There has been a long history of arguments over whether happiness is anything more than a particular set of psychological states. On one side, some philosophers have argued that there is not, endorsing a descriptive view of happiness. Affective scientists have also embraced this view and are reaching a near consensus on a definition of happiness as some combination of affect and life-satisfaction. On the other side, some philosophers have maintained an evaluative view of happiness, on which being happy involves (...) living a life that is normatively good. Within the context of this debate we consider how people ordinarily understand happiness, and provide evidence that the ordinary understanding of happiness reflects aspects of both evaluative and descriptive views. Similar to evaluative views, normative judgments have a substantive role in the ordinary understanding of happiness. Yet, similar to descriptive views, the ordinary understanding is focused on the person’s psychological states and not the overall life they actually lived. Combining these two aspects, we argue that the ordinary understanding of happiness suggests a novel view on which happiness consists in experiencing positive psychological states when one ought to. This view, if right, has implications for both philosophical and psychological research on happiness. (shrink)

Phillip Ferreira - Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T.H. Green - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 369-370 David O. Brink. Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pp. xiv + 139. Cloth, $27.50. The British idealists have not fared well during the past century. Still, there has been in recent years a renewed interest (...) in the movement's principal figures: F. H. Bradley and T. H. Green. And, while Bradley's polemical style has found a wider audience, Green's work—especially his Principles of Political Obligation—appears to have had the steadier following. Lesser known than Green's political writing, though, is his longer and more difficult Prolegomena to Ethics. And David O. .. (shrink)

This moving, insightful and ultimately hopeful and helpful blend of memoir and philosophical exploration begins in Christopher Phillips's native stomping grounds of the tiny volcanic island of Nisyros, Greece and unfurls through space and time as the author explores the connections between his immediate circumstances and the eternal wisdom of popular philosophers.

Eavesdropping judgments (judgments about truth, retraction, and consistency across contexts) about epistemic modals have been used in recent years to argue for a radical thesis: that truth is assessment-relative. We argue that judgments for 'I think that p' pattern in strikingly similar ways to judgments for 'Might p' and 'Probably p'. We argue for this by replicating three major experiments involving the latter and adding a condition with the form 'I think that p', showing that subjects respond in the same (...) way to 'thinks' as to modals. This poses a serious challenge to relativist treatments of the modal judgments, since a relativist treatment of the corresponding 'thinks' judgments is totally implausible, so if a unified account of the phenomena is to be found, it cannot be a relativist one. We briefly sketch how a unified account might look. (shrink)

Future-bias is preferring some lesser future good to a greater past good because it is in the future, or preferring some greater past pain to some lesser future pain because it is in the past. Most of us think that this bias is rational. I argue that no agents have future-biased preferences that are rationally evaluable—that is, evaluable as rational or irrational. Given certain plausible assumptions about rational evaluability, either we must find a new conception of future-bias that (...) avoids the difficulties I raise, or we must conclude that future-biased preferences are not subject to rational evaluation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Good and Evil: Interpreting a Human Condition. By EDWARD FARLEY. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1990. Pp. xxi + 295. The Evils of Theodicy. By TERRENCE W. TILLEY. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990. Pp. xii + 277. The Co-Existence of God and Evil. By JANE MARY TRAU. New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, 1991. Pp. 109. Evil is deeply and endlessly fascinating to the religious mind. On (...) the one hand, it challenges religion. The existence of the evils within our ken poses a threat to the rationality of central tenets of theism; the presence of overwhelming evils within our lives can threaten the viabil· ity of our religious attitudes and practices. On the other hand, religions typically offer strategies for coping with evil. They propose explanations of its origins that may aid us in understanding it, and they con· tain salvific practices that are meant to lead to redemption from sin or the cessation of suffering. So religious responses to evil are bound to be complex, and this complexity will inevitably be reflected in the treatment of evil in academic discourses. In addition, the present academic division of labor results in religion being studied in many disciplines. Each of them has its own traditions and agendas, and this often leads to a diversity of approaches that gives interdisciplinary dis· cussion of religious responses to evil something of the air of conversa· tion after Babel. The three books under review here, which represent the disciplines of philosophy, religious studies, and theology, illustrate nicely both the complexity and the diversity. Jane Mary Trau, who is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Barry University, has written a short essay in analytic philosophy of religion proposing a solution to the logical problem of evil. The problem arises from the fact that there are arguments purporting to show that the proposition that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent is inconsistent with the proposition that evil exists. One way to solve the problem would be to find a possibly true proposition such that it is consistent with the proposition ·that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent and together with that proposition entails that evil exists. Alvin Plantinga's celebrated free-will defense offers a solution of this sort. Trau's alternative solution is a version of the familiar greater-goods defense. Trau's main claim is that it is possible that evil has positive value. An evil has positive value if it is logically necessary for some greater 525 526 BOOK REVIEWS good, and it certainly seems to he possible that some evils have positive value. Thus, for example, suppose God creates nothing other than two angels, A and B. Nothing interrupts the felicity of either hut a mild pang of sorrow felt by A, to which B responds with compassion. A's sorrow is logically necessary for the greater good of B's compassionate response to A's sorrow. Hence A's sorrow is an evil that has positive value. Moreover, the proposition that evils with positive value exist is consistent with the proposition that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnihenevolent. So the existence of evil is consistent with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnihenevolent deity. In other words, Trau's version of the greater-goods defense does seem to provide a solution to the logical problem of evil. But that is not to say that all the evils there actually are or even all those we know about do or could have positive value. Thus it does not follow, without further assumptions, that the existence of all the evils there actually are is consistent with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnihenevolent deity. In a discussion of natural evil near the end of her hook, Trau acknowledges the need for such additional assumptions. She says: "Four assumptions underlie the claim that natural evils have positive value: (1) The material universe has positive value. (2) The material universe must function in a way that requires the occurrence of natural evils as secondary effects. (3) The material universe is either the best or the only possible universe. (4) If the universe as we know it did not function the way it does... (shrink)

