Ideas of masculinity and femininity become sharply defined in war-reliant societies, resulting in a presumed enmity between men and women. This so-called "battle of the sexes" is intensified by the use of misogyny to encourage men and boys to conform to the demands of masculinity. These are among Tom Digby's fascinating insights shared in _Love and War_, which describes the making and manipulation of gender in militaristic societies and the sweeping consequences for men and women in their personal, romantic, (...) sexual, and professional lives. Drawing on cross-cultural comparisons and examples from popular media, including sports culture, the rise of "gonzo" and "bangbus" pornography, and "internet trolls," Digby describes how the hatred of women and the suppression of empathy are used to define masculinity, thereby undermining relations between women and men--sometimes even to the extent of violence. Employing diverse philosophical methodologies, he identifies the cultural elements that contribute to heterosexual antagonism, such as an enduring faith in male force to solve problems, the glorification of violent men who suppress caring emotions, the devaluation of men's physical and emotional lives, an imaginary gender binary, male privilege premised on the subordination of women, and the use of misogyny to encourage masculine behavior. Digby tracks the "collateral damage" of this disabling misogyny in the lives of both men and women, but ends on a hopeful note. He ultimately finds the link between war and gender to be dissolving in many societies: war is becoming slowly de-gendered, and gender is becoming slowly de-militarized. (shrink)

Let us begin with a fundamental realization: No amount of thinking and no amount of public policy have brought us any closer to understanding and solving the problem of crime. The more we have reacted to crime, the farther we have removed ourselves from any understanding and any reduction of the problem. In recent years, we have floundered desperately in reformulating the law, punishing the offender, and quantifying our knowledge. Yet this country remains one of the most crime-ridden nations. In (...) spite of all its wealth, economic development, and scientific advances, this country has one of the worst crime records in the world.With such realization, we return once again—as if starting anew—to the subject of crime, a subject that remains one of our most critical indicators of the state of our personal and collective being. If what is to be said seems outrageous and heretical, it is only because it is necessarily outside the conventional wisdom both of our understanding of the problem and of our attempt to solve it. (shrink)

This dissertation consists of four essays, all having in common the theme of nondelimited unity. The first essay, "Mystical Unity," characterizes the introvertive and extrovertive mystical unitive experiences and gives a phenomenological description of how extrovertive unity can develop from introvertive unity. The second essay, "Mystical Nonduality," defends the non-dualist interpretation of the mystical experience of introvertive unity against the criticisms of L. Stafford Betty . The third essay, "Unity as a Metaphysical Paradigm," offers an extensive characterization of nondelimited unity (...) as a metaphysical paradigm and then gives a series of arguments for the paradigm. The final essay, "The Metaphysics of Corporate Social Responsibility," takes the paradigm developed in the third essay and applies it to the problem of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Seventeenth-century philosophy scholars come together in this volume to address the Insiders--Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, and Hobbes--and Outsiders--Pierre Gassendi, Kenelm Digby, Theophilus Gale, Ralph Cudworth and Nicholas Malebranche--of the philosocial canon, and the ways in which reputations are created and confirmed. In their own day, these ten figures were all considered to be thinkers of substantial repute, and it took some time for the Insiders to come to be regarded as major and original philosophers. Today these Insiders all feature (...) in the syllabi of most history of philosophy courses taught in western universities, and the papers in this collection, contrasting the stories of their receptions with those of the Outsiders, give an insight into the history of philosophy which is generally overlooked. (shrink)

More than twenty years after its original publication, _The Case for Animal Rights _is an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author is recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. In a new and fully considered preface, Regan responds to his critics and defends the book's revolutionary position.

This book defends Aestheticism- the claim that everything is aesthetically valuable and that a life lived in pursuit of aesthetic value can be a particularly good one. Furthermore, in distilling aesthetic qualities, artists have a special role to play in teaching us to recognize values; a critical component of virtue. I ground my account upon an analysis of aesthetic value as ‘objectified final value’, which is underwritten by an original psychological claim that all aesthetic values are distal versions of practical (...) values. This is followed by systematic accounts of beauty, sublimity, comedy, drama, and tragedy, as well as appendix entries on the cute, the cool, the kitsch, the uncanny, the horrific, the erotic, and the furious. (shrink)

