This essay considers P. J. Ivanhoe's critical challenge to Slingerland's analysis of wuwei(‘effortless action’). While I agree with Ivanhoe that we should do more work to embody and understand the concept of wuwei, I will defend Slingerland's notion that wuwei involves paradox—particularly in the cases of Zhuangi and Laozi. The present essay is not a defense of the specifics of Slingerland's analysis. Nonetheless, this essay focuses on defending the notion of paradox. Ivanhoe offers an alternative view of wuwei, one that (...) sees the paradox as a riddle. I argue that this kind of formulation would frame the problem of wuwei in an unhelpful manner. I offer several novel ways of overcoming, or at least qualifying, the experience of paradox that seems to be at play in nondoing. (shrink)

Under what conditions are people responsible for their choices and the outcomes of those choices? How could such conditions be fostered by liberal societies? Should what people are due as a matter of justice depend on what they are responsible for? For example, how far should healthcare provision depend on patients' past choices? What values would be realized and which hampered by making justice sensitive to responsibility? Would it give people what they deserve? Would it advance or hinder equality? The (...) explosion of philosophical interest in such questions has been fuelled by increased focus on individual responsibility in political debates. Political philosophers, especially egalitarians, have responded to such developments by attempting to map out the proper place for responsibility in theories of justice. This book both reflects on these recent developments in normative political theory and moves the debate forwards. (shrink)

The global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus has disrupted many sectors of normal life, including the communal worship of religious bodies. This essay first looks at the recent case of the Minnesota Catholic bishops and the Governor of Minnesota which came close to civil disobedience. Then the essay will consider the thought of John Courtney Murray on when it is legitimate for the coercive powers of the state to be used to limit religious freedom, including the right to worship. (...) Finally, those standards are applied to the Minnesota case, arguing that the initial actions of the Governor failed to meet Murray’s test, while the revised executive order succeeded in meeting Murray’s standards. (shrink)

Plato, often cited as a founding father of Western philosophy, set out ideas in the Republic regarding the nature of justice, order, and the character of the just individual, that endure into the modern day. The Routledge Guidebook to Plato’s Republic introduces the major themes in Plato’s great book and acts as a companion for reading the work, examining: The context of Plato’s work and the background to his writing Each separate part of the text in relation to its goals, (...) meanings and impact The reception the book received when first seen by the world The relevance of Plato’s work to modern philosophy, its legacy and influence. With further reading included throughout, this text follows Plato’s original work closely, making it essential reading for all students of philosophy, and all those wishing to get to grips with this classic work. (shrink)

In this second edition of the highly successfulRoutledge Philosophy GuideBook to Plato and theRepublic, Nickolas Pappas extends his exploration of the text to ...

Philosophical aesthetics emerges out of eighteenth-century discussions of taste that paid scant attention to the experience of tasting and ingesting food. Sarah Worth diagnoses this historical oversight and offers an unexpected remedy. She argues that we should start our analysis of aesthetic taste over again, this time beginning with the pleasures of the tongue and mouth, and work out from there to consider the kinds of experience, knowledge, and appreciation that belong to eating and savoring. As she argues, our ability (...) to make gustatory discriminations and to determine what tastes good and why is not as different from our aesthetic judgments as philosophers and other aesthetic theorists might have led us to believe. In this engaging and readable book, Worth persuasively argues that food and its many tastes deserve serious philosophical consideration.Worth explores a number of puzzles that arise when we try to make sense of the concept of taste. She disentangles the metaphorical sense of taste understood as a reasoned judgment expressing aesthetic preferences from the literal sense of taste which involves our sensory experiences when food is in our mouths. She discusses good and bad taste, food and pleasure, authentic and inauthentic food, “food porn”—those impossibly glamourized images of food that we find in advertising and magazines and cookbooks and social media—and the role of recipes in the practice of cooking. She places our everyday experiences of food in the context of wider relationships and activities including cultivation, harvesting, processing, shipping, and purchasing, as well as the preparation and cooking meals for family and friends. The book is punctuated by many of the usual philosophical suspects (Plato and Aristotle, Hume and Kant, Bullough and Sibley) as well as critical and feminist theorists, food sociologists, and a number of famous chefs including Fannie Farmer, Julie Child, and Nigella Lawson. If Worth endorses a particular metaphilosophy of food, it would be that of the Slow Food movement, which is the subject of Chapter Three. (shrink)

