Phantastic interpreters of the emotions in Aristotle argue that a quasi-perceptual faculty, phantasia, is responsible for grasping the relevant value content. This article argues that phantasia cannot do this work. Rather, it claims, a phantastic account either collapses into the straight-up perceptual account or it fails to offer a cognitive account at all (despite the claims made by some of its adherents). According to the first option the focal value properties, such as slights and danger, are part of perceptual content (...) from the start. It ends by proposing that phantastic interpreters are better off opting for the straight-up perceptual account, a view that has wide-ranging implications for our interpretation of Aristotle. (shrink)

Distinguished contributors take up eminent scholar Daniel R. Schwarz’s reading of modern fiction and poetry as mediating between human desire and human action. The essayists follow Schwarz’s advice, “always the text, always historicize,” thus making this book relevant to current debates about the relationships between literature, ethics, aesthetics, and historical contexts.

From Nietzsche's early writings to those marking the end of his intellectual life, the dynamics of what he called "physiology" permeate virtually every facet of his philosophical enterprise. In the following investigation, these dynamics are explored as an interpretive key to not only the dominant themes but also the philosophical motive underlying Nietzsche's philosophy. This motive is described in terms of his diagnosis and attempted cure for the disease of nihilism. In this we maintain that Nietzsche's foremost philosophical task is (...) that of a cultural physician. ;In pursuit of this theme, Nietzsche's "clinical standpoint" is explored and applied with regard to Socrates and Jesus Christ as two case studies in decadence. These two "cases" are a simultaneous physiological investigation into both the ancient Greek and Hebrew cultures. ;This investigation concludes with a detailed analysis of the physiological significance of the Revaluation of all Values, Eternal Recurrence, the Overman and Dionysus as integral to curing the sickness of nihilism. (shrink)

The fundamental postulate of sociobiology is that individuals exploit favorable environments to increase their genetic representation in the next generation. The data on fertility differentials among contemporary humans are not cotvietent with this postulate. Given the importance ofHomo sapiensas an animal species in the natural world today, these data constitute particularly challenging and interesting problem for both human sociobiology and sociobiology as a whole.The first part of this paper reviews the evidence showing an inverse relationship between reproductive fitness and “endowment” (...) in contemporary, urbanized societies. It is shown that a positive relationship is observed only for those cohorts who bore their children during a unique period of rising fertility, 1935–1960, and that these cohorts are most often cited by sociobiologists as supporting the central postulate of sociobiology. Cohorts preceding and following these show the characteristic inverse relationship between endowment and fertility. The second section reviews the existing so-ciobiological models of this inverse relationship, namely, those of Barkow, Burley, and Irons, as well as more informal responses among sociobiologists to the persistent violation of sociobiology's central postulate, such as those of Alexander and Dawkins. The third section asks whether the goals of sociobiology, given the violation of its fundamental postulate by contemporary human societies, might not be better thought of as applied rather than descriptive, with respect to these societies. A proper answer to this question begins with the measurement of the pace and direction of natural selection within modern human populations, as compared to other sources of change. The vast preponderance of the shifts in human trait distributions, including the IQ distribution, appears to be due to environmental rather than genetic change. However, there remains the question of just how elastic these distributions are in the absence of reinforcing genetic change. (shrink)

Hybrid metaethical theories attempt to incorporate essential elements of expressivism and cognitivism, and thereby to accrue the benefits of both. Hybrid theories are often defended in part by appeals to slurs and other pejoratives, which have both expressive and cognitivist features. This paper takes far more seriously the analogy between pejoratives and moral predicates. It explains how pejoratives work, identifies the features that allow pejoratives to do that work, and models a theory of moral predicates on those features. The result (...) is an expressivist theory that, among other advantages, is immune to embedding difficulties and avoids an overlooked difficulty concerning attitude ascriptions that is lethal to most other hybrid theories. (shrink)

Hybrid metaethical theories attempt to incorporate essential elements of expressivism and cognitivism, and thereby to accrue the benefits of both. Hybrid theories are often defended in part by appeals to slurs and other pejoratives, which have both expressive and cognitivist features. This paper takes far more seriously the analogy between pejoratives and moral predicates. It explains how pejoratives work, identifies the features that allow pejoratives to do that work, and models a theory of moral predicates on those features. The result (...) is an expressivist theory that, among other advantages, is immune to embedding difficulties and avoids an overlooked difficulty concerning attitude ascriptions that is lethal to most other hybrid theories. (shrink)

