The argument against need[Need: the belonging of the essence of mortals to, a belonging which is appropriated in the event.]Metaphysically, and t...

The article provides an introduction to Heidegger's manuscript “The Argument against Need”. It comments on the nature of the manuscript, the circumstances of its composition, and its major philosop...

Famously, in his seminal After Finitude, Quentin Meillassoux charges Heidegger with what he classifies as strong correlationism. In general,...

I argue that the lived experience of disabled people should be validated instead of a facile categorization. Thus far, a disabled sensibility is reduced to a categorical interpretation. Through my examination of a theoretical performance I illustrate how a disabled/able persona negates a disabled sensibility and allows an audience to experience the exotic disabled without examining their own `ableism'. Sobchack's and Clark's examinations demonstrate how both the techno-body and the cyberbody continue to devalue a disabled embodiment and sensibility. In the (...) final section of the article I explore how Deleuze's concept of `difference in itself' can free disabled people from the concepts of identity, hierarchy, representation and categorization that have been employed to devalue their embodiment and sensibility. Moreover, I believe that Deleuze's alternative theory of `difference in itself' can validate a disabled embodiment and sensibility. (shrink)

The chapter deals with the two most distinctive elements of the Introduction of the Naturrecht Feyerabend, namely the notions of an end in itself and autonomy. I shall argue that both are to be interpreted with regard to the aim of explaining the ground of right. In this light, I suggest that the notion of an end in itself counters a voluntarist conception like Achenwall’s with a claim whose necessity has a twofold ground: First, the representation of an unconditional worth (...) emerges as a structural element of the practical use of reason. Second, that representation concerns the necessary self-understanding of moral subjects. Finally, I argue that the other distinctive element, the occurrence of the notion of autonomy, is best understood as an application of that idea to a specific issue, which Kant addresses by showing that freedom is a self-regulating domain. (shrink)

The paper reviews some of the links between the notion of “ultimate reality” and everyday life, mainly art, beauty, the creative processes in art, and citizenship. If, according to M. Heidegger, art reveals the truth of being (i.e., also of ultimate reality), then we may find some historical descriptions of creative processes that are very close to descriptions of ultimate reality. Three examples of these kinds of descriptions are discussed (Abhinavagupta, St. Augustine, F. Engels). The final aim is to show (...) how the interpretation of ultimate reality can contribute to a better understanding of the creative process in art. These considerations can also throw light on one particular aspect of civil life—the relations between everyday life and its final goals. If we are to gain an understanding of the relations between ultimate reality, art and civil life, then the disciplines of aesthetics, philosophy, history and anthropology, and cultural history should all contribute together. (shrink)

In this paper, I pay tribute to Jonathan Webber, one of the most dependable interpreters among recent Sartre scholars. I do so by challenging both him and Sartre on an issue that has long frustrated my work on Sartre. In short, Sartre contends that the For-itself’s desire to be Being-in-itself-for-itself is in bad faith. This raises two issues: Is this desire to be ens causa sui part of the ontological structure of the For-itself? If so, is bad faith an essential (...) part of the human being? I contend that the desire to be the In-itself-for-itself is, on Sartre’s premises, part of the ontological structure of an existing human being. As our original flight from freedom and “fundamental project,” this constitutes bad faith’s “coming into the world,” and remains part of Being-for-itself’s “natural” disposition to bad faith. (shrink)

The discipline of Mental Health Counseling, referred to in this essay as Counseling, has no substantial philosophy. In the United States, much of Counseling philosophy is rooted in the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics. However, this is a code of material conduct, not a substantial Counseling philosophy, and by this orientation the distinction between doing and the knowledge that informs activity is not understood important. Counseling theories thereby adhere in a third principle that is left to disseminate in foreign (...) powers. This is to say, Counseling is commonly understood as a name for a loose set of theoretical practices bound by ethical standards, that these practices are reckoned to lay apart from one another while all referencing or otherwise answering to psychology. Due to this deferment, the apparent rise of mental health issues could be attributed to a weakening of intentional focus, since psychology, by its own scientific standard, is less a standard of care than an experimental method oriented in discovering and implementing an objective reality through which it then offers corrective protocols. This essay draws upon philosophical efforts more rigorous than a granting of epistemological deferment to propose that Counseling is a practice unto itself, in-itself, of a true substance, concerned, involved with, and related to psychology but not subject to it. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that the expression “an sich selbst” (“in itself”) in Kant combines with terms to form complex nouns such as “thing in itself” and “end in itself.” I argue that the basic use of “an sich selbst” in Kant’s German is as a sentence adverb, which has the role of modifying subject-predicate combinations, rather than either subject or predicate on their own. Expressions of the form “S is P an sich selbst” mean roughly that S is P (...) ‘in its own right’ or without some further ‘condition’. Accordingly, “an sich selbst” should not be treated as forming complex nouns. This analysis has significant consequences for the interpretation of “thing in itself” in particular, for it implies that the latter is not a complete nominal expression. Instead, one must treat ‘an sich selbst’ as expressing how some S is a ‘thing’, looking to the wider sentential context. I conclude with a brief account of the new significance granted to the concept of a ‘thing’ (Ding) according to the present interpretation. (shrink)

