This essay explores the nature of narrative representations of individual lives and the connection between these narratives and personal good. It poses the challenge of determining how thinking of our lives in story form contributes distinctively to our good in a way not reducible to other value-conferring features of our lives. Because we can meaningfully talk about our lives going well for us at particular moments even if they fail to go well overall or over time, the essay maintains that (...) our good must consist in something more than an accumulation of good discrete moments. Since persons have the capacities to reason, remember, and imagine, our good depends on a larger view of our lives that integrates its particular moments in a narrative. That narrative provides shape and texture to our lives. Storytelling serves to connect the events of our lives to each other, and to explain why the meaning and value of past events or features of our lives can shift as the life, and hence the story of the life, continues to unfold. The essay concludes that narrative enables us to see our lives in ways that support, encourage, or promote our self-concept and self-worth as agents who have controlling authority over our own lives. (shrink)

Context: The current study of emotions is based on theoretical models that limit the emotional experience. The collection of emotional data is through self-report questionnaires, restricting the description of emotional experience to broad concepts or induced preconceived qualities of how an emotion should be felt. Problem: Are the emotional experiences responding exclusively to these concepts and dimensions? Method: Music was used to lead participants into an emotional experience. Then a micro-phenomenological interview, a methodology with a phenomenological approach, was used to (...) guide their descriptions. Results: The descriptions of emotional experiences revealed a temporal structure that could have a linear or circular development. Moreover the qualitative aspects disclosed that these experiences are characterized by corporal sensations and marked variations of emotional intensity. Additionally, the emotional experience was embodied. Implications: The emotional experience is a dynamic process in which bodily sensations take a primary role, allowing the identification of such emotions. The integration of these first-person features of emotional experience with third-person data could lead to a better understanding and interpretation of emotional processes. Constructivist content: This article highlights the need to integrate first-person and third-person methodologies to study and explain human behavior in a comprehensive manner. Key Words: Emotion, experience, micro-phenomenological interview, body, music, affective neuroscience. (shrink)

In our everyday lives, we confront a host of moral issues. Once we have deliberated and formed judgments about what is right or wrong, good or bad, these judgments tend to have a marked hold on us. Although in the end, we do not always behave as we think we ought, our moral judgments typically motivate us, at least to some degree, to act in accordance with them. When philosophers talk about moral motivation, this is the basic phenomenon they seek (...) to understand. Moral motivation is an instance of a more general phenomenon—what we might call normative motivation—for our other normative judgments also typically have some motivating force. When we make the normative judgment that something is good for us, or that we have a reason to act in a particular way, or that a specific course of action is the rational course, we also tend to be moved. Many philosophers have regarded the motivating force of normative judgments as the key feature that marks them as normative, thereby distinguishing them from the many other judgments we make. In contrast to our normative judgments, our mathematical and empirical judgments, for example, seem to have no intrinsic connection to motivation and action. The belief that an antibiotic will cure a specific infection may move an individual to take the antibiotic, if she also believes that she has the infection, and if she either desires to be cured or judges that she ought to treat the infection for her own good. All on its own, however, an empirical belief like this one appears to carry with it no particular motivational impact; a person can judge that an antibiotic will most effectively cure a specific infection without being moved one way or another. (shrink)

The principle of belief persistence, or conservativity principle, states that ’\Nhen changing beliefs in response to new evidence, you should continue to believe as many of the old beliefs as possible' (Harman, 1986, p. 46). In particular, this means that if an individual gets new information, she has to accommodate it in her new belief set (the set of propositions she believes), and, if the new information is not inconsistent with the old belief set, then (1) the individual has to (...) maintain all the beliefs she previously had and (2) the change should be minimal in the sense that every proposition in the new belief set must be deducible from the union of the old belief set and the new information (see, e.g., Gardenfors, 1988; Stalnaker, 1984). We focus on this minimal notion of belief persistence and characterize it both semantically and syntactically. A ’possible world' semantic formalization of the principle easily comes to mind. The set of all the propositions that the individual believes corresponds to the set of states of the world that she considers possible and is a subset of the set of states that are not ruled out by the individual's information (or knowledge). It is required that, if the individual considers a state possible and her new information does not exclude this state, then she continue to consider it possible. Furthermore, if the individual regards a particular state as impossible, then she should continue to regard it as impossible unless her new information excludes all the states that she previously regarded as possible. This is closely related to the.. (shrink)

The idea that normativity and agency are importantly connected goes back at least as far as Kant. But it has recently become associated with a view called “constitutivism.” Perhaps the best-known critique of constitutivism appears in David Enoch’s article, “Agency, Shmagency,” which is the focus of this chapter. His critique of my article, “Agency and the Open Question Argument,” is briefly addressed, explaining why, contrary to his claims, I do not therein defend a form of constitutivism. It is then explained (...) why his “shmagency challenge” does not effectively expose the real challenge faced by those who might wish to develop constitutivist theories. Finally, the chapter considers why we should take seriously the idea that normativity and agency are importantly connected, an idea that neither Enoch’s challenge nor the challenge articulated for constitutivism here does anything to defeat. Enoch has not shown that normativity won’t come from what is constitutive of agency. (shrink)

Book Information Moral Realism: A Defence. Moral Realism:\nA Defence Russ Shafer-Landau , Oxford : Clarendon Press ,\n2003 , x + 322 , {Â}\textsterling35 ( cloth ) By Russ\nShafer-Landau. Clarendon Press. Oxford. Pp. x + 322.\n{Â}\textsterling35 (cloth:).