In _The Smile of Tragedy_, Daniel Ahern examines Nietzsche’s attitude toward what he called “the tragic age of the Greeks,” showing it to be the foundation not only for his attack upon the birth of philosophy during the Socratic era but also for his overall critique of Western culture. Through an interpretation of “Dionysian pessimism,” Ahern clarifies the ways in which Nietzsche sees ethics and aesthetics as inseparable and how their theoretical separation is at the root of Western nihilism. (...) Ahern explains why Nietzsche, in creating this precursor to a new aesthetics, rejects Aristotle’s medicinal interpretation of tragic art and concentrates on Apollinian cruelty as a form of intoxication without which there can be no art. Ahern shows that Nietzsche saw the human body as the vessel through which virtue and art are possible, as the path to an interpretation of “selflessness,” as the means to determining an order of rank among human beings, and as the site where ethics and aesthetics coincide. (shrink)

In all facets of our lives, humans construct meaning to understand their place in the world and their relationships to one another and to broader environments. Within this semantic web, words, stor...

This book excavates the political thought embedded in Heidegger’s philosophy. Though keenly aware of the controversy over Heidegger’s National Socialism, Ward highlights the political ramifications of Heidegger’s thought as opposed to entering the polarized debate concerning the “Heidegger Case.” Chapter 1 accesses Heidegger’s political thought via the distinction Heidegger made between science and philosophy. This leads to Heidegger’s view that modern “culture,” is basically “... superficial and merely contemporary. ‘Liberalism’ will be its political embodiment”. Chapter 2 pursues these themes with (...) special emphasis on Heidegger’s opposition to any naturalistic or biological interpretation of human beings, and this in contrast with the racism of National Socialism. The third chapter describes how, for Heidegger, the rank of a people can be determined in terms of how that people comes to terms with the question of Being. Those who have not fallen away from this question still stand at the highest rank, while those who have are spiralling into decline. As in chapter 2, Nietzsche looms large in this chapter, and one gets the distinct impression here that Heidegger has taken up the Nietzschean project of restoring an order of rank sans physiologie. In chapter 4, Ward articulates “the decisive difference between Heidegger’s National Socialism and that of the National Socialists themselves”. This difference is explored through Heidegger’s interpretation of work—both physical and intellectual—as a means to understanding Heidegger’s critique of Marxism, the role of the university, and, therewith, the primarily philosophical foundation of the sciences within the spiritual mission of the German people. (shrink)

In short, he is known in a discipline in which he did not teach for a book he did not write. In Becoming Mead, Daniel R. Huebner traces the ways in which knowledge has been produced by and about the famed American philosopher.

Ignorance is trending. Politicians boast, "I'm not a scientist." Angry citizens object to a proposed state motto because it is in Latin, and "This is America, not Mexico or Latin America." Lack of experience, not expertise, becomes a credential. Fake news and repeated falsehoods are accepted and shape firm belief. Ignorance about American government and history is so alarming that the ideal of an informed citizenry now seems quaint. Conspiracy theories and false knowledge thrive. This may be the Information Age, (...) but we do not seem to be well informed. In this book, philosopher Daniel DeNicola explores ignorance -- its abundance, its endurance, and its consequences. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead has long been known for his social theory of meaning and the 'self' - an approach which becomes all the more relevant in light of the ways we develop and represent ourselves online. But recent scholarship has shown that Mead's pragmatic philosophy can help us understand a much wider range of contemporary issues including how humans and natural environments mutually influence one another, how deliberative democracy can and should work, how thinking is dependent upon the body and (...) on others, and how social changes in the present affect our understandings of the past. Historical scholarship has also changed what we know of Mead's life, including new emphasis on his social reform efforts, his engagement with colonization and war, and critical reinterpretation of the works published after his death. This book provides an approachable introduction to Mead's contemporary relevance in the social sciences, showing how a pragmatic view of social action serves as the core of Mead's theory, offering striking insights into human agency, symbolism, politics, social change, temporality, and materiality. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and the social sciences more broadly, with interests in social theory and the enduring importance of the sociological classics. (shrink)

Epidemiology is a science of disease which specifies rates (illness prevalences, incidences, distributions, etc.). Evolution is a science of life which specifies changes (gene frequencies, generations, forms, function, etc.). Evolutionary Epidemiology is a synthesis of these two sciences which combines the empirical power of classical methods in genetical epidemiology with the interpretive capacities of neo-darwinian evolutionary genetics. In particular, prevalence rates of genetical diseases are important data points when reformulated for the purpose of analysis in terms of their evolutionary frequencies. (...) Traits which exceedprevalences beyond the rates of mutation (in Hardy-Weinberg calculations) or evidence unusualrange of phenotypic reaction are of special interest. This is because traits which did not confer advantages in the environment of evolutionary adaptation cannot accede, through natural selection, to anything but low rates of genomic prevalence.Evolutionary epidemiology is, in all of medicine, of particular promise in ongoing efforts to better understand psychopathology. Many complexities of phenotypic adjustment arise when new developmental demands are placed on an old genome. The new and complex biosocial ecology of human mass society now evokes different phenotypes than those in the prehistorical ecology to which the genome is structurally and functionally better adapted. Some of these new phenotypes are darwinian failures. In this paper, the theoretical implications of evolutionary epidemiology are extended and some tentative points of clinical application (particularly to psychiatry) are offered. (shrink)

