“Hooking up,” a popular type of sexual behavior among college students, has become a pathway to dating relationships. Based on open-ended narratives written by 273 undergraduates, we analyze how students interpreted a vignette describing a heterosexual hookup followed by a sexless first date. In contrast to the sexual script which holds that women want relationships more than sex and men care about sex more than relationships, students generally accorded women sexual agency and desire in the hookup and validated men’s post-hookup (...) relationship interest. However, in explaining the sexless date, students typically reasoned the woman was being chaste and withholding sex to redeem her reputation whereas they often characterized the man’s abstinence in terms of a pity date. The findings underscore the tenacity of gendered sexual scripts around heterosexual dates and hookups but also reveal fissures and contradictions that suggest some changes to the sexual double standard. (shrink)

_Expanding Curriculum Theory, Second Edition_ carries through the major focus of the original volume—to reflect on the influence of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of "lines of flight" and its application to curriculum theorizing. What is different is that the lines of flight have since shifted and produced expanded understandings of this concept for curriculum theory and for education in general. This edition reflects the impact of events that have contributed to this shift, in particular the logic of school policy changes (...) and reforms in the past decade, and the continued explosion of social media and its effect on the collective understanding of how both "knowledge" and "education" work as forms of repression. The introduction updates the text and puts it into current debates in the field and in the larger socio-economic milieu. New dis/positions are presented that explore central questions circulating within and outside curriculum studies. Exciting scholarship on a range of topics includes notions of desire and commodities, youth culture and violence, new directions in curriculum theory, Eco-Ethical consciousness, new Deleuzian views of normality, the diffusion of technology and lines of flight in transnational curriculum inquiry. (shrink)

This article offers an historical-materialist account of the coup in Honduras on 28 June 2009, which ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. It draws on over two dozen interviews with members of theFrente Nacional de la Resistencia Popular[National Front of Popular Resistance, FNRP], and participation in numerous marches and assemblies over two periods of fieldwork – January 2010, and June–July 2011. The paper steps back in time to provide an historical cartography of the basic material structures of the Honduran economy (...) and its integration into the world market, as well as the geopolitical role it played as a launching pad for Ronald Reagan’s counter-insurgency campaigns against guerrilla forces elsewhere in the region during the 1980s. We show how the defeat of mass guerrilla insurgencies in Guatemala and El Salvador, as well as the triumph over the Sandinista government in Nicaragua by 1990, allowed for the neoliberal pacification of Central America as a whole, including Honduras. We further demonstrate how the centre-leftist Manuel Zelaya, elected to the Honduran presidency in 2006, modestly encroached upon neoliberal orthodoxy and forged geopolitical alliances with left and centre-left governments elsewhere in the region, laying the bases for his violent overthrow. Finally, the paper traces the origins, trajectory, and heterogeneity of the resistance that emerged almost immediately after the coup had been carried out. (shrink)

The three articles and commentary that follow began as talks for a book symposium dedicated to Jon Webber's monograph Rethinking Existentialism. The talks were given for a plenary session at the United Kingdom Sartre Society meeting, held at the Maison Française d'Oxford on 3 July 2023. Organised to honour the excellence of Webber's work on Sartre, the Symposium aimed to call attention to the importance of his monograph. Since Rethinking Existentialism centrally addresses Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and (...) Frantz Fanon, the division of labour was straightforward. Matt Eshleman addresses Webber's treatment of Sartre, Kate Kirkpatrick his treatment of Beauvoir and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc his treatment of Fanon. For those who have not read Rethinking Existentialism a brief synopsis follows. (shrink)

We have good reason to condemn lying more strongly than misleading and to condemn bullshit assertion less harshly than lying but more harshly than misleading. We each have good reason to mislead rather than make bullshit assertions, but to make bullshit assertions rather than lie. This is because these forms of deception damage credibility in different ways. We can trust the misleader to assert only what they believe to be true. We can trust the bullshitter not to assert what they (...) believe to be false. We cannot trust the liar at all. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued that traditional discussions of virtue and character presuppose an account of behaviour that experimental psychology has shown to be false. Behaviour does not issue from global traits such as prudence, temperance, courage or fairness, they claim, but from local traits such as sailing-in-rough-weather-with-friends-courage and office-party-temperance. The data employed provides evidence for this view only if we understand it in the light of a behaviourist construal of traits in terms of stimulus and response, rather than in the (...) light of the more traditional construal in terms of inner events such as inclinations. More recent experiments have shown this traditional conception to have greater explanatory and predictive power than its behaviourist rival. So we should retain the traditional conception, and hence reject the proposed alteration to our understanding of behaviour. This discussion has further implications for future philosophical investigations of character and virtue. Key Words: character traits • situationism • social psychology • virtue ethics. (shrink)

