfranchi, C., and M. Miceli. 1996. Commentary on "Towards a design-based analysis of emotional episodes." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, no. 2:129-133.Fowes, B. J., and F. C. Richardson. 1996. Why is multiculturalism good? American Psychologist 51, no. 6:609-621.Frith, C. 1996. Commentary on "Free will in the light of neuropsychiatry." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:91-93.Forde, R. 1996. Inclusion of psychosocial conditions in clinical practice and the problem of medicalization. Theoretical Medicine 17, no. 2:151-161.Gaylin, W., and D. Doukas. 1995. The second-hand suicide threat. Hastings Center Report 25:20-22.Gillet, G. 1995. Consciousness, thought, and neurological integrity. Journal of Mind and Behavior 16, no. 3:215-233.Haskell, R. E. 1993. Realpolitik in the addictions field: Treatment-professional, popular-culture ideology, and scientific research. Journal of Mind and Behavior 14, no. 3:257-276.Kuys, T. 1995. The tally argument again. Methodological Science 28, nos. 2-3:43-55.Lear, J. 1995. The heterogeneity of the mental: Sebastian Gardner's irrationality and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 104:863-879.Libet, B. 1996. Commentary on "Free will in the light of neuropsychiatry." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 3:95-96.Lloyd, D. 1996. Commentary on "Toward a design-based analysis of emotional episodes." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:127-128.Pepper-Smith, R., W. R. C. Harvey, and M. Silberfeld. 1996. Competency and practical judgment. Theoretical Medicine 17, no. 2:135-150. [End Page 91]Spence, S. A. 1996a. Free will in the light of neuropsychiatry. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:75-90.------. 1996b. Response to the commentaries. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:99-100.Stein, D. J. 1996. The philosophy of psychopathy. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 39:569-580.Stephens, G. L. 1996. Commentary on "Free will in the light of neuropsychiatry." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:97-98.Varela, C. R. 1995. Ethnogenic theory and psychoanalysis: The unconscious as a social construction and a failed explanatory concept. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 25:4.Weisberger, A. M. 1995. The ethics of the broader usage of Prozac: Social choice or social bias? International Journal of Applied Philosophy 10, no. 1:69-74.Wright, I., A. Sloman, and L. Beaudoin. 1996a. Response to the commentaries. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:137.------. 1996b. Towards a design-based analysis of emotional episodes. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3, no. 2:101-126. Books American Psychiatric Association. Task Force on Consent to Voluntary Hospitalization. 1993. Consent to voluntary hospitalization. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.Christiansen, H. D. 1972. Ethics in counseling: Problem situations. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Clark, P., and C. Wright, eds. 1988. Mind, psychoanalysis and science. New York: Blackwell.Comerchero, V., ed. 1970. Values in conflict: Christianity, marxism, psychoanalysis, existentialism. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Epstein, R. S. 1994. Keeping boundaries: Maintaining safety and integrity in the psychotherapeutic process. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.Fairbairn, G. J. 1995. Contemplating suicide: The language and ethics of self harm. New York: Routledge.Grubb, A., ed. 1991. Decision-making and problems of incompetence. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Haas, L. J., and J. L. Malouf. 1995. Keeping up the good work: A practitioner's guide to mental health ethics. 2nd ed. Sarasota: Professional Resource Exchange.Hacking, I. 1995. Rewriting the soul: Multiple personality and the sciences of memory. Princeton: Princeton University... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Is God Still at the Bedside?Mara Kelly-ZukowskiIs God Still at the Bedside? Abigail Rian Evans Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 484 pp. $30.00.It is extremely difficult to find a comprehensive book for use in death and dying courses. Princeton Theological Seminary professor Abigail Rian Evans has produced a notable exception to this. Although her book seems more suited for ministers, chaplains, and pastoral counselors, it would also prove (...) to be useful for those working in the areas of thanatology, medical ethics, health care, and theological eschatology. It could definitely be used as a student textbook, preferably in schools of theology or seminaries.Acknowledging that the “complexity of death” requires an interdisciplinary approach, Evans invokes a variety of disciplines as she moves through four major sections: “Prologue” (a theological and sociological analysis of American attitudes toward death); “Negotiated Death” (a philosophical, theological, and legal discussion of euthanasia, suicide, organ donation, and legal issues); “The Experience of Dying” (a theological and ethical view of pain and suffering, hospice care, and mourning); and “God at the Bedside” (a practical look at the role of clergy, ministry to the dying, and Christian funerals). She begins each chapter with a literary excerpt, includes statistics and polls to support her analyses, and examines the positions of the mainstream religious traditions with regard to each issue. Included, for example, is a most valuable eight-page chart outlining twenty-seven major religions’ positions on euthanasia (101–8).While Evans is careful to include references to religious traditions other than her own (Presbyterian), her treatment of some of their perspectives is a bit simplistic. For instance, she asserts that “Aquinas allowed abortion based [End Page 223] on the principle of double effect” (14) without providing the essential nuances to his thought. However, she does cite many prominent moral theologians throughout her book, including references to the most recent meetings of theological organizations.The major strength of Evans’s treatment of death issues lies in her ability to draw upon her own experience as a Presbyterian pastor, liturgist, Christian bioethicist, and theologian. She has served as minister to parish communities, as thanatology instructor, as counselor to the dying and the bereaved, and as consultant to various educational organizations in their efforts to institute faith-based health care programs. The anecdotes she provides from these varied roles imbue the material with a richness that a purely academic treatise would lack.Because of her experiences, Evans has also furnished her readers with a wealth of practical information. The appendices include resources for patients and their families, information about advance directives, the patients’ bill of rights, a caregiver’s decision-making guide for end of life, and helpful tips for effective care giving and grief management.The last third of the book is dedicated to a thorough discussion of how to minister to the dying. Based on an extensive theological examination of Christian resurrection, Evans’s advice also includes pastoral, psychological, and sociological dimensions. She cites the concept of FCN (faith community nurse), for example, as one of the latest and much needed nursing specialties (349–66). Tracing its history from deacons and deaconesses in the early church to the traditional black church nurse, Evans objectively sets forth its advantages as well as the disadvantages. She concludes that the current economic environment and credentialing issues might make implementation of this innovation in health care problematic (362–64).To the question posed by the book, is God still at the beside?, Evans answers with