This is the first modern book to describe Francis Bacon's jurisprudence. He has long been famous as a scientist, philosopher, politician and literary giant, but his career as one of England's greatest lawyers and jurists has been largely overlooked. Bacon's major contribution to Anglo-American jurisprudence is presented in such a way as to be suitable to specialists and non-specialists alike. The purpose is to restore Bacon to his rightful place as England's first true critical and analytical jurist, and to describe (...) how his legal thought related to his other great intellectual achievements. (shrink)

Corporate Strategy has emerged as a central metaphor for private-sector enterprise. Given inherent imperfections in markets, one important question to consider is how well the practice of Corporate Strategy contributes to social welfare. An account of the implicit morality of free markets is developed as a standard against which two particular, second best solutions to market imperfections — namely, American federal antitrust policy and Corporate Strategy — are compared. Corporate Strategy is subsequently evaluated in terms of the fundamental principles of (...) Rawls' theory of justice. In both analyses, Corporate Strategy is found to depart significantly and systematically from the standards of social justice. An alternative principle, grounded in the concept of duty, is introduced as a means for reconceptualizing Corporate Strategy. (shrink)

How important is atheism for Jewish history and Jews for the history of atheism? Modern Jewish histories have tended to focus on Jewish secularization rather than atheism, and historical surveys of atheism in the West have tended to neglect the Jewish experience which is subsumed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is possible to make the case that the secularization narrative privileges social change over Jewish intellectual engagement with non-belief, and that just as Jewish and Christian conceptions of theism differ, so (...) do their atheisms. Jewish historical attitudes towards atheism are complicated and have shifted over time. Here, skeptical tendencies, that is, attitudes and ideas that would be associated later with atheism, will be considered alongside claims about atheism per se. (shrink)

Limited strikes are arguably different from war insofar as they are more circumscribed, less destructive, and cost less in blood and treasure to employ. However, what they can achieve is also considerably more circumscribed than what is set out by the goals of war. How do we morally evaluate limited strikes? As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” this essay argues that we need to turn to the ethics of limited of force, orjus ad vim, to do (...) so. Two moral assumptions that are the keystone tojus ad vimcan shed light on the moral imperatives and ethical dilemmas of undertaking limited strikes. First, such strikes should be seen as an alternative to war, and not part of thejus ad bellumlast resort process. What I call the “Rubicon assessment” determines at what level force should be used: at the level of war, with all its costs and unpredictability, or at that of the more predictable and less costly limited force. Second, limited strikes should adhere to a “presumption against escalation”; that is, a moral commitment not to escalate to war. This essay highlights these moral principles in five different limited strike scenarios: “hot pursuit,” “red line,” “the last straw,” “the point of no return,” and “the right of retaliation.” The conclusion explores the notion of justice after limited strikes, or what I calljus post vim, to show that while what can be accomplished by limited strikes is inherently constrained, they can, if used morally and in tune with diplomacy, be of service in the quest for peace. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s distinction of chatter from silence gives forgiveness a linguistic spin. How can forgiveness be spoken? Is forgiveness something to be said and heard? Is saying it aloud saying too much, or too little? What is said when (and if) forgiveness is said? Should forgiveness be chatted away, or reserved in silence? For Kierkegaard, the answer(s) is (are) neither/nor: forgiveness can only be said indirectly, kept (almost) indistinguishable from resentment or indifference, as if discarded in the face of offense—if it (...) is to happen. (shrink)

