While Wittgenstein’s work has been extensively investigated in relation to many other important and influential philosophers, there is very little scholarly work that positively investigates the relationship between the work of Wittgenstein and Wilhelm Dilthey. To the contrary, some commentators like Hacker (2001a) suggest that Dilthey’s work (and that of other hermeneuticists) simply pales or is obsolete in comparison to Wittgenstein’s own insights. Against such assessments, this article posits that Wittgenstein’s and Dilthey’s thought most crucially intersects at the related topics (...) of scientism on the one hand and scientific and philosophical method on the other. In reconstructing Dilthey’s conceptions of understanding versus explaining and central points of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, it becomes apparent that they share a staunch rejection of scientism and use the notion of understanding as a means to prevent methodologies from the natural sciences encroaching onto the human sciences (in Dilthey’s case) and philosophy (in Wittgenstein’s case). Notwithstanding a number of central ways in which these thinkers differ, this article closes by suggesting that there is some evidence according to which Wittgenstein, like Dilthey, can reasonably be understood as championing some central tenets of the hermeneutical tradition. (shrink)

Who a manager is, as a person of moral character, has been only of tangential interest in social science definitions of management, which have focused on functions, roles, behaviors, and environmental influences. But how do managers themselves speak of managerial excellence? This paper answers this for a particular corporation, based on a three-phased research process that deliberately imposes no descriptive or normative categories, but allows the answer to emerge, listening to what managers themselves say when discussing excellent managers and their (...) behaviors. This approach finds that: (1) virtue ethics and virtue language is fluently used by practicing managers, (2) virtue language is important to understanding managerial excellence, and (3) whereas the set of virtues defining the excellent manager can be expected to be dependent on the societal, industry, and organizational context, such a set of manager virtues can be identified and prioritized within a particular organizational milieu. The implication is that, once an organization's management better understands the meaning of the excellent manager in terms of the virtue language already used by its own employees, it is better equipped to implement a practical ethic of virtues, one helpful toward recognizing and developing excellent managers. Ethics researchers are challenged to increase their understanding of extant virtue language as the basis for a renewed development of virtue ethics theory and applications. (shrink)

