_Explores how the thought of Leo Strauss amounts to a model for thinking about the connection between philosophy, Jewish thought, and history._.

Leo Strauss's readings of historical figures in the philosophical tradition have been justly well explored; however, his relation to contemporary thinkers has not enjoyed the same coverage. In Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought, an international group of scholars examines the possible conversations between Strauss and figures such as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, and Hans Blumenberg. The contributors examine topics including religious liberty, the political function of comedy, law, and the relation between the Ancients and the Moderns, (...) and bring Strauss into many new and original discussions that will be of use to those interested in the thought of Strauss, the history of philosophy and political theory, and contemporary continental thought"--Back cover. (shrink)

The decision to initiate invasive, first-in-human trials involving Parkinson’s disease presents a vexing ethical challenge. Such studies present significant surgical risks, and high degrees of uncertainty about intervention risks and biological effects. We argue that maintaining a favorable riskbenefit balance in such circumstances requires a higher than usual degree of confidence that protocols will lead to significant direct and/or social benefits. One critical way of promoting such confidence is through the application of stringent evidentiary standards for preclinical studies. We close (...) with a series of recommendations for strengthening the internal and external validity of preclinical studies, reducing their tendency toward optimism and publication biases, and improving the knowledge base used to design and evaluate preclinical studies. (shrink)

lthough it was in the early eighties when I began to feel a growing disaff'ection with the radicalized academic left, a decisive nausea-inducing body blow was administered by the PMLA of January 1989. In that infamous issue appeared a letter signed by twenty-four feminist academics attacking the eminent Shakespeare scholar Richard Levin, for "Feminist Thematics and Shakespearean Tragedy," which had appeared in PMLA the year before. Levin's essay, the work of a well-tempered, open-minded, and liberal supporter of many radical reforms (...) in the academy, was a penetrating critique of the feminist identity politics that were trying to wrest Shakespeare into the persona of a feminist scourge of sexism and patriarchy. Levin's temerity in taking on the distortions of identity politics was threatening enough, but his Enlightenment style and Swiftian wit, which he brilliantly deployed to dismantle the tendentious and self-serving hermeneutics of the "dictatorship of virtue" (a phrase I borrow here from Richard Bernstein) that constitutes avant-garde millenarianism in the U.S. academy, served further to inflame the hypersensitive skins of his holier-than-thou critics, who brook no criticism.. (shrink)

This paper gives a framework for understanding causal counterpossibles, counterfactuals imbued with causal content whose antecedents appeal to metaphysically impossible worlds. Such statements are generated by omissive causal claims that appeal to metaphysically impossible events, such as “If the mathematician had not failed to prove that 2+2=5, the math textbooks would not have remained intact.” After providing an account of impossible omissions, the paper argues for three claims: (i) impossible omissions play a causal role in the actual world, (ii) causal (...) counterpossibles have broad applications in philosophy, and (iii) the truth of causal counterpossibles provides evidence for the nonvacuity of counterpossibles more generally. (shrink)

At present, there is an enormous gulf between the visibility of evil and the paucity of our intellectual resources for coming to grips with it. We have been flooded with images of death camps, terrorist attacks and horrendous human suffering. Yet when we ask what we mean by radical evil and how we are to account for it, we seem to be at a loss for proper responses. Bernstein seeks to discover what we can learn about the meaning of (...) evil and human responsibility. He turns to philosophers such as Kant, who coined the expression 'radical evil', as well as to Hegel and Schelling. He also examines more recent explorations of evil, namely the thinking of Freud and Nietzsche on the moral psychology of evil. Finally, he looks at the way in which three post-Holocaust thinkers - Emmanuel Levinas, Hans Jonas, and Hannah Arendt - have sought to come to grips with evil "after Auschwitz." Bernstein's primary concern throughout this challenging book is to enrich and deepen our understanding of evil in the contemporary world, and to emphasize the vigilance and personal responsibility required for combating it. Radical Evil will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy, social and political theory, and religious studies. (shrink)

The social categories to which we belong—Latino, disabled, American, woman— causally influence our lives in deep and unavoidable ways. One might be pulled over by police because one is Latino, or one might receive a COVID vaccine sooner because one is American. Membership in these social categories most often falls outside of our control. This paper argues that membership in social categories constitutes a restriction on human agency, creating a situation of non-ideal agency for many human individuals. -/- However, there (...) are ways to resist the causal influence of social categories, and certain socially marginalized groups can be understood as attempting to do just this. I discuss two instances of social category resistance: gender pronouns and the rights of trans individuals. I suggest that the intentional declaration of gender pronouns (“she/her” or “they/them”) can be understood as an attempt to resist the causal powers of nonconsensual social categorization. Similarly, one among many reasons to support the rights of trans individuals is that their self-declarations of gender identity can be viewed as a reclamation of agency in the face of causal constraints imposed by socially defined and imposed gender categories. This lesson can be generalized to people belonging to a broad range of marginalized groups. (shrink)

Examines the processes of scientific creativity and discovery, and proposes a model of scientific development.

