Online research in philosophy

ABSTRACT: In contemporary discussions of freedom in Stoic philosophy we often encounter the following assumptions: (i) the Stoics discussed the problem of free will and determinis; (ii) since in Stoic philosophy freedom of the will is in the end just an illusion, the Stoics took the freedom of the sage as a substitute for it and as the only true freedom; (iii) in the c. 500 years of live Stoic philosophical debate, the Stoics were largely concerned (...) with the same philosophical problems of freedom. In this paper I argue that (i) can be upheld only in a very restricted way; (ii) is altogether untenable; and regarding (iii), that, although there may have occurred little change in the Stoic philosophical position on freedom over the centuries, we can detect more than one transformation of the philosophical problems that were at the forefront of the discussion. Moreover, that all the conceptions and problems of freedom were linked to Stoic ethics, and that the differences between them become transparent when one considers their various roles in this context. (shrink)

This paper defends a distinctly liberal approach to public health ethics and replies to possible objections. In particular, I look at a set of recent proposals aiming to revise and expand liberalism in light of public health's rationale and epidemiological findings. I argue that they fail to provide a sociologically informed version of liberalism. Instead, they rest on an implicit normative premise about the value of health, which I show to be invalid. I then make explicit the unobvious, republican background (...) of these proposals. Finally, I expand on the liberal understanding of freedom as non-interference and show its advantages over the republican alternative of freedom as non-domination within the context of public health. The views of freedom I discuss in the paper do not overlap with the classical distinction between negative and positive freedom. In addition, my account differentiates the concepts of freedom and autonomy and does not rule out substantive accounts of the latter. Nor does it confine political liberalism to an essentially procedural form. (shrink)

Some defenders of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) have responded to the challenge of Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs) to PAP by arguing that there remains a flicker of freedom -- that is, an alternative possibility for action -- left to the agent in FSCs. I argue that the flicker of freedom strategy is unsuccessful. The strategy requires the supposition that doing an act-on-one''s-own is itself an action of sorts. I argue that either this supposition is confused (...) and leads to counter-intuitive results; or, if the supposition is acceptable, then it is possible to use it to construct a FSC in which there is no flicker of freedom at all. Either way, the flicker of freedom strategy is ineffective against FSCs. Since the flicker of freedom strategy is arguably the best defense of PAP, I conclude that FSCs are successful in showing that PAP is false. An agent can act with moral responsibility without having alternative possibilities available to her. (shrink)

Freedom has a number of different senses. One of them is the absence of domination, which neo-republican thinkers have helped us to understand better. This notion of freedom does not, however, provide an alternative to political liberalism, since its proper articulation depends on distinctly liberal principles.

This thesis is an investigation into free will, and the role of alternative possibilities. I defend an incompatibilist notion of freedom, but argue that such freedom is not exercised in all cases of decision-making. I begin by considering the debate surrounding Harry Frankfurt’s famous argument that alternative possibilities are irrelevant to freedom. I argue that the main disagreement can be best understood by considering the dispute surrounding the 'Flicker-of-Freedom' objection, which contends that there (...) are still alternatives left open in Frankfurt's example. Compatibilists have argued that any such alternatives are outside the agent’s voluntary control and hence irrelevant. But the arguments for this conclusion commit the compatibilist to the more general claim that volitions are not within agents' voluntary control, and incompatibilism is generally motivated by a rejection this claim - so if we could support this claim, we would refute incompatibilism without appealing to Frankfurt’s argument. This disagreement about whether volitions are within agents' voluntary control has not received much attention in recent years, despite figuring implicitly in the debate. But in previous centuries, this figured explicitly as the main focus. I consider the historical debate, started by the famous dispute between Hobbes and Bramhall, and continuing throughout the eighteenth century. Although the libertarian position better captures our ordinary conception of freedom, compatibilists argue that it introduces freedom-undermining irrationality, and randomness of the sort that is either unhelpful or incoherent. Whilst for many cases of decision-making, these challenges are justified, they are not justified in cases involving a particular kind of reasons conflict. I argue that decisions are free in cases of this sort, but we cannot have incompatibilist freedom more generally. However, I also argue that these are the most important cases, given the nature of our concerns about freedom. By restricting the domain of incompatibilist freedom to just these cases, we can avoid introducing irrationality, or randomness of the sort that has made incompatibilism seem incoherent, whilst preserving the incompatibilist's intuition that an important sense of freedom rests on alternative possibilities. (shrink)

The right to freedom of expression and the democratic system have a directly proportional relationship. Through the exercise of this right we are able to decide who we are, to speak our minds, get information, cast our vote, shape government and hold it to account, and influence our environment so that it becomes the kind of place we wish to lead our lives in. It is within a framework of democratic values that, in my view, the right of (...) class='Hi'>freedom of expression makes unique sense and this paper aims to make this claim more precise, cogent and differentiated from alternative libertarian and liberal conceptions. I apply a fairly uncontroversial conception of the proper functions of the right of freedom of expression, to two concrete cases of international controversy: Julian Assange and Wiki Leaks, and Correa v. Palacio and El Universo. Independent of avowed adherence to democracy, supposed bastions of the right of freedom of expression in society such as some major human rights NGO’s, states and the major mass media turn out to be defending undemocratic positions—undermining the authentic right of freedom of expression in society. Crucial underlying functions of the right of freedom of expression in terms of which this right acquires value are achieving individual and collective autonomy, informed democratic control of government by the people and the right to know facts of public interest. Securing the realization of such values furthers the cause of the abolition of domination, while extending the exercise of freedom of expression to the point where it becomes an act of domination is to extend it beyond the sphere in which this freedom is a right. The same happens with the freedom of movement (Art. 13 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights)—it is a right until the point at which, without reason, my fist impacts your nose. The right of freedom of expression defines a scope for this freedom—it is the scope in which freedom is (at least) not unjust. The libertarian and liberal conceptions of freedom of expression hold a version of the doctrine that the content of any expression is sacrosanct, in that it is to be unlimitedly protected from government intervention, independent of whether it is false or leads to harmful consequences. A more proper way of evaluating an action or policy is with a rights-based approach, common to democratic theory. Actions or policies which maximize the marginal extent to which human rights are respected in practice in a community —amounting to non-domination—are actions or policies worth realizing. (shrink)

This paper argues that ability to do otherwise (in the compatibilist sense) at the moment of initiation of action is a necessary condition of being able to act at all. If the argument is correct, it shows that Harry Frankfurt never provided a genuine counterexample to the 'principles of alternative possibilities' in his 1969 paper ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’. The paper was written without knowledge of Frankfurt's paper.

Most theorists believe that when it comes to freedom, no economic system does better than laissez-faire capitalism the system may have other problems, but as far as freedom is concerned, laissez-faire is as good as it gets. The goal of this paper is to show that this view is mistaken. I begin by criticising two important contemporary conceptions of freedom, the libertarian and the liberal egalitarian conceptions, both of which support the dominant view. I then (...) develop a better alternative, one that I call the social democratic conception of freedom. Using this conception, I go on to show that an economic system that requires firms to have an internal structure that makes decision-making more transparent and responsive to the concerns of workers actually shows greater respect for freedom than laissez-faire capitalism does. (shrink)

This article presents a critique of Philip Pettit’s concept of ‘freedom as non-domination’ and provides an alternative theory of both domination and republican political freedom. I argue that Pettit’s neo-republican concept of domination is insufficient to confront modern forms of domination and that this hampers his concept of republican freedom and its political relevance under the conditions of modernity. Whereas the neo-republican account of domination is defined by ‘arbitrary interference’, modern forms of domination, I argue, are (...) characterized by routinization and systemic forms of control and subordination. In the end, the neo-republican account of domination is more appropriate for 17th- and 18th-century social institutions rather than those that persist under modernity. In its place, I propose a more dynamic concept of domination and rework the concept of freedom in order to place the republican tradition within the context of modernity itself. I argue that the core insight of republicanism is its emphasis on the arrangement and reformation of social institutions to enhance social freedom. From this, I argue that republicanism can take its place as a more attractive alternative to liberal theory. (shrink)