This article focuses on Sartre’s concept of the practicoinert in his major work A Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1. I first show the progression from Sartre’s previous conception of in-itself to his concept of practico-inert. I identify five different layers of the practico-inert: human-made objects, language, ideas, social objects and class being. I show how these practico-inert layers form the possibilities for our subjectivity and how this represents a change from Sartre’s view of in-itself in Being and Nothingness. I (...) then explore the relationship of freedom to the practico-inert and how Sartre argues that the practico-inert places limits on our freedom. Lastly, I argue that despite the pessimistic picture Sartre paints in CDR, the practico-inert has the potential to both limit and enhance our freedom. I appeal to Sartre’s post-CDR essay ‘A Plea for Intellectuals’ to argue that a Sartrean account of progress requires the utilisation of the practico-inert. (shrink)

The concept of being in a position to know is an increasingly popular member of the epistemologist’s toolkit. Some have used it as a basis for an account of propositional justification. Others, following Timothy Williamson, have used it as a vehicle for articulating interesting luminosity and anti-luminosity theses. It is tempting to think that while knowledge itself does not obey any closure principles, being in a position to know does. For example, if one knows both p and ‘If p then (...) q’, but one dies or gets distracted before being able to perform a modus ponens on these items of knowledge and for that reason one does not know q, one is still plausibly in a position to know q. It is also tempting to suppose that, while one does not know all logical truths, one is nevertheless in a position to know every logical truth. Putting these temptations together, we get the view that being in a position to know has a normal modal logic. A recent literature has begun to investigate whether it is a good idea to give in to these twin temptations—in particular the first one. That literature assumes very naturally that one is in a position to know everything one knows and that one is not in a position to know things that one cannot know. It has succeeded in showing that, given the modest closure condition that knowledge is closed under conjunction elimination, being a position to know cannot satisfy the so-called K axiom of normal modal logics. In this paper, we explore the question of the normality of the logic of being in a position to know in a more far-reaching and systematic way. Assuming that being in a position to know entails the possibility of knowing and that knowing entails being in a position to know, we can demonstrate radical failures of normality without assuming any closure principles at all for knowledge. Moreover, the failure of normality cannot be laid at the door of the K axiom for knowledge, since the standard principle NEC of necessitation also fails for being in a position to know. After laying out and explaining our results, we briefly survey the coherent options that remain. (shrink)

This article offers the first systematic investigation of the linguistic forms in which Kant expresses his transcendental idealism since Gerold Prauss’ seminal book Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich. It is argued that Prauss’ own argument for the claim that ‘in itself’ is an adverbial expression that standardly modifies verbs of philosophical reflection is flawed and that there is hence very poor exegetical evidence for so-called ‘methodological two-aspect’ interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism. A comprehensive investigation of Kant’s adverbial (...) uses of ‘in itself’ rather reveals that there are various groups of verbs that ‘in itself’ modifies, which can more or less all be reduced to a standard use in which ‘in itself’ modifies verbs of predicative being such as the copula. It is also discussed how these findings can be accommodated by the two main alternative kinds of interpretations, that is, two-object and ontological two-aspect interpretations. (shrink)

Theories about the dawn of "principality of existence" or "principality of quiddity" stand in the realm of "confusion of term and concept fallacy". It is true that asalat as a term appeared for the first time in Mirdamad's works such as Taqwim al-Iman to mention the problem of principality of existence, but we should notice that its meaning as a concept can be tracked in Suhrawadi's works. If by the term asalat we mean having real extension, as it is used (...) in Mulla Sadra's work, we can, without any doubt, claim that Suhrawardi is among the proponents of principality of quiddity. Proposing the distinction of existence and quiddity by al-Faraby and Avicenna, some philosophers regarded this distinction as a real one. But Suhrawardi, by presenting about nine arguments, claimed that existence remains as a mental predicate and does not have any real extension. He made use of his theory in the realm of the Necessary Being through Itself. Avicenna had claimed that the essence of God is His Existence but Suhrawardi denied this Avicennan Peripatetic principle. He said that existence has no real extension and so the essence of God cannot be existence. He claimed that here iniyyah means indivisible life. It seems that Mulla Sadra's arguments for demonstrating the principality of existence posed versus Suhrawardi's arguments for the mental nature of existence. (shrink)

The presence of a human being/organism—a living human ‘whole’, with the defining tendency to promote its own welfare—has value in itself, as do the functions which compose it. Life is inseparable from health, since without some degree of healthy functionality the living whole would not exist. The value of life differs both within a single life and between lives. As with any other form of human flourishing, the value of life-and-health must be distinguished from the moral importance of human beings: (...) less fulfilled means not less important morally, but more in need of being fulfilled. That said, to say that life and health has value is not to say exactly what—if anything—that value requires by way of active promotion at a given time. Many factors must be taken into account in making health care decisions, even if the worth of all lives, and the dignity of all human beings, must in every case be acknowledged. (shrink)

