This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

What role does non-genetic inheritance play in evolution? In recent work we have independently and collectively argued that the existence and scope of non-genetic inheritance systems, including epigenetic inheritance, niche construction/ecological inheritance, and cultural inheritance—alongside certain other theory revisions—necessitates an extension to the neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis (MS) in the form of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). However, this argument has been challenged on the grounds that non-genetic inheritance systems are exclusively proximate mechanisms that serve the ultimate function of calibrating organisms (...) to stochastic environments. In this paper we defend our claims, pointing out that critics of the EES (1) conflate non-genetic inheritance with early 20th-century notions of soft inheritance; (2) misunderstand the nature of the EES in relation to the MS; (3) confuse individual phenotypic plasticity with trans-generational non-genetic inheritance; (4) fail to address the extensive theoretical and empirical literature which shows that non-genetic inheritance can generate novel targets for selection, create new genetic equilibria that would not exist in the absence of non-genetic inheritance, and generate phenotypic variation that is independent of genetic variation; (5) artificially limit ultimate explanations for traits to gene-based selection, which is unsatisfactory for phenotypic traits that originate and spread via non-genetic inheritance systems; and (6) fail to provide an explanation for biological organization. We conclude by noting ways in which we feel that an overly gene-centric theory of evolution is hindering progress in biology and other sciences. (shrink)

Is GDP a good proxy for social welfare? Building on economic theory, this book confirms that it is not, but also that most alternatives to it share its basic flaw, i.e., a focus on specific aspects of people's lives without sufficiently taking account of people's values and goals. A better approach is possible.

The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

One of science's greatest intellects examines how people and animals display fear, anger, and pleasure. Darwin based this 1872 study on his personal observations, which anticipated later findings in neuroscience. Abounding in anecdotes and literary quotations, the book is illustrated with 21 figures and seven photographic plates. Its direct approach, accessible to professionals and amateurs alike, continues to inspire and inform modern research in psychology.

Charles Taylor has been one of the most original and influential figures in contemporary philosophy: his 'philosophical anthropology' spans an unusually wide range of theoretical interests and draws creatively on both Anglo-American and Continental traditions in philosophy. A selection of his published papers is presented here in two volumes, structured to indicate the direction and essential unity of the work. He starts from a polemical concern with behaviourism and other reductionist theories (particularly in psychology and the philosophy of language) (...) which aim to model the study of man on the natural sciences. This leads to a general critique of naturalism, its historical development and its importance for modern culture and consciousness; and that in turn points, forward to a positive account of human agency and the self, the constitutive role of language and value, and the scope of practical reason. The volumes jointly present some two decades of work on these fundamental themes, and convey strongly the tenacity, verve and versatility of the author in grappling with them. They will interest a very wide range of philosophers and students of the human sciences. (shrink)

This new edition of Charles Fried's 'Medical Experimentation' includes a general introduction by Franklin Miller and the late Alan Wertheimer, a reprint of the 1974 text, an in-depth analysis by Harvard Law School scholars I. Glenn Cohen and D. James Greiner, and a new essay by Fried reflecting on the original text and how it applies to the contemporary landscape of medicine and medical experimentation.

In this revised edition of his 1979 classic Political Theory and International Relations, Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international (...) politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice of a state’s domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific imagination, The Origin of Species sold out on the day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England, and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly "passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street." Yet, after reading it, Darwin's friend and colleague T. H. Huxley had a different (...) reaction: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that." Based largely on Darwin's experience as a naturalist while on a five-year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle, The Origin of Species set forth a theory of evolution and natural selection that challenged contemporary beliefs about divine providence and the immutability of species. A landmark contribution to philosophical and scientific thought, this edition also includes an introductory historical sketch and a glossary Darwin later added to the original text. Charles Darwin grew up considered, by his own account, "a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect." A quirk of fate kept him from the career his father had deemed appropriate--that of a country parson--when a botanist recommended Darwin for an appointment as a naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle from 1831 to 1836. Darwin is also the author of the five-volume work Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle (1839) and The Descent of Man (1871). (shrink)

The publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 ignited a public storm he neither wanted nor enjoyed. Having offered his book as a contribution to science, Darwin discovered to his dismay that it was received as an affront by many scientists and as a sacrilege by clergy and Christian citizens. To answer the criticism that his theory was a theory only, and a wild one at that, he published two volumes in 1868 to demonstrate that evolution was (...) obvious to anyone who cared to look at a bull in a pasture or a dog on a hearth. In response to those who insisted that species were distinct since creation, Darwin pointed to breeders of pigs and pigeons. In reply to those who protested that human intervention is one thing and natural selection another, he argued, "If organic beings had not possessed an inherent tendency to vary, man could have done nothing." To counter those who scorned his descriptions of species in exotic places, he submitted local evidence of cabbages and cauliflower. Based on a wide array of sources, from ancient pictographs to Polish roosters, from skins and from skeletons, from scientific journals and breeding manuals, Darwin assembled a mass of proof--and a hypothesis about species reversion that risked his reputation anew. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication is a two-volume compilation of his thorough and intensive research and the revolutionary conclusions that resulted. The first portion of his work is dedicated to a meticulous analysis of various aspects of plant and animal life, including an inventory of varieties and their physical and behavioral characteristics, investigation of the impact of a species' surrounding environment and the role that both natural and forced changes in this environment have had. Darwin then turns to a richly detailed discussion of the roles of inheritance and crossing in the development of species. A wealth of illustrations further support and enhance his findings. This fascinating, invaluable, and courageous undertaking eventually formed the foundation for our current understanding of evolution. "In science as in politics the victors tend to write the history books. As a result, the record of the past is edited, intentionally or unintentionally, so that it focuses mainly on the precursors of contemporary orthodoxy. Such a focus may accurately represent the genealogy of modern ideas, but it almost inevitably misrepresents the historical experience of their progenitors... Even the powerful, persuasive, and ultimately triumphant theory of evolution by natural selection required not only defense, but repeated buttressing and revision. Variation showed Darwin hard at work on this rearguard action, using the materials he had at hand... His information was gleaned from the observations of fanciers, breeders, and amateur naturalists, as well as from the treatises of those on the cutting edge of zoology and botany. As hindsight narrows the historical spotlight, it imposes its own sense of hierarchy on the preoccupations of the past. But Darwin was interested in all of these topics, valued all of these sources, and belonged, to a greater or lesser extent, to all of these communities."--from the Introduction. (shrink)

A new understanding of political philosophy from one of its leading thinkers What is political philosophy? What are its fundamental problems? And how should it be distinguished from moral philosophy? In this book, Charles Larmore redefines the distinctive aims of political philosophy, reformulating in this light the basis of a liberal understanding of politics. Because political life is characterized by deep and enduring conflict between rival interests and differing moral ideals, the core problems of political philosophy are the regulation (...) of conflict and the conditions under which the members of society may thus be made subject to political authority. We cannot assume that reason will lead to unanimity about these matters because individuals hold different moral convictions. Larmore therefore analyzes the concept of reasonable disagreement and investigates the ways we can adjudicate conflicts among people who reasonably disagree about the nature of the human good and the proper basis of political society. Challenging both the classical liberalism of Locke, Kant, and Mill, and more recent theories of political realism proposed by Bernard Williams and others, Larmore argues for a version of political liberalism that is centered on political legitimacy rather than on social justice, and that aims to be well suited to our times rather than universally valid. Forceful and thorough yet concise, What Is Political Philosophy? proposes a new definition of political philosophy and demonstrates the profound implications of that definition. The result is a compelling and distinctive intervention from a major political philosopher. (shrink)

