This essay analyzes the provocative image of the bodhisattva, the saint of the Indian Mahayana Buddhist tradition, descending into the hell realms to work for the benefit of its denizens. Inspired in part by recent attempts to naturalize Buddhist ethics, I argue that taking this ‘mythological’ image seriously, as expressing philosophical insights, helps us better understand the shape of Mahayana value theory. In particular, it expresses a controversial philosophical thesis: the claim that no amount of physical pain can disrupt the (...) flourishing of a fully virtuous person. I reconstruct two related elements of early Buddhist psychology that help us understand this Mahayana position: the distinction between hedonic sensation and virtuous or nonvirtous mental states ; and the claim that humans are massively deluded as to what constitutes well-being. Doing so also lets me emphasize the continuity between early Buddhist and Mahayana traditions in their views on well-being and flourishing. (shrink)

This essay considers the eighth century Indian Buddhist monk, Śāntideva’s strategy of using the afflictive mental states for progress towards liberation in his Introduction to the Practice of Awakening. I begin by contrasting two images from the first chapter that represent the power of bodhicitta: the fires destroying the universe at the end of time, and the mercury elixir that transmutes base metals into gold. The first of these, I argue, better illustrates the text’s predominant strategy of destroying the afflictive (...) mental states directly by their antidotes. The second, in contrast, represents an alternative strategy in which afflictive mental states like anger, craving and delusion, are manipulated for liberative gain. I offer several examples of Śāntideva’s use of the kleśas in his text, and argue that they can be understood as a continuation of the logic of skillful means, in which destructive actions, and here destructive mental states, are used to lessen suffering. Finally, I suggest that one reason Śāntideva employs the kleśas in this way is because of his realization that many practitioners early on the bodhisattva path will lack the motivation necessary to successfully pursue the difficult training of the bodhisattva. (shrink)

Professor Errol E. Harris, past-President of The Hegel Society of America, accepted the invitation of the Philosophy Department of Villanova University to occupy their Chair of Christian Philosophy for the 1982 spring semester. The following paper was presented as his inaugural address to that department.

1 My first teacher of philosophy, at what is now Rhodes University in South Africa, was Arthur R. Lord, a man who deserves to be well known, though today few people will ever have heard of him. He was himself a pupil of J.A. Smith and E.F. Carritt at Oxford in the early years of this century, during the heyday of British Idealism. In 1911 he won the Green Moral Philosophy Prize with a voluminous dissertation on the passions, which I (...) read in typescript when I was a student, but which was never published and disappeared after his death in 1940. (shrink)

The vagaries of the postal system, British or American, or both, apparently, have prevented until now by seeing Professor Hodgson’s complaints about my review of his and his colleagues’ translation of Part 3 of the Religionsphilosophie. I am dismayed and not a little surprised that he should have taken my comments so amiss, for I had not the least intention of suggesting anything but that their translation was admirable, and that the immense work they had accomplished was a very valuable (...) contribution to the subject. I thought I had made that clear. The use of the phrase “liberties taken with the text” was, perhaps, unfortunate, but to say that it was “a careless and irresponsible misrepresentation” is surely rather extreme. For what translator trying to put Hegel’s involved and involuted German into readable and intelligible English can avoid taking liberties with the text? One of the best and most gifted, William Wallace, takes liberties in almost every sentence, yet succeeds in great measure in conveying Hegel’s thought correctly and in lucid English. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley was a self-confessed idealist, but as there is no clear consensus concerning just what idealism is, the term has been applied to a wide variety of doctrines, many of which Bradley repudiated. Solipsism, the view that all and the only reality consists of the content of my consciousness, is rejected by the vast majority of idealists, and by Bradley in particular on the grounds that direct experience affords no clear conception of a self, and so far as (...) it gives any at all it is already in correlation with a not-self. If direct experience is to be transcended we may as legitimately conclude to materialism as to “idealism”; and nothing in experience, whether direct or indirect, proves that immediate feeling is confined to my self. In Ethical Studies he refers to the view that material things and other people are merely ideas in the mind of the thinker as “a silly doctrine,” and asks how the solipsist would answer the questions: Is my consciousness something that goes beyond myself; and if so in what sense? and Had I a father? What do I mean by that, and how do I reconcile my assertion of it with my answer to question? Whatever our reaction to these criticisms, they give clear evidence that Bradley rejected what he took to be solipsism, the argument of which he states as follows: “I cannot transcend experience and experience must be my experience. From this it follows that nothing beyond myself exists; for what is experience is its states.” Solipsism is the most extreme version of idealism, but for all idealists the crucial question remains whether their theories do not in the end reduce to something very like it; and if they do, they cannot be accepted, because solipsism is a patent self-contradiction, in that it reduces to the self what the very conception of a self must exclude from it. To this issue we shall have to return; let us meanwhile consider further what idealism meant for Bradley. (shrink)

The category of being-for-self is central for the whole of Hegel's system. It is the category of wholeness, what Hegel calls the true infinite; and, in the preface to the Phänomenologie he has identified the truth as the whole in its self-generation, which is what the entire system of his philosophy presents. The exposition of this category in the Logic is therefore of singular importance, yet it is by no means easy to follow. Although we may be able to understand (...) how Hegel reaches this category, how it emerges from determinate being, the subcategories into which it evolves, and the transition to quantity that it presages, present nosmall difficulty. (shrink)

The term ‘Empiricism’ has had at least two different, though not unconnected, applications in modern thought, one to scientific method and the other to philosophical theory. My intention in this lecture is to try to show that, while these two applications of the term have a common source, their actual referents are widely divergent and in large measure even mutually incompatible.