Certain recent experiments are often taken to show that people are far more likely to classify a foreseen side-effect of an action as intentional when that side-effect has some negative normative valence. While there is some disagreement over the details, there is broad consensus among experimental philosophers that this is the finding. We challenge this consensus by presenting an alternative interpretation of the experiments, according to which they show that a side-effect is classified as intentional only if the agent considered (...) its relative importance when deciding on the action. We present two new experiments whose results can be explained by our hypothesis but not by any version of the consensus view. In the course of doing so, we develop a methodological critique of the previous literature on this topic and draw from it lessons for future experimental philosophy research. (shrink)

I argue that an act can be wrong _because_ it wrongs a particular person. I then show how this thesis serves as a constraint on moral theories, using Kantian ethics as a case study.

This paper articulates a new understanding of Sartre’s philosophical methodology in his early publications up to and including Being and Nothingness. Through his critique of Husserl across these works, Sartre develops an original and sophisticated variety of transcendental phenomenology. He was attracted to Husserl’s philosophy for its promise to establish the foundations of empirical psychology but ultimately concluded that it could not fulfil this promise. Through the analyses that led him to this conclusion, Sartre formulated a new kind of phenomenological (...) reduction and a distinctive kind of transcendental argument to draw conclusions about mind-independent reality from phenomenological premises. His aims were to dissolve the traditional distinction between mind and world, to establish that the mind is accessible to empirical study, and to formulate the conceptual framework required to study the mind systematically. Sartre’s philosophy of psychology, therefore, drove the philosophical development of the methodological foundation of his philosophical project. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued that we should revise our understanding of character. An individual's behaviour is governed not by a set of ‘global’ traits, each elicited by a certain kind of situational feature, they argue, but by a much larger array of ‘local’ traits, each elicited by a certain combination of situational features. But the data cited by these philosophers support their theory only if we conceive of traits purely in terms of stimulus and response, rather than in the more (...) traditional terms of inner mental items such as inclinations. We should not adopt the former conception, moreover, since doing so would impede pursuit of the ethical aims for which we need a theory of character, whereas retaining the latter conception will facilitate this pursuit. So we should not revise our understanding of character in the way proposed. (shrink)

We argue in this article that many common adverbial phrases generally taken to signal a discourse relation between syntactically connected units within discourse structure instead work anaphor- ically to contribute relational meaning, with only indirect dependence on discourse structure. This allows a simpler discourse structure to provide scaffolding for compositional semantics and reveals multiple ways in which the relational meaning conveyed by adverbial connectives can interact with that associated with discourse structure. We conclude by sketching out a lexicalized grammar for (...) discourse that facilitates discourse interpretation as a product of compositional rules, anaphor resolution, and inference. (shrink)

Recent debate over the empirical psychological presuppositions of virtue ethics has focused on reactive behavioural dispositions. But there are many character traits that cannot be understood properly in this way. Such traits are well described by attitude psychology. Moreover, the findings of attitude psychology support virtue ethics in three ways. First, they confirm the role of habituation in the development of character. Further, they show virtue ethics to be compatible with the situation manipulation experiments at the heart of the recent (...) debate. Finally, they show how the cognitive-affective theory of personality and the two-system theory of behavioural cognition are compatible, thereby undermining the current empirical challenge to virtue ethics. Empirical research into the nature and development of attitudes should therefore be central to philosophical discussions of virtue and character. (shrink)

