Seventeen transgressive behaviors were studied in the context of six personality variables using survey methods. The personality variables were impulsivity, sensation seeking, empathetic perspective taking, guilt, and shame, with social desirability used as a control. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated a five-factor model as having the best fit. Those five factors are competitive cheating, self-cheating, school cheating, relationship cheating, and breaking a social contract. A structural equation model indicated that only impulsivity, sensation seeking, and empathetic perspective taking were related to frequency (...) of transgressive behaviors, thus supporting the hypothesis that moral decision making has a critical automatic component. (shrink)

Patrick Frierson - Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 313-338 Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes Patrick R. Frierson The whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely (...) medicine, mechanics, and morals. Descartes is well known for his metaphysics and physics, the roots and trunk of his philosophical project. But Descartes's morals are generally neglected, partly because they are so difficult to find. He does not dedicate a major published work to morality. His most direct comments on it are in letters to Princess Elizabeth and Pierre Chanut. The published work that most touches on moral issues is The Passions of the Soul, which is primarily a treatise on the relationship between mind and body. As a result of this lack of primary sources , there have been only a few significant studies of Descartes's moral philosophy in French, and only two major works devoted to it in English. This neglect of Descartes's ethics is unfortunate, not least since ethical concerns sometimes influence his work in other areas. This.. (shrink)

Social media is full of dead people. Untold millions of dead users haunt the online world where we increasingly live our lives. What do we do with all these digital souls? Can we simply delete them, or do they have a right to persist? Philosophers have been almost entirely silent on the topic, despite their perennial focus on death as a unique dimension of human existence. Until now. -/- Drawing on ongoing philosophical debates, Digital Souls claims that the digital dead (...) are objects that should be treated with loving regard and that we have a moral duty towards. Modern technology helps them to persist in various ways, while also making them vulnerable to new forms of exploitation and abuse. This provocative book explores a range of questions about the nature of death, identity, grief, the moral status of digital remains and the threat posed by AI-driven avatars of dead people. In the digital era, it seems we must all re-learn how to live with the dead. (shrink)

The text includes fragments of his work that have never before been translated.

This book is a collection of 14 philosophical essays on the theme of love written over the years beginning 2009. All these essays were formed out of conversations-in-thinking and used various philosophical thoughts in their approach to the theme of love. Some of these essays were posted and shared in social media sites often during Valentine's Day. Others were written as academic exercises and sharing.

The defining debate in this new century will be about technology and human enhancement, according to many across the political spectrum.[1] Our ability to use science to enhance our bodies and minds – as opposed to its application for therapeutic purposes – is one of the most personal and therefore passionate issues in an era where emerging technologies seduce us with new and fantastic possibilities for our future. But in the process, we are forced to rethink what it means to (...) be human or, essentially, our own identity. For some, technology holds the promise of making us superhuman; for others, it offers a darker path toward becoming Frankenstein’s monster. This paper will look at a growing chorus of calls for human enhancement to be embraced and unrestricted. Specifically, we will critically examine recent “pro-enhancement” arguments – articulated in More Than Human by Ramez Naam,[2] as one of the most visible works on the subject today – and conclude that they ultimately need to be strengthened, if they are to be convincing. Our overarching motive here is not so much that we are against human enhancement technologies; that seems to be too premature a conclusion given the state of research and debate, and such technologies may be inevitable anyway. However, we believe that a skeptical eye should be applied to claims that there should be no restrictions on any particular action. Even our most cherished human rights are bounded by reason or societal norms, for whatever they are worth. For instance, our right to free speech still does not allow us to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater or to slander others. Our right to fall in love and to make love with whom we want does not extend to children. And for all the talk about the virtues of a “free market” or “free trade”, the invisible hand of our economy is still occasionally slapped by anti-trust lawsuits, which would not be an issue if the market were truly free. So even if human enhancement seems to be a reasonable practice and even a right, restrictions may still be required to mitigate undesirable circumstances or unintended consequences – which would be consistent with how functioning societies treat other liberties, values and rights. (shrink)

Le présent article indique les principales caractéristiques de la ritualité funéraire. Il montre, au-delà de ses formes d'organisation, ses enjeux. Retenue du mort, séparation du défunt et remaniement des places que les vivants occupent en rapport à la société des morts, constituent les dimensions principales d'une ritualité sans doute variable selon les cultures, mais aussi universelle. On peut décrire les pratiques des funérailles, les « expliquer » en montrant qu'elles ressortissent à des impératifs sociaux, ou les « comprendre » en (...) disant que l'être désolé trouve au travers de coutumes les moyens d'affirmer son attachement à l'être aimé et de nier symboliquement la perte qu'il subit. Mais il faut surtout comprendre que la ritualité funéraire, qui déborde des obsèques, oblige les sociétés au-delà de leurs capacités communicationnelles. Ce débordement est précisément l'affaire de toute culture et de son travail. En direction de l'incommunicable.This article describes the main characteristics of the funeral ritual. It shows beyond its forms of organization, its issues. Retention of death, separation and rearrangement of the deceased that the living spaces occupy in relation to the company of the dead, are the main dimensions of a ritual probably varies by crop, but also universal. We can describe the practices of funerals, "explain" by showing that they belong to social imperatives, or "understand" saying sorry be found through customs means to affirm its commitment to the loved and symbolically deny the loss sustained. But above all understand that the funeral ritual, which extends beyond the funeral, requires companies beyond their communication skills. This overflow is precisely the case of any culture and work. Towards the incommunicable. (shrink)

During his encounter with Lethaeus Amor in theRemedia amoris, in which he discusses techniques to forget a former lover, Ovid writes the following:quisquis amas, loca sola nocent: loca sola caveto;quo fugis? in populo tutior esse potes.non tibi secretis est opus; auxilio turba futura tibi est.tristis eris, si solus eris, dominaeque relictaeante oculos facies stabit, ut ipsa, tuos.This passage has been discussed in Hardie's treatment of Lethaeus Amor, and, while he directly addresses Ovid's use oflociin this passage as I shall below, (...) his focus is on the rich intertextuality – textual remembrances – within theRemediarather than the use oflociin thears memoriaeproper. Hardie points out numerous intertexts in theRemedia, using the character of Lethaeus Amor to highlight the paradox of a learned reader of love poetry being unable to forget the poetry he has read, despite this specific oblivion being a precondition for curing oneself of love. In this case, theloca solaOvid warns against are ‘topics of solitude’ which ‘conjure up for the experienced reader scenes of erotic despair’, thus calling to mind the lover's own lovelorn state. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on Kant’s position concerning the nature of nonhuman animals and the moral obligations that humans have toward animals. It begins by describing Kant’s account of the nature of animals and the distinction between humans and nonhuman animals. It then moves on to explaining Kant’s account of the nature of moral obligation and his oft-misunderstood contention that we do not have “duties to” nonhuman animals but only “duties with regard to” these animals. The chapter corrects the orthodox reading (...) of Kant’s position, which has it that he considers benevolence toward animals to be justified only by the effects of brutality on the human who commits brutal acts. Instead Kant argues that animals are worthy of admiration, love, sympathy and gratitude, despite not being “ends in themselves” like humans. Finally, the chapter considers Kant’s position in relation to that of another important eighteenth-century moral theorist, Francis Hutcheson. (shrink)

