I argue that Hegel’s Phenomenology is an attempt to prove that human experience displays a sui generis logical structure. This is because, as rational animals who instinctively create a universe of meaning to navigate our environment, the perceptual content of our conscious experience of objects, the desires that motivate our self-conscious experience of action, and the beliefs and values that make up our sociohistorical experience all testify to the presence of rationality as their condition of possibility. As such, Hegel’s Phenomenology (...) not only requires of us that we transform the mission of logic into a description of the immanent logic at the basis of human experience, thereby making the task of logic “anthropological.” It also presents us with a novel model of human experience—one that: demonstrates the rationality already instinctively at work in our bodily sensations, perceptions, and desires; gives an account of the origins of human society and history; and also makes human experience irreducible to cognitive processes in the brain, psychological mechanisms, and the biological imperatives of survival and reproduction. (shrink)

I argue that Hegel’s logic is an anthropology. Appealing to the fact that we, as the kind of beings we are, search for meaning in our sensory encounter with things and in our actions, it articulates the rationality that guides this search and explains the fundamental shape of human experience. This has three implications for his logic. First, since this rationality is first and foremost an instinctive activity, it is an elaboration of our unconscious knowledge of the rules of thinking. (...) Second, it is an account of the universe of meaning that we create in order to make sense of what is around us and our lives, a theory of the discourses through which we engage in the project of world-interpretation. Third, I contend that it is a work of human self-knowledge and cannot be understood in isolation from the rational form of life whose basic normative structure it distills. (shrink)

I argue that Žižek's Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism presents us with a radically original variety of metaphysics both in terms of Žižek's own intellectual development and the history of philosophy. Rather than being concerned with the study of being qua being, Less Than Nothing proclaims that we ought to investigate nothing qua nothing inasmuch as contemporary physics demonstrates that the more we analyze reality the more we find a void, this latter now in matter (...) of fact exhibiting the traits of ultimate reality rather than the order of the perceived universe. Before arriving at this, however, I demonstrate how Žižek is led to contemporary physics in order to overcome inherent limitations in his own previous metaphysics of Hegelian inspiration. If thinking substance as subject imposes upon us the recognition that substance as a self-articulating totality of necessity is an illusion, subject being nothing but a synonymous for its constitutive tension with itself, if we are to explain how this weakly structured nature does not collapse upon itself we must go further. In this manner, Less Than Nothing outlines one way in which we must step beyond Hegel to find new metaphysical solutions for impasses that have emerged out of thinking the obscure ground of the psychoanalytic subject. (shrink)

In Ontological Catastrophe, Joseph Carew takes up the central question guiding Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy: How could something like phenomenal reality emerge out of the meaninglessness of the Real? Carefully reconstructing and expanding upon his controversial reactualization of German Idealism, Carew argues that Žižek offers us an original, but perhaps terrifying, response: experience is possible only if we presuppose a prior moment of breakdown as the ontogenetic basis of subjectivity. Drawing upon resources found in Žižek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and (...) post-Kantian philosophy, Carew thus develops a new critical metaphysics—a metaphysics which is a variation upon the late German Idealist theme of balancing system and freedom, realism and idealism, in a single, self-reflexive theoretical construct—that challenges our understanding of nature, culture, and the ultimate structure of reality. (shrink)

What are the origins of consciousness and language? Why are so many driven to see them as epiphenomenal to a metaphysically more primordial phenomenon when we have good reasons to think they are irreducible to such? Drawing on the work of the Slovenian psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek, and in particular his reading of the German philosopher F.W.J. Schelling, I suggest a provactive but nuanced thesis: that at the basis of human subjectivity there is no rhyme or reason for its emergence and (...) to protect ourselves from this insight we build various fantasy-constructions of its ground as defensive mechanisms. (shrink)

