First published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Exchange of Words is a philosophical exploration of human testimony, specifically as a form of intersubjective understanding in which speakers communicate by making themselves accountable for the truth of what they say. This account weaves together themes from philosophy of language, moral psychology, action theory, and epistemology, for a new approach to this basic human phenomenon.

The paper argues for the centrality of believing the speaker (as distinct from believing the statement) in the epistemology of testimony, and develops a line of thought from Angus Ross which claims that in telling someone something, the kind of reason for belief that a speaker presents is of an essentially different kind from ordinary evidence. Investigating the nature of the audience's dependence on the speaker's free assurance leads to a discussion of Grice's formulation of non-natural meaning in an epistemological (...) light, concentrating on just how the recognition of the speaker's self-reflexive intention is supposed to count for his audience as a reason to believe P. This is understood as the speaker's explicitly assuming responsibility for the truth of his statement, and thereby constituting his utterance as a reason to believe. (shrink)

A philosophical essay on the role of narrative autobiography in the effort of self-understanding. It originated as the 2015 lecture in the annual series of Aquinas Lectures at Marquette University, begun in 1937.

Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran (...) argues for a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person.Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others. (shrink)

Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran (...) argues for a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person. Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others. (shrink)

The notion of ‘bipolar’ or ‘second‐personal’ normativity is often illustrated by such situations as that of one person addressing a complaint to another, or asserting some right, or claiming some authority. This paper argues that the presence of speech acts of various kinds in the development of the idea of the ‘second‐personal’ is not accidental. Through development of a notion of ‘illocutionary authority’ I seek to show a role for the ‘second‐personal’ in ordinary testimony, despite Darwall's argument that the notion (...) of the ‘second‐personal’ marks a divide between practical and theoretical reason. (shrink)

One way in which the characteristic gestures of philosophy and criticism differ from each other lies in their involvements with disillusionment, with the undoing of our naivete, especially regarding what we take ourselves to know about the meaning of what we say. Philosophy will often find less than we thought was there, perhaps nothing at all, in what we say about the “external” world, or in our judgments of value, or in our ordinary psychological talk. The work of criticism, on (...) the other hand, frequently disillusions by finding disturbingly more in what is said than we precritically thought was there. In our relation to the meaningfulness of what we say, there is a disillusionment of plentitude as well as of emptiness. And no doubt what is “less” for one discipline may be “more” of what someone else is looking for.In recent years, metaphor has attracted more than its share of both philosophical and critical attention, including philosophical denials of the obvious, as well as critical challenges to the obviousness of the ways we talk about metaphor. In this paper I discuss a problem of each sort and suggest a complex of relations between them. The particular denial of the obvious that I’m interested in is the claim recently made by Donald Davidson that “a metaphor doesn’t say anything beyond its literal meaning ,” nor is it even correct to speak of metaphor as a form of communication.1 There’s disillusionment with a vengeance; and even if not strictly believable, it is still not without its therapeutic value, as we shall see. 1. Donald Davidson, “What Metaphors Mean,” in On Metaphor, ed. Sheldon Sacks , p. 30; hereafter abbreviated “WMM.” Davidson’s view has found supporters among both philosophers and literary theorists. It is, for example, important to the early argument of Richard Rorty’s recent book. See his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity , p. 18. Richard Moran is an assistant professor of philosophy at Princeton University. He is currently working on a book on subjectivity and contemporary concepts of personhood. (shrink)

Beauty is a contested concept insofar as it seeks to mark a categorical distinction among the sources of pleasure, typically in terms of oppositions such as objective/subjective, universal/particular, necessity/contingency. Kant represents a culmination of this tradition in defining the judgment of beauty in terms of the requirement for universal agreement, modeling the judgment of beauty as closely as possible to ordinary factual judgments. A different tradition of thinking about beauty, however, while still seeking to mark a categorical distinction by reference (...) to the idea of necessity, finds the relevant sense of necessity not in conditions of agreement but necessities of erotic love and the sense of requirement felt toward its objects. This paper explores the consequences of taking this other tradition seriously, using Proust as a representative exemplar, as a way both of making sense of some of the features Kant ascribes to the concept of the beautiful, while avoiding the paradoxes stemming from his focus on the conditions for universal agreement. (shrink)

It is undeniable that the assumption of sincerity is important to assertion, and that assertion is central to the transmission of beliefs through human testimony. Discussions of testimony, however, often assume that the epistemic importance of sincerity to testimony is that of a (fallible) guarantee of access to the actual beliefs of the speaker. Other things being equal, we would do as well or better if we had some kind of unmediated access to the beliefs of the other person, without (...) the risks involved in the overt act of speaking, and the assumption of sincerity in speech is the closest we can come to this access. Contrary to this picture, I argue that sincerity has a quite different epistemic role to play in testimony than that of an indicator of the speaker's beliefs. The epistemology of testimony requires reference to the speaker as agent, and not just the speaker's beliefs, as well as a sense of 'expression of belief' that links it to the specifically addressive relation to another person. (shrink)

