Abstract: In the Philebus, Socrates constructs a dialectical argument in which he purports to explain to Protarchus why the pleasure that spectators feel when watching comedy is a mixture of pleasure and pain. To do this he brings in phthonos (malice or envy) as his prime example (47d-50e). I examine the argument and claim that Socrates implicitly challenges Protarchus’ beliefs about himself as moderate and self-knowing. I discuss two reasons to think that more is at stake in the argument (...) than the mixed pleasure and pain of comic malice. (shrink)

This book is about the inner roots of malice.

Schopenhauer is one of the few philosophers in the history of Western ethics to dedicate sustained critical attention to the nature, extent, and phenomenology of malice. Yet while other aspects of Schopenhauer's moral psychology have received significant attention, his nuanced account of malice is under-explored. This paper attempts to remedy this oversight. It argues that Schopenhauer defends a unified and hierarchical account of moral vice in which malice is a sui generis motive, the pinnacle of immorality, and (...) far more pervasive in the human psyche than typically recognized. Moreover, it is argued that part of the significance of Schopenhauer’s account lies in how his idiosyncratic conceptual framework allows him to philosophically capture many widespread beliefs about malicious persons — particularly the view that malice is best explained in terms of the agents own inner-suffering. Nevertheless, Schopenhauer’s views about malice raise a number of interpretive puzzles, which the paper subsequently aims to elucidate and solve. (shrink)

À partir de sa clinique, l’auteur montre que le fantasme de Cupidon est un des fantasmes organisateurs du couple. Il précise ensuite trois configurations de ce fantasme qui organisent chacune une combinaison particulière du conjugal et du parental.

In the early 1990s, the Commonwealth reformed its political structure to allow interference in domestic affairs of member states. This article examines whether such an institutional transformation has helped the organization to fulfil its purpose to work in the common interests of member countries and of their people. The article demonstrates that, while, as a consequence of post-Cold War globalization, concerns about the Commonwealth's political credibility and public perception have relaxed Commonwealth leaders' reluctance to accept legally binding norms of the (...) organization, strong resistance to Commonwealth interference in internal affairs exists among developing member states. It is argued that, because the new Commonwealth political structure lacks legitimacy and is contrary to the real interests of the majority of members, institutionalizing the Commonwealth has not contributed to the formation of a collective identity among Commonwealth members and to the resolution of the problem of inequality within and without the organization. (shrink)

This article addresses three interpretive errors that are common with respect to Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of malice. The first error concerns the interpretation of malice as consisting in the preference or choice of a lesser good over a greater good. I argue that malice instead consists in a disorder of the will, and where that disorder results in the choice of a spiritual evil. The second error occurs when one charges Thomas with inconsistency: it is claimed that (...) Thomas’s view of the will is incompatible with malicious actions. I argue that such claims rest on a mistaken understanding of the role of choice in Thomas’s thought. The third error is one of translation: some scholars caution against translating Thomas’s malitia as “malice.” The reasons that are usually given for this view do not hold up to scrutiny. (shrink)

Transferred malice, or transferred intent, is the criminal doctrine that states that if D tries to kill A, and accidentally kills B, the intent to kill transfers from A to B, and so D is guilty of murdering B. This is widely viewed as a useful legal fiction. One of the finest essays on this topic was written by our honorand, Douglas N. Husak. Husak views both the potential usefulness of, and his preferred alternative to, transferred malice through (...) the lens of sentencing – how much hard treatment the offender will receive. In this essay, I take a step back and ask in what ways transferred malice might be useful. I find its potential usefulness is not restricted to sentencing, but thinking about other ways in which it might be useful actually brings other potential drawbacks into focus – in particular, I argue, transferred malice mislabels the crimes the offender committed, and does so in a way that erases one of the victims from the moral description of the crime. (shrink)