The field of mindfulness and the emerging science of heroism have a common interest in the causes and conditions of selfless altruism though up to this point there has been little cross-pollination. However, there is increasing evidence that mindfulness training delivers heroically relevant qualities such as increased attentional functioning, enhanced primary sensory awareness, greater conflict monitoring, increased cognitive control, reduced fear response, and an increase in loving kindness and self-sacrificing behaviors. Predicated on the notion of a “no self,” traditional mindfulness (...) and its focus on enlightenment and selfless service may in fact be ideally suited to the development of the elusive “trait” (predictable) versus “state” (intermittent) heroic character. Interweaving observations and questions drawn from the science of heroism, the article explores the relevant theory, practices, and scientific outcomes of mindfulness. It finds that there is evidence that heroically relevant qualities are trainable with the suite of mindfulness techniques and that an enduring experience of selflessness and service of others (the enlightened hero) may well be within the grasp of the serious practitioner. (shrink)

The ethics expressed in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love has been subject to persistent criticism for its perceived indifference to concrete persons and failure to attend to the other in their individual specificity. Recent defenses of Works of Love have focused in large part on the role of vision in the text, showing the supposed “blind” empty formalism of the emphasis on the category of “the neighbor” to serve a normative model of seeing the other correctly. However, when this (...) problem is viewed in the broader context of Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of moral vision, two further, thus far unanswered, problems emerge: How can we see the other and the moral demand they represent at the same time, and how can we see the other and our own condition at the same time? This paper draws on other Kierkegaardian texts to show how Kierkegaard’s model of moral vision allows for the simultaneity in vision necessary to overcome these challenges. (shrink)

This paper shows how Maria Montessori's thought can enrich contemporary virtue epistemology. After a short overview of her ‘interested empiricist’ epistemological framework, I discuss four representative intellectual virtues: sensory acuity, physical dexterity, intellectual love, and intellectual humility. Throughout, I show how Montessori bridges the divide between reliabilist and responsibilist approaches to the virtues and how her particular treatments of virtues offer distinctive and compelling alternatives to contemporary accounts. For instance, she emphasizes how sensory acuity is a virtue for which (...) one can be responsible, highlights the embodied nature of cognition through a focus on physical dexterity, interprets intellectual love as a way of loving the world rather than as a love that takes knowledge as its object, and presents an alternative account of intellectual humility to contemporary emphases on the interpersonal dimensions of this virtue. (shrink)

Literature provides us with otherwise unavailable insights into the ways emotions are produced, experienced and enacted in human social life. It is particularly valuable because it deepens our comprehension of the mutual relations between emotional response and ethical judgment. These are the central claims of Hogan's study, which carefully examines a range of highly esteemed literary works in the context of current neurobiological, psychological, sociological and other empirical research. In this work, he explains the value of literary study for a (...) cognitive science of emotion and outlines the emotional organization of the human mind. He explores the emotions of romantic love, grief, mirth, guilt, shame, jealousy, attachment, compassion and pity - in each case drawing on one work by Shakespeare and one or more works by writers from different historical periods or different cultural backgrounds, such as the eleventh-century Chinese poet Li Ch'ing-Chao and the contemporary Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka. (shrink)

As much a doubter as a believer, Emily Dickinson often expressed views about God in general—and God with respect to suffering in particular. In many of her poems, she contemplates the question posed by countless theologians and poets before her: how can one reconcile a benevolent deity with evil in the world? Examining Dickinson’s perspectives on the role played by a supposedly omnipotent and all-loving God in a world marked by violence and pain, Patrick Keane initially focuses on her (...) poem “Apparently with no surprise,” in which frost, a “blonde Assassin,” beheads a “happy Flower,” a spectacle presided over by “an Approving God.” This tiny lyric,Keane shows, epitomizes the poet’s embattled relationship with the deity of her Calvinist tradition. Although the problem of sufferingis usually couched in terms of natural disasters or human injustice, Dickinson found new ways of considering it. By choosing a flower as her innocent “victim,” she bypassed standard “answers” to the dilemma in order to focus on the problem in its purest symbolic form. Keane goes on toprovide close readings of many of Dickinson’s poems and letters engaging God, showing how she addressed the challenges posed—by her own experience and by an innate skepticism reinforced by a nascent Darwinism—to the argument from design and the concept of a benevolent deity. More than a dissection of a single poem, Keane’s book is a sweeping personal reflection on literature and religion, faith and skepticism, theology and science. He traces the evolving history of the Problem of Suffering from the Hebrew Scriptures, through the writings of Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas, to the most recent theological and philosophical studies of the problem. Keane is interested in _how_ readers today respond to Emily Dickinson’s often combative poems about God; at the same time, she is located as a poet whose creative life coincided with the momentous changes and challenges to religious faith associated with Darwin andNietzsche.Keane also considers Dickinson’s poems and letters in the context of the great Romantic tradition, as it runs fromMilton throughWordsworth, demonstrating how thework of these poets helps illuminate Dickinson’s poetry and thought. Because Dickinson the poet was also Emily the gardener, her love of flowers was an appropriate vehicle for her observations on mortality and her expressions of doubt. _Emily Dickinson’s Approving God _is a graceful study that reveals not only the audacity of Dickinson’s thought but also its relevance to modern readers. In light of ongoing confrontations between Darwinism and design, science and literal conceptions of a divine Creator, it is an equally provocative read for students of literature and students of life. (shrink)

Locke had a lifelong love of travel literature. He was also a proponent of the construction of natural histories. Many commentators have noted that there is a close link between these two interests. They suggest that data gleaned from travel literature was used in the construction of natural histories. This paper uses Locke’s reading of François Pyrard’s Voyage to argue that the relationship between the two genres was closer than has been realized. Specifically, it is argued that Pyrard’s discussion (...) of the coconut displays characteristic features of a natural history. It pays careful attention to first-hand experience. It emphasizes empirical observation and eschews theory and speculation. It focuses on the practical utility of the coconut. And it records a number of specific measurements. These features allowed Locke to read this portion of a piece of travel literature as a piece of natural history. This allows us to recognize that the genres of natural history and travel literature were not distinct for early modern thinkers. They overlapped in significant ways. (shrink)