Among the legacies of Elizabeth Anscombe's 1957 monograph Intention are the introduction of the notion of 'practical knowledge' into contemporary philosophical discussion of action, and her claim, pursued throughout the book, that an agent's knowledge of what he is doing is characteristically not based on observation.' Each idea by itself has its own obscurities, of course, but my focus here will be on the relation between the two ideas, how it is that the discussion of action may lead us to (...) speak of non-observational knowledge at all, and how this notion can be part of the understanding of a kind of ordinary knowledge that we have reason to consider practical rather than speculative. Anscombe mentions several quite different things under the heading of 'non-observational knowledge', and she first introduces the notion of the nonobservational for purely dialectical purposes, associated with the task of setting out the field she wants to investigate, in a way that ... (shrink)

Among the legacies of Elizabeth Anscombe's 1957 monograph Intention are the introduction of the notion of ‘practical knowledge’ into contemporary philosophical discussion of action, and her claim, pursued throughout the book, that an agent's knowledge of what he is doing is characteristically not based on observation. Each idea by itself has its own obscurities, of course, but my focus here will be on the relation between the two ideas, how it is that the discussion of action may lead us to (...) speak of non-observational knowledge at all, and how this notion can be part of the understanding of a kind of ordinary knowledge that we have reason to consider practical rather than speculative. Anscombe mentions several quite different things under the heading of ‘non-observational knowledge’, and she first introduces the notion of the nonobservational for purely dialectical purposes, associated with the task of setting out the field she wants to investigate, in a way that avoids begging the very questions she means to raise. She needs a way of distinguishing the class of movements to which a special sense of the question ‘Why?’ applies, but which doesn't itself employ the concepts of ‘being intentional’ or ‘acting for a reason’. Section 8 begins: “What is required is to describe this class without using any notions like ‘intended’ or ‘willed’ or ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’. This can be done as follows: we first point out a particular class of things which are true of a man: namely the class of things which he knows without observation.” She first illustrates this by the example of knowledge of the position of one's limbs, the immediate way one can normally tell, e.g., whether one's knee is bent or not. But examples of this sort are in fact ill suited to shed light on the idea of ‘practical knowledge’, which is the true focus of the idea of the non-observational in the study of action. When we see this we will be better able to see why Anscombe is concerned with the non-observational in the first place, and how this concern is tied to other characteristic Anscombian theses, for instance that an action will be intentional under some descriptions but not others, and that practical knowledge is distinguished from speculative knowledge in being “the cause of what it understands”. And we will be able to understand how it is that an agent can be said to know without observation that he is doing something like painting the wall yellow, when this knowledge so patently involves claims about what is happening in the world, matters which it seems could only be known observationally. (shrink)

remarks some lessons about self-knowledge (and some other self-relations) as well as use them to throw some light on what might seem to be a fairly distant area of philosophy, namely, Sartre's view of the person as of a divided nature, divided between what he calls the self-as-facticity and the self-as-transcendence. I hope it will become clear that there is not just perversity on my part in bringing together Wittgenstein and the last great Cartesian. One specific connection that will occupy (...) me here is their shared hostility to the idea of theoretical certainty as our model for the authority of ordinary self-knowledge, and their relating of such a theoretical model to specific forms of self-alienation. This, in turn, is related to another concern they share, a concern with the difficulties, philosophical and otherwise, in conceiving of oneself as but one person in the world among others. (shrink)

Of course in every act of this kind, there remains the possibility of putting this act into question – insofar as it refers to more distant, more essential ends.... For example the sentence which I write is the meaning of the letters I trace, but the whole work I wish to produce is the meaning of the sentence. And this work is a possibility in connection with which I can feel anguish; it is truly my possibility...tomorrow in relation to it (...) my freedom can exercise its nihilating power. (shrink)

It is undeniable that the assumption of sincerity is important to assertion, and that assertion is central to the transmission of beliefs through human testimony. Discussions of testimony, however, often assume that the epistemic importance of sincerity to testimony is that of a guarantee of access to the actual beliefs of the speaker. Other things being equal, we would do as well or better if we had some kind of unmediated access to the beliefs of the other person, without the (...) risks involved in the overt act of speaking, and the assumption of sincerity in speech is the closest we can come to this access. Contrary to this picture, I argue that sincerity has a quite different epistemic role to play in testimony than that of an indicator of the speaker’s beliefs. The epistemology of testimony requires reference to the speaker as agent, and not just the speaker’s beliefs, as well as a sense of ‘expression of belief’ that links it to the specifically addressive relation to another person. (shrink)

The Philosophical Imagination is a collection of essays ranging over a wide range of philosophical themes: from the emotional engagement with fictions, to the functioning of metaphor in poetry and in rhetoric, to the concept of beauty in Kant and in Proust, and the nature of the first-person perspective in thought and action.