John Doris has recently argued that since we do not possess character traits as traditionally conceived, virtue ethics is rooted in a false empirical presupposition. Gopal Sreenivasan has claimed, in a paper in Mind, that Doris has not provided suitable evidence for his empirical claim. But the experiment Sreenivasan focuses on is not one that Doris employs, and neither is it relevantly similar in structure. The confusion arises because both authors use the phrase ‘cross-situational consistency’ to describe the aspect of (...) character traits that they are concerned with, but neither defines this phrase, and it is ambiguous: Doris uses it in one sense, Sreenivasan in another. Partly for this reason, the objections Sreenivasan raises fail to block the argument Doris provides. In particular, the most reliable data Doris employs, Milgram’s famous study of authority, is entirely immune to Sreenivasan’s objections. Sreenivasan has not shown, therefore, that Doris provides unsuitable evidence for his claim. (shrink)

Two debates in contemporary philosophical moral psychology have so far been conducted almost entirely in isolation from one another despite their structural similarity. One is the debate over the importance for virtue ethics of the results of situational manipulation experiments in social psychology. The other is the debate over the ethical implications of experiments that reveal gender and race biases in social cognition. In both cases, the ethical problem posed cannot be identified without first clarifying the cognitive structures underlying the (...) problematic phenomena. In this chapter, I argue that the two kinds of phenomena share a basic cognitive structure, which is well articulated by the findings of the empirical psychology of attitudes, especially if these findings are understood in the context of the cognitive-affective system theory of personality. On the basis of this joint construal of situationism and implicit bias, I argue that the negative programme of ethical improvement that many philosophers recommend in response to one or other problem is unrealistic. Instead, we should consider more seriously the prospects of the positive programme of ethical improvement recommended by Aristotle, the direct aim of which is to instil deeply in ourselves the values at the heart of each of the virtues. (shrink)

When policymakers craft rules for use by the general public, they must take into account the ways in which their rules are likely to be misapplied. Should contractualists and rule consequentialists do the same when they search for rules whose general acceptance would be non-rejectable or ideal? I argue that these theorists face a dilemma. If they ignore the possibility of misapplication, they end up with an unrealistic view that rejects rules designed to protect us from others’ mistakes. On the (...) other hand, if they take misapplication into account, they end up rejecting rules that appeal to what really matters morally in favor of easier-to-apply proxies for these rules. This leaves them unable to say why certain wrong acts are wrong, which in turn may lead them to mistaken verdicts about moral worth and wronging. I show how this misapplication dilemma applies to standard contractualist and rule consequentialist theories, but also suggest how it might generalize to other two-level theories, including those designed to avoid the ideal world objection. (shrink)

One of the characteristic features of Sartre’s philosophical writing, especially in Being and Nothingness, is his use of extended narrative vignettes that immediately resound with the reader’s own experience yet are intended to illustrate, perhaps also to support, complex and controversial claims about the structures of conscious experience and the shape of the human condition. Among the best known are his description of Parisian café waiters, who somehow contrive to caricature themselves, and his analysis of feeling shame upon being caught (...) spying through a keyhole. Commentators disgaree over what these two examples are intended to convey and how they relate to one another. My aim here is to defend and enrich the interpretation of these vignettes and their associated theories that I offer in my book, The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. On this reading, the waiter should be understood, as he usually is, as as an example of bad faith, but this discussion of bad faith is much more significant than has generally been recognised. We should read the later discussion of shame and interpersonal relations within this framework of bad faith. Sartre describes two aspects of shame: the revelation of the existence of what Sartre calls ‘the Other’, a perspective on the world other than my own; and the ascription to another person of a particular kind of attitude towards me. This second aspect presupposes the first, but is not essential to shame. It is simply the way we experience other people within the project of bad faith. (shrink)

We focus on the production of efficient descriptions of objects, actions and events. We define a type of efficiency, textual economy, that exploits the hearer’s recognition of inferential links to material elsewhere within a sentence. Textual economy leads to efficient descriptions because the material that supports such inferences has been included to satisfy independent communicative goals, and is therefore overloaded in the sense of Pollack [18]. We argue that achieving textual economy imposes strong requirements on the representation and reasoning used (...) in generating sentences. The representation must support the generator’s simultaneous consideration of syntax and semantics. Reasoning must enable the generator to assess quickly and reliably at any stage how the hearer will interpret the current sentence, with its (incomplete) syntax and semantics. We show that these representational and reasoning requirements are met in the SPUD system for sentence planning and realization. (shrink)