a resounding “yes” (424). Her comprehensive, well-researched, and extremely practical handbook for end-of-life issues makes it clear that a theology of life and death provides a framework in which we make choices not only about how we will die but also how we will live (xvi). [End Page 224]Mara Kelly-ZukowskiFelician CollegeCopyright © 2012 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Ukrainian religious studies have their roots in the Kievan Rus era. First of all, The Tale of the Times, which describes the process of introducing Christianity in Ukraine-Russia, reveals the historical, psychological and ideological basis for Vladimir the Great's choice of faith for his people. Adoption of Christianity is a major worldview revolution in the spiritual life of Ukraine, which has included it in the context of world civilization. From a princely time, many religious thinkers have become a universal (...) way of seeing, understanding and appreciating the world for many Ukrainian thinkers. The main purpose of their works is not the desire to create a certain holistic system of theological knowledge, but the desire to convey their personal religious -istic perception of the divine nature, harmony, beauty and perfection of God-created world. These are the "Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh", "The Word of Law and Grace" by Hilarion of Kiev, "The Life of Theodosius Pechersky" and even "The Word of Igor's Hike". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Search for the Absent God: Tradition and Modernity in Religious Understanding. By WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P., MARY CATHERINE HILKERT, 0.P., ed. New York: Crossroad, 1992. Pp. 224. $27.50 (cloth). In presenting the fruit of a lifetime of exploration on the part of this theological craftsman of the highest merit, the editor has performed an unparalleled service. For William Hill is a clear and courageous thinker, and one (...) whose selfless editorial duties have perhaps curtailed his own writing over the years. Yet these essays make up for that, and afford younger students of theology a starting point for their reflections beyond the fads of the moment, yet seizing the challenge of contemporary proposals. His grasp of classical and of modern idiom, together with his range of reading, make him a theologians' theologian par excellence. For with his classical mentors he is concerned with conceptual coherence, yet equally anxious to respond to the anthropological perspectives of contemporary theological inquiry. Briefly characterized, the work brings Thomas Aquinas into dialogue with Heidegger and with Whitehead, using each of the latter figures to challenge an earlier " Thomistic" synthesis of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, and highlight dimensions of his theology hitherto left quite implicit. This creative recovery of medieval thought begins with an established interpretation of Aquinas's metaphysical transformation of the neoplatonized Aristotle of Avicenna: his insistence that esse {existing ) precedes essence (or possibility). The identification of God as that One in whom essence and existing are identical sets the stage for Hill's explicitly theological treatment of free persons, by analogy with the " persons " of the divine triunity: " each divine person ' posits ' the others as over and against himself and thereby posits himself in his hypostatic identity. What all this bases itself upon is the understanding that the Christian revelation of freedom as radically constituting personhood enables it to function as a category which surmounts the Greek dichotomizing of reality into contingency and necessity " (117). If the identification of existing with essence in God confronts Heidegger's critique of " ontology," Hill's use of classical trinitarian thought to suggest a fruitful distinction in human creatures between nature and freedom allows him at once to correct the caricature of Aquinas proffered by process theologians as "classical theism," and 521 522 BOOK REVIEWS also to profit by their criticisms of the use of hellenistic categories like impassibility in divinity. "The key... lies in the mystery of freedom. Abstractly, freedom is a property of nature, but its exercise is the pre· rogative of person as the existential instantiation of nature. The person viewed ontologically (as subject of the act of existing) thus determines itself though its nature to be the sort of person it is, viewed psychologi· cally and historically" (127). Finite natures need to negotiate all sorts of causal influences in effecting such a determination of themselves; not so " an infinite nature whose freedom is transcendent." Yet when that One freely determines itself to be source and goal of all, and espe· cially of rational creatures (cf. Summa Theologiae 1.2 Prol.), then " that choice is one of willing to be constituted, personally and so relationally, and in this sense to be determined, by other free beings" (127). So the God who (in Aquinas' idiom) is not "really related" to the world in the sense of enduring (in Hill's words) "passive influx," nonetheless freely relates to intentional creatures in such a way as to be responsive to their freedom. So his response to Moltmann's conten· tion that God suffers " in his very deity " is an explicitly Christological one: "first, that God remains immutable and impassible in his own intrinsic godhead, so that his genuine love for creatures cannot entail suffering within divinity as such; but second, that God does choose to enter personally and relationally into the heart of humankind's suffering in his transcendentally free and loving response to it. God truly suffers... in and through his humanity which is one with the humanity of all men and women" (162). If this resolution sounds "classical," it is, both in its concern for conceptual coherence and for bringing out the radical implications of doctrines like that of Chalcedon... (shrink)

The triangular desire and the scapegoat mechanism are the key issues of René Girard’s mimetic theory. The imitative desire to have what the other has conceals the ‘meta-physical’ desire to be the Other. The ‘inter-dividual’ human being does not recognize in his model/rival or in the idol/scapegoat the mimetic ‘counter-part’ of himself. How can Nietzsche’s reading of the ancient Greek agonal or competitive culture be re-interpreted in the context of his ambivalent relationship with Richard Wagner? What is the correlation of (...) Nietzsche’s mental illness and his choice in favour of the violence by Dionysus against the Judaeo-Christian truth of the innocent victim? Nietzsche’s attitude of resentment – from a 'thwarted and traumatized desire' – is put in a wider cultural-psychological and ‘anthropo-ethical’ context. The tripartite division of the soul according to Plato, Aristotle’s rhetoric ‘patho-etho-logy’ and the trifunctional hypothesis of Georges Dumézil make up the interpretative framework. Nietzsche’s ‘patho-logy’ – self-knowledge alienated from desire – and the destruction of his moral resilience typify an ‘autoimmune crisis’. (shrink)

