In the recent article “A new approach to manipulation arguments,” Patrick Todd seeks to reframe a common incompatibilist form of argument often leveraged against compatibilist theories of moral responsibility. Known as manipulation arguments, these objections rely on cases in which agents, though they have met standard compatibilist conditions for responsibility, have been manipulated in such a way that they fail to be blameworthy for their behavior. Traditionally, in order to get a manipulation argument off the ground, an incompatibilist must illustrate (...) that a manipulated agent is not at all responsible for her behavior. Todd argues that this is an unnecessarily heavy burden—the incompatibilist need only show that the presence of manipulation mitigates ascriptions of responsibility. Though innovative, Todd fails to present his modified manipulation argument in a way that poses a true threat to the compatibilist. In fact, by introducing a scalar conception of moral responsibility, Todd gives the compatibilist the tools necessary to better handle the incompatibilist’s original manipulation argument. (shrink)

In a recent essay, Deery and Nahmias :1255–1276, 2017) utilize interventionism about causation to develop an account of causal sourcehood in order to defend compatibilism about free will and moral responsibility from manipulation arguments. In this paper, we criticize Deery and Nahmias’s analysis of sourcehood by drawing a distinction between two forms of causal invariance that can come into conflict on their account. We conclude that any attempt to resolve this conflict will either result in counterintuitive attributions of moral responsibility (...) or will undermine their response to manipulation arguments. (shrink)

Many manipulation arguments against compatibilism rely on the claim that manipulation is relevantly similar to determinism. But we argue that manipulation is nothing like determinism in one relevant respect. Determinism is a "universal" phenomenon: its scope includes every feature of the universe. But manipulation arguments feature cases where an agent is the only manipulated individual in her universe. Call manipulation whose scope includes at least one but not all agents "existential manipulation." Our responsibility practices are impacted in different ways by (...) universal and existential phenomena. And this is a relevant difference, especially on Strawsonian approaches to moral responsibility, which take facts about our responsibility practices to be deeply connected to the nature of responsibility itself. We argue that Strawsonian accounts of moral responsibility are immune to manipulation arguments, and no attempt to modify the scope of manipulation or determinism featured in these arguments will help incompatibilists secure their desired conclusion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In ‘Forgiveness: An Ordered Pluralism,’ Fricker argues that the function of forgiveness is to liberate the forgiver from redundant blame-feeling. Blame is rendered redundant when it no longer serves its purpose, so to understand the function of forgiveness, we must understand the function of blame. For Fricker, the paradigmatic function of Communicative Blame is to align the moral understandings of wrongdoers and their victims, which is accomplished by wrongdoers coming to feel remorse. In this paper, I argue that Fricker (...) should adopt a broader view of moral understanding and sever the connection between remorse and the alignment of moral understandings. (shrink)

In a 2020 article in Analysis, Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the moral equality account of the hypocrite’s lack of standing to blame fails. To object to this account, Lippert-Rasmussen considers the contrary of hypocrisy: hypercrisy. In this article, I show that if hypercrisy is a problem for the moral equality account, it is also a problem for Lippert-Rasmussen’s own account of why hypocrites lack standing to blame. I then reflect on the hypocrite’s and hypercrite’s standing to self-blame, which reveals that the (...) challenge hypercrisy poses for accounts of standing is different from the challenge Lippert-Rasmussen articulates. (shrink)

One debate surrounding Derk Pereboom’s (2001, 2014) four-case argument against compatibilism focuses on whether, and why, we judge manipulated agents to be neither free nor morally responsible. In this paper, we propose a novel explanation. The four-case argument features cases where an agent is the only individual in her universe who has been manipulated. Let us call manipulation whose scope includes at least one but not all agents existential manipulation. Contrast this with universal manipulation, which affects all agents within a (...) universe. We propose that we find agents in Pereboom’s manipulation cases less free and morally responsible in part because they are the target of existential manipulation. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found that people’s free will and moral responsibility judgments were sensitive to the scope of manipulation: people judged existentially manipulated agents significantly less free and responsible than universally manipulated agents. (shrink)

