Perfect ethical duties have usually puzzled commentators on Kant's ethics because they do not fit neatly within his taxonomy of duties. Ethical duties require the adoption of maxims of ends: the happiness of others and one's own perfection are Kant's two main categories. These duties, he claims, are of wide obligation because they do not specify what in particular one ought to do, when, and how much. They leave ‘a latitude for free choice’ as he puts it. Perfect duties, however, (...) such as the duties of respect, to avoid suicide, lying, and servility, do not appear to require the adoption of ends but only the performance or omission of specific types of actions. The puzzle is how these duties can be ethical, and therefore wide. Faced with this difficulty, Mary Gregor denies that perfect ethical duties are wide. She claims that they are an ‘anomaly’ and that they do not belong to ethics proper but to moral philosophy in general. She argues that these duties are derived from the categorical imperative, instead of, as Kant himself appears to have thought, the first principle of virtue. Taking a very different approach, Onora O'Neill finds the perfect/imperfect distinction of little importance and suggests doing without it altogether. Most other interpreters also assume that ‘wide’ is opposed to ‘perfect’ so that a wide perfect duty is a conceptual impossibility. (shrink)

I criticize the widely accepted “practical” interpretation of the universality test contained in Kant’s first formula of the categorical imperative in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals – the formula of the universal law of nature. I argue that this interpretation does not work for contradictions in conception because it wrongly takes contradictions in the will as the model for them and, as a consequence, cannot establish a clear distinction between the two kinds of contradiction. This interpretation also assumes (...) an understanding of universality that departs from Kant’s own and, cannot, for this reason, capture the kind of contradiction that he explicitly claims to establish. I provide an alternative interpretation, which I call revised logical interpretation, that allows us to account for contradictions in conception, including those examples that the practical interpretation cannot handle, as well as to establish a clear distinction between the two kinds of contradiction. (shrink)

Friends and foes of liberal neutrality assume that neutrality presupposes pluralism. On this view, the state should be neutral among the many permissible conceptions of the individual good that citizens affirm. I argue that neutrality need not be construed as a response to pluralism. I focus on the case of specifically religious neutrality and argue that it can be an appropriate political response to what I call “the fact of religious hegemony,” which is a social scenario in which a particular (...) religion is unanimously recognized as dominant. Religious neutrality, in this kind of context, requires the state to avoid all religious words and symbols that can be taken as an expression of endorsement or criticism of religion. I take this conception of religious neutrality from both political history and current political practice and discourse. Neutrality was originally conceived of as a proper political response in contexts of religious hegemony both in France and in Mexico. Today, and despite the growth of religious pluralism, this conception continues to be a live political posture in the places where it first originated. I call it “neutrality as independence from religion” and argue that it differs from liberal neutrality in crucial respects. (shrink)

De acuerdo con Hume, las evaluaciones morales se basan en los sentimientos de aprobación o de desaprobación que experimentamos al contemplar el carácter de una persona desde un punto de vista general. También sostiene que la adopción de esta perspectiva no se debe a una exigencia de la razón, sino que obedece a operaciones naturales de la imaginación. En este trabajo discuto la pregunta sobre el mecanismo psicológico por el que adoptamos este punto de vista general. Para ello explico primero (...) otras operaciones de la imaginación que son centrales en las evaluaciones morales: la asociación de percepciones en la producción de las pasiones del amor, el orgullo, el odio y la humildad; la transmisión de fuerza y vivacidad entre las percepciones; y la simpatía. A continuación señalo que el supuesto mecanismo natural de la imaginación por el cual adoptaríamos el punto de vista general parece no poder existir. Sugiero que, en lugar de ello, esta perspectiva puede concebirse como una construcción social o, como Hume diría, un "artificio" de los seres humanos. Si esto último es plausible, sin embargo, se desdibuja la distinción entre virtudes naturales y artificiales. (shrink)