The article explores two recurring themes in the scholarly writings on ‘transferred malice’ the doctrine designed by Anglo-American law to allow full criminal responsibility where the defendant caused harm to a different object than the one he had in mind, due to either accident or mistake. First, in face of the diversity of views advocating the eradication of transferred malice, the article searches for the provinces in which that doctrine should still have relevance to our legal system. It (...) is often assumed that malice cannot transfer amongst different offences, which has led many scholars to conclude that the doctrine is superfluous. The analysis here offered counters both assumption and conclusion alike, as well as the common view that differentiates between the implications of accident and mistake. Second, reflecting on the different criteria proposed to restrict the implementation of transferred malice such as physical and immediate harm to the actual object, remoteness of the actual harm from the harm intended, and foreseeability as to the actual harm the article provides an analytical framework by which to assess these criteria and to determine which of them proves more persuasive. The result is a notion of transferred malice that strikes a favourable balance with the requirement of mens rea. (shrink)

(2013). Hume's Theory of Pity and Malice. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 324-344. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.692664.

In both their external and internal communications, organizations tend to present diversity management approaches and corporate social responsibility initiatives as a kind of morally ‘good’ organizational practice. With regard to the treatment of employees, both concepts largely assume equality to be an indicator of organizational ‘goodness’, e.g. in terms of equal treatment, or affording equal opportunities. Additionally, research on this issue predominantly refers to prescriptive and imperative moralities that address the initiatives themselves, and values them morally. Schopenhauer opposes these moralities (...) by conceptualizing morality as exclusively being based on the incentives of acting instead of the actions themselves. He identifies egoism, compassion, and malice as the sole incentives for every human action, whereby only those actions solely motivated by compassion can be ascribed genuine moral worth. In this context, this article shows that from a Schopenhauerian perspective, CSR and DM initiatives only have a genuine moral worth in so far as the individuals who have initiated or supported their implementation were exclusively motivated by compassion. Stressing the narrative of a business case, if utilized as a façade for true compassion that attaches economic legitimacy to these initiatives, does not necessarily harm their moral worth. The approach and the findings developed in this paper contribute to the discourse on the ethical behavior of organizations, as well as to the discourse on CSR and DM. (shrink)

Inchoate crime consists of acts that are regarded as crimes despite the fact that they are only partial or incomplete in some respect. This includes acts that do not succeed in physically harming the victim or are only indirectly related to such a result. Examples include attempts (as in attempted murder that does not eventuate in the killing of anyone), conspiracy (in which case the crime has only been planned, not yet acted out) and incitement (where the inciter does not (...) himself commit the crime he is urging others to undertake). The present paper attempts to analyze these inchoate crimes from a libertarian perspective, based on the non-aggression principle. (shrink)

The Psalms are a heterogeneous collection of texts that may come from many different periods, yet a reasonably consistent picture emerges of the sins they mention. These are mostly to do with social interactions, though there is some attention to sins of thought and intent. Because so many Psalms are concerned with supplications by those oppressed by others, the emphasis tends to fall on malice rather than on more ‘obvious’ sins such as murder or adultery, which are little mentioned. (...) There is not much reflection on the nature of sin as such, though Psalm 51 suggests that it goes back even as far as one’s conception. (shrink)

In Treatise 2.3.4 Hume provides an explanation of why ‘we naturally desire what is forbid, and take a pleasure in performing actions, merely because they are unlawful’. Hume’s explanation of this phenomenon has barely received any attention so far. But a detailed analysis bears fruit for both Humean scholarship and contemporary moral psychology. After putting the passage in its context, I explain why desiring and taking pleasure in performing certain actions merely because they are unlawful poses a challenge to Hume’s (...) theory of evaluation. Then I propose a solution of the challenge which draws on Hume’s treatment of malice, and highlights the role played by comparison and the self in these apparently paradoxical passions. Finally, I distinguish three views in contemporary discussions of desiring something under the guise of the bad (negationism, parasitism, at-face-valuism), and I argue that Hume’s account stands out as a particularly plausible version of the third view. (shrink)

