Online research in philosophy

This book offers a new interpretation of Heidegger's major work, Being and Time. Unlike those who view Heidegger as an idealist, Taylor Carman argues that Heidegger is best understood as a realist. Amongst the distinctive features of the book are an interpretation explicitly oriented within a Kantian framework (often taken for granted in readings of Heidegger) and an analysis of Dasein in relation to recent theories of intentionality, notably those of Dennett and Searle. Rigorous, jargon-free and deftly argued this (...) book will be necessary reading for all serious students of Heidegger. (shrink)

This article offers an overview of the structure and significance of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Neither a psychological nor an epistemological theory, Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is instead an attempt to describe perceptual experience as we experience it. Although he was influenced heavily by Husserl, Heidegger, and Gestalt psychology, his work departs significantly from all three. Particularly original is his account of our bodily, precognitive experience of other persons, which he argues is essentially more primitive than any belief or doubt we can (...) raise concerning the contents or even the existence of their minds. I conclude with a discussion of the differences between Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and Alva Noë's more recent 'enactive' theory of perception. (shrink)

Herman Philipse's Heidegger's Philosophy of Being is an attempt to interpret, analyze, and ultimately discredit the whole of Heidegger's thought. But Philipse's reading of the texts is uncharitable, and the ideas he presents and criticizes often bear little resemblance to Heidegger's views. Philipse relies on a crude distinction between "theoretical" and "applicative" interpretations in arguing that Heidegger's conception of interpretation as a kind of projection (Entwurf) is, like the liar's paradox, formally self-defeating. But even granting the distinction, the charge of (...) reflective incoherence is fallacious and question-begging. Finally, Philipse advances the astonishing "interpretive hypothesis" that the seemingly morbid existential themes in Being and Time were part of a deliberate "Pascalian strategy" to win converts to Heidegger's own idiosyncratic "postmonotheist worship of Being." In short, notwithstanding its nearly comprehensive coverage of Heidegger's works, the book does not represent a sufficiently serious effort to understand the complexities and obscurities of Heidegger's thinking. (shrink)

The central question in Heidegger's philosophy, early and late, is that concerning the meaning of being. Recently, some have suggested that Heidegger himself interprets being to mean presence (Anwesen, Anwesenheit, Praesenz), citing as evidence lectures dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. I argue, on the contrary, that Heidegger regards the equation between being and presence as the hallmark of metaphysical thinking, and that it only ever appears in his texts as a gloss on the philosophical tradition, not as an (...) expression of his own ontological commitments. In his early work Heidegger seeks to confront and even correct the traditional interpretation of being by challenging its narrow preoccupation with presence and the present. By the 1930s, however, he abandons the idea that there is anything to?be intrinsically right or wrong about with regard to the meaning of being and turns his attention instead to what he calls ?appropriation? (Ereignis) or the truth of being, that is, the essentially ahistorical condition for the possibility of all historically contingent interpretations of being, including the metaphysical interpretation of being as presence. (shrink)

Richard Moran's Authority and Estrangement offers a subtle and innovative account of self-knowledge that lifts the problem out of the narrow confines of epistemology and into the broader context of practical reasoning and moral psychology. Moran argues convincingly that fundamental self/other asymmetries are essential to our concept of persons. Moreover, the first- and the third-person points of view are systematically interconnected, so that the expression or avowal of one's attitudes constitutes a substantive form of self-knowledge. But while Moran's argument is (...) wide-ranging and compelling, he relies throughout on an overly intellectualized conception of first-person attitudes as attitudes of reflection or deliberation. That conception is at once implausible and unnecessary to the main current of his argument, whose goal is to demonstrate that our self-conception as persons depends on both the distinctness and the interconnectedness of our first- and third-person perspectives on ourselves. (shrink)