This paper explores small-scale farmers’ cultural beliefs about the causes of drought events and the reasoning behind their beliefs. Cultural beliefs vary across countries, regions, communities, and social groups; this paper takes the case of farmers from Gaza Province in southern Mozambique as its focus. Findings show that the farmers have a limited knowledge and understanding of the scientific explanation about drought. Thus, farmers’ beliefs about the causes of drought are strongly based on the indigenous and Christian philosophies that attribute (...) drought to supernatural forces, such as ancestors or God, and as a punishment for wrongdoings. Farmers have a distinct and under-explored repertoire of possible wrongdoings to justify the punishments driven by those cultural beliefs. Some of their reasoning is static, while some is mutable, and is based on their observation and perception of the negative, unexpected, or harmful recent or current events which happen in their surrounding environment, and which they believe could be avoided or prevented. Farmers’ beliefs about drought causes, and their underlying reasoning for those beliefs, are what will primarily influence their perception of their own capacity to adapt, their motivation to respond, and their behavioral responses. Yet, their social groups exert a great influence on their choices of response. The paper concludes that more context-specific investigations into the socio-psychological nature of farmers’ beliefs are required prior to interventions in order to better help farmers to respond to future drought risks. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The purpose of this thesis is to study the account given by Thomas Aquinas of prudentia or right practical reasoning. While there is no doubt that Aristotle's ethical doctrine was the source for St.Thomas, it is commonly thought that the spirit if not the substance of Aristotelian phronesis is altered by the Christian concepts of law, obedience to God, free will and sin. ;To assess the influence of the (...) Christian theological tradition, a short survey is made of the history of the notion of liberum arbitrium. A tendency emerges to equate free choice with 'free will', identifying the element of freedom with the will and not with the intellect. Much of the reason for this is the need to explain the psychology of sin. ;With the infusion of Aristotelian philosophy in the twelfth century, many theologians began to develop a more balanced philosophy of human action, but the voluntarist view of freedom, sin and grace was strongly defended and came to dominate, in spite of Thomas' profound explanation. ;A new account is given of the stages of the process of human action, reducing the steps from twelve to four. The basis for this is to combine cognition and volition in each stage, so that Thomas can be seen to have given more precise names to a basically Aristotelian account, although Thomas' stage of execution is a genuine contribution adding more possibilities for an explanation of akrasia. ;The heart of practical reasoning is the process of decision, and this thesis looks at all of Thomas' examples of the 'practical syllogism' to show the development of his views from his early works to the Summa Theologiae. ;Having shown how the intellect and will are closely related in each stage of practical reasoning, prudence emerges clearly as the right disposition of the intellect for deliberating, deciding and executing action. A firm basis for a new view of freedom, law and the possibilities for error is provided by Aquinas' psychology of action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas's Moral ScienceColleen McCluskeyDenis J. M. Bradley. Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas's Moral Science. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997. Pp. vii-xiv + 610.In this book, Bradley examines whether one can construct an autonomous Thomistic philosophical ethics from Thomas Aquinas's theologically flavored moral writings. In order (...) to answer this question, Bradley provides a comprehensive analysis not only of Aquinas's moral psychology, but also of the Aristotelian doctrines which to a certain extent provide its foundation. Bradley begins with a look at Aristotle's concept of a science, his notion of practical reasoning, and his accounts of deliberation, choice, and the ultimate end for human beings. Bradley also discusses Aquinas's interpretations of those theories and the extent to which Aquinas's views follow and diverge from Aristotle's writings. The metaphysical principles grounding the notions of a science, of being, and of goodness and their connections to Aquinas's ethics are noted and explained. In his discussion of the moral theory itself, Bradley frames his presentation around Aquinas's theory of action (especially its volitional aspects and the workings of practical reason) and the role of natural law, although the virtues are not neglected. Bradley's treatment throughout the book is meticulous (although in my view somewhat repetitive).The most interesting aspect of this book is Bradley's discussion of the paradoxical nature of Aquinas's ethical theory. As he notes, Aquinas's theory has a teleological orientation; his system is structured around the idea that human beings have a particular ultimate end. Aquinas argues that due to their nature, all human beings desire to attain their ultimate end. As is also well-known, Aquinas specifies that this end is the beatific vision and that only the vision of the divine essence is able to satisfy completely [End Page 118] all human desires. However, this end is not only inaccessible to human beings in this life, but one that they are unable to obtain without the aid of God's grace. But it follows from this that human beings have a natural desire that cannot be satisfied naturally, a paradoxical position, especially for an Aristotelian. For according to Bradley, Aquinas argues that although one can establish through philosophical arguments that human beings have a natural desire which only God can satisfy, no philosophical argument can establish that God, in fact, ever satisfies this desire. That God chooses to do so is a matter of faith and revelation. Thus, as far as philosophy is concerned, human beings may have been structured with an unsatisfiable desire. This violates an important Aristotelian notion about teleology, the idea that there can be no futile natural desire. The inability to satisfy a natural desire for an ultimate end renders a teleologically based system incoherent. It follows that. given his characterization of the ultimate end, a characterization that Aquinas thinks he can establish on philosophical grounds alone, his purely theological commitments are integral and necessary components of his moral system. Thus, Bradley's answer to the question he raises in the book is no, one cannot construct an autonomous Thomistic philosophical ethics from Aquinas's moral writings.In the process of arriving at this conclusion, Bradley critiques the work of two philosophers, Jacques Maritain and Santiago M. Ramirez, both of whom argue that a purely philosophical ethics can be built out of Aquinas's writings, although both maintain that Aquinas himself did not do so. Maritain and Ramirez take Thomistic philosophical ethics to retain basic Christian beliefs but to be established on the basis of natural reasoning processes alone, independently of revelation. Bradley raises a number of objections against their characterizations of Thomistic ethics, among them the worry that, ultimately, such philosophical systems are not truly independent of a theological ethics (pace Maritain) and the charge that Aquinas's characterizations of the supernatural nature of the human ultimate end is not taken seriously (Ramirez).Space permits only a cursory examination of some general concerns over Bradley's position. Bradley argues that what is fundamental to... (shrink)

ABSTRACT: One-page entry on freedom in the philosophical (as opposed to political) sense in antiquity, noting (among other things) that a notion of freedom of choice that requires that the person not be causally predetermined in his/her actions is developed only in the 1st-3rd cents. CE in Alexander of Aphrodisias, building on elements of Aristotelian ethics and logic, Stoic psychology and perhaps Christian and Middle Platonic influences. Both German version (1998) and English translation (2011).

