Despite the increasing attention devoted to the theme of political judgment, the question of how to theorize judgment as specifically democratic remains elusive. This article shows the promise of Spinoza for approaching such a vexing issue. Through a combined reading of his major political and metaphysical texts, I develop a new concept of political judgment that I call ‘citizen jurisprudence’. Citizen jurisprudence is at once a right and a power that is internally related to the ‘power of the people’. Put (...) another way, citizen jurisprudence is the figure and effect of democracy understood in an expansive sense: not solely as a state form but as an activity of equally free individuals determining the sense and the scope of common affairs. An account of this concept simultaneously nuances Spinoza’s current profile as a political thinker and contributes to efforts within contemporary political theory to recuperate the radical potential of judgment as a mode of democratic agency. (shrink)

In recent years, increasing attention has been given to virtue ethics in business. Aristotle's thought is often seen as the basis of the virtue ethics tradition. For Aristotle, the idea of phronësis, or 'practical wisdom', lies at the foundation of ethics. Confucian ethics has notable similarities to Aristotelian virtue ethics, and may embody some similar ideas of practical wisdom. This article considers how ideas of moral judgment in these traditions are consistent with modern ideas about intuition in management decision making. (...) A hypothetical case is considered where the complexity of ethical decision making in a group context illustrates the importance of intuitive, phronësis-like judgment. It is then noted that both Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics include suggestions about support for moral decision making that are also consistent with modern theory. (shrink)

In the search for the foundations of cognition philosophers often encounter a familiar problem - the problem of content. The problem of content is essentially the problem of how content, whether experiential or intentional, is possible. In practice providing a response to this problem involves providing an account of how an active self-consciousness is able to conceive/perceive, or in some way be consciousness ofx. The unique nature of this problem imposes significant constraints on the field of explanatory possibilities. Since the (...) x which is to be accounted for is essentially the possibility of absolutely any x there is no y which is not also an x. Hence, nothing remains outside of the explanandum which can be appealed to in order to account for it without, to some extent, presupposing that which needs to be explained. In many of the theories we will examine overcoming this problem involves appealing to a transcendental “structure of awareness” which more often than not is composed of “universal-like” transcendental “entities” of indeterminate nature and ontological status. A major appeal of transcendental entities is that they can at least appear to provide a way of supplying the power of objective “determinateness” necessary to account for the possibility of determination without themselves being determinates. The general strategy of appealing to such transcendental “entities” has, however, for some time been suspiciously regarded as it is unclear how such an appeal is able to avoid the aforementioned presupposition of content. But if the appeal to transcendental cognizing intermediates is to be ‘ dismissed we may be left to face up to the fact that content simply “happens”- that the process of determination, of “judgment”, is a mysterious talent that can neither be taught nor understood. Through a critical examination of both Western and Eastern philosophical approaches to the problem of content this dissertation identifies and describes, insofar as is possible, “that” through which content is rendered possible. In so doing it draws attention to previously neglected points of contact between major philosophical traditions and clarifies the central issues surrounding the problem. The dissertation supports the conclusion that, although there is a need to acknowledge a particular role for a transcendental “self- consciousness” in providing a coherent response to the problem of content, the attempt to articulate a mechanism through which this role is fulfilled most likely misguided. Although it appears to be possible both to know something about this “self-consciousness”, and even to know it more directly, it cannot be understood in the usual sense. (shrink)