The doctrine of transferred intent (or transferred “malice” in England) generally provides that if A attempts to harm B but, because of bad aim, misses and accidentally causes the same harm to befall C, A’s harmful intent vis-à-vis B is transferred to C, thus rendering A guilty of intentionally harming C. Commentators acknowledge the doctrine to be a legal fiction, but they differ regarding whether the fiction produces just results, some believing it does, others believing that A is guilty (...) at most of attempting to harm B rather than intentionally harming C. Commentators who agree that the fiction produces just results nevertheless differ regarding whether the fiction should be retained or whether A’s intent to harm “a” person, in this case, B, is the only intent that signifies for crimes of intentional harm, regardless of whom A eventually harms. Doug Husak sought to achieve reflective equilibrium between intuition and theory regarding bad-aim cases by proposing in 1996 that A be punished for attempting to harm B (rather than for harming C) but sentenced as if he had harmed B. I once believed that Husak was correct. But I now have doubts, in part because Husak, along with others, cannot explain why the strength of people’s intuitions regarding A’s responsibility in bad-aim cases depends upon (1) C’s being a reasonably foreseeable victim, and (2) C’s being harmed by the same threat of force that A initially unleashed against B. I argue that one cannot achieve reflective equilibrium in bad-aim cases without inquiring into why resulting harm matters in criminal law, and that when one does, one discovers that just as people’s intuitions regarding whether intentional harms are proximate depend upon how resulting harms occur, so, too, people’s intuitions regarding whether an actor is guilty of intentional harm depend upon how resulting harm comes about. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Dante's Mission The Journey Begins Vestibule (Ante‐Hell): The Indecisive Neutrals Upper Hell: Sins of Unrestrained Desire (the Wolf) River Styx, Walls of the City of Dis Lower Hell: Sins of Malice Leading to Violence (the Lion) Lower Hell: Sins of Malice Leading to Fraud (the Leopard) Dante's Existential Lessons in Hell.

Malice that cannot speak its name, cold-blooded but secret hostility, impotent desire, hidden rancor and spite--all cluster at the center of envy. Envy clouds thought, writes Joseph Epstein, clobbers generosity, precludes any hope of serenity, and ends in shriveling the heart. Of the seven deadly sins, he concludes, only envy is no fun at all. Writing in a conversational, erudite, self-deprecating style that wears its learning lightly, Epstein takes us on a stimulating tour of the many faces of envy. (...) He considers what great thinkers--such as John Rawls, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche--have written about envy; distinguishes between envy, yearning, jealousy, resentment, and schadenfreude ; and catalogs the many things that are enviable, including wealth, beauty, power, talent, knowledge and wisdom, extraordinary good luck, and youth. He looks at resentment in academia, where envy is mixed with snobbery, stirred by impotence, and played out against a background of cosmic injustice; and he offers a brilliant reading of Othello as a play more driven by Iago's envy than Othello's jealousy. He reveals that envy has a strong touch of malice behind it--the envious want to destroy the happiness of others. He suggests that envy of the astonishing success of Jews in Germany and Austria may have lurked behind the virulent anti-Semitism of the Nazis. As he proved in his best-selling Snobbery, Joseph Epstein has an unmatched ability to highlight our failings in a way that is thoughtful, provocative, and entertaining. If envy is no fun, Epstein's Envy is truly a joy to read. (shrink)

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”—so says Hanlon’s Razor. This principle is designed to curb the human tendency toward explaining other people’s behavior by moralizing it. We ask whether Hanlon’s Razor is good or bad advice. After offering a nuanced interpretation of the principle, we critically evaluate two strategies purporting to show it is good advice. Our discussion highlights important, unsettled questions about an idea that has the potential to infuse greater humility and civility (...) into discourse and debate. (shrink)

Abstract: Against the background of a great deal of structural symmetry between intellectual and moral virtue and vice, it is a surprising fact that what is arguably the central or paradigm moral vice—that is, moral malevolence or malevolence proper—has no obvious or well-known counterpart among the intellectual vices. The notion of "epistemic malevolence" makes no appearance on any standard list of intellectual vices; nor is it central to our ordinary ways of thinking about intellectual vice. In this essay, I argue (...) that there is such a thing as epistemic malevolence and offer an account of its basic character and structure. Doing so requires a good deal of attention to malevolence simpliciter . In the final section of the essay, I offer an explanation of our relative unfamiliarity with this trait. (shrink)

