This paper contributes to the debate about how the overdemandingness objection applies to Kant's ethics. I first look at the versions of the overdemandingness objections Kant himself levels against other ethicists and ethical principles and I discuss in what sense he acknowledges overdemandingness as a problem. Then I argue that, according to Kant's own standards, introspection about the moral worthiness of one's actions can constitute forms of moral overdemandingness. Self-scrutiny and Kant's well-known claim that we can never be certain that (...) we acted for the right reason jeopardize agents’ deserved happiness. Furthermore, self-scrutiny can constitute an activity Kant himself criticizes under the labels of “micrology” and “fantastic virtue”. The demandingness of critical self-scrutiny has not yet received due attention in the overdemandingness debate since this debate is focused on duties we have towards others. (shrink)

There is a consensus that Kant's aim in the Groundwork is to clarify, systematize and vindicate the common conception of morality. Philosophical theory hence serves a restorative function. It can strengthen agents' motivation, protect against self-deception and correct misunderstandings produced by uncritical moral theory. In this paper, I argue that Kant also corrects the common perspective and that Kant's Groundwork shows in which senses the common perspective, even considered apart from its propensity to self-deception and without being influenced by misleading (...) theory, is deficient. Critical practical philosophy needs to set right agents about the stringency of some of their duties, and agents need to be made aware that they have certain other duties. I discuss how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of the stringency of the duty to not make false promises and how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of duties to self. I finally discuss how his critical practical philosophy can become popular and achieve the correction of the common perspective. I stress the role of education informed by philosophical theory for this and contrast it with so called ‘popular philosophy’. (shrink)

We investigate the behavior of cardinal characteristics of the reals under extensions that do not add new [Formula: see text]-sequences (for some regular [Formula: see text]). As an application, we show that consistently the following cardinal characteristics can be different: The (“independent”) characteristics in Cichoń’s diagram, plus [Formula: see text]. (So we get thirteen different values, including [Formula: see text] and continuum). We also give constructions to alternatively separate other MA-numbers (instead of [Formula: see text]), namely: MA for [Formula: see (...) text]-Knaster from MA for [Formula: see text]-Knaster; and MA for the union of all [Formula: see text]-Knaster forcings from MA for precaliber. (shrink)

Martin Wight was one of the most profound and influential thinkers on international relations of his time; and his work is increasingly discussed, appraised, and drawn upon today. His earlier volume of posthumously-published lectures - International Theory: The Three Traditions - is now regarded as a seminal text. That volume is here complemented and completed. In these four lectures Wight takes the archetypal thinkers of the three traditions - Machiavelli, Grotius, and Kant - to whom he adds Mazzini, the (...) father of all revolutionary nationalism and subjects their writings and careers to a masterly analysis and commentary. This volume has been prepared and edited by Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter, and contains an important new introduction to Wight's thought by Professor David S. Yost. The volume also contains a preface by Sir Michael Howard, CH. (shrink)

Avigail Eisenberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Victoria. She was also a fellow of CRÉUM during the 2004-2005 academic year. She has written important texts on the issues of identity, race, gender, minority rights, and in particular, Aboriginal claims. Her writing displays intelligent and acute commentaries in which she demonstrates an ability to tackle difficult questions in a refreshing way. Martin Blanchard of CRÉUM asked Professor Eisenberg if she would be willing to (...) be interviewed via email on the subject of an article she had just finished writing, entitled “Reasoning about the Identity of Aboriginal People”. She kindly accepted to answer his questions. (shrink)

Pastor and author Martin Thielen has compiled a list of ten things people need to believe, and ten things they don't, in order to be a Christian. This lively and engaging book will be a help to seekers as well as a comfort to believers who may find themselves questioning some of the assumptions they grew up with. With an accessible, storytelling style that's grounded in solid biblical scholarship, Thielen shows how Christians don't need to believe that sinners will (...) be "left behind" to burn in hell or that it's heresy to believe in evolution. And while we must always take the Bible seriously, we don't always have to take it literally. At the same time, Christians do need to believe in Jesus--his life, his teachings, his death and resurrection, and his vision for the world. A great benefit of those beliefs is that they provide promising answers to life's most profound questions, including: Where is God? What matters most? What brings fulfillment? What about suffering? Is there hope? Thielen articulates centrist, mainline Christianity in a way that's fresh and easy to understand, and offers authentic Christian insights that speak to our deepest needs. This new edition includes a leader's guide, previously only available online, and a new introduction from the author that reflects on the book's reception. The leader's guide features unique and easily implemented aids for carrying out a seven-week, congregation-wide initiative that will help local churches reach out to their communities. More information is available at thielen.wjkbooks.com. (shrink)

The first case of COVID-19 infection in Africa was recorded in Egypt on 14 February 2020. Following this, several projections of the possible devastating effect that the virus can have on the population of African countries were made in the Western media. This paper presents evidence for Africa’s successful responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and under-reporting or misrepresentation of these successes in Western media. It proceeds to argue for accounting for these successes in terms of Africa’s communitarian way of life (...) and conceptions of self, duty, and rights; and that a particular orientation in theorizing on global justice can highlight the injustices inherent in the misrepresentation of these successes and contribute shared perspectives to formulating a framework of values and concepts that would facilitate the implementation of global policy goals for justice. The paper is thus grounded in a rejection of the insular tenets of theorizing prevalent in the global justice debate and to persistent inclinations in Western scholarship to the thinking that theorizing in the African context that draws inspiration from the cultural past has little to contribute to the quest for justice globally. On the contrary, it argues that reflexive critique of cultural history is a necessary source of normative ideals that can foster tolerant coexistence and a cooperative endeavour toward shared conceptions of justice in the contemporary world. (shrink)

En diversos textos relacionados con la filosofía de la historia, Immanuel Kant presenta los conceptos de “naturaleza”, “destino” o “providencia” que dan sentido y finalidad a la historia de la humanidad en su conjunto. Estos textos fueron publicados durante las décadas de 1780 y 1790. El objetivo de este artículo es examinar las diferentes formas que adopta la teleología de la naturaleza en estos textos kantianos. Intentaremos mostrar las coincidencias y las diferencias entre las formas mencionadas.