Odon Lottin, O.S.B. was an historian and a moral theologian. As an historian, he studied the scholastic attention to human psychology and morality. As a theologian, he studied the roles that thought and action play in the development of the moral agent. His influence in historical and moral theology has been significant. Nonetheless, moralists and medievalists independently have appropriated his insights. No one has yet studied the relationship between his historical investigations and his moral theology. This work accomplishes that (...) study. ;This dissertation considers Lottin's contributions to both historical and moral theology. Lottin studies the medieval history and understanding of free choice, moral action, the acquired virtues and conscience. He traces this history to uncover specific ideas, expose the development of thought, recognize the emergence of consensus, and find whether satisfying resolutions were achieved. Many of his contemporaries in the manual tradition misinterpreted this history. This misinterpretation was due to their inaccurate or undeveloped historical method. And, just as there was deficiency in their method, there were significant shortcomings in the scope of their theological investigations. Thus, by looking back to history, Lottin presents a moral theology more substantive than the manuals. Each of the first four chapters of this dissertation presents Lottin's historical studies of the major debates, examines his incorporation of that material into his own contribution to the debates' resolutions, and concludes with how his work has been appropriated and where it may yet lead. The final chapter considers Lottin's contribution to the discipline of moral theology. ;Moral theology can neither be ahistorical nor impersonal. Lottin's work demonstrates the necessity of accurate history for interpretation and of critical reflection on the cause of human action. His return to medieval moral theology is a return to human agency. His agent-centered moral theology retrieves prudence and the moral virtues as dynamic means for rightly forming consciences and determining action. Historical and agent-centered moral theology is concerned with theory and practice. The theory of the moral life looks at human intentionality, the practice is its free expression; together they comprise the meaning of self-determination. (shrink)

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHICS. AFTER NIETZSCHE -/- Preface This book tells the story of twentieth-century ethics or, in more detail, it reconstructs the history of a discussion on the foundations of ethics which had a start with Nietzsche and Sidgwick, the leading proponents of late-nineteenth-century moral scepticism. During the first half of the century, the prevailing trends tended to exclude the possibility of normative ethics. On the Continent, the trend was to transform ethics into a philosophy of existence whose self-appointed task was (...) that of describing the human condition as consisting of choices, as unavoidable as arbitrary, without any attempt at providing criteria for making such choices. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the heir of ethics was a philosophy of morality, that is, an analysis of the language of morality that intended to clarify valuations without trying to justify them. 1958 was the year of the normative turn that led to the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy, a turn followed by decades of controversies between distinct kinds of normative ethics: utilitarian, Kantian, virtue ethics. While the controversy was raging, a quiet revolution took place, that of applied ethics which surprisingly dissolved the controversy's very subject matter by providing methods for making convergence possible on intermediate principles even when no agreement was available about first principles. The normative turn and the revolution of applied ethics have led us, at the turn of the century, to a goal that was quite far from the starting point. Instead of scepticism and relativism that was the fashion at the beginning of the century, at the beginning of the third millennium impartial and universal moral arguments seem to hold the spot being supported, if not by a final rational foundation, at least by reasonableness, the most precious legacy of the Enlightenment. -/- ● TABLE OF CONTENTS -/- ● I Anglo-Saxon philosophy: naturalism 1. Dewey beyond evolutionism and utilitarianism 2. Dewey and anti-essentialist moral epistemology 3. Dewey and naturalist moral ontology 4. Dewey and normative ethics of conduct and function 5. Perry and semantic naturalism -/- ● II Anglo-Saxon philosophy: ideal utilitarianism and neo-intuitionism 1. Moore's critique of utilitarian empiricism 2. Moore on the naturalistic fallacy 3. Moore on the nature of intrinsic value 4. Moore on ideal utilitarianism 5. Prichard on the priority of the right over the good 6. Ross's coherentist moral epistemology 7. Ross's moral ontology: realism, pluralism, and non-naturalism 8. Ross's normative ethics of prima facie duties -/- The chapter reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore's early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. It stresses the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. It argues that PE is more a patchwork of somewhat diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. -/- ●III Anglo-Saxon philosophy: non-cognitivism 1. The Scandinavian School, the Vienna circle and proto-emotivism 2. Wittgenstein and the ineffability of ethics 3. Russell's and Ayer's radical emotivism 4. Stevenson and moderate emotivism 5. Stevenson and the pragmatics of moral language 6. Stevenson and the methods for solving ethical disagreement 7. Hare and prescriptivism The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of 'good', its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with 'emotive' meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell's ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson's theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. A section reconstructs the discussion from the Forties about Hume's law, mentioning Karl Popper's argument and Richard Hare's early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- ●IV Anglo-Saxon philosophy: critics of non-cognitivism 1. Neo-naturalism and its objections to the naturalistic fallacy argument 2. Objections to Hume's law 3. Clarence Lewis and the pragmatic contradiction 4. Toulmin and the good reasons approach 5. Baier and moral reasons 5. Baier, social moralities and the absolute morality 6. Baier and the moral point of view 7. Baier and the contents of absolute ethics -/- ● V Continental philosophy: the philosophy of values 1. Max Weber and the polytheism of values 2. Phenomenology against psychologism and rationalism 3. Reinach and the theory of social acts 4. Scheler and the material ethics of values 5. Hartmann and the ontology of values 6. Plessner, Gehlen and the Philosophische Anthropologie -/- The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl's project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the apriori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy conducted in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach's theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that sketches the ideas 'discovered' later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section discusses Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of 'values' – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler, who claimed to be Husserl's legitimate heirs. -/- ● VI Continental philosophy: the critics of the philosophy of values 1. Freud, the Superego and Civilization 2. Heidegger on original ethos against ethics 3. Sartre and de Beauvoir on authenticity and ambiguity 4. Adorno and Horkheimer on emancipation and immoralism -/- ●VII Post-liberal theologians and religious thinkers 1. Barth on the autonomy of faith from ethics 2. Developments of Reformed moral theology after Barth 3. Bonhoeffer on the concrete divine command and ethics of penultimate realities 4. Developments of Reformed and Catholic moral theology after world war II 5. Baeck and the transformation of liberal Judaism 6. Rosenzweig against liberal Judaism 7. Buber and religion as the vital lymph of morality 8. Heschel and Judaism as a science of actions -/- The chapter examines the main protagonists of Christian theology and Jewish religious thinking in the twentieth century. It stresses how the main dilemmas of contemporary philosophical ethics lie at the root of the various path of inquiry taken by these thinkers. -/- ● VIII Normative ethics: neo-Utilitarianism 1. The discussion on act and rule utilitarianism 2. Hare on two-tiered preference utilitarianism 3. Harsanyi, Gauthier and rational choice ethics 4. Parfit, utilitarianism and the idea of a person 5. Brandt and indirect conscience utilitarianism -/- The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick's and Moore's fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine refuted. Two examples give the reader a glimpse at this uproarious process. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This transformation results in preference utilitarianism combined with a 'Kantian' version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare's two-level preference utilitarianism, where act utilitarianism plays the function of the eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of an action-guiding practical device. -/- ● IX Normative ethics: neo-Aristotelianism and virtue ethics 1. Hannah Arendt, action and judgement 2. Hans-Georg Gadamer and phronesis 3. Alasdair MacIntyre on practices, virtues, and traditions 5. Stuart Hampshire on deliberation 6. Bernard Williams and moral complexity 7. Feminist ethics -/- Sect 1 reconstructs the post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named 'Rehabilitation of practical philosophy' is described. Heidegger's most brilliant disciples were the promoters of this Rehabilitation. Hans-Georg Gadamer is a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle's lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger's lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the significant role of the notion of phronesis. Sect 3 discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. It argues that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. The chapter gives a short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot's and Peter Geach's critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre's grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly inevitable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- ● X Normative ethics: Kantian and rights-based ethics 1. Dialogical constructivism 2. Apel, Habermas and discourse ethics 3. Gewirth and rights-based ethics 4. Nagel on agent-relative reasons 5. Donagan and persons as ends in themselves Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This current started with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. The chapter offers an examination of his argument in some detail, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas's elaboration on Apel's theory. -/- ● XI The applied ethics renaissance 1. Elisabeth Anscombe on the atom bomb 2. From medical ethics to bioethics 3. Rawls and public ethics 3. Nozick, Dworkin and further developments of public ethics 5. Sen and the revival of economic ethics -/- The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin's new casuistry. The chapter argues that Rawls's distinction between a "political" and a "metaphysical" approach to the theory of justice, one central part of ethical theory, is a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and the new casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter. The idea is that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls' view never will be close – on the essential criteria for judgment. -/- ● XII Fin-de-siècle metaethics 1. Deontic logics 2. Anti-realism 3. External realism 4. Internal realism 5. Kantian constructivism -/- The chapter illustrates the fresh start of meta-ethical discussion in the Eighties and Nineties and the resulting new alignments: metaphysical naturalism, internal realism, anti-realism, and constructivism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 697 Excellent as Sullivan's book is, it has raised a host of questions which, though it cannot be fairly expected to discuss them at length, much less to resolve, are at the heart of ongoing reflections about the possibility of salvation outside the visible Church. Such questions concern the concrete ways in which God works in the lives of peoples of different religions, the unique and normative (...) role of Christ in the history of salvation, the function of non-Christian religions as mediations of salvation, and so on. And the debate on these issues rages on among Catholic as well as non-Catholic theologians! One wishes that Sullivan had given a fuller account of this debate which is central in interreligious dialogue. More directly connected with the method and approach of the book itself are the questions of dogmatic development and the hermeneutics of doctrines. To put it more concretely, was Leonard Feeney, with whose ironic fate the book opens and ends, simply expressing the ancient doctrine of the deposit of the faith concerning salvation in the Church in a negative and imperfect fashion? Or was he (and more importantly, popes and official teachers of the faith) wrong in affirming the exclusiveness implicit in the formula extra ecclesiam nulla salus (which apparently they did)? H the latter, then the issues of infallible magisterium and dogmatic ' development ' raise their ugly heads, and one has to come to terms with them. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. PETER c. PHAN Character. By JOEL KUPPERMAN. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. vi + 193. The two theses of J. Kupperman's Character are "that character is of central importance to ethics and that ethical philosophy will have to be restructured once this is understood " (p. 3). The argument has three stages: the first three chapters explicate the notion of character and its relationship to the notions of the self and of responsibility; the next two consider the dominant, rival theories in contemporary ethics; the last two address the topics of value and the place of character in ethics. In two appendices, Kupperman applies the substantive conclusions of the work to the issues of moral psychology and the education of character. A brief review cannot communicate the many nuances of argument and the precise and lucid style that distinguish the book. While certain parts of the argument seem problematic, or at least in 698 BOOK REVIEWS need of further development, the work deserves the attention of professional ethicists and of inquisitive non-professionals. The opening chapter offers the following definition of character: "X's character is X's normal pattern of thought and action, especially with respect to concerns and commitments in matter affecting the hap· piness of others or of X, and most especially in relation to moral choices" (p. 17). In the second