The Congress for Cultural Freedom is remembered as a paramount example of the “cultural cold wars.” In this paper, I discuss the ways in which this powerful transnational organization sought to promote “science studies” as a distinct – and politically relevant – area of expertise, and part of the CCF broader agenda to offer a renewed framework for liberalism. By means of its Study Groups, international conferences and its periodicals, such as Minerva, the Congress developed into an influential forum (...) for examining the ways Big Science impacted the relations between science, society, and politics, thus constituting a semi-institutional niche for Science Studies before its professionalization within academia during the 1970s. I argue that the Congress contributed to the construction of public space in which the relations between science, society and politics were debated, and science was reconceptualized as a social activity. The vision of “science studies” the CCF-associated intellectuals promulgated was different from the science studies we know today. Yet, this alternative vision, in which the issues of science politics appeared inseparable from those of science policy, science organization, and science governance, constituted the “pre-history” of science studies today. (shrink)

In her book, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Saba Mahmood analyzes the practices of the women in the mosque movement in Cairo, Egypt. Mahmood argues that in order to recognize the participants as agents, we need to question the assumption that agency entails resistance to norms; moreover, we need to question the feminist allegiance to an unquestioned ideal of freedom. In this paper, I argue that rather than giving up the ideal of freedom, (...) we can explore the possibility that there are different conceptions of freedom, and that the agency of the women in the mosque movement can be understood through a conception of freedom as a practice of connection, or belonging. I develop this alternative paradigm through discussions of four conceptions of freedom: Foucault's theory of agency as self-creation, positive freedom, communitarian freedom, and freedom as resistance. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of Kant's categories of freedom, explaining how they fit together and what role they are supposed to play. My interpretation places particular emphasis on the structural features that the table of the categories of freedom shares with the table of judgements and the table of categories laid out by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. In this way we can identify two interpretative constraints, namely (i) that the categories falling under each heading (...) must form a synthetic unity whereby the third one derives from the combination of the other two. and (ii) that the first two categories falling under each heading must be morally undetermined and sensibly conditioned, while the third category is sensibly unconditioned and determined only by the moral law. (shrink)

Some claim that Non-reductive Physicalism (NRP) is an unstable position, on grounds that NRP either collapses into reductive physicalism (contra Non-reduction ), or expands into emergentism of a robust or ‘strong’ variety (contra Physicalism ). I argue that this claim is unfounded, by attention to the notion of a degree of freedom—roughly, an independent parameter needed to characterize an entity as being in a state functionally relevant to its law-governed properties and behavior. I start by distinguishing three relations that (...) may hold between the degrees of freedom needed to characterize certain special science entities, and those needed to characterize (systems consisting of) their composing physical (or physically acceptable) entities; these correspond to what I call ‘reductions’, ‘restrictions’, and ‘eliminations’ in degrees of freedom. I then argue that eliminations in degrees of freedom, in particular—when strictly fewer degrees of freedom are required to characterize certain special science entities than are required to characterize (systems consisting of) their composing physical (or physically acceptable) entities—provide a basis for making sense of how certain special science entities can be both physically acceptable and ontologically irreducible to physical entities. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: A general interpretation and close textual analysis of Kant’s theory of the categories of freedom (or categories of practical reason) in his Critique of Practical Reason. My main concerns in the paper are the following: (1) I show that Kant’s categories of freedom have primarily three functions: as conditions of the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be comprehensible as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. (2) I show that for Kant actions, although (...) qua theoretical objects they are always already constituted by means of the theoretical categories, qua practical objects (objects of reason in its practical use, i.e. objects qua possibly good or bad) they are constituted by means of the categories of freedom; and that it is only in this way that actions, qua phenomena, can be a consequence of freedom, and can be understood and evaluated as such. (English translation in progress.). (shrink)

Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, one of the preeminent Indian philosophers of the 20th century, proposed that the absolute appears in three alternative forms - truth, freedom and value. Each of these forms are for Bhattacharyya absolute, ultimate, not penultimate. Each is different from the other, yet they cannot be said to be one or many. He contends that these absolutes are incompatible with each other and that an articulation of the relation between the three absolutes is not feasible. (...) This paper will review Bhattacharyya's presentation of the absolute in its alternative forms and will place these abstractions within the context of three specific religious traditions that he sees illustrating his point. Then, using a model based upon holography, I will illuminate with 'concrete images' that which Bhattacharyya could deductively formulate but could not logically integrate. Holography, the process by which three-dimensional images are produced from an imageless film - a film in which each part can reproduce the whole - will be used as a heuristic device to illuminate the simultaneous and mutually interpenetrating existence of the absolute in three forms. This model will illumine how these three forms can be conceived of as not the same yet not other and how these forms can be incompatible as absolutes, but metaphysically inseparable. (shrink)

Ever since Kant asked: “How am I to develop the sense of freedom in spite of the restraint?” in his lecture on education, the tension between necessary educational influence and unacceptable restriction of the child’s individual development and freedom has been considered an educational paradox. Many have suggested solutions to the paradox; however, this article endorses recent discussions in educational philosophy that pursue the need to fundamentally rethink our understanding of education and upbringing. In this article it is (...) argued that it is incomprehensible to describe an intervention of an educator as a constraint on a child’s actions and that such an intervention would be in need of justification; as Kant and many others after him have done. Educational intervention should not be understood as a restriction of a child’s endeavour to learn, because any educational intervention is educational. Furthermore, it is argued that the notion of restraint is based on the concept of human beings as radically separated which lead to the assumption that education is restrictive per se. In contrast, this article argues that indoctrination, manipulation, and coercion are rather phenomena within our educational forms of life. Recognizing the interrelations between human beings should play a constitutive part in the conceptualisation of individual freedom. A bond with others is the foundation upon which a child develops its own identity and an understanding of itself as an agent who can express its own will and takes responsibility for its words and actions. (shrink)

Hate groups are often thought to reveal a paradox in liberal thinking. On the one hand, such groups challenge the very foundations of liberal thought, including core values of equality and freedom. On the other hand, these same values underlie the rights such as freedom of expression and association that protect hate groups. Thus a liberal democratic state that extends those protections to such groups in the name of value neutrality and freedom of expression may be thought (...) to be undermining the values on which its legitimacy rests. In this paper, I suggest how this apparent paradox might be resolved. I argue that the state should protect the expression of illiberal beliefs, but that the state (along with its citizens) is also obligated to criticize publicly those beliefs. Distinguishing between two kinds of state action—coercive and expressive—I contend that such criticism should be pursued through the state’s expressive capacities in its roles as speaker, educator, and spender. Here I extend the familiar idea that law, to be legitimate, must be widely publicized; I contend that a proper theory of the freedom of expression obligates the legitimate state to publicize the reasons that underlie rights, in particular reasons that appeal to the entitlement of each citizen subject to coercion to be treated as free and equal. My theory of freedom of expression is thus “expressive” in two senses: it protects the entitlement of citizens to express any political viewpoint, and it emphasizes a role for the state in explaining these free-speech protections and persuading its citizens of the value of the entitlements that underlie them. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to sketch out two contrasting notions of freedom in the Zhuangzi and the Xunzi . I argue that to understand the classical Chinese formulations of freedom we should look at the concept of hua 化 (transformation or to transform). It is a kind of freedom that highlights the moral and/or spiritual transformation of the self and its entailments on the connection between the self and various domains of relationality. The Zhuangzian hua is (...) the transformation of the self in such a way that the self becomes supremely attuned to the complexity of the world and can thus navigate various domains of relationality with extraordinary grace, ease, and efficacy. The Xunzian hua is the transformation of the self so that the self can extend its relationality to include the entire world and transform it from a raw and uncouth world to a civilized one through ritual practices. (shrink)

This is the first full-length presentation of a republican alternative to the liberal and communitarian theories that have dominated political philosophy in recent years. The latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford Political Theory series, Pettit's eloquent and compelling account opens with an examination of the traditional republican conception of freedom as non-domination, contrasting this with established negative and positive views of liberty. The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of this conception, displays its many (...) attractions, and makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at what the implementation of the ideal would imply for substantive policy-making, constitutional and democratic design, regulatory control and the relation between state and civil society. Prominent in this account is a novel concept of democracy, under which government is exposed to systematic contestation, and a vision of relations between state and society founded upon civility and trust. Pettit's powerful and insightful new work offers not only a unified, theoretical overview of the many strands of republican ideas, but also a new and sophisticated perspective on studies in related fields including the history of ideas, jurisprudence, and criminology. (shrink)

