In this paper, we present and defend an analysis of harm that we call the Negative Influence on Well-Being Account (NIWA). We argue that NIWA has a number of significant advantages compared to its two main rivals, the Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA) and the Causal Account (CA), and that it also helps explain why those views go wrong. In addition, we defend NIWA against a class of likely objections, and consider its implications for several questions about harm and its role (...) in normative theorizing. (shrink)

The essays in this volume investigate the question of where, and in what sense, the bounds of intelligible thought, knowledge, and speech are to be drawn. Is there a way in which we are limited in what we think, know, and say? And if so, does this mean that we are constrained—that there is something beyond the ken of human intelligibility of which we fall short? Or is there another way to think about these limits of intelligibility—namely, as conditions of (...) our meaning and knowing anything, beyond which there is no specifiable thing we cannot do? -/- These issues feature prominently in the writings of Kant and Wittgenstein who each engaged with them in unique and striking ways. Their thoughts on the matter remain provocative and stimulating, and accordingly the contributions to this volume address the issues surrounding the limits of intelligibility both exegetically and systematically: they examine how they figure in Kant’s and Wittgenstein’s most significant works and put them in touch with contemporary debates that are shaped by their legacy. These debates concern, inter alia, logically and morally alien thought, the semantics and philosophy of negation, disjunctivism in philosophy of perception and ethics, paraconsistent approaches to contradiction, and the relation between art, literature, and philosophy. The book is divided into four parts: Part I gives a first assessment of the issues, Part II examines limits as they feature in Kant, Part III as they feature in Wittgenstein, and Part IV suggests some ways in which the questions at issue might be reconsidered, drawing upon ideas in phenomenology, dialetheism, metamathematics, and the works of other influential authors. -/- Limits of Intelligibility provides insight into a theme that is central to the thought of two of the most important figures in modern philosophy, as well as to recent metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, epistemology, and ethics. (shrink)

The chapters in this timely volume aim to answer the growing interest in Arthur Schopenhauer’s logic, mathematics, and philosophy of language by comprehensively exploring his work on mathematical evidence, logic diagrams, and problems of semantics. Thus, this work addresses the lack of research on these subjects in the context of Schopenhauer’s oeuvre by exposing their links to modern research areas, such as the “proof without words” movement, analytic philosophy and diagrammatic reasoning, demonstrating its continued relevance to current discourse on logic. (...) -/- Beginning with Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language, the chapters examine the individual aspects of his semantics, semiotics, translation theory, language criticism, and communication theory. Additionally, Schopenhauer’s anticipation of modern contextualism is analyzed. The second section then addresses his logic, examining proof theory, metalogic, system of natural deduction, conversion theory, logical geometry, and the history of logic. Special focus is given to the role of the Euler diagrams used frequently in his lectures and their significance to broader context of his logic. In the final section, chapters discuss Schopenhauer’s philosophy of mathematics while synthesizing all topics from the previous sections, emphasizing the relationship between intuition and concept. -/- Aimed at a variety of academics, including researchers of Schopenhauer, philosophers, historians, logicians, mathematicians, and linguists, this title serves as a unique and vital resource for those interested in expanding their knowledge of Schopenhauer’s work as it relates to modern mathematical and logical study. (shrink)

The legacy of the Platonic dialogues may well lie, not in any classical idealist “doctrine of forms,” but in an inquisitive stance towards the puzzle behind any such doctrine—how thought can be about anything at all. This Platonic puzzle may, however, yield a different guise of idealism that is recognizably diagnostic: it aims to dispel our worry about thought’s objectivity as a confusion, engendered by a self-alienation of thought. These themes of diagnosis and idealism resurface in Wittgenstein, who in his (...) treatment of rules calls for an understanding of thought’s normativity from within. This is taken up by Cora Diamond, who urges philosophy to attend to thought’s real needs by exorcizing any desire for agreement with something other than itself. I argue that Wittgenstein and Diamond lead us back to Kant’s idealism, which identifies transcendental realism as the deep-seated prejudice at the root of the puzzle. (shrink)