Traditionally, theories of moral responsibility feature only the minimally sufficient conditions for moral responsibility. While these theories are well-suited to account for the threshold of responsibility, it’s less clear how they can address questions about the degree to which agents are responsible. One feature that intuitively affects the degree to which agents are morally responsible is how difficult performing a given action is for them. Recently, philosophers have begun to develop accounts of scalar moral responsibility that make use of this (...) notion of difficulty (Coates and Swenson 2013; Nelkin 2016). In this paper, I argue that these accounts, although innovative, are incomplete. The degree to which agents are morally responsible is determined not only by the difficulties that agents face but also by the quality of the reasons for which they act. (shrink)

Recent work on blameworthiness has prominently featured discussions of guilt. The philosophers who develop guilt-based views of blameworthiness do an excellent job of attending to the evaluative and affective features of feeling guilty. However, these philosophers have been less attentive to guilt’s characteristic action tendencies and the role admissions of guilt play in our blaming practices. This paper focuses on the nature of guilty confession and argues that it illuminates an important function of blame that has been overlooked in the (...) recent work on guilt as it relates to blameworthiness: Blame can communicate respect. (shrink)

IntroductionPatrick Todd’s article, “A New Approach to Manipulation Arguments,” has spurred considerable discussion in the literature.Patrick Todd, “A New Approach to Manipulation Arguments,” Philosophical Studies, Vol. 153, No. 1, , pp. 127–133. In his essay, Todd attempts to reframe how manipulation arguments function dialectically. These arguments, often presented by incompatibilists, typically rely on cases in which agents, though they have met a number of compatibilist sufficient conditions for responsibility, have been manipulated such that they intuitively fail to be blameworthy for (...) their actions.In Todd’s version of the manipulation argument, though an agent meets compatibilist conditions for responsibility, readers are asked to what extent that agent is blameworthy for his or her behavior. One possible compatibilist retort to this argument is to contend that the concepts of responsibility and blameworthiness can come apart—an agent can be responsible without being blamew .. (shrink)

In this paper, we review Keith Lehrer’s account of the basing relation, with particular attention to the two cases he offered in support of his theory, Raco (Lehrer, Theory of knowledge, 1990; Theory of knowledge, (2nd ed.), 2000) and the earlier case of the superstitious lawyer (Lehrer, The Journal of Philosophy, 68, 311–313, 1971). We show that Lehrer’s examples succeed in making his case that beliefs need not be based on the evidence, in order to be justified. These cases show (...) that it is the justification (rather than the belief) that must be based in the evidence. We compare Lehrer’s account of basing with some alternative accounts that have been offered, and show why Lehrer’s own account is more plausible. (shrink)

Blame abounds in our everyday lives, perhaps no more so than on social media. With the rise of social networking platforms, we have access to more information about others’ blameworthy behaviour and larger audiences to whom we can express our blame. But these audiences, while large, are typically not diverse. Social media tends to create what I call “blame bubbles”: systems in which expressions of blame are shared amongst agents with similar moral outlooks while dissenting views are excluded. Many have (...) criticised the blame expressed on social media, arguing that it is often unfitting, excessive, and counterproductive. In this talk, I’ll argue that while blame bubbles can be guilty of these charges, they are also well placed to do important moral work. I’ll then attempt to identify the causal source of these bad-making features and explore potential structural interventions that can make blame bubbles better at performing their moral function and less likely to generate harmful consequences. (shrink)

