GREGORY R. JOHNSON and DAVID RASMUSSEN argue that Rand's defense of abortion on demand is inconsistent with her own fundamental metaphysical, epistemological, and moral principles, namely that everything that exists has a determinate identity, that the concept of man refers to all of man's characteristics, not just his essential characteristics, and that there is no gap between what an organism truly is and what it ought to be.

GREGORY R. JOHNSON argues, contra Barry Vacker, that reductionist thinking and nonlinear aesthetics are not mutually exclusive, and that the passages in The Fountainhead cited by Vacker actually support the mastery of nature thesis. Johnson also addresses some miscellaneous criticisms offered by William Thomas, who wrote a review of Johnson's "Liberty and Nature" that appeared in Navigator.

GREGORY R. JOHNSON and DAVID RASMUSSEN defend their critique of Ayn Rand's views on abortion, arguing that their critics miss its main points. Tibor Machan and Alexander Tabarrok actually depart from Rand's own position under the guise of defending it; they introduce a non-Randian distinction between being a human organism and being a moral person.

Gregory R. Johnson and David Rasmussen defend their critique of Ayn Rand's views on abortion, arguing that their critics miss its main points. Tibor Machan and Alexander Tabarrok actually depart from Rand's own position under the guise of defending it; they introduce a non-Randian distinction between being a human organism and being a moral person.

_Dreams of a Spirit-Seer_, Immanuel Kant's book on Emanuel Swedenborg, has mystified readers since its publication in 1766 during Swedenborg's lifetime. The unusual style and content of _Dreams_ have given rise to two opposing interpretations. Most Kant scholars regard the work as a skeptical attack on Swedenborg's mysticism. Other critics, however, believe that Kant regarded Swedenborg as a serious philosopher and visionary, and that _Dreams_ both reveals Kant's profound debt to Swedenborg and coneals that debt behind the mask of irony. (...) In addition, Dr. Gregory R. Johnson provides selections from other Kantian writings that mention Swedenborg and also contemporary reviews of _Dreams_, showing that Kant himself was ambivalent about Swedenborg's claims and that readers of his day questioned his position. With its extensive notes, this work is an invaluable resource for students of Kant and of Swedenborg. (shrink)

An argument is made for the relevance of phenomenological hermeneutics to economics, with special attention to recent debates on hermeneutics among economists of the Austrian school of Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek. Hermeneutics is explicated in the context of Husserlian phenomenology, with special attention to phenomenology's Aristotelian roots. Naive and methodological forms of ?objectivism?; are contrasted with hermeneutics, which recovers the horizons of scientific knowledge: the whole, and the activities of the human knower. Finally, the charges that hermeneutics (...) entails pernicious forms of relativism and historicism are confronted. (shrink)

This essay surveys and assesses J. G. Merquior's principal English?language contributions to liberal social and political theory. The greatest strength of Merquior's work is his recognition that one can neither understand nor defend liberalism without first understanding and defending modernity. The greatest weakness of Merquior's work is his overly oppositional conception of the relationship between modernity and its postmodern critics, particularly his failure to recognize that both the positive and negative features of postmodernism are simply radicalizations of the positive and (...) negative features of modernity itself. It is argued that the strengths of Merquior's work are best affirmed and its weaknesses best overcome by appropriating it within the context of a ?critical modernist? approach to understanding and legitimizing the institutions and practices characteristic of modernity and liberalism. (shrink)

