In this paper I link two hitherto disconnected sets of results in the philosophy of emotions and explore their implications for the computational theory of mind. The argument of the paper is that, for just the same reasons that some computationalists have thought that cognition may be a natural kind, so the same can plausibly be argued of emotion. The core of the argument is that emotions are a representation-governed phenomenon and that the explanation of how they figure in (...) behaviour must as such be undertaken in those terms. I conclude with some interdisciplinary reflections in defence of the hypothesis that emotions might be more fundamental in the organization of behaviour than cognition; that, in effect, we may be emoters before we are cognizers . The aim of the paper is: (1) to introduce a number of promising results in philosophical and empirical emotion theory to a wider audience; and (2) to begin the task of organizing those results into a computational theoretical framework. (shrink)

The first anthology to highlight the problems of environmental justice and sustainable development, Reflecting on Nature provides a multicultural perspective on questions of environmental concern, featuring contributions from feminist and minority scholars and scholars from developing countries. Selections examine immediate global needs, addressing some of the most crucial problems we now face: biodiversity loss, the meaning and significance of wilderness, population and overconsumption, and the human use of other animals. Spanning centuries of philosophical, naturalist, and environmental reflection, readings include (...) the work of Aristotle, Locke, Darwin, and Thoreau, as well as that of contemporary, mainstream figures like Bernard Williams, Thomas Hill, Jr., and Jonathan Glover. Works by Val Plumwood, Bill Devall, Murray Bookchin, and John Dryzek comprise a radical ecology section. Featuring insightful section introductions by the editors, this comprehensive and timely collection of philosophical and environmental writing will inform, enlighten, and encourage debate. (shrink)

Articulates an imaginationist solution to the question of how purely instrumental music can be perceived by a listener as having emotional content. Both musicians and laypersons can perceive purely instrumental music without words or an associated story or program as expressing emotions such as happiness and sadness. But how? In this book, Saam Trivedi discusses and critiques the leading philosophical approaches to this question, including formalism, metaphorism, expression theories, arousalism, resemblance theories, and persona theories. Finding these to be inadequate, he (...) advocates an “imaginationist” solution, by which absolute music is not really or literally sad but is only imagined to be so in a variety of ways. In particular, he argues that we as listeners animate the music ourselves, imaginatively projecting life and mental states onto it. Bolstering his argument with empirical data from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science, Trivedi also addresses and explores larger philosophical questions such as the nature of emotions, metaphors, and imagination. Saam Trivedi is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. (shrink)

A superb new edition of Epictetus’s famed handbook on Stoicism—translated by one of the world’s leading authorities on Stoic philosophy Born a slave, the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught that mental freedom is supreme, since it can liberate one anywhere, even in a prison. In How to Be Free, A. A. Long—one of the world’s leading authorities on Stoicism and a pioneer in its remarkable contemporary revival—provides a superb new edition of Epictetus’s celebrated guide to the Stoic philosophy of life (...) along with a selection of related reflections in his Discourses. Freedom, for Epictetus, is not a human right or a political prerogative but a psychological and ethical achievement, a gift that we alone can bestow on ourselves. We can all be free, but only if we learn to assign paramount value to what we can control, treat what we cannot control with equanimity, and view our circumstances as opportunities to do well and be well, no matter what happens to us through misfortune or the actions of other people. How to Be Free features splendid new translations and the original Greek on facing pages, a compelling introduction that sets Epictetus in context and describes the importance of Stoic freedom today, and an invaluable glossary of key words and concepts. The result is an unmatched introduction to this powerful method of managing emotions and handling life’s situations, from the most ordinary to the most demanding. (shrink)

Basic affects reflect the diversity of satisfactions and discomforts that are inherited tools for living from our ancestral past. Affects are neurobiologically-ingrained potentials of the nervous system, which are triggered, moulded and refined by life experiences. Cognitive, information- processing approaches and computational metaphors cannot penetrate foundational affective processes. Animal models allow us to empirically analyse the large-scale neural ensembles that generate emotional-action dynamics that are critically important for creating emotional feelings. Such approaches offer robust neuro-epistemological strategies to decode the fundamental (...) nature of affects in all mammals, including humans, but they remain to be widely implemented. Here I summarize how we can develop a cross-species affective neuroscience that probes the neural nature of emotional affective states by studying the instinctual emotional apparatus of the mammalian body and brain. Affective feelings and emotional actions may reflect the dynamics of the primal viscero-somatic homunculus of SELF-representation. (shrink)

Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology is framed by a comprehensive theory of living nature. Central to this philosophical biology is the claim that animals lack self-consciousness but their awareness of their surroundings is nevertheless anchored in a self. Since Plessner does not explain how this unselfconscious self is manifest to the animal, the warrant for his claim remains unclear. Following Plessner’s construal of human existence as a radically transformed variant of animal life, I argue that he leaves animals’ selfhood unaccounted for (...) because he overlooks the animal precursor of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, which affords a pre-reflective self-awareness. I fill this lacuna by drawing on Kant’s and Plessner’s theories of human feelings, Hans Jonas’s conception of animal emotion,and recent arguments that make evaluative affects fundamental to animal consciousness. Revised along these lines, Plessner’s framework allows us to specify how animal affectivity is transformed in self-conscious human life. (shrink)

The language of emotions is culturally conditioned and a conceptualization of emotions is determined by the value systems adopted in given cultures, as well as by personal experiences in recognizing, valuing, and communicating those emotions. It is believed that sometimes certain emotions have no lexical equivalents in particular languages. Even within one culture and one language, we can observe a gray area in the meaning of terms from this field. This is not surprising, given the subjective perception of the world (...) by each member of a specific community, as well as the multitude of emotions themselves. Although most information about other people’s emotions comes to the recipients through language, talking or writing about them is not simple. Emotions are among the concepts that are not very clearly delineated in our experience and therefore other, more comprehensible concepts, such as spatial orientations or objects, should be used when referring to them. In the novel The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya, emotions are conceptualized and represented for instance by liquids, small animals, natural forces, and substances with some specific taste (sour, bitter, etc.). Our goal was to figure out which emotions and their linguistic instantiations are only typical for the Russian language and which ones would fall in the universal category. The paper will focus on the description and the way emotions are conceptualized from a cognitive linguistic perspective, drawing on CMT (Conceptual Metaphor Theory), conceptual metonymies, and cognitive models. (shrink)

This article is a review of Frans de Waal's book Mama's Lust Hugs. Animal Emotions and what They Tell Us about Ourselves, which was released in Polnad in 2019. The book deals with the problem of animal emotionality. One of the conclusions reached by the author and which was emphasized in the review is the thesis that there is no such thing as unique human emotions that animals would not have. Emotions are universal; they are shared both by humans and (...) animals. The review noted that although the book is interesting, it is not new in terms of content, because it deals with issues that de Waal wrote about many times in his earlier publications. On the other hand, thanks to the collection and inclusion in one book of the issues related to emotionality in animals, the publication can be a good starting point for reflection not only on animals, but also on humans and their place in the world. It puts the reader in facing the question of human nature. For this reason, what has been tried to show in the review, Frans de Waal's book is a good example of how scientific issues lead to philosophical reflections. (shrink)

This article explores a German philosophy of metaphor, which proposed a close link between the body and the mind as the basis for metaphor, debunked the view that metaphor is just a decorative rhetorical device and questioned the distinction between the literal and the figurative. This philosophy of metaphor developed at the intersection between a reflection on language and thought and a reflection on the nature of beauty in aesthetics. Thinkers such as Giambattista Vico, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (...) Jean Paul and others laid the foundations for this philosophy and it was successively refined by Gustav Gerber, Alfred Biese and Friedrich Nietzsche. It influenced in its turn in various ways the linguistic study of metaphor and the psychology of metaphor as elaborated, for instance, by a lesser-known American scholar, Gertrude Buck. All these thinkers contributed to a philosophy and psychology of the metaphoric according to which metaphors are not only nice, but necessary for the structure and growth of human thought and language. Obvious parallels between this 19th-century philosophy of metaphor and the 20th-century theory of metaphor developed by Lakoff and his followers are examined throughout. (shrink)

The idea of human cruelty to animals so consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello in her later years that she can no longer look another person in the eye: humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world. Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother’s lecturing on animal rights at the college where he teaches. His colleagues (...) resist her argument that human reason is overrated and that the inability to reason does not diminish the value of life; his wife denounces his mother’s vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority. At the dinner that follows her first lecture, the guests confront Costello with a range of sympathetic and skeptical reactions to issues of animal rights, touching on broad philosophical, anthropological, and religious perspectives. Painfully for her son, Elizabeth Costello seems offensive and flaky, but—dare he admit it?—strangely on target. In this landmark book, Nobel Prize–winning writer J. M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello’s own sense of mortality, her compassion for animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family. In his fable, presented as a Tanner Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep human conviction—Coetzee brings all these elements into play. As in the story of Elizabeth Costello, the Tanner Lecture is followed by responses treating the reader to a variety of perspectives, delivered by leading thinkers in different fields. Coetzee’s text is accompanied by an introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann and responsive essays by religion scholar Wendy Doniger, primatologist Barbara Smuts, literary theorist Marjorie Garber, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation. Together the lecture-fable and the essays explore the palpable social consequences of uncompromising moral conflict and confrontation. (shrink)

Africa is often considered by the westerners as a continent of emotional and sentimental nature and as a result lacking in the criticality that would make the people philosophical. However, it must be remembered that civilisation has its cradle in Africa, precisely in Egypt. It must also be noted that most of the important figures in the world history as well as the biblical history in one way or the other travelled to Africa, for instance, the Ionian philosophers, Moses, (...) Jesus Christ and a host of others. Hence, they were undoubtedly influenced by the Egyptian thought. The blatant denial and the unbearable unwillingness of the western world to accept this crystalline fact is what spurred the researcher to carry out this study. The writer, therefore primarily employed the reflective and analytical methods to achieve the purpose of the study, that the Greek Philosophy has its origins in Africa. (shrink)

Taking as our starting point Plato'smetaphor of the doctor as philosopher we reflect on some aspects of the epistemological status of medicine. The framework to this paper is the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer which shows the paradoxical nature of Western medicine in choosing the body-object as its investigative starting point, while in actual fact dealing with subjects. Gadamer proposes a model of medicine as the art of understanding and dialogue, which is capable of bringing together its various constituent parts, i.e. (...) knowledge, knowing how to do and knowing how to be, in medical practice and in the physician'straining. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the dyadic figure of the physician as Platonic “master of the living totality” and wounded healer, capable of activating the patient'sself-healing capacity. (shrink)

In their work The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada 1850-1 950, Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott consider that the Canadian way of doing philosophy uses reason in an accommodationist manner. I propose in this thesis that William Lyall's Intellect, the Emotions and the Moral Nature represents a splendid example of the accomodationist use of reason. The Maritimes philosopher advances the idea that emotions have a cognitive value, a claim which I support by trying (...) to put Lyall's ideas in a modern framework offered by French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. Latent in Lyall's work can also be found a theory of metaphor which I try to revive with the help of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Thus, following Lyall, emotions and reason are always in a balance and they work together in order to give us a more consistent and fuller grasp of reality. (shrink)

Taking as our starting point Plato'smetaphor of the doctor as philosopher we reflect on some aspects of the epistemological status of medicine. The framework to this paper is the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer which shows the paradoxical nature of Western medicine in choosing the body-object as its investigative starting point, while in actual fact dealing with subjects. Gadamer proposes a model of medicine as the art of understanding and dialogue, which is capable of bringing together its various constituent parts, i.e. (...) knowledge, knowing how to do and knowing how to be, in medical practice and in the physician'straining. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the dyadic figure of the physician as Platonic master of the living totality and wounded healer, capable of activating the patient'sself-healing capacity. (shrink)

This article examines the ideological implications of different interpretations of the statement "Humans are animals." It contrasts theories that regard humans as literally sophisticated animals with those who interpret the statement metaphorically. Sociobiological theories, bolstered by metaphors in the dictionary of English emphasize competitiveness and aggression as features shared by humans and nonhuman animals. Other theories emphasize symbiosis and cooperation. Some of these theories are prescriptive—metaphor patterns in English reflect the strong tendency to regard animal behavior as something for humans (...) to avoid. Conversely, sociobiologists suggest it is natural and right to behave like animals, the naturalistic fallacy. Other cultural theories suggest that the statement is only metaphorical; our differences from animals are what make us most human. The article notes the tendency to metaphorically project the values and structures of current human society onto the animals being studied, serving the interest of those who, in power, benefit from the status quo. (shrink)

Open Humanities Press, Living Books About Life Series.

