I consider a recent attempt by Mark Schroeder in his book Being For to provide an expressivist semantics for the connectives, and I argue that it does not, as it claims, answer the ‘Frege-Geach objection&rsquo.

This article is a discussion of Mark Schroeder's response to my earlier criticism of some aspects of his book, Being For. I defend the soundness of that earlier criticism.

The essays are arranged in two sections of ethical topics and a section on philosophy, evolution, and the human sciences that includes the title essay, “Making Sense of Humanity.” In World, Mind and Ethics, excellent pieces by Elster, Sen, Jardine, Hookway, McDowell, Nussbaum, Charles Taylor, Altham, and Hollis range even more widely: over ethics, political philosophy, and epistemology, reflecting some of the breadth of Williams’s interests.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Being and Freedom: On Late Modern Ethics in Europe by John SkorupskiJ. P. MessinaJohn Skorupski. Being and Freedom: On Late Modern Ethics in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 560. Hardcover, $130.00.John Skorupski's Being and Freedom traces the development of modern ethics in France, Germany, and England, as set in motion by two great revolutions: the French Revolution and Kant's methodological revolution in the Critique (...) of Pure Reason. I begin this review by offering [End Page 714] a brief summary of the book (which consists of eight lengthy chapters, an introduction, and a brief conclusion). I then raise some interpretive worries and offer an overall assessment.In chapter 1, Skorupski reminds us that the French Revolution, a physical struggle between opposing factions, was also a battleground of ideas. In opposing the ancien régime, revolutionaries took aim at the "Catholic-feudal order" (27). Underlying this order was an ethical view, "holism," according to which a person lives well through excellent performance of community roles assigned by family, state, and church. When individual interests conflict with these social roles, the latter take precedence. Revolutionaries (partially inspired by Rousseau) railed against this. On their view, persons were born for freedom, not the chains of traditional life. To realize such freedom demanded a radical democratic state. Here, too, fidelity to the ethical whole (the Republic) sometimes required sacrifices on the part of individuals. But in a properly constituted republic, these sacrifices would be self-imposed requirements of the general will.As revolution turned to terror and blood became the regular currency of sacrifice, critics like Guizot saw the ancien régime's parochialism as a symptom of a larger problem with its underlying ethics, one it shared with the radicals aligned against it: its commitment to holism. Holism says that some social entities have a good not reducible to the good of their members. Additionally, these social wholes have their own rights that sometimes override individual rights (28, 59). These features make it easy for holist orders to justify sacrificing individuals for collective goods. If this is the disease, individualism of the sort associated with Kantian ethics can seem to be the cure.Chapter 2 argues that the new critical philosophy resulting from Kant's "Copernican" Revolution is a mixed bag. On the one hand, Kant offers no good reason for positing a noumenal world and locating freedom there (77–79). On the other hand, there is lasting promise in the idea that morality follows from each person's individual autonomy. And yet, in the end, Kant's arguments fail here, too. For deriving morality from autonomy requires an explicit commitment to impartiality, which does not follow from autonomy (83–102). And, even when suitably modified, Kant's ethical principles risk emptiness if they fail to take content from our relationships and social roles (112, 148). Unfortunately, Kant suggests that doing so would perpetrate heteronomy, making such emptiness inevitable (102).By chapter 3, the tension between holist and individualist conceptions of ethics has become Skorupski's central leitmotif. On the one hand, individualists are well positioned to resist oppression and terror. On the other hand, individualism risks atomism and alienation from our attachments and feelings. Such alienation leads Schiller to reject Kant's views on freedom and virtue (161). For our author, this is as it should be.Skorupski next turns to Fichte. Although Fichte takes a step away from transcendental idealism by making intellectual intuition the hallmark of our subjectivity (173), he agrees with Kant that morality follows from autonomy. Indeed, for Fichte, autonomy commits us to striving for full self-sufficiency, which appears to court a similar atomism. Yet this impression is corrected when Fichte turns to politics. There, Fichte grounds rights (as permissible demands) in mutual recognition (182–83). This positions him to see the state and the family as ethical wholes (187–88), pointing away from Kantian individualism back toward holism.Hegel takes these steps away from Kant to their logical conclusion. As Skorupski explains in chapter 4, Hegel argues that the individualist systems grounded in autonomy and abstract right (Moralität) mark but stages on the way to moral... (shrink)

