In previous years, philosophers have either ignored the virtue of humility or found it to be in need of radical redefinition. But humility is a central human virtue, and it is the purpose of this book to defend that claim from a Kantian point of view. Jeanine Grenberg argues that we can indeed speak of Aristotelian-style, but still deeply Kantian, virtuous character traits. She proposes moving from focus on action to focus on person, not leaving the former behind, but (...) instead taking it up within a larger, more satisfying Kantian moral theory. Using examples from literature as well as philosophy, she shows that there is a Kantian virtue theory to be explored in which humility plays a central role. Her book will have a wide appeal to readers not only in Kant studies but also in theological ethics and moral psychology. (shrink)

Classic perfect being theologians take ‘being perfect’ to be conceptually necessary and sufficient for being God. I argue that this claim is false because being perfect is not conceptually necessary for being God. I rest my case on a simple thought experiment inspired by an alternative I developed to perfect being theology that I call “functional theology.” My findings, if correct, are a boon for theists since if it should turn out that there is no perfect being, there could still (...) be a God. (shrink)

There is an expansion of empirical research that at its core is an attempt to quantify the "feely" aspects of living in raced (and other stigmatized) bodies. This research is offered as part concession, part insistence on the reality of the "special" circumstances of living in raced bodies. While this move has the potential of making headway in debates about the character of racism and the unique nature of the harms of contemporary racism--through an analysis of stereotype threat research, microaggression (...) research, and the reception of both discourses--I will argue that this scientization of the phenomenology of race and racism also stalls progress on the most significant challenges for the current conversation about race and racism: how to listen and how to be heard. (shrink)

In this book, Jeanine Grenberg argues that everything important about Kant's moral philosophy emerges from careful reflection upon the common human moral experience of the conflict between happiness and morality. Through careful readings of both the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason, Grenberg shows that Kant, typically thought to be an overly technical moral philosopher, in fact is a vigorous defender of the common person's first-personal encounter with moral demands. Grenberg uncovers a notion of phenomenological experience in Kant's (...) account of the Fact of Reason, develops a new a reading of the Fact, and grants a moral epistemic role for feeling in grounding Kant's a priori morality. The book thus challenges readings which attribute only a motivational role to feeling; and Fichtean readings which violate Kant's commitments to the limits of reason. This study will be valuable to students and scholars engaged in Kant studies. (shrink)

A popular “Reductionist” account of personal identity unifies person stages into persons in virtue of their psychological continuity with one another. One objection to psychological continuity accounts is that there is more to our personal identity than just mere psychological continuity: there is also an active process of self-interpretation and self-creation. This criticism can be used to motivate a rival account of personal identity that appeals to the notion of a narrative. To the extent that they comment upon the issue, (...) proponents of narrative accounts typically reject Reductionist metaphysics that (ontologically) reduce persons to aggregates of person stages. In contrast to this trend, we seek to develop a narrative account of personal identity from within Reductionist metaphysics: we think person stages are unified into persons in virtue of their narrative continuity with one another. We argue that this Reductionist version of the narrative account avoids some serious problems facing non-Reductionist versions of the narrative account. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to questions Sticker and Saunders raise about integrating third-personal interactions within my phenomenological first-personal account of moral obligatedness. Sticker argues that third-personal interactions are more central for grounding moral obligatedness than I admit. Saunders turns things around and suggests we might not even be able to access third-personal interactions with others at the level one would need to in order to secure proper moral interactions with them. I argue in response that both these challenges misunderstand (...) something about my phenomenological first-personal account of the grounding of moral obligation. Sticker assumes that I make absolutely no room for third-personal interactions as important for morality, but that is not the case. And Saunders assumes that first-, second- and third-personal interactions demand phenomenological access to oneself and others as transcendentally free, but I deny that claim. I will consider each of these challenges in turn. (shrink)

While we are sympathetic to Balcetis’s approach, we feel that using motivational direction as the sole organizing structure for influences of affect on perception may be unnecessarily limiting. Three reasons for this concern are discussed.

This article explores the relationship between globalization and localization in context of our current ecological and social crisis. The benefits of immersing in one's local community and ecology are presented through an ecopsychological lens. Transpersonal dimensions of place are examined, reframing globalism as our seamless connections through the planetary life force. The author contends that while deepening our local relationships with place is essential for sustainability, developing our wider connections is essential for collective wellbeing.

James E. Taylor As the title of this book makes clear, the essays contained in it are unified by their focus on models of God and alternative ultimate realities. But what is ultimate reality, what does 'God' mean, and what would count as a model ...

