Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts (...) to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals -German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists- have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish culture and a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day."--Jacket. (shrink)

The present article examines the contemporary stakes and “application” of The Differend with particular attention to neo-fascist denialism, trolling, and alt-right “free speech” discourse. This entails investigating the text’s own rhetorical performance as well as the shifting attitudes towards the sophistic tradition in The Differend and its precursor text, “On the Force of the Weak.” The article thus also takes up in detail three examples of the characteristic sophistic form of the dilemma or double-bind, two of which are drawn from (...) Lyotard: the Holocaust denialist Robert Faurisson’s infamous dilemma of “the witness to the gas-chambers”; the canonical ancient dilemma through which Protagoras wins his fee from his student Euathlus despite seemingly never having helped him win a dispute; and “if you can speak, you can breathe,” the contemporary denialist’s rejoinder to “I can’t breathe.” Lyotard’s arguments are briefly compared to those of other thinkers. (shrink)

Daniel Schwartz examines the views on friendship of the great medievalphilosopher Thomas Aquinas.

One arguably unwelcome consequence of social inequality is that it impedes friendships between persons of unequal status. The central aim of this essay is to identify the circumstances in which friendship gives people reason to reduce status inequality in society. I start by assessing the impact of inequality of status on friendship by focusing on its adverse effect on the friends’ similarity. Next I discuss the claim that if people of upper status would ‘uplift’ modest‐status people to their rank for (...) the purpose of making them apt for friendship, this would reduce inequality in society. Assisted by J.S. Mill’s arguments for equality between the sexes, I then identify the circumstances in which people of upper status have reason to seek to equalize people of modest status so as to make them apt for friendship with them. Having shown that friendship does not generally give reason to introduce equality of status I close by arguing for the opposite view: equality gives reason to encourage friendship as a replacement for less egalitarian forms of relationship. (shrink)

Flirtations: Rhetoric and Aesthetics This Side of Seduction, opens by asking a fundamental first question: What is flirtation, and how does it differ from seduction? The essays thereby address the under-theorized terrain of flirtation not as a subgenre of seduction but rather as a phenomenon in its own right.

This article takes up the specifically poetic dimension of what Jacques Derrida calls Martin Heidegger’s “philosophical nationalism” in the recently published Geschlecht III, arguing that this text doubles as a self-interrogation of Derrida’s own practice of reading poetry. Thus reading Geschlecht III alongside the nearly contemporaneous “Shibboleth: For Paul Celan,” I claim that Derrida’s critical deconstruction of Heidegger’s philosophical-poetic nationalism both allows us to read the traces of a more affirmatively deconstructive thinking of literary community in “Shibboleth” and draws attention (...) to the limits and traps of such a project. Further, I demonstrate that Derrida’s and Heidegger’s respective approaches to the question of literary community cannot be separated from their respective approaches to the question of translation and their respective ways of mobilizing the motif of the “untranslatable.”. (shrink)

This article takes up the specifically poetic dimension of what Jacques Derrida calls Martin Heidegger’s “philosophical nationalism” in the recently published Geschlecht III, arguing that this text doubles as a self-interrogation of Derrida’s own practice of reading poetry. Thus reading Geschlecht III alongside the nearly contemporaneous “Shibboleth: For Paul Celan,” I claim that Derrida’s critical deconstruction of Heidegger’s philosophical-poetic nationalism both allows us to read the traces of a more affirmatively deconstructive thinking of literary community in “Shibboleth” and draws attention (...) to the limits and traps of such a project. Further, I demonstrate that Derrida’s and Heidegger’s respective approaches to the question of literary community cannot be separated from their respective approaches to the question of translation and their respective ways of mobilizing the motif of the “untranslatable.”. (shrink)

A productive way to think about imagistic mental models of physical systems is as though they were sources of quasi‐empirical evidence. People depict or imagine events at those points in time when they would experiment with the world if possible. Moreover, just as they would do when observing the world, people induce patterns of behavior from the results depicted in their imaginations. These resulting patterns of behavior can then be cast into symbolic rules to simplify thinking about future problems and (...) to reveal higher order relationships. Using simple gear problems, three experiments explored the occasions of use for, and the inductive transitions between, depictive models and number‐based rules. The first two experiments used the convergent evidence of problem‐solving latencies, hand motions, referential language and error data to document the initial use of a model, the induction of rules from the modeling results, and the fallback to a model when a rule fails. The third experiment explored the intermediate representations that facilitate the induction of rules from depictive models. The strengths and weaknesses of depictive modeling and more analytic systems of reasoning are delineated to motivate the reasons for these transitions. (shrink)

