The book is virtually a history of ethics, based not upon the ordinary description of systems, but upon selections from the original sources and upon ...

Scholars of political thought often view Plato as a ‘political moralist’, or a ‘utopian’ partly due to the Republic’s emphasis on ‘justice’. But in the Republic, Plato offers a distinctive theory of legitimacy, one that grounds legitimacy on an interdependent relationship between justice and moderation. Justice requires that the principle of specialisation be respected, while moderation requires that citizens agree about who should rule. But citizens will only agree if their ‘necessary’ desires are satisfied. Conversely, the ‘necessary’ desires can only (...) be satisfied when the principle of specialisation is maintained. In this way, justice requires moderation, and moderation requires justice, and both are necessary for legitimacy. Plato’s theory of legitimacy is positioned in relation to existing accounts, especially those of John Rawls and Bernard Williams. It is shown that Plato’s theory is a genuine theory of legitimacy, not a theory of acquiescence. In the concluding section, Rawls’ theory is subjected to a critique based on Plato’s theory. (shrink)

Diese Hardcover-Ausgabe ist Teil der TREDITION CLASSICS. Der Verlag tredition aus Hamburg veroffentlicht in der Buchreihe TREDITION CLASSICS Werke aus mehr als zwei Jahrtausenden. Diese waren zu einem Grossteil vergriffen oder nur noch antiquarisch erhaltlich. Mit TREDITION CLASSICS verfolgt tredition das Ziel, tausende Klassiker der Weltliteratur verschiedener Sprachen wieder als gedruckte Bucher zu verlegen - und das weltweit! Die Buchreihe dient zur Bewahrung der Literatur und Forderung der Kultur. Sie tragt so dazu bei, dass viele tausend Werke nicht in Vergessenheit (...) geraten. (shrink)

It is often assumed that morally permissible acts are morally better than impermissible acts. We call this claim Betterness of Permissibility. Yet, we show that some striking counterexamples show that the claim’s truth cannot be taken for granted. Furthermore, even if Betterness of Permissibility is true, it is unclear why. Apart from appeals to its intuitive plausibility, no arguments in favour of the condition exist. We fill this lacuna by identifying two fundamental conditions that jointly entail betterness of permissibility: ‘reasons (...) monotonicity of permissibility’ and the ‘weak classical view’. We then argue that there are good reasons for accepting both of the fundamental conditions. We note that there exist plausible moral theories that reject one of the fundamental conditions. However, the way in which those theories reject the fundamental conditions does not allow them to endorse the counterexamples that motivate the belief that Betterness of Permissibility might be false. (shrink)

The first English translation of the major political works of Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), one of the most important of the French political figures in the aftermath of the revolution of 1789, and a leading member of the liberal opposition to Napoleon and later to the restored Bourbon monarchy. The texts included in this volume are widely regarded as one of the classic formulations of modern liberal doctrine.

According to the Bayesian paradigm in the psychology of reasoning, the norms by which everyday human cognition is best evaluated are probabilistic rather than logical in character. Recently, the Bayesian paradigm has been applied to the domain of argumentation, where the fundamental norms are traditionally assumed to be logical. Here, we present a major generalisation of extant Bayesian approaches to argumentation that utilizes a new class of Bayesian learning methods that are better suited to modelling dynamic and conditional inferences than (...) standard Bayesian conditionalization, is able to characterise the special value of logically valid argument schemes in uncertain reasoning contexts, greatly extends the range of inferences and argumentative phenomena that can be adequately described in a Bayesian framework, and undermines some influential theoretical motivations for dual function models of human cognition. We conclude that the probabilistic norms given by the Bayesian approach to rationality are not necessarily at odds with the norms given by classical logic. Rather, the Bayesian theory of argumentation can be seen as justifying and enriching the argumentative norms of classical logic. (shrink)

abstract Moralism is often charged with being ineffective, rude, hypocritical, and intolerant. This article challenges all of those claims, first using evidence from social science to argue that moralism can be effective in changing others’ behaviour, serving as a remedy against the important problems of moral ignorance and weakness of will. Next, the apparent problems of rudeness, hypocrisy, and intolerance are argued to be either illusory or overstated. Finally, examples of unethical moralism are reviewed and a prudential type of moralism (...) is differentiated and defended. (shrink)