In two experiments, subjects’ task was to decide whether a binocularly viewed target word was evaluatively good (e.g., fame, comedy, rescue) or bad (e.g., stress, detest, malaria) in meaning. Just prior to this target word, a priming word was presented to the nondominant eye, and masked by an immediately following presentation of a letter—fragment pattern to the dominant eye. (Masking effectiveness was demonstrated by subjects’ failure to discriminate the left vs. right position of a test series of words.) In Experiment (...) 1, which used evaluatively positive or negative words as priming stimuli, judgment latency for the evaluative decision task was facilitated by primes that agreed in evaluation with targets, and was retarded by primes that disagreed in evaluation with targets. This result demonstrated that the evaluative meaning of priming stimuli was processed under conditions that prevented subjects from detecting their presence. Primes in Experiment 2 were 2-word strings for which the evaluative meaning of individual words was orthogonal to the evaluative sentence meaning (e.g., the two evaluatively negative words, "enemy fails,“ make up an evaluatively positive sentence). Results of Experiment 2 indicated that masked priming effects were influenced by the evaluative meanings of individual words, but not by their sentence meanings. This result supported the conclusion that the processing of undetected, dichoptically masked words is limited to analyses that are not powerful enough to extract sentence meanings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PARODY AND THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBABILITY IN THE APOLOGY by Thomas J. Lewis Over a century ago James Riddell pointed out that Socrates' defense speech in die Apology closely followed the standard form of Athenian forensic rhetoric. He called the Apology "artistic to the core," and he identified parts of "the subde rhetoric of this defense."1 Since then many scholars have explicated the rhetorical elements in Socrates' defense.2 (...) Their work has led in turn to recent attempts to integrate the rhetorical form into an overall understanding of the meaning and significance of the Apology? The puzzle to be solved is what to make of the fact that Socrates disclaims the ability and the intention to use rhetoric in a speech which is itself a rhetorical masterpiece. R. E. Allen raises the possibility thatby using the techniques ofrhetoric and at the same time denying that he is using them Socrates is dissembling or lying. However, Allen rejects this possibility and interprets Socrates' falsehood as only a surface or apparent falsehood. According to Allen it is ironic parody of a disreputable rhetoric which seeks to convince without concern for the truth.4 For Allen the object of the parody is base rhetoric in general, the type of rhetoric denounced by Socrates in the Gorgias as "rhetoric aiming at gratification and pleasure, and indifferent to truth and the good of the soul."5 Two subsequent articles, one by Kenneth Seeskin, the other by Douglas Feaver andJohn Hare, support the view that Socrates is parodying the debased form of rhetoric. However, they place somewhat different emphasis on the exact object of the parody. They argue that the object of Socrates' rhetorical parody is Gorgias' Pahmedes, rather than pandering rhetoric in general.6 After summarizing the many rhetorical similarities between Gorgias' Palamedes and Socrates' defense speech, Seeskin concludes that "Gorgias' Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 359-366 360Philosophy and Literature Palamedes is not a masterpiece of world literature; it is a collection of topoi—tried and true devices for winning acquittal... [whereas] despite his disclaimer, Socrates' speech is no amateur performance. On the contrary, he knew all the tricks of the trade and employed them with consummate skill" (p. 97). Seeskin uses Plato's Gorgias to explain how Socrates' rhetoric fits within an overall understanding of the Apology. He notes the two types ofrhetoric presented in the Gorgias: base rhetoric, a species of flattery which aims at gratification; and philosophic or true rhetoric which aims at improving the soul. Then Seeskin makes a crucial point. He insists it is not enough to distinguish between base rhetoric and philosophic rhetoric; there must be a way to identify a given instance of rhetoric as either base rhetoric or as philosophic rhetoric. Moreover, he cautions that distinguishing the one from the other is no easy task. "It is impossible to tell them apart on the basis of technique alone. Base rhetoric is no less polished for its baseness.... Nor can one tell them apart on the basis of their stated goals. Flattery succeeds only to the extent that it can pass itself off as something better" (p. 98). Thus, if Socrates and Palamedes employ the same rhetorical devices, Seeskin wonders how we can tell which type ofrhetoric is in the Apology. "Somewhere in the Apology of Socrates there ought to be a clue which allows one to distinguish his defense from the 'standard' defense composed by Gorgias" (p. 99). Seeskin finds the clue in the exordium, where Socrates denies that he is a skillful speaker: "Unless, of course, by a skillful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth. If that is what they mean, I would agree that I am an orator, though not after their pattern" (17b). Although Palamedes makes a comparable claim, Seeskin argues that Palamedes was concerned with appearance rather than truth, and that the key to appearance is the use of the argument from probability. According to Seeskin, Socrates does not rely on the argument from probability, whereas this argument permeates the Palamedes. "Again and again, the speaker tries to show that it would be implausible to suppose that anyone in his position did what he is accused of doing. How... (shrink)

This paper mentions several different sorts of "essentialism," and examines various senses in which quantified modal logic is "committed to" the most troublesome kind of essentialism. It is argued that essentialism is neither provable, Nor entailed by any contingently true non-Modal sentence. But quantified modal logic is committed to the meaningfulness of essentialism. This sort of commitment may be made innocuous by requiring that essentialism simply be made logically false; some of the consequences of taking this line are explored.

There is an unresolved stand-off between ontological naturalism and phenomenological thought regarding the question whether normativity can be reduced to physical entities. While the ontological naturalist line of thought is well established in analytic philosophy, the phenomenological reasoning for the irreducibility of normativity has been largely left ignored by proponents of naturalism. Drawing on the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Schütz, Stein and others, I reconstruct a phenomenological argument according to which natural science (as the foundation of naturalization projects) is itself (...) a part of the essentially normative life-world to the effect that ontological naturalism faces a bootstrapping problem. I aim to demonstrate that this stand-off is grounded in a deep disagreement about the possibility of reduction. I close by arguing that this deep disagreement turns on the question which conception about the nature of (natural) science is true. This result pits a perfectionist model of science (implied by ontological naturalism) against a pragmatist conception of science (in favour of the phenomenological argument). The motivation is that transforming the disagreement about the controversial principle into a disagreement about conceptions of science may help to offer a foundation for different attempts at solving the stand-off. (shrink)