The summa of a distinguished philosopher's career, and full treatment of the temporal in philosophical terms, this volume shows us that by taking time seriously we can discover something essential to almost every question of human concern. Are we IN time? Charles Sherover asks, and in pursuing this question he considers time in conjunction with cognition, morality, action, physical nature, being, God, freedom, and politics. His essays, while drawing upon Royce, Heidegger, Kant, Leibniz, and even Hartshorne and Bergson, defy categorization (...) by method or school; instead, they reveal the diversity and divergence of thinking about time as well as the myriad features and values within the omnipresence of time and change. The volume begins with an overview of the history of thought on time and a clarification of some fundamental conceptual distinctions in temporal ideas. Sherover then offers a critique of Kant, the first thinker to recognize that all human experience has a temporal form. In a series of essays on metaphysics--a valuable corrective to the dominant metaphysical tradition of talking about being as if time does not matter--he pursues temporal responses to such problems as being, internal relations, individuation, mind, and free will. Finally, in essays on time, freedom, and the common good, Sherover argues that these three phenomena are intrinsically related to one another, the fulfillment of each involving the other two. Throughout, these essays brilliantly depict human life and thought thoroughly steeped in time and argue for the significance of the future for human activity. Portraying the openness of the future as the basis for purposiveness and freedom, knowledge and moral action, social life and religious hope, Sherover's work conveys a hopeful message of human finitude that nonetheless allows us a measure of control over events in our own time. (shrink)

Gregory R. Johnson and Chris Matthew Sciabarra discuss references to Ayn Rand in the works of Paul Feyerabend and Slovaj Žižek.

This rich and varied collection of essays addresses some of the most fundamental human questions through the lenses of philosophy, literature, religion, politics, and theology. Peter Augustine Lawler and Dale McConkey have fashioned an interdisciplinary consideration of such perennial and enduring issues as the relationship between nature and history, nature and grace, reason and revelation, classical philosophy and Christianity, modernity and postmodernity, repentance and self-limitation, and philosophy and politics.

Roger Sullivan's earlier book, Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory, has done for Kant's moral philosophy what Henry Allison's Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense has done for Kant's metaphysics: it offers a comprehensive and plausible account of Kant's thought and defends it from common objections and misunderstandings. Sullivan's new book draws upon his earlier one, distilling its insights into an ideal introduction to Kant's ethics that will be both useful to undergraduate and graduate students and also interesting to Kant specialists.

In this book the author lays bare and illuminates the systematic connections between Heidegger's philosophy, his accounts of modernity and technology, and his political views. This is by far the best of the more than a dozen books and anthologies washed up by the latest wave of the Heidegger-Nazism controversy.

According to Carl Page, the ambition of first philosophy is "to get to the bottom of things," to render lucid the ultimate principles of self and world by means of reason. Philosophical historicism is the thesis that human reason is constituted by historically contingent and mutable horizons. These horizons comprehend reason and are therefore incomprehensible to it. History lies behind reason, thus reason cannot get behind history. Therefore, if historicism is true, reason cannot get to the bottom of things. Page (...) seeks to demonstrate the self-refuting character of philosophical historicism, thereby defeating its contention that first philosophy is impossible. Page does not, however, offer positive reasons for believing first philosophy to be possible, much less an indication of what really lies at the bottom of things. (shrink)

This book's subtitle, as well as its inclusion in Yale University Press's philosophy catalog, creates the expectation of a philosophical match between, in one corner, the ideas of Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss and, in the other, the ideas of such "postmodernist" thinkers as Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty, and behind them such gray eminences as Heidegger and Kojève. One soon discovers, however, that Devigne deals not with philosophical responses to postmodernism, but with political responses to (...) postmodernity--a sociological category described only in the most superficial terms. Devigne's account of these political responses is further constricted by his method of treating Strauss's ideas in the context of American conservatism and Oakeshott's ideas in the context of British conservatism. Thus, instead of illuminating the meaning of Strauss's work in the light of Plato, Farabi, and Maimonides, Devigne places him in the company of such writers as Daniel Bell, James Q. Wilson, and Michael Novak. In his chapter on Oakeshott, Devigne only superficially connects Oakeshott to Hobbes, Hegel, and Bradley, while failing to mention Augustine and Montaigne, but he does manage to devote a third of a page to the arcana of the British budget between 1971 and 1977. Recasting Conservatism is, in short, less a work of political philosophy than a work of political science or sociology. (shrink)