Adams 's suggestion that there must be one really right way of presenting the history of moral philosophy seems implausible to me, so I reject – with additional reasons – his charges against the structure of Invention of Autonomy. Skorupski's way of stating the ‘equal moral abilities’ thesis is not, I argue, very Kantian; a more Kantian version is not open to his objections. I am unconvinced by Schultz's claim that Sidgwick did not really hold that thesis. Deigh raises (...) questions I cannot reply to here, but I do offer some texts that seem to show that Sidgwick is not guilty of the confusion about ‘ought’ with which Deigh charges him. Correspondence:c1 [email protected]. (shrink)

The first volumes of the great University of Toronto Press edition of the works of John Stuart Mill, edited by John M. Robson, appeared in 1963, and the edition was completed in 1991. Not surprisingly, it has generated a great deal of discussion of Mill's thought. The bibliography in John Skorupski's Companion to Mill lists some 350 items pertinent to Mill published since 1963, although it makes no attempt at comprehensive coverage of English-language studies and has nothing in any (...) foreign language. No one can keep up with all of this secondary material. It is not the least of the virtues of the Companion that it gives us a broad survey of much of the recent research and thought about Mill. I suspect that some of the articles will not be very helpful to bewildered undergraduates hoping for a boost on an assignment. But all of them will be useful to advanced students and scholars who want to know where we are on Mill these days. (shrink)

The first volumes of the great University of Toronto Press edition of the works of John Stuart Mill, edited by John M. Robson, appeared in 1963, and the edition was completed in 1991. Not surprisingly, it has generated a great deal of discussion of Mill's thought. The bibliography in John Skorupski's Companion to Mill lists some 350 items pertinent to Mill published since 1963, although it makes no attempt at comprehensive coverage of English-language studies and has nothing in any (...) foreign language. No one can keep up with all of this secondary material. It is not the least of the virtues of the Companion that it gives us a broad survey of much of the recent research and thought about Mill. I suspect that some of the articles will not be very helpful to bewildered undergraduates hoping for a boost on an assignment. But all of them will be useful to advanced students and scholars who want to know where we are on Mill these days. (shrink)

"Being and Freedom is an account of ethics in Europe from the French Revolution: a phase of philosophical ethics whose influence ran far beyond philosophy, eventually dominating politics and religion in the West. Developments came from France, Germany, and Britain. This book is currently the only study that treats them together as a Europe-wide phenomenon. The first chapter covers the philosophical conflict at the heart of the French Revolution, between the individualism of the Enlightenment and two very different forms of (...) holistic ethics: the old regime's ethic of service and the radical-democracy of the Rousseauian left. Responses analysing modern freedom and democracy came from a series of French liberal thinkers. In Germany the reaction was to two revolutions seen as inaugurating modernity--the political revolution in France and the philosophical revolution of Kant. Here the fate of religion was critical; with it the metaphysics of being and freedom. The story is traced from Kant to Hegel's idealist version of ethical holism. In Britain, Enlightenment naturalism remained the prevailing framework. It took different forms: 'common sense' and the theory of the sentiments in Scotland, utilitarianism in England. From these elements came a synthesis of European themes by John Stuart Mill--comparable in range but opposed to that of Hegel. This period's ethical ideas remain the core of late modern ethics and the contested ground on which ethical disagreements take place today. The final chapter is a retrospective and assessment"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

It seems common at the moment to make agent-neutrality a necessary condition of ‘consequentialism” and to hold that deontological ethics are agent-relative. This note argues that both these tendencies regrettably obscure useful terms and distinctions. It concludes by considering what it would be best, now, to mean by ‘utilitarianism” and making a proposal.

John Stuart Mill is one of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century. But does he have anything to teach us today? His deep concern for freedom of the individual is thought by some to be outdated and inadequate to the cultural and religious complexities of twenty first century life. In this succinct and shrewd book, John Skorupski argues that Mill is a profound and inspiring social and political thinker from whom we still have much to learn. He reflects (...) on Mill's central arguments in his most famous works, including "Utilitarianism" and "On Liberty", and traces their implications for democratic politics. With the use of topical and controversial examples, including privacy, religious intolerance, and freedom of speech, he makes Mill's concerns our own at a time when what liberalism means, and why it matters, is once again in dispute. He concludes that Mill's place in the pantheon of 'great thinkers' rests not only on his specific political and social doctrines, but above all on his steadfastly generous and liberal vision of human beings, their relations to one another, and what makes life worth living. (shrink)