chapter, Kupperman considers three views: Enduring Self (ES), No Self (NS), and Constructed Self (CS). The ES appears to be seH-evidently true. But what exactly is the self and where is it to he found? It is difficult to fix the abiding " I " amid or behind the flux of our self-experience. On the other hand, even Hume's skepticism concerning the self presumes that " we know where to look " for it. The " I " is simultaneously obvious and elusive, stable and unstable (p. 40). Thus, both the ES and the NS are problematic, The third option is the Constructive Self, Kupperman holds that, as children, we begin with a "protoseH." The full-fledged self is often the result of orientations, habits, and traits of character developed before one has even begun deliberating about the kind of character one would like to have. Like the self, character is constructed mostly through unreflective choices. But this raises questions about responsibility, which is the focus of the third chapter. If we have not willed to be the sorts of persons we now are, how can we be held responsible for who we are or what we do? Actions do not " flow from character like water from a pipe " (p, 59). Over long periods of time and through a reorganization of large portions of our life, we can... (shrink)

It is argued that Beethoven used a system of numbers to guide aspects of many of his works, especially major ones. The numbers manifest themselves in the number of notes in a melody and/or of bars in a work or part of it, in groupings and numberings of works of a given kind, and in his deliberate choice of Opus numbers. They are not only small ones such as 3 , which of course turn up frequently anyway; larger ones (...) are prominent, particularly 27, 30, 32 and 33. The interpretation of the numbers was not his own innovation, but came largely from Christian and Masonic traditions in Austria at that time; the modes of his adhesion to those movements is appraised. The thesis confronts the apparent fact that Beethoven was very bad at arithmetic; consideration of this matter involves the psychology of arithmetic. It also faces a remarkable level of modern ignorance, including among musicologists, of numerology and of its methods of research. (shrink)

Late in life, Józef Maria Bocheński set out to examine the age-old preoccupation with the question “how to live as well and as long as possible?” A traditional answer has been, “live wisely.” In his Handbook of Worldly Wisdom (2020), Bocheński analyzes this answer arguing that, conceptually, living wisely is distinct from obeying moral commandments, prescribing ethical rules, and recognizing authority (e.g., piety, free submission to divine authority). He claims that ethics consists solely in what moral philosophers label as “metaethics” (...) — a theoretical discipline interested in the conceptual status of moral discourse qua discourse. However, Bocheński remains silent about a substantive ethics — that is, how a life led one way or another subscribes to some guiding value-set. As regards wisdom, therefore, the consequence of this position is that Bocheński’s account is ethically neutral. I argue that such a position entails a tension and dichotomy between, on the one hand, prudential rationality concerned with getting on in the moment — that is, wisdom — and, on the other hand, unconditional moral commandments. For his part, Bocheński does not recommend living according to wisdom’s precepts as he analyses them; his own path through life, he tells us, has been a commitment to Christian values, piety abetted by observance of moral commandments, a perspective that, I submit, is not ethically neutral: on the contrary, it entails thick, substantive value-choice. Bocheński’s avowal suggests a second dichotomy and tension, that between the worldly conduct of life, with moderate acknowledgment of moral principles, and an extra-worldly perspective (the “folly of the Cross”). Bocheński does not attempt to resolve either dichotomy, to seek a possible point of their convergence and integration, for instance by inquiring into moral psychology (i.e., the construction of self, the nature of the will, etc.). I believe that this set of views stems from conclusions Bocheński reached in advance of producing the Handbook that bear on, first, how philosophy should be conducted — as logical analysis hostile to grandiloquent speculation and synthesis (“worldviews”); and second, his utter dismissal as nefarious of anthropocentric views. Indeed, Bocheński asserts, without a blush, that almost everything “we” have come to believe about ourselves is superstition writ large. I trace what I consider to be difficulties with Bocheński’s account of wisdom — in relation to his take on morality, (meta-)ethics, and piety — to these idiosyncratic views. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Hidden Wisdom: Medieval Contemplatives on Self-Knowledge, Reason, Love, Persons, and Immortality by Christina Van DykeAnn W. AstellA Hidden Wisdom: Medieval Contemplatives on Self-Knowledge, Reason, Love, Persons, and Immortality. By Christina Van Dyke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xxv + 228. $41.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-19-886168-3.Building upon Étienne Gilson’s The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard (1940), which identified a systematic structure in the thought of a great contemplative (...) theologian, Jean Leclercq’s paradigm-shifting book, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (1960), won a place for medieval monastic theology alongside Scholastic theology, broadening the canon for scholars of medieval theology. That theological canon has long since been further broadened to include the books of women mystics.Van Dyke’s book similarly aims to widen the canon of texts studied under the rubric of medieval philosophy to include contemplative writings by women and men, some of whom are also regarded as mystics. This short, wise, and winning book is “perhaps the first book-length reintegration of the medieval contemplative tradition into discussions of medieval philosophy” (208).Van Dyke urges her fellow philosophers to engage seriously with meditative and mystical writings as a corrective of historically false claims: first, that “women didn’t do philosophy in the Middle Ages” (1); second, that mystical and contemplative writings, by definition, lack philosophical/rational content; third, that Scholastic disputations arose purely within the “isolated bubbles” of the universities and did not reflect ongoing societal and ecclesial “conversations that frequently included women” (2). Beyond this corrective [End Page 707] function, Van Dyke argues that the pairing of contemplative with Scholastic texts enriches the study of medieval philosophy through complementation by reinforcing philosophy’s status as a transformative pursuit of wisdom, highlighting its inherent variety as a field, engaging the historical voices of men and women alike in discussions of topics of common interest, and demonstrating the mutual complementarity of the Scholastic and contemplative philosophical traditions, which have distinctive emphases and provide different angles of approach to given questions and topics.What topics? The adjective “hidden” in the title has a double meaning. It gently points to the medieval contemplative tradition as “hidden” to presentday philosophers who, Van Dyke hopes, will discover its philosophical richness. The adjective also pairs with the adjectival noun “contemplatives” in the subtitle, suggesting the interplay in Van Dyke’s vocabulary, which treats “mystic” (a