Our culture is conflicted about morally judging and condemning. We can't avoid it altogether, yet many layfolk today are loathe to do it for reasons neither they nor philosophers well understand. Their resistance is often confused (by themselves and by theorists) with some species of antiobjectivism. But unlike a nonobjectivist, most people think that (a) for us to judge and condemn is generally (objectively) morally wrong , yet (b) for God to do so is (objectively) proper, and (c) so too (...) for certain persons in certain relations (e.g., self-condemnation, parental child rearing.) Certainly, religious (e.g., Christian) critics of judging and condemning without doubting the objective truth of their tradition's core moral teachings. Most puzzling is that (a) merely judging and condemning in one's heart may be improper, and (b) someone else with no more evidence or expertise might properly judge and condemn the same action. The answer is in condemning's complex structure of presuppostions. Condemning and judging are acts, and attitudes initiated by the act. Condemnation is motivated by two judgments presumed to justify it, a criticism of a target, and a judgment that the criticism justifies some negative response toward the target. Unlike nonpunitive penalties, punishments are motivated and explained by condemnation. Condemnation is an act of a hostile will, wishing some evil for its target, not (just) as a means to some good. Its root is in damning, an act akin to cursing. It declares a degraded status. The hostility makes it harder to justify condemnation than criticism, and punishment than nonpunitive penalties. Condemning claims objectivity and authority. It involves reflexive evaluation, regarding itself justified, approving its hostile feelings toward the target. Condemners presume themselves entitled to sit in judgment, pass judgment, and cast the condemned down. Those presumptions inhere in sitting in judgment, assuming jurisdiction. Unlike mathematical or scientific judgments, passing moral judgment seems to be a political act subject to extraepistemic constraints. "Who are you to judge?" may properly challenge your right to pass judgment. (shrink)

This article uses the personal diaries and memoirs of Archpriest Sergius (Sergei) Bulgakov to examine the circumstances of his expulsion from Bolshevik-occupied Crimea in late 1922. At the time, he was rector of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Yalta. The expulsion of Fr. Sergius was part of a large-scale operation to expel the humanist intelligentsia, who did not fit within the ideological contours of the new government. We will examine the political aspects of the condemnations of Fr. Sergius’s doctrine of (...) Sophia, the theological development of which he began in exile. We will also examine aspects of Fr. Sergius’s attitude to monarchy and his belief in the “white tsar,” noting that Bulgakov’s position as an émigré could hardly be characterized as monarchical. Sophiology may be the political equivalent of ecclesiastical democracy, of faith in the ecclesiastical people and the Christian community, which was alien to the conservative monarchism of Orthodox believers abroad, centered in Serbia’s Sremski Karlovci. We will examine the circumstances of the church’s condemnation of Fr. Sergius, which took place against the context of canonical uncertainty, and we will touch upon some aspects of the contemporary reception of Sophiology in Russia in a political context (V. Bibikhin, O. Kirichenko). (shrink)

Opponents of commerce in organs sometimes appeal to Kant’s Formula of Humanity to justify their position. Kant implies that anyone who sells an integral part of his body violates this principle and thereby acts wrongly. Although appeals to Kant’s Formula are apt, they are less helpful than they might be because they invoke the necessity of respecting the dignity of ends in themselves without specifying in detail what dignity is or what it means to respect it, and they cite the (...) wrongness of an agent’s treating another merely as a means without clarifying conditions under which this occurs. This paper crystallizes two different approaches to the Formula of Humanity and probes when, according to them, the principle would imply that it is wrong to engage in “live donor” transactions, in which someone chooses to undergo a kidney extraction in exchange for money. (shrink)

Many contemporary democratic theorists are democratic egalitarians. They think that the distinctive value of democracy lies in equality. Yet this position faces a serious problem. All contemporary democracies are representative democracies. Such democracies are highly unequal: representatives have much more power than do ordinary citizens. So, it seems that democratic egalitarians must condemn representative democracies. In this paper, I present a solution to this problem. My solution invokes popular control. If representatives are under popular control, then their extra power is (...) not objectionable. Unfortunately, so I argue, in the United States representatives are under loose popular control. (shrink)