This article uncovers a hitherto underappreciated aspect of transatlantic cultural history: Moravian late humanism, and its relationship to contemporary intellectual currents in the Americas and the broader Republic of Letters in the age of Benjamin Franklin. To date, the Moravians have attracted the attention of scholars for their novel theological views on gender and sexuality, their unique approach to reconciling piety with profit, their missionary efforts among native populations, their musical culture and their rejection of slavery. Their interactions with the (...) world of transatlantic and global late humanism, however, have not been studied in any systematic way. The present analysis opens and closes with a remarkable but almost unknown Latin oration, delivered in Philadelphia in 1742 by Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, to an audience provided with printed copies commissioned from the Franklin Press. A critical edition and an English translation of this work are provided in an appendix. In our article we examine the original European genesis and subsequent transatlantic context of Zinzendorf’s oration, tracing its development from a formal theological apologia into a quasi-legal statement of the count’s commitment to Moravian values, expressed in an erudite allusory language which left its listeners bemused. As our investigation shows, however, the confusion of the Philadelphia worthies who gathered to hear Zinzendorf ’s oration cannot be put down to a lack of cultural awareness among the leading missionaries and settlers from Germany and Denmark, many of whom partook fully in the contemporary culture of late humanism, both before and after they crossed the Atlantic. Through detailed reconstructions of their educations, correspondence networks, reading habits and note-taking practices, we show the richness of the Moravians’ transatlantic culture of late humanism, which ran the gamut from Ciceronian oratory to pious poetry in learned languages. Basing our argument on a little-known body of archival and printed sources in Latin, German, English and indigenous languages, we argue that Moravian late humanism had a significant impact on the development and expression of the Moravian church’s unique theology, its missionaries’ study of native languages and their interactions with other groups in the Atlantic world. In so doing, we also place the Moravians in the context of contemporary intellectual life in New England, the Caribbean, Europe and the Catholic world. (shrink)

What today divides analytical from Continental philosophy? This paper argues that the present divide is not what it once was. Today, the divide concerns the styles in which philosophers deal with intellectual problems: solving them, pressing them, resolving them, or dissolving them. Using ‘the boundary problem’, or ‘the democratic paradox’, as an example, we argue for two theses. First, the difference between most analytical and most Continental philosophers today is that Continental philosophers find intelligible two styles of dealing with problems (...) that most analytical philosophers find unintelligible: pressing them and resolving them. Second, when it comes to a genuine divide in which not understanding the other side’s basic philosophical purposes combines with disagreement on fundamental questions of doctrine, the only such divide today is that between those analytical philosophers who tend to solve problems and those Continental philosophers who tend to press problems. It is among these subgroups that there is a real philosophical divide today. So the analytical–Continental divide is more a matter of style than of substance; but as we try to show, differences in style shape differences over substance. (shrink)

What happens when the world changes in ways that make Canada's physical capital, natural resources, and geography - once the ultimate competitive advantages - less important than knowledge, information, technological know-how, and human capital? What happens to Canadians? In A State of Minds Thomas Courchene examines the political structures that link local, provincial, and federal governments and challenges many longstanding beliefs about how society should be organized and financed. While focusing on Canadian competitiveness in a global economy, Courchene shows (...) us how an open federal state like Canada can achieve both economic prosperity and social justice. Always provocative, Courchene blends compelling analysis and reasoned insight with a prescription for change: To stay ahead of the competitive curve and protect the Canadian way of life, Canada must become a "state of minds.". (shrink)