Metaphor enters contemporary philosophical discussion from a variety of directions. Aside from its obvious importance in poetics, rhetoric, and aesthetics, it also figures in such fields as philosophy of mind (e.g., the question of the metaphorical status of ordinary mental concepts), philosophy of science (e.g, the comparison of metaphors and explanatory models), in epistemology (e.g., analogical reasoning), and in cognitive studies (in, e.g., the theory of concept-formation). This article will concentrate on issues metaphor raises for the philosophy of language, with (...) the understanding that the issues in these various fields cannot be wholly isolated from each other. Metaphor is an issue for the philosophy of language not only for its own sake, as a linguistic phenomenon deserving of analysis and interpretation, but also for the light it sheds on non-figurative language, the domain of the literal which is the normal preoccupation of the philosopher of language. A poor reason for this preoccupation would be the assumption that purely literal language is what most language-use consists in, with metaphor and the like sharing the relative infrequency and marginal status of songs or riddles. This would not be a good reason not only because mere frequency is not a good guide to theoretical importance, but also because it is doubtful that the assumption is even true. In recent years, writers with very different concerns have pointed out that figurative language of one sort or another is a staple of the most. (shrink)

Authority and Estrangement addresses a set of questions about self-knowledge and seeks to answer them in the context of the broader differences between the first-person and third-person perspectives on oneself. Attention to these broader differences takes the discussion from epistemology to moral psychology, and seeks to relate some of the issues of contemporary philosophy of mind to the concerns with self-consciousness in post-Kantian thought.

I’m very grateful for the attention given to my book by all the commentators, and their various and thoughtful responses have helped me in many ways. Several related issues are raised by the comments of Heal and Reginster, and to avoid repetition I will discuss them together here. Both of them raise questions about the scope and authority of rationality over a person’s beliefs and other attitudes, and ask what is supposed to be wrong with adopting what I describe as (...) a spectator’s point of view on oneself, and whether this stance by itself involves the evasion of rational responsibility for one’s attitudes. They also, in their different ways, provide searching discussions of the ‘rakehell’ case from Chapter 5, where several of these issues come together, so I’d like to respond to those parts of their comments together as well. (shrink)

The Philosophical Imagination is a collection of essays ranging over a wide range of philosophical themes: from the emotional engagement with fictions, to the functioning of metaphor in poetry and in rhetoric, to the concept of beauty in Kant and in Proust, and the nature of the first-person perspective in thought and action.

It is not unusual for even the very greatest polemics to proceed through some unfairness toward what they attack, indeed to draw strength from the very distortions which they impose upon their targets. In the same way that a good caricature of a person’s face enables us to see something that we feel was genuinely there to be seen all along, a conviction that persists in the face of, and may indeed be sustained by, our ongoing sense of the discrepancy (...) between the picture and the reality. Some such distortion may be necessary in order to point to or make visible a feature that is perfectly present, but is obscured by the mass of other details. In the case of ideas and systems of thought there is an additional reason for a positive concern with distortion, and that is that we do not encounter ideas in a social or intellectual void. Rather, they come to us through their admirers, detractors, followers and opponents. The social and intellectual reception and dissemination of Plato, or Marx, or the Bible are now and forever part of the meaning of those texts, and this remains true however demonstrable it may be that their reception involves a large distortion of what is actually there in those texts. To concern oneself with them must also be to concern oneself with what both their advocates and opponents have made of them, and in this or that context this image may be of greater social and intellectual importance than the question of strictly ‘correct’ readings. And of course for no contemporary school of philosophy has the social and cultural milieu of its reception been more important to its identity as a trend of thought than in the case of Existentialism, particularly in its French, Sartrean form. Today, of course, it has been a fact of intellectual life within the Academy for over 30 years that Existentialism has no friends, and is.. (shrink)

central to virtually all contemporary thinking on self-consciousness and first-person authority. And a good measure of its importance has been not only as an evolving philosophical account of these phenomena, but also as a model of an account that places the capacity for specifically first-person awareness of one's mental states at the center of what it is to be a subject of mental states in the first place. For not every philosophical account of introspection will take its specifically first-person features (...) to be essential to it (e.g., if it is allowed that this "faculty" could in principle be directed at the mind of another person), or seek to account for the capacity for self-knowl-. (shrink)

The ideas of expression and expressiveness have been central to Stanley Cavell’s writing from the beginning, joining themes from his more strictly philosophical writing to the role of human expression as projected in cinema. This paper explores a thread running through several different parts of his writing, relating claims he makes about the photographic medium of film and its implications for the question of expression and expressivity in film There is an invocation of notions of necessity and control in the (...) context of cinema that should be understood in the context of related ideas in his writings on Wittgenstein and others. The paper pursues some thoughts about the power of the camera, the themes of activity and passivity in expression, and the human face as the privileged field of such activity and passivity. (shrink)

Metaphor is an issue for the philosophy of language not only for its own sake, as a linguistic phenomenon deserving of analysis and interpretation, but also for the light it sheds on non‐figurative language, the domain of the literal which is the normal preoccupation of the philosopher of language. If all we mean by paraphrase is the ability to say what one means in other words, then it does seem true that there is a difference between idiom and metaphor here. (...) In a paper that has attracted a great deal of commentary, Donald Davidson has argued that we should indeed cease talking about figurative meaning in connection with metaphor altogether; and he seems prepared to accept the consequences that follow from this rejection. The theory of figurative language prompting the rethinking of some of the basic concepts in the philosophy of language generally. (shrink)

A short critical response to Hannah Ginsborg’s book, The Normativity of Nature, in which I raise some questions about how to understand the idea that calling something beautiful is a form of praise of that thing.