The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is Kant's central contribution to moral philosophy, and has inspired controversy ever since it was first published in 1785. Kant champions the insights of 'common human understanding' against what he sees as the dangerous perversions of ethical theory. Morality is revealed to be a matter of human autonomy: Kant locates the source of the 'categorical imperative' within each and every human will. However, he also portrays everyday morality in a way that many readers (...) find difficult to accept. The Groundwork is a short book, but its argument is dense, intricate and at times treacherous. This commentary explains Kant's arguments paragraph by paragraph, and also contains an introduction, a synopsis of the argument, six short interpretative essays on key topics of the Groundwork, and a glossary of key terms. It will be an indispensable tool for anyone wishing to study the Groundwork in detail. (shrink)

Logic diagrams have been increasingly studied and applied for a few decades, not only in logic, but also in many other fields of science. The history of logic diagrams is an important subject, as many current systems and applications of logic diagrams are based on historical predecessors. While traditional histories of logic diagrams cite pioneers such as Leibniz, Euler, Venn, and Peirce, it is not widely known that Kant and the early Kantians in Germany and England played a crucial role (...) in popularising Euler(-type) diagrams. In this paper, the role of the Kantians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries will be analysed in more detail. It shows that diagrams (or intuition in general) were a highly contentious topic that depend on the philosophical attitude and went beyond logic to touch on issues of physics, metaphysics, linguistics and, above all, mathematics. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of moral conflict in Kant’s ethics. An analysis of the only explicit discussion of the topic in his published writings confirms that there is no room for genuine moral dilemmas. Conflict is limited to nonconclusive ‘grounds’ of obligation. They arise only in the sphere of ethical duty and, though defeasible, ought to be construed as the result of valid arguments an agent correctly judges to apply in the situation at hand. While it is difficult to (...) determine in theory what makes some of them stronger than others, these ‘grounds’ can account for practical residue in conflict cases and for a plausible form of agent regret. The principle that ‘ought implies can’ survives intact. (shrink)

Suppose your evil sibling travels back in time, intending to lethally poison your grandfather during his infancy. Determined to save grandpa, you grab two antidotes and follow your sibling through the wormhole. Under normal circumstances, each antidote has a 50% chance of curing a poisoning. Upon finding young grandpa, poisoned, you administer the first antidote. Alas, it has no effect. The second antidote is your last hope. You administer it---and success: the paleness vanishes from grandpa's face, he is healed. As (...) you administered the first antidote, what was the chance that it would be effective? -/- This essay offers a systematic account of this case, and others like it. The central question is this: Given a certain time travel structure, what are the chances? In particular, I'll develop a theory about the connection between these chances and the chances in ordinary, time-travel-free contexts. Central to the account is a Markov condition involving the boundaries of spacetime regions. (shrink)

Eristic has been studied more and more intensively in recent years in philosophy, law, communication theory, logic, proof theory, and A.I. Nevertheless, the modern origins of eristic, which almost all current researchers see in the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, are considered to be a theory of the illegitimate use of logical and rhetorical devices. Thus, eristic seems to violate the norms of discourse ethics. In this paper, I argue that this interpretation of eristic is based on prejudices that contradict the original (...) intention of modern eristic. Eristic is not an art of being right or winning an argument, but an art of protecting oneself from the one who deliberately violates norms of discourse ethics to gain argumentative acceptance. For this reason, eristic must be seen as a discipline of Enlightenment philosophy and a correlate of discourse ethics. Especially in the age of alternative facts and post-factual politics, this makes eristic a valuable discipline. (shrink)

The present article is an attempt to clarify the Kantian conception of duties to the self and to defend them against common objections. Kant’s thesis that all duty rests on duties to the self is shown to follow from the autonomy of the human will; and the allegation that they are impossible because the agent could always release himself from such a duty turns out to be question-begging. There is no attempt to prove that there are such duties, but they (...) are revealed to be an indispensable part of morality. Traditional attributes of moral commands, such as ‘categoricity’ or ‘overridingness’ make no sense in a one-sidedly other-regarding or social conception of morality. (shrink)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, best known for his involvement in the anti-Nazi resistance, was one of the 20th century's most important theologians. His ethics have been a source of guidance and inspiration for men and women in the face of evil. Today, Bonhoeffer's theology is being read by Continental thinkers who value his contributions to the recent "religious turn" in philosophy. In this volume, an international group of scholars present Bonhoeffer's thought as a model of Christian thinking that can help shape a (...) distinctly religious philosophy. They examine the philosophical influences on Bonhoeffer and explore the new perspectives his work brings to the perennial challenges of faith and reason, philosophy and theology, and the problem of evil. These essays add Bonhoeffer's voice to important contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Is Kant’s ethical theory too demanding? Do its commands ask too much of us, either by calling for self-sacrifice on particular occasions, or by pervading our lives to the extent that there is no room for permissible action? In this article, I argue that Kant’s ethics is very demanding, but not excessively so. The notion of ‘latitude’ does not help. But we need to bear in mind that moral laws are self-imposed and cannot be externally enforced; that ‘right action’ is (...) not a category of Kantian ethics – there is a more and a less, and lack of perfection does not entail vice; and that only practice makes perfect, i.e. how much virtue can realistically be expected can vary from agent to agent. The principle that ‘ought’ is limited by ‘can’ is firmly entrenched in Kant’s ethical thought. (shrink)