My aim is to show how Žižek's political philosophy is informed and made possible by his reading of German Idealism, thus establishing an intrinsic relationship between Žižek's politics and ontology, by focusing on the problematic of “political imagination.” First, we will see to what degree Žižek's interpretation of the Schellingian logic of the Grund lays the foundation for his own appropriation of Marx's analysis of capital and this theorization of the sociopolitical deadlock we find ourselves in. Next, I will show (...) how his reading of Hegel's concept of tarrying with the negative allows him to establish the possibility of a way out of this deadlock while simultaneously giving him resources to rethink orthodox Hegelian-Marxist interpretations of the philosophy of history and the very nature of the communist struggle. In the last section, I will demonstrate how it is the Schellingian-inspired concept of ontological catastrophe, which is implicitly at work in the former as that which guarantees the always formally possible capacity for political imagination and thus the condition of the possibility of an authentically political act. (shrink)

Following a series of textual gestures which suggest that Schelling is the culmination of the German Idealist tradition, this essay is an attempt to articulate the ambiguity of the Hegel-Schelling relationship in Slavoj Žižek's work and its productive potential. Characterizing his own dialectical materialism again and again as Hegelian, but never a Schellingian project, Žižek often belies the central role played by late Schelling of the Freiheitsschrift and the Weltalter in the self-unfolding logic of the tradition. But why is there (...) such an oscillation? Describing the Grundlogik of German Idealism as the radical ontological incompletion of reality announced by the abyss of freedom of the Kantian subject, Žižek's own philosophy suggests that neither Hegel nor Schelling were able of themselves to fully articulate the consequences of the deadlock of freedom. Yet, what I argue is that it is only by an implicit retroactive reconstruction of the inner logic of post-Kantian philosophy, an aprés-coup unearthing of philosophical possibilities hidden within these two thinkers made possible by psychoanalysis, that Žižek is able to present his reading of the radical nature of subjectivity in German Idealism. By unpacking this latent reconstruction I will not only demonstrate the consistency and comprehensiveness that a Žižekian reading of the history of German Idealism can display but also the complex intertwining of Schellingian ontology and Hegelian logic at the core of Žižek's own parallax ontology. (shrink)

My goal is to offer a strategy for understanding the intended effect of Žižek's sociopolitical writings. Although many critics are suspicious of Žižek's lack of a positive program for action or his rejection of liberal democracy, my conviction is that these concerns miss something essential in Žižek's endeavor as an intervention: Žižek's continual insistence on the need to “reformulate” the Left, “reinvent” the political, “think” an alternative future, if we are to overcome the impasses we face today and which in (...) turn calls for the necessity of social creativity. Using this intuition as a guide, I develop an interpretation of Žižek's account of the externality of truth, the function of imagination in politics as the art of the impossible, and how both are needed to carve up the space for an authentic act. We will see that Žižek's sociopolitical writings are less of a solution than an attempt, by identifying the role of the militant with the empty position of the analyst, to cultivate a potential for an event opening. (shrink)

Although Hegel's absolute idealism is often presented as a solipsistically self-grounding, the Realphilosophie offers us an another image of Hegel which not only challenges standard interpretations, but more importantly gives us valuable resources to rethink living being. The zero-level determinacy of nature as “the idea in its otherness” has two consequences. Firstly, the starting point of any philosophy of nature must be a realism, insofar as nature's material constitution shows itself as unthought-like. Secondly, if idealism is to be viable, it (...) must prove itself to be a result of nature's immanent auto-development. Taking as my guide the category of “trembling” (Erzittern) and exploring its intimate connection with the emergent ideality of bodies producing sound, the chemical process and the voice of animals, I aim to show how the Realphilosophie is a reconstruction of the painful odyssey of the material genesis of the autopoietic self-referentiality of the concept as it is paradoxically begotten, by immaculate conception, in the pure extimacy of nature. The dialectics of nature is not a naturephilosophical theory of material being as implicit, self-unfolding productivity which necessarily leads to life via an intrinsic teleology, but rather an account of the contingent material emergence of unpredictable kinds of ontological determinacies from within the immanent field of mechanical nature. Only a naturalized idealism/idealized naturalism is capable of arguing for the ontological irreducibility of living being while simulta eously articulating its dependence upon different scientific domains which form its ontogenetic ground. It avoids both eliminative materialism and naïve vitalism. (shrink)

