Scholarship on Kant's practical philosophy has often overlooked its reception in the early days of post-Kantian philosophy and German Idealism. This volume of new essays illuminates that reception and how it informed the development of practical philosophy between Kant and Hegel. The essays discuss, in addition to Kant, Hegel and Fichte, relatively little-known thinkers such as Pistorius, Ulrich, Maimon, Erhard, E. Reimarus, Reinhold, Jacobi, F. Schlegel, Humboldt, Dalberg, Gentz, Rehberg, and Möser. Issues discussed include the empty formalism objection, the separation (...) between right and morality, freedom and determinism, nihilism, the right to revolution, ideology, and the limits of the liberal state. Taken together, the essays provide an historically informed and philosophically nuanced picture of the development of post-Kantian practical philosophy. (shrink)

It is, we think, fair to say that scholarship on post-Kantian philosophy1 has traditionally tended to focus on theoretical philosophy rather than on practical philoso...

Hubert Dreyfus has defended a novel view of agency, most notably in his debate with John McDowell. Dreyfus argues that expert actions are primarily unreflective and do not involve conceptual activity. In unreflective action, embodied know-how plays the role reflection and conceptuality play in the actions of novices. Dreyfus employs two arguments to support his conclusion: the argument from speed and the phenomenological argument. I argue that Dreyfus's argumentative strategies are not successful, since he relies on a dubious assumption about (...) concepts and reflection. I suggest that Dreyfus is committed to a minimal view of conceptuality in action. (shrink)

Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right was one of the most influential books in nineteenth-century philosophy. It was read carefully by Schelling, Hegel, and Marx, and initiated a tradition in German philosophy that considers human subjectivity to be relational and intersubjective, thus requiring relations of recognition between subjects. The essays in this volume highlight this little-understood book's most important ideas and innovations. They offer discussions of Fichte's conception of freedom, self-consciousness, coercion, the summons, the body, and human rights, together with new (...) analyses of his deduction of right, his views on the social contract, and his arguments for the separation of right from morality. The essays expand and deepen ongoing debates in the scholarship and chart new avenues of thought about Fichte's most enduring work of political philosophy. They will be essential reading for students and scholars of German Idealism, nineteenth-century philosophy, and the history of political thought. (shrink)

Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right develops an intersubjective view of individual self-consciousness. The central concept of this view is his notion of the summons, which he characterizes as upbringing. I argue that Fichte has a developmental view of self-consciousness in which a subject is brought up, through relations of recognition, to be first an individual human being that is capable of responding to reasons and second a political individual that respects other political individuals’ rights. My argument shows that Fichte has (...) two conceptions of recognition, elementary recognition and political recognition, as well as two conceptions of the individual, the individual human being and the political individual. I examine Fichte’s conception of Erziehung, or upbringing, and particularly, Fichte’s remarks about child rearing in order to disambiguate the two types of recognition and individuality. (shrink)

The essay provides a new interpretation of Fichte’s deduction of the external world that considers the argument to be motivated not by epistemic concerns but by concerns about the possibility of freedom. In defending this view, I critically examine Frederick Beiser’s reconstruction of Fichte’s deduction, which characterizes the argument as refuting external world skepticism, exactly the threat by which Fichte is not troubled. I claim that Fichte is troubled by ethical skepticism, the view that the freedom required for self-consciousness is (...) not possible. Establishing the possibility of the freedom involved in self-consciousness requires an external world suitable for such a form of freedom. An implication of this claim is that the world that Fichte deduces is an intersubjective or social world. (shrink)

According to J. G. Fichte, for a science to possess systematic form the science must begin with a first principle known with certainty and each proposition within the science must be validly connected to the first principle. The content of the Wissenschaftslehre consists of essentially one kind of content, what he calls “the acts of the human mind” He also holds that the Wissenschaftslehre provides each science its own first principle, thus making up part of its content. Following his first (...) publications, F. W. J. Schelling began to simultaneously develop a philosophy of nature, or Naturphilosophie, and to systematize his view of transcendental philosophy. His Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature and First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature were followed by the System of Transcendental Idealism. Where Spinoza attempted to provide a model of the unconditional as a self‐causing substance, Schelling conceives of the unconditional as the absolute or self‐positing. (shrink)

Tom Huhn’s challenging book provides subtle readings of three philosophers’ aesthetic projects, two of which have been overlooked by many American philosophers. Mimesis is the guiding theme of Huhn’s reading, and it gives him a unique access to certain aesthetic and cognitive theories. While Huhn’s book is relatively short, its themes are vast. I will only discuss what I take to be the heart of Huhn’s project: revealing the relationship between society and aesthetic pleasure.