Drawing on American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce›s »phaneroscopy«, and particularly on its point of disjunction from more orthodox phenomenology concerning the status and necessity of reception, this article argues that today’s databases phenomenalize the aesthetic dimension of worldly sensibility. Although database phenomenalizing explicitly substitutes for the phenomenalizing performed by consciousness on standard accounts of phenomenology, the important point is that it does so without severing contact with human experience. What is ultimately at stake here is the status of the phenomenon (...) itself: insofar as it hosts the self-manifestation of the world without necessarily manifesting it to anyone or anything, the phenomenon can be disjoined from its subjective anchoring in consciousness (or any of its avatars) and ascribed to the operationality of worldly sensibility itself. Gestützt auf die sog. »phaneroscopy« des amerikanischen Philosophen Charles Sanders Peirce und insbesondere auf ihre Differenz zur orthodoxeren Phänomenologie in Bezug auf den Status und die Notwendigkeit der Rezeption argumentiert dieser Beitrag, dass die heutigen Datenbanken die ästhetische Dimension weltlicher Sinnlichkeit phänomenalisieren. Auch wenn die Phänomenalisierung durch Datenbanken diejenige durch Bewusstsein explizit ersetzt, bleibt es bedeutsam, dass dies geschieht, ohne den Kontakt mit menschlicher Erfahrung abzubrechen. Worum es letztlich geht, ist der Status des Phänomens selbst: Insoweit es die Selbst-Manifestation der Welt beherbergt, ohne sie notwendigerweise für irgendjemand oder irgendetwas zu manifestieren, kann das Phänomen von seiner subjektiven Verankerung im Bewusstsein (oder jedem seiner Avatare) gelöst werden und der Operationalität weltlicher Sensibilität selbst zugeschrieben werden. (shrink)

So far as his critical employment of the concept is concerned, the thing in itself is not a second object. The thing in itself is given in its appearances; it is the object which appears. In other words, the object is taken in a twofold sense. There is no contradiction, Kant maintained, in supposing that one and the same will is, as an appearance, determined by the laws of nature and yet, as a thing in itself, is free. He never (...) meant to hold that the self of the theoretical reason and the self of the practical reason are two separate and distinct entities. It is one and the same object considered from two perspectives. In this sense the thing in itself is purely a limiting concept. So far as the critical method is concerned, objects are always considered from a particular and limited perspective, e.g. science, morality, art, et cetera. This is the central meaning of his theory of appearances. In this employment of the concept it is completely meaningless to speak of the thing in itself as a cause of appearances. The critical distinction between appearances and things in themselves is not intended to be a distinction between subjective sense data and public objects, but between public objects as given according to two or more modes. This involves no extension of the category of causality beyond appearances. Moreover, it is not open to the charge that an unknown object is given the attribute of existence. The thing in itself is known as an appearance. By definition that is the only way that it could be known. To say that we know only appearances and not things in themselves is to state an obvious tautology, namely that objects are known only as they are known. (shrink)

It is argued that in beginning ``being and nothingness'' with the absolute ontological distinction between the for-itself (pure nothingness) and the in-itself (pure being), sartre makes it impossible to understand how the phenomenological account of experience which comes later in the work could be correct. attention is paid almost entirely to the critique of sartre implicit in the chapter of merleau-ponty's ``phenomenology of perception'' titled 'the cogito'. merleau-ponty's divergence from sartre is seen to center around his critique of sartre on (...) the nature of the in-itself, the world, and the pre-reflective 'cogito'. (shrink)

The general attitude towards Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is rather fiercely critical and at times even tendentious. It seems that the figure of Schopenhauer as an irredeemably flawed, stubborn, and contradictory philosopher serves as a leitmotiv among scholars. Schopenhauer’s identification of the thing-in-itself with the will continues to be a thorny puzzle in the secondary literature, and it presents perhaps the greatest challenge to Schopenhauer scholars. Schopenhauer borrows the term ‘thing-in-itself’ from Immanuel Kant, who uses it to refer to a reality (...) that is distinct from what appears to us, and hence unknowable. Despite the fact that several interpretations have been offered to make sense of Schopenhauer’s identification of the thing-in-itself with the will, there appears to be no consensus about how to interpret this identification as well as his understanding of the term ‘thing-in-itself’. Unlike the other interpretations, the interpretation that I offer here distinguishes between three distinct and mutually incompatible views that Schopenhauer formulates about the thing-in-itself. I argue that it is not only difficult to give a coherent, consistent account of Schopenhauer’s position, but also not worth trying, because such an endeavor comes at the cost of ignoring the textual richness and depth of thought that Schopenhauer’s works offer. (shrink)