Christianity teaches that whenever evil is done, God had ample warning. He could have prevented it, but He didn't. He could have stopped it midway, but He didn't. He could have rescued the victims of the evil, but - at least in many cases - He didn't. In short, God is an accessory before, during, and after the fact to countless evil deeds, great and small. An explanation is not far to seek. The obvious hypothesis is that the Christian God (...) is really some sort of devil. Maybe He is a devil as popularly conceived, driven' by malice. Or maybe He is unintelligibly capricious. Or maybe He is a fanatical artist who cares only for the aesthetic quality of creation - perhaps the abstract beauty of getting rich variety to emerge from a few simple laws, or perhaps the concrete drama of human life with all its diversity - and cares nothing for the good of the creatures whose lives are woven into His masterpiece. Oust as a tragedian has no business providing a happy end out of compassion for his characters.) But no; for Christianity also teaches that God is morally perfect and perfectly benevolent, and that He loves all of His creatures; and that these things are true in a sense not a million miles from the sense in which we attribute morality, benevolence, or love to one another. (shrink)

Rodger et al 1 present a thoughtful case for the ethical defensibility of genetic disenhancement targeting unnecessary harm and suffering of the pigs raised for xenotransplantation research. On the assumption that xenotransplantation research is unlikely to be halted (and by my lights, also that no other short-term palliative options can be identified or developed), their view appears to be largely reasonable and aligned with recent proposals by animal ethicists for targeting pain in factory-farmed animals. Yet, despite their thoughtful responses to (...) anticipated objections, the authors overlook an important class of recent harm-based objections grounded in the ethics of care. Drawing on recent work in animal ethics, I present a case for potential (a) care-based harms to pigs and (b) care-based harms to humans that are relevant to genetic disenhancement interventions of the sort these authors propose. I discuss each in turn below. The first concern over care-based harm draws on Mark Rowlands’2 notion that at least some non-human animals may be considered moral subjects, even if they are not considered moral agents. Rowlands’ view is based on the positive capacities that many animals possess for sympathy, compassion, kindness, patience and tolerance, as well as negative capacities including malice, anger and …. (shrink)

Everyday moral thought uses the concepts of virtue and vice at two different levels. At what I will call a global level it applies these concepts to persons or to stable character traits or dispositions. Thus we may say that a person is brave or has a standing trait of generosity or malice. But we also apply these concepts more locally, to specific acts or mental states such as occurrent desires or feelings. Thus we may say that a particular (...) act was brave or that a desire or pleasure felt at a particular moment was malicious. Even when they concern acts, these last judgements are of virtuousness rather than of moral rightness. They therefore turn essentially on a person’s motives; while he can act rightly from a bad motive, he cannot act virtuously from a bad motive. But they assess the virtue or vice of particular acts and mental states rather than of persons or traits of character. These global and local uses of the virtue-concepts are clearly connected, in that we expect virtuous persons to perform and have, and virtuous traits to issue in, particular virtuous acts, desires, and feelings. A philosophical account of virtue should explain this connection, but there are two different ways of doing so. Each takes one of the two uses to be primary and treats the other as derivative, but they disagree about which is the primary use. A dispositional view takes the global use to be primary and identifies virtuous acts, desires, and feelings in part as ones that issue from virtuous.. (shrink)

Cruelty and morality seem like polar opposites – until they join forces. Beware those who persecute in the name of principle... -/- Following in the steps of Michel de Montaigne, the distinguished political philosopher Judith Shklar has argued that cruelty should be considered the supreme evil and that we should put it first among the vices. The essence of cruelty is to wilfully and needlessly inflict pain and suffering on another creature – be it an animal or a human being. (...) Closely related to this vice are malice and sadism, both of which involve taking pleasure or delight in the suffering of others. Although cruelty might not be peculiar to human beings, it is a familiar and pronounced feature of human nature and social life. One important feature of human cruelty is the way that it varies, both with respect to its instruments and when it is occasioned, depending on our particular cultural and social circumstances. With this in mind, we can ask: what is the relationship between cruelty and morality? -/- . (shrink)

Life, but not as we know it -- Still life in nearly present time -- Driving and the city -- Movement-space -- Afterwords -- From born to made -- Spatialities of feeling -- But malice aforethought -- Turbulent passions.