The fear of death resists philosophical attempts at reconciliation. Building on theories of emotion, I argue that we can understand our fear as triggered by a de se mode of thinking about death which comes into conflict with our will to live. The discursive mode of philosophy may help us to avoid the de se mode of thinking about death, but it does not satisfactorily address the problem. I focus instead on the voluntary diminishment of one’s will to live. I (...) argue that we can encourage a natural tendency for the will to live to decline as we approach death. I then consider two objections: Is not the will to live too fundamental for us to control? And even if we can control it, would not a declining will to live result in a general despair that it is better to resist? I argue that both of these objections can be overcome. (shrink)

In the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association for the fall of 1988, we find the view that “the power of philosophy lies in its radicalness.” The author, Tom Foster Digby, tells us that in our own day “the radical potency of philosophy is particularly well-illustrated by contemporary feminist philosophy” in ways that “could eventually reorder human life.” The claim that philosophy is essentially radical has deep historical roots. Aristotle and Plato each created a distinctive style of social philosophy. (...) Following Ernest Barker, I shall call Aristotle's way of doing social philosophy “whiggish,” having in mind that the O.E.D. characterizes ‘whig’ as “a word that says in one syllable what ‘conservative liberal’ says in seven.” Later whigs shared with Aristotle the conviction that traditional arrangements have great moral weight, and that common opinion is a primary source of moral truth. The paradigm example of a whig moral philosopher is Henry Sidgwick, with his constant appeal to Common Sense and to “established morality.” On the more liberal side, we have philosophers like David Hume who cautions us to “adjust [political] innovations as much as possible to the ancient fabric,” and William James who insists that the liberal philosopher must reject radicalism. In modern times, many social philosophers have followed the more radical example of Plato, who was convinced that common opinion was benighted and in need of much consciousness-raising. Looking on society as a Cave that distorted real values, Plato showed a great readiness to discount traditional arrangements. He was perhaps the first philosopher to construct an ideal of a society that reflected principles of justice, inspiring generations of utopian social philosophers. (shrink)

In this chapter I analyse group flow: a state in which performers report intense interpersonal absorption with the music and each other. I compare group flow to individual flow, and argue that the same essential structure can be discerned. I argue that group flow does not justify an anti-representationalist enactivist interpretation. However, I claim that the cognitive task in which the music is produced is irreducibly collective.

We take rights to be fundamental to everyday life. Rights are also controversial and hotly debated both in theory and practice. Where do rights come from? Are they invented or discovered? What sort of rights are there and who is entitled to them? In this comprehensive introduction, Tom Campbell introduces and critically examines the key philosophical debates about rights. The first part of the book covers historical and contemporary theories of rights, including the origin and variety of rights and standard (...) justifications of them. He considers challenges to rights from philosophers such as Bentham, Burke and Marx. He also examines different theories of rights, such as natural law, social contract, utilitarian and communitarian theories of rights and the philosophers and political theorists associated with them, such as John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, Robert Nozick and Michael Sandel. The second part of the book explores the role of rights-promoting institutions and critically assesses legal rights and international human rights, including the United Nations. The final part of the book examines how philosophies of rights can be applied to freedom of speech, issues of social welfare and the question of self-determination for certain groups or peoples. _Rights: A Critical Introduction_ is essential reading for anyone new to the subject of rights and any student of political philosophy, politics and law. (shrink)

Metaphysics-first approaches dominate the current literature in the epistemology of modality. According to metaphysics-firsters, metaphysical theses have an important role in the justification of modal epistemologies. For example, the thesis that essentialist truths constitute the metaphysical grounds of modal truths is meant to have an important role in the justification of essentialist modal epistemologies. In this article, we argue against this approach. We first pick up some of the groundwork on behalf of the metaphysics-firsters and explicitly spell out potential arguments (...) for their view. However, despite some initial plausibility, these arguments are ultimately found wanting. We conclude that the metaphysics-first approach lacks motivation and puts far too stringent demands upon modal epistemologists. (shrink)

The work of 6th century Indian logician Dharmakirti is explored in detail in series of twelve articles analyzing deviant logic, subject failure, andther important aspects of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist logical tradition.riginal.

A conception of an environmental ethic is set forth which involves postulating that nonconscious natural objects can have value in their own right, independently of human interests. Two kinds of objection are considered: those that deny the possibility of developing an ethic ofthe environment that accepts this postulate, and those.that deny the necessity of constructing such an ethic. Both types of objection are found wanting. The essay condudes with some tentative remarks regarding the notion of inherent value.