Expressions belonging to the lexical fields of medicine and psychology recur repeatedly throughout Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writings since the 1930s. He uses therapeutic vocabulary mostly in the context of metaphilosophical reflections, i.e. reflections about the activity of philosophizing. But how are we to understand such expressions? Even though some interpreters admit their metaphorical nature, the methodological background of using figurative language has hitherto been neglected concerning this matter. Here, I argue that Wittgensteinian therapy is what G. Lakoff and M. Johnson have (...) termed a “structural metaphor”. Thus we do not only obtain a better understanding of Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy, but also of the role metaphor use plays within his methodology. I shall try to show that he uses therapeutic metaphors (akin to pictorial elements) as argumentative and epistemological devices and thereby investigates the philosophically problematic expression ‘philosophy’ grammatically. (shrink)

Traditionally, analytic philosophers writing on aesthetics have given short shrift to nature. The last thirty years, however, have seen a steady growth of interest in this area. The essays and books now available cover central philosophical issues concerning the nature of the aesthetic and the existence of norms for aesthetic judgement. They also intersect with important issues in environmental philosophy. More recent contributions have opened up new topics, such as the relationship between natural sound and music, the beauty of (...) animals, and the aesthetics of gardens. Using these materials, it is now easy to include a module on the aesthetics of nature as one part of an introductory course on aesthetics, or even to design an entire upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar around the topic. Author Recommends: Don Mannison, 'Comments Stimulated by Reinhardt's Remarks: A Prolegomenon to a Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic'. Environmental Philosophy. Eds. Don Mannison, Michael McRobbie, and Richard Routley (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), 212–16. Readers coming fresh to contemporary debates may find the lack of attention to natural beauty in twentieth-century philosophy somewhat puzzling. This paper, which defends the view that nature cannot be aesthetically appreciated as such, presents this attitude in a particularly pure form. Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). This seminal essay marks the beginning of contemporary discussion of the aesthetics of nature. Many of its ideas and themes continue to reverberate in contemporary debates. Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000). This volume is a collection of Carlson's influential essays on environmental aesthetics. Chapters 4 and 5, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment' and 'Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity', set the agenda for much subsequent discussion in the aesthetics of nature. Chapter 6, 'Nature and Positive Aesthetics', develops and defends the controversial idea that nature, unlike art, is always aesthetically good. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). In this paper, Berleant presents his influential idea of an 'engaged aesthetics' for nature. Yuriko Saito, 'The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 101–11. This article develops Saito's idea that ethical considerations play a critical role in the aesthetics of nature, and presents a novel argument for Positive Aesthetics for nature. Malcolm Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Essays on the Aesthetics of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). This book collects Budd's papers on the aesthetics of nature, which contain important criticisms of Carlson's natural environmental model and the notion of Positive Aesthetics for nature. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). This paper argues for the importance of aesthetic appreciation that emphasizes emotional responses to nature. A philosophically sophisticated and influential treatment by a leading aesthetician. Ned Hettinger, 'Allen Carlson's Environmental Aesthetics and Protection of the Environment'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2005): 57–76. In this essay, an environmental philosopher gives careful and thorough consideration to the place of aesthetic considerations in environmental protection, focusing on Carlson's work. John Andrew Fisher, 'What the Hills are Alive With: In Defense of the Sounds of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 167–79. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Most discussions of nature aesthetics focus on visual experiences; this essay is the first philosophical study of the aesthetics of natural sounds. A nuanced and original paper. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant. 'Introduction: The Aesthetics of Nature'. The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004), 11–42. A comprehensive review of the literature, this essay contains the best available bibliography on the subject. Online Materials: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/environmental-aesthetics/ Environmental Aesthetics: Allen Carlson's entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.aesthetics-online.org/articles/index.php?articles_id=17 Teaching Environmental Aesthetics: Allen Carlson's article on the American Society for Aesthetics Web site. http://www.uqtr.uquebec.ca/AE/Vol_6/ Volume 6 of AE: Canadian Aesthetics Journal /Revue canadienne d'esthetique: Papers by Thomas Heyd and Ira Newman on Allen Carlson's book Aesthetics and the Environment, along with a response from Carlson. http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=400 Paradoxes and Puzzles: Appreciating Gardens and Urban Nature: An essay by Stephanie Ross in the online journal Contemporary Aesthetics. Sample Syllabus for a three-week module in an undergraduate aesthetics course: This three week module can easily be adapted to fit shorter available class time or reduced reading expectations for students. A lighter two-week module, for instance, would drop the Hepburn reading and do either the Carroll essay or the Saito essay, but not both. Note that all readings for this module are reprinted in Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (eds.), The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Week 1: Introduction Reading: Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Discussion of Hepburn's essay will allow the instructor to bring out the distinctive issues and themes of the aesthetics of nature. Week 2: Objectivity or Subjectivity? Readings: Allen Carlson, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37 (1979): 267–76. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. This section covers two very different approaches to thinking about the aesthetic appreciation of nature. Consideration of these provides an opportunity for students to reflect on nature's relationship to art, and on the character of aesthetic experience itself. Week 3: Pluralistic Approaches Readings: Yuriko Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms'. Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 135–49. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. This section considers approaches that are motivated by perceived limitations of the two approaches mentioned above. In discussing these, students will focus on the significance, for the aesthetics of nature, of emotion and also of broader ethical considerations. Sample Syllabus for an upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar: Books on Syllabus: Glenn Parsons, Aesthetics and Nature [AN] (London: Continuum Press, forthcoming November 2008). Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture [AE] (London: Routledge, 2000). Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (eds.), The Aesthetics of Natural Environments [ANE] (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Week 1: Introduction Parsons, AN, ch. 1. Allen Carlson, 'Environmental Aesthetics'. The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. Eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes (London: Routledge, 2001), 423–36. Don Mannison, 'Comments Stimulated by Reinhardt's Remarks: A Prolegomenon to a Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic'. Environmental Philosophy. Eds. Don Mannison, Michael McRobbie, and Richard Routley (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), 212–16. Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Reprinted in ANE. Week 2: Imagination Parsons, AN, ch. 2. Thomas Heyd, 'Aesthetic Appreciation and the Many Stories About Nature'. British Journal of Aesthetics 41 (2001): 125–37. Reprinted in ANE. Emily Brady, 'Imagination and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 139–47. Reprinted in ANE. Marcia Eaton, 'Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 149–56. Reprinted in ANE. Week 3: Formalism Parsons, AN, ch. 3. Carlson, 'Formal Qualities and the Natural Environment', AE, ch. 3. Allen Carlson, 'On the Possibility of Quantifying Scenic Beauty'. Landscape Planning 4 (1977): 131–72. Ira Newman, 'Reflections on Allen Carlson's Aesthetics and the Environment'. AE: Canadian Aesthetics Journal /Revue canadienne d'esthetique 6 (2001) http://www.uqtr.uquebec.ca/AE/Vol_6/Carlson/newman.html>. Nick Zangwill, 'Formal Natural Beauty'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 21 (2001): 209–24. Week 4: Science and Nature Aesthetics Parsons, AN, ch. 4. Aldo Leopold, 'Country'. A Sand County Almanac, with Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1966), 177–80. Carlson, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment', AE, ch. 4. Carlson, 'Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity', AE, ch. 5. Glenn Parsons, 'The Aesthetics of Nature'. Philosophy Compass 2 (2007): 358–72. Week 5: Positive Aesthetics Carlson, 'Nature and Positive Aesthetics', AE, ch. 6. Eugene Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics (Denton, TX: Environmental Ethics Books, 1996), ch. 6. Yuriko Saito, 'The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 101–11. Malcolm Budd, 'The Aesthetics of Nature'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2000): 137–57. Glenn Parsons, 'Nature Appreciation, Science and Positive Aesthetics'. British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 279–95. Week 6: Animals Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968 [1757]), Pt. III, sec. VI. Holmes Rolston III, 'Beauty and the Beast: Aesthetic Experience of Wildlife'. Valuing Wildlife: Economic and Social Perspectives. Eds. Daniel J. Decker and Gary R. Goff (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 187–96. Glenn Parsons, 'The Aesthetic Value of Animals'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2007): 151–69. Week 7: Pluralism Parsons, AN, ch. 5. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. Reprinted in ANE. Yuriko Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms'. Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 135–49. Reprinted in ANE. Ronald Hepburn, 'Nature Humanized: Nature Respected'. Environmental Values 7 (1998): 267–79. Ronald Hepburn, 'Trivial and Serious in Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 65–80. Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson, 'New Formalism and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 363–76. Week 8: Engagement Parsons, AN, ch. 6. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. Reprinted in ANE. Cheryl Foster, 'The Narrative and the Ambient in Environmental Aesthetics'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 127–37. Reprinted in ANE. Allen Carlson, 'Aesthetics and Engagement'. British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (1993): 220–27. Week 9: The Sublime Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews (Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1790]). Excerpts from sections 23–9. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968 [1757]). Excerpts from Pt. II, sections 1–8. Ronald Hepburn, 'The Concept of the Sublime: Has it any Relevance for Philosophy Today?'. Dialectics and Humanism 15 (1988): 137–55. Stan Godlovitch, 'Icebreakers: Environmentalism and Natural Aesthetics'. Journal of Applied Philosophy 11 (1994): 15–30. Reprinted in ANE. Malcolm Budd, 'Delight in the Natural World: Kant on the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Part I: The Sublime in Nature'. British Journal of Aesthetics 38 (1998): 233–50. Week 10: Aesthetic Preservation Parsons, AN, ch. 7. Janna Thompson, 'Aesthetics and the Value of Nature'. Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 291–305. Holmes Rolston III, 'From Beauty to Duty: Aesthetics of Nature and Environmental Ethics'. Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on Environmental Aesthetics. Ed. Arnold Berleant (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 127–41. Ned Hettinger, 'Allen Carlson's Environmental Aesthetics and Protection of the Environment'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2005): 57–76. Keekok Lee, 'Beauty for Ever?'. Environmental Values 4 (1995): 213–25. Week 11: Gardens Parsons, AN, ch. 8. Mara Miller, The Garden as an Art (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), ch. 1. Mara Miller, 'Gardens as Works of Art: The Problem of Uniqueness'. British Journal of Aesthetics 26 (1986): 252–6. Stephanie Ross, What Gardens Mean (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), chs. 1, 7. Tom Leddy, 'Gardens in an Expanded Field'. British Journal of Aesthetics 28 (1988): 327–40. David Cooper, 'In Praise of Gardens'. British Journal of Aesthetics 43 (2003): 101–13. Week 12: Art in Nature Parsons, AN, ch. 9. Carlson, 'Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?', AE, ch. 10. Sheila Lintott, 'Ethically Evaluating Land Art: Is It Worth It?'. Ethics, Place & Environment 10 (2007): 263–77. Emily Brady, 'Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art'. Ethics, Place & Environment 10 (2007): 287–300. Focus Questions1. Are there any important differences between the aesthetic appreciation of art and the aesthetic appreciation of nature? If so, what are they?2. Is preserving nature for its aesthetic value a coherent idea?3. What is the ugliest natural thing or place you can think of? How might proponents of Positive Aesthetics for nature deal with your example?4. Does the concept of the sublime have any significance for our contemporary experience of nature? If it does, what relation does it bear to our aesthetic appreciation of nature?5. Watch Rivers and Tides (2001), the documentary film about the British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. Ethically speaking, how do you think we ought to regard his art-making? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments PLATONIC ELEMENTS IN KAFKA'S "INVESTIGATIONS OF A DOG" by Lewis W. Leadbeater Few critics of Kafka, and certainly few German critics of Kafka, have been willing to allow for much of any classical influence on his works. There are exceptions, but for the most part these commentators can bring themselves to admit only the fact Kafka endured with distaste his lengthy involvement with the classical languages (...) and literature and that, if in any way, he was influenced only in terms of syntax or style.1 Yet it is certain that Kafka read classical literature with interest and that he was well acquainted with classical epic, tragedy, philosophy, and mythology. The wandering Odysseus, the sea god Poseidon, tortured Prometheus —all these and other classical figures are to be found in his works. Indeed, a recent interpretation of The Trial involves a discussion of it in comparison with the trial of Socrates.2 The fact is that Kafka knew Plato's Apology and counted as one of his prized possessions a copy of Plato's Phaedrus. He and Brod read Plato together in high school.3 Are we really to assume, then, that, given Kafka's philosophical bent, he saw no relationship between Plato and the later philosophers, like Kierkegaard for instance, with whom he was quite taken, and that given his fertile mind and penchant for metaphor, Kafka reflects only Platonic syntax?4 Quite the contrary; we must, I think, cede his classicism to Kafka, and in the discussion which follows I should like to point out that in one of the short stories, "Investigations of a Dog," parable and metaphor blend as well as they do because of Platonic influence, and especially that of the Apology and the Phaedrus. Kafka's animals pervade his works in both metaphor and simile. Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find himself transformed into a gigantic beetle; Joseph K dies, at the end of his trial, like a dog, and it is a questioning canine which investigates the meaning of dog104 Lewis W. Leadbeater105 ness in "Forschungen eines Hundes." Generally the animalistic metaphor involves removal, alienation, and isolation— a loss of kinship with humanity to be sure, but more important a loss of communication, an inability to communicate, and hence an emphasis on all-encompassing, frustrating silence. The natural result for these people turned animal is an involvement in a process of severe introspection frequently linked with the pursuit of some idea or ideal which will provide a hitherto unknown, transcendent nourishment for a famished, alienated soul. Such is certainly the case with Gregor Samsa and quite possibly the case with Joseph K; it is in fact such pursuits which lie at the heart of the researches of our investigating Dog. Though any attempt to pinpoint the source of Kafka's penchant for animalistic metaphors is quite certainly futile, one might well posit as paradigmatic the alienation plays of Aristophanes involving animals, and certainly the notion of a psychological link between man and beast is present in Plato's Phaedrus, a dialogue in which the soul metaphor itself involves horses, and one in which there is considerable discussion of the interchangeability of the souls of men and beasts.5 As noted above such interchangeability or transformation occurs regularly in Kafka; within the ugly form of beetle lay the psyche of Gregor Samsa. Perhaps within the not-so-ugly canine form of our investigating hound lies the soul of Socrates. Consider for a moment the character of our Dog in light of Plato's Socrates as he appears in the Apology. To begin with, the Dog, as he tells us, is a solitary creature, withdrawn and involved solely in his "investigations" (p. 278).6 In addition, he fully realizes that he is different from the rest of his species (p. 279) and that indeed at times he feels rejected by his kind, realizing as he does that his investigations run counter to the traditional values of his species, a species by which he had hoped at one time to be accepted with great honor (p. 308). What he has capitulated to is "questions" which, furthermore, have quite removed him from normal... (shrink)