Groups based on the notion of a shared sacralized descent enjoyed considerable influence in religious, social or political affairs in Central Asia by grace of their actual or imagined ancestry. They were credited by titles like īšān, sayyid, hwāğa and tūra. The flexibility of multiple genealogy accounts provided ample space for negotiations of conceptions concerning identity, descent, and sacredness as well as for their affirmation or disapproval. The 19th century saw an increase in newly emerging, self-styled religious dignitaries, but the (...) strategies these people adopted to achieve their goals and the responses of their environment remain largely understudied, the more so if their attempts remained unsuccessful. This article explores the vain endeavour of two īšāns, father and son, to establish themselves in the religious market in the Ferghana Valley, and discusses the “making of new religious figureheads” during the tsarist and early Soviet period. Based on letters and documents from the īšāns‘ private holdings, the essay shows their efforts to present themselves as progeny of the Prophet Ayyūb – patron saint of the silk processing craftsmen – from whom they tried to levy donations, but met repeated refusal. (shrink)

Making sense of how intelligible notions in Kant's moral philosophy make a place for themselves in the sensible, natural world is perhaps one of the greatest challenges to a Kantian moral philosopher. In this book, Rauscher takes on that question with great aplomb, by looking carefully at an impressive array of Kant's texts, and assessing the extent to which one can say Kant is a realist, or naturalist. Rauscher's intelligent and creative conclusion, in his words, is as follows: I have (...) identified a Kantian transcendental moral idealism that is also an empirical realism, thus dissolving some of the realist/constructivist disagreement. I show, however, that Kant is himself hesitant to endorse this transcendental... (shrink)

A significant issue facing communicators in the current multicommunicative environment is securing the attention of potential audience members who are likely to be engrossed in their digital devices. The theory of attentional social presence suggests that communicators secure their attention using one of four types of social presence—budgeted, competitive, entitled, and invitational. In this essay, the theory of attentional social presence is extended by identifying strategies interactants use to resolve misalignments in expected or preferred types of social presence. The research (...) design involved interviews with 32 individuals about their experiences with misalignment in attentional social presence. Transcripts of the interviews were coded following the qualitative approach of grounded theory. Three primary strategies emerged from the analysis—prescribing to eliminate misalignment, rationalizing to overlook misalignment, and co-creating to resolve misalignment. Understanding various methods for negotiating mismatches among chosen types of social presence will allow communicators to create more satisfying and productive interactions. (shrink)

Article Commentary Jeanine Grenberg, Kantian Review, FirstView Article.

I argue that there can be, on Kant's account, a significant motivational role for feeling in moral action. I first discuss and reject Andrews Reath's claim that Kant is forced to disallow a motivational role for feeling because of his rejection of moral sense theory. I then consider and reject the more general challenge that allowing a role for the influence of feeling on the faculty of desire undermines Kant's commitment to a morality free from anthropological considerations. I conclude by (...) providing an overview of Kant's discussion of the moral feeling of respect which shows this feeling to meet the criteria he sets for inclusion in moral motivation. (shrink)

This essay explores challenges that arise for professors who teach critical theory in our current climate of conservatism. Specifically, it is argued that the conservative commitments to non-revolutionary change and reverence for tradition are corrupted in our current political and intellectual climate. This corruption, called “ideological imperviousness,” undermines the institutional structures put in place to produce a functional educational environment that protects the interests of both professors and students. The result is an environment that imposes an unjust vulnerability on professors (...) and risks depriving students of the opportunity to acquire the critical skills necessary to combat their own vulnerabilities. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this book is to examine the logical features common to all the sciences. Each science proceeds by inventing general principles from which are deduced the consequences to be tested by observation and experiment; the author shows how the implications of this process explain some of its more baffling features and resolves many of the difficulties that philosophers have found in them. His exposition is by way of detailed examples.

In this paper, I take Philip Rossi’s robust interpretation of critique as an interpretive guide for thinking generally about how to interpret Kant’s texts. I reflect first upon what might appear to be a minor technical issue: how best to translate the term Fähigheit when Kant utilizes it in reference to the human experience of pleasure and displeasure. Reflection upon this technical issue will, however, end up being a case study in how important it is when we are interpreting Kant’s (...) texts to have Rossi’s focus on human finitude in the background. The terrain for these reflections on human finitude will be the realm of feelings of pleasure and displeasure. And the result will be that, counter to recent interpreters, like Elizondo, who have suggested that Kant could welcome a thoroughly active conception of rational feeling, we must instead, as guided by Kant’s commitment to human finitude, remember that every feeling for Kant—even the most rational of feelings, like the moral feeling of respect, or the pleasure he notes that we take in the proper functioning of one’s virtuous rational self—must be understood within the purview and constraints of the finite and sensibly-affected human being. I hope, then, that this brief reflection can be taken as one small piece of that larger story Rossi so aptly describes in his book, the story which answers the question of “What is critique?” in a way that insists upon but also simultaneously celebrates the centrality of finitude in human existence. (shrink)