Absent within Jean-Luc Marion’s theory of selfhood is an account of psychosis that displaces standard phenomenological and psychoanalytic models. Working primarily with Book V of Being Given, my paper sketches the formal possibilities exhibited in a self who cannot manage the superabundance of the given and, swept away by an uncontrollable flood of givenness, thereby falls into a hysteria of self-experience and loses its ipseity. Then, contrasting psychosis with positive figures of the self, I explore the dynamic relationship between givenness (...) and the gifted highlighted by the phenomenological diremption and effacement of selfhood displayed in both. (shrink)

Absent within Jean-Luc Marion’s theory of selfhood is an account of psychosis that displaces standard phenomenological and psychoanalytic models. Working primarily with Book V of Being Given, my paper sketches the formal possibilities exhibited in a self who cannot manage the superabundance of the given and, swept away by an uncontrollable flood of givenness, thereby falls into a hysteria of self-experience and loses its ipseity. Then, contrasting psychosis with positive figures of the self, I explore the dynamic relationship between givenness (...) and the gifted highlighted by the phenomenological diremption and effacement of selfhood displayed in both. (shrink)

The ‘death’ of German Idealism has been decried innumerable times since its revolutionary inception, whether it be by the 19th-century critique of Western metaphysics, phenomenology, contemporary French philosophy, or analytic philosophy. Yet in the face of two hundred years of sustained, extremely rigorous attempts to leave behind its legacy, German Idealism has resisted its philosophical death sentence. For this exact reason it is timely ask: What remains of German Idealism? In what ways does its fundamental concepts and texts still speak (...) to us? Drawing together new and established voices from scholars in Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, this volume offers a fresh look on this time-honoured tradition. It uses myriad of recently developed conceptual tools to present new and challenging theories of its now canonical figures. (shrink)

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is typically read as a work that either rehabilitates the metaphysical tradition or argues for a new form of idealism centred on social normativity. In the following, I show that neither approach suffices. Not only does the metaphysical reading ignore how the Phenomenology demonstrates that human rationality can never adequately capture ultimate reality because ultimate reality itself has a moment of brute facticity that resists explanation, which prevents us from taking it as a logically self-contained, self-justifying (...) metaphysical zone traditionally known as ‘substance,’ but it also ignores how the Phenomenology equally demonstrates that human rationality creates a historically self-unfolding universe of meaning that is, because it displays a rational systematicity and consistency unlike anything else in the world, the closest thing we have to substance, but which, given its freedom, is more correctly called ‘subject.’ Consequently, while the non-metaphysical reading rightly recognizes that the Phenomenology develops a radically innovative account of intersubjectivity, it neglects how the social theory that it develops comes fully equipped with various metaphysical commitments concerning nature, spirit, and the relationship between them without which this theory would be unintelligible. (shrink)

The seventh edition of this pragmatic guide to determining right and wrong in the workplace is updated with new case studies and ancillary materials to combine stakeholder perspectives with a deep dive on workplace ethics issues. Using a unique stakeholder-based approach, this book takes business ethics out of the theory realm and provides practical ways to analyze any business decision. Including dozens of cases, Joseph Weiss looks beyond the impacts of ethical lapses on share price and profit to focus (...) on relationships between stakeholders, including individuals, groups, corporations, and governments. The new seventh edition includes seven new cases and ten new Point/Counterpoint exercises, which challenge students to argue both sides of a contemporary issue. It incorporates the latest research as well as updated cases dealing with recent scandals at organizations such as Boeing, Facebook, and Uber. Professors will have access to online support, including teaching notes, PowerPoint slides, and sample tests. The book is equipped with a step-by-step guide to implementing stakeholder analysis, tips to help students apply ethical principles in their personal and professional lives, and comprehensive coverage of employee workplace issues. Addressing relevant topics such as risk management, preferential hiring, and sexual harassment in conjunction with the digital divide, bribery, the environment, and more, Business Ethics, seventh edition explores ethical implications in today's increasingly interconnected global business environment. (shrink)

(2013). Life, the Unhistorical, the Suprahistorical: Nietzsche on History. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 64-91. doi: 10.1080/09672559.2012.744532.