Discrimination, understood as differential treatment of individuals on the basis of their respective group memberships, is widely considered to be morally wrong. This moral judgment is backed in many jurisdictions with the passage of equality of opportunity legislation, which aims to ensure that racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, sexual-orientation, disability and other groups are not subjected to discrimination. This chapter explores the conceptual underpinnings of discrimination and equality of opportunity using the tools of analytical moral and political philosophy.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the recent debate about responsibility and distributive justice. It traces the recent philosophical focus on distributive justice to John Rawls and examines two arguments in his work which might be taken to contain the seeds of the focus on responsibility in later theories of distributive justice. It examines Ronald Dworkin's ‘equality of resources’, the ‘luck egalitarianism’ of Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen, as well as the criticisms of their work put forward by (...) Elizabeth Anderson, Marc Fleurbaey, Susan Hurley, and Jonathan Wolff. Key concepts such as responsibility (individual and collective), luck (thin and thick; brute and option), control, desert, and equality of opportunity are delineated, and the implementation of responsibility-sensitive accounts of justice is considered. The chapters of this book are positioned in relation to the wider literature on responsibility and distributive justice, and a brief outline of the chapters is provided. (shrink)

This article intends to identify and construct a Wesleyan perspective of business and entrepreneurship, drawing on how Wesley viewed and used business and entrepreneurship in relation to poverty in England, in order to identify helpful implications for the church which seeks to engage with poverty-related issues. Wesley did not repudiate or underestimate business and entrepreneurship in believers’ lives; rather, he provided believers with practical guidance and theological foundations for business and entrepreneurship particularly in the context of poverty. We argue that (...) Wesley should be viewed as a compassionate entrepreneur—with the compassion of a liberator and the practice of an entrepreneur, as he encouraged believers to actively participate in economic activities, and recognized entrepreneurship as a sustainable and significant way to empower the poor. Wesley’s example challenges the church today as his case study serves as a radical and faithful application of biblical economic teachings on business and entrepreneurship. (shrink)

In "Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth: Contributions in Honor of Robert A. Segal", nineteen renowned scholars offer a collection of essays addressing the persisting question of how to approach religion and myth as academic categories. Taking their cue from the work of Robert A. Segal, they discuss how to theorize about religion and myth from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. With cases from ancient Greece and Mesopotamia to East Asia and the modern world by and large, and engaging (...) with diverse disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, history, film, theology, and religious studies among others, the volume establishes a synthesis that demonstrates the pervasiveness as well as the pitfalls of the categories "religion" and "myth" in the world. (shrink)

examines theoretical discourses on the specificity, origin, and function of ''religion'' in antiquity, broadly defined here as the period from the 6th century BCE to the 4th century CE.

This chapter identifies three contrasts between responsibility-sensitive justice and desert-sensitive justice. First, while responsibility may be appraised on prudential or moral grounds, it is argued that desert is necessarily moral. As moral appraisal is much more plausible, responsibility-sensitive justice is only attractive in one of its two formulations. Second, strict responsibility sensitivity does not compensate for all forms of bad brute luck, and forms of responsibility-sensitive justice like luck egalitarianism that provide such compensation do so by appealing to independent moral (...) concerns such as equality. Desert-sensitive justice can deliver the appropriate compensation without relying on external moral resources. Finally, while responsibility-sensitive justice harshly refuses to provide for those whose basic needs are unsatisfied due to their own negligent actions, this result can be averted by desert-sensitive justice as it can take into account responsibility-independent considerations. In sum, desert-sensitive justice appears to offer a tighter fit with considered judgments about justice. (shrink)