Kant’s views on the relation between freedom and moral law seem to undergo a major, unannounced shift. In the third section of the Groundwork, Kant seems to be using the fact that we must act under the idea of freedom as a foundation for the moral law. However, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that our awareness of our freedom depends on our awareness of the moral law. I argue that the apparent conflict between the (...) two texts depends on a reading of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III, and on an interpretation of Kant’s claim that we “act under the idea of freedom”, that is implausible on textual and on philosophical grounds. I then present an alternative interpretation of what Kant means by “acting under the idea of freedom” and of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III. I argue that the only substantive conclusion of these paragraphs is that no theoretical proof of freedom is necessary. Moreover I argue that although these paragraphs raise concerns about the validity of the moral law, these concerns and Kant’s answers to them, do not give rise to any significant conflict with his views in the Critique of Practical Reason. (shrink)

A companion volume to Free Will: A Philosophical Study , this new anthology collects influential essays on free will, including both well-known contemporary classics and exciting recent work. Agency and Responsibility: Essays on the Metaphysics of Freedom is divided into three parts. The essays in the first section address metaphysical issues concerning free will and causal determinism. The second section groups papers presenting a positive account of the nature of free action, including competing compatibilist and incompatibilist analyses. The third (...) section concerns free will and moral responsibility, including theories of moral responsibility and the challenge to an alternative possibilities condition posed by Frankurt-type scenarios. Distinguished by its balance and consistently high quality, the volume presents papers selected for their significance, innovation, and clarity of expression. Contributors include Harry Frankfurt, Peter van Inwagen, David Lewis, Elizabeth Anscombe, John Martin Fischer, Michael Bratman, Roderick Chisholm, Robert Kane, Peter Strawson, and Susan Wolf. The anthology serves as an up-to-date resource for scholars as well as a useful text for courses in ethics, philosophy of religion, or metaphysics. In addition, paired with Free Will: A Philosophical Study, it would form an excellent upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level course in free will, responsibility, motivation, or action theory. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to approach Juan Luis Vives' conception of freedom of the will in light of scholastic discussions on will and free choice, and point to some interesting similarities with the analysis of free choice contained in Jean Buridan's Quaestiones super decem libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum.

Abstract This essay attempts to articulate an understanding of the goal of ?freedom? in classical Ch'an Buddhism by setting concerns for ?liberation? in relation to the kinds of authority and regulated structure characteristic of Sung dynasty Ch'an monasteries. It begins with the thesis that early Western interpreters of Zen have tended to emphasise the dimensions of Zen freedom that accord with modem Western versions of freedom presupposing tension between freedom and authority as well as between individual (...) autonomy and the demands of a communal setting. These dichotomies, assumed by modem Western interpreters, appear to have been absent from this medieval Chinese context, thus suggesting that their concepts of freedom and liberation must have differed significantly from our own. The essay examines classical Ch'an rhetoric and practices in an effort to reconceive what ?freedom? might have meant in this context and concludes with a proposal for this reconception. (shrink)

Kant’s views on the relation between freedom and moral law seem to undergo a major, unannounced shift. In the third section of the Groundwork, Kant seems to be using the fact that we must act under the idea of freedom as a foundation for the moral law. However, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that our awareness of our freedom depends on our awareness of the moral law. I argue that the apparent conflict between the (...) two texts depends on a reading of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III, and on an interpretation of Kant’s claim that we “act under the idea of freedom”, that is implausible on textual and on philosophical grounds. I then present an alternative interpretation of what Kant means by “acting under the idea of freedom” and of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III. I argue that the only substantive conclusion of these paragraphs is that no theoretical proof of freedom is necessary. Moreover I argue that although these paragraphs raise concerns about the validity of the moral law, these concerns and Kant’s answers to them, do not give rise to any significant conflict with his views in the Critique of Practical Reason. (shrink)

In this chapter, I articulate the structure of a general concept of autonomy and then reply to possible objections with reference to Ulysses arrangements in psychiatry. The line of argument is as follows. Firstly, I examine three alternative conceptions of autonomy: value-neutral, value-laden, and relational. Secondly, I identify two paradigm cases of autonomy and offer a sketch of its concept as opposed to the closely related freedom of action and intentional agency. Finally, I explain away the autonomy (...) paradox, to which the previously identified pair of paradigm cases seems to give rise in the context of mental disorder. By addressing this paradox, we learn two valuable lessons. The first is about the relationships between the three conceptions of autonomy above. The second is about the relationship between autonomy and mental disorder. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine how and why Heidegger's early conception of freedom as the ground of the self-appropriation of Dasein had been gradually transformed after 1930. The approach of Heidegger to the issue of human freedom displays how his thinking proceeds from Kant's formulation of the problem in "The Third Antinomy" of the first Critique to Sophocles' tragedy of Antigone. I argue that the reason behind this transformation resides in the attempt of thinking the relation between (...) class='Hi'>freedom and natural necessity over and beyond the constraints of critical philosophy. What seems pivotal in this transformation is Heidegger's growing concern with the "tragic" in which he envisages the possibility of a genuine exposure to the "truth" of the conflict between freedom and necessity and, more primordially, to the "abode" wherein the encounter between man and Being {Sein) occurs. Here, the "tragic" is pointing to the limits of representation and what is presented. In other words, it exhibits the limits of human freedom in its relation to the truth of Being. In the passion for disclosure of Being {aletheia), man is driven into the freedom of instituting its truth. In Heidegger's late thinking, human freedom is determined not any more by the obligation of choosing oneself but by the necessity of clearing the truth of Being. Human freedom is tragic in the face of this necessity that it has to answer. Therefore, man is envisaged as having no right or mastery over his freedom for there is no total clearing of its origin. Finally, I argue that it seems impossible to understand the transformation in Heidegger's concept of freedom without an appeal to his emphasis on the "tragic" as being an attempt to deepen and to transfigure the problem as treated in Kantian critical philosophy. In its tragic sense, Heidegger's concept of human freedom displays what lies beneath the Kantian antinomy: the incomprehensible origin of human freedom conceived as the event of the historical appropriation of Being {Er-eignis). (shrink)

This article explores the British anti-slavery writings of the mid- to late 18th century, and the meanings which they gave to the idea of owning a property in the person. It addresses the construction of a particular moral and political landscape where freedom was understood as both a kind of property and as non-domination, and slavery was constructed as a form of theft, and as the exercise of arbitrary power. This created a complex moral space, where possession, commerce, savagery, (...) tyranny and the emergence of race were all caught up with each other and entangled with the concept of consent. The article concludes with the suggestion that our current understandings of slavery continue to be informed by our notions of contract and consent, and so by conceptions of freedom and ownership that take us back to the tensions and debates of the 18th century. (shrink)

Susan Hurley has argued against a well known argument for freedom of speech, the argument from autonomy, on the basis of two hypotheses about violence in the media and aggressive behaviour. The first hypothesis says that exposure to media violence causes aggressive behaviour; the second, that humans have an innate tendency to copy behaviour in ways that bypass conscious deliberation. I argue, first, that Hurley is not successful in setting aside the argument from autonomy. Second, I show that the (...) empirical data are irrelevant to statutory regulation of media violence. They do not yield a sufficiently strong correlation between exposure to media violence and non-autonomously copied criminal violence, and they do not yield a way ex ante to individuate the viewers who will be affected by media violence. (shrink)

This paper comprises a critical examination of foundationalist conceptions of comprehensive doctrines in the religion in politics-debate. I argue that John Rawls, the towering figure of this debate, operates with a foundationalist conception of comprehensive doctrines that has shaped the debate’s view of relevant alternatives (often referred to as exclusivism and inclusivism). However, there are several problems with foundationalist conceptions, and the most serious is that they are empirically inadequate in relation to modern Western societies. I conclude that (...) participants of the exclusivist/inclusivist debate ought to look closer at alternative, non-foundationalist conceptions, and I supply a brief sketch of one such approach, inspired by American pragmatism. (shrink)