Frederick Olafson criticizes Hubert Dreyfus’s interpretation of BEING AND TIME on a number of points, including the meaning of being, the nature of intentionality, and especially the role of das Man in Heidegger’s account of social existence. But on the whole Olafson’s critique is unconvincing because it rests on an implausible account of presence and perceptual intuition in Heidegger’s early philosophy, and because Olafson maintains an overly individuated notion of Dasein and consequently a one-sided conception of the role of das (...) Man. Unfortunately, since Dreyfus confines his commentary exclusively to Division I, he in effect forgoes any attempt to explain how das Man might be understood as playing the simultaneously constitutive and destructive role Heidegger evidently envisioned for it. I conclude by arguing that the conformity and the conformism represented by das Man are bound together by Heidegger’s notion of standoffishness (Abständigkeit). (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was described by Paul Ricoeur as "the greatest of the French phenomenologists." The new essays in this volume examine the full scope of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, from his central and abiding concern with the nature of perception and the bodily constitution of intentionality to his reflections on science, nature, art, history, and politics. The authors explore the historical origins and context of his thought as well as its continuing relevance to contemporary work in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, (...) biology, art criticism and political and social theory. (shrink)

Life and works -- Intentionality and perception -- Body and world -- Self and others -- History and politics -- Vision and style -- Legacy and relevance.

This bibliography is the culmination of four years' work by a team of noted scholars; its annotated entries are organized by religious tradition and cover each tradition's central concepts, offering a judicious selection of primary and secondary works as well as recommendations of cross-cultural topics to be explored. Specialists in the history and literature of religions and comparative religion will find this bibliography a valuable research tool.

The new essays in this volume examine the full scope of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy.

To assert that the ancient planetary theory proposed by Ptolemy was irrefutable – at least until the telescope discovery – is a bit of a cliché. The aim of this paper is to analyze in what sense it could be said that the epicycle and deferent model proposed by Ptolemy to explain the planetary movement is irrefutable and in what sense it is not. To do this, we will use the conceptual framework developed by the Structuralist Conception, and in particular, (...) the Moulines’ analysis of the “guiding principles”. DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n2p211. (shrink)

This is a reply to an article in the preceding issue. I show that Carman's attempt {Inquiry 37 [1994], pp. 203?23) to meet my critique of Dreyfus's interpretation of Heidegger is itself open to criticism on several important points. He imputes an ?anti?individualistic? attitude to Heidegger and denies that the concept of Dasein is in any sense the concept of a subject; but both these claims are refuted by appealing to express statements by Heidegger. Carman also denies that (...) the concept of presence plays any significant role in Heidegger's early thought; and against this I show that it is centrally involved in several of the lecture series from the period of Being and Time. A number of other criticisms are taken up, among them those having to do with the concept of a clearing (Lichtung), the role of perception in Heidegger's account of Dasein, and the anonymous public kind of selfhood that Heidegger calls Das Man. In the case of this last, I argue that the case for regarding it as a necessary condition of the intelligibility of the world to us is extremely weak. (shrink)

This essay discusses the views of historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, who sets forth that democratic societies tend toward a determinist outlook; she fears that the weakened belief in free will and its heroes endangers a democratic society. She regards H. G. Wells as the founder in 1920 of the "new history," with its antiheroic bias. She welcomes therefore the television series The Civil War for having achieved "a history from above and history from below," with its heroes among common soldiers (...) as well as the generals and statesmen. Himmelfarb criticizes the "debunking" historians who not only belittle the significance of heroes but find in "small causes" (e.g., the origins of Hitler's obsessive anti-Semitism) a basis for large-scale events (e.g., the Holocaust). Himmelfarb finds that H. G. Wells's Outline of History was intended not only to displace military conquerors as the heroes of history but to elevate the scientific elite in their place as history's truly constructive people. Americans, however, were, earlier, first introduced to another variety of "new history" by two Columbia University professors, Charles A. Beard and James Harvey Robinson, who wrote textbooks used by perhaps millions of high school students; Beard had derived the concept in 1906 when he read the Socialist History of France , much of it written by the French socialist, Jean Jaurès. The philosophy of history still remains in a position similar to that which has long prevailed in the philosophy of physics, where determinism and indeterminism have persisted irreconcilably. (shrink)

: Today's personable, sanitized images of human embryos and fetuses require an audience that is literally and metaphorically distanced from dead specimens. Yet scientists must handle dead specimens to produce embryological knowledge, which only then can be transformed into beautiful photographs and talking fetuses. I begin with an account of Gertrude Stein's experience making a model of a fetal brain. Her tactile encounter is contrasted to the avant-garde artistic tradition that later came to dominate embryo imagery. This essay shows (...) the embryo visualizations portrayed in a contemporary coffee-table book about gestational development to be a remarkable political achievement predicated, in part, on keeping hidden the unsavory details of anatomical technique that transform dead specimens into icons of life. (shrink)

The paper included here was presented by Nanette Funk in Honor of Gertrude Ezorsky, the famed philosopher, feminist, and antiracism activist, at the 1997 Meeting of the Society for Women in Philosophy. It is published here as presented. Thus, although it is a coauthored talk the “I” refers to Nanette Funk.