The ideas of expression and expressiveness have been central to Stanley Cavell’s writing from the beginning, joining themes from his more strictly philosophical writing to the role of human expression as projected in cinema. This paper explores a thread running through several different parts of his writing, relating claims he makes about the photographic medium of film and its implications for the question of expression and expressivity in film There is an invocation of notions of necessity and control in the (...) context of cinema that should be understood in the context of related ideas in his writings on Wittgenstein and others. The paper pursues some thoughts about the power of the camera, the themes of activity and passivity in expression, and the human face as the privileged field of such activity and passivity. (shrink)

"Traditionnellement, la philosophie a pensé la connaissance de soi sur le mode problématique d'un sujet faisant de lui-même son propre objet de connaissance. Constatant l'impasse où mène cette approche contemplative de la connaissance de soi, Richard Moran propose de la repenser à partir de la responsabilité de la personne vis-à-vis de ses propres attitudes et de l'autorité de l'agent sur ses propres actions. En abordant la connaissance de soi sous l'angle d'une psychologie morale, Autorité et aliénation la renouvelle (...) en profondeur en mettant en évidence non seulement l'autorité de la première personne, mais aussi ses défaillances et ses limites. Faisant dialoguer la philosophie analytique et la philosophie continentale, de Wittgenstein à Sartre, Richard Moran montre que l'aliénation, comprise comme une forme d'étrangeté à soi (à ce qui, de nous, nous échappe), délimite, autant que l'autorité, les contours de la connaissance de soi."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

In an 1896 letter to Wilhelm Fliess, the first and primary confidante for his fledgling ideas, the young Sigmund Freud wrote: “I see that you are using the circuitous route of medicine to attain your first ideal, the physiological understanding of man, while I secretly nurse the hope of arriving by the same route at my own original objective, philosophy. For that was my original ambition, before I knew what I was intended to do in the world.”1 When philosophy is (...) mentioned in his later, published, writings, it will normally be an occasion for Freud to disavow any such connection with the enterprise of psychoanalysis, a repeated gesture of denial that naturally only goes to show how profound the relationship must really be. For many years now, Jonathan Lear has been one of the great mediators between the worlds of philosophy and psychoanalysis, showing us what they have to learn from each other, and what they have difficulty 1 accepting from each other. In these lectures he explores a connection between a stance toward oneself that is furthered in the psychoanalytic session, and a stance towards one‟s life to which Kierkegaard gives the name „irony‟. I will begin my remarks with some thoughts about the general picture of irony presented in Professor Lear‟s lectures, and its relation to certain philosophical claims for the role of what is variously called „critical reflection‟, „self-consciousness‟, or the metaphor of “stepping back” from some aspect of one‟s thought or engagement in the world. I will then focus on the idea of self-knowledge at play in the lectures and the role of something called „expression‟ in this context. (shrink)

In philosophy it is widely recognized that a person’s first-person perspective on his own thought and action is importantly different from the third-person perspective we may have on the thought and actions of other people. In daily life it is natural to ask someone what he is doing or what he thinks about something, on the assumption that he knows what he is doing or what he is thinking. Some philosophers, however, argue that it is impossible to speak of knowledge (...) in this context because the idea of knowledge requires a kind of distance between subject and object, a distance that is not present in the first-person context. I argue that this denial of self-knowledge is a paradoxical conclusion that we can resist, while retaining what is distinctive about the first-person. (shrink)

I’m very grateful for the attention given to my book by all the commentators, and their various and thoughtful responses have helped me in many ways. Several related issues are raised by the comments of Heal and Reginster, and to avoid repetition I will discuss them together here. Both of them raise questions about the scope and authority of rationality over a person’s beliefs and other attitudes, and ask what is supposed to be wrong with adopting what I describe as (...) a spectator’s point of view on oneself, and whether this stance by itself involves the evasion of rational responsibility for one’s attitudes. They also, in their different ways, provide searching discussions of the ‘rakehell’ case from Chapter 5, where several of these issues come together, so I’d like to respond to those parts of their comments together as well. (shrink)