D. Z. Phillips; III—Does it Pay to be Good?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 65, Issue 1, 1 June 1965, Pages 45–60, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reconsiderations on History and Antiquarianism: Arnaldo Momigliano and the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century BritainMark Salber PhillipsQuando mia figlia era molto piccola si divertiva a entrare nel mio studio e a chiedermi con finta gravità: “Signore papà che cosa hai concluso?” La sua domanda mi è tornata in mente molte volte più tardi, e mi ritorna nella mente anche oggi. Concludere non è facile, in qualsiasi lingua. E io per natura (...) preferisco proporre problemi.—A. Momigliano, “Epilogo senza conclusione”The question is: can we save for ourselves and for our successors this immemorial tradition, this long-standing delight, of talking to past historians as if they were our senior colleagues?—A. Momigliano, “Polybius Between the English and the Turks”More than any other historian of this century, Arnaldo Momigliano shaped our understanding of the evolution of Western historiography from the ancient to the modern world. Fundamental to this continuity, as Momigliano saw it, was the revival in the Renaissance of the classical division of history into two distinct genres. The first (often called, without further qualification, “history”) is the narrative of public events organized in linear [End Page 297] and causal fashion; the second, antiquities, is a more diverse body of writing that neglects political narrative for philosophical, literary, topographical, and other concerns. After the Reformation antiquarianism took on new tasks in response to the religious controversies of the age, but it remained distinct from the narrative tradition. Only in the eighteenth century did a convergence begin that has finally been completed in the historical methods of our own time. 1This identification of the eighteenth century as the time when historical narrative and antiquarian research converged gives Momigliano’s views their particular interest to students of this period. His terms, however, are always far wider than any single century. In fact his argument constitutes a genealogy of modern historical method, since the merging of the two traditions—first witnessed in the erudite historiography of Edward Gibbon—was a precondition of modern practice. On these foundations, a modern historical discipline has grown up in which systematic research has become indivisible from the task of representing the past in narrative, with the consequence that the ancient separation of history and antiquities has at last been transcended.This essay is intended as a sketch of an alternative approach to the study of historical thought and writing in eighteenth-century Britain. In my view an essential point of departure is the interest of eighteenth-century writers in the structures and experiences of private life, their desire to explore the inward lives of individuals and the everyday life of societies. This revaluation of private life challenged the classical conception of history in fundamental ways, resulting in a fruitful tension between the social and sentimental interests of the age and its inherited view of history. At stake, in the very [End Page 298] broadest terms, was the need to find forms of historical narrative that met the needs of a commercial society and recognized the values and activities of a non-aristocratic audience.In the eighteenth century antiquarian erudition was far from the only genre bordering on the territory of political narrative. Conjectural history, religious history, history of manners, history of sciences and of literature, biography, memoir, and novel all defined themselves in relation to a traditional conception of history and claimed the attention of readers for their own rival narrative spaces. More particularly, these related genres ranged themselves against history’s strict identification with public life, with all the assumptions about audience, gender, and intellectual authority that accompanied the public domain. Without ever displacing the national narrative in the hierarchy of literatures, these other genres offered a variety of alternative histories whose common ground was their resistance to the assumed priority of politics. 2For a generation Momigliano’s dialectic of history and antiquarianism has served as an organizing principle for a good deal of teaching and writing on early modern historiography. 3 It is time, I believe, for a revaluation of this conceptual scheme. The wider consideration of genres I am urging would greatly enlarge the framework of discussion and give us a sharper sense of the interests of eighteenth-century historians and their... (shrink)

When social reformers blame the current ills of Western culture on the loss of community, they often evoke an ideal past in which societies were characterized by shared values, respect for tradition, commitment to the common good, and similar attributes. Communitarians assert that community was prominent in the past, and argue that reclaiming the role community formerly played is necessary to counter the negative effects of individualism and liberal thinking. Considering the relevance of community for our moral and political (...) life today, Derek Phillips offers the first thorough critique of the historical, often nostalgic, claims that underlie dominant versions of communitarian philosophy. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

"This book is D.Z. Phillips' systematic attempt to discuss the problem of evil. He argues that the problem is inextricably linked to our conception of God. In an effort to distinguish between logical and existential problems of evil, that inheritance offers us distorted accounts of God's omnipotence and will. In his interlude, Phillips argues that, as a result, God is ridiculed out of existence, and found unfit to plead before the bar of decency. However, Phillips elucidates a neglected tradition in (...) which we reach a different understanding of God's presence amidst suffering, and addresses the ultimate question of how God can be said to be with those who are crushed by life's afflictions." "An ideal text for students of philosophy, religious studies and theology, but also for anyone who reflects seriously on the danger of adding to human evils by the way in which we write and think about them."--Jacket. (shrink)

This book is, along with Inner Grace, a sequel to Phillip Cary's Augustine and the Invention of the Inner Self. In this work, Cary argues that Augustine invented the expressionist type of semiotics widely taken for granted in modernity, where words are outward signs giving inadequate expression to what lies within the soul. Augustine uses this new semiotics to explain why the authority of external teaching, including Biblical authority, is useful but temporary, designed to lead to a more permanent (...) Platonist vision granted by the inner teacher, Christ, who is the eternal Wisdom of God. In fact, for Augustine we literally learn nothing from words or other outward signs, which are useful only as admonitions or reminders pointing out the right direction for us to look in order to see for ourselves, with the inner eye of our own mind. Even our knowledge of other people is ultimately a matter of seeing what is in their souls, not putting faith in their words. Cary argues that for Augustine outward signs cannot give us knowledge because all bodily things are fundamentally powerless, incapable of conveying an inner good to the soul. This also leaves no room for a concept of efficacious external means of grace DL not even the flesh of Christ. The sacraments, which Augustine was the first to describe as outward signs of inner grace, signify what is necessary for salvation but do not confer it. Baptism, for example, is necessary for salvation, but its power is found not in water or word but in the inner unity, charity, and peace of the church. Along with its companion work, Inner Grace, this careful and insightful book breaks new ground in the study of Augustine's theology of grace and sacraments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hildegard and HolismSuzanne M. Phillips (bio) and Monique D. Boivin (bio)Keywordsbiopsychosocial, integration, medieval, mental illnessWe appreciate the careful and enriching commentary offered by Kroll and by Radden on our paper about holistic views of mental illness in the writings of the twelfth-century abbess and healer Hildegard of Bingen. Both reviewers are well-established figures in the study of historical perspectives on mental illness, an area that we have just begun (...) to explore. We are glad for the opportunity to respond to their observations and thereby to continue the dialogue.First, we would like to clarify our purpose in preparing this paper. Nowhere do we claim that Hildegard used a biopsychosocial model of mental illness, either in addressing the needs of the particular case of Sigewiza, or more generally in her writings on illness and health. In fact, we agree with Kroll (2007, 370), when he states that Hildegard did not use a biopsychosocial model. We use the term “biopsychosocial” only three times in the paper, always by contrast with what we see in Hildegard’s writings. The present-day biopsychosocial model focuses on getting a range of perspectives on the table, encouraging the consideration of biological, psychological, and social issues when thinking about mental illness. This is a good thing, but we argue that it does not go far enough. Specifically, there has been insufficient attention to ways these perspectives might interact.How, then, might we describe Hildegard’s way of conceptualizing mental illness? In place of the label “biopsychosocial model,” Kroll suggests that Hildegard’s approach could be described as a “religious model” (p. 372). Here we disagree. By our reading, Hildegard’s description of mental illness involves religious components, certainly, but also humoral, astrological, interpersonal, community, and intrapsychic components. Radden correctly notes that we are not so much interested in the particular components as we are in their interactions. We are attracted to Hildegard’s writings because she attends to these interactions. Our students, like Kroll’s (p. 371), are curious about mind–body relationships, which represent one example of the interplay between components. Our concern is that the current biopsychosocial model often fails to satisfy our own, and our students’, interest in the nature of those interactions. Our hope is that Hildegard’s writings might help us to think more richly about the interactions.As Radden (2007, 373) points out, present-day psychiatrists and psychologists do in fact use mul-ticausal accounts of depression. And we agree that such accounts need not be reductionistic (Kroll, 371). But we also recognize that psychology and psychiatry have well-established reductionist (more specifically, materialist) habits. To borrow [End Page 377] Kroll’s phrase, the biological model threatens “to swallow all other models” (p. 371). We must guard against such reductionism, given the habits of our disciplines. As we noted, McHugh and Slavney (1998) respond to that threat by building walls between the perspectives, suggesting that we might use different perspectives when thinking about different sorts of problems. We think that there ought to be more synthetic, holistic ways of responding to that threat, and we are hopeful that Hildegard’s writings can help us to develop those.At a basic level, we see Hildegard asking different questions than people ask today. On the first page of his commentary, for example, Kroll poses the question of “which of these three modalities [bio-, psycho-, social] may be sufficient” (p. 369) in the particular medieval text. We found that the sufficiency of one modality or another does not concern Hildegard. We are not able to speak to the general point that Kroll raises, that one or another element is emphasized depending on the goal of the medieval text; we can report our experience in reading Hildegard, where we found no sense in which one or another component is privileged. Even though Hildegard operated within a thoroughly religious context, we did not find examples of her subsuming other factors under religion. Everything interacts with spiritual concerns, to be sure, but everything also interacts with the biological, and with the interpersonal, and with the astrological. Although it may seem odd to us post-Darwinian thinkers, Hildegard’s model is essentially... (shrink)