Nursing and nursing education face a paradox whereby the world's most trusted profession seems not to trust its own students and practitioners. Much of nursing education has adopted what has been memorably described as the ‘cop shit’ approach. This is the panoply of surveillance, anti‐plagiarism and proctoring technologies that appear to be used more for policing and punishment of an inherently dishonest student body than to develop ethical and scholarly writing among future peers and colleagues. Nurses in practice may experience (...) similar levels of distrust as they face growing micromanagement and control of both their appearance and nursing practice. We propose that these practices of distrust emerge, not from malice, but rather from the omnipresent neoliberalism and managerialism that engulf almost every aspect of health and university life. Neoliberalism's success has been to reformat academia and practice to the point where such ingrained mistrust has become merely a neutral recognition of ‘the real world’. Dismantling nursing and education's ‘cop shit’ culture and replacing it with the trust and respect that the world's most trusted profession is accorded by wider society will not be easy, but it is vital for the future of nursing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Have We Been Careless with Socrates' Last Words?:A Rereading of the PhaedoLaurel A. Madison (bio)In section 340 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche offers what he believes will be received as a scandalous interpretation of Socrates' last words. "Whether it was death or the poison or piety or malice—something loosened his tongue at that moment and he said: 'O Crito, I owe Asclepius a rooster.' This ridiculous and terrible (...) 'last word' means for those who have ears: 'O Crito, life is a disease.'"1 Nietzsche might be surprised, however, to discover just how many readers "have ears" to hear the pessimism and resentment in Socrates' voice as he bids farewell to his life. Indeed, this interpretation has become standard among both Plato scholars and non-scholars, taking on the air of orthodoxy.2Not only is this "Nietzschean" reading widespread, it also has a significant impact on how we understand Plato's project in general and, ultimately, whether or [End Page 421] not we believe that Plato still has something to teach us. This commonly accepted interpretation reinforces the view that Socrates and Plato were ascetics of the worst kind, hostile to life and the body in particular. As a consequence, significant portions of Plato's thought are treated as woefully unenlightened. Indeed, how can we take seriously the views of such a dualist who denigrates our earthly existence and urges us to deny and repress our passions, instincts, desires, and drives—i.e., to live for death?It is assumed correctly, I think, that Socrates' last words speak volumes about both his and Plato's view of the nature and task of human existence. However, the meaning of these words, I will argue, has been seriously misinterpreted and their intended significance fundamentally obscured. Thus it is time to take another, closer look at what is arguably Socrates' most important statement—a statement uttered with his last breath:Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget.3How are we, as readers of this dialogue, to interpret Socrates' last words? What is the meaning of his final thought, his dying wish and command? According to the standard reading of this passage, Socrates awaits the termination of his life with gratitude and relief. As death closes in on him, he asks Crito to make an offering to Asclepius, the god of healing. By invoking this god, Socrates appears to be calling attention to the recovery from an illness. But what is the illness and what is the cure? At the moment these words are uttered, Socrates is on the brink of death and it is assumed that he views his death as the cure to the illness of life. This reading is substantiated by an earlier passage where Socrates argues that "the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death" (64a3-4). The body, Socrates argues, obscures our pursuit of the truth and the sooner we can separate our soul from this hindrance (i.e., in death) the better off we will be, for "as long as we have a body and our soul is fused with such an evil we shall never adequately attain what we desire, which we affirm to be the truth" (66b3-5). From the philosopher's perspective, then, the body is something to "disdain" (, 65d1) and "despise" (, 68c11)—indeed, to "flee" from (, 65d1). Thus given the disparagement of our bodily existence in this earlier passage, how else can we interpret Socrates' final statement?4Because this "Nietzschean" reading of Socrates' last words appears to be based in large part upon the discussion of philosophy as preparation for death, any examination of it must include an analysis of the earlier passage as well.5 However, [End Page 422] to adequately interpret the discussion of philosophy as preparation for death (or any passage in the dialogues, for that matter), we must first place it in its context within the drama of the dialogue, the philosophical significance of which has been argued at length elsewhere.6 Let us then turn to the opening scene of the dialogue, for... (shrink)