This paper elaborates four asymmetrical, developmental stages of the phenomenon of human freedom, starting with a rudimentary sort of freedom, thebasic experience of a relatively unencumbered power to act in alternative ways. The paper argues that structural elements of this rudimentary form of freedomare demonstrable in three distinct, supervening forms of freedom: instrumental freedom, the experience of the self-reflective ability to pursue certain aims, perfectionist freedom, the experience of the capacity to master oneself according (...) to some ideal, and, finally, interpersonal freedom, the experience of empowerment and alternatives only available through commitments to others. (shrink)

The recent confirmation of the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) by the US Supreme Court has brought to the fore long-standing debates over individual liberty and religious freedom. Advocates of personal liberty are often critical, particularly in the USA, of public health measures which they deem to be overly restrictive of personal choice. In addition to the alleged restrictions of individual freedom of choice when it comes to the question of whether (...) or not to purchase health insurance, opponents to the PPACA also argue that certain requirements of the Act violate the right to freedom of conscience by mandating support for services deemed immoral by religious groups. These issues continue the long running debate surrounding the demands of religious groups for special consideration in the realm of health care provision. In this paper I examine the requirements of the PPACA, and the impacts that religious, and other ideological, exemptions can have on public health, and argue that the exemptions provided for by the PPACA do not in fact impose unreasonable restrictions on religious freedom, but rather concede too much and in so doing endanger public health and some important individual liberties. (shrink)

This paper presents a non-preference-based approach to the analysis of negative freedom. It is argued that a proper understanding of (different conceptions of) negative freedom necessitates an examination of the consequences of changes in the set of feasible alternatives. For this reason the paper does not focus on freedom rankings of opportunity sets but on freedom rankings of opportunity situations, i.e., pairs consisting of a feasible set and an opportunity set. Three different freedom rankings (...) of opportunity situations are axiomatically characterised. Each of the three rankings forms a generalisation of the purely cardinality-based freedom ranking of opportunity sets presented by Pattanaik and Xu (1990). (shrink)

This essay presents a possible interpretation of the concept of beauty in Kant’s Critique of Judgment, which was itself suggested by Kant in the two introductionsto the text and gained force among the Early German Romantics and Idealists, introducing an alternative point of view into the concept of beauty and the role it plays in the relationship between reason and sensibility, man and world. Through the analysis of the four moments of the Analytic of the Beautiful, beauty will manifest (...) itself as the realm in which a special encounter between human freedom and nature takes place. Therefore, and as an alternative to some traditional interpretations of Kant’s aesthetic investigation, which understand Kant’s judgment of taste exclusively on the basis of its subjective conditions, the judgment of beauty will present itself also in the relationship it establishes with the objects of nature. (shrink)

Criticizing the misunderstanding and wrong explanation of Marx’s philosophical system made by recent Chinese textbooks on Marxist philosophy, the author argues that Marx’s philosophy has practical, economical-philosophical, and ontological dimensions and stresses on reconstructing Marx’s philosophical system through synthesizing the above three dimensions. This paper intends to set up a new outline of Marx’s philosophical system, in terms of the following four concepts—thing, value, time, and freedom.

While the concept of sin plays a pivotal role in the ethico-religious philosophies of Kierkegaard and Kant, both struggle to provide an adequate account of the nature of sin. Kant’s ethical interpretation improves signifi cantly on the traditional theological account by introducing the notion of individual responsibility, but it ultimately fails to provide an explanation of the psychological mechanisms of the fall. Kierkegaard tries to unite the Kantian conception of responsibility with an essentially Hegelian interpretation of the fall, using the (...) concept of anxiety as the glue. Contrary to usual opinion, it is argued here that far from resolving the difficulties of the Kantian account, Kierkegaard’s interpretation only serves to multiply them. But it is also shown that Kierkegaard’s analysis of the phenomenon that he calls “anxiety about sin” does provide the materials for an alternative interpretation of the origin of moral evil in man. (shrink)

In his lectures, Kant suggested to his students that the freedom of a divine holy will is “easier to comprehend than that of the human will,”(28:609) but this suggestion has remained neglected. After a review of some of Kant’s familiar claims about the will (in general), and about the divine holy will in particular, I consider how these claims give rise to some initial objections to that conception. Then I defend an interpretation of Kant’s conception of the divine will, (...) and of its historical development in relation to Leibniz and Spinoza, that identifies the content, origin, and role of God’s representations in a way that is responsive to some of the historical and contemporary problems. Finally, I trace a few of the implications of this account of the divine will for our understanding Kant’s account of freedom more generally, including human freedom. (shrink)

rectitude of will for the sake of that rectitude itself.” From the point of view of contemporary metaphysics, this is one of the most unhelpful definitions imaginable. Does such freedom require alternative possibilities, for example? Is it compatible with causal determination? Is the exercise of such freedom a necessary and sufficient condition for moral responsibility? The definition sheds no light on these questions.

A recent trend in curriculum reform argues that a successful liberal education curriculum must incorporate courses on multiculturalism. Though there is some agreement on what topics to cover in those courses, very little attention has so far been directed to the issue of how those courses must be designed. What is important in addressing this 'how' question is a clear understanding of the concepts involved. The question I explore in this paper is: what is the best way of understanding the (...) nature of the concept of 'Indian culture' that would in turn help us achieve the proposed goal of liberal education. I argue that neither essentialism nor postmodernism - the two popular ways of understanding a concept in mainstream philosophy - is going to be of much help. I also consider a historical alternative suggested by Uma Narayan. I then offer a naturalist way of understanding this concept and note its relative advantages over Narayan's historical account. (shrink)

Adorno and Levinas argue from distinct yet intersecting perspectives that there are pathological forms of freedom, formed by systems of power and economic exchange, which legitimate the neglect, exploitation, and domination of others. In this paper, I examine how the works of Adorno and Levinas assist in diagnosing the aporias of liberty in contemporary capitalist societies by providing critical models and strategies for confronting present discourses and systems of freedom that perpetuate unfreedom such as those ideologically expressed in (...) possessive individualist and libertarian conceptions of freedom. (shrink)

v. 1. A dialectical examination of the conceptions of freedom.--v. 2. A dialectical examination of the controversies about freedom.

What is it for a speech act to be sincere? The most common answer amongst philosophers is that a speech act is sincere if and only if the speaker is in the state of mind that the speech act functions to express. However, a number of philosophers have advanced counterexamples purporting to demonstrate that having the expressed state of mind is neither necessary nor sufficient for speaking sincerely. One may nevertheless doubt whether these considerations refute the orthodox conception. Instead, it (...) may be argued, they expose other ways of elucidating sincerity in speech. “Sincerity in speech” is ambivalent between a number of different conceptions. Against this background this paper presents two alternative conceptions, viz., Sincerity as Spontaneity and Sincerity as Presenting Oneself as one takes Oneself to be and develops a third conception which we may call Sincerity as a Communicative Virtue. This conception emphasizes the speaker’s intention in communicating her attitudes and the need to be properly justified in saying what one does. (shrink)

One well-known incompatibilist response to Frankfurt-style counterexamples is the ‘flicker-of-freedom strategy’. The flicker strategy claims that even in a Frankfurt-style counterexample, there are still morally relevant alternative possibilities. In the present paper, I differentiate between two distinct understandings of the flicker strategy, as the failure to differentiate these two versions has led some philosophers to argue at cross-purposes. I also explore the respective dialectic roles that the two versions of the flicker strategy play in the debate between compatibilists (...) and incompatibilists. Building on this discussion, I then suggest a reason why the compatibilism/incompatibilism debate has reached a stalemate. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have often favoured reductive approaches to how-possibly explanation. This article identifies three alternative conceptions making how-possibly explanation an interesting phenomenon in its own right. The first variety approaches “how possibly X?” by showing that X is not epistemically impossible. This can sometimes be achieved by removing misunderstandings concerning the implications of one’s current belief system but involves characteristically a modification of this belief system so that acceptance of X does not result in contradiction. The second (...) variety offers a potential how-explanation of X. It is usually followed by a range of further potential how-explanations of the same phenomenon. In recent literature the factual claims implied by the second variety have been downplayed whereas the heuristic role of mapping the space of conceptual possibilities has been emphasized. I will focus especially on this truth-bracketing sense of potentiality when looking closer at the second variety in the paper. The third variety has attracted less interest. It presents a partial how-explanation of X. Typically it aims to establish the existence of a mechanism by which X could be and was generated. The third conception stands out as the natural alternative for the advocate of ontic how-possibly explanations. This article transfers Salmon’s (1984) view that explanation-concepts can be broadly divided into epistemic, modal, and ontic to the context of how-possibly explanations. Moreover, it is argued that each of the three above-mentioned varieties of how-possibly explanation occurs in science. To recognize this may be especially relevant for philosophers. We are often misled by the promises of various why-explanation accounts, and seem to have forgotten nearly everything about the diversity of how-possibly explanations. (shrink)