Packed with examples pulled straight from recent headlines, ENGINEERING ETHICS, Sixth Edition, helps engineers understand the importance of their conduct as professionals as well as reflect on how their actions can affect the health, safety and welfare of the public and the environment. Numerous case studies give readers plenty of hands-on experience grappling with modern-day ethical dilemmas, while the book's proven and structured method for analysis walks readers step by step through ethical problem-solving techniques. It also offers practical application of (...) the Engineering Code of Ethics and thorough coverage of critical moral reasoning, effective organizational communication, sustainability and economic development, risk management, ethical responsibilities, globalized standards for engineering and emerging challenges relating to evolving technology. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

The Spirit of the Laws is, without question, one of the central texts in the history of eighteenth-century thought, yet there has been no complete, scholarly English-language edition since that of Thomas Nugent, published in 1750. This lucid translation renders Montesquieu's problematic text newly accessible to a fresh generation of students, helping them to understand quite why Montesquieu was such an important figure in the early enlightenment and why The Spirit of the Laws was, for example, such an influence upon (...) those who framed the American constitution. Fully annotated, this edition focuses attention upon Montesquieu's use of sources and his text as a whole, rather than upon those opening passages towards which critical energies have traditionally been devoted, and a select bibliography and chronology are provided for those coming to Montesquieu's work for the first time. (shrink)

The Tattvasaṃgraha, or Encyclopedia of Metaphysics, is the most influential and most frequently studied philosophical text from the late period of Indian Buddhism. This edition includes verses by Śāntarakṣita (c. 725-788 CE), which are clarified and expounded in the commentary of his student Kamalaśīla (c. 740-795 CE); both of these authors played crucial roles in founding the Buddhist tradition of Tibet. In the Tattvasaṃgraha, they explain, discuss and critique a vast range of views and arguments from across the whole South (...) Asian philosophical and religious spectrum. The work deals at length with ideas drawn from Buddhism, Jainism, and a variety of traditions now incorporated within Hinduism, including Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya-vaiśeṣika, and Sāṃkhya; it also includes the earliest discussion of Advaita Vedānta in any Buddhist text. The chapters selected for translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan deal with such fundamental philosophical issues as the existence or nonexistence of God and the soul; the nature of matter and of causal relationships; the connection between words and their referents; the rules of logic; the sources of our knowledge; and the compatibility of beliefs about karma with Buddhism's fundamental claim that there is no self. Introductory chapters discuss translation choices and explain the forms of argument and methods of reasoning employed by Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla. (shrink)

This first volume of the Logic of the Future edition collects Peirce's writings on the historical development, theory and application of his graphical method and diagrammatic reasoning. Its 28 selections of texts and extensive general and volume int.

Although nursing has a unique contribution to advancing social justice in health care practices and education, and although social justice has been claimed as a core value of nursing, there is little guidance regarding how to enact social justice in nursing practice and education. In this paper, we propose a critical antidiscriminatory pedagogy (CADP) for nursing as a promising path in this direction. We argue that because discrimination is inherent to the production and maintenance of inequities and injustices, adopting a (...) CADP offers opportunities for students and practicing nurses to develop their capacity to counteract racism and other forms of individual and systemic discrimination in health care, and thus promote social justice. The CADP we propose has the following features: it is grounded in a critical intersectional perspective of discrimination, it aims at fostering transformative learning, and it involves a praxis‐oriented critical consciousness. A CADP challenges the liberal individualist paradigm that dominates much of western‐based health care, and the culturalist and racializing processes prevalent in nursing education. It also situates nursing practice as responsive to health inequities. Thus, a CADP is a promising way to translate social justice into nursing practice and education through transformative learning. (shrink)

In this book, Charles Larmore develops an account of morality, freedom, and reason that rejects the naturalistic metaphysics shaping much of modern thought. Reason, Larmore argues, is responsiveness to reasons, and reasons themselves are essentially normative in character, consisting in the way that physical and psychological facts - facts about the world of nature - count in favor of possibilities of thought and action that we can take up. Moral judgments are true or false in virtue of the moral (...) reasons there are. We need therefore a more comprehensive metaphysics that recognizes a normative dimension to reality as well. Though taking its point of departure in the analysis of moral judgment, this book branches widely into related topics such as freedom and the causal order of the world, textual interpretation, the nature of the self, self-knowledge, and the concept of duties to ourselves. (shrink)

