청대 고증학은 고전과 경전의 복원(復原)을 통한 법고창신(法古創新) 온고지신(溫故知 新)의 방법론을 주창한 고전주의 학파이다. 하지만 18세기 고증학을 수용하였던 조선의 유학계는 협소한 자구(字句) 해석과 문자학적 훈고(訓誥)에 집중하는 고증학의 경전고변 이 학문적 실용성이 있는가에 대한 의문을 제기하며 또 하나의 지적유희에 젖어들어 훈고 적학 공리공론으로 고증학이 빠져들 것이라는 우려를 떨쳐내지 못하였다. 하지만 조선 중, 후기 유학자들이 고증학 전반에 대하여 비판적인 시각을 견지했던 것 은 아니다. 명청 교체기 초기 고증학의 명대 3대 유로(遺老)인 고염무, 황종희 왕부지 등 에 대해서 조선의 유학계에서는 매우 긍정적이고 우호적인 입장을 모여주는 (...) 것들이 자주 나타난다. 이들의 특징은 경세치용의 실용적 경세론을 주창하는 학자들이었다는 것이다. 명말청초 경세치용의 고증학은 근본적으로 공사 사를 대립적 개념으로 상정했던 송대 성리학과 달리, 공 사의 통일적 관계에 주목한다. 이와 같은 공과 사의 경계 허물기는 조 선 실학사상에서는 결코 피해 갈 수 없는 것이었다. 이에 대한 조심스러운 수용은 기호 남 인계 성호학파에서부터 제기되는 것으로 보인다. 또한 이것은 노론계 북학파에서는 사욕과 탐욕을 위한 근대 자본주의 욕망구조의 승인 이 아닌 국가공동체의 공익을 위한, 즉 공적 영역에서의 사리(私利)의 수용으로 나타난다. 또한 재화와 욕망의 공적 수용이라는 측면에서 유교주의적 경세론에서 벗어나지 않으며 이용후생학파의 이론적 토대가 되기도 한다. 이외에도 황종희의 사회개혁론은 정약용과 최한기 등 당시 조선실학자들에게 막대한 사회사상적 영향을 주었으며 조선 후기 실학사상의 민권 민본주의의 근간을 제공한 것이 다 이렇게 명말청초 초기 계몽파 고증학의. 경세치용적 개혁사상은 조선 실학사상의 사회 변혁 사상의 근간이 되었음은 분명하다. (shrink)

Background: While nursing ethics education is commonly provided for undergraduate nursing students in most nursing colleges, consensus on the content and teaching modules for these ethics courses have still not been established. Objectives: This study aimed to examine the effects of nursing ethics education on the moral sensitivity and critical thinking disposition of nursing students in Korea. Research design: A one-group pre- and post-test design was used. Moral sensitivity was measured using the Korean version of the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire. Critical (...) thinking disposition was measured using the Critical Thinking Disposition Questionnaire. Participants and research context: Participants were 70 undergraduate nursing students who were attending a university located in Seoul, Korea. The nursing ethics education was provided 7 times, from September to December 2010, and comprised 90-min sessions each week. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with the Human Subject Research Ethics Committee guidelines. Findings: After the education, the levels for the patient-oriented care, a sub-domain of moral sensitivity, and inquisitiveness, a sub-domain of critical thinking disposition, significantly improved. There were no changes in overall scores for moral sensitivity and critical thinking disposition. There were significant positive correlations between moral sensitivity and critical thinking disposition both pre- and post-intervention. Conclusion: These results reflect the need for ongoing efforts to develop innovative content, structure, and instructional methods for undergraduate nursing ethics education programs. (shrink)