Can the theory that reality is a simulation be tested? We investigate this question based on the assumption that if the system performing the simulation is nite (i.e. has limited resources), then to achieve low computational complexity, such a system would, as in a video game, render content (reality) only at the moment that information becomes available for observation by a player and not at the moment of detection by a machine (that would be part of the simulation and whose (...) detection would also be part of the internal computation performed by the Virtual Reality server before rendering content to the player). Guided by this principle we describe conceptual wave/particle duality experiments aimed at testing the simulation theory. (shrink)

Introduction -- Defamation Criteria: Fact or Value? -- The Elusive Distinction between Fact and Opinion -- Defamation and Freedom of Expression -- Conclusion -- 10 Conclusion: A Unifying Prescription -- Introduction -- Socialist Positivism -- Critical Legal Positivism -- Feminist Positivism -- Alternative Dispute Resolution -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

Research into esports is proliferating (Bányai et al. 2019; Pizzo et al. 2022; Reitman et al. 2020) and now covers a variety of academic disciplines, including business and management (Scholz 2019)...

In this brief comment on a target article by Koelsch et al., I argue that emotions are more sensitive to context than other affective states.

Intro -- Title -- Contents -- Publisher's Acknowledgment -- Introduction -- Madhyamaka's Promise as Philosophy -- 1. Trying to Be Fair -- 2. How Far Can a Mādhyamika Reform Customary Truth? Dismal Relativism, Fictionalism, Easy-Easy Truth, and the Alternatives -- Logic and Semantics -- 3. How Do Mādhyamikas Think? Notes on Jay Garfield, Graham Priest, and Paraconsistency -- 4. "How Do Mādhyamikas Think?" Revisited -- 5. Prasaṅga and Proof by Contradiction in Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti, and Dharmakīrti -- 6. Apoha Semantics: What (...) Did Bhāviveka Have to Do with It? -- 7. What Happened to the Third and Fourth Lemmas in the Tibetan Madhyamaka? -- Ethics and the Spiritual Path -- 8. Madhyamaka Buddhist Ethics -- 9. Reason, Irrationality, and Akrasia (Weakness of the Will) in Buddhism: Reflections upon Śāntideva's Arguments with Himself -- 10. Yogic Perception, Meditation, and Enlightenment: The Epistemological Issues in a Key Debate between Madhyamaka and Chan -- Madhyamaka in Contemporary Debates -- 11. On Minds, Dharmakīrti, and Madhyamaka -- 12. Serious, Lightweight, or Neither: Should Madhyamaka Go to Canberra? -- Notes on the Articles -- Abbreviations -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author -- Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism Titles Previously Published -- About Wisdom Publications -- Copyright. (shrink)

This book systematically reviews a variety of methods for addressing ethical problems in medicine, accounting for both their weaknesses and strengths. Illustrated throughout with specific cases or controversies, the book aims to develop an informed eclecticism that knows how to pick the right tool for the right job.

This article attempts to explain the ambiguous association of Lacanian psychoanalysis with materialism. Resisting attempts to divide Lacan’s work into discrete periods, I argue that, throughout his work, Lacan was concerned with articulating aspects of language and subjectivity that resist incorporation into networks of idealised meaning or sense, and that it is this emphasis on the materiality of language, routed through the concept of the Real, that makes up theparticular ‘materialism’ of Lacanian theory. The emergence of this strain of thinking (...) is located in Lacan’s radical reworking of Freud’s theses on primary narcissism. (shrink)