There are better and worse ways to blame others. Likewise, there are better and worse ways to blame yourself. And though there is an ever-expanding literature on the norms that govern our blaming practices, relatively little attention has been paid to the norms that govern expressions of self-blame. In this essay, I argue that when we blame ourselves, we ought not do so privately. Rather, we should, ceteris paribus, express our self-blame to those we have wronged. I then explore how (...) this norm can contribute to our understanding of the ethics of self-blame as well as the nature of blameworthiness itself. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer’s most recent collection of essays, Deep Control: Essays on Free Will and Value, is both incredibly wide-ranging and impressively detailed. Fischer manages to cover a staggering amount of ground in the free will debate, while also providing insightful and articulate analyses of many of the positions defended in the field. In this collection, Fischer focuses on the relationship between free will and moral responsibility. In the first section of his book, Fischer defends Frankfurt cases as an important (...) and useful tool in rejecting the necessity of regulative control for moral responsibility. In the second section, Fischer turns his attention to his own account of guidance control. In this essay, I first focus on Fischer’s defense of Frankfurt cases, specifically his response to the argument that the assumption of determinism in such cases is question-begging. I then analyze two objections to Fischer’s account of guidance control. Finally, I conclude with a brief discussion of the metaphor of the pilgrimage, which Fischer introduces in the opening essay of his collection. (shrink)

Proponents of manipulation arguments against compatibilism hold that manipulation scope (how many agents are manipulated) and manipulation type (whether the manipulator intends that an agent perform a particular action) do not impact judgments about free will and moral responsibility. Many opponents of manipulation arguments agree that manipulation scope has no impact but hold that manipulation type does. Recent work by Latham and Tierney (2022, 2023) found that people's judgments were sensitive to manipulation scope: people judged that an agent was (...) less free and responsible when a manipulation was existential (impacting at least one but not all agents) than when the manipulation was universal (impacting every agent). This study examines people's judgements about existential and universal manipulation cases that involve both intentional and non‐intentional outcomes. We found that manipulation scope also affects people's free will and responsibility judgments in manipulation cases involving both intentional and non‐intentional outcomes. Interestingly, we also found that manipulation type influences the effect that manipulation scope has on people's free will judgments but not their moral responsibility judgments, which indicates that people's free will and responsibility judgments can come apart. This puts pressure on the prevalent assumption that judgments about free will and moral responsibility are conceptually bound together. (shrink)

In her rich and engaging new book, Elinor Mason argues that blameworthiness has three varieties—ordinary, detached, and extended—each of which corresponds to a distinct way of acting wrongly. In ex...

People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been suggested for this pattern of preferences. Adjudicating among these explanations can, among other things, shed light on the rationality of future-bias: For instance, if our preferences are explained by unjustified beliefs or an illusory phenomenology, we might conclude that they are irrational. This paper investigates one hypothesis, according to which future-bias (...) is explained by our having a phenomenology that we describe, or conceive of, as being as of time robustly passing. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found no evidence in its favour. Our results present a puzzle, however, when compared with the results of an earlier study. We conclude that although robust passage phenomenology on its own probably does not explain future-bias, having this phenomenology and taking it to be veridical may contribute to future-bias. (shrink)

Much has been written about the fittingness, epistemic, and standing norms that govern blame. In this paper, we argue that there exists a norm of blame that has yet to receive philosophical discussion and without which an account of the ethics of blame will be incomplete: a norm proscribing comparatively arbitrary blame. By reflecting on the objectionableness of comparatively arbitrary blame, we stand to elucidate a substantive, and thus far overlooked, norm governing our attributions of responsibility. Accordingly, our aim in (...) this paper is to develop a comparative non-arbitrariness condition on blame that can enrich our understanding of the ethics of blame. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis according to (...) which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

All else being equal, most of us typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future rather than the past and negative experiences in the past rather than the future. Recent empirical evidence tends not only to support the idea that people have these preferences, but further, that people tend to prefer more painful experiences in their past rather than fewer in their future (and mutatis mutandis for pleasant experiences). Are such preferences rationally permissible, or are they, as time-neutralists contend, (...) rationally impermissible? And what is it that grounds their having the normative status that they do have? We consider two sorts of arguments regarding the normative status of future-biased preferences. The first appeals to the supposed arbitrariness of these preferences, and the second appeals to their upshot. We evaluate these arguments in light of the recent empirical research on future-bias. (shrink)