This carefully designed, multi-authored textbook covers a broad range of theoretical issues in cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience. With accessible language, a uniform structure, and many pedagogical features, Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience: A Philosophical Introduction is the best high-level overview of this area for an interdisciplinary readership of students. Written specifically for this volume by experts in their fields who are also experienced teachers, the book’s thirty chapters are organized into the following parts: I. Background Knowledge, II. Classical Debates, (...) III. Consciousness, IV. Crossing Boundaries. -/- Each chapter starts with relevant key words and definitions and a chapter overview, then presents historical coverage of the topic, explains and analyzes contemporary debates, and ends with a sketch of cutting edge research. A list of suggested readings and helpful discussion topics conclude each chapter. This uniform, student-friendly design makes it possible to teach a cohort of both philosophy and interdisciplinary students without assuming prior understanding of philosophical concepts, cognitive science, or neuroscience. -/- Key Features: -/- Synthesizes the now decades-long explosion of scientifically informed philosophical research in the study of mind. Expands on the offerings of other textbooks by including chapters on language, concepts and non-conceptual content, and animal cognition. Offers the same structure in each chapter, moving the reader through an overview, historical coverage, contemporary debates, and finally cutting-edge research. Packed with pedagogical features, like defined Key Terms, Suggested Readings, and Discussion Questions for each chapter, as well as a General Glossary. Provides readers with clear, chapter-long introductions to Cognitive Neuroscience, Molecular and Cellular Cognition, Experimental Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Metaphysical Issues, and Epistemic Issues. (shrink)

This paper argues that Mencius is a eudaimonist, and that his eudaimonism plays an architectonic role in his thought. Mencius maintains that the most satisfying life for a human being is the life of benevolence, rightness, wisdom, and ritual propriety, and that such a life fulfills essential desires and capacities of the human heart. He also repeatedly appeals both to these and to morally neutral desires in his efforts to persuade others to develop and exercise the virtues. Classical Greek (...) eudaimonists similarly regarded the life of virtue as both objectively good and subjectively desirable, and appealed to the desire for eudaimonia or happiness to motivate a commitment to the virtues. Mencius offers a carefully crafted, teleological account of human nature that appears designed in part to support his eudaimonism. In contrast with proposals by other scholars, I argue that Mencius’ notion of happiness, analogous to the Greek eudaimonia, is expressed by the construction jìn xìng 盡性, “fulfilling human nature” or the nearly equivalent jìn xīn 盡心, “fulfilling one’s heart.”. (shrink)

Roman Law in the State of Nature offers a new interpretation of the foundations of Hugo Grotius' natural law theory. Surveying the significance of texts from classical antiquity, Benjamin Straumann argues that certain classical texts, namely Roman law and a specifically Ciceronian brand of Stoicism, were particularly influential for Grotius in the construction of his theory of natural law. The book asserts that Grotius, a humanist steeped in Roman law, had many reasons to employ Roman tradition and (...) explains how Cicero's ethics and Roman law - secular and offering a doctrine of the freedom of the high seas - were ideally suited to provide the rules for Grotius' state of nature. This fascinating new study offers historians, classicists and political theorists a fresh account of the historical background of the development of natural rights, natural law and of international legal norms as they emerged in seventeenth-century early modern Europe. (shrink)

abstract Moralism is often charged with being ineffective, rude, hypocritical, and intolerant. This article challenges all of those claims, first using evidence from social science to argue that moralism can be effective in changing others’ behaviour, serving as a remedy against the important problems of moral ignorance and weakness of will. Next, the apparent problems of rudeness, hypocrisy, and intolerance are argued to be either illusory or overstated. Finally, examples of unethical moralism are reviewed and a prudential type of moralism (...) is differentiated and defended. (shrink)

Ruetsche argues that a problem of unitarily inequivalent representations arises in quantum theories with infinitely many degrees of freedom. I provide an algebraic formulation of classical field theories and show that unitarily inequivalent representations arise there as well. I argue that the classical case helps us rule out one possible response to the problem of unitarily inequivalent representations called Hilbert Space Conservatism.

I argue that it is possible to give an interpretation of the classical ℏ→0 limit of quantum mechanics that results in a partial explanation of the success of classical mechanics. The interpretation...

This paper considers states on the Weyl algebra of the canonical commutation relations over the phase space R^{2n}. We show that a state is regular iff its classical limit is a countably additive Borel probability measure on R^{2n}. It follows that one can "reduce" the state space of the Weyl algebra by altering the collection of quantum mechanical observables so that all states are ones whose classical limit is physical.