Preface -- Identity and the subjunctive -- Representing the seducer -- Interrupting philosophy: -- The complaint about knowledge -- Transcendence and negativity -- The moodiness of the subjunctive -- The accusation of ethics -- Working through love -- The subjunctive hopes all things -- Freedom -- Suffering, faith, and forgiveness -- Concluding with the unscientific.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Leibniz’s Political and Moral Philosophy in the Novissima Sinica, 1699–1999Patrick RileyThe Preface to Leibniz’s Novissima Sinica 1 contains an important but highly compressed and abbreviated quintessence of his theory of justice or jurisprudence universelle—a version so compressed and abbreviated that one must have a broader and fuller understanding of this universal jurisprudence before one can entirely appreciate what Leibniz has to say about Christian charity, Platonism, and geometry in (...) the Novissima Sinica itself. Above all, one wants to know why Leibniz, in the key paragraph of the Preface to Novissima Sinica, should describe the Chinese emperor as just and charitable and as a (more or less) “Platonic” geometer who is as wise as he is charitable. And why should Leibniz contrast this “wisely charitable” Chinese ruler with the Pontius Pilate who irresponsibly asked, “What is truth?” and then permitted the judicial murder of the very Christ who did most to make charity and justice coextensive by saying, “A new law I give unto you, that ye love one another”? 2 The wise course, therefore, is to throw enough light on Leibnizian universal jurisprudence in general to make his moral-political utterances in Novissima Sinica intelligible in particular.In 1693, four years before the publication of Novissima Sinica, Leibniz revealed the outlines of his jurisprudence universelle in the Codex Iuris Gentium:a good man is one who loves everybody, so far as reason permits. Justice, then, which is the virtue which regulates that affection which [End Page 217] the Greeks call philanthropy, will be most conveniently defined... as the charity of the wise man, that is, charity which follows the dictates of wisdom... Charity is a universal benevolence, and benevolence the habit of loving or of willing the good. Love then signifies rejoicing in the happiness of another..., the happiness of those whose happiness pleases us turns into our own happiness, since things which please us are desired for their own sakes. 3Slightly later, in La véritable piété, Leibniz indicated what this view of justice entails:those who... reduce justice to [mere] rigor, and who fail altogether to understand that one cannot be just without being benevolent... in a word, not only those who look for their profit, pleasure, and glory in the misery of others, but also those who are not at all anxious to procure the common good and to lift out of misery those who are in their care, and generally those who show themselves to be without enlightenment and without charity, boast in vain of piety which they do not know at all, whatever appearance they create. 4The central idea of Leibniz’s “universal jurisprudence,” which aims to find quasi-geometrical, eternal moral verities equally valid for all rational beings, human or divine, is that justice is “the charity of the wise” (caritas sapientis), 5 that it is not mere conformity to sovereign-ordained “positive” law given ex plenitudo potestatis (in the manner of Hobbes); nor is it mere “refraining from harm” or even “rendering what is due” (the neminem laedere and suum cuique tribuere of Roman law). 6 The equal stress on “charity” and on “wisdom” suggests that Leibniz’s practical thought is a kind of fusing of Platonism—in which the wise know the eternal truths such as absolute goodness (Phaedo 75d), which the gods themselves also know and love (Euthyphro 93-10e) and which therefore deserve to rule (Republic 443d-e) 7 —and of Pauline Christianity, whose key moral idea is that charity or love is the first of the virtues (“though I speak [End Page 218] with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal”). 8 Historically, there is nothing remarkable in trying to fuse Platonism and Christianity. Augustine’s thought (particularly the early De Libero Arbitrio) is just such a fusion. 9 But Leibniz was the last of the great Christian Platonists, and left the world just as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant were about to transform and “secularize” it.I. If one decomposes caritas sapientis into its parts, charity and wisdom, the provenance of both elements is clear enough... (shrink)

The problem : commerce and corruption -- Smith's defense of commercial society -- What is corruption? : political and psychological perspectives -- Smith on corruption : from the citizen to the human being -- The solution : moral philosophy -- Liberal individualism and virtue ethics -- Social science vs. moral philosophy -- Types of moral philosophy : natural jurisprudence vs. ethics -- Types of ethics : utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics -- Virtue ethics : modern, ancient, and Smithean -- Interlude (...) : the what and the how of TMS VI -- The what : Sith's "practical system of morality" -- The how : rhetoric, audience, and the methods of practical ethics -- The how : the ascent of self-love in three stages -- Prudence or commercial virtue -- The challenge : from praise to prudence -- Educating the vain : fathers and sons -- Self-interest rightly understood -- The advantages and disadvantages of prudence -- Magnanimity or classical virtue -- The problems of prudence and the therapy of magnanimity -- Up from individualism : desert, praiseworthiness, conscience -- Modernity, antiquity, and magnanimity -- The dangers of magnanimity -- Beneficence or christian virtue -- Between care and caritas -- Benevolence and beneficence and the human telos -- The character and purposes of the wise and virtuous man -- Wisdom and virtue and Adam Smith's apology -- Epilogue: The "economy of greatness". (shrink)

ABSTRACTHow much control do we have over our reasons for action? Not much, but some. We all have reasons to avoid pain and not to inflict it on others. What explains our shared reasons? On an externalist account, reasons are grounded in values. All reasons are external to agency. This ensures that reasons are universal, so it is an attractive feature of moral and prudential reasons. However, when our reasons differ this is less attractive. In some cases, it seems like (...) something internal to the agent makes all the difference. There are many valuable things, but an agent can only come to care about a small set of those things. Consider your reasons that stem from your love of philosophy or punk rock. Here it seems we make some reasons our reasons by becoming committed to them. I call these our agential reasons. We express our agency by coming to care about some things in ways not required by rationality. Unlike, matters of taste though, these are not bare preferences we just find ourselves having. Rather these concerns are cultivated over time. We express rational agency by incorporating particular values into our lives. (shrink)

Recent studies suggest that terminally ill African Americans’ care is generally more expensive and of lower quality than that of comparable non-Hispanic white patients. Scholars argue that increasing hospice enrollment among African Americans will help improve end-of-life care for this population, yet few studies have examined the experiences of African American patients and their loved ones after accessing hospice care. In this article, we explore how African American patients and lay caregivers evaluated their hospice experiences. Drawing from 39 in-depth interviews (...) with 26 participants, we use a modified version of Bute and Jensen’s (2011) narrative typology to organize patients’ and caregivers’ stories into three general categories: narratives of satisfaction, narratives of regret, and narratives of ambivalence. Building from these categories, we discuss the implications of this research for understanding hospice experiences, promoting hospice access, and improving end-of-life care for marginalized populations. (shrink)

