I first met Parmenides – together with Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and the other great Presocratics – in a German translation by Wilhelm Nestle, famous as the editor of the later editions of Zeller's magnum opus. I was 15 or 16 years old, and I was overwhelmed by the meeting. The verses that I liked best were Parmenides' story of Selene's love for radiant Helios . But I did not like it that the translation made the moon male and the sun (...) female , and it occurred to me to give the couplet in German a title like ‘Moongoddess and Sungod’, or perhaps ‘Selene and Helios’, in order to rectify the genders. So I began fiddling about with the translations. The volume, which I still possess, shows many traces of this. (shrink)

“... für die Wißenschaft, der ich von ganzer Seele lebe.” Otto Böhtlingk : Ein Gelehrten- leben rekonstruiert und beschrieben anhand seiner Briefe. By Agnes Stache-Weiske. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 2017. Pp. xv + 583. €118. Otto Böhtlingk an Rudolf Roth: Briefe zum Petersburger Wörterbuch 1852–1885. Index. By Agnes Stache-Weiske, Gabriele Zeller, and Frank Köhler. Veröffentlichungen der Helmuth von Glasenapp-Stiftung, vol. 45.2. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 2015. Pp. 188. €59.

R. Jay Wallace argues in this book that moral accountability hinges on questions of fairness: When is it fair to hold people morally responsible for what they do? Would it be fair to do so even in a deterministic world? To answer these questions, we need to understand what we are doing when we hold people morally responsible, a stance that Wallace connects with a central class of moral sentiments, those of resentment, indignation, and guilt. To hold someone responsible, he (...) argues, is to be subject to these reactive emotions in one's dealings with that person. Developing this theme with unusual sophistication, he offers a new interpretation of the reactive emotions and traces their role in our practices of blame and moral sanction. With this account in place, Wallace advances a powerful and sustained argument against the common view that accountability requires freedom of will. Instead, he maintains, the fairness of holding people responsible depends on their rational competence: the power to grasp moral reasons and to control their behavior accordingly. He shows how these forms of rational competence are compatible with determinism. At the same time, giving serious consideration to incompatibilist concerns, Wallace develops a compelling diagnosis of the common assumption that freedom is necessary for responsibility. Rigorously argued, eminently readable, this book touches on issues of broad concern to philosophers, legal theorists, political scientists, and anyone with an interest in the nature and limits of responsibility. (shrink)

This Open Access book provides both a broad perspective and a focused examination of cow care as a subject of widespread ethical concern in India, and increasingly in other parts of the world. In the face of what has persisted as a highly charged political issue over cow protection in India, intellectual space must be made to bring the wealth of Indian traditional ethical discourse to bear on the realities of current human-animal relationships, particularly those of humans with cows. Dharma, (...) yoga, and bhakti paradigms serve as starting points for bringing Hindu--particularly Vaishnava Hindu--animal ethics into conversation with contemporary Western animal ethics. The author argues that a culture of bhakti--the inclusive, empathetic practice of spirituality centered in Krishna as the beloved cowherd of Vraja--can complement recently developed ethics-of-care thinking to create a solid basis for sustaining all kinds of cow care communities. (shrink)