What should the EU do about the fact that some Member States are backsliding on their commitments to democracy, supposedly a fundamental value of the EU? The Treaty provisions under Article 7 TEU are widely criticized for being ineffective in preventing such developments. Are they legitimate? I argue that the ultimate sanction of Article 7 TEU falls into a performative contradiction, which undermines its ability to coherently defend fundamental values. Instead, expulsion from the EU is the appropriate, coherent and legitimate (...) final political sanction for democratic and rule of law backsliding by a Member State. The argument has the following steps: In Part 1, I argue that the current Article 7 framework for responding to democratic and rule of law backsliding in the EU is normatively problematic, in that the mechanism currently in the Treaty undermines the values it purports to defend; in other words, it falls into a performative contradiction. It is undemocratic to deprive Member States of their right to vote in the Council while holding them subject to Council decisions. However, Part 2 studies relevant philosophical arguments from an adjacent literature on criminal disenfranchisement, concluding that allowing backsliding Member States to keep their voting rights in the Council _also_ taints the democratic character of Council decision-making. In Part 3, I consider the resulting paradox in light of the literature on militant democracy. Could militant democracy justify Article 7? I argue not; even if we accept the hypothetical justifiability of militant measures, they are not legitimate here since a democratically acceptable alternative exists that would safeguard the democratic character and legitimacy of Council decision-making: expulsion from the Union. I also address a central objection to an expulsion mechanism—that it would require treaty change and is therefore practically impossible. (shrink)

Arguments are advanced that a theory of possible worlds cannot be a theory of meaning for modal statements, And lewis's version of the theory in his "counterfactuals" is used as a particular stalking-Horse. (a) 'possible world', Though used referentially, Is defined in a way that makes it non-Referential, And moreover, The theory does not supply or validate proposals for criteria that individuate worlds; hence the theory seems incomprehensible. (b) the theory yields no useable account of truth-Conditions for modal statements. (c) (...) a conceptualist version of the theory cannot overcome these problems. (d) lewis's similarity theory of possible worlds as a semantics for counterfactuals sustains in many cases (including one he cites) intuitively untrue counterfactuals and rejects many intuitively correct ones. (shrink)

The work of Jacques Derrida has transformed our understanding of a range of disciplines in the humanities through its questioning of some of the basic tenets of western metaphysics. This volume is a trans-disciplinary collection dedicated to his work; the assembled contributions - on law, literature, ethics, history, gender, politics and psychoanalysis, among others - constitute an investigation of the role of Derrida's work within the field of humanities, present and future. The volume is distinguished by work on some of (...) his most recent writings, and contains Derrida's own address on 'the future of the humanities'. In addition to its pedagogic interest, this collection of essays attempts to respond to the question: what might be the relation of Derrida, or 'deconstruction' to the future of the humanities? The volume presents the most sustained examples yet of what deconstruction is in its current phase - as well as what its possible future may be. (shrink)

This paper critically engages the legal and political framework for responding to democracy and rule of law backsliding in the EU. I develop a new and original critique of Article 7 TEU based on it being democratically illegitimate and normatively incoherent qua itself in conflict with EU fundamental values. Other more incremental and scaleable responses are desirable, and the paper moves on to assess the legitimacy of economic sanctions such as tying access to EU funds to performance on democratic and (...) rule of law indicators or imposing fines on backsliding states. I hold such sanctions to be a priori legitimate, and argue that in some cases economic sanctions are even normatively required, given that EU material support of backsliding member states can amount to material complicity in their backsliding. However, an economic conditionality mechanism would need to be designed to minimize unjust and counterproductive effects. One way to pursue this could be to complement sanctions against the backsliding government with investment for prodemocratic actors in that state. (shrink)

Creating a new discourse of peace in schools offers educators a choice in how they think, believe, and act in response to student wrongdoing and conflict. In this article the reader is introduced to how restorative justice principles can be used in education as a way of supporting a school-wide culture of care, where building and maintaining healthy relationships are fundamental principles. Thisnew discourse offers an alternative to the traditional discipline practices in schools, which focus on rules and consequences. The (...) literature, research and major findings underlying this new discourse are explained. Finally, circles are described as an application of this new discourse. (shrink)

Deze bundel is een vriendenboek, uit erkentelijkheid aan Ronald Commers aangeboden naar aanleiding van zijn emeritaat. Ronald Commers was tot 2011 als hoogleraar verbonden aan de vakgroep Wijsbegeerte en Moraalwetenschap van de Universiteit Gent. Zijn werk is breed en diepgaand en heeft velen geïnspireerd. De bijdragen in deze bundel dragen er de sporen van. Zo divers als de onderwerpen die Commers heeft behandeld, zo divers zijn ook de essays die hier zijn opgenomen. Ze zijn een blijk van waardering vanwege de (...) auteurs voor de invloed die Commers door zijn denken en doen op hun werk en leven heeft gehad en nog steeds heeft. (shrink)

Studie over de moraalfilosofie van een van de grondleggers van de sociologie (1858-1918).