In Being in Time I articulate and defend a theory of diachronic identity based on a new account of the relation between objects and time. Traditionally, the relation between objects and time has been considered to be a direct one, analogous to the one they have with space, and accordingly called location. In my dissertation, I argue that this locative approach is metaphysically problematic insofar as it commits us to questionable consequences about the nature of objects or about the metaphysics (...) of location. In particular, the locative approach, depending on how it is specified, requires that objects do not persist, have multiple exact locations, divide into temporal parts, or are extended simples. In place of this locative approach, and drawing from an analysis of our temporal semantics, I put forward an account of the relation between objects and time – transcendentism, to give it a name – according to which this relation is indirect, and has to be analysed in terms of the events in which objects participate. Accordingly, for a object to exist at a time is for it to participate in an event which is located at that time. As such, transcendentism is not yet a theory of persistence – insofar as objects may be in time without persisting, i.e. by existing at an instant alone –. Transcendentism is an open option for every kind of persistence theorist – be one an endurantist, a perdurantist, or an exdurantist –. However, the combination of transcendentism and endurantism may reveal itself to be a semantically grounded and metaphysically fruitful choice. Semantically grounded, insofar as the analysis of our temporal semantics speaks against the locative approach and in favour of endurantism. Metaphysically fruitful, insofar as it allows us to frame a theory of persistence that avoids all questionable consequences mentioned before – a theory according to which objects persist without having temporal parts and without being extended simples or multilocated entities. The dissertation consists of four self-standing chapters in which (i) I systematize and highlight the problematicity of the locative approach, (ii) I put forward and articulate the transcendentist alternative, (iii) I develop a suitable metaphysics of events, and (iv) I reply to five objections that have been moved against the view both in official communications and in print. (shrink)

Kant emphasizes that moral philosophy must be divided into two parts, a metaphysics of morals, and an empirical application to individuals, which Kant calls 'moral anthropology'. But Kant gives humanity (die Menschheit) a prominent role even in the purely rational part of ethics – for example, one formulation of the categorical imperative is a demand to treat humanity as an end in itself. This paper argues that the only concepts of humanity suited to play such a role are the rational (...) idea of humanity, and the rational ideal derived from this idea, which Kant discusses in Critique of Practical Reason and other texts. (shrink)

This chapter [of the edited volume, A Companion to Ancient Philosophy] examines the shift in Plato’s account of the eidē or ‘forms’ from the Republic to the Parmenides. Forms in the Republic are characterized in terms of perfection, purity, and changelessness, with the form being an ultimate explanatory principle for being-X. Participants, while being-X, are also capable of not-being-X, either through qualitative change and coming-to-be, or through external changes in perspective or opinion, by which they “appear [φανήσεται]” not-X (R. V.479a7). (...) The form is treated as prior to participant and as prior to mixture with what would deny what it is. It is intrinsically changeless and not subject to changes in appearance. -/- In the Parmenides, the account of form shifts to accommodate the types of admixture demanded for combination with and division from other forms. In the Fifth Hypothesis, forms are subject to determinate “bonds of being and not-being,” which permits the form to present itself as an object of discursive knowing, being-X, -Y, and -Z, and not-being not-X, not-Y, and not-Z. Forms are still treated as pure and perfect, but now with the power of gathering together intelligible bonds of being and not-being. Thus, in the Parmenides, forms are the gathering source and the gathered terms subject to the admixture; they are that by which true speech is explained. In this chapter, I argue that the “turning of the soul from becoming to truth and being” (R. VII.525c) announced in the Republic is partially fulfilled through the account of veridical speech in the Parmenides. (shrink)

Today it is a rare journal article that does not begin with the words "on the threshold of the third millennium." Someone might say, "What do you, philosophers, have to do with the swift flow of time? You're always talking about the eternal!" But he would not be right. First, although philosophy reflects on the eternal, it exists in time. Like any intellectual community, philosophy has its beginning and history; indeed, a history full of dramatic and even tragic pages, including (...) death at the stake for one's ideas, the irreconcilable confrontation of systems, the blind disregard of some thinkers in their lifetime and the undeserved fame of others, and so on. And what will the future bring? This is a question raised by philosophers "on the threshold of the third millennium," as they ponder the fate and paths of their activity. Second, the central philosophical problem is the problem of Being and man's place in it; hence, the question what the philosophy of the twenty-first century will be like is the question of how we shall represent being itself, man himself, the meaning of human life. Can we today at least name the most general features of the future philosophy? To answer this question I have tried to compare two past philosophical systems—I. Kant's and A. Schopenhauer's. And the reason is this both philosophers are one in their passionate desire to find the Truth for humanity and the individual and, although they begin their reflections from the same positions, they end up with results that are quite incompatible. But both poles of philosophy—the rationalist and the irrationalist—have proved equally valid for humanity. And I think that these two systems determined one of the paths of philosophy in the twentieth century that will continue into the twenty-first. (shrink)

Not only that, but the very attempt to do so is impossible of attainment, for the human mind cannot, even in pure thought, reach the central observatory of the absolute looker-on, for the startlingly simple reason that it is only by participating in reality that it exists at all. A system is a spectacle which is there for a disengaged mind, a mind which is not itself enclosed within the panorama it beholds. For the human subject such a disengagement is (...) unthinkable. Where its possibility seems plausible --for pure reason--it is only because the systematizer neglects the one element which can never be included within his structure: his own act of thinking. Our thought does not lie open to our gaze-we cannot stand outside it and treat it as an object, and it is only the objectified which is systematizable. Because I am altogether engaged in being, no merely "objective" judgment upon it is possible. (shrink)