The 2010 Nagoya Protocol is an international framework for access and benefit sharing (ABS) of the use of genetic and biological resources, with particular focus on indigenous communities. This is especially important in Africa, where local communities have a close reliance on environmental resources and ecosystems. However, national legislation and policies commonly lag behind international agreements, and this poses challenges for legal compliance as well as practical applications. This study reviews the academic literature on the Nagoya Protocol and ABS applications, (...) and then considers the implications of this analysis for research in Africa. Results show that there is uneven engagement with the principles of the Nagoya Protocol across different academic disciplines; local communities are sometimes sidelined in these studies; and only 8% of researchers in the literature analysed are located in Africa. Future developments should focus on ensuring national compliance with the Nagoya Protocol, and that researchers and industry work in partnership with local African communities on ABS issues. (shrink)

Given that many people with disabilities have been excluded from political deliberation and subjected to infantilizing and degrading treatment from others, many members of the disability rights movement are understandably critical of policies and practices that speak on behalf of people with disabilities and presume to know what is really in their best interest. Yet, this analysis argues that a general principle of anti-paternalism is not desirable for disability politics. In particular, people with cognitive disabilities are sometimes unable to make (...) important decisions by themselves, and may require assistance from family members or more cognitively able and verbally fluent citizens to make their political voices and choices heard. Drawing from John Locke and Alasdair MacIntyre, this article reconsiders the relationship between paternalism and autonomy, suggesting that autonomous decisionmaking and expression are best thought of as collaborative processes undertaken between people with a range of capacities. (shrink)

Li Da (1890–1966) was one of China’s most important Marxist intellectuals and a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party. He played a major role in the introduction of Marxist philosophy and theory to China and in its dissemination among Chinese revolutionaries. His works are now regarded in China as classics of Marxist philosophy, and he is numbered among the ten most influential Chinese intellectuals of this century. Yet, almost nothing has been written about Li Da in English.In this seminal (...) study, Knight analyzes Li Da’s contribution to the flowering of Marxist philosophy and theory in China, examining Li’s writings and placing them in the context of the Marxist tradition. Knight also explores Li Da’s philosophical relationship with Mao Zedong, who was heavily influenced by Li’s works. Through the lens of Li’s life and thought, this book provides a detailed assessment of the introduction and dissemination of Marxist philosophy and social theory in China. (shrink)