It is well known that the process of quantization—constructing a quantum theory out of a classical theory—is not in general a uniquely determined procedure. There are many inequivalent methods that lead to different choices for what to use as our quantum theory. In this paper, I show that by requiring a condition of continuity between classical and quantum physics, we constrain and inform the quantum theories that we end up with.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

It is often assumed that morally permissible acts are morally better than impermissible acts. We call this claim Betterness of Permissibility. Yet, we show that some striking counterexamples show that the claim’s truth cannot be taken for granted. Furthermore, even if Betterness of Permissibility is true, it is unclear why. Apart from appeals to its intuitive plausibility, no arguments in favour of the condition exist. We fill this lacuna by identifying two fundamental conditions that jointly entail betterness of permissibility: ‘reasons (...) monotonicity of permissibility’ and the ‘weak classical view’. We then argue that there are good reasons for accepting both of the fundamental conditions. We note that there exist plausible moral theories that reject one of the fundamental conditions. However, the way in which those theories reject the fundamental conditions does not allow them to endorse the counterexamples that motivate the belief that Betterness of Permissibility might be false. (shrink)

Patrick Grim and Einar Duenger Bohn have recently argued that there can be no perfectly knowing Being. In particular, they urge that the object of omniscience is logically absurd (Grim) or requires an impossible maximal point of all knowledge (Bohn). I argue that, given a more classical notion of omniscience found in Aquinas and Augustine, we can shift the focus of perfect knowledge from what that being must know to the mode of that being’s understanding. Since Grim and Bohn (...) focus on the object rather than mode of God’s knowledge, this classical approach to omniscience undermines their objections. (shrink)

Classical Confucian thought is deeply concerned, on the one hand, with individual moral self-cultivation and, on the other, with the widespread establishment of a moral social order. These twin aspirations find expression in the legends of Yao, Shun, King Wen, and other sage-kings who achieved perfection in both realms. Yet a serious tension arises, because despite Confucius’s and Mencius’s moral purity and devotion, their political impact is marginal. They consistently teach that humaneness and rightness will transform the world, and (...) work energetically to put this principle into action. Yet their own experience is an uneasy fit with this principle, as moral decay remains the norm among the rulers of their.. (shrink)

Several recent studies have returned to the famous controversy over the reception of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. By reinterpreting it within the immediate context of Germany in the early 1870s, James Whitman understands this controversy as a Methodenstreit within Classical Philology and James I. Porter claims that, through this controversy, Nietzsche developed an extensive critique of modern culture. I contend that Nietzsche’s reaction to the scholarly rejection of his first publication resulted in no immediate (...) response on his behalf; rather, it led to three years of intense rethinking and strengthening of the position he took in The Birth of Tragedy. This is evidenced in his early published essays and notebooks of 1872–1875. From the first readers of these early notebooks, Karl Schlechta and Anni Anders, to its most recent interpreters, Richard T. Grey and Alexander Nehamas, these scholars are unanimous in understanding them as Nietzsche’s attempt to work through.. (shrink)

In a naïve realist approach to reading an ontology off the models of a physical theory, the invariance of a given theory under permutations of its property-bearing objects entails the existence of distinct possible worlds from amongst which the theory cannot choose. A brand of Ontic Structural Realism attempts to avoid this consequence by denying that objects possess primitive identity, and thus worlds with property values permuted amongst those objects are really one and the same world. Assuming that any successful (...) ontology of objects is able to describe a universe containing a determinate number of them, I argue that no version of OSR which both retains objects and understands ‘structure’ in terms of relations can be successful. This follows from the fact that no set of relational facts is sufficient to fix the cardinality of the collection of objects implied by those facts. More broadly, I offer reasons to believe that no version of OSR is compatible with the existence of objects, no matter how ontologically derivative they are taken to be. Any such account would have to attribute a definite cardinality to a collection of objects while denying that those objects are possessed of a primitive identity. With no compelling reason to abandon the classical conception of cardinality, such an attribution is incoherent. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.