In the topological semantics for modal logic, S4 is well-known to be complete for the rational line, for the real line, and for Cantor space: these are special cases of S4’s completeness for any dense-in-itself metric space. The construction used to prove completeness can be slightly amended to show that S4 is not only complete, but also strongly complete, for the rational line. But no similarly easy amendment is available for the real line or for Cantor space and the question (...) of strong completeness for these spaces has remained open, together with the more general question of strong completeness for any dense-in-itself metric space. In this paper, we prove that S4 is strongly complete for any dense-in-itself metric space. (shrink)

This paper investigates the argument that substantiates Nietzsche's refusal of teh Kantian concept of thing in itself. As Maudmarie Clark points out, Nietzsche dismisses this notion because he views it as self-contradictory. The main concern of the paper will be to account for this position. In particular, the two main theses defended here are that the argument underlying Nietzsche's claim is that the concept of thing in itself amounts to the inconsistent idea of a propertyless thing and that this argument (...) is a sound one. Finally, I will show that the reading proposed allows a deflationary response to the objection that Nietzsche's will to power is simply a new version of the post-Kantian thing in itself.Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die Argumentation, die Nietzsches Zurückweisung des kantischen Begriffs des Dings an sich untermauert. Wie Maudmarie Clark betont, berwift Nietzsche diesen Begriff als selbstwidersprüchlich. Hauptanliegen des Aufsatzes ist, dies deutlich zu machen. Insbesondere werden folgende zwei Thesen vertrenen: dass das Nietzsches Position zugrundeliegende Argument darin besteht, der Begriff des Dings an sich sei der inkonsistente Begriff eines eigenschaftslosen Dings; dass dieses Argument stichhaltig ist. Schließlich wird gezeigt, dass diese Interpretation eine delfationäre Antwort auf den Einwand ermöglicht, Nietzsches Wille zur Macht sei einfach eine neue Variante des postkantischen Dings an sich. (shrink)

Writers like Christine Korsgaard and Allen Wood understand Kant's idea of rational nature as an end in itself as a commitment to a substantive value. This makes it hard for them to explain the supposed equivalence between the universal law and humanity formulations of the categorical imperative, since the former does not appear to assert any substantive value. Nor is it easy for defenders of value-based readings to explain Kant's claim that the law-giving nature of practical reason makes all beings (...) with practical reason regard the idea of a rational nature as an end in itself. This article seeks to replace these value-based readings with a reading of the idea of rational nature as an end that fits better with the overall argument of the Groundwork. (shrink)

In his comments, Daniel Nicholls succeeds in saying more than a few things that I had scarcely realized about the ways in which I write and, therefore, of what I tend to take for granted. He sees in what I write a capacity ‘to utilize the “obvious” whilst at the same time saying something about it.’ Not every philosopher would take that as a compliment. Many philosophers and philosophies have quite other pretensions – to transcend the illusions of common thought (...) and perception towards a higher plane of metaphysical philosophy – or of physics and mathematics. I find that Nicholls’s remark both compliments and complements my work, however. The use of everyday language and example to disturb that everyday world to ‘bring it into high relief’ as Nicholls puts it – is a significant part of philosophical method. To juxtapose the esoteric language of metaphysics (being-in-itself, being-for-itself, being-for-others) with the everyday (what there is, living for oneself, living for others) is to haunt the everyday with a metaphysical imagination even as it reveals what metaphysics had erased from the coinage of common words. (I am thinking, of course, of Derrida’s remarks about Anatole France’s satirical view of philosophical language as coinage from which all marking has been erased). (shrink)

This work is ''a systematic ontology.'' Ontology is the study of being as such, and a systematic ontology is an account of the most fundamental ways of being something or other - of what they are and of how they are related to each other. The questions it pursues are not primarily about what causes things, but about what things are or consist in - though causal questions cannot be totally avoided. The title of the work, What Is, and What (...) Is in Itself, marks the most important distinction in ways of being. What is includes everything there is, but not everything there is included in what is in itself. The first five chapters of the book define and examine the ways of being: in chapters 1 and 2, being actual or existing, or even just being something without existing or being actual; in chapter 3, being an intentional object, and perhaps a merely intentional object; in chapter 4, relations between things and their properties; and in chapter 5, being a thing in itself. Chapter 6 discusses whether only conscious beings are things in themselves, and suggests an affirmative answer. Chapter 7 discusses the epistemology of ontology. Chapters 8 and 9 discuss issues about thisness and identity. And chapters 10 and 11 discuss mainly occasionalist and panentheist answers to questions about the causal unity of the universe. (shrink)