According to the traditional view of Empedocles' cosmic cycle, there are two creations of plants and animals, one under the dominion of increasing Strife and one under the dominion of increasing Love. At the point at which Strife holds complete sway the four elements are completely separated and all life is destroyed; at the point at which Love is completely dominant there is also a destruction of the biological world, this time because the elements are blended into a perfectly homogeneous (...) mixture. This interpretation of the cosmic cycle, which has prevailed almost since it was developed by Friedrich Panzerbieter and seconded by authority of Eduard Zeller was challenged by Paul Tannery and then by H. von Arnim . Long after these essentially programmatic critiques, three independent studies published in 1965 by Jean Bollack, Uvo Hölscher and Friedrich Solmsen mounted a vigorous challenge to the received view. However, in a detailed monograph devoted to Empedocles' cosmic cycle, Denis O'Brien brought to bear an impressive array of scholarly evidence and critical acumen in support of the traditional view . Several challenges to the traditional view have appeared since O'Brien's book, of which the most significant is that of A. A. Long, who, while criticizing attempts of some opponents of the traditional view, produced some novel and interesting arguments against it. Although the traditional view continues to enjoy the support of authorities such as Jonathan Barnes and M. R. Wright, there is a decided shift in favour of revisionary views. Nevertheless recent advocates of a revisionary interpretation do not provide detailed refutations of the traditional view; Long's arguments remain the strongest objections to the traditional view, and they have never been refuted. Will they stand up to scrutiny? (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Tenth-Century Arabic Interpretation of Plato's Cosmology MAJID FAKIIRY OF PLATO'STHIRTY-SIXDIALOG~Y~Sonly the Timaeus is devoted entirely to cosmological questions. The influence of this dialogue on the development of cosmological ideas in antiquity and the Middle Ages was very great. At a time when the knowledge of Greek philosophy and science in Western Europe had almost vanished, the Timaeus was the only Greek cosmological work to circulate freely in learned (...) circles. The translation and commentary of Chalcidius (c. 350) made the Timaeus available to Latin scholars, at least up to c. 53. But interest in the Timae~s was sustained for a long time before that. The lost commentary of Posidonius of Apamea (d. 51 B.C.), the De animae procreatione in Timeo of Plutarch (d. A.D. 125), the commentary of Proclus (d. 485), extant up to 44d,1 are the most important links in this continuous chain of Platonic cosmological exegesis in antiquity. In the Arabic tradition, the Timaeus had a decisive impact on the development of cosmological ideas also. Plutarch and Proclus were familiar names in the history of Platonic and post-Platonic thought, but I am not aware that the Stoic Posidonius, whom Zeller has described as ".the most universal mind that Greece had seen since the time of Aristotle," 2 was known to the Arabs, or that any mention of his commentary on the Timaeus is to be found in the Arabic sources. General interest in Platonism was an early feature of the philosophical wave which swept the Islamic learned world in the 8th century, and Zeller may be right in saying that it was the Platonic School of Athens which gave Muslim Neoplatonism its peculiar stamp. 3 One of the earliest translators of philosophical texts into Arabic, Yah.ia (b. al-Bit.riq) who flourished in the 2rid half of the 8th century, is credited with the translation of the Timaeus, later retranslated or revised by Hunain (b. Ish~q; d. 873) and Yahia (b. 'Adi and not, as Sarton has it, b. 'Ali; d. 974).~ In addition, the following Platonic dialogues appear to have been translated into Arabic: The Sophistes, the Parmenides, the Cratylus, the Euthydemus, the Republic, the Statesman, the Laws and the Crito. The determination of the actual translator of each work poses serious difficulties. In an autobiographical tract, Hunain simply reports that either he or his disciple Is~ (b. Yahia) translated these works for his patron Muhammad (b. Cf. A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plata's Timaeu~ (Oxford, 1928),pp. 34f., and George Sarton, History o] Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1959),I, 428f. Cf. E. Zeller,OutEnesof the History oSGreek Philosophy (N.Y., 1955),p. 268. sIbid., p. 329. ' Cf. al-Fihrist (Cairo, N~D.),p. 358. [15] 16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Musa), the astrologer.~ Other writers corroborate or supplement this account. Thus Ibn al-Nadim (d. 997), ascribes to Hunain the interpretation (tarsi'r) of the Republic, to him and to Ibn 'Adi the translation of the Laws, and to his son Ish.iq the translation of the Sophistes, together with the commentary of Olympiodorus2 The Crito appears to have been translated also by Yahia (b. Adi), and extensive excerpts from it and the Phaedo are often quoted in the Arabic sources in connection with the trial and execution of Socrates. Another difficulty is raised by the fact that none of the Arabic versions of these dialogues which have come down to us, either as separate works or parts of general commentaries such as the Laws, the Timaeus and the Republic, are complete, so that the inference is inescapable that, as borne out by Hunain's own testimony, it was Galen's paraphrases or compendia of these works, or at any rate those which were translated into Arabic within the School of Hunain, that are actually referred to in our sources.7 It is not, however, with the general diffusion of Platonism in the Muslim world that I am primarily concerned here, but rather with the impact of Platonic cosmological theory as illustrated in the writings of Abu Bakr Muhammad (b. Zakariya al-Razi; d., c. 932), the Rhases of Latin authors, the greatest... (shrink)