En este trabajo trato de demostrar que Nino no logra articular un liberalismo completamente antiperfeccionista en su respuesta al comunitarismo. Para ello, parto de reconstruir el diagnóstico que Nino ofrece de la crítica comunitarista al liberalismo y señalo que para darle respuesta se compromete con una concepción particular del bien basada en la idea de autorrealización autónoma. En la siguiente sección desarrollo la manera en la que esa concepción del bien da forma al liberalismo de Nino y, en el apartado (...) siguiente, la confronto con un experimento mental destinado a evaluar si es capaz de bloquear distintas políticas estatales de corte perfeccionista. En la última sección ofrezco unas breves conclusiones respecto al modo en el que la adopción de una concepción del bien particular limita las pretensiones antiperfeccionistas de su teoría liberal. In this paper I attempt to prove that Nino does not succeed in developing a fully antiperfectionist account of liberalism as an answer to the communitarian challenge. I begin with a reconstruction of Nino’s diagnosis of the communitarian challenge to liberalism and point out that, in order to answer it he commits himself to a particular conception of the good based on the idea of autonomous self-realization. In the next section I develop the way by which that conception of the good shapes Nino’s liberalism. I further challenge his liberalism with a mental experiment designed to asses if it is capable of blocking several perfectionist State policies. In the last section I offer some brief remarks on the way the adoption of a particular conception of the good limits the antiperfectionist scope of Nino’s liberalism. (shrink)

The notions of “concepts of the political” and that of “political concepts” refer to different but intertwined phenomena. As I will argue in this article, the concepts of the political refer to the self-institution of societies, while political concepts are those that emerge in the realm of politics, a field some societies institute as precisely the site in which the reversibility of the political takes place. This article will argue that the concepts of the political and the political concepts coming (...) out of South America in its contemporary history spring from the main events and processes—the political and social history—that dominated the period. The events and concepts first discussed will be those related to the conquest and its legacy, only to later move fully to the past fifty years of dictatorships, transitions to democracy, and the emergence of the neopopulist political form. (shrink)

A close reading of the three Bhavanakramah texts, written by Kamalasila, reveals that their author was aware of two competing concepts of meditation prevalent in Tibet at the time of their composition. The two concepts of meditation,associated with the Sanskrit words bhavana and dhyana, can be related respectively to the Indian and Chinese sides of the well-known debates at bSam yas. The account of the Mahayana path outlined in these texts implies an acceptance of the precedence of bhavana over dhyana. (...) In this paper I argue that Kamalasila advocated bhavana – a conception of meditation which encompasses non-conceptual dhyana, but which also includes a discernment of reality that is conceptual in nature. Such conceptual discernment should not be understood simply as a process of ordinary rational understanding but rather as constituting a special kind of meditative wisdom. A failure to recognize the subtle differences between Kamalasila’s employment of the terms dhyana and bhavana, along with his advocacy of the latter, could easily lead to mistranslation and, with this, a basic misunderstanding of his position. In particular, it could lead to a conception of insight that is overly intellectual in nature. Given the historically important role that these texts played in the formation of Tibetan Buddhism, the implications of such a misconception could be far-reaching. This paper attempts to clarify the key meditation terminology found in the Bhavanakramas as well as demonstrate the rationale for using ‘meditation’ as the default translation for bhavana. (shrink)

Friedrich Schiller ist bei seiner Kant-Rezeption nicht nur von seinem Dresdener Freund Christian Gottfried Körner unterstützt worden. Auch auf kompetente Belehrungen und Anregungen seitens des Jenaer Philosophieprofessors Karl Leonhard Reinhold konnte er stets zählen. Reinhold führt ihn ab 1787 an kantische Schriften heran und konfrontiert ihn mit illuminatischen Geschichts- und Aufklärungsideen. Nach dem Antritt seiner Professur steht Schiller unter dem Einfluss des praktischen Teils von Reinholds System der Elementarphilosophie. So verdanken Schillers kantisch-ästhetische Reflexionen der frühen 1790er-Jahre ihr thematisches Grundprofil maßgeblich (...) einer dialogischen Auseinandersetzung mit Lehrstücken des Philosophenkollegen zum ästhetischen Vergnügen, zu den menschlichen Grundtrieben, zur Freiheit des Willens sowie zur Idee moralischer Gemeinschaft. (shrink)

The answer to the question about the relation between philosophy and poetry must be, after Boeder's Topologie der Metaphysik (1980), a differentiated one. Thus, she take into account first the epochally distinguished history of metaphysics, and later the sens-explications of the world of modernity, in order to show, why contemporary thinking instead to listen the voice of poetizing seek the access to the configuration of Wisdom of our tradition.

I discuss two puzzling and neglected passages in the Critique of Practical Reason, namely, V:92 and V:163. In these passages Kant claims that practical philosophers should follow the paradigm of the chemist and conduct experiments on common human reason. I explain Kant’s conception of the chemical experiment, provide a detailed interpretation of the two passages in question, and conclude by applying the structure of the chemical experiment to the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason. Chemical experiments as a model (...) of ethics should be understood as a method of confirming that a philosophical theory systematizes and defends ideas that ordinary rational agents are already committed to. (shrink)