We can, in view of what we have said, ask if Tugarinov is doing a sort of structuralism; and, however we answer that question, one will want to know if he is doing something that can succeed, at least better than other moderns who have attempted a similar enterprise.The answer is that Tugarinov is doing a sort of (quasi-Aristotelian) structuralism — at least in the sense of refusing any absolute fixity to history, and of asserting a multi-level poly-directionality to the (...) historical flow — an approach that suffers from most of the weaknesses of other such structuralisms.If Tugarinov succeeds better than other moderns — and we think that he does — this is because he refuses to make of historicism a relativism, maintaining a certain “categorial integrity” that is within history but not historical. In this he identifies with the best in the philosophic tradition; but it is not at all clear how he remains “Marxist”. (shrink)

Although Tacitus began his writing career during the Principate at the end of the first century CE, the dominant approach to thinking about political life was still guided by Republicanism, a constellation of concepts from the mid-first century BCE Roman Republic. Republicanism held that there was only one type of monarchy and that it necessarily precluded libertas. Tacitus, who was living under different iterations of monopolistic power in the Principate, questions this tenet by examining various Germanic tribes. The Germania explores (...) different types of monarchical arrangements, showing that monarchy is not a one-size-fits-all form and that there are significant political differences among the Germanic monarchies, some of which preserve libertas. In this examination, he highlights the inapplicability of Republicanism to a system as dynamic as the Principate. (shrink)

Near the end of Practice in Christianity, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Anti-Climacus denies that progress occurs within history. We are not getting better every day, in every way. According to Anti-Climacus, we are the same as we have always been. This essay sets Anti-Climacus’s denial of progress in its historical context, arguing that he develops a counter-philosophy of history which combats the prevailing Hegelianism of his age. The essay also draws connections between Anti-Climacus’s philosophy of history and the themes of imitation and (...) contemporaneity, showing how a denial of history’s progress enables contemporary humans to interact with the same world Christ faced. (shrink)

The search for an ethics rooted in human experience is the crux of this deeply compassionate work, here translated from the 1983 German edition. Distinguished philosopher Werner Marx provides a close reading, critique, and _Weiterdenken_, or "further thinking," of Martin Heidegger's later work on death, language, and poetry, which has often been dismissed as both obscure and obscurantist. In it Marx seeks, and perhaps finds, both a measure for distinguishing between good and evil and a motive for preferring the former. (...) The poet Hölderlin posed the question, "Is there a measure on earth?" His own answer was emphatic, "There is none," for he was convinced that the measure for man was to be found only in the domain of the heavenly beings. Such metaphysical assumptions, as well as the attempt to found ethical conduct in the nature of man as a rational being, have been rejected by many contemporary thinkers, particularly Heidegger. Yet these thinkers have not been able to provide a satisfactory alternative to metaphysical foundations of the standards for responsible human conduct. Marx, therefore, goes beyond Heidegger in demonstrating how several of his most basic notions could be relevant to a secular morality in our age. It is death, Marx claims, that unsettles man and transforms his conduct toward his fellow man. the common experience of mortality nourishes ethical life—and leads to the measures of compassion, love, and recognition of one's fellow human beings. "It is only on the basis of these 'traditional virtues,'" Marx writes, "that we can find a motive for averting the impending dangers which have often enough been described so vividly and convincingly.". (shrink)

The paper discusses examples of integrative metatheoretical and theoretical work undertaken in the spirit of unification. Unification is defined as a recursive process in which the outcome of any one integrative episode provides ideas that may enter into further such episodes. The conceptual materials entering into integration exist at different levels and in distinct contexts. At the metatheoretical level, the examples relate to a number of contexts and issues, including methodological individualism versus holism. At the theoretical level, two examples of (...) the idea of a unification episode are described. In each instance, the ideas entering into the integrative episode are drawn from distinct research programs. It is argued that the spirit of unification, as embodied in theoretical practice along the lines suggested by the examples, can create bridges between disparate theory enterprises so as to help break down particularistic barriers within sociological theory. (shrink)

IN THE COURSE of his discussion of contradiction in the section of the Logic devoted to essence, Hegel makes two startling claims. First, he states that everything is inherently contradictory. Second, he states that speculative thought or philosophy is distinguished from ordinary thinking by holding fast to contradiction.