Recently, I presented evidence that there are two broad kinds of dehumanization: descriptive dehumanization and normative dehumanization. An individual is descriptively dehumanized when they are perceived as less than fully human in the biological-species sense; whereas an individual is normatively dehumanized when they are perceived as lacking a deep-seated commitment to good moral values. Here, I develop the concept of normative dehumanization by addressing skepticism about two hypotheses that are widely held by dehumanization researchers. The first hypothesis is that (...) dehumanization is distinct from mere dislike and other non-dehumanizing attitudes. The second hypothesis is that dehumanization is an important predictor of intergroup hostility. Across four studies, I found evidence that normative dehumanization is distinct from mere dislike, and denials of ideal humanness. I also found that it is a unique predictor of intergroup hostility. These findings suggest that research into dehumanization and intergroup hostility will benefit from recognizing the distinction between descriptive and normative dehumanization. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Madness of the Philosophers, Madness of the ClinicJames Phillips (bio)KeywordsPhilosophy, insanity, moral, natural, Hegel, KierkegaardDaniel Berthold's "Talking Cures: A Lacanian Reading of Hegel and Kierkegaard on Language and Madness" is an eloquent discussion of speech, silence, and the 'talking cure' in the three figures highlighted in the title. There is much to admire in this paper. The treatment of speech and silence in the thought of Hegel and Kierkegaard, (...) with many well-chosen quotations, offers much for reflection, both with respect to these philosophers and more generally with respect to the human condition. This is a paper that deserves more than one reading. I find nothing to criticize here and intend the following as further discussion of the themes Berthold has brought to us. Taking his cue from Lacan and reading back into the nineteenth-century figures from the perspective of Lacan's emphasis on language and what he (Lacan) terms the Symbolic, Berthold explores the question of madness in Hegel and Kierkegaard. In my remarks, I connect Berthold's analysis with older traditions of madness, distinguishing what I call the madness of the philosophers and the madness of the clinic.With the phrase, madness of the philosophers, I refer to a longstanding philosophic tradition that opposes reason and passion and attributes madness to an excess of the latter. In Berthold's paper, Hegel is the representative of this position, with his description of madness as a regression into the primitive "life of feeling." As Berthold puts it:For Hegel, madness is a "reversion" or "withdrawal" or "sinking back" of the rational consciousness into the primitive world of instincts and drives, or what Hegel calls "the life of feeling" (Gufühlsleben), which he locates in "the soul," where the "mind is still in the grip of nature"... The soul is "the form of the dull stirring, the inarticulate breathing of the spirit through its unconscious individuality" (in seiner besusstlosen Individualität)... The mind becomes "mastered" by the archaic, unconscious drives of the soul: "the natural self... gains mastery over the... rational consciousness."(2009, 301)Taking off from Lacan in his interpretation of Hegel, Berthold associates reason with language—or, in Lacan's terminology—the register of the Symbolic. Hegel's "life of feeling"—or of passion—is inarticulate, primitive, and vulnerable to madness.Berthold analyzes Kierkegaard in these categories. On the one hand, Kierkegaard is driven to silence, subjectivity, and inwardness as the native [End Page 313] ground of faith. On the other hand, he recognizes something maddening in his extreme solitude, and acknowledges his need to write as a form of self-therapy: "If I stop [writing] for a few days, right away I become ill.... So powerful an urge, so ample, so inexhaustible [is my need to write], subsist[ing] day after day for... years." Kierkegaard's compromise is his "indirect communication." By Berthold's account, Kierkegaard's silence does not rate very high for Hegel and Lacan. For Hegel it represents a regression into the primitive "life of feeling." For Lacan, Kierkegaard's silent inner self is "a myth—a 'shapeless vapor,' 'absolutely nothing.'" As we shall see, Kierkegaard's ambivalence toward silence and speech (or writing) does not fit neatly into the equation of silence and madness.What, however, in contrast to this madness of the philosophers, is the madness of the clinic?1 It is madness caused by disease, whether the latter be understood in ancient terminology of humors, or more modern terminology of brain disease. For a quick review of how clinical madness has played off against the madness of the philosophers, we can turn to the philosophers themselves, invoking Plato as our first guide, because he speaks of both kinds of madness. On the one hand, with his tripartite division of the soul, he is one of the inaugurators of the philosophic vision of madness as an overcoming of the rational part of the soul by the appetitive side. On the other hand, he implicitly endorses the Hippocratic, medical view of madness with a statement like this: "A man who commits one of these crimes might be suffering from insanity, or be as good as insane either because... (shrink)