This paper explores a philosophical argument about the use of natural light in films. I argue that directors use sunlight as a visual metaphor to induce a sublime experience from the viewer to elevate the narrative. While it is more efficient in terms of time management and finances to use electric lights, sunlight creates a successful emotional effect on the viewer placing them in contemplation of the relationship between humanity, nature, and humility. Essentially, I am concerned with what it (...) is that the capturing of sunlight accomplishes in these works of art that a light bulb can’t. In this paper, I consider how natural light is used to guide the viewer’s eye and how natural light makes us feel. I believe motion pictures are the perfect artistic medium to explore our emotional understanding of the sun as it not only captures objects in motion in the light of the sun it also captures the sun itself in motion. My intention is to provide a better understanding of the powerful psychological effect that the use of sunlight has on the viewer of a film. (shrink)

Figuring Animals is a collection of fifteen essays concerning the representation of animals in literature, the visual arts, philosophy, and cultural practice. At the turn of the new century, it is helpful to reconsider our inherited understandings of the species, some of which are still useful to us. It is also important to look ahead to new understandings and new dialogue, which may contribute to the survival of us all. The contributors to this volume participate in this dialogue in a (...) variety of ways--through personal experience, natural history, cultural studies, philosophical inquiry, art history, literary analysis, film studies, and theoretical imagining, and through a combination of these trains of thought. The essays expose weaknesses in western epistemological frames of reference that for centuries have limited our views and, thus, our experiences of animal being, including our own. (shrink)

In AFTERLIVES OF AFFECT, Watson considers the life and work of Mayanist Linda Schele (1942 - 1988) as an entry point to discuss the nature of cultural inquiry and the metaphor of decipherment in anthropology. Watson figures Schele as a trickster guide in his experimental, person-centered ethnography, reanimating the work of decipherment and drawing upon an "affect of discovery" that better expresses the affective engagement of anthropologists and their subject of study. Through her archive, Watson finds an archaeologist wholly (...) animated by her fieldsite and immersed in a more "spiritual science," though nonetheless still imbricated in a system of settler-colonial knowledge production. By holding Schele's work in conversation with both her own interlocutors and prominent voices in the field today, Watson refocuses on anthropologists who are engaged as individuals; carrying their own attachments with them as they describe, interpret, and decipher what they observe, and in doing so, positions affective engagement as a constitutive element in a more reflexive anthropology. The book is organized into six chapters that progress thematically through Schele's life and Watson's autoethnographic reflections on his own research. In Sacrilege (chapter 1), Watson draws together moments throughout his research where he felt his exhumation of Schele's work veered too closely to disturbing what was laid to rest-much like Schele's own work, which relied on the unearthing of sites long laid to rest, reanimating long-dead Mayan rulers and artists. The chapter sets the tone of the work as always toeing the line and risking the introduction of the mystical and affective into scientific interpretation-edgewalking with Schele. In Animals (chapter 2), Watson draws upon metaphors in the animal world, as did Schele when she sought inspiration for her next moment of insight; spider webs present a Geertzian metaphor for webs of signification, while rabbits are trickster guides, a transtemporalizing technology, drawing Schele (and Watson) forward and back through time. Through these reflections, Watson builds iteratively on arguments throughout the book that return to themes more recognizable in contemporary theory conversations: more-than-human worlds, the question of modernity, and the social conditions of knowledge production. This book will be of interest to readers in anthropology, especially those engaged in the ontological turn and more-than-human worlds, as well as the history of anthropology and anthropology theory more broadly. This book will also be of interest to readers in science studies, the posthumanities, and affect theory. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is now well established as a substantive, independent normative theory. It was not always so. The revival of virtue ethics was initially spurred by influential criticisms of other normative theories, especially those made by Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Bernard Williams. 1 Because of this heritage, virtue ethics is often associated with anti-theory movements in ethics and more recently, moral particularism. There are, however, quite a few different approaches to ethics that can reasonably claim (...) to be versions of virtue ethics. The predominant strand of virtue ethics is broadly Aristotelian, although some accounts bear little resemblance to Aristotle's. In its most general form, virtue ethics is compatible with a wide range of meta-ethical and normative commitments. This diversity makes it difficult to compare virtue ethics as such with other normative theories. It can also be a challenge to see just what the various versions of virtue ethics have in common with each other. Three major types of virtue ethics are represented in the books by Rosalind Hursthouse, Michael Slote, and Christine Swanton, recommended in the following section. Each of these book sets forward a considerably self-standing form of virtue ethics. The authors differ on central issues such as the relationship between virtue and flourishing and the link between virtuous agents and right or virtuous actions. Unlike Swanton and Slote, Hursthouse defends a version of ethical naturalism that has affinities with theories recently defended by Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre. 2 Slote's theory is agent-based, meaning that his account derives judgments about the moral status of actions from moral features of agents. Hursthouse and Swanton defend theories according to which the moral status of an action depends on its broader relationship to human flourishing (Hursthouse) or whether it hits the target of a virtue (Swanton). Although these three books presently form the core of contemporary virtue ethics, there are other approaches that might reasonably be described as versions of virtue ethics, such as those presented by Julia Driver, Linda Zagzebski, and Robert Adams. 3 There are also, of course, a large number of articles in which authors defend or criticize tenets that are central to most versions of virtue ethics. Some recent articles on especially important topics are listed in the following section. Current 'hot topics' in virtue ethics include whether its account of right action is adequate and whether virtue ethics is at odds with empirical psychology. Articles on these debates and others are listed in the following section. Author Recommends: Books These three books are foundational works in contemporary virtue ethics, and represent quite different approaches to virtue ethics. For each book, I have also listed an article by the same author in which he or she articulates some similar themes. Those pressed for time or space on a syllabus might start by examining those articles. 1. Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Hursthouse defends a eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics with Aristotelian affinities. *See also Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Normative Virtue Ethics.' How Should One Live? Ed. Roger Crisp. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. 19–36. 2. Slote, Michael. Morals from Motives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Slote defends a version of virtue ethics based on evaluations of motives, drawing on historical figures like Martineau, Hutcheson, and Hume. Note that this book represents a fairly significant departure from his first book in virtue ethics, From Morality to Virtue (New York: Oxford, 1992). *See also Slote, Michael. 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics.' Virtue Ethics . Ed. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 3. Swanton, Christine. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Swanton defends a pluralistic, non-eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics that draws on influences ranging from Aristotle to Nietzsche to contemporary psychoanalytic theory. *See also Swanton, Christine. 'A Virtue Ethical Account of Right Action.' Ethics 112 (2001): 32–52. Articles The following is a selection of articles that address some of the central and controversial topics within virtue ethics. 1. Annas, Julia. 'Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing.' Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 78.2 (2004): 61–75. This article addresses the problem of action guidance and the role that an account of right action should play in virtue ethics. 2. Conly, Sarah. 'Flourishing and the Failure of the Ethics of Virtue.' Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol. XIII, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue . Eds. P. French et al. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. 83–96. This article articulates the central problems faced by versions of virtue ethics that rely on a conception of human flourishing. 3. Das, Ramon. 'Virtue Ethics and Right Action.' Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2003): 324–39. This article raises objections about insularity and circularity to accounts of right action presented by Hursthouse, Slote, and Swanton. 4. Doris, John M. 'Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics.' Nous 32 (1998): 504–30. This article argues that situationist psychology undermines the concept of a character trait on which virtue ethicists rely. An expanded version of this criticism can be found in Doris, Lack of Character, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 5. Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Virtue Theory and Abortion.' Philosophy and Public Affairs 20.3 (1991): 223–46. This article argues that virtue ethics is capable of providing action guidance in the difficult problem of abortion. 6. Johnson, Robert N. 'Virtue and Right.' Ethics 113 (2003): 810–34. This article raises several objections against the accounts of right action in virtue ethics, one of which is that they cannot make sense of the rightness of self-improving actions. The criticism is directly primarily at Hursthouse's theory, but Swanton and Slote are discussed as well. 7. Kamtekar, Rachana. 'Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character.' Ethics 114 (2004): 458–91. This article argues that situationist critiques of virtue ethics rely on a mistaken understanding of virtuous character. 8. Kawall, Jason. 'Virtue Theory and Ideal Observers.' Philosophical Studies 109 (2002): 197– 222. This article argues for an ideal observer-style account of right action in virtue ethics. 9. Nussbaum, Martha. 'Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach.' Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XIII, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue . Ed. P. French et al. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. 32–53. This article presents a view of the virtues on which the virtues are excellences in spheres of activity. Although the spheres are common to all humans, the manifestation of excellence in a given sphere is subject to cultural variation. 10. Sreenivasan, Gopal. 'Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution.' Mind 111 (2002): 47–68. This article addresses the situationist critique of character traits by arguing that virtue ethics does not depend on the concept of a character trait as Doris and others understand it. 11. Stangl, Rebecca. 'A Dilemma for Particularist Virtue Ethics.' Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2008): 665–78. This article addresses the relationship between virtue ethics and radical moral particularism, arguing that the latter may have undesirable consequences for virtue ethicists unless they accept the unity of the virtues. 12. Stohr, Karen. 'Contemporary Virtue Ethics.' Philosophy Compass 1.1 (January 2006): 22–7. This article provides an overview and analysis of contemporary virtue ethics. It includes discussion of main problems and challenges for the future. 13. Stohr, Karen. 'Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue.' Journal of Ethics 7 (2003): 339–63. This article raises problems for the commonly accepted distinction between virtue and continence, arguing that the mixed emotions normally associated with continence are sometimes characteristic of virtue instead. 14. van Zyl, Liezl. 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Action Guidance.' Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (2009): 50–69. This article defends agent-based virtue ethics against objections that it cannot distinguish agent-appraisal from act-appraisal and that it cannot provide adequate action guidance. Anthologies 1. Crisp, Roger, ed. How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. This is one of the first virtue ethics anthologies published, and so reflects a correspondingly earlier picture of the field. The essays, however, are important and interesting in their own right, and cover a broad array of topics. 2. Crisp, Roger and Michael Slote, eds. Virtue Ethics . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. This anthology was published over a decade ago and does not capture recent developments in the field. It is, however, an admirably thorough collection of the most influential essays from the early days of virtue ethics, both promoting and criticizing it. 3. Darwall, Stephen, ed. Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. This anthology is distinctive in that it includes material from Aristotle, Hutcheson, and Hume, along with some central contemporary sources. 4. Walker, Rebecca L. and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Working Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. This recent anthology focuses on applied virtue ethics and has an excellent selection of essays by influential thinkers on topics including the environment, business, medicine, war, and poverty. Online Sources 'Virtue Ethics', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/ Entry written by Rosalind Hursthouse and updated in 2007. 'Bibliography on Virtue Ethics', maintained by Jörg Schroth. http://www.ethikseite.de/bib/cvirtue.pdf Extensive list of work published in virtue ethics. Updated regularly, listed in both alphabetical and chronological order, and contains abstracts of papers. 'Janusblog', maintained by Guy Axtell. http://janusblog.squarespace.com/ Blog devoted to current work in virtue ethics and virtue epistemology, although with an emphasis on the latter. It contains spirited discussion among the many contributors, as well as a library of papers. Sample Syllabus This syllabus is for a graduate seminar or intense upper-level undergraduate course. Books for purchase for this course might include the Crisp and Slote anthology, the Walker and Ivanhoe anthology, and Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics. Week 1: The Roots of Contemporary Virtue Ethics Anscombe, Elizabeth. 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (Crisp and Slote) Foot, Philippa. 'Virtues and Vices' (Crisp and Slote) MacIntyre, Alasdair. 'The Nature of the Virtues' (Crisp and Slote) Week 2: The Roots of Contemporary Virtue Ethics Stocker, Michael. 'The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories' (Crisp and Slote) Williams, Bernard. 'Morality, the Peculiar Institution' (Crisp and Slote) McDowell, John. 'Virtue and Reason' (Crisp and Slote) Week 3: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics, Part I Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Practical Wisdom: A Mundane Account.' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106.3 (2006): 283–307. Stangl, Rebecca. 'A Dilemma for Particularist Virtue Ethics' Week 4: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics, Part II Stark, Susan. 'Virtue and Emotion.' Nous 33.5 (2001): 440–55. Stohr, Karen. 'Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue' Week 5: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics, Part III Conly, Sarah. 'Flourishing and the Failure of an Ethics of Virtue' Nussbaum, Martha. 'Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach' MacIntyre, Alasdair. Dependent Rational Animals, chapter 10 Week 6: Agent-Based Virtue Ethics Slote, Michael 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics' (Crisp and Slote) Slote, Michael, Morals from Motives, chapters 1 and 3 Week 7: Pluralistic Virtue Ethics Swanton, Christine. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View , chapters 3, 4, and 11. Week 8: The Situationist Critique of Virtue Ethics Doris, John. 'Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics' Kamtekar, Rachana. 'Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character' Sreenivasan, Gopal. 'Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution' Merritt, Maria. 'Aristotelian Virtue and the Interpersonal Aspect of Ethical Character.' Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (2009): 23–49. Week 11: Right Action – Problems Johnson, Robert. 'Virtue and Right' Das, Ramon. 'Virtue Ethics and Right Action' Week 12: Right Action – Virtue Ethics Solutions Annas, Julia. 'Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing' van Zyl, Liezl. 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Action Guidance' Kawall, Jason. 'Virtue Theory and Ideal Observers' Week 13: Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles Pelligrino, Edmund. 'Professing Medicine, Virtue Based Ethics, and the Retrieval of Professionalism' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Swanton, Christine. 'Virtue Ethics, Role Ethics, and Business Ethics' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Sherman, Nancy. 'Virtue and a Warrier's Anger' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Week 14: Virtue Ethics and the Non-Human World Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Environmental Virtue Ethics' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Walker, Rebecca. 'The Good Life for Non-Human Animals: What Virtue Requires of Humans' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Focus Questions 1. What is the relationship between virtue and flourishing? Are the virtues necessary for flourishing? Sufficient? 2. Can virtue ethics provide an adequate account of right action? 3. On what concept of a character trait does virtue ethics rely, and does situationist psychology undermine it? 4. Is the project of ethical naturalism a plausible one? To what extent does the success of Aristotelian virtue ethics depend on it? 5. How does virtue ethics affect the way that applied ethics is done? (shrink)