Reason and Value collects fifteen brand-new papers by leading contemporary philosophers on themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz. The subtlety and power of Raz's reflections on ethical topics - including especially his explorations of the connections between practical reason and the theory of value - make his writings a fertile source for anyone working in this area. The volume honours Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and will contribute to an enhanced appreciation of the significance of (...) his work for the subject. (shrink)

First published in 1981, this collection of essays was taken from Peters' larger work, Psychology and Ethical Development in order to provide a more focused volume on moral education for students. Peters' background in both psychology and philosophy makes the work distinctive, which is evident from the first two essays alone: 'Freud's theory of Moral Development in Relation to that of Piaget' and 'Moral Education and the Psychology of Character'. He also displays balance in his acceptance that reason and feeling (...) are both of great importance where the subject of moral education is concerned. Although written some time ago, the book discusses issues which are still of considerable interest and importance today. (shrink)

A common strategy unites much that philosophers have written about the virtues. The strategy can be traced back at least to Aristotle, who suggested that human beings have a characteristic function or activity, and that the virtues are traits of character which enable humans to perform this kind of activity excellently or well. The defining feature of this approach is that it treats the virtues as functional concepts, to be both identified and justified by reference to some independent goal or (...) end which they enable people to attain. Some recent philosophers seem to have hoped that by following this perfectionist strategy, we might attain a more convincing account of our moral practices than rule-based theories of ethics have been able to provide. (shrink)

BLWith new text and full apparatus criticus The Eudemian Ethics was one of two ethical treatises which Aristotle wrote on the subject of ethica or `matters to do with character'. Although the two works cover much the same ground, the Nicomachean Ethics is better known; the poor manuscript tradition of the Eudemian Ethics has made correct translation and interpretation of the text extremely difficult. The subject of the work is the choice of a certain means of conduct, made by a (...) `man of practical wisdom', between two extremes of behaviour: asceticism and yielding to uncontrolled impulses. Aristotle also stresses the notion of moral intention and the importance of virtue of character. This new Oxford Classical Text of the Eudemian Ethics is the result of many years of work. After Sir David Ross's death, his original text was substantially reworked and revised by his friend and colleague R. R. Walzer, who was aided in the revision by his former pupil Mrs Jean Mingay, who continued his work after his death in 1974. Mrs Mingay was fortunate in being able to make use of previously unpublished contributions from D. J. Allan after his death in the late seventies, and more recently has been helped in her work by the suggestions of Professor D. A. Russell, David Robinson, and Christopher Rowe. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

Cost conversations are essential to informed consent because patients have a right to information that they think is relevant, and patients overwhelmingly report that cost information is relevant to their medical decisions. Providers have an ethical responsibility to provide necessary information for informed consent, and therefore must discuss costs. The Shared Decision Making model is ideal for enabling this exchange of information, and decision aids are also helpful. Although barriers exist, many useful tools can help providers fulfill this obligation, and (...) encouraging progress is being made to improve cost transparency from insurers and facilities. (shrink)

In this essay I wish to raise the question of whether it is meaningful to say that a certain sort of robot is in pain. This is, of course, not an empirical question. There exists no robot of the sort I shall describe. But, I shall argue, if such a robot did in fact exist, it would be meaningful to say it is in pain.