Authority and Estrangement addresses a set of questions about self-knowledge and seeks to answer them in the context of the broader differences between the first-person and third-person perspectives on oneself. Attention to these broader differences takes the discussion from epistemology to moral psychology, and seeks to relate some of the issues of contemporary philosophy of mind to the concerns with self-consciousness in post-Kantian thought.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 422-423 [Access article in PDF] Robin Small, editor. A Hundred Years of Phenomenology: Perspectives on a Philosophical Tradition. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001. Pp. xxix + 191. Cloth, $79.95.The stated aim of this collection of thirteen essays (mostly new—four are reprints) by philosophers resident in Australia is to offer selective perspectives on the phenomenological tradition, correcting misunderstandings and highlighting aspects overlooked in (...) standard commentaries. Presumably, it also wants to exhibit contemporary Australian writing in the phenomenological tradition, and situate phenomenological claims in terms graspable by analytic philosophers.Robin Small's introduction, taking Husserl's conception of eidetic intuition as fundamental, sketches the rise of phenomenology. The collection is then divided into three parts. Part One ("Approaching the Sources") focuses on the sources of phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger) and opens with a thoughtful essay by Max Deutscher, reprinted from the Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1980), which is replied to by Maurita Harney. Three further, not particularly distinguished, essays deal with the issues of realism, relativism, [End Page 422] and the relation between Ryle and Husserl. Part Two ("Following the Tradition") deals with new themes arising in Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida, while Part Three ("Making Connections") explores the relation between phenomenology and other disciplines, chiefly sociology, anthropology, and literature. A final essay by Jocelyn Dunphy Bloomfield examines the relevance of phenomenology in the Australian context.The collection is interesting but uneven. Some of the essays are out of date: Small's essay on Ryle and Husserl originally appeared in 1981 and Purushottama Bilimoria's paper, "Heidegger and the Japanese Connection," first published in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (1991), is in need of updating given the upsurge of interest in Husserl in Asia in recent years. Deutscher's "Husserl's Transcendental Subjectivity" is helpful in that it introduces Husserl's transcendental idealism through unusually prosaic analogies. He suggests that the transcendental attitude can be grasped in familiar experiences such as "keeping silence" during an awkward or embarrassing moment or adopting a detached or removed stance. An actor on stage can express anger without being angry. The transcendental attitude is such a detached spectator attitude; it is the capacity we have to judge and appraise ourselves (8). Moreover, it is in this attitude that we come to recognize our commitments to others. Deutscher resists the temptation to separate radically the ordinary living in the world from the detached contemplation of it. There never can be total but only intermittent detachment from the life-world; nevertheless the transcendental epoché is important in that it allows us the chance to gain self-awareness about our situation, about our "forms of life." While Deutscher does a terrific job demystifying one of Husserl's central and much misunderstood concepts, he is at risk of oversimplifying and worse of psychologizing Husserl's insights.Richard Campbell's essay on Heidegger's conception of truth as aletheia is also particularly noteworthy in that it is a philosophically sophisticated attempt to cut through Heidegger's somewhat inflated jargon and expresses his central intuitions about truth. Campbell goes to some trouble to elucidate and disambiguate what Heidegger is saying. Furthermore, he believes Heidegger is wrong in his interpretation of Plato; Plato is doing precisely the opposite of what Heidegger says he is doing. Deutscher's essay on Sartre, informed by an analytic rigor and sensitivity to ambiguity, gives a very clear account and partial defence of the relations between positional consciousness of the object and non-positional self-consciounsess. He is critical of Sartre's sweeping concept of the "in itself" and points out that in reality there are many diverse "in-itselves" with different real properties. Crittenden, too, has an interesting essay on Sartre's conception of "the look." Sartre understands the other as the one who looks at (and thereby seeks to objectify me) whereas for de Beauvoir, the other (in the particular case: woman) is the looked at and objectified. The article on sociology and phenomenology attempts to show the relation between their methods... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 422-423 [Access article in PDF] Robin Small, editor. A Hundred Years of Phenomenology: Perspectives on a Philosophical Tradition. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001. Pp. xxix + 191. Cloth, $79.95.The stated aim of this collection of thirteen essays (mostly new—four are reprints) by philosophers resident in Australia is to offer selective perspectives on the phenomenological tradition, correcting misunderstandings and highlighting aspects overlooked in (...) standard commentaries. Presumably, it also wants to exhibit contemporary Australian writing in the phenomenological tradition, and situate phenomenological claims in terms graspable by analytic philosophers.Robin Small's introduction, taking Husserl's conception of eidetic intuition as fundamental, sketches the rise of phenomenology. The collection is then divided into three parts. Part One ("Approaching the Sources") focuses on the sources of phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger) and opens with a thoughtful essay by Max Deutscher, reprinted from the Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1980), which is replied to by Maurita Harney. Three further, not particularly distinguished, essays deal with the issues of realism, relativism, [End Page 422] and the relation between Ryle and Husserl. Part Two ("Following the Tradition") deals with new themes arising in Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida, while Part Three ("Making Connections") explores the relation between phenomenology and other disciplines, chiefly sociology, anthropology, and literature. A final essay by Jocelyn Dunphy Bloomfield examines the relevance of phenomenology in the Australian context.The collection is interesting but uneven. Some of the essays are out of date: Small's essay on Ryle and Husserl originally appeared in 1981 and Purushottama Bilimoria's paper, "Heidegger and the Japanese Connection," first published in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (1991), is in need of updating given the upsurge of interest in Husserl in Asia in recent years. Deutscher's "Husserl's Transcendental Subjectivity" is helpful in that it introduces Husserl's transcendental idealism through unusually prosaic analogies. He suggests that the transcendental attitude can be grasped in familiar experiences such as "keeping silence" during an awkward or embarrassing moment or adopting a detached or removed stance. An actor on stage can express anger without being angry. The transcendental attitude is such a detached spectator attitude; it is the capacity we have to judge and appraise ourselves (8). Moreover, it is in this attitude that we come to recognize our commitments to others. Deutscher resists the temptation to separate radically the ordinary living in the world from the detached contemplation of it. There never can be total but only intermittent detachment from the life-world; nevertheless the transcendental epoché is important in that it allows us the chance to gain self-awareness about our situation, about our "forms of life." While Deutscher does a terrific job demystifying one of Husserl's central and much misunderstood concepts, he is at risk of oversimplifying and worse of psychologizing Husserl's insights.Richard Campbell's essay on Heidegger's conception of truth as aletheia is also particularly noteworthy in that it is a philosophically sophisticated attempt to cut through Heidegger's somewhat inflated jargon and expresses his central intuitions about truth. Campbell goes to some trouble to elucidate and disambiguate what Heidegger is saying. Furthermore, he believes Heidegger is wrong in his interpretation of Plato; Plato is doing precisely the opposite of what Heidegger says he is doing. Deutscher's essay on Sartre, informed by an analytic rigor and sensitivity to ambiguity, gives a very clear account and partial defence of the relations between positional consciousness of the object and non-positional self-consciounsess. He is critical of Sartre's sweeping concept of the "in itself" and points out that in reality there are many diverse "in-itselves" with different real properties. Crittenden, too, has an interesting essay on Sartre's conception of "the look." Sartre understands the other as the one who looks at (and thereby seeks to objectify me) whereas for de Beauvoir, the other (in the particular case: woman) is the looked at and objectified. The article on sociology and phenomenology attempts to show the relation between their methods... (shrink)