Of laws in general -- Of laws directly derived from the nature of government -- Of the principles of the three kinds of government -- That the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of government -- That the laws given by the legislator ought to be relative to the nature of government -- Consquences of the principles of different governments, with respect to the simplicity of civil and criminal laws, the form of judgements, and inflicting of (...) punishments -- Consquences of the different principles of the three governments, with respect to sumptuary laws, luxury, and the condition of women -- Of the corruption of the principles of the three governments -- Of the laws in the relation they bear to defensive force -- Of laws, in the relation they bear to offensive force. (shrink)

The description for this book, Political Equality: An Essay in Democratic Theory, will be forthcoming.

Antisemitism is fun. This essay explains why and proposes a new approach to combating it.

Kierkegaard’s ideal supports a radical form of “deep diversity,” to use Charles Taylor’s expression. It is radical because it embraces not only irreducible conceptions of the good but also incompatible ones. This is due to its paradoxical nature, which arises from its affirmation of both monism and pluralism, the One and the Many, together. It does so in at least three ways. First, in terms of the structure of the self, Kierkegaard describes his ideal as both unified (the “positive (...) third”) and plural (a “negative unity”). Second, he affirms a process which brings together unity, as implied by the linear notion of “stages”, with plurality, in the form of “spheres of existence” (aesthetic, ethical, and religious). And third, the culmination of the process implies that we should embrace both a unified dialectic (“Religiousness A”) alongside the plural remnants of the ethical/aesthetic, that is, both the infinity of the former and the finitudes of the latter. Unsurprisingly, while Kierkegaard describes those who are able to exemplify his ideal in practice as “always joyful,” he also considers the ideal to be “extremely hard, the hardest task of all.” This is why those such as Hubert L. Dreyfus are wrong to claim that it provides an experience of bliss; on the contrary, those who realize it “are always in danger.” As I shall show, one form this danger takes is that it threatens to dirty the hands of those who manage to uphold Kierkegaard’s ideal. Moreover, it does so in ways that, I claim, tend to be missed by Kierkegaard himself. Nevertheless, the danger is also essential to the creativity of his approach, and I conclude by pointing out how this creativity makes it capable of tackling one of the profoundest challenges in contemporary ethics: that arising from what just war theorists call a “supreme emergency.” . (shrink)

Introduction to Hegel's thought for the student and general reader, emphasizing in particular his social and political thought and his continuing relevance to contemporary problems.

Dans la mesure où il achève l’histoire de la philosophie, Hegel se voit conférer un rôle tout à fait singulier dans la lecture heideggerienne d’une telle histoire. Penser après Hegel, c’est donc penser la fin de cette histoire, et par conséquent aussi son autre limite, à savoir son commencement. Or, la signification et la portée de celui-ci se voient bouleversés de part et d’autre de ce qu’il est convenu de nommer le tournant ( Kehre ) de la pensée heideggerienne. Dans (...) un premier temps, le dépassement de Hegel consiste à se recentrer pour mettre en lumière la temporalité constitutive de cet étant pour lequel il y a être, le Dasein, c’est-à-dire son écart fondamental. Dans un second temps, ce que Heidegger tâche, après Hegel, de rejoindre, répond à l’impensé du premier commencement grec, c’est-à-dire avant que la métaphysique, avec Platon, ne débute. Le chemin est alors paradoxalement celui qui, à travers le plus grand éloignement, tente de penser l’être-commençant. (shrink)

