En su Religionskritik Spinozas Leo Strauss sostiene que la crítica de la religión de Spinoza se expresa y fundamenta “en la alternativa cruda y desnuda entre la superstición, el prejuicio, la barbarie, la ignorancia, las tinieblas de un lado, y la razón, la libertad, la cultura, las luces, del otro”. La critica spinoziana de la religión aparece entonces, de acuerdo con Strauss, como “la critica…operada por el Iluminismo mas radical”. Un abismo se abre entre la vida del sabio regida por (...) la razón, y aquella de la multitud sujeta a las pasiones, estableciendo con ello una rígida jerarquía entre dos tipos de hombre nítidamente diferenciados. Nos propondremos en este trabajo examinar esta proposición centrándonos en la necesidad de repensar no sólo el rol de la razón y la imaginación en el discurso político spinoziano, sino fundamentalmente la relación entre una y otra; relación determinante en la constitución de la multitud, y por ello, de la forma política. Nuestro argumento será que en primer lugar esa afirmación no es coherente con la complejidad del texto spinoziano, y en segundo lugar, que la misma constituye el corazón de la interpretación straussiana de Spinoza. (shrink)

Plotinus’ thought is generally viewed as a “system”, the One’s system, wich embraces and considers the Totality as such, as a whole, ruled by the metaphysical law of the unity. Scholars as É. Bréhier, J. Moreau, G. Reale, J. Igal, A. H. Armstrong... agree to it. The present study tries to make explicit and interpret it, examining some basic features, or general traits, wich reveal the Plotinian doctrine from this same point of view. Therefore, the systematic side of Plotinus’ thought (...) is here viewed as the really suitable mode, way or “mothodology” to think the Totality as a supreme unity, and to express the One’s ontology as a perfect whole. According to this interpretation, the system reflects the “synoptical” view of its same content, and shows it as the One’s “presence” in the whole reality and in the Plotinus’ intuitive mind, developed through an ordered series of concepts, in view of the mystical experience, to the union with the One, as the final goal. (shrink)

El artículo estudia el envío del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo a los justos tal y como son tratados por Agustín en "De Trinitate" 4, 20 y 2, 5, resaltando las misiones visibles y sus diversas implicaciones, así como los capítulos 17 al 19 del Libro XV, para explicar la vinculación del Espíritu Santo al amor fraterno.

Introduction: The many faces of human nature / Agustín Fuentes and Aku Visala Chapter 1. Off human nature / Jonathan Marks. Response I. On your marks... get set, we’re off human nature / James M. Calcagno ; Response II. Rethinking human nature : comments on Jonathan Marks’s anti-essentialism / Phillip R. Sloan ; Response III. Off human nature and on human culture : the importance of the concept of culture to science and society / Robert Sussman and Linda Sussman (...) Chapter 2. "To human" is a verb / Tim Ingold. Response I. Free and easy wandering : humans, humane education, and designing in harmony with the nature of the way / Susan D. Blum ; Response II. On human natures : anthropological and Jewish musings / Richard Sosis ; Response III. The humanifying adventure : a response to Tim Ingold / Markus Mühling ; Response IV. The ontogenesis of human moral becoming / Darcia Narvaez Chapter 3. Recognizing the complexity of personhood : complex emergent developmental linguistic relational neurophysiologicalism / Warren Brown and Brad D. Strawn. Response I. "Self-organizing personhood" and many loose ends / Lluis Oviedo ; Response II. A last hurrah for dualism? / Kelly James Clark ; Response III. Why the foundational question about human nature is open and empirical / Carl Gillett Chapter 4. Human origins and the emergence of a distinctively human imagination : theology and the archaeology of personhood / J. Wentzel van Huyssteen. Response I. Constructing the face, creating the collective : Neolithic mediation of personhood / Ian Kuijt ; Response II. Imago Dei and the glabrous ape / Douglas Hedley Chapter 5. What is human nature for? / Grant Ramsey. Response I. The difficulties of forsaking normativity / Neil Arner ; Response II. Some remarks on human nature and naturalism / Aku Visala Epilogues. Putting evolutionary theory to work in investigating human nature / Agustín Fuentes ; Moving us forward? / Celia Deane-Drummond. (shrink)

Philosophical theories of agency have focused primarily on actions and activities. But, besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. How is this aspect of our agency to be conceived? This book offers a comprehensive account of omitting and refraining, addressing issues ranging from the nature of agency and moral responsibility to the metaphysics of absences and causation. Topics addressed include the role of intention in intentional omission, the connection between negligence and omission, the distinction (...) between doing and allowing, and the distinction in law between act and omission. (shrink)

This essay examines recent work on abilities to act. Different kinds of ability are distinguished, and a recently proposed conditional analysis of ability ascriptions is evaluated. It is considered whether abilities are causal powers. Finally, several compatibility questions concerning abilities, as well as the relation between free will and abilities of various kinds, are examined.