This collection brings together new papers addressing the philosophical challenges that the concept of a Devil presents, bringing philosophical rigor to treatments of the Devil. Contributors approach the idea of the Devil from a variety of philosophical traditions, methodologies, and styles, providing a comprehensive philosophical overview that contemplates the existence, nature, and purpose of the Devil. While some papers take a classical approach to the Devil, drawing on biblical exegesis, other contributors approach the topic of the Devil from epistemological, (...) metaphysical, phenomenological, and ethical perspectives. This volume will be relevant to researchers and scholars interested in philosophical conceptions of the Devil and related areas, such as philosophers of religion, theologians, and scholars working in philosophical theology and demonology. (shrink)

Marking the centenary of Walter Benjamin's immensely influential essay, "Toward the Critique of Violence," this critical edition presents readers with an altogether new, fully annotated translation of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern political theory. The volume includes twenty-one notes and fragments by Benjamin along with passages from all of the contemporaneous texts to which his essay refers. Readers thus encounter for the first time in English provocative arguments about law and violence advanced (...) by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, and Emil Lederer. A new translation of selections from Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence further illuminates Benjamin's critical program. The volume also includes, for the first time in any language, a bibliography Benjamin drafted for the expansion of the essay and the development of a corresponding philosophy of law. An extensive introduction and afterword provide additional context. With its challenging argument concerning violence, law, and justice-which addresses such topical matters as police violence, the death penalty, and the ambiguous force of religion-Benjamin's work is as important today as it was upon its publication in Weimar Germany a century ago. (shrink)

One implication of Bell’s theorem is that there cannot in general be hidden variable models for quantum mechanics that both are noncontextual and retain the structure of a classical probability space. Thus, some hidden variable programs aim to retain noncontextuality at the cost of using a generalization of the Kolmogorov probability axioms. We generalize a theorem of Feintzeig to show that such programs are committed to the existence of a finite null cover for some quantum mechanical experiments, i.e., a (...) finite collection of probability zero events whose disjunction exhausts the space of experimental possibilities. (shrink)

Lon Fuller’s classic The Morality of Law is an exploration of the basic principles of a legal system: the law should be publicly promulgated, prospective, clear, and general. So deep are these principles, he argued, that too great a deviation from them would not simply create a bad legal system and bad law, but would render the products of such a system undeserving of the name “law” at all. In this essay, I argue that Fuller’s basic principles are not in (...) fact desiderata for all of law, observing that much of private law plainly flouts them; it is unwritten, retroactive, inchoate, and often limited to particular cases. Far from undercutting its status as law or its legitimacy, these attributes have sometimes been regarded as giving the common law its special character as a kind of law. Fuller’s principles are fundamental only given a certain conception of how law functions, what gives lawmakers their authority, and what renders citizens vulnerable to the imposition of liability through the courts. This conception does not fit private law, which has a distinctive inner morality. Understanding the inner morality of private law tells us a great deal about the nature of private law and about the different ways in which morality can be part of law. (shrink)

The Ethiosemitic verb hlw ‘to be present’ is strange in three regards: it shows an unusual alternation between -o and -awa in Classical Ethiopic; it is formally Perfect, but used in the present tense; and it has no verbal cognates in other branches of Semitic. This is because it is originally not a Perfect, but a presentative particle, to be connected with other Semitic presentatives reflecting *hallaw. Due to the leveling of the second-person object suffixes to the Perfect endings (...) in Ethiosemitic, suffixed presentative forms like hallo-ka could be reanalyzed as consisting of a verbal stem hallo- and a subject ending -ka. Other forms of the paradigm, including the 3M.SG Perfect hallaw-a, were then created by analogy with III-w 02-stem verbs like fannawa ‘to send’. (shrink)

One of the leading scholars and academic administrators of his time, Benjamin Jowett was Master of Balliol College as well as Regius Professor of Greek and, for a time, vice-chancellor at Oxford University. Along with his achievements in the area of academic reform, Jowett is remembered for this four-volume translation of Plato's dialogues. Characterising Plato as the 'father of idealism', Jowett reminds readers that while 'he may be illustrated by the writings of moderns … he must be interpreted by (...) his own, and by his place in the history of philosophy'. In this first volume, he includes fourteen early and middle dialogues such as Charmides, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, each presented with a separate editorial introduction. Jowett's work represents a towering achievement in the field of classical and philosophical studies that had important influence on the subsequent study of Plato. (shrink)