Nietzsche was a philosopher who prided himself, in deliberate contradistinction with previous philosophers, on his ‘historical sense’. But this leaves many questions unanswered about the precise role of the historical in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, can the conception of genealogy in Nietzsche’s later philosophy, as a revised historical method, be taken to represent his mature philosophical methodology in general? I argue, firstly, that there is considerable continuity between Nietzsche’s conceptions of history in the early essay ‘On the uses and (...) disadvantages of history for life’ and those of his later philosophy. The former can therefore be used as a resource for understanding the latter. Through a reading of the early history essay I demonstrate that Nietzsche’s conception of the historical here is intimately bound up with the notion of the ‘unhistorical’ and that it is precisely renewed access to the unhistorical which is required in order for history to be conducive to the flourishing of humanity. I go on to contend that this holds for Nietzsche’s later writings as well, and that genealogy, being purely historical, must therefore be seen as one subsidiary part of a broader philosophy in which the unhistorical will play, literally, a vital role. (shrink)

The Human Psyche is an in-depth exploration of dualist-interactionism, a concept Sir John Eccles developed with Sir Karl Popper in the context of a wide...

The book combines philosophical exposition and legal analysis, and pays special attention to issues of tort law.

This book critically assesses arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism, develops an innovative account of objects’ persistence, and defends new arguments against classical theism. The authors engage the following classical theistic proofs: Aquinas’s First Way, Aquinas’s De Ente argument, and Feser’s Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Augustinian, Thomistic, and Rationalist proofs. The authors also provide the first systematic treatment of the ‘existential inertia thesis’. By connecting the thesis to relativity theory and recent developments in the philosophy of physics, and (...) by developing a variety of novel existential-inertia-friendly explanations of persistence, they mount a formidable new case against classical theistic proofs. Finally, they defend new arguments against classical theism based on abstract objects and changing divine knowledge. The text appeals to students, researchers, and others interested in classical theistic proofs, the existence and nature of God, and the ultimate explanations of persistence, change, and contingency. (shrink)

Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain, tells the story of...

[1] Biographie, Philosophie, Praxis -- [2] Het spel van het naamloze / naar een concept van Joseph Kosuth.

While engaging in rich discussion, Conspiracy Theories analyzes current arguments and evidence while providing real-world examples so students can contextualize and visualize the debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.

We examine two competing solutions to Benardete paradoxes: causal finitism, according to which nothing can have infinitely many causes, and the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis (UPD), according to which such paradoxes are logically impossible and no metaphysical thesis need be adopted to avoid them. We argue that the UPD enjoys notable theoretical advantages over causal finitism. Causal finitists, however, have levelled two main objections to the UPD. First, they urge that the UPD requires positing a ‘mysterious force’ that prevents paradoxes from (...) arising. Since such a force is implausible, the UPD is in trouble. Second, they employ recombination or patchwork principles to argue that paradoxical situations would be possible if causal finitism were false. Since such situations are not possible, causal finitism is true, and so a substantive metaphysical thesis is needed to avoid the paradoxes. We argue that the UPD proponent can successfully respond to these objections. (shrink)

Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain, tells the story of how we came to be, not only as animals at the end of the hominid evolutionary line, but also as human persons possessed of reflective consciousness.

It is plausible to think that practices of caring are partly constituted by a caregiver's commitment to a cared-for. However, discussions of caring often contain no explicit discussion of such commitments, and do not attempt to draw any philosophical conclusions from the nature of caring relations as committed. A discussion of caring practices that emphasizes the importance of commitment therefore has the potential to generate important new insights for our understanding of caring. This essay begins that project by arguing that (...) a commitment-centric conception of caring entails the truth of moral partialism. Although many care-ethicists are sympathetic to partialism, the arguments in its defense remain controversial. As I show in this article, however, partialism is necessarily true given the committed nature of caring. This is because the concept of commitment is itself a necessarily partial one: to say that we are equally committed to everyone or everything is equivalent to saying that we are not committed to anything. Thus, when viewed as a species of commitment, it is part of the concept of caring that it requires us to put the needs of those we care for before the needs of those unknown to us. (shrink)

Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain, tells the story of how we came to be, not only as animals at the end of the hominid evolutionary line, but also as human persons possessed of reflective consciousness.