Like many old cities, Florence has made a pantheon of its streets. Some commemorate names so universal — Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Galileo — that any city would welcome them. Others, inevitably, belong to more local traditions and are apt to puzzle a stranger. One of these is the Via Michele di Lando, a short but impressively prosperous street just outside the Porta Romana, the great medieval city gate to the south. Michele was the leader of the Ciompi revolt of 1378, an (...) insurrection of wool workers and small artisans; and here, amongst opulent nineteenth-century imitations of Renaissance palaces, the city chose to memorialize him — a man whom Machiavelli pictures as leading the rabble “barefoot, with scarcely anything upon him.”. (shrink)

Standards for farm animal welfare are variously managed at a national level by government-led regulatory control, by consumer-led welfare economics and co-regulated control in a partnership between industry and government. In the latter case the control of research to support animal welfare standards by the relevant industry body may lead to a conflict of interest on the part of researchers, who are dependent on industry for continued research funding. We examine this dilemma by reviewing two case studies of research published (...) under an Australian co-regulated control system. Evidence of unsupported conclusions that are favourable to industry is provided, suggesting that researchers do experience a conflict of interest that may influence the integrity of the research. Alternative models for the management of research are discussed, including the establishment of an independent research management body for animal welfare because of its public good status and the use of public money derived from taxation, with representation from government, industry, consumers, and advocacy groups. (shrink)

It is definitely a welcome contribution to Nietzsche scholarship that a volume on Beyond Good and Evil has been published in the German series Klassiker Auslegen, established by Ottfried Höffe. The series aims at providing cooperative commentaries by leading scholars in the field on the most important works in the history of philosophy. As with the other “classics” that have been covered, the order of contributions follows the order of the original publication; in the case of Beyond Good (...) and Evil, there is one contribution for each of the nine chapters, plus one contribution each analyzing the “preface” and “aftersong” and a general introduction by the editor. All the contributions aim at... (shrink)

I provide a novel kind of argument for moral relativism which combines a general quasi-indexical semantics for the most important thin moral terms with an indeterminacy thesis. I then argue that the version of moral relativism supported by this strategy of argument allows for good rejoinders to the three most important and familiar objections to moral relativism.

According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton’s scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these cannot force him to give up his notion of the ideal photograph. My approach is to argue that Scruton has misconstrued the role of causation in his discussion of photography. I claim that although Scruton insists that the ideal photograph is defined by its (...) ‘merely causal’ provenance, in fact he fails to take the causal provenance of photographs seriously enough. To replace Scruton’s notion of the ideal photograph, I offer a substantive account of the causal provenance of photographs, centred on the distinctive role of ‘the photographic event’. I conclude that, with a proper understanding of the photographic process, we have good reason to re-open the question of photography as a representational art. (shrink)

This paper identifies three claims that feature prominently in recent discussions concerning the experience of silence: that experiences of silence are the most “negative” of perceptions, that we do not hear silences because those silences cause our experiences of silence, and that to hear silence is to hear a temporal region devoid of sound. The principal proponents of this approach are Phillips and Soteriou, and here I present a series of objections to common elements of their attempts to place these (...) three claims within an account of experience of silence. The final section of the paper returns to the first of the three claims and argues that, in fact, there is no good reason to accept it as initially formulated. However, when properly formulated, the claim ceases to offer support for Phillips’s and Soteriou’s approach to experience of silence. (shrink)

Examining Seneca’s account of friendship produces an interpretative puzzle: if the good of the Stoic sage is already both complete and self-sufficient, how can friendship be a good? I reject the solution that friendship is simply a preferred indifferent instead of a good and argue that though Seneca’s account can consistently explain both why friendship’s nature as a good does not threaten the completeness or the self-sufficiency of the sage, Stoic friends must choose between intimate friendships (...) that leave them vulnerable or impersonal friendships that lack intimacy but do not undermine their happiness. The consistent Stoic must choose the latter, but I argue that this conflict shows why we ought to reject the Stoic model of friendship. (shrink)

The article attempts to give a coherent expression to a recurrent theme in the history of political theory. The theme is that men and communities must be subjected to stress in various forms (e.g., Poverty, Insecurity, Conflict, Dissension) in order to maintain whatever faculties, qualities, capabilities and institutions they regard as (a) practically necessary in the long run, or (b) an essential part of their conception of a good life. The ideas dealt with have been drawn from philosophers, political (...) scientists and sociologists from Plato and Aristotle through Machiavelli, Mill, Nietzsche, Durkheim, Sorel, and Ortega y Gasset. (shrink)

The idea of believing for a good reason has both normative and psychological content. How are these related? Recently, a number of authors have defended a ‘disjunctivist’ view of rationalisation, on which a good reason can make a subject’s responses to it intelligible in a way that mere ‘apparent reasons’ cannot. However, little has been said about the possible epistemological significance of this view or its relationship to more familiar forms of disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception. This (...) paper examines the relationship between epistemological disjunctivism and disjunctivism about rationalisation, arguing that the latter provides an attractive articulation of certain elements of the former. The specific claim is that disjunctivism about rationalisation enables the proponent of epistemological disjunctivism to explain why beliefs that are based on conclusive normative reasons provided by perception are susceptible to a certain kind of undercutting defeat. On the way to motivating this claim, the paper considers possible ways of articulating epistemological disjunctivism in terms of reasons, distinguishes different forms of disjunctivism about reasons for belief and clarifies the relationships between them. (shrink)

Despite renewed interest in T.H. Green’s social and political theory, little attention has as yet been given to his metaphysics and epistemology — even more neglected, though, are his views on logical matters. It is unclear why this is. I suspect that the obscurity of his discussion has much to do with it. Green routinely refers to writers in whom there is little interest today; and a good deal of effort is required to penetrate his technical vocabulary. Still, I (...) believe we miss something important when we ignore his specifically logical writings. Green has much to say about classical syllogism and its influence on his contemporaries. And, while the discussion is always grounded in his own idealist theory of knowledge, Green’s analysis often reveals surprising aspects of the problem being considered. In what follows, then, I shall consider one such analysis: his account of the logical/epistemological doctrine of Sir William Hamilton and H.L. Mansel — individuals whose writings, in Green’s eyes, made apparent all that was wrong with the “formal logic” of the day. (shrink)