From Benjamin Hoff, the author of The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet, which have sold millions of copies, comes a new translation of the Tao Te Ching. The original author (or authors, as Hoff makes the provocative claim that there may have been more than one) streamlined the folk religion of China down to its foundation and rebuilt it as a man-in-nature philosophy, incorporating his advanced spiritual, philosophical, social, and political ideas. Ever since its creation, the (...) Tao Te Ching has stood alone among the world's writings. There was nothing like it before it appeared, and there is still nothing like it now. Unlike a good deal of Chinese writing, old and new, the Tao Te Ching makes no reference to specific individuals or events, whether of the then-past or then-present. It is not historical, nor classical; its world is the world of now. Laboring over the ancient text for seven years, Hoff tackled this project by following the same principles he learned while employed by a master restorer of valuable but damaged antique objects: Thoroughly research the history of the object; remove all misguided, historically incorrect alterations and repairs; patch and fill where necessary; match the new work to the old so seamlessly that no one will detect a difference in treatment; honor the materials and its design; and honor the tradition that has formed around the object over the years. This unique interpretation of the Tao Te Ching shows what is possible when a translator truly partners themselves with someone of another time, another place, and another language. (shrink)

Classical accounts of intertheoretic reduction involve two pieces: first, the new terms of the higher-level theory must be definable from the terms of the lower-level theory, and second, the claims of the higher-level theory must be deducible from the lower-level theory along with these definitions. The status of each of these pieces becomes controversial when the alleged reduction involves an infinite limit, as in statistical mechanics. Can one define features of or deduce the behavior of an infinite idealized system (...) from a theory describing only finite systems? In this paper, I change the subject in order to consider the motivations behind the definability and deducibility requirements. The classical accounts of intertheoretic reduction are appealing because when the definability and deducibility requirements are satisfied there is a sense in which the reduced theory is forced upon us by the reducing theory and the reduced theory contains no more information or structure than the reducing theory. I will show that, likewise, there is a precise sense in which in statistical mechanics the properties of infinite limiting systems are forced upon us by the properties of finite systems, and the properties of infinite systems contain no information beyond the properties of finite systems. (shrink)

The term moral considerability refers to the question of whether a being or set of beings is worthy of moral consideration. Moral considerability is most readily afforded to those beings that demonstrate the clearest relationship to rational humans, though many have also argued for and against the moral considerability of species, ecosystems, and “lesser” animals. Among these arguments there are at least two positions: “environmentalist” positions that tend to emphasize the systemic relations between species, and “liberationist” positions that tend to (...) emphasize the attributes or welfare of a particular individual organism. Already, this classic conflict provides for some challenging theoretical clashes between environmentalists and animal liberationists. The question of moral considerability is complicated, however, by recent developments in genetic engineering. Some animals, like pigs and fish, have been genetically modified by humans to grow organs that can then be transplanted into humans. If environmental arguments for the moral consideration of species are correct, then we are released from our obligations to morally consider those animals that we have genetically modified, since they are by their nature always an “invader species.” If, instead, the welfare of the animal is of penultimate importance, then there is a case for strengthening the moral considerability of GM animals over “naturally-occurring” animals, since they bear a closer relationship to humans. This would appear to be an intractable problem, a “bad marriage,” as Mark Sagoff once proposed. This paper argues that the case of invasive transgenic animals exposes weaknesses in this classic conflict, and particularly, in the framing of this conflict. To remedy this framing problem, this paper argues for a reconceptualization of the term “moral considerability,” instead urging a strong distinction between moral considerability, moral relevance, and moral significance. (shrink)

We give classical proofs, strengthenings, and generalizations of Lecomte’s characterizations of analytic ω-dimensional hypergraphs with countable Borel chromatic number.

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called appeal to ignorance (or ad ignorantiam). A few passages from classical philosophical texts may commit an argumentum ad ignorantiam. Richard Robison develops another way of launching an ad ignorantiam that works by using a rhetorical question to commit the illicit move: Woods and Walton describe the appeal to ignorance as a fallacy “located within confirmation theory as a confusion between the categories of 'lack of confirming evidence' (...) and 'presence of disconfirming evidence'”. Wreen has argued that the ad ignorantiam maneuver is not fallacious, whereas other philosophers accept the general fallacy of an appeal to ignorance but note some instances where lack of evidence does provide good inductive grounds for some statement. (shrink)