The struggle to delineate the relationship between theology and logic flourished in the thirteenth century and culminated in two condemnations in early 1277, one in Paris and the other in Oxford. To see how much and what kind of effect ecclesiastical actions such as condemnations and prohibitions to teach had on the development of logic in the Middle Ages, we investigate the events leading up to the 1277 actions, the condemned propositions, and the parts of these condemnations connected to modal (...) and temporal logic specifically. We show that because of the specific motivations late thirteenth-century and fourteenth-century logicians had when working in modal and temporal logic, the effect of the 1277 condemnations on the development of those branches was much smaller than might have been supposed. (shrink)

Book review of three book about philosopher Charles Taylor. "Charles Taylor", by Ruth Abbey. Teddington, UK: Acumen, 2000. ISBN: 0691057141. "Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity", by Nicholas H. Smith. Cambridge: Polity, 2002. ISBN: 0742521273. "Charles Taylor: Thinking and Living Deep Diversity", by Mark Redhead. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. ISBN: 0745645767. There can be no doubt that Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has made a major contribution to the development of contemporary philosophy and is one of the most (...) influential and prolific philosophers in the English-speaking world today. Perhaps the most striking feature of his work is its breadth, both in terms of the topics addressed and per-spectives employed. Taylor's work ranges from reflections on artificial intelligence to analyses of contemporary multicultural societies, touching on questions of epistemology, ethics, identity, and metaphysics along the way. He is rare in his ability to bring his deep knowledge of history, ancient culture and religious thought to bear in his philosophical investigations. (shrink)

Se abordan dos formas de justicia en principio antagónicas: la retributiva, propia del mundo de los héroes y de la venganza antigua, y la punitiva, de tradición tanto antigua como moderna, que consiste en la racionalización de la violencia mediante el tribunal. Se muestra la preeminencia de la punitiva, el antagonismo a medias con la retributiva, que viene a ser la apropiación de la violencia por la necesidad, y su marginación del ámbito de la justicia. The article addresses two antagonistic (...) forms of justice: retributive justice, form which belongs to the world of heroes and ancient vengeance; and punitive justice, which can be found in both ancient and modern traditions and consists on the rationalization of violence by means of the court. The article shows the preeminence of the punitive justice, its half antagonism with the retributive form -which comes to be violence's appropriation made by necessity -, and its margination from justice's ambit. (shrink)

In 1241/4 the theology masters at the university at Paris with their chancellor, Odo of Chateauroux, mandated by their bishop, William of Auvergne, met to condemn ten propositions against theological truth. This book represents the first comprehensive examination of what hitherto has been a largely ignored instrument in a crucial period of the university's early maturation. However, the book's ambition goes wider than this. The condemnation provides a window through which to view the wider doctrinal, intellectual, institutional and historical (...) developments within the emerging university. These include the advent of the Dominicans and Franciscans at the university; and the developing focus of Paris theologians on using their learning for preaching at a time of a rapid and sometimes divergent development of doctrine and concerns over the newly-translated Aristotelian and associated Arab and Jewish works, heresy, the Greek Church and the Jews. The book compares the condemnation's ten articles with the major statement of Catholic principles in the first canon of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, and assesses what conclusions can be drawn from their apparent correlation. (shrink)

In their article “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants,” Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino argue that the American public evaluates soldiers’ wartime actions more according to whether the war they are fighting was initiated justly, than on their actions during warfare. In this respect, their views are more similar to those of revisionist philosophers than to those of traditional just war theorists. Before leaping to broad conclusions from their survey, it should be (...) replicated. If the findings hold in the replication, intriguing questions could be asked about comparative cross-national attitudes and about the relationship between democracy and war. (shrink)