In this thesis I assess the role of well-being in ethics. In order to do so I reply to a threefold charge against the importance of well-being in ethics. In What We Owe to Each Other Scanlon argues that the concept of well-being plays very little role in the thinking of an agent; that no unified theory of well-being can be found; that welfarism is false. In Part I, I argue that the concept of well-being does play an explanatorily and (...) justificatorily important role in the thinking of a rational agent. I arrive at this conclusion by distinguishing levels of thinking activity as well as by considering the implicit rather than explicit role well-being plays in our deliberation. I conclude this part of the thesis by illustrating the relation between the idea of well-being, its parts and its sources. In Part II, I put forward a unified theory of well-being and I do so by taking on board with a slight modification Scanlon's own buck-passing account of value. I argue that something is a part of a person's good if, and only if, there is reason for this person to desire it. I claim that this account does not fall prey to the 'scope problem'. I also discuss a number of different though connected issues such as the defence of the claim that well-being is itself a normative notion and issues concerning the various parts of well-being. In Part III, I begin to sketch the normative role of well-being both first-personally and impartially. With Scanlon, I agree that welfarism is false. Yet, I argue in favour of a moderate form of welfarism, a view that takes a positive function of each individual's well-being to afford the ultimate criterion of practical reason. (shrink)

En la presente investigación se reflexionará sobre la guerra y su naturaleza en el contexto del sistema filosófico de Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, estableciendo como su fundamento ontológico la categoría del ser-para-sí o autoafirmación, aquella necesidad de toda autoconciencia que pretende ser libre, y que se alcanza a través del proceso dialéctico del reconocimiento. Se contrastará esta concepción con la clásica noción de guerra justa planteada por Tomás de Aquino, examinando el lugar que la negatividad del mal tiene en ambos (...) sistemas metafísicos, con el fin de determinar si es posible entender la eticidad de ambas guerras en un mismo sentido. (shrink)

This book examines the unique views of philosopher Jacob Sigismund Beck, a student of Immanuel Kant who devoted himself to an exploration of his teacher's doctrine and to showing that Kant's transcendental idealism is, contra to the common view, both internally consistent and is not a form of subjective idealism. In his attempt to explain away certain apparent contradictions found in Kant's system, Beck put forward a new reading of Kant's critical theory, a view, which came to be known as (...) the Standpunctslehre, the Doctrine of the Standpoint. Author Lior Nitzan reconstructs, step by step, the historical development of Beck's doctrine. He shows how Beck's unique view is drastically different from that of his contemporaries and presents the relevance of Beck to contemporary debates about the proper interpretation of Kant's notion of objectivity, the refutation of idealism and the role of the thing in itself in Kant's transcendental idealism. In doing so, Nitzan presents a defense of Beck's radical perspective of Kant's theory and claims that some of Kant's negative responses to it may in fact be due more to the adversary academic environment at the time than to Kant's true, well considered, opinion. Jacob Sigismund Beck's Standpunctslehre challenges the two dominant schools in the interpretation of Kant's transcendental idealism-the "two world" and the "two aspect" view. It presents a new way of understanding Kant's transcendental idealism, according to which the thing in itself plays no positive role in relation to the possibility of experience. Moreover, it claims that eliminating the thing in itself as the ultimate object of knowledge is not to admit idealism but in fact is the only way to consistently uphold realism. In addition, the book also addresses the question why, assuming that the proposed interpretation is correct, Kant had chosen not to make his true intentions clear. (shrink)

Writers like Christine Korsgaard and Allen Wood understand Kant's idea of rational nature as an end in itself as a commitment to a substantive value. This makes it hard for them to explain the supposed equivalence between the universal law and humanity formulations of the categorical imperative, since the former does not appear to assert any substantive value. Nor is it easy for defenders of value-based readings to explain Kant's claim that the law-giving nature of practical reason makes all beings (...) with practical reason regard the idea of a rational nature as an end in itself. This article seeks to replace these value-based readings with a reading of the idea of rational nature as an end that fits better with the overall argument of the Groundwork. (shrink)

Because of the difficulty posed by the contrast between the search for truth and truth itself, Michael Polanyi believes that we must alter the foundation of epistemology to include as essential to the very nature of mind, the kind of groping that constitutes the recognition of a problem. This collection of essays, assembled by Marjorie Grene, exemplifies the development of Polanyi's theory of knowledge which was first presented in Science, Faith, and Society and later systematized in Personal Knowledge. Polanyi believes (...) that the dilemma of the modern mind arises from the peculiar relation between the positivist claim for total objectivity in scientific knowledge and the unprecedented moral dynamism characterizing the social and political aspirations of the last century. The first part of Knowing and Being deals with this theme. Part two develops Polanyi's idea that centralization is incompatible with the life of science as well as his views on the role of tradition and authority in science. The essays on tacit knowing in Part Three proceed directly from his preoccupation with the nature of scientific discovery and reveal a pervasive substructure of all intelligent behavior. Polanyi believes that all knowing involves movement from internal clues to external evidence. Therefore, to explain the process of knowing, we must develop a theory of the nature of living things in general, including an account of that aspect of living things we call "mind." Part Four elaborates upon this theme. (shrink)