This paper analyses a hitherto unknown technique of using logic diagrams to create argument maps in eristic dialectics. The method was invented in the 1810s and -20s by Arthur Schopenhauer, who is considered the originator of modern eristic. This technique of Schopenhauer could be interesting for several branches of research in the field of argumentation: Firstly, for the field of argument mapping, since here a hitherto unknown diagrammatic technique is shown in order to visualise possible situations of arguments in a (...) dialogical controversy. Secondly, the art of controversy or eristic, since the diagrams do not analyse the truth of judgements and the validity of inferences, but the persuasiveness of arguments in a dialogue. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to settle the controversy around Kant’s notorious discussion of maternal infanticide in the ‘Doctrine of Right’ of 1797. How should a state punish an unmarried mother who has killed her newborn infant? The text (at DoR VI 335–37) is obscure. Three readings have been defended in the literature: 1. Lenience. Maternal infanticide does not count as murder; so, capital punishment is inappropriate. On this view, the child does not enjoy the full recognition of the (...) law (this is the standard view). 2. Temporary privilege. Lenience should prevail as long as social attitudes are barbaric and treating maternal infanticide like regular cases of murder is perceived to be unjust. The regular punishment for murder will be appropriate once sexual mores have changed. The child will then enjoy the full protection of the law (Hruschka, Varden). 3. No lenience. Capital punishment, though it appears to be unjust, is actually just and ought to be applied. Any child, whether born to married parents or not, enjoys the full protection of the law (Brandt, Uleman). Based on a close examination of the passage and the context of contemporary laws and attitudes, Kant is not, it will be argued, advocating lenience but certain legislative reforms, which are needed to dispel the perception that capital punishment is unjust. Progressive legislation will change social attitudes, not vice versa. Moreover, it will be shown that Kant does not, appearances notwithstanding, endorse the thesis that a child born out of wedlock has been smuggled into the state like ‘prohibited goods’ or ‘contraband merchandise’, which would deprive the child of the protection of the state; that is the view with which Kant saddles Cesare Beccaria. (shrink)

I raise two objections against Christian List and Peter Menzies' influential account of high-level causation. Improving upon some of Stephen Yablo's earlier work, I develop an alternative theory which evades both objections. The discussion calls into question List and Menzies' main contention, namely, that the exclusion principle, applied to difference-making, is false.

How can work be a genuine good in life? I argue that this requires overcoming a problem akin to that studied by Marx scholars as the problem of work, freedom and necessity: how can work be something we genuinely want to do, given that its content is not up to us, but is determined by necessity? I argue that the answer involves valuing contributing to the good of others, typically as valuing active pro-sociality – that is, valuing actively doing something (...) good for others. This makes work better in one way, and may even make work something we are genuinely glad to have in our lives. Contemporary philosophical thinking about good work tends to focus on how work can be good for the person doing it, by providing, for example, self-realization or social relationships, while underappreciating the special importance of valuing social contribution. People will typically only really want work if they want a part of their lives to be about the good of others. This also means that work may be a part of the best life, something we should take into account when discussing work-related policies and the desirability of a ‘post-work’ future. (shrink)