Auditory perception is traditionally conceived as the perception of sounds — a friend’s voice, a clap of thunder, a minor chord. However, daily life also seems to present us with experiences characterized by the absence of sound — a moment of silence, a gap between thunderclaps, the hush after a musical performance. In these cases, do we positively hear silence? Or do we just fail to hear, and merely judge or infer that it is silent? This longstanding question remains controversial (...) in both the philosophy and science of perception, with prominent theories holding that sounds are the only objects of auditory experience and thus that our encounter with silence is cognitive, not perceptual. However, this debate has largely remained theoretical, without a key empirical test. Here, we introduce a novel empirical approach, presenting experimental evidence that silence can be genuinely perceived (not just cognitively inferred). We ask whether silences can ‘substitute’ for sounds in event-based auditory illusions — empirical signatures of auditory event representation in which auditory events distort perceived duration. Seven experiments introduce three new ‘silence illusions’ — the one-silence-is-more illusion, silence-based warping, and the oddball-silence illusion — each adapted from a prominent perceptual illusion previously thought to arise only from sounds. Subjects were immersed in ambient noise interrupted by silences structurally identical to the sounds in the original illusions. In all cases, silences elicited temporal distortions perfectly analogous to the illusions produced by sounds. Our results suggest that silence is truly heard, not merely inferred, introducing a general approach for studying absence perception. (shrink)

In this work we investigate the Weihrauch degree of the problem Decreasing Sequence of finding an infinite descending sequence through a given ill-founded linear order, which is shared by the problem Bad Sequence of finding a bad sequence through a given non-well quasi-order. We show that $\mathsf {DS}$, despite being hard to solve, is rather weak in terms of uniform computational strength. To make the latter precise, we introduce the notion of the deterministic part of a Weihrauch degree. We then (...) generalize $\mathsf {DS}$ and $\mathsf {BS}$ by considering $\boldsymbol {\Gamma }$ -presented orders, where $\boldsymbol {\Gamma }$ is a Borel pointclass or $\boldsymbol {\Delta }^1_1$, $\boldsymbol {\Sigma }^1_1$, $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^1_1$. We study the obtained $\mathsf {DS}$ -hierarchy and $\mathsf {BS}$ -hierarchy of problems in comparison with the Baire hierarchy and show that they do not collapse at any finite level. (shrink)

It is widely thought that knowledge is factive – only truths can be known. However, this view has been recently challenged. One challenge appeals to approximate truths. Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri argue that false-but-approximately-true propositions can be known. They provide experimental findings to show that their view enjoys intuitive support. In addition, they argue that we should reject the factive account of knowledge to avoid widespread skepticism. A second challenge, advanced by Nenad Popovic, appeals to multidimensional geometry to build (...) a case where it seems intuitive that a person knows p even though p is false. In addition, Popovic argues that we should reject the factive account of knowledge because most of us would not become widespread skeptics if we discovered that ordinary objects in our world are actually four-dimensional. In this paper, we defend the factive account of knowledge against these arguments by challenging the intuitive appeal of the cases and arguing that there is no real threat of widespread skepticism for the factive account of knowledge. (shrink)

We study the computational content of various theorems with reverse mathematical strength around Arithmetical Transfinite Recursion (ATR_0) from the point of view of computability-theoretic reducibilities, in particular Weihrauch reducibility. Our main result states that it is equally hard to construct an embedding between two given well-orderings, as it is to construct a Turing jump hierarchy on a given well-ordering. This answers a question of Marcone. We obtain a similar result for Fraïssé's conjecture restricted to well-orderings.

Goh, Michelle Christian discipleship is to live faithfully Jesus' commandment of love-of God and of our neighbour. The commandment to love especially those who are poor or in need was emphasised by Jesus in his actions and his teachings. Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan has traditionally been an influential model of care and compassion. We are given an example of how we ought to extend ourselves to care for each other, especially those who are helpless, suffering or isolated.1 It (...) is increasingly recognised that elderly persons are amongst those who are in need in modern society. This article discusses how the trinitarian perspective of God can enrich our care and service of ageing persons beyond the Good Samaritan paradigm. (shrink)

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, “. . .Your words ... are too big and useless, and so everyone alike spurns them!”Chuang Tzu said, “Maybe you’ve never seen a wildcat or a weasel. It crouches down and hides, watching for something to come along. It leaps and races east and west, not hesitating to go high or low—until it falls into the trap and dies in the net. Then again there’s the yak, big as a cloud covering the sky. It (...) certainly knows how to be big, though it doesn’t know how to catch rats.” 1 One could perhaps understand, if not empathize with, Hui Tzu’s impatience in the dialogue above. Hui Tzu, after all, is not alone in finding Chuang Tzu’s philosophy, which would be the thinking of the Way .. (shrink)