Norman Austin has organized his analysis of classical Greek myths around Lacan's dichotomy between Being and the meanings imposed upon Being by culturally determined signifiers. The primary signifiers in myth, as projections of contradictory meanings, impel human consciousness in contradictory directions: toward heroic self-realization, on the one hand, and into the fear, guilt, and despair resulting from failure, on the other. The gods both reveal and occlude that which they signify—the signified; ultimately, Being itself. Austin includes one chapter on the (...) father's ghost in Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, and another on Albert Camus's _The Stranger_, as examples of the power of mythical archetypes to reveal and occlude Being, even when the apparatus of gods has been excluded. Despite their pessimism, ancient myths also affirm that the paradoxes are not insoluble. Austin concludes by outlining the profile of the Universal Self intimated in myth, religion, and philosophy as the joint venture of the world realized in consciousness, consciousness realized in consciousness, and consciousness realized in the world. (shrink)

One formulation of the Categorical Imperative tells us to treat humanity as an end in itself. It has become common to think that ‘humanity’ (die Menschheit) here refers to some minimal power of rationality that is necessarily possessed by any rational agent, but I argue that this common reading is misguided. Instead, ‘humanity’ refers to a good will, the will of a being who is committed to moral principles. This good will reading of ‘humanity’ is not only suggested by passages (...) in which Kant specifically discusses humanity, but also is more consistent with the main ideas of Kant's ethics. (shrink)

Kant’s doctrine of the “transcendental object” has always puzzled interpreters. On the one hand, he says that the transcendental object is the object to which we relate our representations. On the other hand, he declares the transcendental object to be unknowable and identifies it with the thing in itself. I argue that this poses a problem that Kant only in the B edition of the Critique solves in a satisfactory manner. According to this solution, we ascribe sensible predicates to things (...) in themselves, but only insofar as they appear. I conclude that this could motivate a phenomenalist account of Kant’s idealism, but one that gives due weight to the role of things in themselves. (shrink)

Kant has been the target of innumerable objections, and yet his thought involves correct scientific aperçus, as well as viable ethical ideas, which are increasingly embraced in the Global Village. Kant's critical philosophy involves profound puzzles. In the first Critique, a spatial force field is identified as an a priori and yet material condition of experience . In the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Good Will is of singular but odd importance , and the Categorical Imperative has a (...) noumenal, yet comprehensible status, and involves two starkly different "versions" . To solve these puzzles requires us to unify and contextualize Kant. The critical philosophy is a piece of a larger philosophical whole—the ideas Kant advanced before and after the 1780s. Kant's overall thought needs to be understood as a product of the pantheist Enlightenment, which was shaped by the Confucian Classics. In the first section, I paint a portrait of Kant's thing in itself. I speculate that it is an interactive bond of forces in space, governing nature; and I contend that this structural-dynamic perspective may not only unify Kant's insights but also supply an ontological narrative that integrates scientific knowledge today. In the second section, I interpret the historical record. I argue that the structural-dynamic perspective was a driving idea of the early Enlightenment; that this idea arrived from China through the Rites Controversy; and that this idea, mediated by others, informed Kant. In the third section, I examine Kant's first book, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces . I argue that this exotic idea is the core of his theory of dynamics, and that the key features of his theory of dynamics withstood the test of time. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to show that a particular interpretation of the end in itself, which is widely accepted in research on Kant’s critical philosophy, is at least worth dis­cussing. I refer to the interpretation of the end in itself as a so-called existing end, i.e., something for the sake of which we perform an action but which we do not realize – sim­ply because it already exists. As I will argue, this interpretation does not take into (...) account a crucial aspect of the end in itself, i.e., its property of being an end. Being an end, the end in itself must fit into the Kantian general definition of a practical end and must therefore be something to be realized. (shrink)

Reviews the book, Being-in-the-world: A commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time by Hubert L. Dreyfus . The publication of Dreyfus' Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division 1 proves an occasion for considerable disappointment, as it reinforces and in some ways even deepens previous misreadings of Heidegger. Dreyfus has concentrated his study almost entirely on the first 200 pages of Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time, first published in 1927. These are the pages that constitute the first division (...) of the first part of Heidegger's first major text—a relatively small section devoted to what Heidegger calls in the division title a "preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein." That title itself should sufficiently indicate the provisional character of the analysis contained therein. But Dreyfus overlooks that explicit characterization and interprets what little of the text he does address as if the remainder of the book were not only superfluous, but virtually unintelligible. Dreyfus begins his book by claiming that "as a first step in his project [Heidegger] attempts to work out a fresh analysis of what it means to be human." This claim is extremely misleading and the reason is twofold: it is true only in a very limited sense ; and even in the limited sense in which it is true, what Dreyfus fails to tell his readers is that Heidegger's analysis is never completed and therefore cannot lend itself to even indirect application without considerable care and much more than a passing understanding of Heidegger's work. In fact, if we are speaking with strict regard to the question of what it means to be human, we must in the end say that Heidegger's analysis of that question is never even begun! The relevance of all of this for psychology is that very little if anything in Heidegger's preparatory analysis of Dasein can be directly adopted by any of the applied sciences. A considerable amount of it may prove to be indirectly helpful , but only if one is willing to use considerable caution and develop much more than a passing acquaintance with Heidegger's work in particular and phenomenology in general. Like Dreyfus, I believe the human sciences can learn a great deal from Heidegger, but unlike Dreyfus I believe that most of it will be indirectly applicable, a lot of it will be found in texts other than Being and Time, and Dreyfus' Being-in-the-World will lamentably not be the book they can learn it from. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Democracy is shown to be a non-instrumental good-in-itself (as well as an instrument in securing other goods) by extrapolation from the Aristotelian premise that humans are political animals. Because humans are by nature language-using, as well as sociable and common-end-seeking beings, the capacity to associate in public decisions is constitutive of the human being-kind. Association in decision is necessary (although insufficient) for happiness in the sense of eudaimonia. A benevolent dictator who satisfied all other conditions of justice, harms her subjects (...) by denying them opportunity to associate in the decisions by which their community is governed. (shrink)