According to the standard version of the counterfactual comparative account of harm, an event is overall harmful for an individual if and only if she would have been on balance better off if it had not occurred. This view faces the “preemption problem.” In the recent literature, there are various ingenious attempts to deal with this problem, some of which involve slight additions to, or modifications of, the counterfactual comparative account. We argue, however, that none of these attempts work, and (...) that the preemption problem continues to haunt the counterfactual comparative account. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt collects thirty original chapters on the diverse oeuvre of one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Carl Schmitt was a German theorist whose anti-liberalism continues to inspire scholars and practitioners on both the Left and the Right. Despite Schmitt's rabid anti-semitism and partisan legal practice in Nazi Germany, the appeal of his trenchant critiques of, among other things, aestheticism, representative democracy, and international law as well as of his theoretical justifications of (...) dictatorship and rule by exception is undiminished. Uniquely located at the intersection of law, the social sciences, and the humanities, this volume brings together sophisticated yet accessible interpretations of Schmitt's sprawling thought and complicated biography. The contributors hail from diverse disciplines, including art, law, literature, philosophy, political science, and history. In addition to opening up exciting new avenues of research, The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt provides the intellectual foundations for an improved understanding of the political, legal, and cultural thought of this most infamous of German theorists. A substantial introduction places the trinity of Schmitt's thought in a broad context. (shrink)

Das Buch behandelt Kants Versuch, innerhalb seiner Ethik Sittengesetz, Naturgesetz und Freiheit im moralischen Handeln in Einklang zu bringen. Im ersten Teil stehen die Begriffe der Freiheit und des Willens bei Kant im Mittelpunkt. Der zweite Teil untersucht detailliert die Kernpunkte der kantischen Ethik: den (letztlich gescheiterten) Versuch, Freiheit und Naturkausalit t auszus hnen, und die Theorie des Handelns nach Moralgesetzen, deren Wahl den freien Willen als eigentliches Moment ausmacht. Am Ende steht die Einsicht in ein hoch entwickeltes, differenziertes gedankliches (...) System, das unserer Alltagsauffassung von moralischer Verantwortung erstaunlich nahe kommt. (shrink)

To believe that logic has no history might at first seem peculiar today. But since the early 20th century, this position has been repeatedly conflated with logical monism of Kantian provenance. This logical monism asserts that only one logic is authoritative, thereby rendering all other research in the field marginal and negating the possibility of acknowledging a history of logic. In this paper, I will show how this and many related issues have developed, and that they are founded on only (...) one prominent statement by Kant. I will argue, however, that this statement takes on a very different meaning in a broader context of the history and philosophy of science, and that Kant and his supporters never advocated the logical monism that they are still said to hold today. (shrink)

Logicians have often suggested that the use of Euler-type diagrams has influenced the idea of the quantification of the predicate. This is mainly due to the fact that Euler-type diagrams display more information than is required in traditional syllogistics. The paper supports this argument and extends it by a further step: Euler-type diagrams not only illustrate the quantification of the predicate, but also solve problems of traditional proof theory, which prevented an overall quantification of the predicate. Thus, Euler-type diagrams can (...) be called the natural basis of syllogistic reasoning and can even go beyond. In the paper, these arguments are presented in connection with the book Nucleus Logicae Weisaniae by Johann Christian Lange from 1712. (shrink)

Kant’s concept of conscience has been largely neglected by scholars and contemporary moral philosophers alike, as has his concept of “indirect” duty. Admittedly, neither of them is foundational within his ethical theory, but a correct account of both in their own right and in combination can shed some new light on Kant’s moral philosophy as a whole. In this paper, I first examine a key passage in which Kant systematically discusses the role of conscience, then give a systematic account of (...) “indirect” duties and the function of hypothetical imperatives in the course of their generation. I then turn to the possibility of moral error and the part “indirect” duty can play in its prevention. In conclusion, I try to show how clarifying the concept of “indirect” duty can help us to shed light on the nature of Kantian ethics as a whole. (shrink)

Suppose that you intend to go to the theater. Are you therein intending the unconditional proposition that you go to the theater? That would seem to be deeply irrational; after all, you surely do not intend to go if, for instance, in the next instant an earthquake is going to devastate the city. What we intend we do not intend ‘no matter what,’ it is often said. But if so—how can anyone ever rationally intend simply to perform an action of (...) a certain kind? In response to the puzzle, a ‘conditionality’ view of intention has emerged: the contents of everyday intentions are claimed to be fraught with hidden conditional clauses. The paper argues that such claims are radically unmotivated: even unconditional intentions have only limited inferential import and hence contrast sharply with a ‘no matter what’ stance. The point is established by examining relevant patterns of reasoning from unconditional to conditional intentions. (shrink)