The principle of necessity as applied to self-defence requires the use of the least harmful defensively effective means of thwarting a wrongful threat. Yet –so I argue – a harm can be excessive even when it is the least harmful way of dealing with the threat at the time of the attack. I therefore propose a historical view of the requirement of necessity. Historical necessity requires the selection of the least harmful means to thwart a future attack at the point (...) in time at which we have a solid presumption that the future attack will take place. This may happen considerably before the time of the attack. Once you fail to acquire or preserve the least harmful defensive option for thwarting a future attack you may come to be irrevocably in breach of necessity. The paper tackles a number of objections to the view proposed. (shrink)

Interpreters disagree on the origin that Francisco Suárez assigns to political obligation and correlative political subjection. According to some, Suárez, as other social contract theorists, believes that it is the consent of the individuals that causes political obligation. Others, however, claim that for Suárez, political obligation is underived from the individuals' consent which creates the city. In support of this claim they invoke Suárez's view that political power emanates from the city by way of "natural resultancy". I argue that analysis (...) of Suárez's less studied De voto and De iuramento reveals that, for Suárez, consent causes both the city and the citizen's political obligation. Moreover, close inspection of the notion of causation by natural resultancy within Suárez's metaphysics shows that what emanates from the body politic in this fashion is not, as claimed, political subjection and political obligation, but rather the city's right to self-mastership. Because for him political obligation does originate in consent it is not incorrect to regard Suárez as a social contract theorist. (shrink)

If distributed cognition is to become a general analytic frame, it needs to handle more aspects of cognition than just highly efficient problem solving. It should also handle learning. We identify four classes of distributed learning: induction, repurposing, symbiotic tuning, and mutual adaptation. The four classes of distributed learning fit into a two-dimensional space defined by the stability and adaptability of individuals and their environments. In all four classes of learning, people and their environments are highly interdependent during initial learning. (...) At the same time, we present evidence indicating that certain types of interdependence in early learning, most notably mutual adaptation, can help prepare people to be less dependent on their immediate environment and more adaptive when they confront new environments. We also describe and test examples of learning technologies that implement mutual adaptation. (shrink)

The recent surge of interest in Bacon's own attempts at natural history has revealed a complex interplay with his speculative ideas in natural philosophy. This research has given rise to the concern that his natural histories are theory-laden in a way that Bacon ought to find unacceptable, given his prescription in the Parasceve for a reliable body of factual instances that can be used as a storehouse for induction. This paper aims to resolve this tension by elaborating a moderate foundationalist (...) account of Bacon's method and by appealing to a distinction he makes, in a letter to Father Fulgentio, between pure and impure natural histories. I argue that the discussions of causes and axioms in the published histories render them impure, since that material properly belongs to Part Four of the Instauratio, but that this interplay with Part Four is necessary for the sake of the continued refinement of Part Three (the natural historical part). Bacon ultimately aims for a storehouse of instances, to be attained at the culmination of this process of refinement, and at that point the history should be published in its pure form. (shrink)

If distributed cognition is to become a general analytic frame, it needs to handle more aspects of cognition than just highly efficient problem solving. It should also handle learning. We identify four classes of distributed learning: induction, repurposing, symbiotic tuning, and mutual adaptation. The four classes of distributed learning fit into a two-dimensional space defined by the stability and adaptability of individuals and their environments. In all four classes of learning, people and their environments are highly interdependent during initial learning. (...) At the same time, we present evidence indicating that certain types of interdependence in early learning, most notably mutual adaptation, can help prepare people to be less dependent on their immediate environment and more adaptive when they confront new environments. We also describe and test examples of learning technologies that implement mutual adaptation. (shrink)

Suárez was probably the first theologian to propose a political understanding of the order of subordination among the demons. According to Aquinas, this subordination immediately reflects the natural differences in perfection between the demons. Suárez charged that a natural-based order of demonic subordination could not ground the capacity of the demons’ ruler—Lucifer—to use his power to impose civic obligations on fellow demons so as to pursue their joint evil goals. But can there be obligations ad malum? This paper explores a (...) number of possible paths seemingly available to Suárez to defend his controversial view. I argue that the most promising interpretation of Suárez is one according to which the obligations created by Lucifer’s commands are not obligations in conscience but rather what we may call “non-moral obligations.”. (shrink)