The proposed volumes are aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seek to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality providing a comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. They seek to promote an interdisciplinary debate from law, semiotics and visuality bringing together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward. Advance Praise for Law, Culture and Visual Studies This diverse and exhilarating collection of essays explores the (...) many facets both historical and contemporary of visual culture in the law. It opens a window onto the substantive, jurisdictional, disciplinary and methodological diversity of current research. It is a cornucopia of materials that will enliven legal studies for those new to the field as well as for established scholars. It is a 'must read' that will leave you wondering about the validity of the long held obsession that reduces the law and legal studies to little more than a preoccupation with the word. Leslie J Moran Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London Law, Culture and Visual Studies is a treasure trove of insights on the entwined roles of legality and visuality. From multiple interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from around the world, these pieces reflect the fullness and complexities of our visual encounters with law and culture. From pictures to places to postage stamps, from forensics to film to folklore, this anthology is an exciting journey through the fertile field of law and visual culture as well as a testament that the field has come of age. Naomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., USA This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse fields including cultural studies, communication theory, rhetoric, law and film studies, legal and social history, visual and legal theory, in order to document the various historical, cultural, representational and theoretical links that bind together law and the visual. This book offers a breath-taking range of resources from both well-established and newer scholars who together cover the field of law's representation in, interrogation of, and dialogue with forms of visual rhetoric, practice, and discourse. Taken together this scholarship presents state of the art research into an important and developing dimension of contemporary legal and cultural inquiry. Above all, Law Culture and Visual Studies lays the groundwork for rethinking the nature of law in our densely visual culture: How are legal meanings produced, encoded, distributed, and decoded? What critical and hermeneutic skills, new or old, familiar or unfamiliar, will be needed? Topical, diverse, and enlivening, Law Culture and Visual Studies is a vital research tool and an urgent invitation to further critical thinking in the areas so well laid out in this collection. Desmond Manderson, Future Fellow, ANU College of Law / Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University, Australia. (shrink)

In this article I wish to re-examine the vexed issue of the possibility of idealism in ancient and medieval philosophy with particular reference to the case of Johannes Scottus Eriugena (c. 800–c. 877), the Irish Neoplatonic Christian philosopher. Both Bernard Williams and Myles Burnyeat have argued that idealism never emerged (and for Burnyeat, could not have emerged) as a genuine philosophical position in antiquity, a claim that has had wide currency in recent years, and now constitutes something of an orthodoxy.1. (...) Myles Burnyeat, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed,” Philosophical Review 91 (1982): 3–40, repr. in Godfrey Vesey, ed., Idealism—Past and Present (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1982), pp. 19–50. Hereafter this essay will be cited in the version printed in Vesey, ed. Richard Sorabji (instancing Gregory of Nyssa) and Werner Beierwaltes (citing Proclus and Eriugena), and Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson (discussing Plotinus), on the other hand, have all argued that idealism is to be found in the Neoplatonic tradition, a tradition neglected by Burnyeat.Richard Sorabji, “Gregory of Nyssa: The Origins of Idealism,” in Time, Creation and Continuum. Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 287–96; Werner Beierwaltes, Denken des Einen. Studien zur neuplatonischen Philosophie and ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1985). See also Beierwaltes, “Die Wiederentdeckung des Eriugena im Deutschen Idealismus,” in Platonismus und Idealismus (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1972), pp. 188–201, and his “Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Eriugenas im Deutschen Idealismus und danach. Eine kurze, unsystematische Nachlese,” in Eriugena. Grundzüge seines Denkens (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1994), pp. 313–330. Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson, “Cognition and its Object,” in Lloyd P. Gerson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1996), pp. 217–49, esp. pp. 245–49. But see, Lloyd P. Gerson, Plotinus (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 227, n.3, who maintains that Plotinus is not an idealist. Similarly, in a 1989 study, I argued not only that idealism was a genuine possibility in late classical and in medieval philosophy, but that that the ninth-century Carolingian philosopher Johannes Eriugena presents a striking example of an extremely radical, almost fantastical, idealism.Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena. A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1989). Of course, the whole discussion depends entirely on what is meant by ‘idealism’. Burnyeat uses Berkeley’s immaterialism as his standard for idealism, and it is this decision, coupled with his failure to acknowledge the legacy of German idealism, which prevents him from seeing the classical and medieval roots of idealism more broadly understood. (shrink)