Stephen Darwall has recently suggested (following work by Mark Overvold) that theories which identify a person’s good with her own ranking of concerns do not properly delimit the ‘scope’ of welfare, making self-sacrifice conceptually impossible. But whether a theory of welfare makes self-sacrifice impossible depends on what self-sacrifice is. I offer an alternative analysis to Overvold’s, explaining why self-interest and self-sacrifice need not be opposed, and so why the problems of delimiting the scope of welfare and of allowing for self-sacrifice (...) are distinct. If my analysis is correct, desire theories may allow for self-sacrifice however they delimit the scope of welfare. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs what the famous sentence "what is rational is actual /and what is actual is rational" specifically means within the Hegel's Philosophy of Right. The two traditional and antithetical interpretations of these words share one main point: both transpose them on the level of the Philosophy of History. Haym does this from a conservative perspective. He regards the Hegelian saying as an immediate justification for existence. Gans and, more recently, Ilting do this from a liberal perspective. They find (...) the idea of the progressive realization of rationality in history in the Hegelian saying. The latter interpretation seems to be attested in some alternative formulations provided by Hegel in his lectures (where "real" and "actual" are linked by "wird" or "muß sein", not by "ist"). Hegel's words, however, do not directly refer to the Philosophy of History. They concern in the first place the structure of ethical life (Sittlichkeit). This is confirmed by the recurring reference to the category of “idea”. Ethical life is the process through which ethical substance – i.e. the ensemble of the substantial determinations that structure everyone’s life – is realized through the self-conscious action of individuals. This action is the objectifying of the spirit and is always a finite action. Through this very manifold contingency, the "brightly coloured covering" of men's being busy, the substance emerges as the "universal way of their acting". This process turns into a whole series of specific differences that structure several spheres of action and existence, whose compresence must be governed. As it is always open to error and not logically deducible, this process turns the identity of rational and actual, in the Philosophy of Right, into an ethical-political problem. (shrink)

In my view, we need a sociological analysis to show how the crisis stemmed from a certain set-up of the so-called global society. Such a set-up is the product of a long historical development, which goes beyond the financial crisis? outbreak in 2008. The question I ask is the following: from a sociological standpoint, why did this crisis break out? And what remedies can be put in place? The measures adopted these days cannot solve the crisis, but, for a number (...) of reasons, they can at most provide temporary stoppers and remedies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to focus on the role of fairness within an apparently secondary passage of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, in order to show that it is necessary to the impartial construction of perfect procedural justice.

This paper deals with the major concepts of Scanlon’s moral contractualism. It is possible to describe moral contractualism as the ability to identify priorities and moral reasons in deliberative action, that no one could reasonably reject. These capabilities require us to take into account the interests of others in our moral judgments. The result is that Scanlon overthrow the philosophy of Hobbes: morality is not originated from politics; on the contrary, politics is a function of morality. His answer to the (...) dilemma of Prichard is particularly persuasive, though the proof of the falsity of the skeptical position can only be dialectic and persuasive is its intellectualistic position on relations between reasons and desires, too. (shrink)

The article focuses on the relations between passions and cognition in Hume’s philosophy. Although it is widely recognised that Hume attributed a central role to emotions in our natural structure, it is not frequently understood that in Hume’s conceptual framework passions themselves have a gnoseological content. In this paper some arguments are provided in order to show that this is the case.

After recalling the Lockean doctrine of tacit consent and Hume’s criticisms to contractualistic theories, I propose a method for the selection of rulers.

Hobbesian spaces? In this article I explore some issues related to cyberwar and its implications for the extension of the Hobbesian paradigm of the state of nature to international relations with particular reference to cyberspace. My conclusion is that there are many reasons to believe that this explanatory paradigm should also apply in this area.

In this article I discuss some aspects of prima facie statements and compare them with some deductive properties of moral rules. The conclusion I draw is in the sense of a re-evaluation of some aspects of moral intuitionism, which seems essential to the concepts of moral imagination and moral education.