Various influential ethical theories propose that we should strive to develop morally sound character traits, either because good actions are those that issue from good character traits, or because good traits are those that generally incline us toward actions that are good for some independent reason such as the intentions with which they are performed or the consequences of performing them. This proposal obviously raises questions about the nature and origins of character traits, and our degree of control over them. (...) For if we cannot develop our traits then this proposal should be abandoned, and if we can then we need to know how this is best achieved. (shrink)

Richard Moran’s theory of first-person authority as the agential authority to make up one’s own mind rests on a form of mind-body dualism that does not allow for habituation as part of normal psychological functioning. We have good intuitive and empirical reason to accept that habituation is central to the normal functioning of desire. There is some empirical support for the idea that habituation plays a parallel role in belief. In particular, at least one form of implicit bias seems better (...) understood as a case of habituated belief than as a mere association or an example of what Tamar Gendler calls ‘alief’. If there is to be genuine first-person epistemic authority over persisting mental states, therefore, an alternative account to Moran’s is required in the case of desire and perhaps in the case of belief. More generally, the neglect of habituation in recent philosophy of mind is a symptom of the need for philosophers to take the temporal structure of rational agency more seriously. (shrink)

This paper surveys work on applying the insights of lexicalized grammars to low‐level discourse, to show the value of positing an autonomous grammar for low‐level discourse in which words (or idiomatic phrases) are associated with discourse‐level predicate–argument structures or modification structures that convey their syntactic‐semantic meaning and scope. It starts by describing a lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar for discourse (D‐LTAG). It then reviews an initial experiment in parsing text automatically, using both a lexicalized TAG and D‐LTAG, and then touches upon (...) issues involved in how lexico‐syntactic elements contribute to discourse semantics. The paper concludes with a brief description of the Penn Discourse TreeBank, a resource being developed for the study of discourse structure and semantics. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. The fourteen original essays in this volume focus on the phenomenological and existentialist writings of the first major phase of his published career, arguing with scholarly precision for their continuing importance to philosophical debate. Aspects of Sartre’s philosophy under discussion in this volume include: consciousness and self-consciousness imagination and aesthetic experience emotions and other feelings embodiment selfhood and the Other freedom, bad faith, and authenticity literary fiction as (...) philosophical writing _Reading Sartre: on Phenomenology and Existentialism_ is an indispensable resource for understanding the nature and importance of Sartre’s philosophy. It is essential reading for students of phenomenology, existentialism, ethics, or aesthetics, and for anyone interested in the roots of contemporary thought in twentieth century philosophy. (shrink)

This article is a response to critiques of my book Rethinking Existentialism in this symposium. It begins with a reflection on the nature of this discussion. Then it reformulates Eshleman's ‘bridge problem’ to defend my view that eudaimonist arguments cannot establish that we ought to respect freedom. Next, it shows how my interpretation of Beauvoir's argument for authenticity can incorporate Kirkpatrick's reading of Beauvoir's ethics. Then it uses Romdenh-Romluc's description of Fanon's therapeutic methodology to present a comparative reading of Fanon (...) and Sartre, followed by an argument that Romdenh-Romluc's reading of Fanon can be incorporated into my interpretation to the benefit of both. The penultimate section incorporates Beauvoir's theory of femininity into my account of her theory of gender sedimentation. The final section considers how Eshleman's emphasis on social interdependence might enrich Sartre's picture of authenticity. The article closes with brief comments on the value of reading these texts together. (shrink)

Sartre's concept of ‘non-thetic awareness’ must be understood as equivalent to the concept of ‘nonconceptual content’ currently discussed in anglophone epistemology and philosophy of mind, since it could not otherwise play the role in the structure of ‘bad faith’, or self-deception, that Sartre ascribes to it. This understanding of the term makes sense of some otherwise puzzling features of Sartre's early philosophy, and has implications for understanding certain areas of his thought.