Si L’Étoile de la rédemption de Franz Rosenzweig se veut encore un « système de philosophie », c’est dans la pleine conscience de ce que la forme du système a trouvé, dans l’œuvre de Hegel, un accomplissement en lequel toute l’histoire de la philosophie se rassemble et s’achève. Une « pensée nouvelle » est‑elle dès lors possible, qui surmonte réellement la tradition qui la précède, sans qu’un tel dépassement la conduise hors de la philosophie? Cet article se penche sur la (...) manière dont Rosenzweig a conçu l’histoire de la philosophie et déterminé, depuis la Révélation, la position d’extériorité qui devait être la sienne. La voie rosenzweigienne est mise en regard de celle de Heidegger, l’un et l’autre penseur n’ayant pas seulement discerné dans leur temps l’achèvement des systèmes, mais conçu le renouveau de la philosophie comme un mouvement de traduction vers l’origine, grecque ou biblique, de la pensée. (shrink)

My topic is the materialist appropriation of empiricism – as conveyed in the ‘minimal credo’ nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu (which interestingly is not just a phrase repeated from Hobbes and Locke to Diderot, but is also a medical phrase, used by Harvey, Mandeville and others). That is, canonical empiricists like Locke go out of their way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall (...) not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (Essay, I.i.2, in Locke 1975; which Kant gets exactly wrong in his reading of Locke, in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere, contrary to a prevalent reading of Locke, that the Essay is not the extension to the study of the mind of the methods of natural philosophy; that he is actually not the “underlabourer” of Newton and Boyle he claims politely to be in the Epistle to the Reader (Wolfe and Salter 2009, Wolfe 2010). Rather, Locke says quite directly if we pay heed to such passages, “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct” (Essay, I.i.6). There would be more to say here about what this implies for our understanding of empiricism (see Norton 1981 and Gaukroger 2005), but instead I shall focus on a different aspect of this episode: how a non-naturalistic claim which falls under what we now call epistemology (a claim about the senses as the source of knowledge) becomes an ontology – materialism. That is, how an empiricist claim could shift from being about the sources of knowledge to being about the nature of reality (and/or the mind, in which case it needs, as David Hartley saw and Denis Diderot proclaimed more overtly, an account of the relation between mental processes and the brain). (David Armstrong, for one, denied that there could be an identification between empiricism and materialism on this point: eighteenth-century history of science seems to prove him wrong: see Armstrong 1968 and 1978.) Put differently, I want to examine the shift from the logic of ideas in the seventeenth century (Locke) to an eighteenth-century focus on what kind of ‘world’ the senses give us (Condillac), to an assertion that there is only one substance in the universe (Diderot, giving a materialist cast to Spinozism), and that we need an account of the material substrate of mental life. This is neither a ‘scientific empiricism’ nor a linear developmental process from philosophical empiricism to natural science, but something else again: the unpredictable emergence of an ontology on empiricist grounds. (shrink)

Volume 47, Issue 3, November 2018, Page 403-427.

In these selected essays, Charles Parsons surveys the contributions of philosophers and mathematicians who shaped the philosophy of mathematics over the past century: Brouwer, Hilbert, Bernays, Weyl, Gödel, Russell, Quine, Putnam, Wang, and Tait.

This book is an examination of how the law understands human identity and the whole notion of 'human being'. On these two notions the law, usually unconsciously, builds the superstructure of 'human rights'. It explores how the law understands the concept of a human being, and hence a person who is entitled to human rights. This involves a discussion of the legal treatment of those of so-called "marginal personhood" (e.g. high functioning non-human animals; humans of limited intellectual capacity, and fetuses). (...) It also considers how we understand our identity as people, and hence how we fall into different legal categories: such as gender, religion and so on. The law makes a number of huge assumptions about some fundamental issues of human identity and authenticity - for instance that we can talk meaningfully about the entity that we call 'our self'. Until now it has rarely, if ever, identified those assumptions, let alone interrogated them. This failure has led to the law being philosophically dubious and sometimes demonstrably unfit for purpose. Its failure is increasingly hard to cover up. What should happen legally, for instance, when a disease such as dementia eliminates or radically transforms all the characteristics that most people regard as foundational to the 'self'? This book seeks to plug these gaps in the literature. (shrink)