Business ethics is a topic receiving much attention in the literature. However, the term 'business ethics' is not adequately defined. Typical definitions refer to the rightness or wrongness of behavior, but not everyone agrees on what is morally right or wrong, good or bad, ethical or unethical. To complicate the problem, nearly all available definitions exist at highly abstract levels. This article focuses on contemporary definitions of business ethics by business writers and professionals and on possible areas of agreement (...) among the available definitions. Then a definition is synthesized that is broad enough to cover the field of management in a sense as full as most managers might conceive of it. (shrink)

First published in 1865, this book puts forth a new ethical system that aims to provide practical guidance on how to live a good life based on reason, empathy, and social responsibility. The author argues that traditional religious and philosophical systems have failed to keep up with the changing social and economic conditions of modern life and proposes a set of principles that are grounded in the needs and aspirations of ordinary people. The book covers a wide range of (...) topics, including work, family, education, politics, and the environment. A thought-provoking read for anyone interested in ethics and social justice. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Reeder’s article offers a new and intriguing approach to the study of people’s ordinary understanding of freedom and constraint. On this approach, people use information about freedom and constraint as part of a quasi-scientific effort to make accurate inferences about an agent’s motives. Their beliefs about the agent’s motives then affect a wide variety of further psychological processes, including the process whereby they arrive at moral judgments. In illustrating this new approach, Reeder cites an elegant study he conducted a number (...) of years ago (Reeder & Spores, 1983). All subjects were given a vignette about a man who goes with his date to a pizza parlor and happens to come across a box that has been designated for charitable donations. In one condition, the man’s date then requests that he make a donation; in the other, she requests that he steal the money that is already in the box. In both conditions, the man chooses to comply with this request. The key question is how subjects will use his behavior to make inferences about whether he is a morally good or morally bad person. The results revealed a marked difference between conditions. When the man donated to charity, subjects were generally disinclined to conclude that he must have been a morally good person. It is as though they were thinking: ‘He didn’t just do this out of the goodness of his heart. (shrink)

This article discusses whether a sense of humor is a political virtue. It argues that a sense of humor is conducive to the central political virtues. We must first, however, delineate different types of humor (benevolent or malicious) and the different political virtues (sociability, prudence, and justice) to which they correspond. Generally speaking, a sense of humor is politically virtuous when it encourages good will toward fellow citizens, an awareness of the limits of power, and a tendency not to (...) take oneself too seriously or when it condemns moral or intellectual vice. An analysis of President Donald Trumps deeply flawed sense of humor is used to ground this account. (shrink)

If realism about possible worlds is to succeed in eliminating primitive modality, it must provide an 'analysis' of possible world: nonmodal criteria for demarcating one world from another. This David Lewis has done. Lewis holds, roughly, that worlds are maximal unified regions of logical space. So far, so good. But what Lewis means by 'unification' is too narrow, I think, in two different ways. First, for Lewis, all worlds are (almost) 'globally' unified: at any world, (almost) every part is (...) directly linked to (almost) every other part. I hold instead that some worlds are 'locally' unified: at some worlds, parts are directly linked only to "neighboring" parts. Second, for Lewis, each world is (analogically) 'spatio-temporally' unified; every world is 'spatio-temporally' isolated from every other. I hold instead: a world may be unified by nonspatio-temporal relations; every world is 'absolutely' isolated from every other. If I am right, Lewis's conception of logical space is impoverished: perfectly respectable worlds are missing. (shrink)

Terrorism, torture, and the problems of evil -- Diabolical evil, searching for Satan -- Philosophies of evil -- Communities of fear -- The enemy within -- Bad seeds -- The character of evil -- Facing the Holocaust -- Twenty-first-century mythologies.

This book examines Proclus' doctrine of evil in light of the tradition of exegesis of Plato's treatment of evil within the schools of ancient Platonism, from ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Limits of Self-ConstitutionJames Phillips, MD (bio)I am in general agreement with the authors that a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic approach is a good response to simple pruning procedures. That said, however, I do have questions about how they develop their argument.I was surprised at the very notion of pruning, and quite surprised that it is as popular as the authors suggest. The idea that Pete should deal with (...) his inappropriate outbursts by erasing or pruning that aspect of his personality seems so ridiculous that it beggars belief. It leaves one wondering whether Pete, or anyone agreeing with this argument, is credulous enough to think you can just prune away an undesirable part of yourself.The authors write:Importantly, this expulsion is often thought to be a good thing not simply because the undesirable elements are morally wanting but because in some important sense, they are not really a part of the agent proper. This point many seem extravagantly wishful, but is intuitively plausible.Really, “intuitively plausible” that personality traits are not part of the agent? I can understand that the agent may not grasp his or her involvement in the undesirable trait, but to argue that the trait is in reality not part of agent is a very odd claim on the part of the authors.When the authors write that “It would be difficult to exaggerate the prominence of the pruning view of agential self-constitution in philosophy,” they are strongly connecting the notions of pruning and self-constitution. I am aware that self-constitution is a major theme for philosophers like Korsgaard. The authors strongly embrace this principle in drawing out their arguments.In a footnote to their article the authors claim that various notions of a “true self” imply a pruned self. For Winnicott, an originator of the “true self,” this note of pruning does not hold. Winnicott contrasts the true self, a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience and a feeling of being alive, with a false self, a defensive veneer without the vivacity of the true self. The notion of pruning simply does not belong in this discussion.What the authors and their supporting philosophers leave out are two limitations to self-constitution. For the first, let me invoke another philosopher, Martin Heidegger, and his notion of “thrownness”—Geworfenheit. We are “thrown” into the world in the particular circumstances of our birth. We do not self-constitute our beginnings; we are plunged into them. The question then becomes what we make of these beginnings. [End Page 209] If they are undesirable, we can brood over them, or we can attempt to overcome them. And as we all know, if the beginnings are bad enough, we may not be able to overcome them.The second limitation to self-constitution resides in the “self.” Does the individual constitute him or her self, or is it more a matter of the self developing out of dialogic relationship of self and other? Here I invoke another philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, who has addressed this issue from a number of perspectives. At a deictic level, the “I” or the self is a shifter that takes on a different meaning depending on its context. At the level of pragmatics, the individual is engaged in illocutionary speech that is addressed to another person, implying, in simple terms, that we live in dialogue. Still more pertinent to this discussion, Ricoeur notes that self-knowledge is not straightforward: “the self does not immediately know itself, but only knows itself indirectly by way of the detour through the cultural signs of all sorts that make us say that action is symbolically mediated” (Ricoeur, 2016, p. 240). And finally, Ricoeur argues for the priority of alterity over reflexivity. “Pushing further yet the primacy of alterity over reflexivity, some will emphasize the dependence of personal identities on identifications with... heroes, emblematic characters, models and teachers” (p. 248). To clarify this statement, Ricoeur is contrasting self-constitution through reflection with a self-other relationship in which the self needs the other to constitute itself—and, of course, he is making a case for the latter.Although I am questioning the authors’ concepts of... (shrink)