In this thesis I consider two common, though directly opposed, interpretations of Kantian morality. According to what I call "the other-regarding interpretation," Kantian morality is primarily about the regulation of human interaction. According to what I call "the private and internal interpretation," Kantian morality is primarily self-regarding since what chiefly matters, on this view, is adopting moral motives. I argue that both interpretations rest on a failure to understand Kant's distinction between ethics and justice , a distinction which he introduces (...) in The Metaphysics of Morals, on which I primarily focus. As I interpret this distinction, ethics addresses the question about the supreme individual good , whereas justice addresses the question how to make possible the coexistence of the freedom of action of a plurality of agents who pursue their personal ends. I argue that the other-regarding interpretation tends to reduce morality to justice , whereas the internal and private interpretation reduces morality to ethics and cannot accommodate Kantian justice as part of morality. I focus most of my attention on the former view because it has been significantly more influential in recent debates. Against this view, I argue that ethics, on Kant's account, is about the pursuit of the supreme individual good , and not about the regulation of human interaction. The tendency to reduce morality to justice is manifest in the thesis that the justification of principles of personal morality rest upon an agreement as well as in a certain version of the thesis of the priority of the right over the good. Both theses are present in the work of Jurgen Habermas. The use of agreement is common among followers of John Rawls's who attempt to extend his Contractarian justification of principles of justice to the domain of personal morality. Such an extension, I argue, presupposes an understanding of personal morality by analogy with justice. Paradoxically, these two theses are regarded as "Kantian," though they have contributed to the distortion in recent debates of what I argue is central to Kant's ethics. (shrink)

El principio de tolerancia recibe un giro novedoso en la obra de John Rawls con su propuesta de aplicarlo a la filosofía misma.

En este estudio crítico, analizo la obra de Rivera Castro Virtud, felicidad y religión en la filosofía moral de Kant, obra en la que se resalta la importancia de la felicidad en la ética de Kant y se busca establecer su relación con la virtud. Mis objeciones conceptuales y metodológicas se orientan eminentemente a cuestionar su tesis básica sobre el alcance y especificidad del rol motivacional de la felicidad en tanto que componente del bien supremo. In this critical essay, (...) I analyse Rivera Castro's Virtud, felicidad y religión en la filosofía moral de Kant. In this work, the author highlights the significance of happiness in Kant's Ethics, aiming at establishing its relation to virtue. My conceptual and methodological objections are intended to question her fundamental thesis on the scope and specificity of the motivational role happiness plays as component element of the highest good. (shrink)

RESUMEN El artículo examina el consuelo como una cuestión filosófica en cuanto que concreción de la solicitud, y muestra los recursos que aporta para comprender al ser humano como sujeto sufriente y respondiente. Se analiza el consuelo en cuanto que fenómeno de acceso a otras dimensiones constitutivas del ser humano, como la afectividad, la apelación y el cuidado. ABSTRACT The article examines consolation as a philosophical issue insofar as it is a materialization of attentiveness, and explains the resources it offers (...) to understand human beings as suffering and caring subjects. It analyzes consolation as a phenomenon that provides access to other constitutive dimensions of the human being, such as affectivity, appeal, and care. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called the historian's fallacy (HF). In HF, the writing of a historical event has been skewed by way of biased hindsight on the author's part. The historian has written the details of the event down in such a way that the facts of the event, only seen after the event has occurred, cause the initial event to become distorted. HF should not be confused with a method historians use (...) in the present day when documenting the past. This is called presentism, a mode of historical analysis in which present‐day ideas are projected into the past. Another issue to address is that HF should not be confused with historical fallacy. One commits the historical fallacy when one reads into a process the results that occur because of that process. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy: red herring (RH). An RH is a distraction device and refers to an informal logical fallacy that detracts from the actual issue, allowing one to be sidetracked from what is actually happening and to draw a false conclusion. RHs can also be used as a literary device to steer readers off course such as in mystery novels like Perry Mason stories and, of course, Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan (...) Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles presents a classic example of an RH. If a topic is proposed, and we can speak or write about it without departing from the initial trail, then we have successfully avoided an RH fallacy. (shrink)

