Paradoxically, the practical necessity of love seems to combine the personal character of psychological necessity with the inescapable and authoritative quality of moral necessity. Traditionally, philosophers have avoided this paradox by treating love as an amalgam of impersonal evaluative judgments and affective responses. On my account, love participates in a different form of practical necessity, one characterized by a non-moral yet normative type of expectation. This expectation is best understood as a kind of second-personal address that does not support derivative (...) third-personal demands. It is revealed when we react with hurt feelings instead of resentment upon its disappointment. (shrink)

People who make graveside promises consider themselves bound by them, which raises the question of whether a promise can morally obligate a promisor directly to a promisee who cannot acknowledge the promise. I show that it can by using the theoretical framework provided by “transaction accounts” of promising. Paradigmatically, these accounts maintain that the creation of a promissory obligation requires that the promisee consent to the promise. I extend these accounts to capture promises made by proxy and self-promises, and conclude (...) that we can make promises to absent promisees when we bear responsibility for their moral and personal development. (shrink)

People who make graveside promises consider themselves bound by them, which raises the question of whether a promise can morally obligate a promisor directly to a promisee who cannot acknowledge the promise. I show that it can by using the theoretical framework provided by “transaction accounts” of promising. Paradigmatically, these accounts maintain that the creation of a promissory obligation requires that the promisee consent to the promise. I extend these accounts to capture promises made by proxy and self-promises, and conclude (...) that we can make promises to absent promisees when we bear responsibility for their moral and personal development. (shrink)

The category of “former friend” is familiar, yet the nature of this relationship type remains underexplored. Aristotle, for example, poses but does not answer the question of what constitute appropriate relations between former friends. To elucidate post-friendship expectations, I promote an account of friendship according to which some of our most significant friendships participate in a type of intimacy characterized by having normative standing to interpret each other in a constitutive manner, which I call the “co-interpretation view” of friendship. Unchecked (...) powers of co-interpretation, however, invite and allow for violations of each friend’s personhood, so I draw on Kantian resources to guide the co-interpretation view and render it more plausible. These Kantian resources help to establish relevant expectations for co-interpretation between friends. This positions me to provide an account of appropriate expectations between former friends, which I analyze in three types of post-friendship circumstance: when the friendship has faded but the parties still share a general outlook; when the friendship has become damaging for the friends but not due to viciousness; and, when the friendship ruptures due to vicious behaviors. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 19th century dynamometry was a common method to measure human body strength. Instruments were described by J.-B. Regnier, G.B.A. Duchenne de Boulogne, V. Burq et Mathieu, and unauthorized copies of different size were also being used. Although it is not clear which instrument exactly Sigmund Freud used when trying to measure the effects of cocaine on grip strength in 1884, it seems that he used copies like those maintained in the Museum on the History of (...) Medicine in Ingolstadt. Attempts of quantification seem to belong to the scientific tendencies in mid and late 19th century medicine. It can be demonstrated, that the roots of dynamometry go back to the first decades of the century and belong to the conceptions derived from Mesmerism and Animal Magnetism. (shrink)

Near the end of the first book of his De reditu the poet Rutilius is delayed in Triturrita, on the Tuscan coast, because of the dark and stormy weather. The South-West Wind with its dripping wings—says the poet in an Ovidian imitation—does not cease from summoning pitch-black clouds and obfuscating the sun's light for several days. Elegant images of constellations —perhaps not just ornamental, but also indicating the dates and the duration of the delay—and the reference to the tempestuous sea (...) and to two possible explanations of ocean's tides round the first book off : interea madidis non desinit Africus aliscontinuos picea nube negare dies.iam matutinis Hyades occasibus udae;iam latet hiberno conditus imbre Lepus,exiguum radiis, sed magnis fluctibus, astrum, 635quo madidam nullus nauita linquat humum;namque procelloso subiungitur Orioniaestiferumque Canem roscida praeda fugit.632 negare B: necare VR Although the meaning of the first couplet is clear, a textual difficulty seems to affect the pentameter. Since the editio princeps by Giovanni Battista Pio, a well-established tradition of scholars has preferred the vulgate reading negare to necare, a reading found in V and R. However we reconstruct the stemma, necare was the reading of the archetype, whereas negare could be a banalization of necare or a conjecture of the editor princeps. (shrink)

Comment une nouvelle divinité, munie de ses attributs spécifiques, ses timai et ses épiphanies, peut-elle être créée? Par qui? Et à quelles fins? Qui seront ses prêtres et ses fidèles? La documentation hellénistique confère une perspective historique aux aspects cultuels, sociaux et idéologiques de ces phénomènes religieux et les cultes des souverains sont un cas particulier de l’établissement et de l’acceptation de nouveaux dieux. Les cultes de souveraines n’ont que très récemment reçu l’attention qu’ils méritent. L’article étudie les cas de (...) Bérénice Ire, Arsinoé II et Laodice V afin de fournir de nouvelles interprétations de quelques fêtes dynastiques et d’étudier la relation entre les cultes de souverains et la légitima­tion du pouvoir féminin. La discussion repose surtout sur des papyrus et des inscriptions, mais l’analyse conclusive de l’Idylle XVII de Théocrite montre que la logique poétique de la légitimation du pouvoir entre en résonance avec celle qu’attestent les sources non littéraires. (shrink)

v. 1. Scritti di gnoseologia. Scritti di filosofia prima -- v. 2. Scritti di fenomenologia. Scritti di ermeneutica.