Many people believe in angels and evil spirits, and popular culture abounds in talk about encounters with such entities. Yet the question of the existence of such spirits is ignored in the academy. Even the Christian Church, which one might expect to show keen interest in transcendent realities, does not appear to be paying much attention. In this book Phillip Wiebe defends the plausibility of the traditional Christian claim that spirits are real. Wiebe examines descriptions of encounters with both (...) good and evil transcendent beings in biblical times and in later Christian history, along with recent accounts of similar experiences. He argues that invisible beings can be postulated to explain events just as unobservable objects are postulated in many scientific theories. Beyond supporting claims for the existence of lesser spirits such as demons and angels, this empirical approach yields important results for assessing common arguments surrounding the existence of God - a question that has become artificially separated from the question of spirits as such. Grounding his argument in a wide range of phenomena - from near death experiences to demonic possession - Wiebe offers a sophisticated case for belief in God on philosophical and epistemological grounds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Many-Headed Muse: Tradition and Innovation in Late Classical Greek Lyric Poetry by Pauline A. LeVenTom PhillipsPauline A. LeVen. The Many-Headed Muse: Tradition and Innovation in Late Classical Greek Lyric Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. x + 377 pp. Cloth, $99.The “New Music” of the late fifth and early fourth centuries b.c.e. has been subject to a revival of interest in recent years. Most scholarship, however, has (...) tended to focus either on socio-historical aspects of performance culture or on the philological problems posed by texts such as Timotheus’ Persians. The corpus of fourth-century hymns by authors such as Aristonous and Philodamus has likewise been a minority pursuit, addressed in the main by historians of religion and epigraphers rather than literary critics. This monograph provides a welcome change in emphasis. Resolutely literary in her approach, LeVen elaborates readings that challenge assumptions about a qualitative decline in late classical literature, arguing instead for reading these texts in terms of their particular interpretative demands and situating them in a continuum of literary developments. The New Musicians emerge not as vapidly showy musical and dramatic virtuosos, but as composers of considerable verbal sophistication who developed and extended traditional poetic techniques while also demanding new kinds of emotional and interpretative engagement from audiences. The textual strategies at work in the hymnic corpus are also brought into sharper relief, particularly as regards the effects created by the interplay of performance and material inscription. The result is a valuable contribution to scholarship: as well as situating the New Music in relation to earlier song culture, LeVen shows how some of the strategies [End Page 357] employed by Timotheus and his contemporaries anticipate literary developments in the Hellenistic period. As such, this book will be of interest to all students of ancient Greek poetry.The book begins with an overview of poetic activity in the late classical period, including a useful set of tables that present the literary and epigraphic sources grouped by type. LeVen also surveys developments in scholarship on the New Music, recapitulating the case for caution when assessing the evidence of ancient critics and comedians, and making a strong case for the importance of engaging with the poems’ “dynamics of allusion, emulation, and intertextuality” (69). The rest of the book consists of case studies concerned with individual authors and corpora, and thematic chapters discussing the New Musicians’ linguistic innovations. The first group includes a chapter on Philoxenus of Cythera (chap. 3), a discussion of the Dinner Party attributed to Philoxenus (chap. 6), and readings of the inscribed hymns (chap. 7). The discussion of Philoxenus of Cythera focuses mainly on the anecdotes about his life preserved by Athenaeus, Machon, and other later authors. LeVen explores these texts’ persistent concern with the interrelated issues of food, xenia, and poetry, and their varying figurations of Philoxenus’ character. She also argues convincingly that the Dinner Party (PMG 836) should be attributed to Philoxenus of Cythera (114–18), and a good part of chapter 6 is devoted to an analysis of this text. Her readings emphasize the poem’s creation of an interpretative dialogue: the speaker presents not just an ekphrasis but also an “appeal to his own feelings and to those of his internal addressee” which underlines the “social dimension” of dining (257). More controversially, she also argues that it was performed as a dithyramb: as a text performed on the public stage, its detailed descriptions of fine dining “collaps[e] the distinction between... the public competitions at festivals and sacrifices and the private elegant home” (261).In her concluding remarks about the role played by the symposium in fourth-century poetic culture, LeVen sees the distinctiveness of the period not in poems being performed in multiple locations but in “the open traffic” between public and private performance settings, “the symposium importing passages from the dramatic stage and exporting some of its traditional motives and forms of expression to more public settings, dramatic and beyond” (268). The remainder of chapter 6 is concerned with the hymns to Virtue and Health of Aristotle and Ariphron, while chapter 7 deals with inscribed hymns such as the Erythrean paeans, Aristonous’ Hymn... (shrink)

In 1889, the German philologist Friedrich Blass isolated a section of Chapter 20 from Iamblichus’ Exhortation to Philosophy (mid- or late 3rd Century CE) as an extract from a lost sophistic or philosophical treatise from the late 5th Century BCE. In this article, I introduce the text, which is now known as 'Anonymus Iamblichi' (or 'the anonymous work preserved in Iamblichus') by appeal to its two main contexts (source preservation and original historical composition), translate and discuss all eight surviving fragments (...) in their entirety, and provide some closing remarks about its importance to this history of democratic thought. The text itself presents a series of very carefully interwoven arguments concerning the three “parts” of excellence (ἀρετή) – wisdom, courage, and eloquence – and their successful application in society. In the course of presenting this case, Anonymus Iamblichi comments on the conditions under which one should learn to be excellent (Fragments 1-2) and the ends to which one should direct one’s excellence (Fragments 3-4); he provides an anthropological discussion of the weaknesses of human psychology and its effects on the good man (Fragments 5-6) and an hypothetical thought experiment concerning the “Superman” (which naturally solicits comparison with Nietzsche’s übermensch) and his inability to overcome the multitude in a lawless state (Fragments 6 and 8); and a positive defense of law and justice, reflecting a pro-democratic philosophical perspective (Fragments 7-8) – a rara avis indeed in ancient philosophy. (shrink)

Recent structural innovations in global commerce present difficult challenges for legacy understandings of responsibility. The rise of outsourcing, sub-contracting, and mobile app-based platforms have dramatically restructured relationships between and among economic actors. Though not entirely new, the remarkable rise in the prevalence of these “not-quite-arm’s-length” relationships present difficulties for conceptions of responsibility based on interrogating the past for specifiable actions by blameworthy actors. Iris Marion Young invites investigation of a “social connection model of responsibility” (SCMR) that is, in many ways, (...) better suited to this new commercial reality. Scholars working to understand corporate responsibility have invoked Young’s model to some good effect, though often superficially and uncritically. In this paper, we look closely at Young’s social connection model and its potential for helping us understand corporate responsibility in a radically networked world. (shrink)