1. We sometimes angrily confront, pointedly ostracize, castigate, or denounce those whom we think have committed moral offences. Conduct of this kind may be called blaming behaviour. When genuine,...

Manipulation cases are usually seen as a problem for compatibilists, and a strength for incompatibilist theories. I present a new case of indirect manipulation, which I claim does not interfere with the manipulated agent's freedom under libertarian criteria. I argue that the only promising libertarian response to my case would undermine Widerker's response to Frankfurt cases, which I take to be the best libertarian strategy for dealing with Frankfurt-type manipulation. I outline a satisfactory compatibilist explanation of my case.

Sometimes someone does something morally wrong in clear-eyed awareness that what she is doing is wrong. More commonly, a wrongdoer fails to see that her conduct is wrong. Call the latter behavior unwitting wrongful conduct. It is generally agreed that an agent can be blameworthy for such conduct, but there is considerable disagreement about how one’s blameworthiness in such cases is to be explained, or what conditions must be satisfied for the agent to be blameworthy for her conduct. Many theorists (...) hold that an agent’s blameworthiness for unwitting wrongful conduct must stem from—or trace back to—her blameworthiness for something else. And appeals to tracing in these cases lead some writers to a highly revisionist view, on which people are blameworthy for wrongdoing much less often than we ordinarily think (and our mistake, unfortunately, isn’t about how much wrongdoing there is). In this chapter, I set out the main claims of an argument for such a view and respond to it. I offer grounds for retaining a good many of the judgments that the revisionist would have us reject. The defense rests to a significant extent on commonsense views about the psychological capacities and abilities to act that people ordinarily possess, views that, as far as I can tell, revisionists have not shown to be mistaken. (shrink)

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the (...) compatibility of the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss a simple argument that modal metaphysics is misconceived, and responses to it. Unlike Quine's, this argument begins with the observation that there are different candidate interpretations of the predicate ‘could have been the case’. This is analogous to the observation that there are different candidate interpretations of the predicate ‘is a member of’. The argument then infers that the search for metaphysical necessities is misguided in much the way the ‘set-theoretic pluralist’ claims that the search (...) for the true axioms of set theory is. We show that the obvious responses to this argument fail. However, a new response has emerged that purports to prove, from higher-order logical principles, that metaphysical possibility is the broadest kind of possibility applying to propositions, and is to that extent special. We distill two lines of reasoning from the literature, and argue that their import depends on premises that any ‘modal pluralist’ should deny. Both presuppose that there is a unique typed hierarchy, which is what the modal pluralist, in the context of higher-order logic, should disavow. In other words, both presupposes that there is a unique candidate for what higher-order claims could mean. We consider the worry that, in a higher-order setting, modal pluralism faces an insuperable problem of articulation, collapses into modal monism, is vulnerable to the Russell-Myhill paradox, or even contravenes the truism that there is a unique actual world, and argue that these worries are misplaced. We also sketch the bearing of the resulting ‘Higher-Order Pluralism’ on the theory of content. One theme of the discussion is that, if Higher-Order Pluralism is correct, then there is no fixed metatheory from which to characterize higher-order reality. (shrink)

Accounts of moral responsibility commonly focus on responsibility for actions and their consequences. But we can be responsible as well for omitting to act or refraining from acting, and for consequences of these. And since omitting and refraining are not in every case performing an action, an account of responsibility for actions will not apply straightforwardly to these cases. This paper advances proposals concerning responsibility for omitting, refraining, and their consequences. Providing such an account is complicated by the fact that (...) cases of omitting or refraining are quite varied. (shrink)