Nick Bostrom's book *Superintelligence* outlines a frightening but realistic scenario for human extinction: true artificial intelligence is likely to bootstrap itself into superintelligence, and thereby become ideally effective at achieving its goals. Human-friendly goals seem too abstract to be pre-programmed with any confidence, and if those goals are *not* explicitly favorable toward humans, the superintelligence will extinguish us---not through any malice, but simply because it will want our resources for its own purposes. In response I argue that things might (...) not be as bad as Bostrom suggests. If the superintelligence must *learn* complex final goals, then this means such a superintelligence must in effect *reason* about its own goals. And because it will be especially clear to a superintelligence that there are no sharp lines between one agent's goals and another's, that reasoning could therefore automatically be ethical in nature. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAny conceptualisation of evil, arguably, has to empower us to resist or transform it in our lived worlds. The latter concern motivates this paper much more than a thorough analysis of evil itself. Drawing on Jewish and Christian thought, I tentatively consider evil as resulting from the incomplete or failed cultivation of the humane. Along this line, evil is the opposite of humanity; it is the antihuman, the subhuman, or the demonic. Gratuitous violence, hatred, resentment, and malice manifest this (...) dark ‘power’ of evil. In the aforementioned traditions, peace and justice are conceived as being dependent on the inner order or unity of the soul. Conversely, iniquity – as the manifestation of evil – in the world reflects conflicts or disorders in individual souls. Hence the need to constitute one’s personhood. Such continuous creation takes place through genuine human encounters, where and when love, friendship, and gratitude are allowed to unfold themselves. These ‘dispositions’ are conceived as counterweights to evil. I will work out this argument, but also briefly examine how education, rural and urban planning, economic and political ‘systems’ can either breed or curtail evil. (shrink)

IntroductionEvery day, it seems, we advance into darkness we have not known before. It is not a journey we have sought out or chosen for ourselves. We are swept along by a current of malice that can only be avoided if we hide from the news. The spectacle of a mass anti-Zionist and antisemitic “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on Columbia University’s central quad and elsewhere has structural predecessors, to be sure, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, but parallels with mass (...) antisemitism require comparison with earlier historical moments. As the University of Chicago’s president, Paul Alivisatos, wrote straightforwardly in a public letter, “the impact of an encampment depends on the degree to which it disrupts study, scholarship, and free movement around campus.”1 The Occupy Wall Street movement was notably accompanied by a substantial body of theoretical work, whereas the Columbia occupation is supported by little more than a Manichaean view of a world divided between oppressor and oppressed peoples. The chants are sounded without any plausible theory of how they could actually lead to the dissolution of the Jewish state. The students breaking windows and occupying a building at Columbia were certainly employing theory of a sort when they asserted that the university had a moral responsibility to deliver meals to them, but observers found the theory difficult to endorse. The students promise to remain until Columbia meets their divestment demands—which presumably means they will be in their tents for a very long time indeed, since for governing boards to cede their investment authority to mob action means giving up their other responsibilities as well. But Brown University’s governing corporation has agreed to meet with student representatives and hold a vote on divestment in the fall.2 I expect the results of the vote will disappoint the protestors. (shrink)

I'm pleased to have been offered the chance of replying to Joseph Frank's criticisms . He is a courteous opponent, though capable of a certain asperity. . . . Frank complains that his critics appear incapable of attending to what he really said in his original essay. It is the blight critics are born for; and it is undoubtedly sometimes caused by the venal haste of reviewers, and sometimes by native dullness, and sometimes by malice. But there are other (...) reasons why an author may sometimes feel himself to be misrepresented. One is that a genuinely patient and intelligent reader may be more interested in what the piece under consideration does not quite say than in what is expressly stated. Another is the consequence of fame. Frank's original article is over thirty years old; it crystallised what had been for the most part vague notions, ideas that were in the air, and gave them a memorable name. "Spatial form" entered the jargon of the graduate school and began an almost independent existence. The term might well be used by people who had never read the essay at all; or they might casually attribute to him loose inferences made by others from the general proposition—inferences he had already disallowed and now once more contests. It must be difficult, particularly for an exasperated author, to distinguish between these causes of apparent misrepresentation. But sometimes it can be done; and then it will appear that the effect of the first is far more interesting than that of the second cause. For the suggestion then must be that the author has repressed a desire to take a position which, in his manifest argument, he differentiates from his own. This, as it happens, is what he advances as an explanation of certain ambiguities in my Sense of an Ending; the least one can say is that it is perfectly possible. Frank Kermode is the author of The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, Continuities, and Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne: Renaissance Essays; his works also include The Classic and The Genesis of Secrecy. His contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Novels: Recognition and Deception" , "A Reply to Denis Donoghue" , and "Secrets and Narrative Sequence". (shrink)