The aim of this article is to fill a certain gap in the assessment of relativism by drawing on Joseph Ratzinger’s (1927–2022) criticism of the normative transformation since Kant. During the Enlightenment, Natural Law was doubted as a cultural feature of Christianity that had no bearing on pluralist society. Consequently, this jurisprudential tradition underwent de-Hellenization and branched out in radical directions, the most decisive of which was Kant’s post-metaphysical system of natural values. Positivism and German Idealism attempted to restore (...) the unity of philosophy that Kant’s philosophy had disrupted. Yet even more influentially, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was Marxism that relativized the doxological aspect of normativity by emphasizing the importance of praxis. Since philosophy became neither an exact science as Kant had conceived it to be, nor a practical programme for social justice as Marxism had promised, the Existentialists, and particularly Sartre, advocated a more radical philosophy of freedom. Ratzinger argues that despite the nuances of post-Kantian philosophy, Positivism, Existentialism, and Marxism failed to comprehend the human condition and that the positivist method resulted in an overwhelming relativism that has reduced normativity to a matter of correct procedures rather than regarding it as the foundation of the inviolable dignity of the human being. (shrink)

Privacy remains an intractable ethical issue for the information society, and one that is exacerbated by modern applications of artificial intelligence. Given its complicity, there is a moral obligation to redress privacy issues in systems engineering practice itself. This paper investigates the role the concept of privacy plays in contemporary systems engineering practice. Ontologically a nominalist human concept, privacy is considered from an appropriate engineering perspective: human-centred design. Two human-centred design standards are selected as exemplars of best practice, and are (...) analysed using an existing multi-dimensional privacy model. The findings indicate that the human-centred standards are currently inadequate in dealing with privacy issues. Some implications for future practice are subsequently highlighted. (shrink)

According to agent-based approaches to virtue ethics, the rightness of an action is a function of the motives which prompted that action. If those motives were morally praiseworthy, then the action was right; if they were morally blameworthy, the action was wrong. Many critics find this approach problematically insensitive to an act’s consequences, and claim that agent-basing fails to preserve the intuitive distinction between agent- and act-evaluation. In this article I show how an agent-based account of right action can be (...) made sensitive to an act’s consequences. According to the approach which I defend, an action is right just in case it realizes an agent’s morally praiseworthy motive. Conversely, an action is wrong just in case it realizes a morally blameworthy motive. Specifying act-evaluation in terms of the realization, rather than the expression, of an agent’s motives allows an agent-based approach to distinguish between agent- and act-evaluation. This is because an agent may act from a morally praiseworthy motive, but fail to realize that motive. Her action will therefore not have been the right one, despite its being the expression of morally praiseworthy motives. (shrink)

Functionalism has long been the dominant paradigm in systems development practice. However, functionalism promotes an innate and immutable instrumental rationality that is indifferent to human values, rights, society, culture and international stability. It, in essence, lacks empathy. Although alternative paradigms have been promoted for decades in the systems development literature to help address this deficit, functionalism remains dominant. This paper reiterates the call for a fundamental paradigm shift away from myopic functionalism and towards a more empathic and human-centred philosophy. It (...) argues that the human-centred tradition offers a philosophically compatible and mature approach that can be practically harnessed for promoting empathy in systems development. The paper investigates the potential of systems development to become truly human-centred using data originally collected as part of a multi-method critical-interpretive study of privacy in information systems development. Multiple methods are used for the data analysis presented, including principal components analysis, hierarchical clustering, Q methodology and descriptive statistics. The multi-method analysis demonstrates that a marked discreteness exists between human-centred sentiments and instrumentally rational ones in systems development praxis. The paper concludes by presenting recommendations on how human-centred values can be practically fostered and engaged to enable greater empathy in contemporary system development and strengthen international stability. (shrink)