What it means for an action to have moral worth, and what is required for this to be the case, is the subject of continued controversy. Some argue that an agent performs a morally worthy action if and only if they do it because the action is morally right. Others argue that a morally worthy action is that which an agent performs because of features that make the action right. These theorists, though they oppose one another, share something important in (...) common. They focus almost exclusively on the moral worth of right actions. But there is a negatively valenced counterpart that attaches to wrong actions, which we will call moral counterworth. In this paper, we explore the moral counterworth of wrong actions in order to shed new light on the nature of moral worth. Contrary to theorists in both camps, we argue that more than one kind of motivation can affect the moral worth of actions. (shrink)

The authors argue in favor of the “nonconciliation” (or “steadfast”) position concerning the problem of peer disagreement. Throughout the paper they place heavy emphasis on matters of phenomenology—on how things seem epistemically with respect to the net import of one’s available evidence vis-à-vis the disputed claim p, and on how such phenomenology is affected by the awareness that an interlocutor whom one initially regards as an epistemic peer disagrees with oneself about p. Central to the argument is a nested goal/sub-goal (...) hierarchy that the authors claim is inherent to the structure of epistemically responsible belief-formation: pursuing true beliefs by pursuing beliefs that are objectively likely given one’s total available evidence; pursuing this sub-goal by pursuing beliefs that are likely true (given that evidence) relative to one’s own deep epistemic sensibility; and pursuing this sub-sub-goal by forming beliefs in accordance with one’s own all-in, ultima facie, epistemic seemings. (shrink)

It has been hypothesized that our believing that, or its seeming to us as though, the world is in some way dynamical partially explains (and perhaps rationalizes) future-bias. Recent work has, in turn, found a correlation between future-bias and near-bias, suggesting that there is a common explanation for both. Call the claim that what partially explains our being both future- and near-biased is our believing/it seeming to us as though the world is dynamical, the dynamical explanation. We empirically test two (...) versions of the dynamical explanation. The first is the moving ego explanation—according to which it is our belief that the ego moves, or our phenomenology as of the ego moving, that jointly (partially) explains future- and near-bias. The second is the moving time explanation—according to which it is our belief that time robustly passes, or our phenomenology as of robust passage, which jointly (partially) explain future- and near-bias. We found no evidence in favour of either explanation. (shrink)

Manipulation arguments are commonly deployed to raise problems for compatibilist theories of responsibility. These arguments proceed by asking us to reflect on an agent who has been manipulated to perform some (typically bad) action but who still meets the compatibilist conditions of responsibility. The incompatibilist argues that it is intuitive that the agent in such a case is not responsible even though she met the compatibilist conditions. Thus, it is argued, the compatibilist has not provided conditions sufficient for responsibility. Patrick (...) Todd has recently argued that incompatibilists have taken on a heavier dialectical burden than is necessary. Todd argues that incompatibilists need not argue that an agent in a manipulation case is not at all responsible, but only that her responsibility is mitigated in order to refute compatibilism. Hannah Tierney has responded to Todd’s argument by arguing that a compatibilist can admit that manipulation mitigates responsibility without eliminating it. I argue that Tierney’s response is unsuccessful on its own terms. But, I argue, Todd’s argument can be resisted by way of a parallel counter-argument for compatibilism. I argue that Todd’s argument for incompatibilism is no more powerful than my argument for compatibilism. And since Todd’s manipulation argument is offered as an objection to compatibilism, this amounts to a victory for the compatibilist; the objection is defused. (shrink)