It is well-known that Leibniz ends and crowns the 1714 “Monadologie” with a version of his notion of jurisprudence universelle or “justice as the charity [love] of the wise:” for sections 83-90 of the Vienna manuscript claim that “the totality of all spirits must compose the City of God . . . this perfect government . . . the most perfect state that is possible . . . this truly universal monarchy [which is] a moral world in the natural (...) world”—a moral world of iustitia in which “no good action would be unrewarded” for those “citizens” who “find pleasure . . . in the contemplation of [God’s] perfections, as is the way of genuine ‘pure love.’” But the opening four-fifths of the work offer Leibniz’ theory of “substance” viewed as the necessary pre-condition of justice: for “on the knowledge of substance, and in the consequence of the soul, depends the knowledge of virtue and of justice” . Thus without a complete and correct notion of substance/monad, no complete and correct notion commune de la justice would be conceivable. Hence the entire “Monadologie” can be understood as a theory of justice underpinned by a Grundlegung of moral “monads” or justice-loving rational “substances.” In this connection it is revelatory that Leibniz cites the relevant sections of the 1710 Théodicée in most of the 90 articles of the “Monadologie” : for Théodicée is “the justice of God,” and Leibniz makes that justice “appear” in the opening lines of the “Monadologie” by referring the reader immediately to Théodicée #10 —which relates “im­mortal spirits” to a just God who is cherished through “genuine pure love.” This means that “the justice of God” as “higher love” colors the “Monadologie” instantly. Thus one need not “wait” for sections 83-90 to arrive in order for the “Monadologie” to be a “theory of justice:” it is such ab initio. (shrink)

Leibniz’s Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice is his most important writing on justice as “wise charity” and “universal benevolence” ; we now observe the 300th anniversary of its composition, and a reproduction of part of Leibniz’s manuscript appears in the Appendix to this article. But Leibniz’s essay might with equal justice be called, “Meditation on the Common Notion of Platonism”—for the Méditation opens with a nearly-verbatim paraphrase of Euthyphro 9e-10e, moves on to reduce Hobbes to Thrasymachus in (...) Republic Book I, and ends with Platonic “ascent,” in the manner of Phaedrus and Symposium, from mere negative forbearance from harm to justice as wise love, caritas, Roman-law honeste vivere, and benevolent “aid to others”—as in Augustine’s Platonizing De Civitate Dei XIX). (shrink)

Leibniz’s Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice is his most important writing on justice as “wise charity” and “universal benevolence” ; we now observe the 300th anniversary of its composition, and a reproduction of part of Leibniz’s manuscript appears in the Appendix to this article. But Leibniz’s essay might with equal justice be called, “Meditation on the Common Notion of Platonism”—for the Méditation opens with a nearly-verbatim paraphrase of Euthyphro 9e-10e, moves on to reduce Hobbes to Thrasymachus in (...) Republic Book I, and ends with Platonic “ascent,” in the manner of Phaedrus and Symposium, from mere negative forbearance from harm to justice as wise love, caritas, Roman-law honeste vivere, and benevolent “aid to others”—as in Augustine’s Platonizing De Civitate Dei XIX). (shrink)

A number of prominent moral philosophers and political theorists have recently called for a recovery of love. But what do we mean when we speak of love today? Love's Enlightenment examines four key conceptions of other-directedness that transformed the meaning of love and helped to shape the way we understand love today: Hume's theory of humanity, Rousseau's theory of pity, Smith's theory of sympathy, and Kant's theory of love. It argues that these four Enlightenment (...) theories are united by a shared effort to develop a moral psychology that can provide both justificatory and motivational grounds for concern for others in the absence of recourse to theological or transcendental categories. In this sense, each theory represents an effort to redefine the love of others that used to be known as caritas or agape - a redefinition that came with benefits and costs that have yet to be fully appreciated. (shrink)

Few concepts are more central to ethics than love, but none is more subject to false consolation. This 1999 book explores several theological, philosophical and literary accounts of love, focusing on how it relates to matters such as self-interest and self-sacrifice, and invulnerability and immortality. Timothy Jackson first considers key aspects of what the Bible says about love, then he further examines the meaning of love and sacrifice through a close reading of novels by Fitzgerald and (...) Hemingway. Lastly, he evaluates how love constrains, and is constrained by, other traditional moral concepts. Throughout, Jackson defends the moral priority of what the Christian tradition calls 'agape'. He argues that a proper understanding of agapic love rejects both moral relativism and the comfort of believing that good people cannot be harmed, or that God causally necessitates every historical action and event. When love is thus disconsoled, it neither fears death nor despises life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.1 (2000) 1-26 [Access article in PDF] "What Will Surprise You Most": Self-Regulating Systems and Problems of Correct Use in Plato's Republic Patrick Maynard University of Western Ontario 1. Republic's Third Wave: "On Philosophers" The title of this paper is taken from a line in Book VI of Plato's Republic that appears to reject not only the accounts of moral justice and (...) other virtues argued in Book IV, but also an axiom of Plato's earlier dialogues: that the virtues are good and beneficial things. It reads: "What will surprise you most, when you hear it, is that each of the things we praised in that nature tends to corrupt the soul that has it and to drag it away from philosophy. I mean courage, moderation, and the other things we mentioned" (491b7-10). Although these other things specifically include justice, magnanimity, grace, love of truth, and a tendency to consider "the form [idea] of each thing that is" (486d10), for their part, commentators have never shown surprise at this passage; indeed they have tended either to neglect or minimize it.1 To recall the context of 491b7-10, it actually comes as a second surprise, hard on the heels of a remarkable admission by Socrates, in early Book VI. The admission came in response to Adeimantus' challenge to Socrates' attempt to show that 'Platonic' philosophers, in the famous Book V sense of those who believe in the [End Page 1] forms, will be just and virtuous people, capable of political leadership (484d8-487a5). Book VI's page 487 thus contains Adeimantus' blistering attack on Socratic method, and a counter-argument against the idea of philosopher-rulers, based on common opinions about philosophers—an argument that should give pause to those who say that Republic left elenctic method behind with Book I. It is Socrates who now faces a forceful elenchus: that is, an inconsistency between the philosopher-rulers position he has just argued and another view he himself accepts, for his reply to Adeimantus is that "they seem to speak the truth" (487d10, 489d5), and "what he says is true, that the best among the philosophers are useless to the majority" (489b2), but that "the greatest and more serious slander on philosophy... results from those who profess to follow the philosophic way of life," especially the "vicious" ones (489cd).Most commentators, teachers, readers, eager to join the account of forms at the end of Book V with that of the form of the good well into Book VI, bridge over this discussion of philosophers' reputations, perhaps noting such of its features as the true pilot, the tinker, the figure in the dust storm, etc., but with little attention to argument structure.2 However, low estimate of structure in Plato's writings is usually a mistake, especially with Republic, and some commentators do make space to shape this bit of text, before getting on to what really interests them. They usually bracket the whole philosophers' reputations discussion, including 491b, as an early part of the so-called "third and greatest wave" (472a, 473c) of objections and replies, regarding the feasibility of the earlier social proposals of Republic: specifically, the objection to the possibility of philosopher-rulers. Socrates' reply to the third wave is usually taken to conclude with the transition at 502c7-503d12, which begins: "now that this difficulty has been disposed of, we must deal with what remains"—that is, with how such rulers could come about, and how they would be educated, a transitional remark that makes the gateway to the scholars' great attractor of the form of the good, with its discussions of the sun, the divided line, the cave of shadows—and few readers ever look back. Thus one recent commentator who does discuss the early part of Book VI moves on to those topics as follows: "Now that the combination of traits required in a philosopher-king has been shown to be a natural possibility... (shrink)