This is a book that should cause Kant scholars to miss their daily walks. It is remarkable on at least four counts. First, Shell displays the unity of Kant's thought through both his "critical" and "pre-critical" writings. Second, with a deft deployment of biographical data, she demonstrates the unity of Kant's life and thought. Third, Shell demonstrates the importance of Kantian texts that are ignored by most commentators: the pre-critical corpus, the correspondence, unpublished notes and reflections, book reviews, student notes, (...) biographical anecdotes, and so forth. Fourth, Shell argues that Kant's emphasis on both human finitude and human dignity moderates the progressivism of his philosophy of history, constituting a critique of, and alternative to, such totalizing historicisms as those of Marx and Heidegger and the sundry postmodernisms of their frustrated and disillusioned followers. In this way, she hopes to contribute to the ongoing revival of an older and nobler form of liberalism that treats human dignity as an absolute. (shrink)

The contributors to The Moral of the Story, all preeminent political theorists, are unified by their concern with the instructive power of great literature. This thought-provoking combination of essays explores the polyvalent moral and political impact of classic world literatures on public ethics through the study of some of its major figures-including Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Robert Penn Warren, and Dostoevsky. Positing the uniqueness of literature's ability to promote dialogue on salient moral and intellectual virtues, (...) editor Henry T. Edmonson III has culled together a wide-ranging exploration of such fundamental concerns as the abuse of authority, the nature of good leadership, the significance of "middle class virtues" and the needs of adolescents. This collection reinvigorates the study of classic literature as an endeavor that is not only personally intellectually satisfying, but also an inimitable and unique way to enrich public discourse. (shrink)

Flesh of My Flesh is a collection of articles by today's most respected scientists, philosophers, bioethicists, theologians, and law professors about whether we should allow human cloning. It includes historical pieces to provide background for the current debate. Religious, philosophical, and legal points of view are all represented.

Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives—from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon—contribute to literary criticism? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions, including iterary theorists Marshall Gregory, James (...) Phelan, and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections between literature, religion and philosophy. (shrink)

Click on the DOI link to access the article.

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Although Alasdair MacIntyre has criticized both the market economy and applied ethics, his writing has generated significant discussion within the literature of business ethics and organizational studies. In this article, I extend this conversation by proposing the use of MacIntyre’s account of the virtues to conceive of management as a domain-relative practice that requires and develops practical wisdom. I proceed in four steps. First, I explain MacIntyre’s account of the virtues in light of his definition of a “practice.” Second, I (...) examine his distinction between “practices” and “institutions.” Third, I explain what I mean by a “domain-relative practice” and defend the claim that it is helpful to conceive of management in those terms. Finally, I highlight several features of practical wisdom as a virtue developed in and integral to standards of excellence within management as a domain-relative practice. (shrink)

Psychophysical scaling models of the form R = f, with R the response and I some intensity of an attribute, all assume that people judge the amounts of an attribute. With simple biases excepted, most also assume that judgments are independent of space, time, and features of the situation other than the one being judged. Many data support these ideas: Magnitude estimations of brightness increase with luminance. Nevertheless, I argue that the general model is wrong. The stabilized retinal image literature (...) shows that nothing is seen if light does not change over time. The classification literature shows that dimensions often combine to produce emergent properties that cannot be described by the elements in the stimulus. These and other effects cannot be adjusted for by simply adding variables to the general model because some factors do not combine linearly. The proposed alternative is that people initially judge the entire stimulus – the object in terms of its environment. This agrees with the constancy literature that shows that objects and their attributes are identified through their relations to other aspects of the scene. That the environment determines judgments is masked in scaling studies where the standard procedure is to hold context constant. In a typical brightness study the essential stimulus might be the intensity of the light or a difference between the light and the background. The two are perfectly confounded. This issue is examined in the case of audition. Judgments of the loudness of a tone depend on how much that tone differs from the previous tone in both pitch and loudness. To judge loudness people first seem to process the stimulus object in terms of differences between it and other aspects in the situation; only then do they assess the feature of interest. Psychophysical judgments will therefore be better interpreted by theories of attention that are based in biology or psychology than those that are based in classical physics. (shrink)