Frances Kamm's Principle of Secondary Permissibility specifies a class of exceptions to the general rule not to kill as a means. The principle allows us to harm as a means some of those who would have been otherwise harmed as side effects. ‘For example, suppose it is impermissible to paralyze A's legs as a means to a greater good. It would still be permissible to do this as the alternative to permissibly killing A as a mere indirect side effect.’ I (...) argue that, despite of its great appeal, PSP is incorrect; it is simply not true that the victims of substitutive harm are not worse off than they would otherwise permissibly have been. In fact, there is no moral difference between the purportedly substitutive harm licensed by PSP and the standard sort of harming as means repudiated by nonconsequentialists. (shrink)

There is an important tension within Francis Bacon’s discussions of sense-perception. On the one hand, he sometimes seems to regard sense-percep­tion as a certain and unquestionable source of information about the world. On the other hand, he refers to errors, faults, desertions, and deceptions of the senses; indeed, he aims to offer a method which can remedy these errors. Thus, Bacon may appear conflicted about whether sense-perception provides reliable information about the world. But, I argue, this appearance of a conflict (...) is itself illusory. Bacon offers us a coherent and compelling account of sense-perception that acknowledges not only its weaknesses but also its strengths. I explain his account by exploring its roots in the atomist and natural magic traditions, drawing special attention to the similarity between Bacon’s response to skepticism and earlier atomist responses to skepticism. One of the key features of the view is the analogy between sense organs and scientific instruments, both of which infallibly register information based on causal principles. (shrink)

Francisco Suárez is arguably the most important Neo-Scholastic philosopher and a vital link in the chain leading from medieval philosophy to that of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Long neglected by the Anglo-Saxon philosophical community, this sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian is now an object of intense scholarly attention. In this volume, Daniel Schwartz brings together essays by leading specialists which provide detailed treatment of some key themes of Francisco Suárez's philosophical work: God, metaphysics, meta-ethics, the human soul, action, ethics (...) and law, justice and war. The authors assess the force of Suárez's arguments, set them within their wider argumentative context and single out influences and appraise competing interpretations. The book is a useful resource for scholars and students of philosophy, theology, philosophy of religion and history of political thought and provides a rich bibliography of secondary literature. (shrink)

Os intérpretes discordam quanto a origem que Francisco Suárez atribui a obrigação e a sujeição política. De acordo com alguns, Suárez, como outros contratualistas, acredita que é o consentimento dos indivíduos que causa a obrigação política; outros, porém, afirmam que para Suárez a obrigação política não deriva do consentimento dos indivíduos. Em respaldo a esta tese eles invocam a opinião de Suárez de que o poder político emana da cidade por meio de “decorrência natural.” Eu argumento que a análise de (...) obras menos estudada de Suárez, como o De voto e o De iuramento, mostra que, para Suárez, o consentimento causa tanto a obrigação política da cidade e quanto a dos cidadãos. Além do mais, uma inspeção mais acurada da noção de causalidade por decorrência natural dentro da metafísica suareziana mostra que o que emana do corpo político não é, como sustentado, a sujeição e a obrigação política, mas sim o direito à autonomia da cidade. E visto que para Suárez a obrigação política se origina no consentimento, então não é errado considerá-lo um contratualista. *Texto traduzido por Bruno D’ambros. (shrink)

Many of the policies that shaped Argentinean politics and society in the second half of the nineteenth century, most notably the project behind the 1853 constitution and its proposed immigration policies, can be traced to lawyer, publicist and political thinker Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810-84). In this article I chart the modifications in the way Alberdi appropriates French Doctrinaire thought. I argue that while in the young Alberdi we see a strong emphasis on the historicist element of Doctrinarism, on later stages (...) Alberdi reduces Doctrinaire thought to its central sociological thesis. It is this impoverished version of French Doctrinaire thought conjoined with a number of negative appraisals about the Argentinean population, which led eventually to his proposal to rely on demographic engineering as a means for infusing life into Argentina's democratic constitution. (shrink)