Proponents of grounding often describe the notion as "metaphysical causation" involving determination and production relations similar to causation. This paper argues that the similarities between grounding and causation are merely superficial. I show that there are several sorts of causation that have no analogue in grounding; that the type of "bringing into existence" that both involve is extremely different; and that the synchronicity of ground and the diachronicity of causation make them too different to be explanatorily intertwined.

We are continually trying to make sense of our world through the stories we tell and are told, but in our search for coherence, we often sacrifice our freedom and the rich randomness of life. In this passionate and lucid book, Michael André Bernstein challenges our practice of "foreshadowing," in which we see our lives as moving toward a predetermined goal or as controlled by fate. Foreshadowing, he argues, demeans the variety and openness that exist in even the most (...) ordinary moments of life. And it is precisely ordinary life, with its random, haphazard, and contradictory choices, that Bernstein celebrates in his call for "sideshadowing"—an alternative practice that reminds us that every present is dense with possible futures. Bernstein sees the Holocaust as the prime example of how our tendency to "foreshadow" and "backshadow" misrepresents history. He argues eloquently against politicians and theologians who posit the Holocaust as foreordained and who depict its victims as somehow complicit with a fate that they should have been able to foresee. Instead, Bernstein proposes a radically new understanding of the relationship between the Holocaust and earlier Jewish experience, transforming how we read and write both individual and communal history. Foregone Conclusions is an extraordinarily wide-ranging book, both in its scope and in its broader intellectual and moral implications. From the latest biographies of Kafka to the peace accords between Israel and the PLO, from the role of cultural diversity in universities to the Crown Heights riots, Bernstein warns us against passively accepting our identities as being shaped primarily by historical or personal victimization. His book liberates us from stereotyped patterns of understanding the relationship between our lives as individuals and as members of racial, sexual, and historic/ethnic communities. Berstein ultimately opens a powerful new way to understand the principles governing how we read and write narratives--whether historical, personal, or literary. In striking original juxtapositions and critical evaluations of Marcel Proust, Robert Musil, and Aharon Appelfeld, Bernstein sugests the need for a new literary model based on the prosaics of daily life. Bernstein speaks directly and persuasively to many of the most pressing issues in Jewish history, Holocaust studies, literary criticism, and cultural history. Foregone Conclusions is a provocative and poignant attempt to find coherence in our world without accepting either ineluctable destiny of pure coincidence. (shrink)

The principle of gratuitous suffering -- The value of humans and the value of animals -- The holocaust of factory farming -- Hunting -- Animal experimentation -- The law and animals -- Women and animals.

Leading philosophers and social thinkers, including Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, and Jurgen Habermas, pay tribute to the influential American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein.

Pauline Kleingeld and Marcus Willaschek, in a co-authored article, declare that their purportedly new interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s writings on autonomy reveals that his moral philosophy is neither realist nor constructivist. However, as I explain here, John Rawls already occupies the area of intellectual territory to which Kleingeld and Willaschek attempt to lay claim: Rawls interprets Kant’s moral philosophy as neither realist, as Kleingeld and Willaschek evidently construe this term, nor constructivist, as they evidently construe this term. Contra Kleingeld and (...) Willaschek, the moral constructivism attributed to Kant by Rawls is not voluntarist, and Rawls’s account of Kant’s concept of autonomy is not paradoxical. In order to understand autonomy, it is necessary to understand Kant’s complex conception of the will, which structures his moral philosophy (as Rawls, unlike Kleingeld and Willaschek, explains). Rawls, like Kant, but unlike Kleingeld and Willaschek, clearly distinguishes between certain importantly different questions about normativity and obligation. Kant’s moral philosophy, according to Rawls’s insightful interpretation, is a form of objective moral constructivism. (shrink)

Free will, if such there be, involves free choosing: the ability to mentally choose an outcome, where the outcome is 'free' in being, in some substantive sense, up to the agent of the choice. As such, it is clear that the questions of how to understand free will and mental causation are connected, for events of seemingly free choosing are mental events that appear to be efficacious vis-a-vis other mental events as well as physical events. Nonetheless, the free will and (...) mental causation debates have proceeded largely independently of each other. Here we aim to make progress in determining how the free will and mental causation debates bear on one another. We first argue that the problems of free will and of mental causation can be seen as special cases of a more general problem, concerning whether and how mental events of a given type may be efficacious, qua the types of event they are---qualitative, intentional, freely deliberative---given their apparent causal irrelevancy for effects of the type in question; here we generalize what Horgan 1989 identifies as "the problem of mental quausation" (S1). We then build on this result to identify fruitful parallels between hard determinism and eliminative physicalism (S2) and soft determinism and non-reductive physicalism (S3). (shrink)