The paper by Hans-Christian Lucas on “The ‘Sovereign Ingratitude’ of Spirit toward Nature” in The Owl of Minerva, 23, 2 : 131-150, is of special interest, if only because, as Lucas says, the transition from nature to spirit is as important for Hegel as is the much criticized transition from the logic to nature. Moreover, the section on anthropology in the Geistesphilosophie is unique, difficult, and much neglected by commentators. My own interest in it dates back longer than I can (...) remember, but Lucas does not seem to be aware of my paper on the subject. He, however, has had access to more recent texts than were at that time at my disposal, from which he cites helpful passages. On these sources I am not in a position to comment, but I should like here to address afresh some of the points bearing on complaints Lucas makes against Hegel’s lack of argument and failure to demonstrate the links between the stages of the dialectic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Journalists often take themselves as having a moral duty to protect their sources. If the sources in question leak information from government departments, government ministers will consider themselves as having the moral right to demand that the journalists disclose the identity of those sources. This creates conflicts of value between what journalists and ministers consider to be right. It is argued not only that traditional moral theories cannot resolve such moral conflicts, but that they are in a sense a (...) good thing. A world in which the conflicts occur may be considered to be better than one in which they are prevented from occurring, for one can expect to have both effective journalism and effective government only in the former. The most important consequence of this view is that it makes the professional ethics of journalism (and, by implication, those of other professions) into something more than the mere application of universal moral rules to the various situations in which those who work in the profession are liable to find themselves. (shrink)

This Article explores the connections between disability and health justice in service of further tethering the two theories and practices. The author contends that disability should shift from marker of health inequity alone to critical demographic in the analytical and practical application of health justice. This theoretical move creates a more robust understanding of the harms of health injustice, its complexities, and, remedially, reveals underexplored legal and policy pathways to promote health justice.

One of the most frequently discussed passages from Locke's An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding is that which occurs in IV.vii.9, where he writes:… the Ideas first in the Mind, ‘tis evident, are those of particular Things, from whence, by slow degrees, the Understanding proceeds to some few general ones; which being taken from the ordinary and familiar Objects of Sense, are settled in the Mind, with general Names to them. Thus particular Ideas are first received and distinguished, and so (...) Knowledge got about them: and next to them, the less general, or specifick, which are next to particular. For abstract Ideas are not so obvious or easie to Children, or the yet unexercised Mind, as particular ones. If they seem so to grown Men, ’tis only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. For when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find, that general Ideas are Fictions and Contrivances of the Mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves, as we are apt to imagine. For example, Does it not require some pains and skill to form the general Idea of a Triangle, for it must be neither Oblique, nor Rectangle, neither Equilateral, Equicrural, nor Scalenon; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist; an Idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent Ideas are put together.I shall not pretend that what Locke is claiming in this passage is wholly clear, nor shall I try to defend the views expressed in it. My intention is to show that what he says here has been widely misinterpreted. It has become common to treat the contents of the passage as aberrant; as presenting a ridiculous variant on his main thesis on abstraction, or that very thesis elaborated with a foolish rhetorical flourish. But what is said in this passage is not something said elsewhere, nor is it an alternative to something said elsewhere. Here, and nowhere else, Locke shows awareness of implications for his doctrine of abstraction, of views he holds about simple ideas. (shrink)

The need for objective standards of judgement is acutely felt in the bewilderment created by the world situation of our time, a bewilderment that is partly the result of the rapid advance of the natural sciences, with its profound effects upon metaphysical doctrines, religious beliefs and moral attitudes, and partly due to the intractable problems which have arisen in social and political fields. The progress of the sciences, while it seems to have given us secure knowledge of the world about (...) us, has, at the same time, undermined confidence in the criteria of belief and judgement in the conduct of affairs which hitherto had served to guide mankind. Bereft of these the majority of men are unable to see a clear way through the complexities of modern political and economic life and are overwhelmed by the major problems that confront them. As examples of the major perplexities with which mankind is faced today, I shall mention only three:—. (shrink)

No author could fail to be grateful for so considerate and thoughtful a review of his book as Professor di Giovanni has written of mine in the Spring 1985 Owl, with its generous praise in the first paragraph. But I am somewhat bewildered by his description of my interpretation of Hegel as “foreign.” To whom is it foreign? I ask myself. Clearly, from what di Giovanni says, it is not foreign to the British idealists and their epigoni. Is it foreign (...) to Americans, and if so, to which? Is it foreign to Germans? - surely not to such as Rudiger Bubner, with whom I usually find myself in close agreement. Is it foreign to Hegel? - if so, then I have certainly failed in my avowed purpose. (shrink)

Not unexpectedly, the October meeting of the Society at The Pennsylvania State University proved to be most enjoyable. The host institution, known for many years as a center of Hegelian scholarship, provided the Society with every opportunity and facility for the success of its meeting. The modern conference center, and its staff, was efficient without any sacrifice of cordiality. Certainly every member who attended the meeting and there were about one hundred, will recall the pleasant reception and banquet - both (...) of which were held in the attractive Nittany Lion Inn. Professor Joseph Kockelmans, as local chairman, has earned the gratitude of the Society. The book-display, organized by Kevin M. Clark, was both extensive and informative. (shrink)

As in Düsseldorf in 1978, so in Montreal in 1983, the Hegel Society of America held a fringe meeting. But this last time it was more ambitious and more fully organized, a session lasting throughout the day of August 24. Lawrence Stepelevich opened the proceedings with a brief report of the development of the Owl from a nestling into a full-fledged journal. He then introduced the speakers on the subject: “The Trials of the Absolute Spirit.”.