The paper included here was presented by Nanette Funk in Honor of Gertrude Ezorsky, the famed philosopher, feminist, and antiracism activist, at the 1997 Meeting of the Society for Women in Philosophy. It is published here as presented. Thus, although it is a coauthored talk the “I” refers to Nanette Funk.

One of our most distinguished intellectual historians gives us a brilliant revisionist history. The Roads to Modernity reclaims the Enlightenment–an extraordinary time bursting with new ideas about the human condition in the realms of politics, society, and religion–from historians who have downgraded its importance and from scholars who have given preeminence to the Enlightenment in France over concurrent movements in England and America. Contrasting the Enlightenments in the three nations, Gertrude Himmelfarb demonstrates the primacy of the British and the (...) wisdom and foresight of thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Edward Gibbon, and Edmund Burke, who established its unique character and historic importance. It is this Enlightenment, she argues, that created a moral and social philosophy–humane, compassionate, and realistic–that still resonates strongly today, in America perhaps even more so than in Europe. This is an illuminating contribution to the history of ideas. (shrink)

When Donald Davidson published his influential article ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’ [1963], many of his contemporaries were convinced that reasons for action could not be causes of anything, so that even an explanation such as ‘Gilbert knelt because he had decided to propose to Gertrude’ did not work by citing Gilbert’s decision as a cause of his kneeling. Davidson was mainly responsible for demolishing that consensus and reinstating causalism—the thesis that psychological or rationalizing explanations of human behaviour are a (...) species of event-causal explanation—as the dominant view in the philosophy of action, so that it is now often regarded as an obvious truth. (shrink)

In their debate over my interpretation of Heidegger's account of das Man in Being and Time, Frederick Olafson and Taylor Carman agree that Heidegger's various characterizations of das Man are inconsistent. Olafson champions an existentialist/ontic account of das Man as a distorted mode of being?with. Carman defends a Wittgensteinian/ontological account of das Man as Heidegger's name for the social norms that make possible everyday intelligibility. For Olafson, then, das Man is a privative mode of Dasein, while for (...) class='Hi'>Carman it makes up an important aspect of Dasein's positive constitution. Neither interpreter takes seriously the other's account, though both acknowledge both readings are possible. How should one choose between these two interpretations? I suggest that we choose the interpretation that identifies the phenomenon the work is examining, gives the most internally consistent account of that phenomenon, and shows the compatibility of this account with the rest of the work. (shrink)

I offer a revised interpretation of Heidegger's 'ontological idealism' - his thesis that being, but not entities, depends on Dasein - as well as its relationship to Kant's transcendental idealism. I build from my earlier efforts on this topic by modifying them and defending my basic line of interpretation against criticisms advanced by Cerbone, Philipse, and Carman. In essence, my reading of Heidegger goes like this: what it means to say that 'being' depends on Dasein is that the criteria (...) and standards that determine what it is to be, and hence whether an item (or anything at all) is, are conceptually interwoven with, and hence conceptually dependent upon, a structure that could not obtain without Dasein (namely, time). For this reason, to ask whether entities (e.g., nature) would exist, even if we (Dasein) did not, is either to ask an empirical question with an obvious negative answer (viz., According to our best current theories, does everything depend causally upon us?), or to ask a meaningless question with no answer (viz., If we suspend or discount the standards and criteria that determine whether anything is, does anything exist?). In short, Heidegger is an empirical realist, but neither a transcendental idealist nor realist. (shrink)

I develop a “two-systems” interpretation of Husserl’s theory of belief. On this interpretation, Husserl accounts for our sense of the world in terms of (1) a system of embodied horizon meanings and passive synthesis, which is involved in any experience of an object, and (2) a system of active synthesis and sedimentation, which comes on line when we attend to an object’s properties. I use this account to defend Husserl against several forms of Heideggerean critique. One line of critique, recently (...) elaborated by Taylor Carman, says that Husserl wrongly loads everyday perception with explicit beliefs about things. A second, earlier line of critique, due to Hubert Dreyfus, charges Husserl with thinking of belief on a problematic Artificial Intelligence (AI) model which involves explicit rules applied to discrete symbol structures. I argue that these criticisms are based on a conflation of Husserl’s two systems of belief. The conception of Husserlian phenomenology which emerges is compatible with Heideggerean phenomenology and associated approaches to cognitive science (in particular, dynamical systems theory). (shrink)