Liberty and Law examines a previously underappreciated theme in legal history―the idea of permissive natural law. The idea is mentioned only peripherally, if at all, in modern histories of natural law. Yet it engaged the attention of jurists, philosophers, and theologians over a long period and formed an integral part of their teachings. This ensured that natural law was not conceived of as merely a set of commands and prohibitions that restricted human conduct, but also as affirming a realm of (...) human freedom, understood as both freedom from subjection and freedom of choice. Freedom can be used in many ways, and throughout the whole period from 1100 to 1800 the idea of permissive natural law was deployed for various purposes in response to different problems that arose. It was frequently invoked to explain the origin of private property and the beginnings of civil government. Several kinds of permissive natural law were identified. Permission could be positive or negative, depending on whether it was specifically conceded by a legislator or only tacitly allowed. It could free from sin or merely remit some temporal punishment that was due. It could commend some conduct without commanding it or permit some evil without condoning it. Medieval canonists used the concept of permissive natural law to harmonize the discordant texts that they found in their sources; William of Ockham found it a powerful tool in his defense of Franciscan poverty against papal criticisms; for Richard Hooker it justified both the constitutional structure and the ritual practices of the Anglican church; John Selden used it to uphold the inviolability of contracts, most importantly the contract of government; Hugo Grotius made it a central theme in his treatment of the conduct permissible in waging war; in the eighteenth century Jean Barbeyrac and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui associated the idea with the emerging doctrine of natural rights. In Liberty and Law, Tierney has presented us with a magisterial and provocative way of interpreting legal history. (shrink)

Here is a completely corrected and revised English translation that incorporates Arendt's own substantial revisions and provides additional notes based on letters, contracts, and other documents.

Discusses the nature of thought and volition, examines past philosophical theories, and clarifies the relation between will and freedom.

Aristotle's essentialism is generally recognized as involving a distinction between what belongs to something _in itself (kath' hauto) and what belongs to it _accidentally (kata sumbebekos). But he distinguishes two relevant senses of "_in itself"; the first referring to what belongs to something in _what it is, the second referring to such attributes as: odd to number, male to animal, curved to line, and white to surface. I set out these distinctions, and argue that Aristotle counts the second class of (...) _in itself attributes as being just as essential to the individual substances to which they belong as the first. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 301-312 [Access article in PDF] Kant on Property: The Problem of Permissive Law Brian Tierney In a pathbreaking article published in 1982 Reinhold Brandt called attention to the significance of the concept of permissive natural law in Kant's political philosophy. Brandt noted that Kant's "rightful concept of practical reason" or "permissive law of practical reason" was of fundamental importance for (...) understanding the whole theory of the Rechtslehre, and he complained that the issue had been virtually ignored in the recent secondary literature. 1 Since then others have taken up the theme, but it remains relatively neglected in the vast modern literature on Kant. In the work of Brandt and in some other recent explorations of this question a primary concern has been to relate Kant's doctrine to other aspects of his critical theory. Brandt himself, for instance, compared the "provisional" and "peremptory" rights mentioned in the Doctrine of Right with the "problematic" and "assertoric" judgments of the Critique of Pure Reason. The problem that I want to consider is rather different. In the following study I want to consider primarily the internal structure of the Doctrine of Right and specifically to ask whether Kant's appeal to permissive natural law served a constructive purpose in the theory of property that he presented in that work or whether it was perhaps subversive of the argument that he developed. 2 This will require [End Page 301] some discussion of the other usages of the idea of permissive law that we find scattered in Kant's later writings. In pursuing such an inquiry we encounter various difficulties and apparent anomalies in Kant's teaching. I want finally to suggest that we might understand those difficulties better if we were to situate Kant's work in a broader historical context than those that have previously been considered, bearing in mind that the concept of permissive natural law had been discussed by jurists and political philosophers for several centuries before Kant took up the argument. Kant on Property When approaching Kant's Doctrine of Right it may be salutary to recall a remark of Mary Gregor, the translator of the work and a sympathetic reader of it. "Kant has never been accused of underestimating his readers," Gregor wrote, "but he seldom treats them so harshly." 3 The difficulty of the work is compounded by the fact that the text as we have it is apparently in a mutilated condition, with some passages transposed from their original contexts. Any reading of such a text will be open to dispute; but it seems necessary to attempt at least an outline of Kant's doctrine and to mention some of its complexities if we are to understand the function of permissive natural law in the argument presented.Kant's purpose was to formulate a doctrine of property based on reason alone, a doctrine in which "abstraction is made from all spatial and temporal conditions." 4 The principles he deduced were intended to apply to anyone "merely because and insofar as he is free and has practical reason." 5 The whole subsequent argument revolved around these concepts of practical reason and human freedom. Kant began by presenting some basic propositions and definitions. Obligation, he wrote, was "the necessity of a free action under a categorical imperative of reason." And an action was permitted or licit when it was not contrary to obligation. This freedom of action was called a moral faculty (facultas moralis). 6 According to Kant, the only innate right inhering in all persons was a right to freedom (defined as "independence from being coerced by another's [End Page 302] choice") insofar as this freedom could coexist with the freedom of all others. 7 A corresponding universal law of Right established the rule: "[S]o act externally that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law." 8External laws imposed by another evidently did hinder one's freedom. Kant therefore held that a person was... (shrink)