Humans pay close attention to the reputational consequences of their actions. Recent experiments indicate that even very subtle cues that one is being observed can affect cooperative behaviors. Expressing our opinions about the morality of certain acts is a key means of advertising our cooperative dispositions. Here, we investigated how subtle cues of being watched would affect moral judgments. We predicted that participants exposed to such cues would affirm their endorsement of prevailing moral norms by expressing greater disapproval of moral (...) transgressions. Participants read brief accounts of two moral violations and rated the moral acceptability of each violation. Violations were more strongly condemned in a condition where participants were exposed to surveillance cues (an image of eyes interposed between the description of the violation and the associated rating scale) than in a control condition (in which the interposed image was of flowers). We discuss the role that public declarations play in the interpersonal evaluation of cooperative dispositions. (shrink)

In the paper author advocates rejecting a prominent criticism of Marx, which holds that his condemnation of capitalism fails because it is based on incoherent, inconsistent moral reasoning. To rebut this criticism he investigates Marx’s conception of ideological illusion, arguing that some moral judgments could be true even if people always possess moral beliefs because of ideological illusion. To support this thesis he provides epistemological argument about the nature of epistemic justification, proving that on any reasonable interpretation of knowledge, (...) justification of moral beliefs is possible under even the extreme conditions of ideological illusion. He then introduces the final theme of the essay, namely that strikingly Aristotelian themes lie at the heart of Marx’s ethical condemnation of capitalism. By discussing the similarity of Marx’s account of alienation to Aristotle’s account of self-actualization he shows that both thinkers explicitly connect their accounts of development and actualization of human potential and freedom within a society with a sharp critique of economic forms that block or retard that development and actualization. Key words ARISTOTLE, MARXISM, CAPITALISM. (shrink)

I here press an often overlooked question: Why does the fairness of a sanction require an adequate opportunity to avoid it? By pressing this question, I believe I have come to better understand something that has long puzzled me, namely, what philosophers (and others) might have in mind when they talk about “true moral responsibility,” or the “condemnatory force” of moral blame, or perhaps even “basic desert.” In presenting this understanding of “condemnation” or of “basic desert,” I am presenting (...) an idea that I do not, myself, endorse—one to which I am, myself, opposed. I present and defend it, hoping that, if what I say accurately captures what people have in mind, it will also show how condemnation or desert, in this sense, can be left behind. (shrink)

Despite the numerous instances of PED use in professional sports, there continues to be a strong negative moral response to those athletes who dope. My goal is to offer a diagnosis of this response. I will argue that we do not experience such disdain because these athletes have broken some constitutive rule of sport, but because they have lied about who they are. In violating the constraints of their own public narratives, they make both themselves and their choices unintelligible. This (...) worry becomes especially profound as we care greatly about who our athletes are. Using cases from both athletics and US politics, I argue that certain kinds of lies so violate our understanding of who a person is that we can no longer recognize them as the person we took them to be. Fundamentally, I believe that PED users have lied about something central to their public narratives. I develop this view through an examination of narrative identity, primarily focusing on J. David Velleman’s work on agency and self-constitution. I do not claim that the athlete using steroids is nonidentical to who she would be in the absence of steroid use, but that through use of PEDs, she has misled us about an important component of her pubic narrative and this is difficult for us to reconcile. Ultimately, this has implications for sport as well as other other aspects of human social life. (shrink)

What for Sartre happens when bad faith goes so deep that one is no longer master of it? In The Condemned of Altona, Franz Gerlach, after an initial show of resistance, joins the Nazi cause and tortures prisoners of war in his charge. Fleeing home from Russia at the war’s end, he sequesters himself in the attic of the family mansion and attempts to absorb the guilt of the twentieth century by frantically arguing his case before a tribunal of scuttling (...) crabs.What does Sartre’s portrayal of hallucination tell us about the human condition and is it the result of insanity? As a harbinger for the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre’s ontology has shifted away from an emphasis on human isolation and absolute freedom to a concern with how behaviour, even of an irrational kind, is a profound reflection of one’s place in a social hierarchy. Also a reflection of a CDR-type approach, Sartre’s views change regarding the status of truth and interpersonal relations. For while someone like Nausea’s Roquentin exhibits a redemptive value through introspection, fantasy and private experience, Franz’s behaviour points to a repeated failure to deal with social reality and the associated attempt to redeem his own existence by acting authentically towards others. (shrink)