This book is, along with Outward Signs, a sequel to Phillip Cary's Augustine and the Invention of the Inner Self. In this work, Cary traces the development of Augustine's epochal doctrine of grace, arguing that it does not represent a rejection of Platonism in favor of a more purely Christian point of view DL a turning from Plato to Paul, as it is often portrayed. Instead, Augustine reads Paul and other Biblical texts in light of his Christian Platonist inwardness, (...) producing a new concept of grace as an essentially inward gift. For Augustine, grace is needed first of all to heal the mind so it may see God, but then also to help the will turn away from lower goods to love God as its eternal Good. Eventually, over the course of Augustine's career, the scope of the soul's need for grace expands outward to include not only the inner vision of the intellect and the power of love but even the initial gift of faith. At every stage, Augustine insists that divine grace does not compromise or coerce the human will but frees, heals, and helps it, precisely because grace is not an external force but an inner gift of delight leading to true happiness. As his polemic against the Pelagians develops, however, he does attribute more to grace and less to the power of free will. In the end, it is God's choice which makes the ultimate difference between the saved and the damned, and we cannot know why he chooses to save one person and not another. From this Augustinian doctrine of divine choice or election stem the characteristic pastoral problems of predestination, especially in Protestantism. A more external, indeed Jewish, doctrine of election would be more Biblical, Cary suggests, and would result in a less anxious experience of grace. Along with its companion work, Outward Signs, this careful and insightful book breaks new ground in the study of Augustine's theology of grace and sacraments. (shrink)

Many contemporary discussions of forgiveness assume forgiveness is fundamentally admirable. Examining Aristotle’s account, however, demonstrates that there is a tension between desert and forgiveness that is often overlooked in contemporary discussions. Through examining the neglected concept of sungnōmē, which forestalls blame, I conclude that Aristotelian blame is justified only on grounds of fairness. This conclusion is evidence that Aristotelian blame is not merely an instrumental or descriptive tool, but rather a way of holding agents morally accountable. Through examining the emphasis (...) Aristotle places on the role of blame and its role in maintaining honor, I show that forgiveness is incompatible with Aristotle’s account because when the victim decides to forgive, she lets go of blame on grounds other than desert. For Aristotle, when she does so, she accepts less than she is worth, and so forgiving a wrongdoer undermines the victim’s honor. As a result, Aristotle rejects forgiveness as positively vicious. Aristotle’s response to the tension is to reject forgiveness as positively vicious since it involves accepting less than what one deserves. -/- In my dissertation, I resolve this impasse by both defending the value of forgiveness and seeking to resolve the tension by explaining why we can choose to forgive without undermining our own honor. Contra Aristotle, I argue that cultivating the disposition to be forgiving is part of flourishing individual and communal life. The choice to let go what of one deserves, however, need not mean that honor is relinquished. Instead, I defend an alternative account of honor in which honor lies not in demanding what is deserved but instead in committing to the consistent pursuit of the good. On this account, honor is related to the ongoing commitment to a coherent and compelling identity rooted in seeing ethical values as central to the conception of one’s self, rather than outwardly-mediated Aristotelian honor. Honor is thus bound up in commitment to the good life generally, and does not rely on getting what one deserves. My account thus reconciles Aristotelian blame with forgiveness, demonstrates what is valuable about honor, and why it is still worth pursuing in our modern world. (shrink)

A little-discussed aspect of the “conservative” position on abortion involves the claim that human beings exist at all stages of gestation — that even the human fertilized ovum is a human being. There are good reasons of both a practical and theoretical nature why this particular idea has received so little attention in the abortion controversy. On the practical side there is the fact that zygotes are rarely if ever the subjects of abortion decisions; and on the theoretical side, (...) there is the prima facie implausibility of the idea itself — an implausibility stemming from the fact that human zygotes possess none of the features that distinguish clear-cut examples of human beings from other living things.I would like to suggest, however, that there are good reasons — again both practical and theoretical — for examining with some care the idea that human zygotes are human beings. For even if this idea is not central to the abortion controversy, it has clear relevance to the morality of using intrauterine devices as a means of procreation control. (shrink)