This paper examines Fichte's conception of the freedom of choice in Das System der Sittenlehre of 1798 as a solution to the dilemma posed by determinism and indeterminism. It show that Fichte does not simply affirm an indifferent power of voluntary choice, but demonstrates how such a power might co-exist with the measure of regularity and lawfulness we normally admit of human choices. Particular choices do not occur at random, but are based on general reasons. These reasons are in turn (...) based on the extent to which we have freely reflected on our original drive. Thus our choices can be comprehended and predicted from the point of reflection from which we choose. This does not lead to the denial of the freedom of choice, but only to rethinking it in terms of the freedom of reflection: Though we cannot choose other than what we choose from the point of reflection we occupy, we can choose other than what we choose by raising or lowering ourselves through reflection to a higher or lower point of reflection. (shrink)

Christopher Nolan is the writer and director of Hollywood blockbusters like The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, and also of arthouse films like Memento and Inception. Underlying his staggering commercial success however, is a darker sensibility that questions the veracity of human knowledge, the allure of appearance over reality and the latent disorder in contemporary society. This appreciation of the sinister owes a huge debt to philosophy and especially modern thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Derrida. (...) Taking a thematic approach to Nolan's oeuvre, Robbie Goh examines how the director's postmodern inclinations manifest themselves in non-linearity, causal agnosticism, the threat of social anarchy and the frequent use of the mise en abyme, while running counter to these are narratives of heroism, moral responsibility and the dignity of human choice. For Goh, Nolan is a 'reluctant postmodernist'. His films reflect the cynicism of the modern world, but with their representation of heroic moral triumphs, they also resist it. (shrink)

Sungho Choi has criticised Michael Strevens's counterexample to DavidLewis's final theory of "token" causation, causation as "influence." Iargue that, even if Choi's points are correct, Strevens's counterexampleremains useful in revealing a shortcoming of Lewis's theory. Thisshortcoming is that Lewis's theory does not properly account for*degrees* of causation. That is, even if Choi's points are correct,Lewis's theory does not capture an intuition we have about the*comparative* causal statuses of those events involved in Strevens'scounterexample (we might, for example, intuit that Sylvie's ball-firingis (...) *as much*/*more*/*less* a cause of the jar's shattering as/than isBruno's ball-firing). (shrink)

In philosophical methodology, intuitions are used as evidence to support philosophical theories. In this paper, I evaluate the skeptical argument that variation in intuitions is good evidence that our intuitions are unreliable, and so we should be skeptical about our theories. I argue that the skeptical argument is false. First, variation only shows that at least one disputant is wrong in the dispute, but each disputant lacks reason to determine who is wrong. Second, even though variation in intuitions shows that (...) at least one disputant has the wrong intuition in the thought experiment, it is not evidence of unreliability of any disputant’s intuition regarding the philosophical theory being tested. So, variation in intuitions is not good evidence that one’s own intuitions are unreliable. One reply from the literature in peer disagreement is that we should conciliate if we cannot determine who is wrong. I argue that these disagreements are instead unconfirmed peer disagreements (i.e., no good reason to take or dismiss disputants as an epistemic peer, inferior or superior). I argue that if you have a strong intuition about a case, then it is rational for you to remain steadfast. Thus, variation in intuitions does not call for skepticism. (shrink)

While Reinhold was no doubt interested in harnessing Kantian practical reason as a rational ground for our fundamental religious convictions, it remains unclear as to whether he reserves any role for theoretical or speculative reason in moral faith, and if so, what. This paper argues that he continues to assign an important role to speculative reason in the establishment and dissemination of a “religion of reason” in his efforts across three major texts of the Jena period (namely, the 1786-87 Letters (...) on the Kantian Philosophy, the 1789 Attempt at the New Theory of the Human Power of Representation, and the 1790 first edition of Contributions to the Correction of the Misunderstandings of Previous Philosophers) to outline a “new metaphysics” that accounts for supersensible objects (God, the soul, freedom and the physical, the moral and the intelligible world) in terms of forms of reason. It shows how Reinhold develops a unified account of speculative and practical reason by extending the former’s role to include that of producing ideas that pertain to the practical postulates and narrowing the latter’s role to that of imparting objective reality and further content to the ideas. (shrink)