Nietzsche writes a preface to _The Gay Science_ in 1886, four years after its first four books were in print. In this address, he explains that he has _been ill_ and is _in recovery_. He diagnoses himself as having suffered from “romanticism.” Nietzsche warns that he will henceforth vent his malice on the sort of lyrical romantic sentimentalism from which he suffered. Nietzsche then undertakes to write an additional fifth book to the corpus, which he added in 1887—a year (...) after the above-referenced preface, thereby providing a _new_ end in departure from his previous romantic excursions of the initial four books of _GS_. I wish to trace how these claims—of illness and convalescence are related to what I argue is a major philosophical turn in Nietzsche’s thinking on the nature of reality and how reality matters to us—as value. In this essay, I will locate Nietzsche’s turn. To do so, I explain (1) what Nietzsche describes as “romantic pessimism,” that is, an epistemological dualism (i.e., assertion of an irresolvable appearance versus reality distinction). I will first explain and then show how Nietzsche suffers from this illness in the early books of _GS_, using textual examples to demonstrate his epistemological presuppositions and romantic-pessimistic preferences (which manifest as a defiant claim that fictions are preferred to reality, thereby still crediting an appearance-reality distinction); (2) how by his later book five of _GS_ Nietzsche plays a different tune by which prior dualisms dissolve in his affirmation of a co-implication of fiction and truth, such that (a) neither are wholly separate from the other, and (b) it becomes difficult if not impossible to distinguish between them. (shrink)

Every Christian who carefully reads the message of St. Apostle Paul, can not do it pay attention to the number of times he uses, so to speak, military terminology. Suffice it to read the sixth chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians - the words, which is also St. Mr. Patriarch Joseph finished his Testament: "Fix in the Lord and in the power of his power. Put on a full armor of God so that you can resist the tricks devilish (...) For we have to fight not against the body and blood, but against the beginning, against the authorities, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of malice Therefore, take a full weapon God so that you can resist and... stand firmly. Stand, then, girth Your hips are right, putting on the armor of justice, and putting your legs ready preaching the gospel of peace. (shrink)

It is quite clear that sin like any other evil involves the privation of a requisite perfection, that it has what is called a negative malice. But is that all? Even a superficial examination of a sin of transgression shows that there is another element, an act, which is something positive: peccatum non est pura privatio, sed est actus debito ordine privatus; peccatum est actus inordinatus. Is this positive element the formal constituent of sin, so that sin may be (...) said not only to have a negative malice, but also a positive one? Or, in other words, is a sin bad not only on account of what it lacks, of what it is not, but also—and principally—on account of what it is? (shrink)

In thePeristephanon, a collection of hymns in praise of the Christian martyrs, the Spanish poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens refers back to a time more than a hundred years before he was writing, when Christianity was not the predominant influence in the Roman world but the religion of a beleaguered minority. In the course of Prudentius' lifetime, the trials that were suffered by that minority under emperors such as Decius and Diocletian became an important point of reference for increasing numbers of (...) Roman converts seeking to identify with Christianity and its sectarian past. At the time, however, those trials were recorded in only meagre written accounts. Prudentius, whose successful administrative career might have culminated in elevation to a senior position in the imperialscrinia, displays particular interest in the extent of the official archival material in thePeristephanon. In a number of passages in this work, he comments on the fragility of historical documents, which are easily destroyed by acts of malice or the effects of time. The following discussion will examine the ways in which he reflects on the permanence, or otherwise, of his own written texts. Analysis of his imitation of elegiac verse inscriptions will demonstrate how he draws attention to the inadequacy of even the most monumental types of human writing. But I will argue that, by identifying his poems with the martyrs' perishable bodies, Prudentius claims that they too can be a medium for a divine presence not confined to any perishable physical form. (shrink)