This paper argues that God is not logically able to condemn a person to Hell by considering what is entailed by accepting the best argument to the contrary, the so-called free will defense expounded by Christian apologists Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig. It argues that the free will defense is logically fallacious, involves a philosophical fiction, and is based on a fraudulent account of Scripture, concluding that the problem of postmortem evil puts would-be believers in a logical and moral (...) straightjacket from which there is no escape without heresy or contradiction. -/- 1. Imagining an Afterlife in Hell -- 2. Essential Doctrines of Christianity -- 3. The Logical Puzzle Involved -- 4. Plumbing the Depths of Christian Doctrine a Little - 4.1 Christianity’s Commitment to Theism - 4.1.1 God’s Omnipotence - 4.1.2 God’s Omniscience - 4.1.3 God’s Omnibenevolence (Moral Perfection) - 4.2 The Doctrines of Salvation and Damnation - 4.2.1 Salvation and Heaven - 4.2.2 Damnation and Hell - 4.2.3 The Inhabitants of Hell – 5. The Issue of Inconsistency Again - 5.1 The Missing Concept of Responsibility - 5.2 God’s Responsibility for Evil in General - 5.3 The Charge of Inconsistency Reinforced -- 6. The Christian Cross: A Logical Straightjacket -- 7. The Art of Apologetics -- 8. Craig’s Apologetics - 8.1 Craig’s Purported Proof of Consistency - 8.1.1 A Problem with the Entailment Condition - 8.1.2 A Problem with the Consistency Condition - 8.1.3 Is Craig’s Optimal World the Best God Could Create? - 8.1.4 A Heavenly Refutation - 8.1.5 “Heaven Isn’t a Possible World” - 8.1.6 “Heaven Isn’t a Feasible World” -- 9. Free Will, Foreknowledge, and Predestination - 9.1 Compatibilist versus Incompatibilist Meanings of “Free Will” - 9.2 Free Will, Predestination, and Being Sent to Hell - 9.3 Consequences of Being Predestined to Hell -- 10. Summary. (shrink)

Al-Ghazālī on Condemnation of Pride and Self-Admiration : Book XXIX of the Revival of the Religious Sciences. Translated by Mohammed Rustom. Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 2018. Pp. xxxvi + 190. £17.99.

The “fallacy of negative evidence” in historical scholarship is well exemplified by the assumption that In agro dominico, John XXII's bull condemning the errors of Meister Eckhart, was published only in the ecclesiastical province of Cologne. Scholarship on the subject has taken the limited publication of In agro dominico for granted on the grounds that nothing has been known to show that the bull was sent elsewhere. Seeing “nobody on the road,” some experts have even been able to see wording (...) in papal legislation that normal eyesight cannot find, namely, an explicit statement limiting the publication of the bull against Eckhart to the city, diocese, and province of Cologne. Were it true that John XXII restricted the publication of In agro dominico, then it might follow, as some recent scholars have maintained, that John wished to minimize the significance of Eckhart's trial and its outcome. But is it true? (shrink)

This is a critical examination of a recent book by David Piche, which contains a new edition of the sweeping and influential condemnation by Bishop Stephen Tempier of 219 (or now, 220) propositions on March 7,1277 at the University of Paris. In addition to the Latin text, Piche's book includes a French translation of the text of the condemnation, an introduction to the Latin text and translation, and his historico-doctrinal interpretation of the condemnation and the events leading (...) up to it. This condemnation has deservedly received considerable attention from scholars during the past twenty-five years or so, and Piche's new edition of the text is a valuable contribution to this ongoing research. His historico-doctrinal commentary on the condemnation incorporates and builds upon much of this more recent material. Without agreeing with his interpretation on every point, my overall evaluation of his book is quite positive. (shrink)