La exploración sobre la naturaleza, el significado y la estructura del concepto de crisis, y la definición misma de una crisis social convocan, primero, al uso, por lo general, ambiguo del término y, segundo, a las condiciones que manifiesta el mundo contemporáneo. Así, en este libro se procura analizar el, popularmente empleado pero poco esclarecido, concepto de crisis, sobre todo, en dos autores de la segunda generación de la teoría crítica, Habermas y Offe. La intención fundamental del texto es crear, (...) a partir de estos autores, un enfoque para estudiar las dinámicas patológicas de las sociedades contemporáneas. (shrink)

Two basic kinds of communitarians are discriminated. Weak communitarians reject only the liberal metaethical theses that I call universalism and neutralism, but endorse liberal norms and institutions at the normative level. Strong communitarians condemn liberalism at both levels: they reject not only universalism and neutralism, but also substantive liberal norms defending communitarian values. This article intends to show certain internal paradoxes of these two versions of communitarianism.

This paper argues that the diversity of conflicting comprehensive doctrines in liberal pluralist societies raises a problem of estrangement between citizens and the basic structure of society that Rawls' version of political liberalism does not successfully solve. 'Political estrangement' occurs when someone refuses to accept a political outcome that favors a comprehensive doctrine she rejects, based on what she imagines, correctly or incorrectly, to be true of her fellow citizens' comprehensive doctrines and their effect on political outcomes. Rawls argues that (...) the political conception of justice and the use of public reason ensure the incompatibility of our comprehensive doctrines will not undermine our willingness to to accept political decisions contrary to our own values. However, public reason does not guarantee this result. Imagination can allow us to see that the influence of some reasonable comprehensive doctrines can lead to oppressive political outcomes and public reason restricts us from addressing this fact. Yet, widening public reason to account for this problem is likely to increase the conditions that cause estrangement. The paper concludes that the political conception of justice and public reason may sometimes fail to adequately justify political outcomes in the sense Rawls hopes. (shrink)

Informed by Gloria Anzaldúa's and José Carlos Mariátegui's work, as well as by Andean cosmology, Omar Rivera turns to Inka stonework and architecture as an example of a "Cosmological Aesthetics." He articulates ways of sensing, feeling and remembering that are attuned to an aesthetic of water, earth and light. On this basis, Rivera brings forth a corporeal orientation that can be inhabited by the oppressed, one that withdraws from predominant modern/Western conceptions of the human. By providing an aesthetic (...) analysis of cosmological sensing, Rivera sets the stage for exploring physical dimensions of anti-colonial resistance, and furthers the Latinx and Latin American tradition of anti-colonial and liberatory philosophy. Seeingaesthetic involvements with the cosmos as a source for embodied modes of resistance, Rivera turns to the work of María Lugones and Enrique Dussel in order to make explicit the aesthetic dimensions of their work. Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance creates a new dialogue between art historians, artists, and philosophers working on Latin American thought, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. It weaves together a Latin American philosophy that connects pre-Columbian cosmologies with contemporary thinkers. Rivera's original approach introduces us to the living, evolving and aesthetic alternatives to coloniality of power and of knowledge, overhauling current understandings of decolonial theory and opening the tradition in transformative ways. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'begging the question'. Begging the question is a logical fallacy in which the premise of an argument presupposes the truth of its conclusion; in other words, the argument takes for granted what it is supposed to prove. In works such as Prior Analytics and Topics, Aristotle was the first to introduce begging the question by stating what translates to “asking the initial thing” or “asking the original point”. Labeling (...) an argument as “begging the question” is often itself using the fallacy's name incorrectly, and yet we accept this incorrect usage. Politics is a common place for begging the question. Politicians in a debate often beg the question by giving answers that give the conclusion of the person they are citing as a truth or fact and never show any real proof of the matter. (shrink)