This book uses neuroscience discoveries concerning religious experiences, the Self and personhood to deepen, enhance and interrogate the theological and philosophical set of ideas known as Personalism. McNamara proposes a new eschatological form of personalism that is consistent with current neuroscience models of relevant brain functions concerning the self and personhood and that can meet the catastrophic challenges of the 21st century. Eschatological Personalism, rooted in the philosophical tradition of "Boston Personalism", takes as its starting point the personalist claim that (...) the significance of a self and personality is not fully revealed until it has reached its endpoint, but theologically that end point can only occur within the eschatological realm. That realm is explored in the book along with implications for personalist theory and ethics. Topics covered include the agent intellect, dreams and the imagination, future-orientation and eschatology, phenomenology of Time, social ethics, Love, the challenge of AI, privacy and solitude and the individual ethic of autarchy. This book is an innovative combination of the neuroscientific and theological insights provided by a Personalist viewpoint. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Cognitive Science, Theology, Religious Studies and the philosophy of the mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 283 with his intention to kill himself, finds therein a common point of contact and identifies himself with Jerusalem to whom he lends his own motives of his love affair. By means of this phantasy he protects himself against the effect of his experience. Thus Shakespeare is right in his conjunction of poetry with "fine frenzy." According to the editor, Ernst Kris, who provides an excellent (...) preface to the whole volume and very knowledgeable footnotes, Freud developed the above ideas in Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Der Wahn und die Triiume in W. Jensens "Gradiva" (1907), and Der Dichter und dos Phantasieren (1908). Another "note" in the same enclosure gives a "Definition of the Holy": "Holy" is that which consists in the fact that men have sacrificed a part of their freedom of sexual perversion for the good of a larger community. The abhorrence of incest (wicked) is based on the fact that as a result of sexual promiscuity (also in childhnod) the members of the fainily continuously hohl together and become unable to join strangers. It is therefore antisocial. Culture consists in this permanent renunciation. As against this the "superman." Kris comments thus: "This seems to be the earliest formulation of Freud's view that the process of civilization is inimical to drives (Triebfeindlichkeit). It was later on expressed in The "cultural" sexual murder and the modern nervousness (1908), in Totem and Taboo (1912-13), in Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1929) and in Why War? (1932). This shows clearly, however, that Freud regards the philosophy of Nietzsche as a revulsion against the process of civilization as such, or as one of the symptoms of this revulsion. In a letter of January 1, 1898 (p. 209), Freud gives a definition of happiness: "Happiness is the subsequent fulfillment of a prehistoric wish. Therefore riches bring one very little happiness. Money is no child-wish." "Prehistoric" means here the stage of early unremembered childhood. Freud is a rigorous determinist, and he states in a supplement to a letter of August 27, 1899: "There is nothing arbitrary or undetermined in the psychical." This determinacy concerns even such trivial facts as why Freud imagined the figure of 2467. The self-critical acumen of Freud is remarkable. In a letter of October 31, 1895, shortly after the writing of the Draft of a Psychology, he writes to Fliess (about the latter's ideas): "First impression: Surprise that there is one man who is still more of a visionary than myself and that this happens to be my friend Wilhelm" (p. 116). Freud employs here the expression "Phantast" (for visionary) which means that his own (Freud's) ideas and those of Fliess are "phantastic." This is of course primarily a criticism of Fliess. Professor Kraft-Ebbing (author of Psychopathia sexualis and head of the clinic of nervous diseases in Vienna), who was friendly to Freud and helped him to gain the title of professor of the university but remained sceptical--just as did Breuer--called Freud's theory "a scientific tale" (ein wissenschaftliches Miirchen). MAX RIESER New York City L'esprit, la verit~ et l'histoire. By Giovanni Gentile. Trans. by Joseph Moreau. (Paris: Aubier, 1962. Pp. 331.) Giovanni Gentile (1875--1944), the most thorough-going Hegelian in the whole history of Western philosophy, suffered decline in Italy on the eve of World War II (primarily for political reasons), but in recent years a return to Gentile the philosopher has been increasingly noticeable there and elsewhere. Proof of this renewed interest is the above French edition of Gentile, which is a collection of excerpts from his systematic writings, selected by an indefatigable disciple, Vito A. Bellezza. 284 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Although this is not the first time that Gentile has been translated into French (a major work of his, L'esprit, acte pur, was published in Paris in 1925), the fact remains nevertheless that his neo-Hegelian system of philosophy fell on deaf ears originally in France, due to the predominance then of Bergsonism and positivi.sm in different areas of French thought. However, as Michele F. Sciacca (another commentator on Gentile) notes in the Preface, the Gentilian system of "actual idealism" should get... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:From the Perspective of the Self: Montaigne’s Self-PortraitPatrick HenryFrom the Perspective of the Self: Montaigne’s Self-Portrait, by Craig B. Brush; 321 pp. New York: Fordham University Press, 1994, $32.50.In a note to Chapter One, the author explains that his is the third book to center on the self-portrait of Montaigne but, unlike one—Miroirs d’encre by Michel Beaujour—his deals only with Montaigne and, unlike both—the other is Montaigne’s Essays (...) as the Book of the Self by Richard Regosin—his is not geared toward literary theory and offers no theoretical approach to self-portraiture or autobiography. What we have, then, is a close textual analysis of the essayist’s self-portrait which is shown to coexist with the ubiquitous voice of the moraliste, whose subject is mankind in general, and a third voice, particularly pronounced in the 1588 and 1595 editions of the Essays, that of the “essayer,” “whose topic is his own book, its aim, its method of inquiry, and its production” (p. 120). Throughout his study, even as he scrutinizes the self-portrait, Brush demonstrates that these three voices are interrelated, interdependent, and virtually inseparable. [End Page 173]Brush’s exhaustive enterprise: to depict “how Montaigne came to the project [of self-portraiture], how he conceived it, how he practiced it, what he had to say about it, what he learned from the strange practice, how it became a way of life for him” (p. 8) takes him into areas that have been well-debated by Montaigne scholars. Thus we find lengthy discussions of the sense of the word “essay,” authorial modesty, the role of the reader, titles, beginnings, digressions, additions, endings, skepticism, nominalism, Catholicism, dialogue, ethics, evolution, the use of personal pronouns, the structure of individual chapters and of the book as a whole, the link between La Boétie’s death and the self-portraiture project, and the interplay between self and other.On each topic, however, Brush inevitably offers a fresh insight, a quirky intuition, or a new departure that makes the discussion worthwhile. He paints the history of both domestic and official portraiture at the moment when Montaigne began writing; he explains why a self-portrait is not an autobiography; he opposes the treatise and the essay; he differentiates clearly between self-study, self-knowledge, and self-portraiture; he depicts what is missing from the portrait that the essayist deemed relatively complete, and he weighs carefully the opposed proclivities of the essayist toward self-improvement and self-acceptance. In addition, he points out how the impossibility of finding a “pure self” forced Montaigne “to paint himself in context” (p. 107) and argues forcefully that the essayist’s “love of life was a profoundly religious experience” (p. 210). In a particularly rich commentary on “Of practice” (pp. 82–83), Brush stresses the importance of writing for the author of the Essays. In this case, the writing of the essay may in fact have been more significant for him than the event that the writing narrates, thus underscoring the essayist’s claim that this book has made him as much as he has made it. Finally, Brush’s tenth chapter, “Study Without a Book,” eloquently elucidates the originality that Montaigne brought to his reading of the ancient adage “Know Thyself.”It was inevitable that Brush would cover much familiar material but by keeping his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Montaigne criticism in the end notes and by rigorously analyzing the Essays, he has written an eminently readable, jargon-free study that will serve both the beginning student and the seasoned Montaigne scholar. Having no theory to impose, he is free to chart the amazingly rich variety and diversity of the Essays, aspects of the human condition that the essayist always underscored. His book, clearly the product of years of ruminating on the Essays, contains hundreds of quotations from Montaigne’s Travel Journal and from seventy-seven of the one-hundred-seven chapters penned by the essayist. By giving us, in the main, nothing but his own personal reflections on the Essays, he has also curiously and interestingly provided us with his... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Home Is Somewhere Else: Autobiography in Two VoicesPatrick HenryHome Is Somewhere Else: Autobiography in Two Voices, by Desider Furst and Lilian R. Furst; xv & 235 pp. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, $14.95 paper.Published in the “Margins of Literature” series, Home Is Somewhere Else follows a family of three who, on the margins of the Holocaust, live for nine months in Nazi occupied Vienna before escaping illegally in early (...) 1939 into Brussels and then legally to England. The narration goes on to relate both the life of that family in England until the mother’s death in 1969 ended “the symbiotic threesome” (p. 203) and the subsequent emigration of the father and daughter to the United States where, with her retired father, the daughter pursues her career as professor of comparative literature. The final chapter, “As My Father Used to Say,” records the wisdom and witticisms of her father who died in 1985 leaving her alone, in mourning and still deracinated, having become “more [herself] and thereby more other” (p. 217). “My geographical roots are shallow; only those created by the brand mark of the red ‘J’ [meaning “Jew” and stamped on the family passport in Vienna in 1938] run deep into my being” (p. 217).The technical interest of the book resides in its dual autobiographies. Desider, the father, wrote his (entitled A Superfluous Man) in the early 1970s after his retirement and emigration to the United States. Lilian, the daughter, read it in 1983 and found it organized into chapters around places where they had lived. Without rereading it, she began her autobiography in 1991, deciding to write alternative chapters that would be centered on the same places her father had written about: Vienna, Cologne, Brussels, London, Bedford, and Manchester. In addition, he writes a chapter on the Isle of Man where he was interned for four months in 1941 and she on Chertsey where she spent a year alone. She also writes a chapter about her mother’s life and one on her life with her father in America. [End Page 156]Although both autobiographies are completely retrospective accounts composed, without diaries or notes of any kind, decades after the initial events they narrate, each reflects the preoccupations of the narrator at the time of the events being narrated. Thus Lilian’s, composed as “a tribute of [her parents] for bringing [her] through to safety” (p. xiv), contains the child’s impressions of family, friends, home, relatives, and nanny as well as her fear and terror as she experiences the Nazi entry into Vienna in 1938, Crystal Night, the train ride to Cologne, and the flight to Brussels. From Desider’s, on the other hand, emanates the broader vision of the responsible adult, parent and husband, conscious of the historical scope within which his particular drama unravels. He paints in vivid colors the happy decade in Vienna (1928–38), the descent into the hell of Nazism, the struggle to escape “this gigantic prison” (p. 47), and his appreciation and admiration for the British. He underscores the complexity of the situation by populating his account with scores of individuals—unfortunate Jews, sadistic Nazis, good Austrians, profiteers of all kinds—and by frequent conflicting references to Providence, destiny, luck, and the totally gratuitous nature of survival. Written as a memorial to his wife by a man who claims never to have wanted anything more than a normal life for himself and his family, his narration fittingly ends with her death in Manchester in 1969.The power of the book, however, springs as much from what unites the narratives, as from what divides them. I am not speaking of the similarity of events but rather of the deeply held human values (responsibility, courage, sacrifice, family union, interdependence, and love) that resonate powerfully throughout both accounts. Indeed, the intertwining of the two voices is poetically and umbilically linked to the hands of father and daughter that grip each other throughout the narrative. We find a father who risks everything to keep his family together, a mother who gives up her medical career for the same reason, and a daughter, full of gratitude, love, and an intense sense... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Shimmering Maya and Other EssaysPatrick HenryThe Shimmering Maya and Other Essays, by Catharine Savage Brosman; 149 pp. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994, $24.94.When the author was fifteen, she held the rank of “prospector” at Girl Scout Camp. Now, over forty years later, she is “digging down through the layers, sifting through the running stream of memory” (p. 14). Her art of prospecting affords the reader (...) a linear impression of a journey that begins with “The Shimmering Maya,” a recountal of a family move in August 1944 from Colorado to South Texas. “Desert Silvery Blue” describes life in Alpine, Texas, while “Leaving for Good” narrates her experience of displacement as she departs Alpine in 1951 to attend Rice Institute, known then as “the atheist school” (p. 37). From Alpine to Houston, she experiences the greening of America and the shock of Gulf Coast humidity, “a sensation of being hit in the face and smothered” (p. 42). At Rice, she finishes her degrees, travels to France, her intellectual home, and returns, in “Cherry Time”—“Yes, Virginia, there is a Virginia” (p. 52)—to describe her life in full bloom during this relatively short but intense period, spent in and around the state of Virginia, before her permanent move to New Orleans. Two essays conclude the volume even as they bend back toward its beginning. “Winter Light” narrates the life of her grandfather, Edward Hill, newspaperman, teacher, doctor, writer, and formidable learner whom she knew only in the winter of his life but whose light illuminated her being and “whose heir I feel, or wish, myself to be” (p. 130). “Turn My Face Out to the West” recounts a recent camping trip in New Mexico but, more profoundly, a return to the Western land of her youth. Like the Anasazi and Pueblo Indians, she too was born there and, reclaiming their heritage as partly hers, extols their solar-based science, courage, sense of community, independent spirit, and love and respect for the land.Brosman paints being, however, as well as becoming. Essays six through eleven focus more centrally than the others on her habitual self: her self-portrait as teacher, scholar, poet, traveler, and traditional woman. As a teacher of language, she offers “at once an end and a means” (p. 86) and, as literature teacher, not “entertainment chiefly but the pursuit of truth” (p. 88), undogmatically attempting to elicit self-awareness without imposing a single view. [End Page 136] A traditional woman who has never felt uncomfortable around men and doesn’t consider them her enemies, Brosman thinks Women’s Studies are “regressive” (p. 84), deplores language “barbarisms” such as “chairperson” and “herstory” (p. 75), and holds for a “nongendered intellectual patrimony of arts, letters, and science” (p. 84). While she admits that it’s a miracle that all marriages don’t simply fall apart, the differences between the sexes, she argues, constitute “the whole basis for attraction” (p. 70), and she prefers her cigar-smoking husband “to men who boast about their Hollandaise sauce” (p. 70). Not interested “in valorizing only the male principle” (p. 70), she seeks “vigor of mind” in all persons and considers herself a “feminist in the cupboard,” one who operates within the family but travels freely and enjoys a rich professional life. She links herself to her Aunt Margaret and other “closet feminists” (p. 100) in her family’s history who demonstrated self-reliance and a sense of their own value, and argues, against de Beauvoir’s thesis in The Second Sex, that female work for American women of the nineteenth century did indeed, like male work, go beyond biology “to remake the world through invention (production)” (p. 102).Brosman demands a metaphysical self-consciousness that recognizes unhappiness, anguish, and disorder but concomitantly posits the good life as the synthetic unity of the mind, body, and heart. This metaphysical consciousness is deeply rooted in the physical world—we are not only in the world but of it—and in a shared sense of place and a commitment to communal enterprises. Her thought is perhaps above all characterized throughout by a sense of “grace” and the “intimation of... (shrink)