This article argues that the moral right to be discharged only for good cause and like rights can be contracted away by employees in appropriate circumstances. It maintains that the rights in question are not inalienable, and that there is nothing irrational about an employee''s wishing to deal them away. It also maintains that inequalities in bargaining power between employers and employees are insufficiently pervasive to justify a flat ban on the alienation of these rights. For a waiver of (...) such rights to be valid, however, employees must have full knowledge of its terms.The question addressed here bears on several legal and policy issues affecting termination of the employment relation. If employees can contract away their right to a goodcause discharge, the American doctrine of employment at willmight find justification in the face of that right. In addition, the alienability of such discharge rights may be necessary to justify express disclaimers of wrongful discharge liability and the waiver provision of the new U.S. Draft Uniform Employment-Termination Act. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:There's Nothing Wrong with Raw Perception:A Response to Chakrabarti's Attack on Nyāya's Nirvikalpaka PratyakṣaStephen H. PhillipsIn the lead article of the fiftieth anniversary issue of Philosophy East and West (January 2000), Arindam Chakrabarti elaborates seven reasons why Nyāya should jettison "indeterminate perception" and view all perception as determinate, that is to say, as having an entity (a) as qualified by a qualifier (F) as object (Fa). In his notes, (...) Chakrabarti invites a reply "so that," as he says, "I may know why immaculate perception is needed by Nyāya after all." The following is a response that shows not so much why indeterminate perception is needed by Nyāya but why it is identified as a causal factor necessary to the arising of some (not all) determinate perception defined as "perception of an entity as qualified." Here I follow Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya, the fourteenth-century founder (with the help of a few less well known predecessors and contemporaries) of "New Logic," Navya Nyāya. Gaṅgeśa devotes an entire section (about one eighteenth) of the perception chapter of his monumental Tattvacintāmaṇi (Jewel of Reflection about Epistemology) to nirvikalpaka pratyaksṣa,1 and he is a chief target of Chakrabarti's chastisement.2Now, first of all, I want to follow Gaṅgeśa's ground rules. The Naiyāyika is not concerned with strategies about how to look good in debates (with Buddhists or anyone else). His attitude is truth-seeking, not eristic, and thus no reply will be given to Chakrabarti's agonizing about how best to show ourselves in controversies with (in particular, Buddhist) adversaries (and Wilfrid Sellars). Gaṅgeśa's reflections are vāda—and the section is rightly titled nirvikalpaka-vāda, vāda being "inquiries among friends"—directed to uncovering real causal factors, not to winning a debate or countering sophisms. Deception, or counter-deception, is sometimes appropriate—for instance, to protect a student or other judge from fallacies advanced by people of bad character. But not here. So I will lay out Gaṅgeśa's argument for identifying nirvikalpaka pratyaksṣa, and then run through Chakrabarti's list of reasons for rejecting it with an eye to the objection's salience to Gaṅgeśa's project. In other words, Chakrabarti's objections will be taken up with an eye to the truth as it appears to a Naiyāyika, not with an eye to how our team should best present itself to outsiders. I have little to say about Chakrabarti's complaints about appearances—in fact, I find them delightful. Don't let him fool you. There's no greater Naiyāyika enthusiast than Chakrabarti himself, and he knows how to distill a controversy to show the wisdom [End Page 104] of Nyāya in contrast to revealing a deficiency, as he appears to be doing here. He does this to make us think broadly about Nyāya in a contemporary context. And at the end I join him in making some very general comments about Nyāya's realism. First, Gaṅgeśa's argument and a rebuttal of Chakrabarti's seven reasons from Gaṅgeśa's point of view.There is no direct, apperceptive evidence for nirvikalpaka pratyaksṣa; rather, it is posited by force of the following inference as the first step of a two-step argument. "The perceptual cognition, 'A cow' (for example), is generated by a cognition of the qualifier, since it is a cognition of an entity as qualified (by that qualifier appearing), like an inference." The second step takes a person's first perception of an individual (Bessie, let us say) as a cow (i.e., as having some such property) as the perceptual cognition figuring as the inference's subject (or pakṣa) such that the cognizer's memory not informed by previous cow experience could not possibly provide the qualifier, cowhood. The qualifier has to be available, and the best candidate seems to be its perception in the raw, a qualifier (cowhood), that is to say, not (as some are wont to misinterpret the point... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to Vaidya, Guhe, and Williams on the Bloomsbury Translation of the Tattva-cintā-maṇi of GaṅgeśaStephen Phillips (bio)More or less happy with the reviews, I would like mainly, in response, to identify advances made in the study of Gaṅgeśa. Anand Vaidya articulates a clearer overview of Gaṅgeśa's theory of knowledge; Eberhard Guhe shows a better way to render the notion of vyāpti, "pervasion," which is central in the theory of (...) inference as a knowledge source; and Michael Williams, too, shows need for improvement on that score as well as for elaboration of matters taken up by classical commentators that are given short shrift in my running comments. For example, whereas long discussions are provoked by Gaṅgeśa's definition of "knowledge," pramā, major points in the purvapakṣa in the section on proving the existence of an īśvara, a "Lord," seem, as Williams says, "threadbare."Vaidya, following Burge (2003), introduces a distinction between entitlement and justification: entitlement is the kind of unreflective epistemic warrant delivered by Gaṅgeśa's pramāṇa, "knowledge sources," working automatically in our everyday lives, whereas justification requires self-conscious certification, prāmāṇya-jñapti. Thereby splitting the horns of a dilemma posed by internalist accounts of knowledge in opposition to externalist ones, Burge and Vaidya are able to incorporate the most [End Page 519] attractive features of each approach. The entitlement/justification distinction cashes out, I may add, to Vaidya's elucidation, Nyāya's deeply held doctrine of parataḥ-prāmāṇya, "certification by another," against the view of "intrinsic certification," svataḥ-prāmāṇya, of Prabhākara and others. As Williams notes, Prābhākara positions, for which Gaṅgeśa sometimes shows sympathy, may have led him to presume that an anubhava—"awareness" or "presentational experience" in my translation, "fresh news" in Matilal's snappy rendering—is an episode of knowledge, pramā, "unless one knows otherwise," bādhakam vinā.On reflection, one sees that such a presentation (it could be perceptual, inferential, analogical, or testimonial) has been produced by a pramāṇa, or, in abnormal cases, not, and so by a "pramāṇa-pretender," a pramāṇaābhāsa, as in seeing a mirage. Again, an anubhava is not just any old cognition or "thought" (pace Das 2021, p. 162); it is defined as nonrecollective. Unlike a deliverance of a genuine pramāṇa, some instances may, on examination, prove to be a-pramā, "non-knowledge," but are, nevertheless, at the animal level, sufficient to provoke and guide action that would not be unhesitating were there doubt in any way. A thirsty Maya, in Vaidya's example, would naturally move in the direction of the water she "sees." But she would hesitate were she to learn from her friend about the unreliability of water-perception in the current circumstances. At the reflective level, where she is unsure whether the anubhava she apperceives is pramā or apramā, her action, including speech (implying assertability), is altered.So far so good in Vaidya's reconstruction. But Gaṅgeśa does not himself pronounce on the question of whether, after learning about the defeater, Maya would still be entitled to her perceptual belief that there is water in the distance. In the volumes under review, I assumed that she would not be "justified" and indeed that she would no longer have the belief (if we may speak about "beliefs"). The defeater grasped at the reflective level would mean not only that she could not certify the perceptual deliverance but also that there would be no knowledge. Clearly, she can't certify it, and thus, as Vaidya reasons, loses the right to assert. But maybe he's correct that, according to Gaṅgeśa's sensibilities, she does not lose the perceptual knowledge. She would remain entitled to her belief.Personally, I think this is wrong, but Vaidya's understanding does have the merit of explaining why some later Naiyāyikas apparently took absurd positions on epistemic luck (Bhattacharya 1996, p. ix). I think that Maya would lose her entitlement, too, but what if, after being informed of the unreliability of water-perception... (shrink)

Diogenes Laertius (8.63-6) preserves a fascinating account of the Presocratic philosopher Empedocles' life. There, drawing on evidence from Aristotle, Xanthus, and Timaeus of Tauromenium, the biographer provides several anecdotes which are meant to demonstrate how Empedocles had, contrary to expectation, been a democratic philosopher - a paradox of itself in Ancient Greece. This article unpacks the complex web woven by Diogenes and argues that there is no good reason to assume that Empedocles was indeed a democratic philosopher, and moreover, (...) that neither Xanthus nor Aristotle thought him so. Indeed, what Diogenes actually preserves for us is the Hellenistic biographer Timaeus' critical dialectical engagement with the versions Aristotle and Xanthus, in his anachronistic bid to render Empedocles a democratic hero. (shrink)