To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Søren Kierkegaard, I review in this essay the relationship between Kierkegaard and the Catholic tradition. First, I look back to consider both Kierkegaard’s encounter with Catholicism and the influence of his work upon Catholics. Second, I look around to consider some of the recent work on Kierkegaard and Catholicism, especially Jack Mulder’s recent book, Kierkegaard and the Catholic Tradition, and the many articles that examine Kierkegaard’s relation to Catholicism in the multi-volume (...) Kierkegaard Research series edited by Jon Stewart. Finally, I look ahead to consider possible directions in which the conversation between Catholics and Kierkegaardians might continue. (shrink)

This innovative book is written in an accessible, compact style that sets forth and explains a sound framework for professional ethics that readers can quickly put into practice in analyzing and writing about cases. Through a series of moral conflicts, it aims at improving the skills of moral reasoning and achieving moral development.

Sheds light on the meaning of human freedom by examining and making clear the relationship between the concepts of anxiety and despair in the writings of Soren Kierkegaard. Drawing on Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death, the author provides detailed accounts on Kierkegaard's concepts of anxiety and despair, and discusses much secondary literature on these topics. What follows is an examination of Kierkegaardian feelings and moods, and freedom and individuality. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, (...) OR. (shrink)

Foundations of Economic Personalism is a series of three book-length monographs, each closely examining a significant dimension of the Center for Economic Personalism's unique synthesis of Christian personalism and free-economic market theory. In the aftermath of the momentous geo-political and economic changes of the late 1980s, a small group of Christian social ethicists began to converse with free-market economists over the morality of market activity. This interdisciplinary exchange eventually led to the founding of a new academic subdiscipline under the rubric (...) of economic personalism. These scholars attempt to integrate economic theory, history, and methodology with Christian personalism's stress upon human dignity, humane social structures, and social justice. This volume presents the methodological and theoretical foundations for economic personalism through a detailed investigation of human action from two different, yet complementary perspectives: from the personalist perspective of Karol Wojtyla in the Acting Person , and the free-market perspective of Ludwig von Mises in Human Action . By comparing and contrasting the viewpoints of Wojtyla and Mises, the authors develop a comprehensive praxeology capable of analyzing human action from moral and economic perspectives. Beyond Self-Interest illustrates how a unified praxeology could encourage more sustained analysis of the moral dimensions of economic activity while simultaneously softening the utilitarian prejudice of contemporary economic analysis. (shrink)

In this paper, I extend contemporary virtue ethics by pointing to a philosophical insight that emerges from Aristotle’s Rhetoric: technical mastery of a discipline or practice involves cultivating the virtue of practical wisdom. After reviewing features of Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, I draw attention to specific virtues identified by MacIntyre while noting the relative absence of the virtue of practical wisdom in his discussion of social practices. I compare and contrast MacIntyre’s virtue ethics with that of Aristotle. Focusing on Aristotle’s (...) Rhetoric, I show how Aristotle suggests that the virtue of practical wisdom is integral to technical mastery in the art of persuasive public speaking. I argue that Aristotle’s insight about the tight connection between practical wisdom and technical mastery is not limited to the art of rhetoric. Retrieving insights from Aristotle’s Rhetoric brings into focus ways in which the virtue of practical wisdom is requisite to technical mastery more generally. (shrink)

In this paper, I extend contemporary virtue ethics by pointing to a philosophical insight that emerges from Aristotle’s Rhetoric: technical mastery of a discipline or practice involves cultivating the virtue of practical wisdom. After reviewing features of Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, I draw attention to specific virtues identified by MacIntyre while noting the relative absence of the virtue of practical wisdom in his discussion of social practices. I compare and contrast MacIntyre’s virtue ethics with that of Aristotle. Focusing on Aristotle’s (...) Rhetoric, I show how Aristotle suggests that the virtue of practical wisdom is integral to technical mastery in the art of persuasive public speaking. I argue that Aristotle’s insight about the tight connection between practical wisdom and technical mastery is not limited to the art of rhetoric. Retrieving insights from Aristotle’s Rhetoric brings into focus ways in which the virtue of practical wisdom is requisite to technical mastery more generally. (shrink)

...Drawing primarily on the work of Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato, ethicist Gregory Beabout contemplates the quest for courage, justice, temperance, wisdom, empathy, humility, and much more. Featuring additional chapters by Mike Hannis on medical ethics, workplace ethics, and environmental ethics..."--Dust jacket.