One of the primary and most consequential properties of consciousness is that it is absolutely isolated. One’s consciousness cannot be shared by anyone else. Self- consciousness about this condition can give rise to a debilitating sense of loneliness. One important task of culture is to manage this sense of loneliness, to defer and diminish it. Religion supplies ideas that function in this way. Literature supplies imaginative experiences to the same ends. After introducing the general topic through a literary example, the (...) paper takes up the problem of other minds and solipsism, considering aspects of the issue treated by Wittgenstein, Moore, Heidegger and Descartes. The possibility of solipsism both demonstrates and results from the unbridgeable isolation of consciousness. The second section turns to the mind/body relation. It argues that intentionality is irreducible to a purely physical explanatory account. This is not because the mind is a brain-like entity that interacts with the body. Rather, it is because any physical explanatory account presupposes an observer or speaker outside the system being observed or described. The irreducibility of that observer is, so to speak, the flip side of solipsism. The unobserved observer is, precisely, each one of us. Each of us is removed in just this way from the world he/she is perceiving and addressing hence, our isolation. The third section turns to the varieties of loneliness here called ‘longing’, ‘grief’ and ‘despair’ relating these to the inevitability of death, primarily the death of others. The fourth part takes up the feeling that makes loneliness intense, love. It goes on to consider the thematization of loneliness in the most common narrative structure cross- culturally, romantic tragi-comedy. The concluding sections examine the ways in which religion and literature serve not only to represent loneliness, but, what is more important, to inhibit or manage it. (shrink)