"Ever Since This World Began" from Love Dog (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013) by Masha Tupitsyn continent. The audio-essay you've recorded yourself reading for continent. , “Ever Since the World Began,” is a compelling entrance into your new multi-media book, Love Dog (Success and Failure) , because it speaks to the very form of the book itself: vacillating and finding the long way around the question of love by using different genres and media. In your discussion of the face, one of the (...) themes of Love Dog , I think there is something to be said about the surfaces media create and how you constantly manipulate them in your work. This seems important for thinking also about your book LACONIA: 1,200 Tweets on Film ; a book on film written in tweets, interposing already three sets of expectations and pushing the boundaries of each medium's faciality, it's surface tension. In Love Dog , is there another kind of facial interaction? Perhaps the discursive faces of approaching love as topic and love as method? If so, how did/do these intersect for you, do/did they drive the creation of this book? MASHA TUPITSYN With LACONIA and Love Dog , I wanted to pay homage to the work modernism has done on subjective time and chronological time by carrying that experiment over into the digital economy. Because LACONIA is a time-based work of cultural criticism that employs the aphorism to look at 21 st century American culture, it is also an archival work of cultural mourning and memory. And in Love Dog , which is also a work about mourning as it relates to love, I wanted to think with all my senses, and to reflect that in the writing itself by using a multi-media form. LACONIA tackled the sound bite and the promotional image--the everyday language of consumer culture--which often wants to communicate ideological agendas through the repetition of a single image or reductive phrase. I had always been interested in the approaches of artists like Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer and essayistic, typographical filmmakers, like Chris Marker and Godard. In both cases, I felt it was important to try to compose a book in which deep—critical—thinking happens in so-called immediate, informal, and disposable contexts. That is, in places where you are either not supposed to be serious or are not required to take things seriously. To me the most intervention is needed in every day instances of culture and representation. In order to do that, I had to utilize and interrogate the very structures I was critiquing. In other words, the writing had to materialize in that live, digital, public space. It couldn’t simply happen at home on a piece of paper or in a word document on my computer that no one could see until it was finished. It had to unfold in real time, amidst everything else. And it had to literally be surrounded by the cultural landscape I wanted to assess. In both LACONIA and Love Dog , I wanted to know how and if we can get away from what we cannot get away from? From which there is no respite. Given this, I don’t think hypertexts can really be called hypertexts anymore. Hypertexts are simply the world today. This is not only the way we read the world now. It is the way the world reads. Likewise, interfaciality, as you put it, works on a number of levels for me, both on and off the page. There is my relation to epistemological and phenomenological surfaces—the screen, the body, the face, the voice, gender; the official story. Then there is the way this dovetails formally, and to which the digital adds yet another dimension. It’s also where sound comes into Love Dog (giving the book a sound; giving tonality to the book’s ideas and feelings). As Anne Carson pointed out in her essay “The Gender of Sound,” the two are connected, and of course so are love and gender. In “Ever Since This World Began,” I wanted to think about the phenomenology of the voice, which is why I visualize the sonic in the book and why in my writing about faces, I look at the tonal aspects (the things a face voices and a voice faces) of a face. This was standard to do when images and faces were “silent” in the silent era. Those images/faces were extraordinarily audible. The greatest screen face, to me, is still Falconetti’s in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc . We can hear her face—even though there is no actual sound on screen of her speaking. The internet is a similarly “silent” space where actual voices are lacking. So intertextuality goes with interfaciality. I’ve also talked a lot about how categorization worked when it came to the reception of my first book, Beauty Talk & Monsters . How despite the fact that Beauty Talk is a text that crisscrosses form and content in a variety of ways, not pinpointing its exact genre—choosing one genre over another—only made things worse. Fiction was the category people were most adverse to me using, even though of course there is a lot of fiction in the book. Part of how fiction works in Beauty Talk is in the reader not knowing exactly where the fiction resides. In Godard’s 1967 film, Weekend , for example, everything matters. Everything is political, whether it’s real or imaginary, film or reality. In Weekend , life is not a game and neither is the game a game. The game is really life. Either everything is important or nothing is. But many people want clear answers and demarcations so that they can decide what is important and what is not important. My use of the “I,” subjective criticism, made everything “real” in Beauty Talk . But fiction is in the construction. It is in the blending. This is why I perforate the movie screen and connect the onscreen and the offscreen; the official story and the backstory. Although I don’t think there is a difference between onscreen and offscreen anymore. Nor is there a dialectic. It’s all screen all the time now. Non-fiction, on the other hand, was more tolerated as a moniker. Unlike Love Dog , Beauty Talk wasn’t explicitly or tangibly (what is tangible is a question in all these books) working with digital forms or within this digital economy, so some people resisted the book’s hypertextuality or intertextuality because they couldn’t see its other forms, if that makes sense. It was a problem of invisibility; of how to make something appear (this is where Nietzsche, big presence in Love Dog , comes in—the nature of appearances). Something people don’t necessarily want to see. Some readers couldn’t see the way forms were interfacing in that book. On the surface, Beauty Talk was simply a text about media culture—the domination of entertainment as a mode of being and knowing—and most readers could only see that one side of the book. But as Godard puts it in Wim Wenders’ documentary about the future of cinema, Room 666 , “Films are made, images are made, when there’s no one looking. That’s what the invisible is, that which we don’t see. That’s what the incredible is, that which we don’t see. And cinema shows you that which we don’t see, the incredible.” We are living in the aftermath of narrative and temporal collapse, which means we don’t read or feel in the same way. I began to use digital forms in my writing because I don’t see us as traditional book people anymore. I would add that power also resides in the invisible, in the things we make invisible by making them visible. Or it did for a long time. The new face of power is quickly becoming so-called transparency, which is even more corrupt because even though we now live in a behind-the-scenes culture, and see and know how the mechanisms of power and corruption operate, we still don't change. The world still doesn't change. Finally, another important thing that Godard says in Room 666 that relates to Love Dog is: “I’m here in front of the camera, and yet in my body and in my head, I’m behind it. My world is the imaginary and the imaginary is a journey between forwards and backwards.” This idea of visible/invisible, foresight and hindsight , backwards and forwards is an important dialectic in relation to time and the idea of the destinal. This is why I wanted Love Dog to travel, literally, figuratively, and discursively. You have to be open to not knowing. To epistemological, geographical, chronological, and emotional aporias. In Love Dog my story is both visible and invisible to me. Sometimes I could see where I was going. Other times I was completely in the dark existentially. Truth procedure, which love is, as bell hooks and Badiou tell us, requires expedition and openness to possibility. Unless you want a story you already know, but that is not truth procedure. So I tried to create this backwards and forwards journey in the book—this sense of travel and motion, hope and doubt—by jumping between forms, media, time; traveling to different places, texts, and emotional registers. The book’s “Time-Jump series,” which mostly takes the form of music—songs—but also a series of “green” videos that I shot, is the most obvious tribute to this idea of subjective and chronological time. continent. Your work aligns with writers that play with the form of their language, or have assumed the role of performance artist at some point: Kathy Acker, Chris Kraus, Avital Ronell, and Anne Carson to name a few representing varied approaches that show up in Love Dog . At the risk of ossifying the work, or missing the point—as these experimental modes of writing stack-up in piles of published works, do they approach a genre? MASHA As I noted in my book Life As We Show It , in Chelsea Girls the poet Eileen Myles points out, “You can’t get money without a category.” More importantly, you can’t get a category—or respect, rank—without a clear genre. This makes genre and gender an obvious pair. The two words are even linked etymologically and both genre and gender concern taxonomies of legitimacy—of sorting through what and who is valuable. So the words share common prejudices. The things one does not want to read is often synonymous with who one doesn't want to read about. Therefore a break-up of or with genre is maybe the genre or anti-genre that could be said to link these writers. Avital Ronell breaks up with philosophical tradition and modes of inquiry. Like Nietzsche, she revaluates methods of evaluation, testing out things you are not supposed to use philosophy to test (and, by the same token, testing philosophy in ways it’s not supposed to be tested), like drugs and stupidity—where philosophy fails and we fail philosophy. And Chris Kraus does something similar in her experimental fiction, using different forms to put female subjectivity “to the test,” so to speak. All these female writers and thinkers have tried to destabilize the systems that have been set up in (and against) writing. Thus missing the mark with genre, even intentionally, means that we have missed the point in some sense as writers and thinkers. And that to me is a good thing, however difficult. We’ve started at the wrong point and gone somewhere else instead. We’ve acknowledged that writing and thinking are also about failure, and that failure is always embedded in the act of writing and in our reasons for writing. So that missing the point is also the point. Derrida insisted: “We must invent a name for those ‘critical’ inventions which belong to literature while deforming its limits.” But how can you give something that resists and deforms, a name? Wouldn’t the name also be deformed? Isn't this why the aforementioned writers get hyphenated descriptors like ficto-criticism? Do we need a proper name to be able to read something carefully? I don’t think so. I don’t need it as a reader. I’ve always taken a work on its own terms. But for most people, if you don’t have an address, people don’t know how to find you. A lot of time, they won’t even know how to look. And in some cases, they’ll think you’re not even worth finding. You are not on the map because you have to literally make the map in order to exist. In her essay, “The Gender of Sound” Carson asks, “Why is female sound bad to hear?” I think for the same reason something uncategorizable (pedagogically, creatively, racially, and sexually)—Other—is hard to read. *For an audio recording of Florida , read by Masha Tupitsyn click here . continent. : We're also curious to hear know how you see the significance of 'performance' (and why the label sticks to the shoes of these authors like toilet paper) in describing this kind of writing work? MASHA I think I responded to the parenthetical portion of this question in my previous answer. As far as how performance relates to Love Dog , in Acker’s Don Quixote , which is another big presence in the book, she writes, “there is no other reality than anthropomorphism.” In Don Quixote , the dog is human and the human is dog. Which brings us to the title of Love Dog and the totemic function of the dog in the book: giving human things animal characteristics and animal things human characteristics. Rather than investing all our human love ideals into dogs, which we do constantly as a culture of dog lovers, I wanted to put the dog into love. It is the difference between the consumption of love as a patriarchal institution or status position and the essence of a type of radical and liberatory relation that would benefit humans in their bonds with other humans. So the dog in Love Dog is not simply the book’s cover or performative affect, so to speak. Love has always needed the dog, which is why the dog is the very embodiment of belief in love . Recall Argos The Great Dog and Odysseus. Argos is the only one who remembers and recognizes the ragged and old Odysseus even after his 20-year absence. So love is the high ideal and the dog, both common and dependable, is the bridge between the sacred and the profane. The dog is the house of love. And because Love Dog is a digital project, it seemed impossible to think about the post-human, technology, the virtual, or difference (which Badiou says is essential to love in In Praise of Love ) without thinking about animal-being and being-animal. Instead of simply “performing” these ideas and characteristics as literary affects, I’m interested in being-becoming. Which means the book’s tropes, leitmotifs, series, and even its titles are in service of that truth procedure. In other words, I actually want to live this way, not just write this way. And, more importantly, I want to live this way not just think this way. So Love Dog became both my totem animal and my autobiographical animal. This made the book organic, anthropomorphic—beyond literary. See the trailer to Masha Tupitsyn's new book available now from Penny Ante Editions. (shrink)

When ancient Chinese philosophy culminated in the sixth to third centuries BCE, “hundreds of flowers [intellectual schools] were blooming”, yet not many theoreticians were particularly interested in questions regarding the relationship between animal and human life — despite their profuse discussion of, and heated debates about, both “nature” and “human nature” in their writings. This indifferent attitude towards creatures lower than humans is best illustrated by Confucius (551–479 BCE), who observed: “It is impossible to associate with birds and beasts, as (...) if they were the same as us.” Later, however, this condescending attitude of the Sage would be challenged by the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi (370 to 301 BCE), who untiringly advocates the equity of all creatures in the universe — a place where both living and fabulous organisms cohabit and co-evolve with one another, as well as with their environments. Morever, even Confucius’s descendent Mencius (c.372–289 BCE) did not endorse his mentor’s position, for the latter’s own writings are likewise inhabited by all kinds of creatures which not only serve the passive role of poetic figuration, but actually also construct their respective Umwelten, paralleled by the umwelt-construction of human beings. Recent advances in biosemiotics and ecosemiotics have enabled us to reread some of these philosophical texts, and to shed new light on this obscure aspect of Chinese thinking. This paper will draw upon the sign reflections of C. S. Peirce (1839–1914) and Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944), and make use of a composite analytical method of text semiotics and dialogue studies, to examine a number of political and ethical allegories by Zhuangzi and Mencius. Acknowledging the necessarycircularity of interpretation and the homogeneity of observer and observed, the essay explores the ways in which ancient philosophical texts can be made compatible with contemporary biological and semiotic thinking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The “Figure” of God and the Limits to Liberalism: A Rereading of Locke’s Essay and Two TreatisesVivienne BrownI. A current interpretative issue in reading John Locke’s texts is the relationship between Locke’s theology and political philosophy. 1 Reacting against the secular interpretations of C. B. Macpherson and Leo Strauss, John Dunn argued that Locke’s theology was axiomatic for the political philosophy of the Two Treatises of Government in that (...) Locke’s liberalism was based on a religious individualism. 2 Dunn thus decisively reoriented Lockean scholarship away from seeing Locke as an apologist for a new capitalist economic order, and James Tully and Richard Ashcraft have since substantiated the view that theological presuppositions were foundational for Locke’s political writings but they emphasized the radical nature of Locke’s political position. 3 This view has in turn been challenged by more recent contextual studies of the development of Locke’s thought. John Marshall has argued that the political argument in the Two Treatises of Government is not dependent on religious individualism in [End Page 83] that Locke’s natural theology was itself driven by epistemological investigations, and that it was this epistemological impetus which inclined the Christian Locke towards the Socinian tendencies of his later years. 4 Ian Harris accepts that theological explanation was central to Locke’s writings in ethics and government, but he also emphasizes the reverse process of determination where Locke’s theology, particularly with respect to revealed religion, is in turn reliant upon Locke’s broader thinking. Harris argues therefore that there is a continuity of substantive thought such that theological concerns mesh into, rather than exclusively determine, the broader pattern of Locke’s political and moral ideas. 5 Recent studies thus share a considerable common ground in their recognition of the importance of the relationship between Locke’s theology and political philosophy, but disagreements remain over the precise nature of this relationship and its implications for Locke’s writings.This paper will address the question of the relationship between Locke’s theology and political philosophy by examining the figurative expressions by means of which God is represented in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government. 6 The paper will argue that the ways in which this metaphorical “figure” of God is inscribed in Locke’s epistemology and political philosophy 7 suggest a different approach to reading the intricate relationship between God and mankind, and that this casts doubt on the widely-received understanding of Locke’s contribution to classic liberal arguments within political philosophy. It will be argued further that the different formulations of the figure of God in these two texts result in problematizing the historiographic notions of theoretical determination and historicized authorial intent which have so far largely informed the interpretative debate in this area. 8 [End Page 84]II. In the Essay it is argued that mankind has no knowledge of real essences, even of such a simple thing as a pebble or a fly, and certainly cannot know the real essence of God which is immeasurably more inaccessible. 9 Descriptions of God in the Essay are not, therefore, literal statements of God’s characteristics but necessarily inadequate attempts to conceptualize him from within the linguistic and mental constraints of the finite world of men. Two possibilities are available to mankind in its attempt to mediate this fundamental state of ignorance. One is to try to form a complex idea made up of the simple ideas received from sensation or reflection upon itself and then to magnify this to an infinite degree:And even the most advanced Notion we have of God, is but attributing the same simple Ideas which we have got from Reflection on what we find in our selves, and which we conceive to have more Perfection in them, than would be in their absence, attributing, I say, those simple Ideas to him in an unlimited degree. 10God’s postulated qualities are thus valued human qualities writ infinitely large, even though elsewhere the anthropomorphism of the “ignorant and uninstructed” is rejected: 11[H]aving from what we experiment in our selves, got the Ideas of Existence and Duration; of... (shrink)