This article examines the evolution of the concept of existence in modern visual representation and reasoning, highlighting important milestones. In the late eighteenth century, during the so-called golden age of visual reasoning, nominalism reigned supreme and there was limited scope for existential import or individuals in logic diagrams. By the late nineteenth century, a form of realism had taken hold, whose existential commitments continue to dominate many areas in logic and visual reasoning to this day. Physical, metaphysical, epistemological, and linguistic (...) positions underlie both nominalist and realist views. Since the paradigmatic works on visual reasoning in the 1990s, formal diagram systems have been developed that revive either the nominalist or realist perspectives. Unlike in the nineteenth century, these are not motivated by philosophical views. Nevertheless, they may still have an impact on many areas of philosophy and science outside logic. (shrink)

According to luck egalitarianism, it is not unfair when people are disadvantaged by choices they are responsible for. This implies that those who are disadvantaged by choices that prevent disadvantage to others are not eligible for compensation. This is counterintuitive. We argue that the problem such cases pose for luck egalitarianism reveals an important distinction between responsibility for creating disadvantage and responsibility for distributing disadvantage which has hitherto been overlooked. We develop and defend a version of luck egalitarianism which only (...) holds people responsible for creating disadvantage. This revision enables luck egalitarianism to offer compensation to those who are disadvantaged by preventing disadvantage to others, like dependent caretakers, without compromising the responsibility–sensitivity at the heart of luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

One increasingly popular approach to personal identity is called ‘animalism.’ Unfortunately, it is unclear just what the doctrine says. In this paper, I criticise several different ways of stating animalism, and put forward one formulation that I find more promising.

Logicians commonly speak in a relatively undifferentiated way about pre-euler diagrams. The thesis of this paper, however, is that there were three periods in the early modern era in which euler-type diagrams (line diagrams as well as circle diagrams) were expansively used. Expansive periods are characterized by continuity, and regressive periods by discontinuity: While on the one hand an ongoing awareness of the use of euler-type diagrams occurred within an expansive period, after a subsequent phase of regression the entire knowledge (...) about the systematic application and the history of euler-type diagrams was lost. I will argue that the first expansive period lasted from Vives (1531) to Alsted (1614). The second period began around 1660 with Weigel and ended in 1712 with lange. The third period of expansion started around 1760 with the works of Ploucquet, euler and lambert. Finally, it is shown that euler-type diagrams became popular in the debate about intuition which took place in the 1790s between leibnizians and Kantians. The article is thus limited to the historical periodization between 1530 and 1800. (shrink)

The question of naturalness in logic is widely discussed in today’s research literature. On the one hand, naturalness in the systems of natural deduction is intensively discussed on the basis of Aristotelian syllogistics. On the other hand, research on “natural logic” is concerned with the implicitly existing logical laws of natural language, and is therefore also interested in the naturalness of syllogistics. In both research areas, the question arises what naturalness exactly means, in logic as well as in language. We (...) show, however, that this question is not entirely new: In his Berlin Lectures of the 1820s, Arthur Schopenhauer already discussed in depths what is natural and unnatural in logic. In particular, he anticipates two criteria for the naturalness of deduction that meet current trends in research: (1) Naturalness is what corresponds to the actual practice of argumentation in everyday language or scientific proof; (2) Naturalness of deduction is particularly evident in the form of Euler-type diagrams. (shrink)

While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of ‘‘risk’’, over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in debates on what is not known and how to appraise it different and partly conflicting epistemic cultures of nonknowledge can be discerned and, second, that drawing attention to nonknowledge (...) in technology conflicts results in significant institutional effects and new constellations of actors in public debates. To illustrate and substantiate this political dynamics of nonknowledge we draw upon examples from the areas of agri-biotechnology and mobile phoning. In a first step, we develop in greater detail the concept of scientific cultures of nonknowledge and identify three such cultures involved in the social conflicts within the two areas. Subsequently, we analyze the specific dynamics of the politicisation of nonknowledge looking at the variety of actors involved and the pluralisation of perceptions and evaluations of what is not known. Then, we point out some of the institutional reactions to the political and cultural dynamics of scientific nonknowledge. We argue that the equal recognition of the diverse cultures of nonknowledge is a key prerequisite for socially legitimate and ‘‘robust’’ decision-making under conditions of politicised scientific nonknowledge. (shrink)