I defend the normativity of meaning against recent objections by arguing for a new interpretation of the ‘ought’ relevant to meaning. Both critics and defenders of the normativity thesis have understood statements about how an expression ought to be used as either prescriptive or semantic. I propose an alternative view of the ‘ought’ as conveying the primitively normative attitudes speakers must adopt towards their uses if they are to use the expression with understanding.

The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers begins in 1926, when the twenty-year-old Arendt studied philosophy with Jaspers in Heidelberg. It is interrupted by Arendt's emigration and Jasper's 'inner emigration' and resumes in the fall of 1945. From then until Jaspers's death in 1969, the initial teacher-student relationship develops into a close friendship. Three countries figure prominently in the correspondence: Germany, Israel, and the United States. Among the topics are Fascism, the atom bomb and the threat of global (...) destruction, German guilt for the Holocaust, Jewishness, the State of Israel, American politics and American universities, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Arendt and Jaspers discuss people both famous and obscure. They gossip, joke complain, and argue. They commiserate with each other over the illnesses and infirmities of old age. And they converse about the world's great philosophers: Spinoza, Kant, Marx, Max Weber, Heidegger. Here is a fascinating dialogue between a woman and a man, a Jew and a German, a questioner and a visionary, both uncompromising in their examination of our troubled century. (shrink)

In his second book, Tierney argues that the purpose of education must move to the heart of the educational debate. Purpose will significantly influence what schools and the education system as a whole will do next.

In this article, I aim to do two things: first, introduce Juche, the official philosophy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“North Korea”), and second, defend Juche against Alzo David-West’s allegation that it is a nonsensical philosophy. I organize David-West’s complaints into two major strands—that Juche’s axiom is too vague to be of philosophical use and that Juche makes too stark a distinction between human vs. everything else—and offer responses to both strands. My goal isn’t to defend the regime, (...) but to present its ideology in the most charitable way so its merits and demerits can be seen more clearly in future engagements. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 381-399 [Access article in PDF] Permissive Natural Law and Property: Gratian to Kant Brian Tierney In his Doctrine of Right Kant set out to formulate a theory of property that would be based on purely rational argumentation, that would abstract "from all spatial and temporal conditions," and that would be applicable to any person, "merely because and insofar as he (...) is free and has practical reason." But from the time when the work first appeared Kant scholars have found many difficulties in the teaching that he presented. Many of them relate to the idea of permissive natural law that Kant introduced at a key point to his argument.In a previous, complementary article I discussed in detail various apparent aporias that arose in Kant's treatment of this concept and suggested that we might understand his problems better by setting them in a broader historical context than those considered in standard works like those of Reinhard Brandt and Wolfgang Kersting. 1 This is the theme that I want to explore further in the present paper.To sum up briefly some of the difficulties in the Doctrine of Right: A central problem for Kant was to explain how rightful possession of individual property could emerge from a hypothetical state of nature where everything was common to all, where everyone had a right to everything. His argument was grounded on a concept of freedom understood as "a pure rational concept." Kant maintained that every person had an innate right to freedom and from this he deduced a universal law of Right: "[S]o act externally that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone." 2 But the person who first seized for himself what had been common to all evidently did encroach on the freedom of others (their freedom to use the property that had been taken). [End Page 381]To address this problem Kant formulated a "postulate of practical reason" concerning property. Citing the Roman law doctrine of res nullius he argued that external things could in principle be acquired. 3 Then he restated the postulate as a permissive law that obliged others to respect the claim of a first occupant. "This postulate can be called a permissive law (lex permissiva) of practical reason which gives us an authorization... to put all others under an obligation, which they would not otherwise have...." 4 But to put others under an obligation is to encroach on their freedom, which would be a violation of the universal law of Right. For Kant, laws that could be discerned by reason alone without promulgation by a legislator, were understood to be natural laws. 5 The universal law of Right and the permissive law of practical reason were both laws of this kind. It seems therefore that natural law contradicted itself. It prohibited and permitted an action at the same time.Other difficulties arose as the argument proceeded. Kant repeatedly asserted that rightful possession must depend on consent expressed in "a collective general (common) and powerful will," "a will that is united originally and a priori"; 6 but he acknowledged that such a general will would not exist in a state of nature before the institution of civil society and that an act of original acquisition would necessarily proceed from a unilateral will. "But the will that a thing is to be mine... can be only unilateral." 7 And yet Kant also wrote, "By my unilateral choice I cannot bind another to refrain from using a thing, an obligation he would not otherwise have." 8 Kant never did explain how a permissive law, allowing a person to act unilaterally, could impose an obligation on others.In my earlier discussion of Kant's work I indicated that it might be fruitful to approach these difficulties by investigating some previous ways of using the language of permissive natural law, especially as it related to the origin of property rights. There is indeed a whole earlier tradition of thought to be considered. An investigation of this material... (shrink)