_The Philosophy of Art_ is a highly accessible introduction to current key issues and debates in aesthetics and philosophy of art. Chapters on standard topics are balanced by topics of interest to today's students, including creativity, authenticity, cultural appropriation, and the distinction between popular and fine art. Other topics include emotive expression, pictorial representation, definitional strategies, and artistic value. Presupposing no prior knowledge of philosophy, Theodore Gracyk draws on three decades of teaching experience to provide a balanced and engaging overview, (...) clear explanations, and many thought-provoking examples. All chapters have a strong focus on current debates in the field, yet historical figures are not neglected. Major current theories are set beside key ideas from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx, and Hegel. Chapters conclude with advice on further readings, and there are recommendations of films that will serve as a basis for further reflection and discussion. Key ideas are immediately accompanied by exercises that will test students' reactions and understanding. Many chapters call attention to ideology, prejudices, and common clichés that interfere with clear thinking. Beautifully written and thoroughly comprehensive, _The Philosophy of Art_ is the ideal resource for anyone who wants to explore recent developments in philosophical thinking about the arts. It is also provides the perfect starting point for anyone who wants to reflect on, and challenge, their own assumptions about the nature and value of art. (shrink)

A brief, radical defense of human uniqueness from acclaimed philosopher Roger Scruton In this short book, acclaimed writer and philosopher Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian moralists, and philosophical materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Scruton argues that human beings cannot be understood simply as biological objects. We are not only human animals; we are also persons, in essential relation with other persons, and bound to them (...) by obligations and rights. Our world is a shared world, exhibiting freedom, value, and accountability, and to understand it we must address other people face to face and I to I. Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual history, from Plato and Averroës to Darwin and Wittgenstein. The book begins with Kant's suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say "I"—by our sense of ourselves as the centers of self-conscious reflection. This fact is manifested in our emotions, interests, and relations. It is the foundation of the moral sense, as well as of the aesthetic and religious conceptions through which we shape the human world and endow it with meaning. And it lies outside the scope of modern materialist philosophy, even though it is a natural and not a supernatural fact. Ultimately, Scruton offers a new way of understanding how self-consciousness affects the question of how we should live. The result is a rich view of human nature that challenges some of today's most fashionable ideas about our species. (shrink)

Working out a Kantian theory of moral responsibility for animals2 requires the untying of two philosophical and interpretive knots: i.) How to interpret Kant’s claim in the important “episodic” section of the Doctrine of Virtue that we do not have duties “to” animals, since such duties are only “with regard to” animals and “directly to” ourselves; and ii.) How to explain why animals don’t have rights, while human beings who (currently or permanently) don’t have sufficient reason for moral responsibility do (...) have rights. At the heart of the problem lies the philosophical challenge of whether a Kantian account of moral responsibility for animals can take the animals themselves into account in the right way, that is, without utilizing arguments that (wrongly) presuppose that non-human animals are moral agents or can be morally responsible for their actions. The task of untying these two knots is the aim of this chapter. I start by defending Kant’s general claim that our duties regarding animals are not “to” them, but rather “with regard to” them. Relations between human and other animals are not relations between two kinds of moral beings, since animals are not capable of the kind of consciousness, in particular the reflective self-consciousness moral being requires. Instead the more complex human-animal relations are affectionate, social relations to which humans can and sometimes should relate morally. This is why these moral duties are “direct” only to ourselves; we are the only ones in the relations that can be morally responsible for them. Correspondingly, respect (in Kant’s precise sense of the word) is a distinctly reflective, moral emotion internal to the specific normative orientation we have only to beings that can be truly free (reflectively self-conscious), and so, to human beings; morality and respect single out how we regard ourselves and other human beings capable of freedom. As we will see, Kant has a consistent and not counter-intuitive account of why we have the moral attitudes we do about animals and of how it is that these attitudes have the appearance of being about the animals themselves. In addition, Kant can explain why it doesn’t follow from this that these moral attitudes arise from attributing moral rights to the animals themselves. Central to this interpretation is Kant’s Religion, as it contains an account of human nature that adequately explains why we have the positive attitudes we do towards animals; similarly, the Religion contains an account of human evil that explains why we consider other occasions of attitudes towards animals as genuine examples of moral failure. Hence, the Religion is central to understanding why Kant’s approach to animals is neither internally inconsistent nor counter-intuitive. (shrink)

_The Philosophy of Art _is a highly accessible introduction to current key issues and debates in aesthetics and philosophy of art. Chapters on standard topics are balanced by topics of interest to today's students, including creativity, authenticity, cultural appropriation, and the distinction between popular and fine art. Other topics include emotive expression, pictorial representation, definitional strategies, and artistic value. Presupposing no prior knowledge of philosophy, Theodore Gracyk draws on three decades of teaching experience to provide a balanced and engaging overview, (...) clear explanations, and many thought-provoking examples. All chapters have a strong focus on current debates in the field, yet historical figures are not neglected. Major current theories are set beside key ideas from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx, and Hegel. Chapters conclude with advice on further readings, and there are recommendations of films that will serve as a basis for further reflection and discussion. Key ideas are immediately accompanied by exercises that will test students' reactions and understanding. Many chapters call attention to ideology, prejudices, and common clichés that interfere with clear thinking. Beautifully written and thoroughly comprehensive, _The Philosophy of Art _is the ideal resource for anyone who wants to explore recent developments in philosophical thinking about the arts. It is also provides the perfect starting point for anyone who wants to reflect on, and challenge, their own assumptions about the nature and value of art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eve W. Stoddard REASON ON TRIAL: LEGAL METAPHORS IN THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 6 6 r I 1WO things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admi_I_ ration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." ' These are perhaps Kant's most well-known and oft-repeated words. They reflect not only the profound feeling (...) that underlies his technical and abstruse treatises, but also his characteristic preoccupation with law. The "starry heavens" are a synecdoche both for the wonder of nature as we perceive it in all its multiplicity, and for the marvel of science's ability to reduce, order, and subdue that infinite multiplicity into a few elegant laws. These two types of law, natural and moral, define the focus of Kant's critical philosophy, and metaphors drawn from jurisprudence pervade all three critiques. In the context of controversial statements on the role of metaphor in philosophical texts by Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, and Richard Rorty, I will analyze the legal metaphors in the prefaces and Transcendental Deductions of the Critique ofPure Reason. My goal in engaging Kant's texts in this controversy over metaphor is twofold: on the one hand to assess experimentally the value of these positions on metaphor in the history of philosophy, and, on the other hand, to examine the relations between critical conceptualization and insurgent metaphoricity in Kant's carefully elaborated and systematized text. In a textwhose key words are "universal and necessary for all possible experience," contingentand ambiguous metaphors might be expected to cause problematic unravelings. Richard Rorty has argued recently that "the history ofscience, culture and politics" should be viewed "as a history of metaphor rather than of discovery." 2 He compares the creations of new vocabularies to the 245 246Philosophy and Literature invention of "new tools" ("CL," p. 5), alluding to "Nietzsche's definition of truth as a mobile army of metaphors" (p. 6). From Plato's figures of the world as cave and the mind as charioteer with unruly horses, we shift to Locke's view of mind as tahda rasa and Descartes's description of the world as a machine. Rorty's paradigm of cultural history as a history of metaphor enters into an earlier, unresolved debate between Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur over the relationship between metaphor and philosophical discourse. Like Derrida, Rorty follows Nietzsche's claims about metaphor in the history of philosophy, a view Ricoeur wants to disprove so that he can recover the privileged univocity of speculative discourse. However Rorty has nothing in common with die complexity and "invaginated" ambiguities, the dazzling multivocity of Derrida's writing on the economics of metaphor. Although Rorty appears at first to agree with Derrida that there is no truth or reality apart from the linguistic tropes which dominate different epochs and cultures, he retains a metaphysical distinction between literal reference and figurative play. Rorty adopts Donald Davidson's theory that metaphors do not have "meaning" precisely because diey have no place in the language game into which they are inserted. They produce an effect, but it is not meaning: "One can only savour it or spit it out"; it is not a " 'truth-value candidate' " ("CL," p. 6). However, through repeated use, the metaphor will find a role in the language game; dying as a metaphor, it will live as a literal statement. Therefore Rorty agrees with Ricoeur that a moribund metaphor is no longer a metaphor, but a literally functioning segment of discourse. Thus despite his initial move toward a Derridean, or atleast Nietzschean, position, Rorty ultimately takes a stand consonant with Ricoeur's desire to rescue speculative discourse from the unruliness of metaphor. Considering Rorty's celebration of Freud in an article on "The Contingency of Selfhood," 3 his failure to consider the role of unconscious associations and overdetermination in the writing and reading of texts is surprising. Dead or alive, a metaphor brings with it a host ofpersonal and public, conscious and unconscious, new and traditional associations that become juxtaposed against a similar number of associations connected with the signifying chain into which the metaphor has been inserted. In... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Persons and Passions: Essays in Honor of Annette BaierLorenzo GrecoJoyce Jenkins, Jennifer Whiting, and Christopher Williams, eds. Persons and Passions: Essays in Honor of Annette Baier. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. Pp. 368. ISBN 0-268-03263-7, Cloth, $53.00.Annette Baier stands out as a figure of prime importance on the contemporary philosophical horizon. This volume finally brings the proper recognition she deserves, presenting a rich collection (...) of essays in her honor. Persons and Passions proves to be extremely interesting both for the discussion of Baier’s own philosophical reflection and as an example of how Baier represents an unparalleled source of inspiration for anyone concerned with the philosophers who have been at the forefront of her interests. Although Baier’s preference is surely for David Hume, her intellectual curiosity and scholarly mastery cover a wider area spanning from Descartes to Kant.This is well represented by the structure of Persons and Passions: the volume is composed of sixteen essays which broadly fall into three groups, respectively concerned with the philosophy of Hume, Descartes or Kant. Lisa Shapiro, William Beardsley, Amy Morgan Schmitter, and Cecilia Wee are all concerned with the philosophy of Descartes, in particular as it is presented in the Meditations on First Philosophy. A major segment of the volume is devoted to examining diverse tenets of Hume’s thought, with essays by Saul Traiger, Lilli Alanen, Donald Ainslie, Janet Broughton, Alasdair MacIntyre, David Gauthier, and Robert Shaver. Then, in their papers, Sergio Tenenbaum and Michele Moody-Adams defend a Kantian explanation of the notions of friendship and cruelty. Finally, Karen Jones and Jennifer Whiting close the book by exploring the specular notions of trust and distrust. Baier’s lessons have been carefully absorbed by all contributors. A detailed analysis of the essays would take more space than a review allows, so I will concentrate only on those concerned with Hume, and try to single out from them the trace of Baier’s teaching.The notions of person and passion (as Christopher Williams explains in his useful introduction) are central to Baier’s general approach to philosophy, and they play an important part in the section of the book dedicated to Hume. Traiger looks into the relation between reason and the passions starting from the example of the man hanging over a precipice in an iron cage Hume introduces in A Treatise of Human Nature 1.3.13, and investigates how other philosophers before Hume had explained the reason-passions relation by means of the same argument. Traiger’s conclusion is that whereas for Montaigne, Pascal and Malebranche the precipice phenomenon proves that our passions will always overwhelm our best reasoning (in turn, demonstrating the separation of mind and body), for Descartes and Hume [End Page 229] it is not so. But whereas in Descartes this is because of the power reason possesses as a separate and independent faculty to silence the passions, in Hume the instance of the fear we feel before a precipice is a clear illustration of the interdependence of reason, passion, and imagination, which occupy “a shared arena, where regularities can be investigated and appropriate conclusions drawn” (114).Many of the essays echo one of the main features of Baier’s interpretation of Hume, namely the necessity of defining a peculiar kind of naturalism which has to be conceived within the frame of the reflective practices in which human beings are engaged as social animals. Alanen offers an analysis of the structure of the passions in Hume, starting from a consideration of the various ways the notion of reflection can help clarify the nature of passions and their intentionality. She defends a form of “natural intentionality” (133), according to which passions are intentional acts with bodily expressions which do not need to presuppose conceptually articulated propositions or judgments. In doing this Alanen discusses the role played by emotional exchange among human beings in the constitution of a unified notion of the self. A similar topic is at the center of Ainslie’s essay, which presents a thorough exploration of the principle of sympathy and of the role the self occupies within its mechanism. Ainslie... (shrink)