Pierre Klossowski’s last major theoretical text Living Currency saw it’s first official1 translation into English in May 2017, nearly fifty years after it was published in French. On the back of the book is a blurb quoting Foucault, in which he calls it ‘the greatest book of our time’. This was almost certainly hyperbole; but whether or not his appraisal was correct, it is a good book that advances a key to understanding Klossowski’s literary and visual relationship to the exploited (...) and monetized body, as this is the preoccupying theme throughout his fictional, non-fictional, and visual art. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the most controversial philosophers and social theorists of our time. He opposes liberalism and postmodernism with the teleological arguments of an updated Thomistic Aristotelianism. It is this tradition, he claims, which presents the best theory so far about the nature of rationality, morality, and politics. This is the first reader of MacIntyre's groundbreaking work. It includes extracts from and his own synopses of two famous books from the 1980s, After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (...) as well as the whole of several shorter works and two interviews. Together, these pieces constitute not only a representative collection of his work but also the most powerful and accessible presentation of his arguments yet available. The MacIntyre Reader concludes with Kelvin Knight 's clear, concise, and insightful overview of the development of MacIntyre's central ideas and how they have developed in his writings. Students will find this book a powerful and accessible introduction to one of the great thinkers of our time. "The publication of the new MacIntyre Reader--a fascinating anthology of his work from his Marxist beginnings to his Thomistic conclusions--provides an interesting opportunity for reconsidering the man's thought." --The Weekly Standard Kelvin Knight is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of North London. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 218-219 [Access article in PDF] David Roochnik. Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character of Plato's Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 159. Cloth, $35.00. Plato makes no general assertions, certainly none about "universals" (108). The Republic does not advocate the creation of an ideal state (78, 93) but transcends utopias to acknowledge the merits of democracy and democratic diversity (...) (92). Nor does Plato hold the tripartite psychological theory associated with the Republic (18-20). Such theories are impossible for human souls with their essentially temporal natures (104). The Republic is a dialectical work (2). Its movement shows without Plato's saying it that diversity is a social good; that the psychological theory of Book 4 "is preserved in its partiality as a moment of the dialectical development of the dialogue" (3); and so on.David Roochnik belongs in the tradition of Leo Strauss, unearthing an odd and unknown Republic from beneath the dialogue familiar to hordes of readers (beginning with Aristotle) who evidently read it wrongly. Roochnik brings intelligence to his project, clear writing, and a mind inclined toward originality. Nevertheless Strauss's influence is everywhere. E.g.: The Republic is "a conversation that twists and turns, develops, and at times revises what was earlier said. In its totality it gives voice to the truth about the human soul" (131).Roochnik's main subject is that truth about the soul. He says that the Republic corrects Book 4's tripartite analysis with the temporally oriented psychology told in the anecdotes of Books 8 and 9. The wise reader respects both approaches. The soul is "erotic and therefore necessarily diverse, but... desires arithmetical simplicity," and both diversity and simplicity "must be included in an adequate psychology" (120). "Our souls are... suspended between... time and eternity, the divine and the beastly" (108). The erotic and the arithmetical serve as poles between which Plato navigates. Book 4 proposes a mathematical psychology, but Eros increasingly dominates the Republic and the rigid arithmetic designed to harness Eros fails. Book 4's arithmetical account of the soul is "inadequate, and... it is meant to be inadequate" (19). One should see the soul as arithmetical in one respect, irrepressibly erotic in another.Number plays a defining role in the Platonic city, too (38). Kallipolis battles Eros with an arithmetical ideal but loses (44-45). The failure of arithmetic amounts to the failure of utopia. The Republic "teaches that perfect justice is neither possible (the marriage number fails) nor desirable (we don't really want to exile everybody over ten)" (93). Notice: because "we"—Roochnik and his friends?—don't want to found a city among impressionable children, the Republic teaches that Kallipolis is not desirable.To similar effect: "if Kallipolis were to come into being, then the Republic could not. But since Kallipolis requires the Republic in order to come into being, it contains in itself the seeds of its dissolution" (69). Nonsense! Kallipolis needs the Republic in order to come into existence but not to remain existent. The dialogue's disappearance implies nothing about the city's dissolution.Straussians routinely deny that the Republic constructs its city. Though typical, Roochnik claims not to be (7 n. 4, 75). His reading "is not ironic": "the... revisions I have discussed take place on the surface of the dialogue itself, and the kinds of negations that follow are dialectical ones which... preserve what is negated in its partiality" (91).But garble about surfaces and dialectic will not rescue a hermeneutical method if one begins (Roochnik does, all Straussians do) by calling every flaw in a Platonic argument intentional. That Platonolatry is implausible in itself; it is methodologically shoddy for other reasons too. In the first place, it yields meager results. When every argumentative failure is intentional the Republic becomes platitudinous. Thus Roochnik's dialectical meaning is less memorable than the laziest reader's understanding of the Republic (Forms, cave, archons). He dismisses radical claims as unworthy of Plato but replaces them with the mealy... (shrink)

Of course there's every difference in the world between my merely saying something and its being so. My claim that I have a toothache is a far cry from the toothache itself. Words are not things: I neither sit in the word ‘chair’ nor eat the word ‘food.’.

The paper examines the contribution of the French philosopher Michel Foucault to the subject of ethics in organizations. The paper combines an analysis of Foucault’s work on discipline and control, with an examination of his later work on the ethical subject and technologies of the self. Our paper argues that the work of the later Foucault provides an important contribution to business ethics theory, practice and pedagogy. We discuss how it offers an alternative avenue to traditional normative ethical theory that (...) both converges and diverges with other extant alternatives. By situating ethics as practices of the self, and by demonstrating the conditions under which freedom in organizations can be exercised, Foucault’s ethics attempt to connect an understanding and critique of power with a personal project of self. He therefore provides a theory of subjectivity that potentially informs a reshaping of contemporary virtue ethics theory, value-based management, and business ethics teaching. (shrink)