This article defends three claims. First, that collection and division in the Phaedrus are described as procedures that underlie human speaking and thinking in general, as well as philosophical inquiry, and are not identified with either. Second, that what sets the dialectical use of these procedures apart from their ordinary use are philosophical suppositions independent of the procedures of collection and division themselves; for that reason, collection and division cannot be identified with dialectic as such. Third, that the second part (...) of the Phaedrus is concerned with the broader question how noble or beautiful speaking, in general, may be said to depend on dialectic as much as it is concerned with the question how rhetoric, as a kind of expertise, is related to dialectic. (shrink)

To reconcile the standard possible worlds model of knowledge with the intuition that ordinary agents fall far short of logical omniscience, a Stalnakerian strategy appeals to two components. The first is the idea that mathematical and logical knowledge is at bottom metalinguistic knowledge. The second is the idea that non-ideal minds are often fragmented. In this paper, we investigate this Stalnakerian reconciliation strategy and argue, ultimately, that it fails. We are not the first to complain about the Stalnakerian strategy. But (...) in contrast to existing complaints, we want to cause trouble for the strategy directly on its home turf. That is, we will advance our objection while granting both the plausibility of the fragmentation component—save for an extreme version of it—and that of the metalinguistic component. Once our central objection to the Stalnakerian strategy is in place, we will show how it negatively affects Adam Elga and Augustín Rayo’s recent attempt to apply the Stalnakerian strategy in the context of Bayesian decision theory. (shrink)

Pauline Kleingeld’s “Contradiction and Kant’s Formula of Universal Law”, published in this journal in 2017, presents a powerful challenge to what has become the standard reconstruction of the categorical imperative. In this response to Kleingeld, I argue that she is right to emphasise the ‘simultaneity requirement’ - that we must be able to will a proposed maxim and ‘simulataneously’, ‘also’ or ‘at the same time’ the maxim in its universalised form - but I deny that this removes the categorical imperative (...) test from the world of universalisation because the agent must be understood as part of that world. There are two distinct types of conflict: a contradiction that results from non-universalisability and Kleingeld’s ‘volitional’ conflict, located within the will of the immoral agent. The standard ‘practical’ reconstruction of the categorical imperative remains largely intact. (shrink)

Kant lectured on moral philosophy fairly regularly over the course of his long, 40-year teaching career. Bearing a variety of different titles such as “Practical Philosophy”, “Ethics”, and “Universal Practical Philosophy and Ethics”, we have evidence that Kant offered a course on moral philosophy in at least 28 different semesters (of these we can prove that 19 actually took place, 9 others were advertised and there is good reason to think that they took place - see Arnoldt 1909). This means (...) that Kant offered a course on ethics in approximately one third of every semester he taught. The student notes from these lectures have proved invaluable resources for gaining insight into Kant’s intellectual development, his opinion on issues not covered extensively in the published works, and his character as a university instructor, among many others things. From his lectures on ethics, 23 distinct sets of notes are thought to have existed at any one point in time, but many of these have since been lost or destroyed (see Naragon 2006). Only 14 sets of notes still exist, either as an original, a copy, a published version of a subsequently lost manuscript, or just a collection of fragments (ibid.). But each of these are not unique, distinct sets of notes. For example: of the 23 sets of known notes, 13 of them belong to the same group in the sense that they are thought to all be copies of one original set. In the end, we possess only five distinct sets of notes from Kant’s lectures on ethics, stemming from various periods of his life: Herder (1760s), Kaehler/Collins (1770s), Powalski (1782/3), Mrongovius (1784/5), and Vigilantius (1790s). In what follows, each of these sets of notes will be given their own brief discussion. (shrink)

Section I of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is meant to lead us from our everyday conception of morality to the supreme principle of all moral action, officially christened the ‘categorical imperative’ some twenty Academy pages further into the treatise. It is quite striking that in this first section Kant dispenses with the notorious technical language that pervades not just other parts of the Groundwork but also most of the remaining philosophical writings of the critical period. The mere (...) fact that Groundwork I is comparatively accessible does not, of course, make it straightforward or uncontroversial. Kant's readers are faced with, amongst other things, four unconvincing paragraphs on the natural purpose of practical reason (G IV 394–6), a crucial change of topic from good volition to acting from duty (G IV 397), an unstated ‘first proposition’ about moral value that has baffled generations of interpreters (presumably G IV 397–9), and a contentious shift from an allegedly unproblematic principle of practical universalizability to a substantive moral command (G IV 402). (shrink)

