humanities 305 university of toronto quarterly, volume 76, number 1, winter 2007 picture of a flying pig, resonating with the dialogue on religion in which the atheist challenges his collocutors to choose to believe in flying pigs. My favourite line of the introduction is this piece of humorous irreverance: 'The concepts and the reasoning in philosophy are sometimes more complex and difficult than the simple stuff you'd run into in an introductory class in, for example, the censored Department.' What are the drawbacks of Martin's text? Well, despite the fact that Plato's dialogues are a common choice for introductory texts, and dialogues have often been the choice of great philosophers, contemporary philosophers and students have trouble teaching and reading dialogues. Perhaps the problem comes from the need to keep track of what positions and arguments a speaker maintains, and if that's the issue Martin effectively combats it by simply naming his characters after the positions they advocate. How might one use this text? It can be used as a stand-alone text or, as I suspect many will use it, as a companion text that provides an accessible commentary on the primary sources; thus it could be added to a course for which one has already prepared material. But a review of an introductory text is something like an a priori analysis – the real test of excellence for such a book is found in the classroom, so we will have to wait and see. The challenge for authors of such books is to write one that is sufficiently engaging to sway teachers, stuck in their ways, to choose a new text. But Martin's Philosophical Conversations is indeed inviting, and should be seriously considered, even if that requires some novel preparation for the teacher. (brian garrett) Paul Saurette. The Kantian Imperative: Humiliation, Common Sense, Politics University of Toronto Press. xiv, 249. $35.00 Saurette's alternative reading of Kant aims to bring to light the 'subterranean Kantian logic' – what he calls the 'Kantian Imperative' – which drives Kant's moral and political project. The 'Kantian Imperative' places common sense and the affect of humiliation at the centre of Kant's moral and political theory. Kant is seen as using common sense to fill the gaps in his a priori autonomy argument and as using humiliation to establish de facto moral obedience to the 'Kantian Imperative image of morality.' Saurette argues that experiencing humiliation fulfils a 'primordial role' in the formation of respect for the moral law for Kant, and Kant's position deems it both right and possible to coerce people to experience humiliation. Indeed, Saurette claims that on Kant's conception, 'strategic employment of humiliation ... [is] a legitimate mode of political cultivation' because 'the experience of humiliation [is] a fundamental precondition of citizenship, morality, and peace.' After arguing that the 'Kantian Imperative' also deeply informs the work of Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, 306 letters in canada 2005 university of toronto quarterly, volume 76, number 1, winter 2007 Saurette's analysis culminates in the claim that the experience of humiliation is so centrally located in Kant's theory that it can neither identify any wrongdoing nor justify the condemnation of the United States military's 'humiliating' treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Saurette therefore concludes that we should start elsewhere when developing our moral and political theories. Saurette's interpretation relies heavily on a passage in the Second Critique: 'The moral law unavoidably humiliates every human being when he compares with it the sensible propensity of his nature ... it humiliates us in our self-consciousness ... it awakens respect for itself insofar as it is a positive and a determining ground.' On Saurette's interpretation, humiliation is a primordial affect that enables respect for the moral law. Since humiliation is an affective precondition for morality, people can be forced to experience it. A key problem with Saurette's interpretation is that the kind of humiliation Kant talks about in this passage is entirely first-person in nature. It is one that only each individual can experience by critically evaluating his actions as motivated by natural inclination as opposed to reason. It is not a type of humiliation that can be brought about by others. Therefore, the Second Critique passage, central to Saurette's interpretation, cannot be used to support it. Rather, the passage supports Kant's distinction between enforceable and non-enforceable rights and duties as found in 'The Doctrine of Right.' Given Saurette's special interest in the political implications of Kant's moral and political project, it is reasonable to expect a detailed engagement with Kant's theory of justice. Unfortunately, Saurette gives no consideration to Kant's 'Doctrine of Right' or Kant's political essays. Not only is this highly problematic in itself, but it also entails that Saurette never engages Kant's claim that it is both impossible and wrong to use coercion in an attempt to make others act morally (experience humiliation in Kant's sense). Because Saurette does not consider 'The Doctrine of Right,' he fails to notice Kant's distinction between enforceable and non-enforceable duties that yields the distinction between the theory of justice ('The Doctrine of Right') and the theory of morality ('The Doctrine of Virtue') as we find it in The Metaphysics of Morals. In short, Kant argues that all those virtues that require the moral motivation cannot be enforced. So any attempt to coerce persons to be moral (experience humiliation) will fail. Moreover, according to Kant's political theory, if a person uses physical coercion in an attempt to force others to be moral, she is depriving that person of her innate right to freedom, which is the cornerstone of Kant's conception of justice. Since Saurette ignores Kant's political writings, these central aspects of Kant's political theory are unfortunately not discussed. Saurette's interpretation of humiliation is also problematic in that it fails to distinguish between Kant's conceptions of humiliation and degradation. For example, Saurette equates media descriptions of prisoners in Abu humanities 307 university of toronto quarterly, volume 76, number 1, winter 2007 Ghraib as being 'humiliated' by United States guards with Kant's use of 'humiliation' in the Second Critique. But it is more consistent with Kant's texts to argue that the prisoners were degraded (since being physically abused is to be deprived of one's innate right to freedom), rather than humiliated. In contrast, the United States military should rightly experience humiliation when called upon by the media to reflect on its actions to recognize its own wrongdoing. Those in the United States military who took the criticism to heart humiliated themselves in the way described in the Second Critique, namely by realizing that they had failed to act in accordance with reason. (helga varden) William F. Sullivan. Eye of the Heart: Knowing the Human Good in the Euthanasia Debate University of Toronto Press. xxiv, 408. $85.00 As a medical doctor who also holds a doctorate in philosophy, William Sullivan is especially well trained and appropriately situated to write on the euthanasia debate. He is particularly concerned to indicate the cognitive role of feelings in value judgments; he adopts and articulates Bernard Lonergan's position on this question and spells out the ramifications of this position for the euthanasia debate. Contrary to the dominant contemporary bioethical theories, Sullivan articulates a foundationalist position in which feelings are understood to play a crucial role in making epistemically objective value judgments, and which overcomes the generalist/ particularist divide by showing that these approaches are both indispensable and complementary. While Sullivan carefully expounds his own positions and criticizes a number of other positions in a penetrating and detailed way, this is not a polemical work, but one that invites readers to deepen their understanding of the issues being debated, and to arrive at a philosophical stance that is most defensible because least truncated. Sullivan begins chapter 2 by reconstructing the life-stories of two individuals who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (als), one of whom did, and one of whom did not, request assisted suicide. His approach, accordingly, can be described as a 'bottom-up' one, for it does not begin by articulating general principles and applying them to particular cases, but with the cases themselves; in this way, Sullivan illustrates the role of affectivity in persons facing end-of-life decisions, something that is often lost on bioethicists who fail to attend to and reflect on these lived experiences. Sullivan concludes this chapter by outlining some important positions on euthanasia in philosophical and legal debates in the North American context. Chapter 3 sketches some of the more important and influential philosophical accounts of feelings as to their cognitive role in knowing and grasping values. This allows the reader to situate the views