The brain–computer interface (BCI) has made remarkable progress in the bridging the divide between the brain and the external environment to assist persons with severe disabilities caused by brain impairments. There is also continuing philosophical interest in BCIs which emerges from thoughtful reflection on computers, machines, and artificial intelligence. This article seeks to apply BCI perspectives to examine, challenge, and work towards a possible resolution to a persistent problem in the mind–body relationship, namely dualism. The original humanitarian goals of BCIs (...) and the technological inventiveness result in BCIs being surprisingly useful. We begin from the neurologically impaired person, the problems encountered, and some pioneering responses from computers and machines. Secondly, the interface of mind and brain is explored via two points of clarification: direct and indirect BCIs, and the nature of thoughts. Thirdly, dualism is beset by mind–body interaction difficulties and is further questioned by the phenomena of intentions, interactions, and technology. Fourthly, animal minds and robots are explored in BCI settings again with relevance for dualism. After a brief look at other BCIs, we conclude by outlining a future BCI philosophy of brain and mind, which might appear ominous and could be possible. (shrink)

In eighteenth century England, there were thinkers who said they were Christian deists and claimed pure, original Christianity was deism. Most scholars do not believe these thinkers were sincere about their religious beliefs, but there are many good reasons to believe they were. Three English deists have the best claim to be considered Christian deists because they alone called themselves Christian deists or called their ideas those of a Christian deist. These three thinkers, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and Thomas Amory, (...) developed a theology in which Christianity was deism and natural religion. The important point, though, was that their version of natural religion included supernatural elements as well as true religious piety. When read closely, these three thinkers believed in miracles, revelation, prayer, and continuing direct divine inspiration. The Christian deists were neither conventional deists nor traditional Christians. Nevertheless, it is not legitimate to exclude them from either category as some scholars do. They cannot be excluded from the category of ‘Christian’ on the basis their contemporaries all saw them as non-Christian. They also cannot be excluded from the category of ‘deists’ because they were pious and believed in an active God. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction An Analysis of the Problem What is Deliberative Democracy? Civil Society and Deliberative Politics The African State and Deliberative Democracy.

Moral distress has been the subject of extensive research and debate in the nursing ethics literature since the mid-1980s, but the concept has received comparatively little attention from those working outside of applied ethics. In this article, I defend a care ethical account of moral distress, according to which the phenomenon is the product of an agent’s inability to live up to one of her caring commitments. This account has a number of attractions. First, it places a greater emphasis on (...) the importance of the relationship between the caregiver and her cared-for than that found in previous accounts. Second, it does not make problematic assumptions about the correctness of a caregiver’s moral judgments, as has been claimed in relation to previous accounts of moral distress. Finally, my account allows for a clear conceptual distinction to be drawn between moral distress and other forms of negative moral emotion such as guilt and regret. Earlier accounts draw this distinction by appealing to the causal aetiology of moral distress, but as I show here, such appeals are ultimately unsuccessful unless they are made from an explicitly care ethical starting point. One of the implications of my account is that moral distress has the potential to occur in the context of any caregiving relationship. This claim is explored in the final section of the paper, in relation to student-teacher and parent-child caregiving. (shrink)

This illustrated series exhibits biographical accounts of the great people of all time. 'People of Importance' includes a variety of figures, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Mother Teresa, Archimedes, Confucius, Dalai Lama, and Marco Polo.

The focus on the institutional implications of democratization in postcolonial plural societies invites the following conclusion. While procedural democracy, the general rules for aggregating preferences, is easily defeated, an alternative formulation, proportional representation or consociational democracy is defended. Consociational democracy has explicable reparable flaws and can be brought into coherence. The tools for repair require the embodiment of deliberative principles in the organs of consociational democracy. I argue in my conclusion that this theoretical argument can be utilized to explicate the (...) ethnic conflict in Burundi. (shrink)

The focus on the institutional implications of democratization in postcolonial plural societies invites the following conclusion. While procedural democracy, the general rules for aggregating preferences, is easily defeated, an alternative formulation, proportional representation or consociational democracy is defended. Consociational democracy has explicable reparable flaws and can be brought into coherence. The tools for repair require the embodiment of deliberative principles in the organs of consociational democracy. I argue in my conclusion that this theoretical argument can be utilized to explicate the (...) ethnic conflict in Burundi. (shrink)