The question I pose in this paper is simple but crucial: Why did Aśvaghoṣa present Brahmanism as the backdrop for the emergence of Buddhism? In both his epic poems, he presents Brahmanism as the obvious and natural condition of society and kings, in the same way that it is depicted in the Brahmanical writings themselves. It has become increasingly clear that Brahmanical texts present ideologically motivated programs for social engineering rather than accurate descriptions of social reality. If social reality did (...) not obligate Aśvaghoṣa to adopt this posture, then why did Aśvaghoṣa buy into this ideological position of Brahmanism? Why did he not describe the social reality underlying Buddhism in a way similar to Aśoka? While attempting to explore these questions, I will analyze Aśvaghoṣa’s arguments against some central theological positions of Brahmanism: First, there is the theological argument that a person must turn to asceticism only after he has raised a family and performed his other religious obligations spelt out in the trivarga and the āśrama system. Second, there is the issue of kāma, both within the trivarga and within the common conception of a householder’s life. The paper will attempt to analyze the way Aśvaghoṣa in his two epic poems deals with these two areas, one more strictly theological and the other dealing with themes of sex, eroticism, and conjugal love, all of which present obstacles to the Buddhist path of liberation that runs through the celibate monastery. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 465-468 [Access article in PDF] Cogito Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes, by Richard Watson; vii & 375 pp. Boston: David R. Godine, 2002, $35.00. Scholarly in what it delivers, but delightful in how it delivers what it delivers, Cogito Ergo Sum is highly informative and fun to read. Touching on all the key places, players and events in the philosopher's life, Watson (...) tells us (at least) everything we wanted to know about Descartes as he cuts through the myths that have been passed down to us about him. Cutting through the myths meant dissociating his biography ("the first biography of Descartes since 1920 that is based on substantial new research, and the only one ever written for general readers"; p. 23) from the two still-operative hagiographic traditions: the French Catholic apologetic tradition and the scientific apologetic tradition. The result is a skeptical biography, full of distrust toward tradition and authority, written very much in the spirit of methodical doubt practiced by its subject.Descartes emerged from a powerful family tradition of law and medicine but mentions his childhood only six times. With good reason. He didn't like either his father or his brother and his mother died thirteen months after he was born. He was considered the family failure, not only wasting time in philosophy but squandering his share of the family fortune. He received an excellent eight-year education at the outstanding Jesuit school at La Flèche where he was immediately attracted to the certitude that mathematics offered him. He earned a law degree in Poitiers, spent time in the Army, though not in battle, and refused a judgeship.It was Isaac Beeckman who radically influenced Descartes's future when he awakened him to the possibility of applying mathematics to the problems of natural science. Watson examines sympathetically Descartes's eventual revolt against this father figure. Watson humanizes Descartes greatly when he examines both his relationship with his daughter, Francina, who died of scarlatina at the age of five, and his relationship with the child's mother, Helena Jans. He also rehabilitates the reputation of Helena who has been traditionally maligned by biographers of the philosopher. Here, and elsewhere, he speaks out loudly and clearly against "the denizens of the Saint Descartes Protection Society" who purport that Descartes broke his celibacy just this once. "Actually," writes Watson, "I think Descartes was enough of a scientist that he would have repeated the experiment several times, if only to see if the experience was the same the second and a third time" (pp. 181; 182).In 1628, totally unwilling to get involved in religious squabbles in France and desiring to live in "joyful anonymity," Descartes takes off for Friesland. This constituted a flight from family, social responsibility, and royalist Catholic totalitarian oppression. He moved around often to situate himself at universities where he wanted to do research and to avoid the plague. This great mathematical genius and father of modern philosophy wanted to replace [End Page 465] Aristotelian philosophy and science and thought correctly that it would be easier to get his ideas accepted here. He became friendly with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia who spoke five languages and astutely critiqued his metaphysics. Despite the myths, neither was in love with the other. She inspired him to write The Passions of the Soul, which, oddly enough, he dedicated to Queen Christina of Sweden. He did, however, dedicate his Principles to Elizabeth. Christina was a bookish intellectual who loved the theater. In 1649, even though he had exhibited a clear dislike of court life, he agreed to be her tutor. He died in Sweden in 1650 during one of the coldest winters ever recorded in Europe.Why did he go to Sweden? He was broke and had little chance for a pension in France. In addition, while he knew the value of his work, he began to think his life might have been a failure. Perhaps he might really enjoy being a courtier after all. Certainly he feared that he would end... (shrink)