1. Relativism has always seemed in some way to flow from, and yet in some way to undermine, a naturalistic attitude towards mind and society. That is true whether one goes back to the modern roots of relativism, in the historical and anthropological perspectives which began to flourish in the eighteenth century; or even further back, to the rather similar development from prehypenSocratic anthropological speculation to the Sophistic discussions which took place in fifthhypencentury Athens. Neither implication—from a purely naturalistic conception (...) to relativism, or from relativism to the rejection of a purely naturalistic conception—is indisputable. I shall argue that neither holds. But each of them can be made to look quite plausible—and in fact both of them simultaneously; amounting in that case to an apparent reductio of naturalism. (shrink)

This paper examines T. H. Green's and Henry Sidgwick's differing views of desireand the will, and connectedly, their differing views of an individual's good and freedom. It is argued that Sidgwick makes effective criticisms of Green, but that important elements in Green's idealist view of an individual's good and freedom survive the criticism and remain significant today. It is also suggested that Sidgwick's own account of an individual's good is unclear in an important way.

This book is about normativity and reasons.

Consequence is at the heart of logic, and an account of consequence offers a vital tool in the evaluation of arguments. This text presents what the authors term as 'logical pluralism' arguing that the notion of logical consequence doesn't pin down one deductive consequence relation; it allows for many of them.

From the end of the Enlightenment to the middle of the twentieth century philosophy took fascinating and controversial paths whose relevance to contemporary post-modernist thought is becoming increasingly clear. This volume traces the English-language side of the period, while also taking into account those continental thinkers who deeply influenced twentieth-century English-language philosophy. The story begins with Reid, Coleridge, and Bentham - who set the agenda for much that followed - and continues with a portrait of the nineteenth century's greatest British (...) philosopher, John Stuart Mill. It then surveys the cross-currents of thought at the end of the century, including American pragmatism, a movement never more influential than now. Finally, it assesses two phases of what John Skorupski calls `analytic modernism' - the revolution against the idealism of Moore and Russell, and the Viennese sequel whose project was to show that philosophy consists of pseudo-problems. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

In these essays, John Skorupski develops a distinctive and systematic moral philosophy. He examines the central ethical concepts of reasons, the good, and morality, and applies the results to issues of culture and politics. Ethical Explorations firmly connects liberal politics to its ethical ideal, and links that ideal to modern morality and modern ideas of the good.

Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, J. L. Schellenberg's new book addresses the structure of..

What happens when someone acts? A familiar answer goes like this. There is something that the agent wants, and there is an action that he believes conducive to its attainment. His desire for the end, and his belief in the action as a means, justify taking the action, and they jointly cause an intention to take it, which in turn causes the corresponding movements of the agent's body. I think that the standard story is flawed in several respects. The flaw (...) that will concern me in this paper is that the story fails to include an agent-or, more precisely, fails to cast the agent in his proper role. (shrink)

Defends the buck-passing account of value from the wrong kind of reason objection by arguing that in the cases proposed there are no reasons to value the intuitively worthless object, but there are practical reasons to bring it about that one values it. Also extends the account to other evaluative concepts.

Abstract I argue that meaning in life is importantly influenced by bioloical ties. More specifically, I maintain that knowing one's relatives and especially one's parents provides a kind of self-knowledge that is of irreplaceable value in the life-task of identity formation. These claims lead me to the conclusion that it is immoral to create children with the intention that they be alienated from their bioloical relatives?for example, by donor conception.

Anthropologists have always been concerned with the difference between traditional and scientific modes of thought and with the relationships between magic, religion and science. John Skorupski distinguishes two broadly opposed approaches to these problems: the 'intellectualist' regards primitive systems of thought and actions as cosmologies, comparable to scientific theory, which emerge and persist as attempts to control the natural world; the 'symbolist' regards them as essentially representative or expressive of the pattern of social relations in the culture in which (...) they exist. Dr Skorupski considers in particular the notions of ritual, ceremony and symbol. He shows how their understanding involves and suggests more general philosophical problems of relativism, interpretation, translation, and the connections between belief and action. These are difficult and important problems and require an unusual combination of imagination and interdisciplinary exercise. This book is intended especially for philosophers, social anthropologists, social theorists and students of comparative religion. (shrink)