The polarization of the individual and the community that underlies much of the debate between individualists and communitarians is made possible in part by the literal vanishingof civil society—the domain whose middling terms mediate the stark opposition of state and private sectors and offer women and men a space for activity that is both voluntary and public. Modern democratic ideology and the reality of our political practices sometimesseem to yield only a choice between elephantine and paternalistic government or a radically (...) solipsistic and nearly anarchic private market sector—overnment gargantuanism or private greed. Americans do not much like either one. President Clinton's callfor national service draws us out of our selfishness without kindling any affection for government. Private markets service our avarice without causing us to like ourselves. The question of how America's decentralized and multi-vocal public can secure a coherentvoice in debates over public policy under the conditions precipitated by so hollow and disjunctive a dichotomy is perhaps the most important issue facing both the political theory and social science of democracy and the practice of democratic politics in America today. Two recent stories out of Washington suggest just how grave the situation has become. Health-care reform failed in a paroxysm of mutual recrimination highlighted by the successful campaign of the private sector against a presidential program that seemed to be widely misunderstood. The public at large simply went missing in the debates. (shrink)

Distinguished contributors take up eminent scholar Daniel R. Schwarz’s reading of modern fiction and poetry as mediating between human desire and human action. The essayists follow Schwarz’s advice, “always the text, always historicize,” thus making this book relevant to current debates about the relationships between literature, ethics, aesthetics, and historical contexts.

We just lived through a global pandemic, and we are entering a period in which the alarming impacts of anthropogenic climate change are becoming increasingly ha.

In this paper, I offer some brief reflections on Jordan Wessling’s book, Love Divine: A Systematic Account of God’s Love for Humanity. I explain what I take to be its strengths in articulating an account of divine love that solves a variety of problems that classical theism cannot solve. Then I articulate a potential problem for Wessling’s account of divine love and hell.

In the article, “Basic Issues of Christian Eschatology Interpreted by Berdyaev”, Richard Gorban covers some eschatological aspects of Mykola Berdyaev. He considers the kernel of the basic issues of Christian eschatological doctrine the way the thinker understands them, determining his own conception of paradox of time. The researcher emphasizes the following issues in the system of religious and philosophical views of Berdyaev: connection of the fate of an individual soul with the fate of the world, death and eternity, end of (...) history, Hell ontology; eschatological prospects of evil pathways and its ontological extermination; growth of the God’s Realm and growth of Antichrist kingdom; personal apocalypses and the world apocalypses. (shrink)

The emotion–cognition integration in Mather et al. can be extended by specifying the relationship between competition and arousal in the reverse direction. According to affective monitoring, competition raises arousal, which, when sustained, results in negative affect, evoking theta oscillations, and when resolved, in positive affect, evoking gamma oscillations. Competition should be considered a core process in both cognition and emotion.

Editors and writers on the prosody of Plautus and Terence disagree about the prosody of the final -a in the nominative and vocative of proper names taken from the Greek First Declension. The fact that they are often quoted as examples of syllaba anceps either at the diaeresis of longer iambic lines or at loci Iacobsohniani would seem to imply that they normally scan as Latin First Declension nouns with short -a in the nominative and vocative singular. So R. Kauer (...) in the commentary of his edition of Terence's Andria on line 301 writes ‘die griechischen Eigennamen auf -a —Sosia, Byrria, Chaerea, Phaedria usw.—haben bei Terenz stets kurzes -a’. (shrink)

I study in detail a proposal made by T. H. Boyer in an attempt to explain classically the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect. Boyer claims that in an AB experiment, the perturbation the external incident particle produces on the charge and current distributions within the solenoid will affect back the motion of the external particle. With a qualitative analysis based on energetic considerations, Boyer seemed to arrive at the conclusion that this perturbation could give account of the AB effect. In this paper (...) I make explicit calculations which show that Boyer's conjecture fails. Indeed I find that the perturbation produced on the solenoid, and then its effect on the external charge, is independent of the solenoid current and consequently cannot account for the AB effect, which is current dependent. (shrink)