This paper deals with a number of technical achievements that are instrumental for a dis-solution of the so-called "Hole Argument" in general relativity. Such achievements include: 1) the analysis of the "Hole" phenomenology in strict connection with the Hamiltonian treatment of the initial value problem. The work is carried through in metric gravity for the class of Christoudoulou-Klainermann space-times, in which the temporal evolution is ruled by the "weak" ADM energy; 2) a re-interpretation of "active" diffeomorphisms as "passive and metric-dependent" (...) dynamical symmetries of Einstein's equations, a re-interpretation which enables to disclose their (up to now unknown) connection to gauge transformations on-shell; understanding such connection also enlightens the real content of the Hole Argument or, better, dis-solves it together with its alleged "indeterminism"; 3) the utilization of the Bergmann-Komar "intrinsic pseudo-coordinates", defined as suitable functionals of the Weyl curvature scalars, as tools for a peculiar gauge-fixing to the super-hamiltonian and super-momentum constraints; 4) the consequent construction of a "physical atlas" of 4-coordinate systems for the 4-dimensional "mathematical" manifold, in terms of the highly non-local degrees of freedom of the gravitational field (its four independent "Dirac observables"). Such construction embodies the "physical individuation" of the points of space-time as "point-events", independently of the presence of matter, and associates a "non-commutative structure" to each gauge fixing or four-dimensional coordinate system; 5) a clarification of the multiple definition given by Peter Bergmann of the concept of "(Bergmann) observable" in general relativity. This clarification leads to the proposal of a "main conjecture" asserting the existence of i) special Dirac's observables which are also Bergmann's observables, ii) gauge variables that are coordinate independent (namely they behave like the tetradic scalar fields of the Newman-Penrose formalism). A by-product of this achievements is the falsification of a recently advanced argument asserting the absence of (any kind of) "change" in the observable quantities of general relativity. 6) a clarification of the physical role of Dirac and gauge variables as their being related to "tidal-like" and "inertial-like" effects, respectively. This clarification is mainly due to the fact that, unlike the standard formulations of the equivalence principle, the Hamiltonian formalism allows to define notion of "force" in general relativity in a natural way; 7) a proposal showing how the physical individuation of point-events could in principle be implemented as an experimental setup and protocol leading to a "standard of space-time" more or less like atomic clocks define standards of time. We conclude that, besides being operationally essential for building measuring apparatuses for the gravitational field, the role of matter in the non-vacuum gravitational case is also that of "participating directly" in the individuation process, being involved in the determination of the Dirac observables. This circumstance leads naturally to a peculiar new kind of "structuralist" view of the general-relativistic concept of space-time, a view that embodies some elements of both the traditional "absolutist" and "relational" conceptions. In the end, space-time point-events maintain a "peculiar sort of objectivity". Some hints following from our approach for the quantum gravity programme are also given. (shrink)

New settings for communication are being built, having, at one side, great corporations of television, radio, press and on line media, and at the other side the role of the independent / alternative press, understood as not bound to a private, public or state enterprise or to some economic group. It takes gradually shape the constitution of the opposition between the traditional media and the independent / alternative press, having as a material base the new technologies of information. (...) How can the new technology of information associated to the new settings of press freedom and the phenomenon of the contradiction of public opinion in the era of internet accomplish the mediation of the opinion in a globalized society? Or still, starting from the presupposition of the press freedom, how to guarantee that the society solves the contradiction of the public opinion? The phenomenon of the public opinion is contradicting because it has in itself, at the same time, the universality of constitutional principles of Law and Ethics, together with the peculiarity of the citizens’ rights and concerns. This contradiction finds its solution by means of the mediation of the freedom of the press itself within a frame of democratic legality. This is the power of the contradiction: to put into effect the dialectic tension between the opposed poles of the universal and the particular in the press freedom, avowing the right of every citizen to express publicly his opinion. This is Hegel’s theory of public opinion: the press freedom and the parliament, as a politic space, are privileged spheres of the mediation of the contradictory phenomenon of the public opinion. Keywords: Press freedom; public opinion; press; citizen journalists. (shrink)

" By relating Berlin's thinking about freedom to competing contemporary views of the politics of freedom, this book will be significant for both scholars of Berlin as well as people who are interested in larger debates about the meaning and ...

Section I: Anti-Rorty -- Knowledge -- Rorty's account of science -- Pragmatism, epistemology, and the inexorability of realism -- Agency -- The essential tension of philosophy and the mirror of nature or a tale of two Rortys -- How is freedom possible? -- Politics -- Self-defining versus social engineering poetry and politics : the problem-field of contingency, irony, and solidarity -- Rorty's apologetics -- Reference, fictionalism and radical negation -- Rorty's changing conceptions of philosophy -- Section II: For (...) critical realism -- Critical realism in context -- Appendix 1: Social theory and moral philosophy -- Appendix 2: Marxist philosophy from Marx to Althusser. (shrink)

The State of the Political offers a broad-ranging re-interpretation of the understanding of politics and the state in the writings of three major German thinkers, Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Franz Neumann. It rejects the typical separation of these writers on the basis of their allegedly incompatible ideological positions, and suggests instead that once properly located in their historical context, the tendentious character of these interpretative boundaries becomes clear. -/- The book interprets the conceptions of politics and the state (...) in the writings of these three thinkers by means of an investigation of their adaptation and modification of particular German traditions of thinking about the state, or Staatsrechtslehre. Indeed, when the theoretical considerations of this state-legal theory are combined with their contemporary political criticism, a richer and more deeply textured account of the issues that engaged the attention of Weber, Schmitt and Neumann is possible. Thus, the broad range of subjects discussed in this book include parliamentarism and democracy in Germany, academic freedom and political economy, political representation, cultural criticism and patriotism, and the relationship between rationality, law, sovereignty and the constitution. -/- The State of the Political is based on extensive consideration of primary and secondary materials, and is held together by a general focus on the importance to these authors of distilling an adequate account of the state and the political - largely because this could bolster their subsequent criticisms of contemporary politics. The study attempts to restore a sense of proportion to discussion of their writings, focusing on the extensive ideas that they shared rather than insisting on their necessary ideological separation. It is a detailed re-appraisal of a crucial moment in modern intellectual history, and highlights the profound importance of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Franz Neumann for the history of European ideas. (shrink)

Recent work has shown that preschool-aged children and adults understand freedom of choice regardless of culture, but that adults across cultures differ in perceiving social obligations as constraints on action. To investigate the development of these cultural differences and universalities, we interviewed school-aged children (4–11) in Nepal and the United States regarding beliefs about people's freedom of choice and constraint to follow preferences, perform impossible acts, and break social obligations. Children across cultures and ages universally endorsed the choice (...) to follow preferences but not to perform impossible acts. Age and culture effects also emerged: Young children in both cultures viewed social obligations as constraints on action, but American children did so less as they aged. These findings suggest that while basic notions of free choice are universal, recognitions of social obligations as constraints on action may be culturally learned. (shrink)

The present paper discusses Kitcher’s framework for studying conceptual change and progress. Kitcher’s core notion of reference potential is hard to apply to concrete cases. In addition, an account of conceptual change as change in reference potential misses some important aspects of conceptual change and conceptual progress. I propose an alternative framework that focuses on the inferences and explanations supported by scientific concepts. The application of my approach to the history of the gene concept offers a better account of (...) the conceptual progress that occurred in the transition from the Mendelian to the molecular gene than Kitcher’s theory. (shrink)

The traditional conception of response-dependence is inadequate because it cannot account for all intuitive cases of response-dependence. In particular, it is unable to account for the response-dependence of (aesthetic, moral, epistemic...) values. I therefore propose to supplement the traditional conception with an alternative one. My claim is that only a combination of the two conceptions is able to account for all intuitive cases of response-dependence.