This paper uses tools of philosophical analysis critically to examine accounts of the nature of racism that have recently been offered by writers including existentialist philosopher Lewis Gordon, conservative theorist Dinesh D'Souza, and sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant. These approaches, which conceive of racism either as a bad-faith choice to believe, a doctrine, or as a type of 'social formation', are found wanting for a variety of reasons, especially that they cannot comprehend some forms of racism. I propose (...) an account that conceives racism chiefly as a motivational/volitional matter, in short, as a form of moral viciousness. I show how this approach offers a unified account that comprises inter alia individual and institutional racism, expressed and unexpressed racism. I point out advantages that my view has over Thomas Schmid's somewhat similar suggestion, and use the account to examine a number of claims made about racism by H. L. Gates, Jr, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, Gertrude Ezorsky, and others. Finally, I defend this approach from the general criticism that Benjamin DeMott has levelled against any effort so to understand racism. Key Words: Benjamin DeMott • Dinesh D'Souza • existentialism • Lewis Gordon • moral concepts • Michael Omi • racism • social formation • Howard Winant. (shrink)

Trying to make sense of abstract painting has resulted in interesting but often inexact and inadequately motivated efforts to characterize what is distinctive about modern art. The present account begins with Gertrude Stein's description of the fascination she experiences in viewing painted surfaces and proceeds through a number of efforts to justify or severely criticize abstract painting in relation to more traditional representational works. The basis for a phenomenology of abstract painting is suggested by James Elkins's first-person analysis of (...) the reasons why painters paint, focusing on the production rather than exclusively on the appreciation of paintings. Elkins's proposal that painters paint as an exploration of the possibilities of working with the material substance of paint is advanced as the basis for a new approach to the problems of understanding the nature of abstract art as the most pure and concentrated form of this remarkable aesthetic preoccupation that is to be found in all paintings and by extension in all art. (shrink)

In a recent paper on Heidegger, Frederick Olafson attacks Hubert Dreyfus for prioritizing our “social” existence (under the notion of das Man) over the individual. In a reply, Taylor Carman, defending Dreyfus, criticizes Olafson for his “subjectivist” notion of Dasein. This paper pursues the implication of this disagreement in the context of Heidegger’s theory of space. Dreyfus’ discussion of Heideggerian spatiality nicely displays the tension between the “public” vs. “individual” domains of being, and consistent with his overall approach, Dreyfus (...) claims that public space should be prioritized. Dreyfus concludes, however, that Heidegger is confused and prioritizes individual space. This paper argues that the categories of “public” and “individual” are inappropriate for analyzing Heidegger’s sense of the shared and personal characters of space. Heidegger’s “indexical” theory of space in fact saves both of these domains without raising the question of priority and without presupposing a “subjectivist” Dasein. On this reading, Olafson’s “individualized” account of presence does not commit him to subjectivism. The confusion Dreyfus attributes to Heidegger is cleared up by an indexical account of spatiality in Heidegger’s text. (shrink)

One may have different objectives in interpreting texts. If a judge interprets a statute in order to obtain a satisfactory solution to a case, his aim may be called "applicative". But if a historian of science wants to reconstruct the meaning of obscure passages of Ptolemy's "Hypotheses planetarum", his objectives are purely historical and theoretical. The paper argues that these different aims, applicative and historical ones, require different methodologies of interpretation, and imply different criteria of success. In particular, the "principle (...) of charity" according to which an interpretation is better to the extent that we agree more with what the text as interpreted says, is fitting for applicative interpretations, but not without further qualifications for historical ones. The paper argues further that we should apply the methodology of historical interpretation to the entire body of German texts now available, if we want to interpret Martin Heidegger's philosophical oeuvre, assess its philosophical value, and investigate its links to Nazism. These were the aims of Herman Philipse's book "Heidegger's Philosophy of Being. A Critical Interpretation" (Princeton University Press, 1998, 555 pp.). Criticisms of this book by Taylor Carman and others are often off target because they presuppose applicative interpretations that aim at making Heidegger say things the interpreter believes himself, instead of striving for historical adequacy, and that are based upon a small selection of translations instead of upon the entire corpus of extant German texts. (shrink)