The diverse essays in this volume speak to the relevance of phenomenological and psychological questioning regarding perceptions of the human. This designation, human, can be used beyond the mere identification of a species to underwrite exclusion, denigration, dehumanization and demonization, and to set up a pervasive opposition in Othering all deemed inhuman, nonhuman, or posthuman. As alerted to by Merleau-Ponty, one crucial key for a deeper understanding of these issues is consideration of the nature and scope of perception. Perception defines (...) the world of the perceiver, and perceptual capacities are constituted in engagement with the world – there is co-determination. Moreover, the distinct phenomenology of perception in the spectatorial mode in contrast to the reciprocal mode, deepens the intersubjective and ethical dimensions of such investigations. -/- Questions motivating the essays include: Can objectification and an inhuman gaze serve positive ends? If so, under what constraints and conditions? How is an inhuman gaze achieved and at what cost? How might the emerging insights of the role of perception into our interdependencies and essential sociality from various domains challenge not only theoretical frameworks, but also the practices and institutions of science, medicine, psychiatry and justice? What can we learn from atypical social cognition, psychopathology and animal cognition? Could distortions within the gazer’s emotional responsiveness and habituated aspects of social interaction play a role in the emergence of an inhuman gaze? -/- Perception and the Inhuman Gaze will interest scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and social cognition. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction -/- Part I. The Gaze in Classical Phenomenology: Perspectives on Objectification -/- 1. Defending the Objective Gaze as a Self-transcending Capacity of Human Subjects -/- Dermot Moran -/- 2. Two Orders of Bodily Objectification: The Look and the Touch -/- Sara Heinämaa -/- 3. On Eliminativism’s Transient Gaze -/- Timothy Mooney -/- 4. Not wholly human. Reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty with Jacques Lacan. -/- Dorothée Legrand -/- 5. Disclosure and the Gendered Gaze in Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics -/- Christinia Landry -/- Part II. Vision, Perception and Gazes -/- 6. Inside the gaze -/- Shaun Gallagher -/- 7. Perception and its Objects. -/- Maurita Harney -/- 8. Technological Gaze: Understanding How Technologies Transform Perception -/- Richard Lewis -/- 9. The Inhuman Gaze and Perceptual Gestalts: The Making and Unmaking of Others and Worlds -/- Anya Daly -/- Part III. Psychiatry, Psychopathology and Inhuman Gazes -/- 10. Values and Values-based Practice in Psychopathology: Combining Analytic and Phenomenological Approaches -/- G Stanghellini and K.W.M. (Bill) Fulford -/- 11. The Inhuman and Human Gaze in Psychiatry, Psychopathology and Schizophrenia. -/- Matthew Broome -/- 12. Overcoming the Gaze: Psychopathology, Affect, and Narrative. -/- Anna Bortolan -/- 13. From excess to exhaustion : The rise of burnout in a post-modern achievement society. -/- Philippe Wuyts -/- 14. Blackout Rages: The Inhibition of Episodic Memory in Extreme Berserker Episodes -/- John Protevi -/- Part IV. Beyond the Human: Divine, Posthuman and Animal Gazes -/- 15. Wondering at the Inhuman Gaze -/- Sean. D. Kelly -/- 16. What Counts as Human/ Inhuman Right Now? -/- Rosi Braidotti -/- 17. Beyond Human and Animal: Metamorphosis in Merleau-Ponty -/- Dylan Trigg -/- Part V. Sociality and Boundaries of the Human -/- 18. Voice and gaze considered together in ‘languaging’. -/- Fred Cummins -/- 19. Ethics Beyond the Human: Disability and The Inhuman -/- Jonathan Mitchell -/- 20. Social Invisibility and Emotional Blindness -/- James Jardine -/- 21. What are you looking at? Dissonance as a window on the autonomy of participatory sense-making frames. -/- Mark James. (shrink)