This is a survey article in which I explore some important recent work on the topic in question, Kant’s formula of the end in itself (or “formula of humanity”). I first provide an overview of the formulation, including what the formula seems roughly to be saying, and what Kant’s main argument for it seems to be. I then call the reader’s attention to a variety of questions one might have about the import of and argument for this formula, alluding to (...) some of the works in which philosophers have recently raised or tried to answer these questions. Then, for the bulk of the paper, I focus my discussion on two issues of contention: the identity of the “end in itself” that the formula refers to, and the relation between the value of the end in itself and the value of other ends. I do not attempt to argue for a particular position of my own regarding these issues. Instead, I explain a number of the more interesting or influential recent attempts to answer these questions, compare these approaches in various ways, draw implications from them, and raise concerns about some of them. I also suggest that an important link connects the question about the identity of the end in itself and the question about the relation between the value of the end in itself in relation to the value of other ends: How one answers these questions commits one to a position on the thorny issue of whether, how, and how fully, autonomy is manifested through empirical (not simply pure) practical reason. (shrink)

The paper provides an axiological analysis of the concepts of respect for information and of information dignity from the vantage point provided by Information Ethics and the conceptual paradigm of object-oriented analysis (OOA). The general perspective adopted is that of an ontocentric approach to the philosophy of information ethics, according to which the latter is an expansion of environmental ethics towards a less biologically biased concept of a ‘centre of ethical worth’. The paper attempts to answer the following question: what (...) is the lowest possible common set of attributes which characterises something as intrinsically valuable and an object of respect, and without which something would rightly be considered intrinsically worthless or even positively unworthy and therefore rightly disrespectable in itself? The thesis developed and defended in the paper is that the minimal condition of possibility of an object’s least intrinsic worthiness can be identified with its abstract nature as an information entity. Thus, all entities, interpreted as clusters of information, have a minimal moral worth qua information objects (i.e. qua information), that deserves to be respected. The principles elaborated in the course of the analysis are those of ‘reflective respect’ (A’s respect towards all members of A’s class motivated by A’s respect towards A not qua individual, but qua instantiation of a class of entities), ‘ontic uniformity’ (A’s recognition of A’s membership to the class of information entities) and ‘ontic solidarity’ (A’s recognition of any information entity’s dignity). (shrink)

Since Hume, philosophers of induction have debated the question of whether we have any reason for assuming that nature is uniform. This debate has always presumed that the uniformity hypothesis is itself coherent. In Part 1 of the following I argue that a proper appreciation of Nelson Goodman's so-called grue-green problem1 should lead us to the conclusion that the uniformity hypothesis, under its usual interpretation as a strictly ontological thesis, is incoherent. In Part 2 I argue that further consideration of (...) the grue-green problem leads to the conclusion that certain popular versions of the thesis of physical supervenience/the primacy of physics, under their usual interpretation as strictly ontological theses, are false. In Part 3 I argue that the notions of natural kinds and nature's joints should not be taken as ontologically objective notions but as interest relative. Together Parts 1, 2, and 3 provide support for the Nietzsche-Goodman thesis that philosophers are prone to mistakenly identify as absolute, mind and language independent, features of the world which are in fact only features of a particular discourse, or of the world relative to a particular discourse. (shrink)

This study proposes a double thesis. The first concerns the Logische Untersuchungen itself. We will attempt to show that its statements about the nature of being are inconsistent and that this inconsis tency is responsible for the failure of this work. The second con cerns the Logische Untersuchungen's relation to the Ideen. The latter, we propose, is a response to the failure of the Logische Untersuchungen's ontology. It can thus be understood in terms of a shift in the ontology of (...) the Logische Untersuchungen, a shift motivated by the attempt to overcome the contradictory assertions of the Logische Untersuchungen. In this sense our thesis is that, in the technical meaning that Husserl gives the term, the Logische Untersuchungen and the Ideen can be linked via a "motivated path. " We can, by way of an introduction, clarify our theses by regard ing three elements. The first is the relation of epistemology to ontology. The second is the notion of motivation as Husserl conceives the term. The third is the fundamental distinctions that are to be explained via the notion of motivation. 1. We should begin by remarking that the goal of the Logische Untersuchungen is explicitly epistemological; it is that of answer ing "the cardinal question of epistemology, the question concerning the objectivity of knowledge" (LU, Tub. ed. , I, 8; F. , p. 56V For Husserl, his other questions - i. e. (shrink)