Tom Huhn’s challenging book provides subtle readings of three philosophers’ aesthetic projects, two of which have been overlooked by many American philosophers. Mimesis is the guiding theme of Huhn’s reading, and it gives him a unique access to certain aesthetic and cognitive theories. While Huhn’s book is relatively short, its themes are vast. I will only discuss what I take to be the heart of Huhn’s project: revealing the relationship between society and aesthetic pleasure.

Much of our behavior is guided by our understanding of events. We perceive events when we observe the world unfolding around us, participate in events when we act on the world, simulate events that we hear or read about, and use our knowledge of events to solve problems. In this book, Gabriel A. Radvansky and Jeffrey M. Zacks provide the first integrated framework for event cognition and attempt to synthesize the available psychological and neuroscience data surrounding it. This synthesis (...) leads to new proposals about several traditional areas in psychology and neuroscience including perception, attention, language understanding, memory, and problem solving.Radvansky and Zacks have written this book with a diverse readership in mind. It is intended for a range of researchers working within cognitive science including psychology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, anthropology, and education. Readers curious about events more generally such as those working in literature, film theory, and history will also find it of interest. (shrink)

This article aims to offer a fresh analysis of two passages in the extensive necromancy episode in Lucan's Bellum Ciuile: the ritual to reanimate the dead soldier's corpse (6.667–73), and the surgical procedure Erichtho then proceeds to undertake (6.750–7), resembling the practice of a vivisection. The study will focus mostly on the strong connection of magic to medical traditions in antiquity, with a commentary on, and analysis of, these verses through the lenses of medical vocabulary, themes and motifs. It ultimately (...) concludes that Lucan was familiar with the language and characteristics of the medical tradition, enriched his report with them, and was playing with his audience's knowledge of the same. (shrink)

An argument is made that only through a detailed comparison of mutational mechanisms underlying the evolution of the genetic systems governing development, can the 'logic' of individual development be fully comprehended. To do this, it is essential to choose two or more genes (or their products) that interact in the establishment of a given function, and to compare the molecular basis of that interaction in closely related species. The rationale to this approach arises from observations of molecular co‐evolution between interacting (...) partners involved with given functions which have led to species specificity in the manner in which such functions are effected. Molecular coevolution reveals that divergence in sequence can be tolerated whilst biological functions are maintained, not because it is neutral and dispensable but because successful, compensatory changes can evolve in eukaryotic genomes that are in continuous states of flux. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 32, Issue S1, Page 1-3, April 2023.

Durkheim's underdeveloped notion of fatalism is the keystone for a bridge between two conceptual categories central to Marxian and Durkheimian theory: alienation and anomie. Durkheim does not necessarily disagree with Marx that excessive regulation can be socially damaging but chooses to highlight the effects of under-regulation. A Durkheimian critique of overregulation becomes possible if we turn away from anomie and toward Durkheim's idea of fatalism—a concept that I will argue here is unexpectedly consistent with Marx's notion of alienation. We can (...) infer that Durkheim presents us with a notion of an “optimal” human condition that exists between anomie and fatalism. The structure of modern societies, it will be argued, is characterized not just by excessive control leading to alienation or by a lack of integrative restraint leading to anomie but also by active efforts to optimally regulate social life. (shrink)

Durkheim's underdeveloped notion of fatalism is the keystone for a bridge between two conceptual categories central to Marxian and Durkheimian theory: alienation and anomie. Durkheim does not necessarily disagree with Marx that excessive regulation can be socially damaging but chooses to highlight the effects of under- regulation. A Durkheimian critique of overregulation becomes possible if we turn away from anomie and toward Durkheim's idea of fatalism-a concept that I will argue here is unexpectedly consistent with Marx's notion of alienation. We (...) can infer that Durkheim presents us with a notion of an "optimal" human condition that exists between anomie and fatalism. The structure of modern societies, it will be argued, is characterized not just by excessive control leading to alienation or by a lack of integrative restraint leading to anomie but also by active efforts to optimally regulate social life. (shrink)

This article argues that Mona Hatoum's video Measures of Distance presents us with an example of Jean-Luc Marion's saturated phenomenon. Partial and deeply textured images of Hatoum's mother have p...