In recent years, many incompatibilists have come to reject the traditional association of moral responsibility with alternative possibilities. Kevin Timpe argues that one such incompatibilist, Eleonore Stump, ultimately fails in her bid to sever this link. While she may have succeeded in dissociating responsibility from the freedom to perform a different action, he argues, she ends up reinforcing a related link, between responsibility and the freedom to act under a different mode. In this paper, I argue that (...) Timpe’s response to Stump exploits concessions she need not have made. The upshot is that, contrary to what Timpe maintains, there is no reason to doubt that Stump's brand of incompatibilism is a genuine alternative to the traditional variety. (shrink)

Deutsch and Hayden have proposed an alternative formulation of quantum mechanics which is completely local. We argue that their proposal must be understood as having a form of `gauge freedom' according to which mathematically distinct states are physically equivalent. Once this gauge freedom is taken into account, their formulation is no longer local.

This article spells out the way in which normative concerns unavoidably enter into the design and interpretation of empirical research on children's development of justice conceptions, with special emphasis on Damon's well-known stage theory of such development. Normative considerations provide assumptions not only about what counts as a conception of justice in the first place but also what counts as a better or a worse conception. Damon, for one, relies on the questionable normative premise that all distributive choices are (...) choices about justice. An alternative research programme is suggested, based on piecemeal mutual adjustments between the normative and the empirical, a programme which would focus on children's desert-based emotions. (shrink)

: The principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) says that doing something freely implies being able to do otherwise. I show that Descartes consistently believed not only in PAP, but also in clear and distinct determinism (CDD), which claims that we sometimes cannot but judge true what we clearly perceive. Because Descartes thinks judgment is always a free act, PAP and CDD seem contradictory, but Descartes consistently resolved this apparent contradiction by distinguishing between two senses of 'could have done otherwise.' (...) In one sense alternative possibilities are necessary for freedom and in another they are not. I discuss three possible interpretations of the two senses. (shrink)

Belgium's policy of not permitting Catholic hospitals to refuse euthanasia services rests on ethical presuppositions concerning the secular justification of political power which reveal the paradoxical character of European liberalism: In endorsing freedom as a value (rather than as a side constraint), liberalism prioritizes first-order intentions, thus discouraging lasting moral commitments and the authority of moral communities in supporting such commitments. The state itself is thus transformed into a moral community of its own. Alternative policies (such as an (...) explicit moral diversification of public healthcare or the greater tolerance for Christian institutions in the Netherlands) are shown to be incompatible with Europe's liberal concern with securing social and material freedom resources, as well as the concern with equality of opportunity, as embodied in the European Union's anti-discrimination labor law. The essay's argument for the preferability of a libertarian solution closes with the challenge that only if the provision of public healthcare can be shown to be rationally indispensable for a morally justified polity, could the exposed incoherence of modern European liberalism be generously discounted. (shrink)

Corporate freedom is the freedom of a collective agent to perform a joint action. According to a reductive account, a collective or corporate agent is free exactly if the individuals who constitute the corporate agent are free. It is argued that individual freedoms are neither necessary nor sufficient for corporate freedom. The alternative account proposed here focuses on the performance of the joint action by the corporate agent itself. Subsequently, the analysis is applied to Cohen’s (1983) (...) analysis of proletarian freedom. Cohen claims that proletarians are individually free but collectively unfree to leave the proletariat. I argue that, pace Cohen, such a contrast between individual and collective freedom can only exist if collective freedom is interpreted in terms of corporate freedom. (shrink)

Philip Pettit’s republican conception of freedom is presented as an alternative both to negative and positive conceptions of freedom. The basic idea is to conceptualize freedom as non-domination, not as non-interference or self-mastery. When compared to negative freedom, Pettit’s republican conception comprises two controversial claims: the claim that we are unfree if we are dominated without actual interference, and the claim that we are free if we face interference without domination. Because the slave is (...) a widely accepted paradigm of the unfree person, the case of a slave with a non-interfering master is often cited as providing a good argument for the first republican claim and against a negative conception of freedom. One aim of this article is to raise doubts about whether this is true. The other aim of the article is to show that the prisoner—also a paradigm of the unfree person—presents a good argument against the second republican claim and in favour of a negative conception of freedom. This is called the ‘prisoner-argument’. It will be argued that neither Pettit’s distinction between free persons and free choices nor his distinction between compromising and conditioning factors of freedom can help to rebut the charge of the prisoner-argument. (shrink)

In a recent paper, William Hasker has responded to a paper of mine criticizing his argument for theological incompatibilism. In his response, Hasker makes a small but important amendment to his account of freedom. Here I argue that Hasker’s amended account of freedom is false, that there is a plausible alternative account of freedom, and that the plausibility of this alternative account shows that Hasker’s argument for theological incompatibilism relies on a dubious premise.

The present article examines the theology of John Zizioulas with a view to understanding its coherence and viability for ecclesiology. Instead of treating his trinitarian theology, or his historical claims, I focus upon the basic themes of his personalistic ontology, especially the relationship between the ‘hypostasis’ and its ‘nature.’ I argue that Zizioulas's central concept of freedom rests upon an equivocation: he affirms both that freedom and being are identical, and that they are mutually exclusive. In conversation with (...) the philosophy of Levinas, I further argue that Zizioulas's proposal, as an ontology of communion, falls prey to the same reduction of being to thought that forms the central tenet of Western conceptions of subjectivity. In conclusion, I argue that both of these problems trade on a basic inability to account for grace as the fundamental reality of communion. Throughout my basic concern is to inquire into just what function the category of ‘being’ has in Zizioulas's theology, and to point out its surprising obscurity. (shrink)

It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have (or not to have) certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" (...) or "desires of the first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. (shrink)

This article develops a new measure of freedom of choice based on the proposal that a set offers more freedom of choice than another if, and only if, the expected degree of dissimilarity between a random alternative from the set of possible alternatives and the most similar offered alternative in the set is smaller. Furthermore, a version of this measure is developed, which is able to take into account the values of the possible options.

A reformulation of our understanding of freedom is required if we are adequately to confront the environmental crisis. Engaging the debate between biocentric ecologists and sociocentric ecologists, I argue that the biocentric effort to ascribe rights (negative liberty) to nature is misbegotten. In turn, I suggest that the sociocentric effort to seek ecological realignment through the extension of human reason (positive liberty) is equally problematic. Martin Heidegger, who rejects both “negative” and “positive” notions of liberty, offers an understanding of (...) human freedom that constitutes an ecologically attuned alternative. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the idea of the rule of law as found in neo-liberal political and legal theory. The central argument is that it is not possible to produce an account of the rule of law and its basic building blocks in such theories—namely freedom, rights and justice—without reference to a set of shared substantive values. The crucial argument is that if freedom is understood negatively, as the absence of coercion, it is not in fact possible to (...) produce an account of coercion which detaches it from conceptions of the good. The impact of this argument is then analysed in relation to a range of themes, one of the central ones of which is that on the neo-liberal view the welfare state cannot be made compatible with the rule of law. The case for this important view is rejected in the paper. (shrink)