In this work, attention is drawn to the abundant use of metaphor and analogy in works of logic. I argue that pervasiveness of figurative language is to be counted among the features that characterize logic and distinguish it from other sciences. This characteristic feature reflects the creativity that is inherent in logic and indeed has been demonstrated to be a necessary part of logic. The goal of this paper, in short, is to provide specific examples of figurative language used in (...) logic that yield insights into the nature of the subject. I encourage the reader to take metaphors seriously, and to accept that they are not mere embellishments but key elements in our understanding of logic. (shrink)

One of the common targets that contemporary feminists are critical of concerning the problem of the body is Rene Descartes' mind and body relation. Feminist scholars can identify at least three lines of investigation of the body in contemporary thought that may be regarded as legacies of the Cartesian view, which treat the body as primarily an object for: 1) the natural sciences, particularly for the life sciences, biology, and medicine; 2) as an instrument or a machine at the (...) disposal of consciousness or allocating an animating, willful subjectivity; and 3) as a vehicle of expression of private thoughts and feelings; that is, as fundamentally passive and transparent. Recently, feminist scholars are seriously thinking of a new conceptual model that can displace Cartesian dualism and that can emancipate notions of the body from Cartesian dominant mechanistic models and metaphors. In this light, this paper turns to a Confucian theory of the body for revelation and the case of Mencius is introduced, in which the mind is regarded as the major component of the body and a coherent model is adopted. Can we then conclude to ask in what ways the reclaiming of the body in the Contemporary Western discussion may learn from the Confucian ideas of the body...? (shrink)

Despisers of religion throughout the centuries have poured scorn upon the idea of sacrifice, which they have targeted as an index of the irrational and wicked in religious practice. Lucretius saw the sacrifice of Iphigenia as an instance of the evils perpetrated by religion. But even religious reformers like Xenophanes or Empedocles rail against ‘bloody sacrifice’. What kind of God can demand sacrifice? Yet the language of sacrifice persists in a secular world. Nor does its secularised form seem much more (...) appealing. One need only think of the appalling and grotesque cult of sacrifice in numerous totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The perversion of the Jihad in radical Islam in contemporary Europe would provide another sombre instance. Throughout Europe in the last few years we have seen the revival of a classical Enlightenment atheism, a movement that, far removed from Nietzsche's pathos for the Death of God, pursues a vigorous and relentless policy of Écrasez l'infâme! Indeed, contemporary polemicists like Dawkins and Hitchens wish to emphasise precisely this dimension of Christianity: not just false but nasty! The modern cultured despisers of religion are the self confessed descendants of Hume and Voltaire. Religion is the product of the period of ignorance in the superstitious and terrified fearful infancy of humanity, and is the crude attempt to face the natural human longing for knowledge, consolation and emotional support. How can one strive to defend the concept of sacrifice against such cultured despisers? I think we need to start by reflecting upon why the slaughter of an animal, say, makes holy – sacra facere? The root meaning of ‘sacrifice’ has a basis in ritual practice, as its Latin etymology suggests. Though in common parlance it communicates a giving up or rejection, the word as we are going to understand it signifies the substitution , or more perhaps sublimation , of an item or interest for a higher value or principle. St Augustine speaks of the outward symbol of the true sacrifice of spiritual offering that God requires in the altar of the heart – a sacrifice of humility and praise. The metaphor works because his audience was familiar with the literal sense of the term. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral ScienceMatthew K. MinerdAmong the various types of law discussed in St. Thomas's theological "treatise on law"—questions 90–108 of Summa theologia [ST] I-II—the classification known as the "law of nations" (ius gentium) holds an ambiguous epistemological position. Marking a kind of halfway point between the natural law and civil law, it seems to straddle both domains. In fact, in a particularly important text (...) dedicated to this topic in the ST (I-II, q. 95, a. 4), Aquinas classes the ius gentium as being closely connected to the natural law, though in a way that is somewhat derivative, not as immediately flowing from human nature (especially in its animality) as does the natural law, but also not as marked by human contingency as is human civil law.As was recently discussed in a well-documented and insightful article by Barrett H. Turner in The Thomist, there have historically been two main lines of Thomist interpretation concerning the exact character of the "law of nations." Very broadly stated, what he refers to as the "Salamancan" line, indebted to Francisco de Vitoria, "interprets Thomas's doctrine of the ius gentium as a body of universal positive institutions (that is, specifications, determinationes) added to the natural law by agreement of the human race."1 [End Page 1043] This position, which would be common for several centuries among members of the Thomist school, would locate the law of nations essentially in the domain of nearly universally adopted customs and institutions, not strictly deduced from the natural law, but rather grounded on "the quasi-political authority of the entire human race, which promulgates the ius gentium by customs whose utility for attaining the ends of the natural law under a certain set of social conditions is easily recognized by rational creatures."2Turner calls the other line of thought "Maritain's Neo-Thomist Line,"3 an outlook that would be shared with various nuances by thinkers like Jean-Marie Aubert, Yves Simon, Marie-Michel Labourdette, John Finnis, and others. Setting aside my qualms about his appellation "neo-Thomist," which does more to obscure than to illumine (for it covers a host of Thomistic figures who have significantly different views on what constitutes "Thomism"), Turner does fairly lay out the major lines of Jacques Maritain's position, which is most directly articulated in Man and the State and La loi naturelle ou loi non-écrite.4 Basing himself on his particular view of knowledge of the natural law through connaturality,5 Maritain contrasted this sort of moral cognition with that which develops in the line of conceptual articulation, thus having a different "gnoseological" character from our knowledge of the natural law, while nonetheless still sharing the same "ontological" foundation. Such conceptually articulated law would be the ius gentium.Rather than add my voice to the dialectic of the various thinkers arrayed by Turner into the two aforementioned camps, I would like to propose a slightly different approach to the "moral epistemology of the law of nations," though one that I believe lies in line with the best aspects of Maritain's approach. Continuing a series of reflections that I have undertaken [End Page 1044] concerning moral epistemology during the past few years,6 I propose that it is most helpful to consider the "law of nations" as being a form of reasoning pertaining to what Scholastic vocabulary would refer to as "moral science,"7 namely discursive philosophical reasoning concerning the essences, properties, effects, and various other essential relationships that belong to a human acts, morally considered (the principal subject of moral philosophy), along with other subjects that are studied in relation to this principal subject (e.g., the principles of human acts, most particularly, the structure of human acts and the moral virtues). Moral science is the activity of reasoning that can be undertaken by knowing agents living together in community, seeking to discursively articulate and explain the moral truth that forms the essential basis for the contingent determinations that will then be codified in particular civil laws, the latter of which are not concerned with questions like "what are the ultimate foundations for property... (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on Edmund Husserl’s analyses of the act of approval and the role he attributes to it in his ethics. I show that we can deepen our understanding of both if we rely on his critical reflections on Shaftesbury’s theory of affections in his lecture course Einleitung in die Ethik. The sections of this course devoted to Shaftesbury are the only place in Husserl’s later philosophical production where he addresses the need to clarify the nature of (...) approval from a phenomenological point of view and provides precise indications about the role that such emotions play in our life. I thereby examine Husserl’s criticisms of Shaftesbury’s account of reflective emotions, and I compare these criticisms with Husserl’s account of approval in the texts from the Konvolut über Billigung collected in the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins. I argue that, according to Husserl, approval is an essential but not sufficient component in the pursuit of virtue. The upshot is that crucial parts of Husserl’s ethics come from a radical and original reworking of central notions of the early modern sentimentalist tradition. (shrink)

Suffering Art Gladly is concerned with the ostensibly paradoxical phenomenon of negative emotions involved in the experience of art: how can we explain the pleasure felt or satisfaction taken in such experience when it is the vehicle of negative emotions, that is, ones that seem to be unpleasant or undesirable, and that one normally tries to avoid experiencing? The question is as old as philosophical reflection on the arts, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, and subsequently addressed by Hume, Burke, (...) Diderot, Kant, and Schopenhauer, among others. Moreover, it is still an important and unresolved question in contemporary philosophy of art, where the discussion has been notably enlivened by recent research on the nature of imagination, cognition, and the emotions. Suffering Art Gladly comprises essays of two kinds, though the division between them is not airtight. The first kind are essays with a primarily historical focus, examining the problem of negative emotion from art as treated by important figures in the history of aesthetic thought, including Aristotle, Hume, Diderot, Kant, and Schopenhauer. The second kind are essays with a primarily contemporary focus, in which the methods and tools of contemporary analytic philosophy are much in evidence. In addition to the thirteen essays forming the heart of the book there is a general introduction by the editor, motivating the basic problem with which the essays are variously concerned and identifying the presuppositions or assumptions that are involved in different solutions to the problem. The individual essays are wide-ranging, dealing with a variety of artforms, negative emotions, and specific works of art, and the contributors, all recognized scholars in the field of aesthetics, are a mixture of junior and senior figures representing seven nationalities. (shrink)

According to the judgment theory of emotion, emotions necessarily involve evaluative judgments. Despite a number of attractions, this theory is almost universally held to be dead, for a very simple reason: it is overly intellectualistic. On behalf of the judgment theorist, I defend a simple strategy, namely, to claim that her view is restricted to a special class of emotions, a strategy that is rooted in a plausible distinction between two broad classes of emotion. It turns out that, if the (...) judgment theory is to be rejected, such rejection cannot be based on the charge that it overintellectualizes emotions. (shrink)