During the latter half of the thirteenth century there arose around Tuscany a strange and unprecedented poetry, erudite, abstract, and arrogantly intellectual. It sang beyond courtly conventions about the wonders of the rational universe whose complex secrets the new speculative sciences were eagerly systematizing. Appropriating the language of natural philosophy, Aristotelian psychology, and even theology, love poetry developed a new theoretical understanding of its enterprise which allowed it to redefine love as spiritualized search for knowledge. This intellectualization of erotic desire (...) culminates in the Florentine sitlnovisti, a handful of learned poets who turned love poetry into an eclectic philosophical affair. Guido Cavalcanti’s famous canzone “Donna me prega” was universally considered to be not only the technically most perfect canzone ever written but also a rigorous philosophical treatise. As much as in our own day, exegeses of the poem were forced into the arcana of Scholastic Aristotelianism in order to make sense of its abstract, psychologistic definition of love’s essence. While Cavalcanti lyricized an Averroistic logic of the unified intellect, his younger friend Dante was preparing to put all of medieval philosophy, theology, and science into terza rima. It was in this terza rima that medieval Paris found perhaps its most felicitous expression, for the Divine Comedy represents, among other things, a creative transfiguration of the critical discourses Paris was diffusing throughout Europe.What recalls that situation today is the way Paris again marks the center of critical thought, while in Italiy a new generation of poets has emerged that translates the lessons of contemporary philosophy into poetry. In this essay I plan to discuss some of the most radical or, by analogy, “stilnovistic” of these lyricists. For purposes of convenience I will refer to them as the “favorite malice” poets. The phrase comes from the title of an anthology of select contemporary Italian poetry, recently published in a bilingual English edition: The Favorite Malice: Ontology and Reference in Contemporary Italian Poetry.2 The title alludes to a passage of Friedrich Nietzsche: “It is my favorite malice and art that my silence has learned not to betray itself through silence.” These words from Thus Spoke Zarathrustra serves as the anthology’s epigraphs and signal the peculiar poetics that brings the poets together in one volume. They are not brought together as a “school” but as a loose convergence of individual practices. The most illustrious name among the group is that of Andrea Zanzotto , who belongs to an older generation but whom the other poets call their “youngest traveling companion.” The “older” companions include Nanni Cagnone, Luigi Ballerini, Raffaele Perrotta, and Angelo Lumelli. Robert P. Harrison is assistant professor of Italian at Stanford University. He has published a book of poems, The Murano Workshop , and articles on Dante, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and liberal philology. The Body of Beatrice is the title of his work in progress. (shrink)

pt. 1. Philosophy and law -- Direct and oblique intention and malice aforethought -- Intention and mens rea in murder -- Duress per minas as a defence to crime -- The expert in court -- pt. 2. Philosophy and war -- Counterforce and countervalue -- Better dead than Red -- The logic and ethics of nuclear deterrence -- Risk, recklessness, and extravagance -- Epilogue -- Enemies of academic freedom.

The phenomenological understanding of empathy as the direct experiencing of the mental states (feelings, intentions, moods) of others eschews the identification of empathy with caring. At the same time, it leaves open the possibility of sadistic pleasure, indifference, or malice as consequences of empathic experience. In this paper, I intend to defend the place of caring as an inseparable part of the empathic experience, specifically when understood as direct perception. My defense relies on (a) conceiving of attentive concern as (...) a perceptual predisposition, and (b) understanding the caring responsiveness of the empathizer as embedded in her direct perception of the empathee's mental states. My claim proceeds by three steps. Firstly, I will present the need to include caring within empathy through the problem that arises from excluding it. Secondly, I will argue for the presence of active responsiveness, inherent in the phenomenological concept of perception and expressed more explicitly in its Gibsonian understanding. Thirdly, I will propose my understanding of attentive concern as a predisposition, which together with the intentionality attributed to the other (itself also a disposition) forms the pre-perceptual basis for identifying empathy with caring. (shrink)