The most valuable political theoretical contribution made by Marx's idea of socialism is towards the resolution of the seeming opposition of mass democracy and rational government. Marx follows Hegel's redefinition of political rationalization as the actualization of the nascent self?consciousness of the existing ethical world when he uses socialism as a statement of those tendencies of bourgeois society that will create the perspectives of social awareness that allow mass democracy. This thesis is made against aspects of the interpretation of Marx's (...) relation to Hegel in Bolshevik political theory. I claim that the Bolshevik idea of socialism as the militant political intervention of the dictatorship of the proletariat develops, through Engels, a position taken with respect to Hegel's philosophy of right in Marx's Rhenish Journal articles. This idea is, however, pre?Hegelian in the sense that it is open to a democratic criticism based on the philosophy of right understood in an alternative fashion. In his writings after leaving the Rhenish Journal and up to the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Marx makes this alternative available, and the notion of socialism he arrives at here turns on an awareness of the contradictions which make the militant political imposition of freedom impossible. Whereas for Bolshevism socialism is to be imposed on existing society, for Marx it is more the development within that society that makes possible mass democratic freedom. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to consider the significance that Hegel grants to religious love and, with it, forgiveness in his early The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate. Although Hegel characterizes religious love in this writing as a unity that transcends reason, his association of such love with forgiveness nevertheless sheds light on an important aspect of human finitude. In this, Hegel may be seen to identify forgiveness as a form of freedom elicited by limits that we (...) encounter in practical life. The author suggests that Hegel’s approach to forgiveness, which makes use not only of themes expressed by Jesus in the Gospel but also Greek tragedy, comprises an attractive alternative to some current views. (shrink)

In his major new work Chandran Kukathas offers, for the first time, a book-length treatment of this controversial and influential theory of minority rights. The work is a defence of a form of liberalism and multiculturalism. The general question it tries to answer is: what is the principled basis of a free society marked by cultural diversity and group loyalties? More particularly, it explains whether such a society requires political institutions which recognize minorities; how far it should tolerate such minorities (...) when their ways differ from those of the mainstream community; to what extent political institutions should address injustices suffered by minorities at the hands of the wider society, and also at the hands of the powerful within their own communities; what role, if any, the state should play in the shaping of a society's (national) identity; and what fundamental values should guide our reflections on these matters. Its main contention is that a free society is an open society whose fundamental principle is the principle of freedom of association. A society is free to the extent that it is prepared to tolerate in its midst associations which differ or dissent from its standards or practices. An implication of these principles is that political society is also no more than one among other associations; its basis is the willingness of its members to continue to associate under the terms which define it. While it is an 'association of associations', it is not the only such association; it does not subsume all other associations. The principles of a free society describe not a hierarchy of superior and subordinate authorities but an archipelago of competing and overlapping jurisdictions. The idea of a liberal archipelago is defended as one which supplies us with a better metaphor of the free society than do older notions such as the body politic, or the ship of state. This work presents a challenge, and an alternative, to other contemporary liberal theories of multiculturalism. (shrink)

Contemporary pragmatists often describe politics as primarily an exercise in social organization. Our tendency is to see the task of political philosophy in terms of the conceptualization of social, governmental, and legal institutions that will protect and deepen the core liberal values of freedom and equality. John Patrick Diggins could thus confidently and truly assert in 1994 that pragmatism "embrace[s] society as almost redemptive . . . no other modern philosophy has so dignified the social" (Diggins 1994, 160–61), I (...) do not see this claim as untrue so much as the unfortunate residue of recent pragmatism's narrow emphasis on a social conception of a pragmatist politics. This emphasis has been at the expense of early pragmatists' skepticism toward the idea that social institutions are the tool most useful for deepening democratic freedom and equality. In articulating pragmatist politics within frameworks with decided biases for the social over the individual, recent pragmatists have obscured a novel element central to early pragmatists William James and John Dewey: the philosophical and political idea of a personal action that is reducible to neither individual power nor social relations. -/- Recent pragmatism's social bias is perhaps clearest in the case of Richard Rorty. In his early work, Rorty defended a conception of knowledge as a social product, describing his position as "explaining rationality and epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say" (Rorty 1979, 174). In Rorty's later work on politics, this social conception of epistemic practice is rephrased in terms of a social authority of consensus. In the first instance, political authority rests on the weight of social consensus: "nothing save freely achieved consensus among human beings has any authority at all" (Rorty 1998, 18). Further, democratic politics is mostly a matter of finding ways of broadening consensus, of bringing more persons into the authoritative social fold: the resolution of disagreement always requires "widen[ing] the range of consensus about how things are" (35). Rorty thus often slides toward a conception of democratic politics as purely social and consensual—individual dissensus is accommodated in private rather than explicitly invited or cherished as a valuable aspect of democratic political culture. -/- Rorty is not alone in voicing this position—his work skillfully condenses themes entrenched over the last twenty-five years of pragmatist political theory (these themes are equally prevalent in non-pragmatist liberal and socialist theory). According to Richard Bernstein, the value of pragmatism is that it articulates social insights such as the following: "the institutionalization of democratic forms of life require[s] a new understanding of the genesis and development of practical sociality" (Bernstein 1991, 48). Cornel West, who describes his envisioned "Emersonian culture of creative democracy" as one "in which human participation is encouraged and for which human personalities are enhanced," tends to view participation and personality in decidedly social terms. According to West's vision of Emersonian culture, "social experimentation is the basic norm" because "once one gives up on the search for foundations and the quest for certainty, human inquiry into truth and knowledge shifts to the social and communal circumstances under which persons can communicate and cooperate in the process of acquiring knowledge" (West 1989, 213). -/- Pragmatists should not accept these arguments. Once we abandon the quest for certainty, the balance of interest does not necessarily tip toward the social. My argument is that our interest should shift, rather, to the synergy between individual and social forces that alone cultivates democratic practice. Only in this way can we hold in vision a conception of democratic practice that both originates and terminates in human personality. (shrink)

In recent work, Rawls, Nozick, and the ?democratic?socialist? theory of Markovi? and Gould, attempt to ground rival models of just economic relations on the basis of conflicting interpretations of human freedom. Beginning with a philosophical conception of humans as essentially free beings, each derives a different system of basic rights and freedoms: (1) the familiar democratic civil and political rights of citizenship in the West (Rawls); (2) the classical bourgeois market freedoms ? ?life, liberty, and property? (Nozick); and (3) (...) democratic socialist rights of self?management of the work?place (Gould and Markovi?). I argue that each of these theorists implicitly assumes a different but ungrounded ?social paradigm of human agency? concerning the particular forms of human choice which are singled out as most important for a free, human life. None of these theories contains the methodological resources for showing why the forms of human agency it ?emancipates? are more important than the forms it suppresses or ignores. In order to overcome this impasse and provide a way of evaluating such rival paradigms of free agency, I elaborate a methodology based on the idea that a free society must provide its members with ?equality in the social bases of self?respect?. I use this methodology to argue that all three of the above conceptions are blind to problems of human agency, freedom, and dignity posed by the modern phenomena of welfare dependency, unemployment, and a self?stultifying division of labor. (shrink)

Following the metaphor of “boulders in the stream” of anthropology proposed by Stephan Schwartz (2000) and carried on by subsequent articles in Anthropology of Consciousness, this article proposes an alternate set of “boulders” that may serve the study of consciousness: Weberian charisma (as developed by Charles Lindholm), Turner's liminality, and Johannes Fabian's notion of “moments of freedom.” These constructs highlight how individuals, even entire communities, at times create new institutions, relationships, and identities despite inhibiting constraints of discourse and power. (...) Ethnographic evidence from a Puerto Rican Protestant church-sponsored school suggests that, though short-lived, these instances are sufficiently common to merit the term “everyday extraordinary.” The article argues that this framing, like George P. Hansen's “Trickster,” may help anthropologists of consciousness account for phenomena that have hitherto been unexplainable by positivist science; additionally, it may help anthropologists “catch” important aspects of contemporary social and political processes characterized by charisma, liminality, and freedom. (shrink)

This article examines the issues raised by religious adherents’ wish to express their beliefs in the public domain through, for example, their modes of dress, their performance of public roles, and their response to homosexuality. It considers on what grounds religion might merit special treatment and how special that treatment should be. A common approach to these issues is through the notion of religious identity, but both the idea of religious identity and its use to ground claims against others prove (...) deeply problematic. An alternative and more productive approach is through the notion of harm. People should enjoy the freedom to express their religious convictions subject to the harm principle, but harm should include the undermining of people’s status as free and equal citizens. The article concludes by considering the grounds upon which this alternative approach might recognize religion as special and might justify giving an overriding status to civic equality. (shrink)

Presents an analysis of Jonathan Edwards' theological position. This book includes a study of his life and the intellectual issues in the America of his time, and examines the problem of free will in connection with Leibniz, Locke, and Hume.