The best-known fact about the interaction of the Republican Roman poet Gaius Lucilius (c.180–103/102b.c.e.), the inventor of the genre of Roman verse satire, with the doctrine of Scepticism is probably a statement of Cicero: that Clitomachus the Academician dedicated a treatise to the poet (Cic.Luc. 102). Diogenes Laertius makes much of that writer's, Clitomachus’, industry (τὸ φιλόπονον, 4.67), with the comment: ‘to such lengths did his diligence (ἐπιμελείας) go that he composed more than four hundred treatises’. This phraseology surely reminds (...) those interested in Lucilius’ influence on later Latin poetry of Horace's disparaging comment,in hora saepe ducentos, | ut magnum, uersus dictabat(‘as a bravura display, he would often dictate two hundred verses in an hour’,Sat.1.4.9–10); moreover, Horace shortly afterwards calls his predecessorgarrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem(‘talkative and too lazy to bear the work of writing’, 1.4.12). Yet, a sceptical view of Horace's critique might have to think of Lucilius as hard-working, like his putative friend the Academic philosopher, Clitomachus. (shrink)

A culture war has been brewing in Singapore since 2009 when a conservative Christian group conducted a reverse takeover of a feminist civil society organization and was subsequently expelled from the organization in a publicized meeting between the two groups. Since then, the state has mediated the contestation of values between religious conservatives and liberal groups allied around issues of gender and sexuality. The culture war between the two sides has revolved around creative protests that have evaded state prohibitions against (...) public contestations over what is legally considered private beliefs and affairs. They involve innovative hybridizations of American discourses on values and rights mixed with Asian emphases on family traditions and sentiments. The COVID-19 pandemic has, however, laid bare the adaptation of the American culture war into the Singaporean public sphere. This article looks at and analyzes COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among conservative Christians in Singapore and their incorporation of anti-vaccination views from American Christian nationalism into secular framings, invoking legal rights and responsibilities aligned with the state’s nationalist discourse. I argue that this represents a new phase of contestation by conservatives, refashioning their religious views into secular frames of public good and morality serving the secular nation. By doing so, they implicitly challenge the state’s regulation of religion as private interests and beliefs. This altered religious activism has shifted the terms of secularism and loosened the hegemony of the state in defining these terms. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the theory of consciousness that is contained in the “theory of the power of representation” or “elementary philosophy” of Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757-1823) during the period of his professorship at the University of Jena. It examines the development the theory undergoes from its first formulation in the Versuch einer neuen menschlichen Theorie des Vorstellungsvermögens (1789) to its subsequent revision in Beiträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Miβverständnisse der Philosophen (1790). Following Martin Bondeli’s cue, it presents the (...) theory as delivering a dynamic view of consciousness, describing it as progressing toward an increasingly reflexive awareness of its components. It also considers some objections to the theory, particularly those raised by the incisive Polish-Jewish critic Salomon Maimon. (shrink)

In Schopenhauer’s thought, the will’s primacy over the intellect seems to suggest that the intellect plays no role in determining what we do. I provide an alternative picture of the intellect as actively deliberating and choosing in abstract cognition from what it passively receives from the will in natural cognition.

Does the relation of (actual) causation admit of degrees? Is it sensible to say, for example, that ‘as compared to his consuming the light beer, Clement’s consuming the moonshine was more a cause of his becoming drunk’? Suppose the answer is ‘yes’. Suppose also that country A unjustifiably ignites a lethal war with country B, and you intuit that, while most combatants of A are liable to lethal counterattack, most non-combatants of A aren’t similarly liable. Then, you might support your (...) intuition by reasoning as follows. ‘Perhaps most non-combatants of A causally contribute to A’s unjust, lethal war effort. However, unlike most combatants of A, their causal contributions are not of such a degree that makes them liable to lethal counterattack’. Such reasoning is rejected by Carolina Sartorio. This is due to the recent revealing of a certain puzzle, one which suggests to Sartorio that causation doesn’t come in degrees. Now, one motivation for Sartorio’s reaction to the aforementioned puzzle is her thought that we can, for the most part, ‘explain away’ the ‘illusion’ that causation comes in degrees. I’ll argue that Sartorio insufficiently supports her foregoing thought. Using Sartorio’s resources, we cannot (largely) ‘explain away’ the widespread appearance that causation comes in degrees. (shrink)