This mathematics textbook covers the fundamental ideas used in writing proofs. Proof techniques covered include direct proofs, proofs by contrapositive, proofs by contradiction, proofs in set theory, proofs of existentially or universally quantified predicates, proofs by cases, and mathematical induction. Inductive and deductive reasoning are explored. A straightforward approach is taken throughout. Plenty of examples are included and lots of exercises are provided after each brief exposition on the topics at hand. The text begins with a study of symbolic logic, (...) deductive reasoning, and quantifiers. Inductive reasoning and making conjectures are examined next, and once there are some statements to prove, techniques for proving conditional statements, disjunctions, biconditional statements, and quantified predicates are investigated. Terminology and proof techniques in set theory follow with discussions of the pick-a-point method and the algebra of sets. Cartesian products, equivalence relations, orders, and functions are all incorporated. Particular attention is given to injectivity, surjectivity, and cardinality. The text includes an introduction to topology and abstract algebra, with a comparison of topological properties to algebraic properties. This book can be used by itself for an introduction to proofs course or as a supplemental text for students in proof-based mathematics classes. The contents have been rigorously reviewed and tested by instructors and students in classroom settings. (shrink)

Background and context: Cicero and Aquinas -- Nature and the natural order in Cicero and Aquinas -- Cicero and Aquinas: nature and reason -- Cicero and Aquinas on the natural law -- Cicero and Aquinas: compatibility and contrast.

Comment Spinoza peut-il être encore aujourd'hui notre "contemporain"? Les études ici rassemblées proposent plusieurs types de réponses à cette question au coeur des relations entre la philosophie et son histoire. C'est d'abord la persistance d'un dialogue entre les philosophes contemporains (Deleuze, Derrida, Milner, Negri...) et Spinoza. C'est la mise en évidence du soubassement classique de questions éthiques contemporaines (la nature du scepticisme, le bonheur, l'immortalité prothétique dans l'indéfinie différance de la mort). C'est surtout (telle est la thèse générale de l'ouvrage) (...) une vision de la politique selon l'extériorité, l'immanence et la loi quantitative du "compte". Quand les "valeurs" (derniers restes de la transcendance) sont source de violence, les comptes démocratiques sont source de paix. La démocratie comme "régime absolu", pour reprendre les derniers mots de Spinoza, est encore devant nous. (shrink)

Les auteurs analysent l'absence du sentiment d'injustice dans la musique populaire, que ce soit dans les chansons traditionnelles, les chansons d'amour, le rap ou encore les chansons politiquement engagées. Electre 2018.

The Tweetable Nietzsche introduces and analyzes the worldview of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's tweets, 140 characters or less, provide readers a distilled essence of every major aspect of his worldview. Each tweet illustrates some aspect of his worldview contributing toward a full-orbed understanding of Nietzsche's thought." -- provided by publisher.

Reiner Schürmann a été appelé « l’un des philosophes majeurs du xx e siècle » et « le continuateur peut-être le plus important d’une pensée de la mystique dans la lignée d’Eckhart et de Heidegger ». Nombre des chercheurs qui connurent Schürmann ou s’intéressent aujourd’hui à son œuvre souscriraient volontiers à de tels jugements, dans la mesure où cette œuvre déploie, comme nulle autre, les conséquences philosophiques et politiques de ce que Maître Eckhart et Heidegger appellent le délaissement ou le (...) laisser être ( Gelassenheit ). Pourtant, presque rien n’a été dévoilé des deux bornes entre lesquelles s’inscrit le cheminement personnel de Schürmann quant au délaissement : sa découverte de ce concept – ou, plus exactement, de ce mode de vie – lors de ses études auprès des dominicains du Saulchoir, et la manière dont le délaissement a pu façonner sa mort trois décennies plus tard. Ces parties précoce et tardive de son œuvre, consacrées au délaissement et à sa mise en acte, sont toutefois cruciales pour comprendre le parcours de Schürmann et donc pour apprécier ce qu’il peut aujourd’hui offrir à la pensée et à l’existence. Si, dans ses œuvres publiées, Schürmann minimise l’importance de l’expérience chrétienne du délaissement, voire critique en elle une figure dérivée et même trompeuse de la Gelassenheit, c’est bien elle qui lui a permis de s’engager sur son chemin de pensée. C’est elle aussi qui, à plus d’un titre, l’attendait au terme de son parcours, lequel apparaît alors comme un cercle faisant retour en soi. (shrink)