Since their publication, the Muhammad cartoons featured in Jyllands Posten and Charlie Hebdo have become a symbol of free speech and Western values. These cartoons used provocation as a tool to discuss the limits of free speech and the scope of social self-censorship. In a just society, should the possibility of laughter be distributed equally? Should cartoonists and editors only publish jokes that are universally laughable? What is the proper reaction to these kinds of provocative jokes once the possibility of (...) censorship is ruled out in a liberal context? Is counterspeech or even cancellation a legitimate response? (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 530-543, May 2022. Since their publication, the Muhammad cartoons featured in Jyllands Posten and Charlie Hebdo have become a symbol of free speech and Western values. These cartoons used provocation as a tool to discuss the limits of free speech and the scope of social self-censorship. In a just society, should the possibility of laughter be distributed equally? Should cartoonists and editors only publish jokes that are universally laughable? What is the (...) proper reaction to these kinds of provocative jokes once the possibility of censorship is ruled out in a liberal context? Is counterspeech or even cancellation a legitimate response? (shrink)

An analysis of Geoffrey Hill's lyric poem about William Blake illuminates the relations between art, prophecy, and imperial politics across more than two centuries. Hill's poem responds to David V. Erdman's argument that Blake was resolutely, if ineffectually and sometimes secretly, opposed to war. It also establishes Hill's own cryptic but definite resistance to contemporary war and warmongers, while it mourns poetry's public powerlessness to halt the violent competition for material resources. Ignored by the majority, poetry fails to bring about (...) the ethical social change that poets often envision. The layering of perspectives (Hill the poet and scholar writing about Erdman the scholar, who is explicating Blake the poet and artist) allows for a multidimensional interpretation of the role of poets and prophetic poetry. Despite their fury at society's deafness and greed, and frustration at their own incapacities, poets—because if they are great poets, they are prophets, too—continue to speak to their audiences about the problems of this world and about the better worlds that can be imagined. Hill's text obliquely teaches how the small success of a great poem can provide a minor note of consolation as it objects to terror and tyranny. (shrink)

An analysis of Geoffrey Hill's lyric poem about William Blake illuminates the relations between art, prophecy, and imperial politics across more than two centuries. Hill's poem responds to David V. Erdman's argument that Blake was resolutely, if ineffectually and sometimes secretly, opposed to war. It also establishes Hill's own cryptic but definite resistance to contemporary war and warmongers, while it mourns poetry's public powerlessness to halt the violent competition for material resources. Ignored by the majority, poetry fails to bring about (...) the ethical social change that poets often envision. The layering of perspectives (Hill the poet and scholar writing about Erdman the scholar, who is explicating Blake the poet and artist) allows for a multidimensional interpretation of the role of poets and prophetic poetry. Despite their fury at society's deafness and greed, and frustration at their own incapacities, poets—because if they are great poets, they are prophets, too—continue to speak to their audiences about the problems of this world and about the better worlds that can be imagined. Hill's text obliquely teaches how the small success of a great poem can provide a minor note of consolation as it objects to terror and tyranny. (shrink)

This review article of the volume Nach der Verurteilung von 1277. Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzen Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte, edited by J.A. Aertsen, K. Emery and A. Speer focuses on three points. First of all, it discusses new developments in the field of enquiry concerning the origin, the meaning and the influence of the condemnation of 1277. Then, it highlights the crisis of the historiographical categories introduced by scholars of the (...) first half of the twentieth century to interpret the condemnation and its aftermath. Lastly, it questions whether a new ‘standard interpretation’ of the condemnation does indeed exist, as Emery and Speer claim in their Introduction, arguing that the supposed ‘founders’ of such an interpretation do not share any kind of old-fashioned positivist approach to medieval thought. In fact, their works simply stress how the emergence of a class of professional philosophers brought about a new conception of the nature and scope of philosophy, considered as an autonomous discipline that could be appreciated and practiced for its own sake. (shrink)