This paper considers what Fichte's conception of the human body as an instrument of perception entails for his radical principle of the primacy of practice. According to Fichte, perception is a function of what he calls the "articulation" of the human body, as opposed to its "organization." I first provide an interpretation of his theory of the human-bodily articulation by arguing that he construes it as a product of culture as well as nature. On this basis, I go on to (...) consider the theory's implications for perception: first, since our articulated body is the sphere of our free activity, it follows from its function as the instrument of perception that we always exercise some measure of control over what we perceive; second, because our articulated body is a product of culture, the way in which we perceive is conditioned by practical rules, precepts and laws that regulate our reciprocal interaction with nature and society. (shrink)

This article seeks to decentre the proprietary author in copyright law by attending to some peripheral matters of Immanuel Kant’s periodical essay, ‘On the Wrongfulness of Reprinting’ (1785), as indices of its medial-material conditions of possibility. We consider not only the epitextual background of the German Enlightenment in which the Berlinische Monatsschrift was produced, but also the peritextual specimens of catchwords, signature marks, and various front matter of Kant’s essay. This medial reading suggests the periodical to be deeply involved in (...) the operations of a print machinery preceding the authorial figure, the existence of which perturbs copyright law’s attachment to original authorship. (shrink)

This essay investigates what a nuanced and revisionary interpretation of Fichte’s Critical-idealist philosophy could reveal about its impact on the philosophic thought of Friedrich Schlegel. It argues that Schlegel sees the Wissenschaftslehre through the lens of the distinction Fichte famous draws between the “spirit” (Geist) and the “letter” (Buchstaben) of a philosophy. He considers the spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre to lie in its acute awareness of its own limitation as a work of art and its letter in the deductive or (...) demonstrative form it inevitably assumes upon being expounded. In the face of the discrepancy, Schlegel rejects the letter of the Wissenschaftslehre in favor of its spirit. (shrink)

Like other health care practices, the increasing complexity in dentistry signals the need for a reconceptualisation of dentist professional learning. Professional dental bodies, at large, still privilege formal continuing professional development (CPD) provisions focusing on off-the-job activities despite growing evidence that much invaluable learning occurs through and at work. In exploring the two common dentist CPD approaches, this article critiques the narrow conceptions of learning inscribed in these frameworks, which are individualistic and acquisition oriented. Drawing on a vignette of dentists’ (...) professional practice at work, this paper argues for a shift in discussion from an emphasis on which CPD models work best to what counts as professional learning for dentists. To flesh out these arguments, the paper proposes using an innovative conceptual approach through the lens of ‘complexity thinking’ and the concept of ‘co-present group’. Through this lens, the reframing of thinking brings out two key features of learning: Emergent learning cannot be specified in advance and much significant learning is typically beyond an individual’s learning. Given the learning potentials of group practice and group learning, the paper concludes with suggestions to support dentists’ lifelong learning at work. (shrink)

This essay investigates what a nuanced and revisionary interpretation of Fichte’s Critical-idealist philosophy could reveal about its impact on the philosophic thought of Friedrich Schlegel. It argues that Schlegel sees the Wissenschaftslehre through the lens of the distinction Fichte famous draws between the “spirit” (Geist) and the “letter” (Buchstaben) of a philosophy. He considers the spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre to lie in its acute awareness of its own limitation as a work of art and its letter in the deductive or (...) demonstrative form it inevitably assumes upon being expounded. In the face of the discrepancy, Schlegel rejects the letter of the Wissenschaftslehre in favor of its spirit. (shrink)