Introduction: Laughter as an expression of human nature in the Middle Ages and the early modern period: literary, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological reflections -- Judith Hagen. Laughter in Procopius's wars -- Livnat Holtzman. "Does God really laugh?": appropriate and inappropriate descriptions of God in Islamic traditionalist theology -- Daniel F. Pigg. Laughter in Beowulf: ambiguity, ambivalence, and group identity formation -- Mark Burde. The parodia sacra problem and medieval comic studies -- Olga V. Trokhimenko. Women's laughter and gender politics (...) in medieval conduct discourse -- Madelon Köhler-Busch. Pushing decorum: uneasy laughter in Heinrich von Dem Türlîn's Diu crône -- Connie L. Scarborough. Laughter and the comic in a religious text -- John Sewell. The son rebelled and so the father made man alone: ridicule and boundary maintenance in The Nizzahon vetus -- Birgit Wiedl. Laughing at the beast: the judensau: anti-Jewish propaganda and humor from the Middle Ages to the early modern period -- Fabian Alfie. Yes . . . but was it funny? Cecco Angiolieri, Rustico Filippi and Giovanni Boccaccio -- Nicolino Applauso. Curses and laughter in medieval Italian comic poetry -- Feargal Béarra. Tromdhámh guaire: a context for laughter and audience in early modern Ireland -- Jean E. Jost. Humorous transgression in the non-conformist fabliaux: a Bakhtinian analysis of three comic tales -- Gretchen Mieszkowski. Chaucerian comedy: Troilus and Criseyde -- Sarah Gordon. Laughing and eating in the fabliaux -- Christine Bousquet-Labouérie. Laughter and medieval stalls -- Scott L. Taylor. Esoteric humor and the incommensurability of laughter -- Jean N. Goodrich. The function of laughter in The second shepherds' play -- Albrecht Classen. Laughing in late-medieval verse and prose narratives -- Rosa Alvarez perez. The workings of desire: Panurge and the dogs -- Elizabeth Chesney Zegura. Laughing out loud in the Heptaméron: a reassessment of Marguerite de Navarre's ambivalent humor -- Lia B. Ross. You had to be there: the elusive humor of the Sottie -- Kyle Diroberto. Sacred parody in Robert Greene's Groatsworth of wit -- Martha Moffitt Peacock. The comedy of the shrew: theorizing humor in early modern Netherlandish art -- Jessica Tvordi. The comic personas of Milton's Prolusion VI: negotiating masculine identity through self-directed humor -- John Alexander. Ridentum dicere verum (using laughter to speak the truth): laughter and the language of the early modern clown "pickelhering" in German literature of the late seventeenth century (1675-1700) -- Thomas Willard. Andreae's ludibrium: Menippean satire in The chymische hochzeit -- Diane Rudall. The comic power of illusion-allusion -- Allison P. Coudert. Laughing at credulity and superstition in the long eighteenth century. (shrink)

This article examines humanist works written in the immediate aftermath of Stefano Porcari's failed conspiracy against Pope Nicholas V. While they were designed to flatter the pope and support papal claims to temporal power, these works use images and adopt rhetorical startegies that are republican and not, as one would expect, imperial in origin. The humanists were so devoted not only to classical form, but also to Roman republican ideals that they sometimes present Porcari positively, have heroes of the (...) Roman republic comment on the modern papacy, and construct a strained theory of papal liberty. (shrink)

Both in historical debates and in recent discussions, the Guise of the Good Thesis represents a genuine dogma of rationalism in moral philosophy. Many influential commentators have maintained that Kant belongs in that camp, even that he “explicitly endorses” the Thesis. Attributing the Thesis to Kant, however, faces scarce textual support and amounts to a dubious understanding of the relationship of Kant’s moral philosophy to previous rationalist views. I suggest that, in Kant’s view, the Thesis only applies to the determination (...) of the will through the moral law. The principle that prior rationalists regarded as descriptive acquires in Kant’s terms a normative status. (shrink)

The System of Ethics was published at the height of Fichte's academic career and marks the culmination of his philosophical development in Jena. Much more than a treatise on ethics narrowly construed, the System of Ethics presents a unified synthesis of Fichte's core philosophical ideas, including the principle I-hood, self-activity and self-consciousness, and also contains his most detailed treatment of action and agency. This volume brings together an international group of leading scholars on Fichte, and is the first of its (...) kind in English to offer critical and interpretive perspectives on this work, covering topics such as normativity, belief, justification, desire, duty, and the ethical life. It will be an essential guide for scholars wanting to deepen their understanding of Fichte's ethical thought, as well as for those interested in the history of ethics more broadly. (shrink)