Jean-Paul Sartre developed a sophisticated and insightful feminist critique of western society through two plays and two screenplays written between 1944 and 1946 –– Huis clos, Les Jeux sont faits, Typhus, and La Putain respectueuse. In these works, Sartre explores the relations between economic oppression, epistemic injustice, and misogynistic violence, diagnoses their root cause as the patriarchal norms of femininity and masculinity, and ascribes the power of those norms to bad faith and internalized oppression. This social critique, which includes a (...) racial dimension, informs some of his subsequent fictional and philosophical writings. Sartre’s analysis of patriarchy has not been noted in writings about these famous dramatic works, a distortion which seems partly due to those same patriarchal norms. (shrink)

George Ciccariello-Maher’sWe Created Chávezis the most important book available in English proposing an anti-capitalist framework for understanding the Bolivarian process in contemporary Venezuela, as well as its historical backdrop dating back to 1958. The book contains within it a laudable critique of Eurocentrism and a masterful combination of oral history, ethnography, and theoretical sophistication. It reveals with unusual clarity and insight the multiplicity of popular movements that allowed for Hugo Chávez’s eventual ascension to presidential office in the late 1990s.We Created (...) Chávezhas set a new scholarly bar for social histories of the Bolivarian process and demands serious engagement by Marxists. As a first attempt at such engagement, this paper reveals some critical theoretical and sociological flaws in the text and other areas of analytical imprecision. Divided into theoretical and historical parts, it unpacks some of the strengths and weaknesses by moving from the abstract to the concrete. The intervention begins with concepts – the mutually determining dialectic between Chávez and social movements; ‘the people’; and ‘dual power’. From here, it grounds these concepts, and Ciccariello-Maher’s use of them, in various themes and movements across specific historical periods of Venezuelan political development – the rural guerrillas of the 1960s, the urban guerrillas of the 1970s, the new urban socio-political formations of the 1980s, Afro-Indigenous struggles in the Bolivarian process, and formal and informal working-class transformations since the onset of neoliberalism and its present contestation in the Venezuelan context. (shrink)

This article presents a broad analysis of the political economy and dynamics of social change during the first year of the Evo Morales government in Bolivia. It situates this analysis in the wider historical context of left-indigenous insurrection between 2000 and 2005, the changing character of contemporary capitalism imperialism, and the resurgence of anti-neoliberalism and anti-imperialism elsewhere in Latin America. It considers at a general level the overarching dilemmas of revolution and reform. Part III examines the complexities of the politics (...) of indigenous liberation and the political economy of the Movimiento al Socialismo government between January 2006 and January 2007. It pays special attention to the limits of reform in the hydrocarbons sector. Also explained in Part III is the formation of an autonomist right-wing movement in the eastern lowlands, and how the new Right has intervened in the process of the Constituent Assembly. The article shows how the actual Constituent Assembly set into motion by the Morales administration in 2006 differs in fundamental terms from the revolutionary assembly envisioned by leading left-indigenous forces during the cycle of revolt in the first five years of this century. (shrink)

The sexual domain is unified only by the phenomenal quality of the occurrence of the desires, activities, and pleasures it includes. There is no conceptual restriction on the range of intentional objects those desires, activities, and pleasures can take. Neither is there good conceptual reason to privilege any class of them as paradigmatic. Since the quality unifying the sexual is not morally significant, the morality of sexuality is no different from morality in general. The view that participant consent is morally (...) sufficient in the sexual domain therefore requires the more controversial view that it is morally sufficient in general. (shrink)

This introduction situates the work of Zavaleta in the field of Bolivian intellectual history, Latin American Studies, and Latin American Marxism. It also explains the objectives of the symposium and the logic underlying its constituent parts.

The first phase of Sartre’s philosophical publications is marked by an apparent ambivalence towards Husserl’s transcendental turn. Sartre accepts both major aspects of that turn, the phenomenological reduction and the use of transcendental argumentation. Yet his rejection of the transcendental ego that Husserl derives from this transcendental turn overlooks an obvious transcendental argument in favour of it. His books on emotion and imagination, moreover, make only very brief comments about the transcendental constitution of the world of experience. In each case, (...) these appear at the end of the book and can seem to contradict the book’s central analysis. The problem underlying these features of his works of phenomenological psychology is clarified and resolved, however, when Sartre articulates his own transcendental phenomenology and ontology in Being and Nothingness a decade after he first encountered the work of Husserl. This resolution raises a new problem that animates the next phase of his philosophy. (shrink)