At first glance, Clarice Lispector’s An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures (1969) might read like a regression from her earlier feminist and anti-Hegelian Passion According to G.H. (1964), given the female protagonist Lóri’s deference in large part to the male character Ulisses. I argue in this essay that any suspicion of such a philosophical letdown can be easily dispelled if we attend to Lóri’s attunement to affects and her immersion in them. As will be explicated in this essay, such (...) an affective investment signals, on the one hand, a return to Spinoza’s philosophy, thus suggesting a resistance toward the claim of a Hegelian philosophical system to surpass Spinoza; on the other hand, this investment, which exceeds the parameters of Spinoza’s philosophy as well, allows Lóri to put into practice an affective philosophy that is not only feminist but also nonanthropocentric. (shrink)

Cities are inextricably bound to their human denizens, although this human dimension is complicated by the emphasis on scale, speed, and progress that often dominates the semiotics and discourses of urban competition. In a profoundly ambivalent movement, various aspects of human “livability” are highlighted in the “quality of life” components of cities rankings and planning, while at the same time the “megacity” trend in planning and semiosis constantly threatens to overwhelm precisely that human livability. We can thus detect two broad (...) and fundamentally-opposed semiotic trends, namely, the confidently cosmopolitan trend that emphasizes urban growth and the positive effects these are assumed to have on quality of life; and the dehumanizing trend that emphasizes the human cost of urban growth and its technological components. The profound ambivalence that this indicates, needs to be figured into urban discourses towards a more holistic and balanced account. (shrink)

Classical Chinese Poetry in Singapore: Witnesses to Social and Cultural Transformations in the Chinese Community. By Bing Wang. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2018. Pp. xii + 189. $90 ; $85.50.

This chapter elucidates the important Fichtean concept of drive by examining how it is put to use in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre to account for the I’s positing of an object in general, its comprehension of nature as purposive, and its consciousness of its own pure nature. In the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, the nature of drive is first clarified as the form the I necessarily takes in and for itself inasmuch as it strives. Further configurations of the determination are (...) used to explain the operation of the laws by which the I determines external objects, their changes, and the harmony or disharmony of their changes with the moral law. In the System of Ethics, the concept is further employed to provide a transcendental account of nature’s purposiveness. By the account, the I is compelled by the need to comprehend its own nature as a drive that constitutes an organized whole to posit to a drive to form parts of itself into such wholes in the rest of nature. Also, when the I refers natural objects to the original drive, it posits final purposes for the objects. In the popular lectures, the concept is employed as an anthropological and psychological concept to explain features that accrue to human beings on account of their rationality, such as their social, aesthetic, intellectual and moral nature. (shrink)

No concept is more controversial in, and yet more central to, the Wissenschaftslehre than that of freedom. This chapter presents Fichte as an empirical indeterminist and a transcendental determinist. Underlying his better-known empirical account of freedom of voluntary choice, I argue, is a transcendental account of “freedom in itself.” The latter, given from the transcendental viewpoint, presents my world as a thoroughly determinate system of possible (inner and outer) experience, including the possible experience of what I can and will do (...) in it. From the perspective of transcendental genesis, freedom of voluntary choice is the result merely of my reflection on and analysis (rather than of my determination and synthesis) of the system. Additionally, I discuss other empirical expressions of freedom than free voluntary choice, including freedom of self-cultivation, freedom of thinking, external freedom and moral freedom. (shrink)

This chapter offers a fresh perspective on Fichte’s controversial critique of dogmatism in the “First and Second Introductions” to the Attempt at a New Presentation of the Science of Knowledge. It argues that the issue at stake in Fichte’s anti-dogmatism is the demand that reason be thoroughly determined from within itself and hence not be determined by anything outside it. It then addresses the charge of Fichte’s two-mindedness about the effectiveness of his refutation of dogmatism by arguing that the absolute (...) autonomy of reason deprives the idealist of any objective foothold upon which to refute the dogmatist outside of moral belief, it furnishes him with the subjective ground of rational justified by means of which the dogmatist can be refuted in his own terms. (shrink)