This paper presents a new, third-personal account of empathy that characterizes empathy as being sensitive to others’ concerns as opposed to remaining stuck in one’s egocentric perspective on the world. The paper also demonstrates why this account is preferable to its two main rivals, namely the simulation theory of empathy, and the direct perception theory of empathy.

Sensibility, in any of its myriad realms – moral, physical, aesthetic, medical and so on – seems to be a paramount case of a higher-level, intentional property, not a basic property. Diderot famously made the bold and attributive move of postulating that matter itself senses, or that sensibility (perhaps better translated ‘sensitivity’ here) is a general or universal property of matter, even if he at times took a step back from this claim and called it a “supposition.” Crucially, sensibility is (...) here playing the role of a ‘booster’: it enables materialism to provide a full and rich account of the phenomena of conscious, sentient life, contrary to what its opponents hold: for if matter can sense, and sensibility is not a merely mechanical process, then the loftiest cognitive plateaus are accessible to materialist analysis, or at least belong to one and the same world as the rest of matter. This was noted by the astute anti-materialist critic, the Abbé Lelarge de Lignac, who, in his 1751 Lettres à un Amériquain, criticized Buffon for “granting to the body [la machine, a common term for the body at the time] a quality which is essential to minds, namely sensibility.” This view, here attributed to Buffon and definitely held by Diderot, was comparatively rare. If we look for the sources of this concept, the most notable ones are physiological and medical treatises by prominent figures such as Robert Whytt, Albrecht von Haller and the Montpellier vitalist Théophile de Bordeu. We then have, or so I shall try to sketch out, an intellectual landscape in which new – or newly articulated – properties such as irritability and sensibility are presented either as an experimental property of muscle fibers, that can be understood mechanistically (Hallerian irritability, as studied recently by Hubert Steinke and Dominique Boury) or a property of matter itself (whether specifically living matter as in Bordeu and his fellow montpelliérains Ménuret and Fouquet, or matter in general, as in Diderot). I am by no means convinced that it is one and the same ‘sensibility’ that is at issue in debates between these figures (as when Bordeu attacks Haller’s distinction between irritability and sensibility and claims that ‘his own’ property of sensibility is both more correct and more fundamental in organic beings), but I am interested in mapping out a topography of the problem of sensibility as property of matter or as vital force in mid-eighteenth-century debates – not an exhaustive cartography of all possible positions or theories, but an attempt to understand the ‘triangulation’ of three views: a vitalist view in which sensibility is fundamental, matching up with a conception of the organism as the sum of parts conceived as little lives (Bordeu et al.); a mechanist, or ‘enhanced mechanist’ view in which one can work upwards, step by step from the basic property of irritability to the higher-level property of sensibility (Haller); and, more eclectic, a materialist view which seeks to combine the mechanistic, componential rigour and explanatory power of the Hallerian approach, with the monistic and metaphysically explosive potential of the vitalist approach (Diderot). It is my hope that examining Diderot in the context of this triangulated topography of sensibility as property sheds light on his famous proclamation regarding sensibility as a universal property of matter. (shrink)

This book is an assault on the notion that it is empirically accurate and legally and philosophically satisfactory to see humans as atomistic entities. It contends that our welfare is inextricably entangled with that of others, and accordingly law and ethics, in determining our best interests, should recognise the central importance of relationality, the performance of obligations, and (even apparently injurious) altruism.