word often glossed as “hidden to the senses”) and “contemplative” as synonyms, but favors the latter as more directly indicative of willed and embodied cognition. In this choice, she draws encouragement both from Bernard McGinn’s broad definition of mysticism (namely, as a contemplative way of preparing one for the direct experience of God’s presence) and from Nicholas Watson’s description of mystical experience as “phenomenological” and “transcendent” (20); she distances herself from the purely psychological interests of William James and the homogenizing views of Evelyn Underhill.In chapter 1, “Mysticism, Methodology, and Epistemic Justice,” Van Dyke takes her fellow philosophers to task for defining “mysticism” narrowly in a way that excludes “embodied, non-unitive states... visions, auditions, and other somatic experiences” (4). This too-narrow definition, she argues, has worked “‘against the recognition of women’s experiences as properly mystical’” (10), excluded meditative practices belonging to the contemplative path practiced by medieval Christians, and effected “the exclusion of philosophers from most of the ongoing interand intradisciplinary conversations about mysticism” (20).The subtitle of Van Dyke’s book conveniently lists five topics—self-knowledge, reason, love, persons, and immortality—that reflect the major themes of chapters 2 through 6. These short chapters each have a similar arrangement, showcasing both the questions common to Scholastics and contemplatives and the differences in their approaches.Chapter 2, “Self-Knowledge” opens with the observation, “The importance of self-knowledge is a truth universally acknowledged in the contemplative philosophical tradition” (33). According to Van Dyke, university-based discussions about the self tend to inquire “about ‘what’ we are and how we come to know this, while contemplative and mystical discussions tend to focus on ‘who’ we are and to emphasize the significance of self... (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Veils: The Poetics of John Rawls*George Armstrong KellyPlutarch recounts in Sais, a holy place of Egypt, the image of Isis, understood by the Greeks to be a version of Pallas Athena, bore the inscription: “I am everything that has been, that is, and that shall ever be: no human mortal has discovered me behind my veil.” 1 This recalls a very different god, Yahweh, whose claim is also to (...) compress all knowledge into an eternal present and whose dwelling, in Solomon’s temple, is in a special sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, also guarded by a veil.There, one might say, the similarity ends. Yahweh is a masculine diety (“the father of his people”), though imagistically he remains a space or an absence filled by a name (“I Am That I Am”) indicative of the transcendent distance of the eternal. Isis is a female shape imaging carnal knowledge behind her veil (with its Machiavellian, Baconian temptations). Her truth, as Plutarch makes clear, is driven by desire, truth being a “desire for divinity,” “a study... and work more holy than the vow and obligation of chastity or the guarding and sealing of any....” 2 The almost certain wages, however, for the would-be ravisher is unfulfillment and death, whereas Yahweh, having become the God of the Christians, promises eternal life through the sacrifice of his only-begotten son and a truth above knowledge “that shall make you free” (John 8:32). [End Page 343]To the Semitic mind the name expressed and represented the power of the person: God was present in a special way wherever the “Name of Yahweh” was. 3 The content of the Holy of Holies, originally portable in the ancient Ark of the Covenant, was the two stone tablets of the Law received by Moses at Horeb (1 Kings 8:9). God’s presence, once installed in the Temple of Jerusalem, was represented as “a cloud [that] filled the house of the Lord” (ibid, 8:10; cf. 2 Chronicles 5:10, 13). God was cloud; knowledge was duty. Of the physical place of this indwelling principle of knowledge, Jesus said (John 2:19): “Destroy this sanctuary: within three days I shall raise it up again.” The evangelist explains that his metaphor is transferred to the new Christian idea of the word made flesh. 4 John’s gospel does not cite the rendering of the veil of the temple, but the synoptic gospels all recount that it was “rent in twain from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51, Mark 16:38, Luke 23:45) at Christ’s Crucifixion. The idea is essentially that knowledge as command and duty has been surpassed by a knowledge that is love in the crucified revelation of the Son of God. This returns us, ambiguously, to the image of the goddess Isis; for even in Hebrew scripture it is foretold: “The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me” (Song of Solomon 5:7). If there is here a clear prefiguration of the fate of both Christ and the temple, there is also an echo of the likely fate of the harlot Rahab, who let Joshua’s spies into Jericho, had God not saved her from the ruin of that city (Joshua 6:17).The purpose of this essay is not to dwell on obvious imagistic and psychological attachments between wisdom and sexual knowledge, but early notice of this liaison is needed to connect the philosophical discourse on veils with motifs disclosed in figurative literature. For the veil that hides the object of desire may also hide the reality of the name or of naming; preserving the veil may be a mode of love, just as challenging it is also. For example, when John Rawls writes: “The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances,” 5 what does his image of the veil intend to convey? What exactly is on each side of this veil? From... (shrink)

Hope is crucial human agency, but its fragility grounds a substantive challenge to Christian belief. It is not clear how a perfectly loving God could permit despairinducing experiences of divine silence. Drawing upon a distinctively Christian psychology of hope, this paper seeks to address this challenge. I contend that divine silence can act as a corrective to misplaced natural hopes. But there are risks in God’s choice to allow a person to lose all natural hope. Thus, if God (...) is perfectly loving, God ought to find a way to demonstrate goodness to those who are tempted by theological despair. I argue that the Church demonstrates God’s goodness through its merciful care and hope for the afflicted. The local community can act to sustain or recover a person’s capacity to remain open to the gift of hope even in the midst of divine silence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:OBJECT AND INTENTION IN MORAL JUDGMENTS ACCORDING TO AQUINAS JOHN FINNIS U'flkueTBity Oollege Unwersity of Oa:ford INTENTION IS OF END, choice is of means. A human aict ~s specified by (and s? is co.rrect:ly describe~ in terms of) its end. A human act IS specified by (and so Is correctly described in terms of) its object. An a:ct which is bad by reason of its object cannot be (...) justified by its end (its: good intention ). A human a:ct is specified by (and so is correctly described in iterms of) its intention.... Such a sequence of statements of St. Thomas ought to leave an impression of confusion. That impression would be heightened by the traditional representation of his analysis of acting in a schema of 12 terms signifying a sequence of psychological acts involved in willing and doing something. For in this analysis, intention seems to precede ·deliberating, judging, and choosing, and so, as deliberating, judging, and choosing often present themselves to consciousness distinctly, intention