This book explores Fichte's theory of sensibility, focusing on its theoretical and practical significance. It offers unique insight into Fichte’s reinterpretation of Kant's aesthetic theory. Fichte's theory of sensibility can be found in his unpublished manuscript Practical Philosophy (1793). The author approaches this text as Fichte's attempt to reorganize Kant’s transcendental aesthetic and aesthetic of pure practical reason into a unified whole. The first half contains one of the first chapter-length studies of Abicht’s Attempt at a Critique of Pleasure (1789) (...) and Fichte’s Practical Philosophy. In this section, the author examines the context and development of a “philosophy of striving” in Practical Philosophy, explains the background of Fichte’s aesthetics, and provides a concise discussion of Kant’s sensationalist view of pleasure. The second half explores how the investigations in Practical Philosophy reemerge in the Jena period through the theory of aesthetic experience and artistic creation, theory of moral deliberation, and theory of truth and justification (particularly in philosophy) and illustrates the pivotal role Fichte assigns to feelings in human spiritual development. (shrink)

The book presents Fichte’s position on free will as a form of compatibilism that has not yet been explored in the literature. Due to early rationalist convictions, Fichte is as much concerned with reconciling freedom with a logical and a theological determinism as he is with a causal determinism. He sees in Kant’s novel concept of a pure practical reason a new form of rationalism, one consisting of a system of moral rather than natural necessitating grounds. At the same time, (...) he adopts a more radically libertarian stance on free will than Kant. Every member in a sequence of free actions is a “first and absolute member” and could be other than it is given the same antecedent natural events and natural laws. The interest of Fichte as a theorist of freedom lies in how he brings together freedom and predetermination in a way that challenges our assumption about their mutual exclusivity. The book provides an overview of Fichte’s philosophical system – the so-called “Doctrine of Science” – from 1793 to 1800 with the aim of contextualizing his theory of free agency and destiny. In doing so, it sheds light on how consideration of these issues in turn shapes the system. (shrink)

This collection presents a sort of counter-history or counter-genealogy of the globalization of French thought from the point of view of scholars working in the UK. While the dominating discourse would attribute the US as the source of that globalization, particularly through the 1966 conference on the Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man at Johns Hopkins University, this volume of essays serves as a reminder that the UK has also been a principal motor of that globalization. The essays (...) take into account how French thought and literary theory have institutionally taken shape in the UK from the 70s to today, highlight aspects of French thought that have been of particular pertinence or importance for scholars there, and outline how researchers in the UK today are bringing French thought further in terms of teaching and research in this twenty-first century. In short, this volume traces how the country has been behind the reception and development of French thought in Anglophone worlds from the late 70s to the present. (shrink)

Many non-heteronormative Malaysian men find themselves on the receiving end of political, socio-cultural, and religious condemnations of their sexual identifyings and expressions. Their lived realities are often considered invalid, including from religious and theological perspectives. This article is a queer socio-theological project that examines the lived realities of six non-heteronormative Malaysian men who speak up and talk back on their sexualities and spiritual sensibilities. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory Methodology, and aided by the theological musings of Marcella Althaus-Reid and a (...) document of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences as analytical frameworks, this article analyzes and theologizes the complex processes of transcendent/desire, or negotiations of the “Profoundly More” and sexuality in the narratives of these men. This article suggests that transcendent/desire can be imaginatively assembled in three interrelated forms: as embodied connections with the transcendent; as a vocation; and as an imperative to flourish. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify how, as Fichte himself claims in a 1800 letter draft, the theory of intersubjectivity he presents in the 1800 Vocation of Man marks an improvement over the theory he presents in the 1798 System of Ethics. Taking my departure from Marco Ivaldo’s suggestion that Fichte ceases to rely on the “good” but still “rather dogmatic” Leibnizian hypothesis of preestablished harmony in the former work in the way that he does in the latter, I argue that (...) the difference lies in his no longer counting on the hypothesis to secure the agreement of each of our worlds and our perception of each other’s actions in it. Fichte attempts to dispense with this last vestige of dogmatism in the Vocation of Man by employing the ethical drive in its material determinateness (in other words, each of our final end) as a transcendental ground for the agreement of our worlds, and thereby the possibility of intersubjectivity. The communal conception of our final end which Fichte develops in the last part of the System of Ethics prepares it for its role as such a ground. For it is in the demand of the “voice of conscience” in us to co-operate with others to bring about “one great free moral community” that he finds in the Vocation of Man a transcendental source and basis for our conviction that the worlds of others’ perceptions agree with the world of our perception. (shrink)