In 1993, Richard Hare argued that, contrary to received opinion, Kant could have been a utilitarian. In this article, I argue that Hare was wrong. Kant's theory would not have been utilitarian or consequentialist even if his practical recommendations coincided with utilitarian commands: Kant's theory of value is essentially anti-utilitarian; there is no place for rational contradiction as the source of moral imperatives in utilitarianism; Kant would reject the move to separate levels of moral thinking: first-order moral judgement makes use (...) of the principle of morality; and, relatedly, he would resist the common utilitarian distinction between actions and their motives because any correct description of an action must refer to motivation. The article concludes with the thought that any consequentialist theory based on pre-given ends (teleology) lacks the philosophical resources to distinguish between willing something as a means and as an end, leaving means only, and destroying transparency. (shrink)

From the mid-1600s to the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were two main circles of German scholars which focused extensively on diagrammatic reasoning and representation in logic. The first circle was formed around Erhard Weigel in Jena and consists primarily of Johann Christoph Sturm and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; the second circle developed around Christian Weise in Zittau, with the support of his students, particularly Samuel Grosser and Johann Christian Lange. Each of these scholars developed an original form of using (...) geometric diagrams in logic. In this paper, I will trace the historical notes of John Venn and other modern logicians back to the original works published in the Weigel and Weise circles and describe the development of using geometric figures for logical reasoning and representation in that period of time. (shrink)

A prominent objection to the counterfactual comparative account of harm is that it classifies as harmful some events that are, intuitively, mere failures to benefit. In an attempt to solve this problem, Duncan Purves has recently proposed a novel version of the counterfactual comparative account, which relies on a distinction between making upshots happen and allowing upshots to happen. In this response, we argue that Purves’s account is unsuccessful. It fails in cases where an action makes the subject occupy a (...) high well-being level though one of the available alternatives would have made it even higher. In fact, it fails even in some cases where each of the available alternatives to the action that was actually performed would have made the subject’s well-being level lower. (shrink)

Even the most sympathetic readers of Kant's moral philosophy usually disagree with him about some aspect of his theory, or some particular moral judgement. His unqualified condemnation of lying in the essay ‘On a supposed right to lie from philanthropy’ is a classical case in question, as is his strong endorsement of retributive justice and the death penalty. A third prominent source of discontent are Kant's repeated verdicts on the moral status of non-human animals, or rather the lack thereof. For, (...) despite the fact that his practical recommendations in this field are sensible and even progressive, he repeatedly insists that there are no direct duties to animals, that the well-being of animals is morally indifferent, in particular that we ought to treat animals decently solely for the sake of humanity. As a result, the foundations of his advice seem morally inadequate, even offensive. (shrink)

Meaningful work is an important ideal, but it seems hard to give an adequate account of meaningful work. In this article, I conduct a revisionary conceptual analysis of ‘meaningful work’, i.e. a conceptual analysis that aims at finding a better and more useful way to use this term. I argue for a distinction between cases where work itself is meaningful and cases where other sources of meaning are found at work. The term ‘meaningful work’ is most useful for the former (...) cases. I then argue for the reasons account of what makes work itself meaningful: work is meaningful if (and to the extent that) there are good reasons to do it. I compare this to established accounts of meaningful work, such as subjective meaningfulness, self-realization, alienation, the unity of conception and execution, autonomy, social contribution, and Veltman’s four-dimensional account. None of these capture the distinct concern that the concept ‘meaningful work’ should capture, or they do so less well than the reasons account. This also shows that work can be meaningful regardless of whether it is good in other respects, such as in inherent interest or opportunities for self-realization. (shrink)

The criticism of Immanuel Kant’s logic commenced with the advent of the so-called ‘new logic’ in the 20th century. One particular passage from the second preface to the Critique of Pure Reason has been a source of contention, where Kant asserted that logic has not taken a step forward or backward since Aristotle (B VIII). In Kant scholarship, one current strategy to avoid this criticism is to relocate Kant within the domain of philosophy of logic or by segregating his general (...) logic from modern formal systems. In this paper, it will be contended that this strategy is too weak, given that the B-preface has currently been analyzed in a markedly divergent manner by the so-called ‘methodological interpretation’. In his methodology and history of science of the B-preface, Kant means something different by progress and regression than what his 20th-century critics assume he meant. By examining what Kant and his critics considered to be progress and regress in science and logic, good reasons can be put forward for the argument that Kant was correct in his assertion that logic has not gone a step forward or backward. (shrink)