Each of the books that Hannah Arendt published in her lifetime was unique, and to this day each continues to provoke fresh thought and interpretations. This was never more true than for Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she first used the phrase “the banality of evil.” Her consternation over how a man who was neither a monster nor a demon could nevertheless be an agent of the most extreme evil evoked derision, outrage, (...) and misunderstanding. The firestorm of controversy prompted Arendt to readdress fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, as she struggled to explicate the meaning of Eichmann in Jerusalem. At the heart of this book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy”; in it Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing, and she examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed. Responsibility and Judgment is an essential work for understanding Arendt’s conception of morality; it is also an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time. (shrink)

Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology ...

The essence of the correspondence between Arendt and Scholem can be said to lie in three things. Above all it provides an intimate account of how two great intellectuals try to come to terms with being both German and Jewish, and how to think about Germany before, during, and after the Holocaust. They also debate the issue of what it means to be Jewish in the post-Holocaust world whether in New York or in Jerusalem. Finally, the specter of Benjamin haunts (...) the work and in a sense the letters are as much about Benjamin as the other two questions since his life and tragic death epitomize them both. Arendt and Scholem's letters on these weighty questions are lightened by more routine exchanges: on travel itineraries, lunch or dinner parties where important people were present, and so forth. These daily details are woven throughout the correspondence and provide vivid biographical information about Arendt and Scholem that is unavailable in any other source. (shrink)

Hannah Ginsborg presents fourteen essays which establish Kant's Critique of Judgment as a central contribution to the understanding of human cognition. The papers bring out the significance of Kant's philosophical notion of judgment, and use it to address interpretive issues in Kant's aesthetics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of biology.

Auf den ersten Blick haben Hannah Arendt und Michel Foucault kaum etwas gemein. Tatsächlich beziehen sie sich jedoch auf die identischen Topoi der Philosophiegeschichte - wenn ihre Auslegungen der Quellen auch denkbar verschieden sind. Als Grund hierfür bestimmt Hannah Holme die komplementären Perspektiven der beiden, die sie als Aneignungen des heideggerschen Sorgebegriffs deutet: die ethische Sorge um sich Foucaults und die politische Sorge um die Welt Arendts. Am Ende steht ein Plädoyer für eine Verbindung des machtkritischen Ethos der (...) Sorge um sich mit der Macht des politischen Handelns, das der Sorge um die Welt unterstellt ist. (shrink)

Arendt's penetrating observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute a major contribution to political philosophy. In this book she describes the perplexing crises which modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.