This article aims to propose a critical and exploratory survey of utopian narratives published in Chile from 1829 to 1934 employing a qualitative and diachronic approach. The fundamental objective of this study is to make evident the thematic tendencies, formal recurrences, influences, and key differences in utopian works of fiction written over a century of Chilean history, connecting these with the overall development of Chilean society, in such a way as to express how the utopian narratives of this period reflect, (...) critique, or rebel against the hegemonic social projects present in the country. Last, this article also seeks to approach these works from the distinctive point of view of the field of utopian studies, thus establishing the relevance of its theoretical framework in the analysis of Chilean fiction. (shrink)

This article explores the extent to which multiple-choice history/social studies exams measure student knowledge of social studies content. This article presents descriptive statistics that quantify the findings from a qualitative study. Data for this study were collected from 13 tenth-grade world history students in an urban classroom in New York State. Each participant answered 15 multiple-choice questions that had appeared on previous versions of the Global History and Geography Regents exam, the high-stakes exam they would have to take at the (...) end of the school year. As a small-scale exploratory study, the findings are not what quantitative researchers would call generalizable. Nevertheless, the findings raise questions about what tests measure, their effectiveness, and what constitutes social-studies knowledge. (shrink)

In response to the continued expansion of “red flag” laws allowing broader classes of people to petition a court for the removal of firearms from individuals who exhibit dangerous conduct, this paper argues that state laws should adopt a double-filter provision that balances individual rights and government public safety interests. The main component of such a provision is a special statutory category — “reporting party” — that enables a broader social network, such as co-workers or school administrators, to request that (...) a law enforcement officer file a petition for an Extreme Risk Protection Order. A double-filter provision would not give reporting parties a right to file a court petition directly. Instead, parties would file a request for petition with law enforcement officers, who must seek an ERPO from the court if they find the reporting party's information credible. That information is then transmitted to the court as a sworn affidavit of the reporting party. The goal is to facilitate a balanced policy model that widens the reporting circle in order to feed more potentially life-saving information into the system, mitigates the risk of erroneous deprivation of constitutionally protected due process and Second Amendment rights. (shrink)

In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois addressed the question "How does it feel to be a social problem?". In 2008, Moustafa Bayoumi answered the same question for Muslims in the United States. Both Du Bois and Bayoumi provide powerful critiques against any notion that racialized minorities are inherently problematic. Both men generally argue that one cannot blame racialized minorities for the ill treatment they endure under systematic oppression. Du Bois and Bayoumi are two of many voices fighting against the (...) popular stigmatization of racialized peoples that include public intellectuals, civil rights activists, politicians, community leaders, educators, and many others. One of the things that all these voices have in common... (shrink)

The posterior parietal cortex and frontal eye field contain maps of visual salience on which the decision to choose a saccade may be based. However, an averaging express saccade is not represented by a victorious unimodal representation in the superior colliculus. Normalization as described by Findlay & Walker is not necessary for the generation of saccades.

Gambling and Speculation takes the long, historic perspective of its controversial subject. The book offers not only a better understanding of the recent "gambling craze," but also a fundamental inquiry into human nature and the structure of societies. The Brenners argue that the negative image of gamblers and of speculators stems from prejudice, whose roots are in the distant, forgotten past. Legal scholars have frequently confused gambling with speculation and the anti-gambling laws were, at times, erroneously interpreted as implying the (...) prohibitions of contracts in futures and insurance markets. One consequence of all this confusion was that during this century both in the United States and England, the legislation and law on betting and gambling became ambiguous. The authors touch on this issue and make policy recommendations: to abolish restrictions on the industry, diminish the states' role in selling lotteries, and, at the same time, make legal distinctions capable of helping the tiny percentage of players who might be "addicted.". (shrink)

Dorfman et al.’s (2024) study on psychiatrists’ perceptions of treatment-refractory mental illness found that while most psychiatrists recognize there are cases where further treatment may no longe...

We analyze the transition of central banks from lenders to market makers of last resort. The adoption of unconventional monetary policies characterizes this transition. In their new role as market makers, central banks engage in the latter by extending and reinforcing interventions in other markets than the traditional bank reserves market. We then explain that the difference between the two roles is one of degree rather than kind. In both cases, the prevention of liquidity shortages is a primary concern. As (...) conventional policies become inadequate, central banks resort to unconventional policies to escape a general liquidity shortage at the zero lower bound. However, these unconventional policies do not solve the structural problems in financial and real markets. Both conventional and unconventional monetary policies cause price distortions, in particular on asset markets. The policies of the market maker of last resort prevent necessary readjustments of cyclical divergences between real and financial markets. (shrink)