Taylor Carman has argued that the passages I submitted to him as proof that Heidegger identifies being with presence are really just his characterizations of a metaphysical conception of being that he repudiates. I show that he has misread these passages and has misunderstood the nature of the continuity that Heidegger himself recognizes between the views of Kant which are under discussion in the texts from which these passages are drawn and his own (Heidegger's) position which finds expression in (...) them. I then cite other passages from another work by Heidegger that make the same point about being and presence just as emphatically and quite independently of any account of any other philosopher's views. Finally, I explain the difference between the ways Heidegger uses the word Anwesenheit ? his word for presence. One of these is as a translation of the Greek ousia which he interprets as a concept of being as presence sans temporality; the other is the radicalized concept of being as presence toward which Heidegger was working in Being and Time. (shrink)

I analyze a number of the quantum no-signalling proofs (Ghirardi et al. 1980, Bussey 1982, Jordan 1983, Shimony 1985, Redhead 1987, Eberhard and Ross 1989, Sherer and Busch 1993). These purport to show that the EPR correlations cannot be exploited for transmitting signals, i.e., are not causal. First, I show that these proofs can be mathematically unified; they are disguised versions of a single theorem. Second, I argue that these proofs are circular. The essential theorem relies upon the tensor (...) product representation for combined systems, which has no physical basis in the von Neumann axioms. Historically, the construction of this representation scheme by von Neumann and Weyl built no-signalling assumptions into the quantum theory. Signalling between the wings of the EPR-Bell experiments is unlikely but is not ruled out empirically by the class of proofs considered. (shrink)

In contrast to many of his contemporaries, A. J. Ayer was an analytic philosopher who had sustained throughout his career some interest in developments in the work of his ‘continental’ peers. Ayer, who spoke French, held friendships with some important Parisian intellectuals, such as Camus, Bataille, Wahl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper examines the circumstances of a meeting between Ayer, Merleau-Ponty, Wahl, Ambrosino and Bataille, which took place in 1951 at some Parisian bar. The question under discussion during this meeting was (...) whether the sun existed before humans did, over which the various philosophers disagreed. This disagreement is tangled with a variety of issues, such as Ayer’s critique of Heidegger and Sartre (inherited from Carnap), Ayer’s response to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of empiricism, and Bataille’s response to Sartre’s critique of his notion of ‘unknowing’, which uncannily resembles Ayer’s critique of Sartre. 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From its dissonant musics to its surrealist spectacles (the urinal is a violin!), Modernist art often seems to give more frustration than pleasure to its audience. In Untwisting the Serpent, Daniel Albright shows that this perception arises partly because we usually consider each art form in isolation, even though many of the most important artistic experiments of the Modernists were collaborations involving several media--Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is a ballet, Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts is (...) an opera, and Pablo Picasso turned his cubist paintings into costumes for Parade. Focusing on collaborations with a musical component, Albright views these works as either figures of dissonance that try to retain the distinctness of their various media (e.g. Guillaume Apollinaire's Les Mamelles de Tiresias ) or figures of consonance that try to lose themselves in some total effect (e.g. Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung ). In so doing he offers a fresh picture of Modernism, and provides a compelling model for the analysis of all artistic collaborations. Untwisting the Serpent is the recipient of the 2001 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship of the Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University. (shrink)

My aim in what follows is to contribute to recent discussions concerning the place of phenomenology within the tradition of transcendental philosophy. Very broadly, the issue here is whether phenomenology aspires to provide transcendental results, and if so, whether it can hope meet those aspirations. This is a large and many-faceted question; my aim here is to explore one rather narrow slice of it. I shall for the most part confine my attention to the version of the phenomenological enterprise found (...) in Division I of Being and Time. And I shall concern myself not with the full range of questions raised by the idea of a transcendental inquiry but rather myopically with a set of questions concerning the distinctive logical modality of purported transcendental results. This modality can be identified in various ways, but we can see it at work in the oft-repeated thought that transcendental philosophy aims to identify the conditions on the possibility of certain facts or features of our experience. (The archetype for this sort of claim is of course Kant’s thesis that the application of the categories is a condition on the possibility of self-conscious experience.) If A is a condition on the possibility of B, then it would seem that A must obtain, given the actuality of B. We might accordingly frame the issue as a question about the modality of necessity in the context of Heideggerian phenomenology. Even so narrowed, the issues here are still pretty large and thorny. I don’t pretend here to be able to resolve them; my hope is that I can at least sharpen the questions and perhaps thereby render them more tractable. In pursuing these issues I shall pay particular attention to a recent illuminating analysis proposed and elaborated by Taylor Carman. (shrink)

