Edmund Gettier is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This short piece, published in 1963, seemed to many decisively to refute an otherwise attractive analysis of knowledge. It stimulated a renewed effort, still ongoing, to clarify exactly what knowledge comprises.

We are interested in the relations among shame, guilt, and embarrassment and especially in how each relates to judgments of character. We start by analyzing the distinction between being and feeling guilty, and unearth the role of shame as a guilt feeling. We proceed to examine shame and guilt in relation to moral responsibility and to flaws of character. We address a recent psychological finding that shame is both destructive and in so far as it has a social function could (...) be replaced by guilt. We reinterpret the guilt culture/shame culture distinction in terms of our way of distinguishing these emotions. Finally we examine embarrassment as distinct from shame and find the difference to lie not so much in the phenomenology of the participant as it is in context, and in which elements of the context the speaker describing the emotion wishes to stress. We conclude by defending shame despite its psychological troubles. (shrink)

Following strict rules of interpretation, this book focuses on the ideas in Plato's early and middle dialogues that lie within the fields now called logic and methodology, specifically elenchus and dialectic and the method of hypothesis.

‘Paideia’ connotes the handing down and preservation of tradition and culture, even civilization, through education. Plato’s education of philosophers in the Academy is inimical to such an essentially conservative notion. His dialectical method is inherently dynamic and open-ended: not only are such conclusions as are reached in the dialogues subject to further criticism, so are the assumptions on which those conclusions are based. In these and other ways explored in this paper, Plato demonstrates that paideia has no harbor within philosophy.

Russian translation of Gettier E. L. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? // Analysis, vol. 23, 1963. Translated by Lev Lamberov with kind permission of the author.

Gareth Matthews suggests that we can better understand the nature of philosophical inquiry if we recognize the central role played by perplexity. The seminal representation of philosophical perplexity is in Plato's dialogues; Matthews invites us to view this as a response to something inherently problematic in the basic notions that philosophy deals with. He examines the intriguing shifts in Plato's attitude to perplexity and suggests that this development may be seen as an archetypal pattern that philosophers follow even today. So (...) it is that one may be won over to philosophy in the first place by the example of a Socratic teacher who displays an uncanny gift at getting one perplexed about something one thought one understood perfectly well. Later, however, wanting like Plato to move beyond perplexity to produce philosophical 'results', one may be chagrined to discover that one's very best attempt to develop a philosophical theory induces its own perplexity. Then, like late Plato and like Aristotle, the philosopher may seek to 'normalize' perplexity in a way that both allows for progress and yet respects the peculiarly baffling character of philosophical questions. (shrink)

This paper argues that without the appropriate educational and organizational context, Socratic pedagogy can undermine a teacher’s leadership and negatively impact classroom dynamics by exposing a teacher’s lack of knowledge. In arguing for this position, the paper articulates the nature of the Socratic method, clarifies the notion of “power” and “leadership,” and then discusses traditional power roles in the classroom. These traditional power roles are strongly contrasted against the notion of power in the Socratic method, where the Socratic teacher derives (...) their power by asking questions. Finally, provided the educational and organizational context are structured in a way that puts the teacher in the role of the Socratic questioner, instructors need not worry that their leadership is in jeopardy or that classroom dynamics will suffer. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship among behaviorism, constructivism and Socratic pedagogy. Specifically, it asks if a Socratic educator can be a constructivist or a behaviorist. In the first part of the paper, each learning theory, as it relates to the Socratic project, is explained. In the last section, the question of whether or not a Socratic teacher can subscribe to a constructivist or a behaviorist learning theory is addressed. The paper concludes by stating that while Socratic pedagogy shares some similarities (...) with each learning theory, ultimately it is fundamentally incompatible with both. (shrink)

David Hume's essay Of Moral Prejudices offers a spirited defense of "all the most endearing sentiments of the hearts, all the most useful biases and instincts, ...

Both a morality, like Kant's, which relies on wrongdoers' guilt feelings and expectation of punishment, as enforcement for its requirements, and one which, like Hume's, relies on the feelings of shame and expectation of their fellows' contempt which will be felt by those showing lack of the moral virtues, seem to merit the charge that morality is an intrinsically cruel institution. The prospects for a gentle non-punitive morality are explored, and Hume's views found more promising, for this purpose, than Kant's.

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients (...) than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. _Shame and Necessity_ gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world. (shrink)

Offers two complementary works, unabridged, in modernised, annotated texts. Suitable for classroom use, this title provides an introduction, a note on the texts, and a select bibliography.

The outcome of this is explored, in detail, in relation to the teaching of literature, creative writing and drama.

This book examines the Socratic method of elenchus, or refutation.

Javier Muguerza’s Ethics and Perplexity makes a highly original contribution to the debate over dialogical reason. The work opens with a letter that establishes a parallel between Ethics and Perplexity and Maimonides’s classic Guide of the Perplexed. It concludes with an interview that repeatedly strikes sparks on Spanish philosophy’s emergence from its “long quarantine,” as Muguerza puts it. These informal pieces—witty, informative, conversational—orbit the nucleus of the work: a formidable critique of dialogical reason. The result is a volume by turns (...) vivid and profound. (shrink)