Of all the works attributed to Ovid but of disputed authenticity, the epistle of Sappho to Phaon is notoriously the one which has most perplexed scholars. Most philologists at the end of the 19th century asserted the Ovidian paternity of the epistle; but in recent years the discussion has flared up once again, especially following an important contribution, tending in the opposite direction, by R. J. Tarrant, and today, above all in Anglo-American studies, the pendulum seems to be swinging more (...) in the direction of inauthenticity, according to the movement typical in debates of this kind. The present article obviously does not intend to discuss the whole question once again nor to reaffirm tout court the attribution to Ovid, but brings to the attention of scholars certain arguments which should not be neglected in the discussion . I do not mean to underestimate the linguistic, stylistic, and metrical anomalies which scholars up to Tarrant and beyond have imputed to the epistula Sapphus, but rather to indicate some characteristics, above all of compositional technique, which have not been considered but which I think have a not insignificant weight in the debate on authenticity. (shrink)

In his critique of egoism as a doctrine of ends, G. E. Moore famously challenges the idea that something can be someone. Donald Regan has recently revived and developed the Moorean challenge, making explicit its implications for the very idea of individual welfare. If the Moorean is right, there is no distinct, normative property good for, and so no plausible objectivism about ethics could be welfarist. In this essay, I undertake to address the Moorean challenge, clarifying our theoretical alternatives so (...) that we may better decide what to admit into our moral ontology and better assess what may be at stake in whether objectivists treat good or good for (or neither) as fundamental. I compare the Moorean and welfarist pictures of value, providing an account of the form and function of good for. According to this account expresses a distinct relational value that has its source in the value of persons. Good for value is thus a form of extrinsic value that provides agent-neutral reasons for action, and it plays a pervasive normative role in regulating child rearing, guiding individual life choices, and shaping social policy formation. (shrink)

This article is based on a paper given in December 2013 at a German–Italian workshop on Jürgen Habermas’ theory. Massimo Rosati had been studying Jürgen Habermas’ thought and classical sociology in the Durkheimian tradition for years. Because of his own Durkheimian reading of communicative action, he had been unsurprised when Habermas began to write systematically on religion. In this article, he addresses the new post-secular sensitivity to the remnants of mimetic and mythic worldviews within theoretical ones and discusses the (...) sacred as a universal historical structure of human consciousness. (shrink)

In this engagingly written book, Colin McGinn advances a number of related theses, most prominent among them, that moral philosophy is in need of new methodologies in order to get at neglected questions about moral character. The methodology McGinn urges involves drawing upon literature for its deep and intricate portrayals of ethical themes. This would seem a natural approach given McGinn’s substantive views about ethics. He contends that our ethical knowledge is aesthetically mediated ; he speculates that the “innateness” of (...) ethics may be “a by-product of our innate grasp of folk psychology” which comes into play when we interpret literature; and he defends an “aesthetic theory of virtue” according to which virtue coincides with beauty of soul. (shrink)

As persons, beings with a capacity for autonomy, we face a certain practical task in living out our lives. At any given period we find ourselves with many desires or preferences, yet we have limited resources, and so we cannot satisfy them all. Our limited resources include insufficient economic means, of course; few of us have either the funds or the material provisions to obtain or pursue all that we might like. More significantly, though, we are limited to a single (...) life and one of finite duration. We also age, and pursuits that were possible at earlier points within a life may become impossible at later stages; we thus encounter not only an ultimate time limit but episodic limits as well. Because we must live our lives with limited resources—material and temporal—we are pressed to choose among and to order our preferences. Without some selection and ordering, few if any of them would be satisfied, and we would be unable to live lives that are recognizably good at all. Moreover, we would be unable to function well as the autonomous beings that we are. Our practical task then is to form a coherent, stable, and attractive ordering of aims—to develop a conception of our good. (shrink)

In On a Discovery, Kant depicts monads as simple beings that are thought in the idea as the ground of appearances. He argues that his account of monads is partially in line with both Leibniz's monadology and his own critical philosophy. However, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant appears to depart from the monadologies of his predecessors. In this article, I make sense of Kant's late subscription to a version of Leibniz's monadology by arguing that Kant considers monads to (...) be the objects represented through cosmological and psychological ideas posited by reason in its search for the unconditioned conditions of appearances. In particular, I point to what I take to be two instances of what Kant calls “objects in the idea” in the Critique of Pure Reason, namely (a) the substratum of matter qua ground of external appearances, and (b) the soul qua ground of internal appearances. Drawing on Kant's reply to Eberhard and the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, I highlight the merely regulative—and yet fundamental—role that monads conceived as objects of reason play in Kant's critical philosophy. (shrink)

Proponents of numerous recent theories of a person's good hold that a plausible account of the good for a person must satisfy existence internalism. Yet little direct defense has been given for this position. I argue that the principal intuition behind internalism supports a stronger version of the thesis than it might appear--one that effects a "double link" to motivation. I then identify and develop the main arguments that have been or might be given in support of internalism about a (...) person's good, showing how these arguments support this stronger version of internalism. (shrink)

Taking as its point of departure the existing critical literature on the intersections between René Girard’s and Giorgio Agamben’s anthropogenetic theories, this essay aims to add further considerations to the debate by discussing some of Agamben’s intuitions within a Girardian paradigmatic explanatory framework. I show how by regressing the archeological analysis to a pre-institutional and pre-legal moment, and by re-examining the antinomic structure of the sacred in its genetic organizing form, one can account more cogently for certain key issues relevant (...) to Agamben’s theoretical project, such as the “paradox of sovereignty,” the nature of the “state of exception,” and the dissociation between culpa and individual responsibility in archaic law, as recently discussed in Karman. I also put forward arguments concerning the limitations of Agamben’s immanent ontology to account for the zoe/bios distinction as a key structural element of his particular take on biopolitics, viewing this specifically in the light. (shrink)