The first phase of Sartre’s philosophical publications is marked by an apparent ambivalence towards Husserl’s transcendental turn. Sartre accepts both major aspects of that turn, the phenomenological reduction and the use of transcendental argumentation. Yet his rejection of the transcendental ego that Husserl derives from this transcendental turn overlooks an obvious transcendental argument in favour of it. His books on emotion and imagination, moreover, make only very brief comments about the transcendental constitution of the world of experience. In each case, (...) these appear at the end of the book and can seem to contradict the book’s central analysis. The problem underlying these features of his works of phenomenological psychology is clarified and resolved, however, when Sartre articulates his own transcendental phenomenology and ontology in Being and Nothingness a decade after he first encountered the work of Husserl. This resolution raises a new problem that animates the next phase of his philosophy. (shrink)

Hell is other people. This miserable-sounding soundbite, the moment of revelation in Jean- Paul Sartre’s shortest play, must be the most quoted line of twentieth-century philosophy. Not even Jacques Derrida’s claim that ‘there is nothing beyond the text’, fondly cherished in some regions of academia, has anything like the cultural reach of what is often taken to be the quintessential Sartrean slogan. And the analytic tradition hardly abounds in snappy lines: meaning just ain’t in the head, to be is to (...) be the value of a variable, and that’s about it. You’ll not sell many of those t-shirts. Part of the appeal of Sartre’s slogan lies, of course, in the fact that we are all regularly annoyed by each other. We think we can see better ways of doing what only other people have the power to do. Your schemes can clash with mine in ways that prevent me from achieving my goals and living my dreams. People can look down on me. (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus argues that the traditional and currently dominant conception of an action, as an event initiated or governed by a mental representation of a possible state of affairs that the agent is trying to realise, is inadequate. If Dreyfus is right, then we need a new conception of action. I argue, however, that the considerations that Dreyfus adduces show only that an action need not be initiated or governed by a conceptual representation, but since a representation need not be (...) conceptually structured, do not show that we need a conception of action that does not involve representation. (shrink)

This article presents a broad analysis of the political economy and dynamics of social change during the first year of the Evo Morales government in Bolivia. It situates this analysis in the wider historical context of left-indigenous insurrection between 2000 and 2005, the changing character of contemporary capitalist imperialism, and the resurgence of anti-neoliberalism and anti-imperialism elsewhere in Latin America. It considers at a general level the overarching dilemmas of revolution and reform. Part II of this three-part essay addresses four (...) major themes. First, it reviews the literature on revolution in contemporary Bolivia. Second, it explains why the 2000 to 2005 period is best conceived as a revolutionary epoch in which left-indigenous social forces were engaged in a combined liberation struggle against racial oppression and class exploitation. However, it argues that this revolutionary epoch has not led to social revolution. Third it examines in detail the electoral rise of Evo Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo party in the December 2005 elections. Fourth, it explores the historical trajectory of the MAS in terms of its changing class composition, ideology, and political strategies since the party's inception in the late 1990s. (shrink)

In the mid-1940s, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre both argued that a person’s preferences and behaviour are ultimately explained by their projects, which they have chosen and can reject. However, they did not agree on the details. Sartre’s theory of ‘radical freedom’ was that projects have no inertia of their own and persist only if they continue to be endorsed. Beauvoir held that projects become gradually sedimented with continued endorsement, increasing in both influence and inertia over time. Sartre’s theory (...) resulted from his basic ontology of being and nothingness, itself arrived at through his method of transcendental phenomenology. Beauvoir’s theory was grounded directly in the phenomenology of lived experience, particularly as articulated in her fictional writings. By the end of the 1940s, Sartre had replaced his original idea of freedom with Beauvoir’s theory of project sedimentation. He was right to do so. Project sedimentation explains what commitment to a project is and how there can be cultural values, neither of which can be explained within the theory of radical freedom. However, the theory of project sedimentation had not been available to Sartre until he revised his philosophical method in response to an anthology of negritude poetry. (shrink)