Classical accounts of intertheoretic reduction involve two pieces: first, the new terms of the higher-level theory must be definable from the terms of the lower-level theory, and second, the claims of the higher-level theory must be deducible from the lower-level theory along with these definitions. The status of each of these pieces becomes controversial when the alleged reduction involves an infinite limit, as in statistical mechanics. Can one define features of or deduce the behavior of an infinite idealized system (...) from a theory describing only finite systems? In this paper, I change the subject in order to consider the motivations behind the definability and deducibility requirements. The classical accounts of intertheoretic reduction are appealing because when the definability and deducibility requirements are satisfied there is a sense in which the reduced theory is forced upon us by the reducing theory and the reduced theory contains no more information or structure than the reducing theory. I will show that, likewise, there is a precise sense in which in statistical mechanics the properties of infinite limiting systems are forced upon us by the properties of finite systems, and the properties of infinite systems contain no information beyond the properties of finite systems. (shrink)

The adoption of the codex for literature in the Roman world was one of the most significant developments in the history of the book, yet remains poorly understood. Physical evidence seems to contradict literary evidence from Martial's epigrams. Near-total adoption of the codex for early Christian works, even as the book roll dominated non-Christian book forms in the first centuries of our era, has led to endless speculation about possible ideological motives for adoption. What has been unquestioned is the importance (...) of Christian scribes in the surge of adoption from 300 C.E. onward. This article reexamines the foundation of many theories, the timeline for non-Christian adoption sketched by Roberts and Skeat in their study, The Birth of the Codex, and reevaluates it through the lens of “diffusion of innovations theory” in order to reconcile the evidence and elevate practical considerations once and for all over ideological motives. (shrink)

This chapter explores how Friedrich Nietzsche’s work The Anti-Christ inspired not only an unexpected charitable reading of Jesus’s life and thought in the New Testament, but also an unlikely sense of “holy envy.” The topic of Jesus is very tricky for Jews. The legacy of Christian anti-Judaism provides the hermeneutical lens for how Jews may interpret the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. Incorporating aspects of Jesus’s life and teachings into a Jewish religious way of engaging the (...) world, or even just appreciating them, can be an anathema to classical and many forms of modern Jewish thought. Sax explores the irony and power of how Nietzsche’s Jesus could inspire a contemporary Jewish thinker to admire and connect to the Jesus of the New Testament. (shrink)

We investigate degree of satisfiability questions in the context of Heyting algebras and intuitionistic logic. We classify all equations in one free variable with respect to finite satisfiability gap, and determine which common principles of classical logic in multiple free variables have finite satisfiability gap. In particular we prove that, in a finite non-Boolean Heyting algebra, the probability that a randomly chosen element satisfies $x \vee \neg x = \top $ is no larger than $\frac {2}{3}$. Finally, we generalize (...) our results to infinite Heyting algebras, and present their applications to point-set topology, black-box algebras, and the philosophy of logic. (shrink)

The possibility of cooperation and the stability of political order are long-standing problems. Polybius, well known for his Histories analysing the expansion of Rome and his description of the Roman constitution, also offers an intriguing social and political theory that covers ground from psycho-anthropological micro-foundations to institution-based political order, providing a genealogy of morals and political order that is best understood in game-theoretical terms. In this paper I try to give such an interpretation. Polybius’ naturalistic, proto-game theoretical views show similarities (...) with Hume, Smith and especially Hobbes’ doctrine of sovereignty by acquisition. However, Polybius is original in crucial regards, giving a motivationally plausible account of institutional and especially constitutional solutions to moral and political problems. Constitutional order, for Polybius, embodies and makes possible in the first place a kind of political reason that cannot be had individually. Polybian political theory thus offers interesting solutions to problems concerning moral motivation, collective action, and the conditions for political order, as well as the explanation and character of institutions. (shrink)

Despite numerous obituaries to the contrary, Critical Theory, now half a century old, is still very much alive. The historical context in which the Frankfurt Circle worked has of course changed radically, as have forms of philosophy and social science. Hence no one can be surprised to find that the classical Frankfurt texts no longer shed direct light on contemporary society. Yet the various reconstructions of this tradition's potential for new social theory save it from the fate proclaimed for (...) it by the necrologists. Theory and Politics exemplifies this most recent type of scholarship. It neither consigns the Frankfurt tradition to a past of questionable relevance, nor reverently celebrates it'in an overly selective interpretation. (shrink)