Resumen: La presente contribución gira en torno al significado del atentado terrorista del 11 de septiembre de 2001 para la hermenéutica filosófica, en particular la de Gianni Vattimo. El turinés gestó en sus textos de entre 2006 y 2014 una versión nueva de la hermenéutica que se basa en la experiencia de este acontecimiento. Esta nueva hermenéutica estaría atenta al conflicto y a las transformaciones sociales y tendría por núcleo la noción de “evento”, Sin embargo, Vattimo mismo no ofrece una (...) definición operativa adecuada del término. Ante esto, propongo incorporar a la tradición hermenéutica conceptos como “evento” y “milagro”, acuñados por Joseph de Maistre. Se trata de una propuesta de “maistrianización” de la hermenéutica para hacer de ella un discurso viable y fructífero en un mundo violento e inestable. (shrink)

Edited by Ivette Fred-Rivera and Jessica Leech. What is the relationship between ontology and modality: between what there is, and what there could be, must be, or might have been? Throughout a distinguished career, Bob Hale’s work has addressed this question on a number of fronts, through the development of a Fregean approach to ontology, an essentialist theory of modality, and in his work on neo-logicism in the philosophy of mathematics. This collection of new essays engages with these themes (...) in Hale’s work in order to make further progress in our understanding of ontology, modality, and the relations between them. Some essays directly address questions in modal metaphysics, drawing on ontological concerns. Others raise questions in modal epistemology and its links to matters of ontology, such as the challenge to give an epistemology of essence. There are also several essays engaging with questions of what might be called ‘modal ontology’: the study of whether and what things exist necessarily or contingently. Such issues can be raised and addressed directly, but they also have an important bearing on the kinds of semantic commitments engendered in logic and mathematics, e.g., to the existence of sets, or numbers, or properties, and so on. It is thus explored in some chapters to what extent one’s ontology—and indeed, one’s ontology of necessary beings—interacts with other plausible assumptions and commitments. (shrink)

In his recent article, ‘A Gift to Theology? Jean-Luc Marion's ‘Saturated Phenomena’ in Christological Perspective’, Brian Robinette has critiqued Marion's phenomenology for confining theology to a one-sided approach to Christology, one that stresses only the passive, mystical reception of Christ. To correct this imbalance, Robinette brings Marion into dialogue with those more active Christologies or ‘prophetical-ethical’ liberation theologies of Gustavo Gutierrez, Johann Baptist Metz and others that stress a life-praxis focused on confronting evil and suffering. In this essay I am (...) arguing that Robinette has not fully developed the ‘logic’ of Marion's phenomenology of the ‘call and the gifted’, in which both a passive and an active element are operative. I explore more fully that very dynamic phenomenological process of the call-and-the-gifted as developed in Marion's work Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Once viewed in Christological perspective, and especially in light of Christ's death and resurrection, Marion's phenomenology entails an ethical trope consistent with the mission of Christ as rendered in Scriptural revelation, and thus the gap between Marion's work and the prophetical-ethical theologies of Gutierrez and Baptist Metz becomes narrowed. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Metaethics: The Foundations of Moral Values and Norms Normative Principles: Human Rights and Democracy Applications: Bioethics and Multiculturalism Conclusion References.

This book focuses on the relationships between phenomenology and theology, which have been varied and complex but seem currently in an inconclusive and loosely defined state. Methodological rigour is not much in evidence, and the two disciplines continue to defy any authoritative synthesis. While both disciplines grapple with questions concerning the fundamental structures of human experience, their relation is troubled by the elusive roles of Revelation and faith, which threaten the scientific autonomy of philosophy on one side and disable theologians (...) for consistent philosophical discourse on the other. This volume revisits that conundrum from various perspectives, as it at once repristinates some of the most vibrant points of encounter and opens possibilities for new beginnings. It begins with the theological musings into which leading phenomenologists have been drawn from the start, with special reference to Husserl, Heidegger, Michel Henry, as well as backward glances to Fichte, Schelling, and Blondel. A second section takes up specific theological themes and examines how phenomenological approaches can refine thinking on them. These include the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Eucharist, Grace, and Prayer. A dialogue between phenomenology and classical theologians is staged in the third section: Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eckhart, Karl Rahner. The closing section ranges more widely, discussing atheism, non-realist theology, and Hinduism from phenomenological angles, and showing how these topics too come within the ambit of theology. (shrink)