We are all concerned by the environmental threats facing us today. Environmental issues are a major area of concern for policy makers, industrialists and public groups of many different kinds. While science seems central to our understanding of such threats, the statements of scientists are increasingly open to challenge in this area. Meanwhile, citizens may find themselves labelled as "ignorant" in environmental matters. In Citizen Science Alan Irwin provides a much needed route through the fraught relationship between science, the (...) public and the environmental threat. (shrink)

Co-published with the University of Queensland Press. HPC holds rights in North America and U. S. Dependencies. Since its first publication in 1976, Alan Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read work--translated into eighteen languages--has become a classic introduction to the scientific method, known for its accessibility to beginners and its value as a resource for advanced students and scholars. In addition to overall improvements and updates inspired by Chalmers's experience as a teacher, comments from his readers, and recent developments (...) in the field, this fourth edition features an extensive chapter-long postscript that draws on his research into the history of atomism to illustrate important themes in the philosophy of science. Identifying the qualitative difference between knowledge of atoms as it figures in contemporary science and metaphysical speculations about atoms common in philosophy since the time of Democritus offers a revealing and instructive way to address the question at the heart of this groundbreaking work: What is this thing called science? (shrink)

A gunman intends to shoot and kill Victim. He shoots and misses his target, but the gunshot startles a group of water buffalo, causing them to trample the victim to death. The gunman brings about the intended effect, Victim’s death, but in a “deviant” way rather than the one planned. This paper argues that such causal structures, deviant causal chains, pose serious problems for several key legal concepts. -/- I show that deviant causal chains pose problems for the legal distinction (...) between attempts and completed crimes, and also for the distinction between attempts and mere preparations. I then suggest that cases of deviant causation undermine notions of legal liability for completed crimes in terms of actus reus and mens rea, and argue that natural accounts of negligence misclassify some cases involving deviant causal chains. After diagnosing several conceptual vulnerabilities in the law revealed by deviant causal chains, I show that natural strategies for shoring up legal theories in the face of these examples are unpromising. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. Critics have always complained about the lack of a practical, political or ethical dimension to Adorno's philosophy. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J. M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno's writings. Bernstein relates Adorno's ethics to major trends in contemporary moral philosophy. He analyses the full range (...) of Adorno's major works, with a special focus on Dialectic of Enlightenment, Minima Moralia and Negative Dialectics. In developing his account Bernstein lays particular stress on Adorno's contention that the event of Auschwitz demands a new categorical imperative. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno's ethics and as such will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: So far in this book, we have examined algorithmic decision systems from three autonomy-based perspectives: in terms of what we owe autonomous agents (chapters 3 and 4), in terms of the conditions required for people to act autonomously (chapters 5 and 6), and in terms of the responsibilities of agents (chapter 7). -/- In this chapter we turn to the ways in which autonomy underwrites democratic governance. Political authority, which is to say the ability of a government to exercise (...) power, may be justifiable or not. Whether it is justified and how it can come to be justified is a question of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy is another way in which autonomy and responsibility are linked. This relationship is the basis of the current chapter, and it is important in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems. We will draw the connection as follows. We begin, in section 8.1, by describing two uses of technology: crime predicting technology used to drive policing practices and social media technology used to influence elections (including by Cambridge Analytica and by the Internet Research Agency). In section 8.2 we consider several views of legitimacy and argue for a hybrid version of normative legitimacy based on one recently offered by Fabienne Peter. In section 8.3 we will explain that the connection between political legitimacy and autonomy is that legitimacy is grounded in legitimating processes, which are in turn based on autonomy. Algorithmic systems—among them PredPol and the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-Internet Research Agency amalgam—can hinder that legitimation process and conflict with democratic legitimacy, as we argue in section 8.4. We will conclude by returning to several cases that serve as through-lines to the book: Loomis, Wagner, and Houston Schools. -/- The link below is to an open-access copy of the chapter. (shrink)

A conception of recognitional abilities and perceptual-discriminative abilities is deployed to make sense of how perceptual experiences enable us to make cognitive contact with objects and facts. It is argued that accepting the emerging view does not commit us to thinking that perceptual experiences are essentially relational, as they are conceived to be in disjunctivist theories. The discussion explores some implications for the theory of knowledge in general and, in particular, for the issue of how we can shed light on (...) the nature of knowledge is if we do not aim to provide conceptual analyses of knowledge in terms of true belief plus something else. Consideration is also given how we can best make sense of the practical value that knowledge has for us. (shrink)

"A fascinating and timely treatment of the objectivism versus relativism debates occurring in philosophy of science, literary theory, the social sciences, ...