The paper examines the contribution of the French philosopher Michel Foucault to the subject of ethics in organizations. The paper combines an analysis of Foucault’s work on discipline and control, with an examination of his later work on the ethical subject and technologies of the self. Our paper argues that the work of the later Foucault provides an important contribution to business ethics theory, practice and pedagogy. We discuss how it offers an alternative avenue to traditional normative ethical theory that (...) both converges and diverges with other extant alternatives. By situating ethics as practices of the self, and by demonstrating the conditions under which freedom in organizations can be exercised, Foucault’s ethics attempt to connect an understanding and critique of power with a personal project of self. He therefore provides a theory of subjectivity that potentially informs a reshaping of contemporary virtue ethics theory, value-based management, and business ethics teaching. (shrink)

Nietzsche's opinions on philosophy and aesthetics developed under strong and lasting impulses from classical antiquity. These were not always the same, for at various periods in his life Nietzsche placed Heraclitus, Empedocles, Aeschylus, and even Socrates and Plato on the highest summit of wisdom. In his so-called first stage of development the pre-Socratics were generally his favourite thinkers, and in the third and last stage these same figures tend to come into prominence again. On the other hand, in the works (...) of Nietzsche's second, rationalistic period, when he was particularly influenced by Comte, Voltaire, and Darwin, Socrates and Plato—usually so hated and despised—are mentioned with affection, with gratitude or even with warm enthusiasm; and so, over and over again, is Epicurus. (shrink)

Enhancing the usability of the brain, as a more intriguing alloy for interaction design, by employing the Brain Current Interface model (BCIm). Instead of studying interaction design through the angle of cognitive semiotics, where signs and signifiers produce meaning, I propose, in this case, to approach the paradigm of interaction design from a metaphorical angle, as a product of perceptual and intentional consciousness. Through this disposition, I argue, it is possible to approach the hypothesis of bringing together the use of (...) non-invasive brain computer interfaces (BCI) and the field of contemporary neuroscience, especially the role of the chemical modulation on a cellular level of the brain while learning, in order to propose a model for interaction via deliberate attention, that influences cognitive performance and advances well-being of individuals of any age.That which was previously mentally projected, which was lived as a metaphor in the terrestrial habitat is from now on projected entirely without metaphor …. (shrink)

In [3], two different effective versions of Borel embedding are defined. The first, called computable embedding, is based on uniform enumeration reducibility, while the second, called Turing computable embedding, is based on uniform Turing reducibility. While [3] focused mainly on computable embeddings, the present paper considers Turing computable embeddings. Although the two notions are not equivalent, we can show that they behave alike on the mathematically interesting classes chosen for investigation in [3]. We give a “Pull-back Theorem”, saying that if (...) Φ is a Turing computable embedding of K into K’, then for any computable infinitary sentence φ in the language of K’, we can find a computable infinitary sentence φ* in the language of K such that for all. (shrink)

Many scholars assume a connection between the evolution of language and that of distinctively human group-level morality. Unfortunately, such thinkers frequently downplay a central implication of modern Darwinian theory, which precludes the possibility of innate psychological mechanisms evolving to benefit the group at the expense of the individual. Group level moral regulation is indeed central to public life in all known human communities. The production of speech acts would be impossible without this. The challenge, therefore, is to explain on a (...) Darwinian basis how life could have become subject to the rule of law. Only then will we have an appropriate social framework in which to contextualize our models of how language may have evolved. (shrink)

This article argues that, suitably modified, the method of reflective equilibrium is a plausible way of selecting moral principles. The appropriate conception of the method is wide and radical, admitting consideration of a full range of moral principles and arguments, and requiring the enquiring individual to consider others' views and undergo experiences that may offset any formative biases. The individual is not bound by his initial considered judgments, and may revise his view in any way whatsoever. It is appropriate to (...) describe the method as a balance between coherentism and fallibilist foundationalism. With these points in mind, various criticisms, including the claims that considered judgments are not initially credible and are shaped by prejudice, and that the method itself fails to determine principle selection, are challenged. (shrink)