Epidemiology is a science of disease which specifies rates . Evolution is a science of life which specifies changes . ‘Evolutionary Epidemiology’ is a synthesis of these two sciences which combines the empirical power of classical methods in genetical epidemiology with the interpretive capacities of neo-darwinian evolutionary genetics. In particular, prevalence rates of genetical diseases are important data points when reformulated for the purpose of analysis in terms of their evolutionary frequencies. Traits which exceedprevalences beyond the rates of mutation or (...) evidence unusualrange of phenotypic reaction are of special interest. This is because traits which did not confer advantages in the environment of evolutionary adaptation cannot accede, through natural selection, to anything but low rates of genomic prevalence.Evolutionary epidemiology is, in all of medicine, of particular promise in ongoing efforts to better understand psychopathology. Many complexities of phenotypic adjustment arise when new developmental demands are placed on an ‘old’ genome. The new and complex biosocial ecology of human mass society now evokes different phenotypes than those in the prehistorical ecology to which the genome is structurally and functionally better adapted. Some of these new phenotypes are darwinian failures. In this paper, the theoretical implications of evolutionary epidemiology are extended and some tentative points of clinical application are offered. (shrink)

A new proof of the impossibility of a universal quantum-classical dynamics is given. It has at least two consequences. The standard paradigm “quantum system is measured by a classical apparatus” is untenable, while a quantum matter can be consistently coupled only with a quantum gravity.

The papers by Mele, Randels, and Schrag call attention to the proper work that the concept of loyalty can perform. All threeauthors argue that loyalty is not taken seriously enough in modern corporations. As Mele, Randels, and Schrag independently ascribespecial status to the concept of loyalty, their analyses converge along numerous conceptual margins. Along these margins, a singularconception of loyalty comes into focus. Along these margins, we can see Simultaneously why each author assigns extraordinary status to loyalty and why, ironically, (...) each turns the special concept of loyalty over to the service of conventional management thinking. Mele,Randels, and Schrag leave it for us to ponder whether this ironic twist is unique to the concept of loyalty. (shrink)

Deaths of Despair (DoD), or mortality resulting from suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related liver disease, have been rising steadily in the United States over the last several decades. In 2020, a record 186,763 annual despair-related deaths were documented, contributing to the longest sustained decline in US life expectancy since 1915–1918. This forum feature considers how health humanities disciplines might fruitfully engage with this era-defining public health catastrophe and help society better understand and respond to the crisis.

Integrating concepts of maintenance and of origins is essential to explaining biological diversity. The unified theory of evolution attempts to find a common theme linking production rules inherent in biological systems, explaining the origin of biological order as a manifestation of the flow of energy and the flow of information on various spatial and temporal scales, with the recognition that natural selection is an evolutionarily relevant process. Biological systems persist in space and time by transfor ming energy from one state (...) to another in a manner that generates structures which allows the system to continue to persist. Two classes of energetic transformations allow this; heat-generating transformations, resulting in a net loss of energy from the system, and conservative transformations, changing unusable energy into states that can be stored and used subsequently. All conservative transformations in biological systems are coupled with heat-generating transformations; hence, inherent biological production, or genealogical proesses, is positively entropic. There is a self-organizing phenomenology common to genealogical phenomena, which imparts an arrow of time to biological systems. Natural selection, which by itself is time-reversible, contributes to the organization of the self-organized genealogical trajectories. The interplay of genealogical (diversity-promoting) and selective (diversity-limiting) processes produces biological order to which the primary contribution is genealogical history. Dynamic changes occuring on times scales shorter than speciation rates are microevolutionary; those occuring on time scales longer than speciation rates are macroevolutionary. Macroevolutionary processes are neither redicible to, nor autonomous from, microevolutionary processes. (shrink)

George Rupp's Beyond Existentialism and Zen, in its typological-structural analysis and model of religious pluralism, proffers an alternative to the dominant Kantian models (e.g., by John Hicks and Sarvepalli Radhakrish nan). The question for Rupp is not which religion is true and how to decide that issue-answered in the Kantian approach in terms of an unknowable Ding an sich that all religions, albeit imperfectly, try to approximate or conceptualize (i.e., God or the Transcendent)-but rather how do religions represent, at least (...) in principle, a structural possibility for salvation or human flourishing, however different and incompatible their distinct prima facie truth claims might be. Although the potential for a radically relativistic model is implicit in Rupp's approach, it is argued here that his Hegelian assumptions lead him to accept relativism only in a provisional ("critical") way; for Rupp, under ideal epistemic conditions (e.g., the Peircian "end of inquiry"), one final conceptualization of ultimate reality will emerge as absolute truth. In the final part of this essay a version of the relativistic model implicit in Rupp's approach is defended against both the Kantian model of Hicks et al. and Rupp's Hegelian-Peircian model, which, it is argued, is incompatible certainly with the spirit of his own typological-structural analysis, if not with the letter. In challenging what Rupp calls the truth of Zen, it is further argued that not only is more than one salvific structural possibility available to us through the different world religions but also that realizing these possibilities is principally a human responsibility, and that the cosmos is quite indifferent to and compatible with several possibilities, from the most destructive to the most conducive to human well being and flourishing. (shrink)