This essay recognizes the insistent force of Jean-Luc Nancy: not only his life force or his physical and mental fortitude in living through a heart transplant and other illnesses, but also his force of thought or his influence on generations of thinkers. The optimistic and resilient spirit of this force oftentimes finds itself reaffirmed in Nancy’s writings especially on freedom, community, the world, sense, love, and existence, as Nancy insistently asserts their always possible new re-beginnings despite their apparent closures at (...) certain times. Yet, as this essay underscores, the other aspect of force must be acknowledged too: force that is waning, weakening, sliding into entropy, if not atrophy. This is force that is more pessimistic, not unlike a negative affect, which can be found in Nancy’s “L’Intrus” and “Dialogue Under the Ribs.” This essay argues that it is important to elucidate this other force because it allows us to take into account the fragile or precarious dimension of existence, or the undeniable pain and fatigue of existence, all of which insist no less in existence. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the relational aspect of Jean-Luc Nancy's thinking. As Nancy himself showed, thinking might be a solitary activity but it is never singular in its dimension. Building on or breaking away from other thoughts, especially those by thinkers who had come before, thinking is always plural, relational. This "singular plural" dimension of thought in Nancy's philosophical writings demands explication. In this book, some of today's leading scholars in the theoretical humanities shed light on how Nancy's thought both (...) shares with and departs from Descartes, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Weil, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, and Lyotard, elucidating "the sharing of voices," in Nancy's phrase, between Nancy and these thinkers. Contributors: Georges Van Den Abbeele, Emily Apter, Rodolphe Gasché, Werner Hamacher, Eleanor Kaufman, Marie-Eve Morin, Timothy Murray, Jean-Luc Nancy, and John H. Smith. (shrink)

Collection of quotes of Chinese philosophy by Laozi, Confusius, Sunzi, and Mencius.

In his article “Explanation Sketches” [3], Fred Newman argues that Scriven is mistaken in his interpretation of Hempel's notion of explanation sketch. According to Scriven, to complete an explanation is to fill in further initial conditions so that the explanandum of the sketch would be entailed by the new enlarged set of initial conditions. The point may be alternatively put by saying that according to Scriven to have a complete explanation is to have a covering-law which connects initial conditions with (...) the explanandum of the original sketch. Now Scriven's point against the deductive theory as applied to History is just that very often when we try to complete a given explanation sketch, we only succeed in unearthing a law which is either false or else trivial. Newman, however, contends that this is an excusable but, nevertheless, unsympathetic way of interpreting Hempel. He suggests an alternative account to the effect that to complete an explanation we need not necessarily produce a covering-law connecting initial conditions with the explanandum; all we need to do is to mention other initial conditions and certain laws which need not necessarily contain mention of the explanandum of the sketch. As he himself puts the point: “However, generously interpreted, when Hempel speaks of a sketch vaguely indicating laws we may take him as merely suggesting that some laws are vaguely indicated which would make up the explanans of an explanation of the event in question—not necessarily in the terms which describe the event in the sketch's explanandum.”. (shrink)

This article considers how the I furnishes a ground for the moral principle’s reality or applicability, or the synthetic unification of the higher and the lower powers of desire, through its originally determined nature. It argues that the nature of I-hood as an immediate unity of seeing and being, an absolute identity of the subjective and objective, is key to securing the moral principle’s applicability. On its basis, Fichte envisages an originally determined system of drives and feelings on the one (...) side, and of ends on the other, in and through which each of our dutiful actions in each given situation is determined. For Fichte, the question of the moral law’s application has more to do with demonstrating the moral law’s applicability as a principium executionis (or what is the same, the real, practical efficacy of reason) than with employing the law as a discursive criterion for deciding whether actions are dutiful or not. The article clarifies this point by reference to Rehberg’s critique of Kant’s ethics. (shrink)