The concepts of anxiety and despair together are central to Kierkegaard's conception of the self. He discusses these concepts principally in two works, The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death. Anxiety and despair each have a complex structure and are closely interrelated to one another. This thematic interconnection between anxiety and despair is doubled and made more difficult by the textual relationship between the two works and the fact that they have different pseudonymous "authors." Further, both these works (...) are very dense and bristle with problems of meaning and interpretation. Therefore, the dissertation is a careful articulation of the structure and relation between anxiety and despair through a close textual analysis of The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death. ;Kierkegaard understands anxiety to be both the attraction to and the repulsion from the nothingness of future possibilities. Thus, anxiety is not simply a psychological state, mood or feeling, but is an ontological structure essential to human being and is the mark of human freedom. Anxiety is that which psychology refers to in seeking an explanation to free human choices. Further, anxiety is an explanation of choice only in the sense that it explains the possibility of choice; it does not and can not explain the cause of this or that particular choice. ;Kierkegaard understands despair to be a not-willing-to-be-oneself. Like anxiety, despair is not simply a psychological state. Instead, it is the structure of one's being who has wrongfully used freedom. Since the self is capable of relating itself to itself in multiple ways, and since despair is the misrelation of oneself to oneself, despair has a multitude of forms. ;I argue that in Kierkegaard's writings, anxiety and despair are surely not different terms for the same mood or psychological state. Rather, anxiety is the mark of human freedom and the condition for the possibility of despair. Despair is the wrongful use of freedom through the failure to choose to be oneself. Finally, a cure for despair must include anxiety, that is, freedom's possibility. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to critique the primary arguments given by Paul Bloom and Jesse Prinz against empathy, and to argue instead that empathy is best understood as a virtue that plays an important but complicated role in the moral life. That it is a virtue does not mean that it always functions well, and empathy sometimes contributes to behavior that is partial and unfair. In some of their writings, both Bloom and Prinz endorse the view that empathy (...) is a fixed trait, but there is little reason to think this, and the studies that they cite do not support this view. Further, a number of recent studies suggest the opposite: our empathic reactions are malleable and subject to environmental effects and learning. Although our capacities for cognitive and emotional empathy are clearly not sufficient for being moral, I argue that they are functionally necessary traits that, like other virtues, must be cultivated correctly. (shrink)

To suppose the possibility of dialogue between theology and science is to suppose that theology is an intellectually worthy partner to engage in dialogue with science. The status of theology as a discipline, however, remains contested, one sign of which is the absence of theology from the university. I argue that a healthy theology-science dialogue would benefit from the presence of theology as an academic discipline in the university. Theology and theologians would benefit from the much closer contact with university (...) disciplines, including the sciences. The university and the sciences would benefit from the presence of theology, providing a department of ultimate concern, where big questions may be asked and ideologies critiqued. A university theology would need to meet standards of academic integrity. (shrink)

Panentheism has received widespread support among theologians involved in the religion‐science dialogue, due in no small part to the success with which panentheism addresses a range of issues. Nevertheless, panentheism as a theological premise needs continued development and elucidation. Panentheism is often presented as a theoretical model of the God‐world relationship, yet the supporting arguments rely on metaphors that are varied and open‐ended. Analogy from the mind‐body relationship leads to a “weak” panentheism that emphasizes the presence of God, while whole‐part (...) analogies suggest a “strong” panentheism that emphasizes some level of identity between God and the world. In turn, these analogies and metaphors bear nontrivial similarities to early Trinitarian and Christological debates in their treatment of God and world as distinct substances. This similarity suggests the importance of panentheistic approaches. Nevertheless, panentheists need to further clarify the relation of theory and metaphor in their work, as well as more precisely develop the central claim that God is in the world. (shrink)