One critique of experimental philosophy is that the intuitions of the philosophically untutored should be accorded little to no weight; instead, only the intuitions of professional philosophers should matter. In response to this critique, “experimentalists” often claim that the intuitions of professional philosophers are biased. In this paper, we explore this question of whose intuitions should be disqualified and why. Much of the literature on this issue focuses on the question of whether the intuitions of professional philosophers are reliable. In (...) contrast, we instead focus on the idea of “muddled” intuitions—i.e. intuitions that are misdirected and about notions other than the ones under discussion. We argue that the philosophically untutored are likely to have muddled intuitions and that professional philosophers are likely to have unmuddled intuitions. Although being umuddled does not, by itself, establish the reliability of the intuitions of professional philosophers, being muddled is enough to disqualify the intuitions of the philosophically untutored. We then turn to the charge that, despite being unmuddled, professional philosophers still have biased intuitions. To evaluate this charge, we switch focus from the general notion of biased intuition to the more specific notion of theory-laden intuition. We argue that there is prima facie evidence—in the form of the presence of conflicts of intuition—for thinking that at least some of the intuitions of professional philosophers are theory-laden. In summary, we conclude that that there is no clean and easy answer to the question of whose intuitions should matter. (shrink)

In this book, Professor Jeanine Grenberg defends the idea that Kant's virtue theory is best understood as a system of eudaemonism, indeed, as a distinctive form of eudaemonism that makes it preferable to other forms of it: a system of what she calls Deontological Eudaemonism. In Deontological Eudaemonism, one achieves happiness both rationally conceived and empirically conceived only via authentic commitment to and fulfilment of what is demanded of all rational beings: making persons as such one's end in all (...) things. To tell this story of Deontological Eudaemonism, Grenberg first defends the notion that Kant's deontological approach to ethics is simultaneously teleological. She then shows that the realization of an aptitude for the virtuous fulfilment of one's obligatory ends provides the solid basis for simultaneous realization of happiness, both rationally and empirically conceived. Along the way, she argues both that Kant's notion of happiness rationally conceived is essentially identical to Aristotle's conception of happiness as unimpeded activity, and that his notion of happiness empirically conceived is best realized via an unwavering commitment to the fulfilment of one's obligatory ends. (shrink)

Linguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist, Julia Kristeva is one of the most influential and prolific thinkers of our time. Her writings have broken new ground in the study of the self, the mind, and the ways in which we communicate through language. Her work is unique in that it skillfully brings together psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, literature, linguistics, and philosophy. In her latest book on the powers and limits of psychoanalysis, Kristeva focuses on an intriguing new dilemma. Freud and (...) psychoanalysis taught us that rebellion is what guarantees our independence and our creative abilities. But in our contemporary "entertainment" culture, is rebellion still a viable option? Is it still possible to build and embrace a counterculture? For whom -- and against what -- and under what forms? Kristeva illustrates the advances and impasses of rebel culture through the experiences of three twentieth-century writers: the existentialist John Paul Sartre, the surrealist Louis Aragon, and the theorist Roland Barthes. For Kristeva the rebellions championed by these figures -- especially the political and seemingly dogmatic political commitments of Aragon and Sartre -- strike the post-Cold War reader with a mixture of fascination and rejection. These theorists, according to Kristeva, are involved in a revolution against accepted notions of identity -- of one's relation to others. Kristeva places their accomplishments in the context of other revolutionary movements in art, literature, and politics. The book also offers an illuminating discussion of Freud's groundbreaking work on rebellion, focusing on the symbolic function of patricide in his _Totem and Taboo_ and discussing his often neglected vision of language, and underscoring its complex connection to the revolutionary drive. (shrink)

In his recent trilogy, J. L. Schellenberg presents a new religious option: to have beliefless faith in a general object of religious concern that he thinks is referenced at the core of most sectarian religions UUU’. After explaining what UUU is more fully, I argue that the claim that UUU exists should not be, as Schellenberg says, the only focus for philosophy of religion. Still, I argue that such a claim is a good basis for a new form of religion, (...) especially if it is modified in a couple of ways. (shrink)

Jeanine Grenberg - Imagination in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.2 335-336 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Jeanine M. Grenberg St. Olaf College Bernard Freydberg. Imagination in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii + 180. Paper, $19.95. At the heart of the task of the historian of philosophy is the effort to interpret well what has (...) been said by another philosopher. Like the poet who chooses to create verse under the constraints of meter and rhyme, the historian does philosophy under the constraints of the historical text. Given these constraints, any historian of philosophy—continental or analytic—must bind herself to the text. The significant distinction one.. (shrink)