In the opening lines of ‘Black Orpheus’, written as a preface to an anthology of negritude poetry, Sartre challenges white readers ‘to feel, as I do, the shock of being seen’. Reading this poetry, he thinks, should undermine white people’s presumption of the objectivity of their perspective. Accordingly, the essay itself contradicts two prominent aspects of the philosophy he had so far developed: the idea that poetry could not be politically engaged; and the theory of radical freedom. These changes are (...) ultimately rooted in his realisation, upon reading this poetry, that his previous understanding of prose is mistaken. This has the consequence that his philosophical method, which derives ontological conclusions from prose descriptions of experience, has two important limitations: its premises cannot be drawn solely from his own experience; and French prose might be insufficient for formulating all relevant premises. He therefore revises his method to deploy this poetry as phenomenological grounds for ontological conclusions, which transforms his ontology of human existence to include cultural inheritance as a primary feature. We will see how this reading of negritude poetry exemplifies both the epistemic challenge involved in what he calls ‘the look’ and the use of listening in response to it. (shrink)

Do you know your own desires in some way that other people cannot know them? Richard Moran claims that his influential theory of first-person authority over beliefs and intentions can also cover desires. However, his deliberative model can apply to desire only if one already has some other way of knowing one’s own desires. Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of pure reflection, on the other hand, portrays a direct epistemic access to one’s own desires that can ground fundamental first-person authority over desires (...) and intentions. (shrink)

‘Of all the difficulties which impede the progress of thought and the formation of well- grounded opinions on life and social arrangements’, wrote John Stuart Mill around 150 years ago, ‘the greatest is now the unspeakable ignorance and inattention of mankind in respect of the influences which form character’. Aristotle is never far in the background of Mill’s moral and political philosophy, a presence weightier than Jeremy Bentham’s in the foreground. That this is often overlooked is not only because thinkers (...) tend to be pigeonholed into a single school and Mill eschews the language of virtue. It is also because moral and political philosophers did not heed Mill’s words and continued for over a century to pay very little attention to the nature and development of character. (shrink)

Freud's account of repression retains vestiges of the Cartesian model of the mind. Sartre's argument against Freud is essentially an objection to this Cartesian aspect, which Sartre's own theory of bad faith dispenses with.

We should understand the concept of self-legislation that is central to Kant's moral philosophy not in terms of the enactment of statute, but in terms of the way in which judges make law, by setting down and refining precedent through particular judgements. This paper presents a descriptive model of agency based on self-legislation so understood, and argues that we can read Kant's normative ethics as based on this view of agency. It is intended to contribute to contemporary debates in moral (...) psychology and to exegetical discussion of Kant. (shrink)

Schools and universities should equip students with the ability to deal with an unpredictable environment in ways that promote worthwhile and fulfilling lives. The world is rapidly changing and the contours of our ethical values have been shaped by the world we have lived in. Education therefore needs to cultivate in students the propensity to develop and refine ethical values that preserve important insights accrued through experience while responding to novel challenges. Therefore, we should aim to foster the virtue of (...) ethical integrity. This virtue is driven by a concern for ethical accuracy, which motivates and warrants respect for our existing ethical commitments as repositories of previous ethical reasoning, but equally requires recognition of our own fallibility and consideration of other people's reasoning. Ethical integrity thus comprises constancy, fidelity, humility, and receptivity, balanced and integrated by the aim of ethical accuracy. It is a kind of ethical seriousness, though it includes acceptance of some degree of ambivalence. It is an inherently developmental virtue distinct from the unachievable ethical perfection of practical wisdom. It is an Aristotelian virtue, even though Aristotle does not himself name it. The paper closes with an outline of what education for ethical integrity would look like. (shrink)

I argue that Sartre's account of the nature and value of authenticity survives Larmore's recent criticism and is preferable to Larmore's alternative account.

This article is a clarification and development of my interpretation of Sartre’s theory of bad faith in response to Ronald Santoni’s sophisticated critique, published in this issue. It begins by clarifying Sartre’s conception of a project and explaining his claim that one project is fundamental, thereby elucidating the idea that bad faith is a fundamental project. This forms the groundwork of my responses to Santoni’s critique of my interpretation, which comprises four arguments: Sartre does not consider us to be ontologically (...) and congenitally disposed to bad faith; Santoni is right that social pressure cannot explain the prevalence of bad faith, but this is a problem with Sartre’s theory rather than a problem for my interpretation of it; Sartre’s conception of seriousness is merely an optional strategy of bad faith; and Sartre is right to deny that bad faith is an inherently cynical project. (shrink)