is presented in this analysis as if it were a distinct content of consciousness. When intention is so conceived, iit becomes possible to imagine that one can, so to speak, choose to direct (an) intention to or withhold it from the various aspects of one's chosen behavior, e.g. it.hose consequences which one foresees and welcomes or those one chooses to bring about onJ.y with regret. To some contemporary moralists, such approving or regretting of consequences is precisely what engages or disengages one's will and thus one's responsibility; what Christians or Jews used to regard as immoral can be uprightly done if done merely as a means to good ends and only with reluctance, I JOHN FINNIS regret, disapproval, i.e. if in no way approved or adopted as an end, i.e. if not really intended.1 Other modern moralists deny that one's responsibility for consequences of deliberate behavior can be so dependent on an inner ruct of intending (as distinct from the choosing and doing) ; they judge one responsible for everything one deliberately and with foresight causes.2 So they too reject the " doctrine " of double effect which Christian moralists had articulated as a development or codification of the elements of St. Thomas's discussion of self-defense, a disoussion whose first premise is that a human ad is specified (i.e. identified for the purposes of moral assessment) by its intention. Today there are other moralists again who combine the two foregoing lines of thought: they reject the doctrine of double effect as giving exaggernted importance to choice (means) over intention (end); one should take into account alil foreseeable consequences of one's chorce and ensure that it is likely to have a greater proportion of good than of bad consequences, and one must never approve (intend) any bad consequences -one may never deliberately cause them as ends hut only as means, means which one deliberwtely causes, not for their own sake, hut only for the sake of those proportionately greater good (or less bad) consequences which one does intend.8 1 Cf., e.g., Richard McCormick, S.J., "Medicaid and.Abortion," Theological Studies 45 (1984): 716-717. 2 Cf. Bruno Schueller, "The Double Effect in Catholic Thought: A Re· evaluation," in McCormick and Ramsey, Doimg Evil to Achieve Good (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978), 191: "... 'intend as a means' and 'permit', when referring to a non-moral evil, denote exactly the same mental attitude." Schueller, "La moraliM des moyens," Recherches de Science Religieuse 68 (1980) : 211 (causilng moral evil is never justified, causing non-moral evils is justified in pursuit of non-moral good of corresponding importance); 221· 2: "pour tous les biens dont la possession contribue au bien-etre de l'homme... [q]uoi que l'on choisisse... les consequences negatives qui resultent du choix sont un pur moyen en vue des consequences positives qui en resultent." s Cf. K.-H. Peschke, "Tragfaehigkeit und Grenzen des Prinzips der Doppelwirkung," Studia Moralia 26 (1988): 110-112, where Peschke states the "principle of double effect" (which he ascribes to Catholic theology and attacks ) in terms not of what is directly or... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY weapons," the emotive meanings of propaganda (p. 168). Thus his main distinctions between understanding and will, science and art, knowing and doing, civil and penal, were repeatedly blurred as his tactics shifted. Bentham's originality, says Mack, "lay just here, in putting moral insights to use by first incorporating them in a systematic analytic structure." Yet he "never fully explained what he intended to include under (...) a 'logic of the will.' He began with individuals, their immediate pleasures and pains, and a Utilitarian rationale or consideration of consequences..." but the essential connective tissues were never sufficiently supplied (pp. 160-161). But at least the logic of the will and Bentham's bitter frustrations as a reformer combined to make him a radical democrat by 1790, and not, as the author clearly and for the first time demonstrates, because of the influence of James Mill some twenty years later. With a wealth of detail the author accompanies Bentham just beyond the mid-point of his odyssey, and fully justifies her admiration for what he attempted to do. She recognizes the obvious "gap between his ambition and his achievement," to which must be added the distance between his psychology and sociology and ours. Many of the questions he raised are still with us, and have even been sharpened, as the late David Baumgardt pointed out, by the logical positivists and the emotivists. In today's discussions, as he indicates, we are often confronted with a choice between but two alternatives: uncritical normative ethics and ethical or non-ethical psychology. Bentham offers at least the possibility of "basing ethics critically upon psychological observations." And Stevenson speaks of attitudes which can be "supported" by some "reasoned argument " (David Baumgardt, Bentham and the Ethics oI Today [Princeton, New Jersey: 1952], pp. 137-150). Nothing in this excellent beginning leads the reader to expect the second volume to portray the completion by Bentham of the majestic structures which he planned and replanned. But a case has been made for a reassessment of Bentham as an adventurer, if not as a builder in philosophy, so that one looks forward to the next installment of his odyssey. HAROLD A. LARRABEE Union College,Schenectady,New York Positives Antichristentum: Nietzsches Christusbild im Brennpunkt nachchristlicher Anthropologie. By Hermann Wein. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962. Pp. 114. 9.50 G.) For understandable reasons, a definitive study of the philosophy of Nietzsche has never been written-and may never be written. Nietzsche's predilection for dialectics, the restless to-and-fro with which he at once affirms and negates virtually every cultural and intellectual phenomenon of the western world, including some products of his own creative imagination, is the despair even of those commentators who would heed his warning that there is no fixed center to his thought. Thus we have had interpretations of Nietzsche as atheist, as secular eschatologist, as nihilist, as cultural relativist, as Dionysian yea-sayer, as Darwinian eugenicist, and the like--none of them altogether mistaken, all of them, singly and collectively, beset by a frustrating one-sidedness. It would be too much to say that Professor Wein has succeeded where all others have [ailed. But he has managed to present more of a "whole" Nietzsche than have his prede- BOOK REVIEWS 121 r He has honored his own sound methodological precept that "only in a farspanning synopsis of what constitutes the aphoristically dispersed Nietzschean corpus does the contrapuntal order of this open, nonsystematic philosophy become apparent" (p. as). Nietzsche, Professor Wein insists, was not an out-and-out nihilist. But in the face of his wholesale negations of what the West has traditionally understood by and accepted as real, true, and valuable, what was left for Nietzsche to affirm? By way of answer, Wein devotes more than half of his book to a multiperspectival exegesis of Nietzsche's briefest and best-known pronouncement: "God is dead." In the first place, the pronouncement is an historical report. "God," a shorthand expression for the hierarchized meanings and values developed by the Judeo-Christian tradition, is all but extinct. Thus for Nietzsche the contemporary era is the epoch of the ascendancy of nihilism. In the second place... (shrink)