Recently I’ve been reflecting on the possibility that choices I’ve made and commitments I’ve accepted — choices and commitments like being part of the academy and treating philosophy as a productive way to pursue truths about race and racism — may have made me into Philosophy’s mammy. Confronted with a crystal-clear specter of myself as mammy, I stubbornly hold fast to the belief that my intellectual identity can be defended to all of my intellectual ancestors: my ancestors in the canon (...) of Western Philosophy, but also my intellectual foremothers and forefathers: Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moragua, Toni Morrison, Patricia Hill Collins, Cornel West, Charles Mills. Some of those to whom I owe an intellectual debt are more like cousins. Alongside philosophers like Kristie Dotson and Donna-Dale Marcano, among others, I occupy a very unique position. It is to them, perhaps, that I most need to give an account myself. I believe that I can give an earnest defense that is not simply self-serving, not an easy way out, and not a concession. The goal of this essay is to investigate this worry. What is revealed is not just the personal, social, and professional location of one particular philosophy; Perhaps surprisingly, I may be an inevitable event and valuable stage in the ongoing progress of Black Feminist Philosophy. (shrink)

The results of two observational studies of clinical directorates (CDs) are presented. The paper exposes fresh perspectives about the management of hospitals and CDs, and suggests that the most important axis on which hospital decision-making rests continues to be profession rather than the CD, even though CDs are designed at least in part to mitigate professional tribalism and bridge professional divides. In empiricising social structural and cultural theories it seems clear that changes to the prescribed organisational framework, which CDs represent, (...) have had negligible effects on behaviour. This being the case, the paper questions the benefits alleged to have accrued from establishing CDs and calls for more effective, micro-behavioural change strategies than merely altering the structure. (shrink)

Introduction Recent accounts of humility, such as Norvin Richards', emphatically set aside any “Catholic metaphysics” that might ground the state, finding its view of human nature – one which asks us to consider ourselves as “contemptible” and “foul” – to be deeply problematic. Richards turns instead to an empirical and behavioral analysis of humility, focusing upon an individual agent's awareness of the flaws, failings and limits specific to her to ground humility. For example, when he asks what it would mean (...) to be “humble” about having a scholarly article accepted for publication in a prestigious journal, he says the following: Suppose, for example, that you have just had an article accepted by a leading journal. You have never been successful there before. In fact, this is much better than you ever did earlier in your career, and as you think of your progress, you are pleased. There are other ways to look at things, though. How does your work compare to what your colleagues are doing? To the work of contemporaries at similar institutions? To that of the leading philosophers of the day? To the Nichomachean Ethics, or the Theory of Descriptions? (shrink)

In this paper, I reject Frierson’s interpretation of Kantian reductionist phenomenology. I diagnose his failure to articulate a more robust notion of phenomenology in Kant as traceable to a misguided effort to protect pure reason from the undue influence of sensibility. But in fact Kant himself relies regularly on a phenomenological and felt first personal perspective in his practical philosophy. Once we think more broadly about what Frierson calls “the space of reasons,” we must admit a robust role for attentive (...) reflection upon felt, phenomenological experience at the center of Kantian practical deliberation. (shrink)

Julia Kristeva, herself a product of the famous May '68 Paris student uprising, has long been fascinated by the concept of rebellion and revolution. Psychoanalysts believe that rebellion guarantees our independence and creative capacities, but is revolution still possible? Confronted with the culture of entertainment, can we build and nurture a culture of revolt, in the etymological and Proustian sense of the word: an unveiling, a return, a displacement, a reconstruction of the past, of memory, of meaning? In the first (...) part of the book, Kristeva examines the manner in which three of the most unsettling modern writers -- Aragon, Sartre, and Barthes -- affirm their personal rebellion. In the second part of the book, Kristeva ponders the future of rebellion. She maintains that the "new world order" is not favorable to revolt. "What can we revolt against if power is vacant and values corrupt?" she asks. Not only is political revolt mired in compromise among parties whose differences are less and less obvious, but an essential component of European culture -- a culture of doubt and criticism -- is losing its moral and aesthetic impact. (shrink)

I introduce a distinction between global and local versions of atheism and theism, where global ones are about all notions of God and local ones are about specific notions. Current expressions of atheism are ambiguous between the two. I argue that global atheism is difficult to enunciate and even more difficult to defend, so much so that global atheism is not yet justified. Until it is, atheists should be local atheists.