This essay explores the important role played by the figure of the virgin girl at the centre of The Beast and The Sovereign. Derrida hints that she may offer a figure between the beast and the sovereign, between the two marionettes of Nature and Culture. Moreover, it seems that she is both what props up the fabled distinction between man and animal and at the same time that upon which man erects himself as sovereign lord and master. Taking Derrida's suggestions (...) further, I argue that the virgin girl both does and undoes sovereign power as phallic power. She is the figure behind the erection of sovereignty. Indeed, her appearance is both necessary and threatening insofar as she both erects sovereign phallic power and threatens to reveal its impotence. In this way, the girl operates between feminine and masculine, between Nature and Culture, between the beast and the sovereign, particularly as her virginity and its deflowering are essential to the cut between the two sides of these traditional binaries. Finally, her appearance is telling in relation to the movements and rhythms of Derrida's deconstructive approach to philosophy and literature in this seminar and in his work more generally. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Nature in Nineteenth-Century British Novels:Doing the MathJoseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, John A. Johnson, and Daniel J. KrugerIThree broad ambitions animate this study. Building on research in evolutionary social science, we aimed (1) to construct a model of human nature—of motives, emotions, features of personality, and preferences in marital partners; (2) use that model to analyze some specific body of literary texts and the responses of readers to those (...) texts, and (3) produce data—information that could be quantified and could serve to test specific hypotheses about those texts.Evolutionary social science is still in the process of constructing a full and adequate model of human nature. Evolutionary social scientists know much already about how human reproductive behavior and human sociality fit into the larger pattern of human evolution. They still have much to learn, though, about the ways literature and the other arts enter into human nature. Our model of human nature draws on our knowledge of imaginative culture, integrates that knowledge with evolutionary theories of culture, and produces data that enable us to draw conclusions on an issue of broad significance for both literary study and evolutionary social science: the adaptive function of literature and the other arts.1In order to make advances in knowledge, it is necessary to choose some particular subject. Genetics is a basic science that applies to all organisms, but geneticists first got an empirical fix on their subject by focusing minutely, with Mendel, on peas, and, with Morgan, on fruit flies. In place of peas and flies, we have taken as our subject British novels of [End Page 50] the longer nineteenth century (Austen to Forster). As a literary topic, the subject is fairly broad, but our theoretical and methodological aims ultimately extend well beyond the specialist fields of British novels, the nineteenth century, British literature, narrative fiction, or even literary scholarship generally. This study is designed to engage the attention of literary scholars in all fields and also to engage the attention of social scientists. If it achieves its aims, this study would help persuade literary scholars that empirical methods offer rich opportunities for the advancement of knowledge about literature, and it would help persuade social scientists that the quantitative study of literature can shed important light on fundamental questions of human psychology and human social interaction. Our own research team combines these two prospective audiences. Two of us (Carroll and Gottschall) have been trained primarily as literary scholars, and two of us (Johnson and Kruger) primarily as social scientists.The focal point for this study is "agonistic" structure: the organization of characters into protagonists, antagonists, and minor characters. The central question in the study is this: does agonistic structure reflect evolved dispositions for forming cooperative social groups? Suppressing or muting competition within a social group enhances group solidarity and organizes the group psychologically for cooperative endeavor. Our chief hypothesis was that protagonists and good minor characters would form communities of cooperative endeavor and that antagonists would exemplify dominance behavior. If this hypothesis proved correct, the ethos reflected in the agonistic structure of the novels would replicate the egalitarian ethos of hunter-gatherers, who stigmatize and suppress status-seeking in potentially dominant individuals. If suppressing dominance in hunter-gatherers fulfills an adaptive social function, and if agonistic structure in the novels engages the same social dispositions that animate hunter-gatherers, our study would lend support to the hypothesis that literature fulfills an adaptive social function.2One of our chief working hypotheses is that when readers respond to characters in novels, they respond in much the same way, emotionally, as they respond to people in everyday life. They like or dislike them, admire them or despise them, fear them, feel sorry for them, or are amused by them. In writing fabricated accounts of human behavior, novelists select and organize their material for the purpose of generating such responses, and readers willingly cooperate with this purpose. They participate vicariously in the experiences depicted and form personal opinions about the qualities of the characters. Authors and readers [End Page 51] thus collaborate in producing a simulated experience of emotionally responsive evaluative judgment. If agonistic structure is a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Nature in Nineteenth-Century British Novels:Doing the MathJoseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, John A. Johnson, and Daniel J. KrugerIThree broad ambitions animate this study. Building on research in evolutionary social science, we aimed (1) to construct a model of human nature—of motives, emotions, features of personality, and preferences in marital partners; (2) use that model to analyze some specific body of literary texts and the responses of readers to those (...) texts, and (3) produce data—information that could be quantified and could serve to test specific hypotheses about those texts.Evolutionary social science is still in the process of constructing a full and adequate model of human nature. Evolutionary social scientists know much already about how human reproductive behavior and human sociality fit into the larger pattern of human evolution. They still have much to learn, though, about the ways literature and the other arts enter into human nature. Our model of human nature draws on our knowledge of imaginative culture, integrates that knowledge with evolutionary theories of culture, and produces data that enable us to draw conclusions on an issue of broad significance for both literary study and evolutionary social science: the adaptive function of literature and the other arts.1In order to make advances in knowledge, it is necessary to choose some particular subject. Genetics is a basic science that applies to all organisms, but geneticists first got an empirical fix on their subject by focusing minutely, with Mendel, on peas, and, with Morgan, on fruit flies. In place of peas and flies, we have taken as our subject British novels of [End Page 50] the longer nineteenth century (Austen to Forster). As a literary topic, the subject is fairly broad, but our theoretical and methodological aims ultimately extend well beyond the specialist fields of British novels, the nineteenth century, British literature, narrative fiction, or even literary scholarship generally. This study is designed to engage the attention of literary scholars in all fields and also to engage the attention of social scientists. If it achieves its aims, this study would help persuade literary scholars that empirical methods offer rich opportunities for the advancement of knowledge about literature, and it would help persuade social scientists that the quantitative study of literature can shed important light on fundamental questions of human psychology and human social interaction. Our own research team combines these two prospective audiences. Two of us (Carroll and Gottschall) have been trained primarily as literary scholars, and two of us (Johnson and Kruger) primarily as social scientists.The focal point for this study is "agonistic" structure: the organization of characters into protagonists, antagonists, and minor characters. The central question in the study is this: does agonistic structure reflect evolved dispositions for forming cooperative social groups? Suppressing or muting competition within a social group enhances group solidarity and organizes the group psychologically for cooperative endeavor. Our chief hypothesis was that protagonists and good minor characters would form communities of cooperative endeavor and that antagonists would exemplify dominance behavior. If this hypothesis proved correct, the ethos reflected in the agonistic structure of the novels would replicate the egalitarian ethos of hunter-gatherers, who stigmatize and suppress status-seeking in potentially dominant individuals. If suppressing dominance in hunter-gatherers fulfills an adaptive social function, and if agonistic structure in the novels engages the same social dispositions that animate hunter-gatherers, our study would lend support to the hypothesis that literature fulfills an adaptive social function.2One of our chief working hypotheses is that when readers respond to characters in novels, they respond in much the same way, emotionally, as they respond to people in everyday life. They like or dislike them, admire them or despise them, fear them, feel sorry for them, or are amused by them. In writing fabricated accounts of human behavior, novelists select and organize their material for the purpose of generating such responses, and readers willingly cooperate with this purpose. They participate vicariously in the experiences depicted and form personal opinions about the qualities of the characters. Authors and readers [End Page 51] thus collaborate in producing a simulated experience of emotionally responsive evaluative judgment. If agonistic structure is a... (shrink)

Sir Geoffrey Lloyd presents a cross-disciplinary exploration of the unity and diversity of the human mind. He discusses cultural variations with regard to ideas of colour, emotion, health, the self, agency and causation, reasoning, and other fundamental aspects of human cognition. He draws together scientific, philosophical, anthropological, and historical arguments in showing how our evident psychic diversity can be reconciled with our shared humanity.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anorexia and the MacCAT-T Test for Mental Competence:Validity, Value, and EmotionLouis C. Charland (bio)Keywordsmental competence, decisional capacity, anorexia, value, emotionValidity of the MacCAT-THow does one scientifically verify a psychometric instrument designed to assess the mental competence of medical patients who are asked to consent to medical treatment? Aside from satisfying technical requirements like statistical reliability, results yielded by such a test must conform to at least some accepted pretheoretical (...) desiderata; for example, determinations of competence, as measured by the test, must capture a minimal core of accepted basic intuitions about what competence means and what a theory of competence is supposed to do. The concepts of "face validity" and "content validity" are both important here. Face validity "indicates that an instrument appears to test what it is supposed to and that it is a plausible method for doing so" (Portney and Watkins 2000, 82). Content validity "means that the test contains all the elements that reflect the variable being studied" (Portney and Watkins 2000, 83). An adequate instrument for measuring mental competence must at minimum satisfy both of these requirements.What Tan and her colleagues (2006) have shown is that the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool—Treatment (MacCAT-T) test for mental competence may not be an empirically valid measure of mental competence for some cases of anorexia. The data they report show that "competence," as measured by the MacCAT-T, does not conform sufficiently well with what is wanted of a clinical medical theory of competence. More specifically, the MacCAT-T is deficient in both face and content validity. This result is extremely significant; previous challenges to the validity of the MacCAT-T have often been largely theoretical in nature. My own objection that the MacCAT is inadequate because it omits the influence of emotion is based on a combination of empirical theory (Charland 1998a) and philosophical argument (Charland 1998b). However, it is entirely theoretical in nature. So is my argument that in ignoring emotion the MacCAT misses a crucial contributing ingredient in competence, namely, value (Charland 2001, see especially 136 note 2). Tan's study provides valuable empirical evidence for the second of these challenges, which deals more specifically with value. On the one hand, the study clearly demonstrates that patients sometimes do [End Page 283] base their treatment decisions on reasons derived from values. And on the other hand, it also nicely illustrates the centrality of values—"utilities" or "preferences"—in the decision-making process generally; a basic assumption of standard decision theory for which, paradoxically, there appears to be no satisfactory counterpart in the MacCAT-T model of reasoning and decision making.Thus, values figure among the reasons that patients actually use in reasoning when they weigh the risks and benefits of proposed treatment options. The MacCAT-T must be amended to incorporate this fact if it is to be a satisfactory clinical medical tool. Without such a correction, the concept of mental competence it measures is empirically invalid. At the root of the problem is a clash of intuitions. Tan's data provide convincing evidence that some of the patients who are deemed to be mentally competent by MacCAT-T standards should not in fact be considered competent. Note that the language in which this clash is expressed—"should not in fact"—involves a combination of descriptive and prescriptive elements, reminding us that the concept of competence is dual in nature: it is both prescriptive and descriptive (Freedman 1981). These problems underscore the need for greater clarity about what pretheoretically we want a clinical theory and test of competence to capture. It is of course reasonable to say that such a test must be consistent with major tenets of the relevant case law (Appelbaum 1998). But a legally valid concept of competence of this sort is too thin and arbitrary a foundation on which to build a clinical medical theory of competence. An empirically valid theory and test of the latter sort must incorporate the role of values if it is be truly helpful in medical practice.Value and the MacCAT-TI agree with Tan and her colleagues that some notion of "pathological value" needs to be... (shrink)

The essays which comprise this collection made their first appearance in 1948 to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the British science journal, The Philosophical Magazine, which initially published many monographs in which distinguished scientific discoveries were announced. The present edition is a reprint of the supplement to the regular issue of 1948 and is now put out in book form to be more available for students of the history of science. The "natural philosophy" (...) in the title reflects the way in which the meaning of the term "philosophy" has changed over the past two centuries, for all the essays are devoted to science as we now know it, even as The Philosophical Magazine has itself become a journal now devoted mainly to solid-state physics. Thus a succession of chapters details the history of astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering through the eighteenth century; other topics include the history of The Philosophical Magazine and histories of scientific periodicals generally, of scientific instruments, and of scientific societies throughout the same era. The concluding essay, by F. Sherwood Taylor, is entitled "The Teaching of the Physical Sciences at the End of the Eighteenth Century"; this is a well documented study of syllabi for courses taught in the universities, as well as an account of the educations received by men who figured prominently in eighteenth-century science. The essays, whose authors include such notables as Sir H. Spencer-Jones, Herbert Dingle, J. R. Partington, J. F. Scott, and Douglas McKie, are uniformly good. They will interest mainly historians of science for their detailed coverage of both internalist and externalist aspects of eighteenth-century thought. They will also appeal to philosophers, however, if only to remind them how their own discipline gave birth to the "new science," and indeed gave it a unity in its early stages that it would do well to recover in the present day.—W.A.W. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 141-144. This January, while preparing a new course, Robert Seydel was struck and killed by an unexpected heart attack. He was a critically under-appreciated artist and one of the most beloved and admired professors at Hampshire College. At the time of his passing, Seydel was on the brink of a major artistic and career milestone. His Book of Ruth was being prepared for publication by Siglio Press. His publisher describes the book as: “an alchemical assemblage that composes (...) the life of his alter ego, Ruth Greisman— spinster, Sunday painter, and friend to Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. Through collages, drawings, and journal entries from Ruth’s imagined life, Seydel invokes her interior world in novelistic rhythms.” This convergence of his professional triumph with the tragedy of his death makes now a particularly appropriate time to think about Robert Seydel and his work. This feature contains a selection of excerpts from Book of Ruth (courtesy of Siglio Press) alongside a pair of texts remembering him and giving critical and biographical insights into his art and his person. These texts, from a former student and a colleague respectively, were originally prepared for Seydel's memorial at Hampshire College and have since been revised for publication in continent. For more information on Book of Ruth, please visit the book's page at the Siglio Press website. —Ben Segal draughty R. * Lauren van Haaften-Schick 2011 “The most apt way to order Smithson's library is with the conjunction 'and'; science and religion; modernism and mass culture; what is present and what is missing.” —Alexander Alberro, 248 Robert Seydel's classes on collage and collecting immersed his students in a curious world of cabinets, oddities, exhaustive archives and obscure histories, explored always with critical rigor and a sincere eye for wonder. His office was a compendium of the ancient, mythic, potential and unworldy, where seemingly unrelated references were endlessly pulled, piled and fused in an ecstatic dance of hyper-annotation. The small room and all its contents overflowed with notes tucked in every margin and corner. Books coated the walls like a switchboard, anxious and humming, waiting for infinite links to be activated. William Blake's books of Job and Urizen summoned Greek mythology and the animal as metaphor, leading to 19th century cryptozoology and the cave paintings at Lascaux, Gaston Bachelard's description of the bird in his garden and Robert Rauschenberg's Canyon . Tracking archetypes and following tangential threads, new revelations and ancient narratives were compiled and ordered to form a new text, a bibliography as assemblage, portrait and poem. Robert's library—one of his many collections—is a portrait, an “artifact, collage of time, a token and remnant” (Seydel, 2007) He is humming with it still. The imagination of this room—of Robert—breathes through the pages of Book of Ruth, as every decision and detail unfolds to a cosmos. Allegory, invention, personal and art histories are entangled and leveled, rendering lived, perceived and absorbed experiences indistinguishable. Anonymous scraps discovered on the street or studio floor, careful clippings and drawn figures are chosen and animated through serendipitous destruction and whimsical, delicate positioning. A precise vocabulary of characters and terms erupts and collapses as personas and passers-by wave and whisper, “Every figure reveals aspects of the total form, which is open and green” (Seydel, 2007). The initials R.S. repeat, a nod to Robert's true family tree and further complicating identification. Robt, Robert's sometimes alter-ego, appears in myriad forms as a trickster “half-wit,” mercurial and skittish, or soft and worn thin. Saul is a solemn tinkerer, parsing the world and sometimes blind. Ruth, the speaker of the book, records and translates all, her voice wavering between poetic verse and a cryptic half-speech as complex as it is sparse. The rhythm of frayed edges sets time - the weight of the world and the lightness of paper. Robert wrote of his process, “Material is essential; scuffings carry history, which wanders throughout” (Seydel, 2007). Collectors, assemblers, sway between careful movements of selection and placement as they pull from the found world, mediating calculated and unconscious association to form a lexicon of gestures, symbols and allusion, the “artifacts of a life... the refuse and rejecta of days” (Seydel, 2007). These assembled fragments shift and chatter, at home in their homelessness, actors performing in their own lives, populating an invented world of similar orphans. Such accumulated, severed parts carry the injury of their cutting and retain the evidence of their source, binding loss to creation in a symbiosis of trauma and repair. Mourning and remembrance are deeply embedded in the histories and acts of such practices. Grievance, acceptance, and the fragility of life are conveyed in the 18th century allegorical arrangements of fetal specimens by Frederik Ruysch. A certain melancholy reverence colors Joseph Cornell's intimately tactile assemblages rendering the universe tangible in miniature, or made in devotion to unrequited loves. Preserved in stasis, these ghosts and idols are kept in a purgatory where fact and fiction, past and present are irrelevant distinctions. Catalogued and contained, the subject of loss is transferred to an artifact. Every thread, scrap and letter may be glued, gathered and placed in a museum, a tomb, a box, a page, ripe and open for possession. Holding on to grief and reveling in disrepair, we opt to be haunted. Forever unbalanced and in flux, the sublime of collage is its resolve to irresolution. For Robert, “Art, as creation and as sign of primary Imagination, is not objects but a state, a kind of fluid” (Seydel, 2007) Reflecting on his work, life, and death, I am drawn to my library and the myriad titles acquired through his inspiration. There is Daniel Spoerri's An Anecdoted Topography of Chance , Susan Stewart's On Longing , various Borges, Barthes, Perec, and especially Life: A User's Manual , which concludes that the perfect puzzle will have no solution. I think of the drawers of miscellaneous swallowed objects at the Mutter Museum, Ray Johnson coding the every day in riddles, Wallace Berman twisting tongues, and Susan Hiller laying every detail to bear. Collectors and makers working in endless cycles of observation, ingestion and display. Every gesture informs and is defined by others, every space is shaped by that which surrounds and fills it, the knot has an inner logic, the gigantic is not so different from the miniature, there is a world in every detail, and “All art is collage” (Seydel, 2011) These thoughts have molded my life, my art, and all the minutia that keep the two so profoundly intertwined; There is no difference between life and what we do with our time. “I write my life. I make me up.” What a gift to share this secret way of knowing the world, and to leave this knowledge for us to do with what we please. “Art begins in admiration” (Seydel, 2011) Lauren van Haaften-Schick is a curator, writer and artist based in New York. Upcoming curatorial projects include "Cancelled" at the Center for Book Arts, and "The Spirit of the Signal" at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York. Recent activities include the workshops "Market, Alternative" and "Alternative Art Economies" at Trade School and Momenta Art, and the e-flux Time/Store, New York. She is the founding director of two arts spaces in Northampton, MA and Philadelphia, PA. She received a BA in Art History and Studio Art from Hampshire college in 2006. Sura Levine on Robert Seydel If early on in his time at Hampshire College I was officially his “mentor,” Robert Seydel quickly became one of my great teachers. Over the years we talked about everything, from art, music, collage, and poetry, to campus politics, this latter far too often. It was always a sublime pleasure, if all too rarely done, to enter his apartment to look at his work in progress, to peruse his bookshelves where, inevitably, there were always new treats to examine. And, while he was working on his Book of Ruth , I was given the opportunity over the course of many meals at the Korean and other restaurants, to talk with him about image and poem ordering. To see how he thought through each comma, each juxtaposition across the gutters of the Book, was to watch a brilliant curator at work. Each day, I walk past his wonderful collaged portrait of Ruth, purchased, after much haggling, as a birthday present, a couple of years ago. And each day, I think how lucky I am to have known Robert as he produced this magnum opus. One of my greatest pleasures in 24 years at the College was to teach “The Collector” with Robert. One of my greatest regrets is that the magic we created together in the classroom will not, and cannot, be duplicated. Its various incarnations, its utter intelligence and magic, were all so deeply Robert’s. His was a mind that put poetry, philosophy, history of science, and history together with art, and art together with music. His intellect and eye were unparalleled. He introduced us to so many artists. He shared his fascination with the cabinets of curiosity of Aldrovandi, of Seba, and Peter the Great’s collection of fetal anomalies, as well as the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. Robert knew them all and so many more. He was a walking encyclopedia, his home a great archive. Arcane knowledge, perhaps, but oh so important for another of Robert’s heroes, the mid-20th century Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, whose name he invariably mispronounced as “Broadthayers.” In speaking his name, Robert would always look in my direction in a panic, and then he go on and maul it. I absolutely loved his various mispronunciations of French names and terms! “The Collector” was always filled with talented young artists, art historians, philosophers and writers who all came to understand the wondrous obsessions of the figure of the collector. Students in this course created dazzling projects each term. He always moved while looking and speaking. He read deeply, and commented on everyone’s work with wonderful generosity. Robert always found something to praise even in the least developed of projects. Robert inspired and mentored all of his students into making work that far exceeded their expectations—and ours. For those of you who were lucky enough to have been touched by or to have had an evaluation written by Robert, savor it, keep it, reread it, and share it. He loved working with you all; it is somehow fitting that he died while prepping yet another new course. Robert, it’s almost impossible to speak of you in the past tense, even though you left us a month ago. No doubt, if you knew about our gatherings and celebrations of you, you would be embarrassed that we are making a fuss over you; you always placed the focus on others rather than on yourself. This trait is exactly why so many people miss you now. We’re here to love you publicly as we all did privately for the eleven years you were among us. Robert, my very dear friend, you were an extraordinary artist—you were my brother of choice. My heart broke when yours did. I miss you profoundly. —Sura Levine, February 26, 2011 Sura Levine is a professor of art history at Hampshire College. Her field of specialty is 19th century Belgian and French art, particularly realism and impressionism. Having worked in museums for a number of years both prior to coming to the College, and, as guest curator and co-author of exhibition catalogues, she became particularly interested in the history of museum and trends in collecting. It was because of their shared interests that she and Robert Seydel developed their course, The Collector, which they co-taught for many years. (shrink)