One of the greatest woman intellectuals of eighteenth-century Germany is Elise Reimarus, whose contribution to Enlightenment political theory is rarely acknowledged today. Unlike other social contract theorists, Reimarus rejects a people's right to violent resistance or revolution in her philosophical dialogue Freedom (1791). Exploring the arguments in Freedom, this paper observes a number of similarities in the political thought of Elise Reimarus and Immanuel Kant. Both, I suggest, reject violence as an illegitimate response to perceived political injustice in (...) a way that opposes Locke's strong voluntarism and the absolutism of Hobbes. First, they emphasize the need to maintain the legal state as a precondition for the possibility of external right. Second, they share an optimistic view of the inherently “just” nature of the tripartite republican state. And finally, Reimarus and Kant both outline an alternative, nonviolent response to political injustice that consists in the freedom of public expression and a discourse on the moral enlightenment of man. (shrink)

I examine the claim that the underlying importance given to freedom within a society's scheme of values varies with historical circumstance and social context (I shall sometimes call this the "relativist claim"). The point of the examination will be to attempt to determine the manner in which, and the extent to which, this claim really endangers the liberal argument, which seems to suggest that freedom is valuable everywhere and always. It will be seen that several apparent challenges may (...) be dismissed, since for one reason or another they do not really threaten traditional liberalism. When these apparent (but non-threatening) challenges are pared away from the relativist claim, it will be seen that the remaining threat is on the one hand weaker, and on the other hand more dubious, than might have been supposed at first. This rather formal work will then set the stage for a proffered definition of the sort of "freedom" that is at stake in this discussion, and for my own attempt to offer answers to the questions about the value of freedom that I raise. (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 bydemonstrating 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)

An alternative philosophic basis for freedom based on writings of ancient Gnostics and psychologist Jung.

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 bydemonstrating 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)

This speech analyzes the constitutive relationship between liberty and domination. In it freedom is intended as opposition to power through the concept of liberation. But many forms of power, in spite of fighting liberty, try to present themselves as liberators or as a guarantor of liberty itself. In this way the concept of freedom becomes first with Christianity and then with modernity an instrument for a sophisticated technology of power that has the opposite function. This individualistic notion of (...) liberty is criticized also from an epistemological point of view (complexity theory, chaos theory), and from a multicultural point of view by a brief comparison with holistic Sino-Japanese concept of spontaneity. Complexity theory shows that the subject is always connected to a system in his decision making process. Chaos theory shows that what seems spontaneous is an unpredictable interaction of causes. Finally Sino-Japanese culture has not a traditional concept of freedom, because it focuses the spontaneity of Dao or nature that is conceived as whole necessary for the comprehension of the individuals’ life. The aim of this text is to give just some hints for a “mise en question” of the concept of liberty related to recent problems such as globalization, environmental problems and crisis of modern political systems. (shrink)

The traditional dispute over whether there are one or two ‘concepts’ of freedom has recently been reignited. Despite this, Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between positive and negative freedom retains a significant amount of influence over academic and popular disputes about freedom, continuing to withstand recent attempts, in Eric Nelson’s words, to ‘lift the shadow’ of Berlin’s famous dichotomy. Berlin’s distinction has traditionally been assailed by two separate schools of thought. One line of argument, propounded by Quentin Skinner and (...) Philip Pettit, has suggested that Berlin’s account includes (at least) one concept of freedom too few. Another line of attack, however, propounded by the likes of Nelson, Efraim Podoksik and Gerald MacCallum, has suggested that, to the contrary, Berlin’s account contains one concept of liberty too many. In this article, I will attempt to clear up this confusing picture by discussing how both of these lines of attack have a role to play in helping to dismantle Berlin’s ultimately misleading account of freedom. In the second half of the article, I then go on to explore the implications of this for contemporary political theory in the construction of a theory of freedom for modern political communities, discussing how the ‘spectrum’ of liberty I explore in the first half leads, naturally, to a social model of individual liberty. (shrink)

This contribution defends Ripstein's attempt to reconstruct Kant's political philosophy as entirely and consistently grounded on the idea of people's innate right to freedom as independence, in particular with respect to charges of circularity raised by other contributors to this symposium. However, it also argues that, if the concept of freedom as independence is to provide a foundation for a full-blown account of political justice, a richer interpretation of it should be provided. In other words, we must be (...) willing to make controversial and empirically informed claims about what counts as a threat to our freedom as independence under specific circumstances. We must have a more embedded account of freedom as independence, one that engages with the contingencies of politics and of the human condition. (shrink)

In what way to understand of the idea of freedom is one of the major factors determining world outlook of a society. There are too many concepts of freedom. That kind of differences appears in individual, group and national level. But the major differences appear in perspectives of civilization understanding, in eastern and western world outlook. In eastern approach the idea of freedom is mostly individualistic, idealistic, spiritual one. In comparison with the eastern understanding, in the western (...) thinking realistic and pragmatic concept of freedom has always been prevailed. It stands on difference of philosophical understanding of the world. In the eastern philosophical thought the idea of freedom mostly connected with mental perfection, higher moral-spiritual values, and the understanding of Truth. However, in the western philosophy freedom has been searched in human researches; in realization of his individual ability in scientific, cultural, political, social, economical spheres of life. Seeking freedom both in internal and external world are two extremes of one phenomenon – human freedom. Each of these extremes has some shortages. In a time of dialogue of civilizations it would be very beneficial for ideas to research in a lightof essence of a life of the human being. Mutual understanding of those who carry different ideas and approaches would be essential step for peace and harmony in the world. (shrink)

Philosophers concerned with the problem of freedom and determinism differ strikingly over the analysis of the concept of human freedom of the will. Compatibilists and incompatibilists, determinists and indeterminists populate the conceptual landscape with a dizzying array of theories differing in complex and subtle ways. Each of these analyses faces an under-appreciated potential challenge: the challenge from scientific essentialism. Might all traditional analyses of freedom of the will be radically ill-conceived because the concept—the nature of freedom (...) itself—is something discoverable only by empirical science? I explore this vexing question. (shrink)

The notion of creatio ex nihilo has become a doctrine firmly established in the three Abrahamic religions (i.e., Christianity, Judaism and Islam). Almost all groups of Islamic thinkers accept the truth of the createdness (creatio) of the universe, and that it is preceded by its “non-existence” (ex nihilo). However, there is a diversity of opinions as to whether the concept of creatio ex nihilo is compatible with alternative accounts of the origin of the physical world, and this diversity is (...) particularly marked between Islamic philosophers and kalam theologians (Mutakallimun). Three major factors, independently or together, play a fundamental role on how Islamic scholars deal with this very issue: (a) their views of the physical world; (b) their approaches to the divine attributes; and (c) their understandings of the teachings of their religion. The aim of this chapter is to investigate whether four different notions of creatio ex nihilo espoused by different Islamic thinkers are compatible with seven alternative accounts of the origins of the universe (five philosophical/theological doctrines – first level of compatibility; and two possible interpretations of a modern scientific theory – second level of compatibility). (shrink)

This essay examines the reasons for Hegel's frequently professed claim that Kant's Critique of Judgment simultaneously reveals the internal limits of critical philosophy and opens the door to his own system of speculative idealism. It evaluates Hegel's contention that the conceptions of aesthetic experience, organic purposiveness, and the intuitive intellect developed in the third Critique together conspire to undermine the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the theories of nature and freedom advanced in the first and second Critiques . (...) Finally it explains how Hegel understands his logic and real philosophy as a realist and quasi-naturalistic alternative to Kant's subjective idealism, one that purports to generate a system of categories adequate not only to dead matter but also to organic life and free self-conscious spirit. (shrink)

Current approaches to machine consciousness (MC) tend to offer a range of characteristic responses to critics of the enterprise. Many of these responses seem to marginalize phenomenal consciousness, by presupposing a 'thin' conception of phenomenality. This conception is, we will argue, largely shared by anti- computationalist critics of MC. On the thin conception, physiological or neural or functional or organizational features are secondary accompaniments to consciousness rather than primary components of consciousness itself. We outline an alternative, 'thick' conception of (...) phenomenality. This shows some signposts in the direction of a more adequate approach to MC. (shrink)