The design of new constitutions is fraught with challenges on both issues of structural design and individual rights. As both a descriptive and normative matter it is exceedingly difficult to believe that one structural solution will fit all cases. The high variation in nation size, economic development, and ethnic division can easily tilt the balance for or against a Presidential or Parliamentary system, and even within these two broad classes the differences in constitutional structure are both large and hard to (...) measure. The only confident claim is that some system of separation of powers coupled with checks and balances is needed. Deciding which system, however, is far harder. In contrast, that same level of doubt does not arise in connection with the correct specification of individual right. Strong systems of negative rights on matters of liberty, property, religion, and speech are preferable across a wide range of social organizations. On the other hand, any effort to create systems of positive entitlements will fail because of the negative effects that they have on wealth creation and the inability to define or limit the scope of the relevant entitlements. (shrink)

A monumental work on the flow of time, from the universe's creation to "Now," by the best-selling author of Physics for Future Presidents. "Now" is a simple concept--you're reading this sentence now. Yet a real definition of "now" has eluded even the great Einstein. We know that time stretches and is affected by gravity and velocity. Yet, as eminent physicist Richard A. Muller points out, it is only today that we have all the physics at hand--relativity, entropy, entanglement, antimatter, (...) and the Big Bang--to explain the flow of time. With these building blocks in place, Muller reaches a startling conclusion: our expanding universe is continuously creating not only new space but also new time. The front edge of this new time is what we call "now," and this moment is truly unique--it is the only moment in which we can exercise our free will. Muller's thought-provoking vision is a powerful counter to established theories in science and philosophy, and his arguments will spark major debate about the most fundamental assumptions of our universe. (shrink)

Factitious disorder is the deliberate simulation of illness for the purpose of seeking the sick role. It is a 20th-century diagnosis, though the grounds for its introduction are uncertain. While previous authors have considered the social changes contributing to growth in the disorder, this article looks at some of the pressures on doctors that may have created the diagnostic need for a disorder between hysteria and malingering. The recent history of those disorders suggests that malingering would no longer be acceptable (...) when applied to the potentially larger numbers involved in workers’ compensation or in mass conscription. Equally, the absolution given to hysteria on the basis of the Freudian subconscious would survive only as long as that model retained credibility. Growing egalitarianism and changing doctor—patient relationships in the 20th century would no longer tolerate a sharp division between culpable malingering and exculpated hysteria, which may previously have been made on grounds of class or gender. They would contribute to the need for a mediating diagnosis, such as factitious disorder. (shrink)

The future of the free market depends on fair, honest business practices. Business Ethics: Contemporary Issues and Cases aims to deepen students’ knowledge of ethical principles, corporate social responsibility, and decision-making in all aspects of business. The text presents an innovative approach to ethical reasoning grounded in moral philosophy. Focusing on corporate purpose—creating economic value, complying with laws and regulations, and observing ethical standards—a decision-making framework is presented based upon Duties-Rights-Justice. Over 40 real-world case studies allow students to grapple with (...) a wide range of moral issues related to personal integrity, corporate values, and global capitalism. Richard A. Spinello delves into the most pressing issues confronting businesses today including sexual harassment in the workplace, cybersecurity, privacy, and environmental justice. (shrink)

Edited by Richard Grusin of the Center for 21st Century Studies, this is the first book to name and characterize—and therefore consolidate—a wide array of current critical, theoretical, and philosophical approaches to the humanities and social sciences under the concept of the nonhuman turn. Each of these approaches is engaged in decentering the human in favor of a concern for the nonhuman, understood by contributors in a variety of ways—in terms of animals, affectivity, bodies, materiality, technologies, and organic and (...) geophysical systems. The nonhuman turn in twenty-first-century studies can be traced to multiple intellectual and theoretical developments from the last decades of the twentieth century: actor-network theory, affect theory, animal studies, assemblage theory, cognitive sciences, new materialism, new media theory, speculative realism, and systems theory. Such varied analytical and theoretical formations obviously diverge and disagree in many of their assumptions, objects, and methodologies. However, they all take up aspects of the nonhuman as critical to the future of twenty-first-century studies in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Unlike the posthuman turn, the nonhuman turn does not make a claim about teleology or progress in which we begin with the human and see a transformation from the human to the posthuman. Rather, the nonhuman turn insists (paraphrasing Bruno Latour) that “we have never been human,” that the human has always coevolved, coexisted, or collaborated with the nonhuman—and that the human is identified precisely by this indistinction from the nonhuman. Contributors: Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins U; Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology; Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown U; Mark B. N. Hansen, Duke U; Erin Manning, Concordia U, Montreal; Brian Massumi, U of Montreal; Timothy Morton, Rice U; Steven Shaviro, Wayne State U; Rebekah Sheldon, Indiana U. (shrink)

The focus of this book is Royce's imaginative proposal to preserve world peace by virtue of international insurance and his reasons for choice of insurance as an instrument of peace. He attempted to combine the art of statistics with the precepts of insurance as a means to craft a scheme for international peace.

The basics of good arguments -- Reasoning and logic -- Fallacies -- Belief, fact, and opinion -- Defining your terms -- Drawing analogies -- Cause and effect -- On good authority -- Making your case.

In defending freedom, most libertarians have appealed to a moral framework that puts an emphasis on the concept of moral rights. Rejecting that approach, Richard Fumerton offers a fresh, nuanced, and balanced "consequentialist" perspective on the importance of defending liberty.