Brand begins his book with a statement of the philosophical and cultural crisis of contemporary life, a crisis brought about by science. The idealizing methods and technology of contemporary science lead to a loss of self-understanding, and to a replacement of ordinary lived experience by scientific constructs; science in its turn has lost its human and philosophical meaning. An exploration of the life-world that provides the basis for science may help remedy this situation. Brand then explores the theme of a (...) concrete, lived world in Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. In these sections he examines themes appropriate to each author: essence, intuition, evidence and intentionality in Husserl; hermeneutics, world, sensibility and authenticity in Heidegger; en soi, pour soi, and negativity in Sartre; the body, science, and dialectics in Merleau-Ponty. These are not just introductory analyses; in each case Brand comes to terms with major interpretations and critics, and is able to show the unity of philosophic inspiration behind each man. In the second section of the book he presents his own analysis of the life-world. He begins with a long study of the nature of philosophical reflection. This includes a treatment of the formal process of distinguishing and reuniting into wholes. He analyzes conceptualization, the experience of wonder, meaning and expression, metaphor, communication, sensibility and the body. Action, value, need, choice, scarcity, and motives are among the themes treated next, and also social dimensions like the family, authority, conflict and friends. Finally he examines private dimensions like personal mythos, one's personal career, sex, eros and love, and the inner life. Throughout these pages Brand uses not only the four philosophers analyzed in Part One, but also such figures as Gadamer, Derrida, Habermas, Wittgenstein, and many others. His writing is a guide not only to philosophical problems, but also to vast areas of current literature; long quotations abound. The original problem of the life-world comes from Husserl, but Brand is especially aware of the dimension of action, choice and work, so his interpretation of the life-world is able to illuminate aspects that Husserl touched only lightly. Brand's independent mind is able to cut across philosophical schools and uncover common elements in them, such as his excellent comparison of Wittgenstein and phenomenology on the irreducible character of insight as the beginning of philosophy. He considers the life-world as not the final ground of experience; rather the process of distinguishing is more basic, and is the final term beyond which we cannot move. Brand claims Husserl does not go beyond the life-world to this, and that only the late Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein appreciate it; but are not Husserl's doctrines of parts and wholes and empty and filled intentions a treatment of the process of distinguishing and identifying? And don't these themes take Husserl beyond the life-world? The wide range and multitudinous sources of this book make exhaustive treatment of each area impossible, and on some points Brand merely gives sketches of what might be done. Other themes are very thoroughly analyzed, and all sections are interesting and provocative. This book should be not only an important contribution to phenomenology, but also one of the most helpful volumes in the philosophical discussions of the years to come.--R. S. (shrink)

Ce livre cherche à montrer comment l'eau, à la fois réalité et symbole, nourrit la pensée de Platon. Quelle est l'origine de cette thématique et quelles en sont les finalités? A travers ces interrogations, il s'agit de mettre en lumière la fonction de cette matière particulière dont les aspects sont déclinés de manière originale dans l'ensemble de son oeuvre. En rassemblant la multiplicité des images de l'eau, l'auteur interroge la nature et la valeur des images en s'efforçant de montrer comment (...) Platon, écrivain et poète, met en oeuvre avec inventivité métaphores, allégories et mythes. De quoi alimenter un questionnement sur le réel, auquel l'eau donne un fil directeur. On y voit aussi se défaire une certaine idée du platonisme. Critique à l'égard de la rhétorique et des arts, Platon vise dans le miroir les effets illusoires de l'image et de l'imitation, mais Socrate utilise lui-même les images et les reflets tout au long des dialogues, et on en découvre avec étonnement toutes les variations. La métaphore hydrique conditionne l'univers de la parole et de la science, reflète le mouvement de la pensée et ses dérives. Dans les images métaphysiques et morales, ce sont les flux, les fleuves et le monde marin qui reflètent la nature et la qualité des âmes ; mythes et allégories déplient les symboles de la corruption, de l'oubli et de l'incontinence, où se jouent une idée de la matière et la valeur de l'existence. Sur le plan ontologique, l'eau dénoue les figures de l'instable qui mettent en oeuvre la réfutation des «liquides» - théoriciens du flux - et l'intelligibilité du devenir. Enfin, dans l'ordre politique, la critique de la thalassocratie, les mythes (l'Atlantide, la mer de la dissemblance) et les images nautiques suivent les lignes fluctuantes de l'histoire athénienne, mais tracent aussi les contours de la Cité juste et le visage du vrai gouvernant. Dans le scintillement des eaux, à la croisée du sensible et de l'intelligible, se construit l'iconologie platonicienne. L'eau figurée, transfigurée dans le fil liquide de la poésie, forme les multiples reflets de ce qu'il faut vraiment voir pour se libérer du spectacle des ombres et penser le chemin d'une sagesse, qui ne renonce jamais au monde. (shrink)

One of the common targets that contemporary feminists are critical of concerning the problem of the body is Rene Descartes' mind and body relation. Feminist scholars can identify at least three lines of investigation of the body in contemporary thought that may be regarded as legacies of the Cartesian view, which treat the body as primarily an object for: 1) the natural sciences, particularly for the life sciences, biology, and medicine; 2) as an instrument or a machine at the (...) disposal of consciousness or allocating an animating, willful subjectivity; and 3) as a vehicle of expression of private thoughts and feelings; that is, as fundamentally passive and transparent. Recently, feminist scholars are seriously thinking of a new conceptual model that can displace Cartesian dualism and that can emancipate notions of the body from Cartesian dominant mechanistic models and metaphors. In this light, this paper turns to a Confucian theory of the body for revelation and the case of Mencius is introduced, in which the mind is regarded as the major component of the body and a coherent model is adopted. Can we then conclude to ask in what ways the reclaiming of the body in the Contemporary Western discussion may learn from the Confucian ideas of the body...? (shrink)

… Pound’s Imagist economy often mixes metaphors of capitalization with metaphors of expenditure. Words, he writes in an early essay, are like cones filled with energy, laden with the accumulated “power of tradition.” When correctly juxtaposed, these words “radiate” or “discharge” or spend this energy , just as the Image releases “an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” . The precise relation of accumulation to expenditure in Pound’s Imagism is never really elaborated. For clarification one would probably (...) have to look toward his theories of sexuality, which hint at a proportion between spermatic retention and intensity of ejaculation. “The liquid solution [of sperm and/or thought],” he writes in his 1921 “Postscript” to Gourmont’s Natural Philosophy of Love, “must be kept at right consistency; one would say the due proportion of liquid to viscous particles, a good circulation; the actual quality of the sieve or separator, counting perhaps most of all; the balance of ejector and retentive media” .13 Similar physiological metaphors will shape Pound’s later economic writings of the thirties and forties. Money will function as a kind of “sieve” or “separator” , and usury will be described as malevolent form of retention, an “obstruction” to the proper circulation of money and goods. Economic justice will therefore involve the institution of a correct “balance” or “measure” between accumulation and expenditure, between “ejector” and “retentive media.” From Pound’s later Confucian perspective, excess in either direction—whether it take the form of “smeary hoarding” or extravagant squandering—always leads to evil and disorder.14Excess is of course what Pound’s Imagist economy most militantly seeks to eliminate from contemporary poetry. Pound writes in 1912, “As to Twentieth-century poetry … it will be harder and saner … ‘nearer the bone.’ It will be as much like granite as it can be … It will not try to seem forcible by rhetorical din, and luxurious riot. We will have fewer painted adjectives impeding the shock and stroke of it…. I want it austere, direct, free from emotional slither” . The vocabulary of this passage combines a discernibly American, puritanical suspicion of ornament with a functionalist asceticism that we have come to recognize as a characteristic feature of the international style of high modernism.15 From a postmodernist vantage point, however, we might well question just why the category of excess or surplus represented by “rhetorical din,” “luxurious riot,” or “emotional slither” should be so inevitably construed as negative or uneconomic. Georges Bataille, for one, provides a provocative refutation of this ideology in La Part maudite. The economics he there seeks to define would instead be based on the valorization of excess, or of what he terms “la dépense improductive,” nonproductive expenditure. Bataille’s “economy of excess” turns on “la perte du proper,” that is, the loss of the literal to the figurative, the loss of purity to scatological defilement, and the loss of personal identity to a sacred expropriation by the Other. 13. See also Kevin Oderman’s comments on the importance of delay and deferral to Pound’s troubadour “eroticism of dalliance” in “ ‘Cavalcanti’: That the Body Is Not Evil,” Paideuma 11 : 257-79. If, according to Pound, the “classic aesthetic” involves “plastic to coitus, plastic plus immediate satisfaction,” Cavalcanti’s cult of Amor instead privileges mental reterntion, “the fine thing held in the mind,” that is, erotic or mnemonic capitalization. See LE, pp. 150-53.14. Rabaté, Language, Sexuality, and Ideology, pp. 217-23, similarly links Pound’s “Postscript” to Gourmont to his later economics.15. Herbert Schneidau, Ezra Pound: The Image and the Real , pp. 177-78. Richard Sieburth is associate professor of French at New York University. He is the author of Instigations: Ezra Pound and Remy de Gourmont and translator of Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hymns and Fragments . He is currently preparing an edition of Pound’s writings on France. (shrink)