Judith Butler’s idea of gender as performative (introduced in Gender Trouble and now a commonplace in feminist theory) is brought into dialogue with feminist performance art (exemplified by Valie Export, the Austrian media- and performance-artist). Butler’s claim that gender is performative and that it can be changed only through a parodic repetition of performative acts is revisited through the lens of Export’s subversive performance pieces. This “interaction” between theory and art practice shall highlight the political potential of Butler’s work and (...) serve to expand her notion of parody as it pertains more directly to women and the female body. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Part I. Introduction: Introduction; 1. Existentialism and its legacy Steven Crowell; Part II. Existentialism in Historical Perspective: 2. Existentialism as a philosophical movement David E. Cooper; 3. Existentialism as a cultural movement William McBride; Part III. Major Existentialist Philosophers: 4. Kierkegaard's single individual and the point of indirect communication Alastair Hannay; 5. 'What a monster then is man': Pascal and Kierkegaard on being a contradictory self and what to do about it Hubert L. Dreyfus; 6. Nietzsche: (...) after the death of God Richard Schacht; 7. Nietzsche: selfhood, creativity, and philosophy Lawrence J. Hatab; 8. Heidegger: the existential analytic of Dasein William Blattner; 9. The antinomy of being: Heidegger's critique of humanism Karsten Harries; 10. Sartre's existentialism and the nature of consciousness Steven Crowell; 11. Political existentialism: the career of Sartre's political thought Thomas R. Flynn; 12. Simone de Beauvoir's existentialism: freedom and ambiguity in the human world Kristana Arp; 13. Merleau-Ponty on body, flesh, and visibility Taylor Carman; Part IV. The Reach of Existential Philosophy; 14. Existentialism as literature Jeff Malpas; 15. Existentialism and religion Merold Westphal; 16. Racism is a system: how existentialism became dialectical in Fanon and Sartre Robert Bernasconi; 17. Existential phenomenology, psychiatric illness, and the death of possibilities Matthew Ratcliffe and Matthew Broome; Bibliography of works cited; Index. (shrink)

Weber's Ideal Type as a Method of Forming the Content of Theoretical Concepts in Social Sciences}. Max Weber introduced the ideal type as the specific method of concept formation in social sciences. But the ideal type is not established in social research. Instead, authors in philosophy of science until today try to reconstruct and interpret what Weber said about ideal types as well as what might be their importance in Weber's social theory. The thesis of the following paper is that (...) the difficulties in understanding Weber's ideal types are linked with Weber's intensional logic of concept formation. The thesis is defended in three steps. The first step deals with Weber's understanding of what is a scientific question in cultural sciences. Secondly Weber's critical arguments against positivism, hegelianism and historism are worked out. Thirdly, Weber's method of concept formation is reconstructed. (shrink)

Sustainable development calls for choices among alternative policy options. It is a common view that such choices can be justified by appealing to an evaluative ranking of the options with respect to how their consequences affect a broad range of prudential and moral values. Three philosophically motivated proposals for analysing evaluative rankings are discussed: the measured merits model (e.g. Chang), the ordered values model (e.g. Griffin), and the permissible preference orderings model (Rabinowicz). The analysis focuses on the models’ potential for (...) making transparent how an evaluative ranking can contribute to a justified choice among options, particularly in situations that involve diverse values as typically found in debates on sustainable development. Such transparency plays a crucial role when policy rankings are going to be used as arguments in political decision processes. The measured merits model is found to have questionable consequences for the concept of sustainability, while the ordered values model calls for an axiological framework that cannot plausibly be spelled out for sustainability. The permissible preference orderings model is more promising. Its formal structure and its ability to deal with value-pluralism provide an interesting re-structuring of the problem of justifying choices in sustainability issues. (shrink)