Modern commercial society has been criticized for attenuating virtue and inhibiting the ethical self-realization of its participants. But Adam Smith, a founding father of liberal commercial modernity, anticipated precisely this critique and took specific measures to circumvent it. This article presents these measures via an analysis of his response to the critique of liberal commercial modernity set forth by Rousseau. It principally argues that Smith's distinctions of the love of praise from the love of praiseworthiness, and the (...) class='Hi'>love of glory from the love of virtue, were elements of a normative moral education that sought to elevate civilized man's corrupted self-love, and thereby recover within modern commercial society a respect for ethical nobility. (shrink)

The unorthodox life and ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche come alive in this documentary history. Here is a clear picture of the time in which this revolutionary philosopher lived and worked. We meet the luminaries of the age: Richard Wagner, Bismark, Freud and Darwin. We learn of Nietzsche’s famous love affairs, his theories of the Superman, the Antichrist and nihilism, as well as his impact on Twentieth Century thinking. And we see how the Nazi’s annexed and deformed Nietzsche’s thought to (...) serve their purposes. Nietzsche For Beginners is an important introduction to modern philosophy. Plato, Kant, Hegel and Schopenhaur are all evaluated in light of their influence on Nietzsche’s work. Discover why this great thinker defiantly declared, “God is Dead.”. (shrink)

Invaluable wisdom on living a good life from the founder of modern economics Adam Smith is best known today as the founder of modern economics, but he was also an uncommonly brilliant philosopher who was especially interested in the perennial question of how to live a good life. Our Great Purpose is a short and illuminating guide to Smith's incomparable wisdom on how to live well, written by one of today's leading Smith scholars. In this inspiring and entertaining book, Ryan (...) Patrick Hanley describes Smith's vision of "the excellent and praiseworthy character," and draws on the philosopher's writings to show how each of us can go about developing one. For Smith, an excellent character is distinguished by qualities such as prudence, self-command, justice, and benevolence—virtues that have been extolled since antiquity. Yet Smith wrote not for the ancient polis but for the world of market society—our world—which rewards self-interest more than virtue. Hanley shows how Smith set forth a vision of the worthy life that is uniquely suited to us today. Full of invaluable insights on topics ranging from happiness and moderation to love and friendship, Our Great Purpose enables modern readers to see Smith in an entirely new light—and along the way, learn what it truly means to live a good life. (shrink)

Adam Smith has long been regarded as a champion of sympathy. More recently he has also been regarded as a critic of love. But how do these two sides of his thought cohere? This article argues that Smith’s defense of sympathy emerges directly out of and is indeed decisively shaped by his critique of love. Yet seeing this requires reconsidering what Smith understood love to be, as well as what he understood sympathy to be. What follows thus (...) offers a reexamination of Smith’s well-known treatment of eros alongside an examination of his underappreciated treatment of agape in order to argue for the claim that Smith’s theory of love is not simply a critique of eros for its particularity but also incorporates an appreciation of the attractions of the universality of agape. At the same time Smith ultimately judges agape insufficient as a remedy for eros, for however admirable its scope and ambitions may be, the realization of its ambitions, Smith thinks, is compromised by our natural epistemic limits. It is this recognition, I want to argue – and not his reservations towards eros alone – that leads Smith to regard sympathy as a central principle of motivation, and to embrace it as the best available means of replicating the practical benefits of universal charity within the confines of our epistemic limits. (shrink)

David Hume and Adam Smith are often regarded as founding fathers of modern social science and champions of self-interested material acquisitiveness. Against this view I argue that their moral and political philosophies are better understood as modern installments in the classical tradition of virtue ethics. By focusing on Hume and Smith's conception of self-love and particularly on their distinction of self-love from self-interest, I demonstrate their dedication to encouraging virtues beyond the instrumental virtues of the market. ;Hume and (...) Smith regard egoism as a natural and inescapable element of human nature, but they also believe that egoism is educable. Untrained egoism manifests itself in such basic forms of selfishness as vanity and ambition, but a properly educated and elevated egoism heightens our sensitivity to the well-being of others. Through a careful analysis of their dialectical rhetoric, I show how Hume and Smith educate the egoism of their readers in their moral works. By so doing I demonstrate that the Scots understood themselves not merely as advocates of the pursuit of wealth, but as moral educators aspiring to introduce their readers to a life beyond the furious pursuit of external goods. Their portraits of magnanimous statesmen and wise and virtuous sages serve as models of this higher life, a life distinguished by the pursuit of moral nobility through beneficent activity. By tracing the Aristotelian and Ciceronian origins of their understanding of the relationship of self-love to benevolence, I thus show that far from celebrating commercial self-interest and denigrating virtue, Hume and Smith draw on classical sources in their attempts to ennoble modern liberalism and encourage decency and respect for the dignity of others. And by focusing particularly on their conception of the proper magnanimity for modernity, that of the wise and virtuous man, I argue that Hume's and Smith's practical writings on history, politics and economics are best regarded as attempts to discharge the beneficent duties they describe in their moral philosophy, and thereby claim wisdom and virtue for themselves. (shrink)