Given the difficulty of characterizing the quandary introduced in Hume’s Appendix to the Treatise, coupled with the alleged “underdetermination” of the text, it is striking how few commentators have considered whether Hume addresses and/or redresses the problem after 1740—in the first Enquiry, for example. This is not only unfortunate, but ironic; for, in the Appendix, Hume mentions that more mature reasonings may reconcile whatever contradiction(s) he has in mind. I argue that Hume’s 1746 letter to Lord Kames foreshadows a subtle, (...) but significant, shift in Hume’s reasonings regarding the relevance of “real connexions”; that the Enquiry of 1748 provides evidence for this shift; and that this shift obviates Hume’s second thoughts by reconciling the contradiction that he had in mind. In short, Hume’s letter to Kames and Enquiry supply the retrodictive keys to a systematically satisfactory account. (shrink)

Why has comedy become one of our most abiding ethical preoccupations as well as a dominant mode of political critique? It is suggested that comedy appeals to contemporary persons because it provides an apt social-aesthetic form through which to face up to living with others at a time when it is hard to bear others or otherness. The article outlines an ethics of modern individuality by developing a theory of comedy as more about building social bonds and finding out what (...) could be shared knowledge and experience than the toppling of dominant modes of thought or repudiating our mutuality with others. Drawing on Georg Simmel’s ‘The Law of the Individual’, the article develops a Simmelian reading of Freud’s Jokes to argue that comedy is one solution to resolving our mutual un-alikeness by way of forging knotted paths toward recognising how we could be alike. (shrink)

Although not known as a philosopher of history, George Herbert Mead wrote and taught seriously about the nature of the past and about historical investigation throughout his career. The paper identifies the major documentary sources and interpretive literature with which to reconstruct Mead’s radically social and dynamic conceptualization of history and extends beyond the existing literature to develop striking implications of Mead’s approach in response to possible criticisms and challenges. By connecting Mead’s writings on history with his broader social theory (...) of action, democracy, and consciousness, the paper shows how Mead provides a novel grounding of our understandings of history in ongoing social processes and suggests that better historical knowledge may be related to participatory, inclusive social practices. As a result, historians have a responsibility to social reconstruction and society’s self-reflection, in Mead’s view. Because of the novel ways in which Mead’s approach explores the relationship between history and social progress he warrants renewed attention and scrutiny from researchers and theorists of history. (shrink)

Modernity and the other: a story of inequality -- Locating the other in the political debates of early modernity -- Thinking and rethinking the equality of the other: Vitoria, Sepúlveda and the true barbarians -- Las Casas and the other: the tension between equality and cultural othercide -- From the civilizing mission to irreconcilable alterity: the changing perception of the Indians in the French Enlightenment -- The other side of modernity: legitimizing the transition from cultural othercide to physical othercide -- (...) Looking to the future. (shrink)

Competition, an experience that human beings construct, is also a challenging concept to teach in a liberal education curriculum. Liberal education is, among other things, a celebration of what imaginative human beings can accomplish together with their differences and their common ground in sight. It is not self-evident, however, that such an ethic of connection, tolerance, and civility canencompass competition. Competition often unfolds as a divisive human experience. Divisiveness among certain human interests is a bedrock premise in the disciplines of (...) economics and strategic management. Frequently, one or both of these disciplines can be found in an undergraduate curriculum alongside liberal education initiatives. The ethical aspirations that we hold for liberal education could be undermined by two disciplines in our very midst.This paper contains a defense of a curricular remedy for this threat to liberal education. With a focus on places, or sites, I create a framework with which we liberal educators can reinterpret competition as the routine practice of an ethic of connection, tolerance, and civility. This focus on sites is augmented when we set our sights photographically on places where competitors necessarily get along with one another. By re-conceiving competition in terms of the places and the sites of human togetherness, I render avoidable the intellectual disconnection between an ethics of liberal education and the divisive concept of competition. We liberal educators can claim competition-intensity, wins and losses, and all-for our educational enterprise. (shrink)

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a popular device used by researchers to analyze such institutions as business and the modern corporation. This popularity is not deserved under a certain condition that is widespread in college education. If we, as management educators, take seriously our parts in preparing our students to participate in the institutions of a democratic society, then the Prisoner's Dilemma—as clever a rhetorical device as it is—is an unacceptable means to that end. By posing certain questions about the prisoners (...) in the Prisoner's Dilemma, I show that management educators have created a Prisoners Dilemma, whereby they intellectually imprison themselves and their students by continuing to appeal to the Prisoner's Dilemma. These questions are not encouraged by the advocates of the Prisoner's Dilemma. (shrink)