In a previous publication, I offered a novel argument against physicalist approaches to the Incarnation called “the Two Sons Worry.” In brief, I argued that a physicalist who is committed to the ecumenical teachings about the Incarnation cannot easily escape the worry that there are two persons in Jesus Christ. Keith Hess has recently pointed out a flaw in the argument that I present. In this paper, I offer a reply that fixes the argument, thus leaving the problem for the (...) physicalist intact. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Vice and Naturalistic OntologyChristopher R. Williams (bio)Keywordscausality, criminality, determinism, medical model, positivismThese questions have been posed: Is vice (encompassing criminal and other wrongful conduct) best regarded as “sick” behavior, “immoral” behavior, or some other type altogether? Are we to understand vice in natural-medical terms, or are we better served by utilizing a moral framework? Is criminality reducible to and best categorized as a metaphysical type the essential features of (...) which are neurological or otherwise biological in nature? Or, perhaps, is criminality closer to a (non-natural) sociological type, the essential features of which can be understood only through reference to social norms and cultural conventions? These are torturously involved philosophical and theoretical questions that have given rise to an equally torturous volume of literature. Without pretending to do justice to these questions or their corresponding literature, several key considerations that must be inserted into and accounted for within the discursive pursuit of these inquiries are worth noting.Where a naturalistic ontology is employed within the study of vice, we reduce the intricacies of deviant behavioral phenomena to what we presume to be their underlying medical/biological properties. It is worth remembering that behavior itself cannot rightfully be said to be “sick”; rather, what we mean to say is that the behavior in question—in our case, various forms of “vice”—is symptomatic of some underlying illness or medical/biological condition. The presumed underlying sickness and the behavior itself are distinct, ontologically linked only through their theorized relationship to one another. This, then, is a key assumption of the medical approach to vice and its ontological classification as a natural-medical kind: that there exists a relationship between the behavior (a symptom) and the underlying illness or medical condition, and that the relationship is of the causal kind. Vice, it is suggested, is a change in state that is caused by (or, at the very least, is a direct consequence of) sickness or illness. Second, to legitimate such attributions, the illness supplying the requisite causal force must be identifiable and its causal connection to the behavior must be or be capable of being sufficiently explicated. In other words, once we have identified the relevant medical/biological properties and the behavior to which they stand in causal relatedness, we must be prepared to characterize this dynamic—we must be able to show exactly how and why such and such a condition gives rise to such and such a behavior.Problematically, causation itself is and has always been a contentious metaphysical specimen. Hume (1955) reminded us of the troubling reality [End Page 39] that we cannot ever “see” one thing cause or necessitate another. We are left, rather, to merely presume the existence of causal relationships between things. How is it, exactly, that disorder in neurodevelopment can necessitate certain behavioral outcomes? Even if we can “see” (in the empirical sense) the disorder and equally “see” the behavior, we cannot of course witness the precise causal action of the former upon the latter. Even if we are content inferring causal action in such cases, we still need to demonstrate the basic conditions of causality. To show that Condition X is causally related Behavior Y, we need to show that they are regularly associated with one another, that Condition X temporally preceded Behavior Y and, most challengingly, that no other conditions or factors have an intervening (e.g., additive, synergistic) influence. Hypothetically, if we were to posit a causal relationship between schizotypal personality traits and violent behavior, we would need to establish: (1) that schizotypal traits and violent behavior regularly coexist; (2) that those traits presented before the manifestation of the violent behavior; and (3) that no other factors (biological, psychological, and/or sociological) contributed in any meaningful way to those manifestations. We would thus need to systematically rule out family dynamics, income, education, intelligence, substance use, and so forth, as contributing factors. If, in turn, we were to determine that the presence of schizotypal traits alone is not sufficient—even if a necessary condition—to produce violent behavior but, rather, that those traits act in concert with other variables to produce the behavior, then we would not truly be... (shrink)