Let F be a fact in virtue of which an agent, S, is blameworthy for performing an act of A-ing. We advance a slightly qualified version of the following thesis: -/- (Reason) F is (at some time) a reason for S to feel guilty (to some extent) for A-ing. -/- Leaving implicit the qualification concerning extent, we claim as well: -/- (Desert) S's having this reason suffices for S’s deserving to feel guilty for A-ing. -/- We also advance a third (...) thesis connecting desert of feeling guilty with the fittingness of this response. -/- In light of our three theses, we address several claims that have been made regarding responsibility and desert. We take issue with the divorce of desert from responsibility. We find acceptable a claim regarding blameworthiness and reason to induce guilt, and we defend the idea that it is noninstrumentally good that one who is blameworthy be subject to a fitting feeling of guilt. We argue against a view on which desert of blame has a teleological dimension. (shrink)

According to what may be called PERMANENT, blameworthiness is forever: once you are blameworthy for something, you are always blameworthy for it. Here a prima facie case for this view is set out, and the view is defended from two lines of attack. On one, you are no longer blameworthy for a past offense if, despite being the person who committed it, you no longer have any of the pertinent psychological states you had at the time of the misdeed. On (...) the other, you can cease to be blameworthy if you sufficiently experience guilt or remorse, suffer enough punishment, or are forgiven for your misdeed. Although several points made in support of the second challenge are accepted, they are entirely consistent with PERMANENT. Neither line of attack, as so far presented, undermines the plausibility of this view stemming from the prima facie case. (shrink)

The Cartesian explanation of emotions relies on the theory of animal spirits that is central to his account of sensation and a hypothesis about innate desires and aversions. Emotions are the distinctive feelings we experience in response to the apparent perception of things that satisfy or frustrate our natural desires. These feelings, similar to internal sensations, correspond systematically to patterns in the flow of animal spirits from the heart to the brain.

How are justifications for religious violence developed and dothey differ from secular justifications for violence? Can liberalsocieties tolerate potentially violent religious groups? Can thosewho accept religious justifications for violence be dissuaded fromacting violently? Including six in-depth contemporary case studies,The Justification of Religious Violence is the first book toexamine the logical structure of justifications of religiousviolence. The first book specifically devoted to examining the logicalstructure of justifications of religious violence Seeks to understand how justifications for religious violenceare developed and how or (...) if they differ from ordinary secularjustifications of violence Examines 3 widely employed premises used in religiousjustifications of violence – ‘cosmic war’, theimportance of the afterlife, and ‘sacred values’ Considers to what extent liberal democratic societies shouldtolerate who hold that their religion justifies violent acts Reflects on the possibility of effective policy measures topersuade those who believe that violent action is justified byreligion, to refrain from acting violently Informed by recent work in psychology, cognitive science,neuroscience and evolutionary biology Part of the Blackwell Public Philosophy Series. (shrink)

Number Nativism is the view that humans innately represent precise natural numbers. Despite a long and venerable history, it is often considered hopelessly out of touch with the empirical record. I argue that this is a mistake. After clarifying Number Nativism and distancing it from related conjectures, I distinguish three arguments which have been seen to refute the view. I argue that, while popular, two of these arguments miss the mark, and fail to place pressure on Number Nativism. Meanwhile, a (...) third argument is best construed as a challenge: rather than refuting Number Nativism, it challenges its proponents to provide positive evidence for their thesis and show that this can be squared with apparent counterevidence. In response, I introduce psycholinguistic work on The Tolerance Principle (not yet considered in this context), propose that it is hard to make sense of without positing precise and innate representations of natural numbers, and argue that there is no obvious reason why these innate representations couldn’t serve as a basis for mature numeric conception. (shrink)

The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – which (...) allows such a solution. I sketch a sensitivist account of the preface writer's doxastic state. (shrink)

Negligence and omission are closely related: commonly, in cases of negligent action, the agent has failed to turn her attention to some pertinent fact. But that omission is itself typically unwitting. A sufficient condition for blameworthiness for an unwitting omission is offered, as is an account of blameworthiness for negligent action. It is argued that one can be blameworthy for wrongdoing done from ignorance even if one is not blameworthy for that ignorance.

How do axioms, or first principles, in ethics compare to those in mathematics? In this companion piece to G.C. Field's 1931 "On the Role of Definition in Ethics", I argue that there are similarities between the cases. However, these are premised on an assumption which can be questioned, and which highlights the peculiarity of normative inquiry.

It is worth noting that Kant begins Perpetual Peace with an apology. He defends political philosophy by encouraging politicians to treat it with contempt.