At the heart of Levinas’s work is the apparently simple idea that through the encounter with another person, we are forced to give up our self-concern and take heed of the ethical relation between us. But, while simple on the surface, when one tries to characterize it in more detail, it can be hard to fit together the various ways in which Levinas talks about this relation and to identify precisely what he took its normative structure to be, as this (...) is described in a number of apparently different ways, that are not obviously compatible or equivalent, such as “command,” “call,” “summons,” “demand,” and so on. In this chapter, we intend to focus on these different characterizations and show what makes them different while also endeavoring to find a way in which Levinas’s conception may nonetheless be fitted together into a coherent account of the face-to-face encounter that is at the heart of his ethics. We will begin by considering the different normative terms used to characterize the encounter in that text and show how they are conceptually distinct from one another; we will then offer a way to read Levinas’s position to nonetheless show how these different normative relations can be fitted together into a stable position. (shrink)

Since Barry Stroud's classic paper in 1968, the general discussion on transcendental arguments tends to focus on examples from theoretical philosophy. It also tends to be pessimistic, or at least extremely reluctant, about the potential of this kind of arguments. Nevertheless, transcendental reasoning continues to play a prominent role in some recent approaches to moral philosophy. Moreover, some authors argue that transcendental arguments may be more promising in moral philosophy than they are in theoretical contexts. Against this background, the current (...) volume focuses on transcendental arguments in practical philosophy. Experts from different countries and branches of philosophy share their views about whether there are actually differences between "theoretical" and "practical" uses of transcendental arguments. They examine and compare different versions of transcendental arguments in moral philosophy, explain their structure, and assess their respective problems and promises. This book offers all those interested in ethics, meta-ethics, or epistemology a more comprehensive understanding of transcendental arguments. It also provides them with new insights into uses of transcendental reasoning in moral philosophy. (shrink)

Ample research demonstrates that parents’ experience-based mental representations of attachment—cognitive models of close relationships—relate to their children’s social-emotional development. However, no research to date has examined how parents’ attachment representations relate to another crucial domain of children’s development: brain development. The present study is the first to integrate the separate literatures on attachment and developmental social cognitive neuroscience to examine the link between mothers’ attachment representations and 3- to 8-year-old children’s brain structure. We hypothesized that mothers’ attachment representations would relate (...) to individual differences in children’s brain structures involved in stress regulation—specifically, amygdala and hippocampal volumes—in part via mothers’ responses to children’s distress. We assessed 52 mothers’ attachment representations and children’s brain structure. Mothers’ secure base script knowledge was significantly related to children’s smaller left amygdala volume but was unrelated to hippocampal volume; we found no indirect links via maternal responses to children’s distress. Exploratory analyses showed associations between mothers’ attachment representations and white matter and thalamus volumes. Together, these preliminary results suggest that mothers’ attachment representations may be linked to the development of children’s neural circuitry related to stress regulation. (shrink)

Although this conference, held at Oxford on September 6–7, 1993, did not completely fulfil the ambitions of its subtitle, it nonetheless provided a stimulating forum for the presentation and exchange of ideas on various topics arising from Hegel’s Phenomenology. In the first paper, “Rupture, Closure, and Dialectic,” Joseph Flay dealt with the Phenomenology in its role as an introduction or beginning to the system. David Duquette then discussed the master/slave dialectic and the political significance of Hegel’s concept of recognition in (...) the Phenomenology. Following this, Jay Bernstein focussed on Hegel’s treatment of conscience and guilt, and related this to his views of ethical action, arguing that Hegel leaves room for moral autonomy and hence tragic suffering even within his conception of Sittlichkeit. In the fourth paper, “The Presence of Aristotle in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” Nicholas Walker analyzed the relation between Hegel and Aristotle, and the complexities of the latter’s influence on the Phenomenology. H.S. Harris then offered a sketch of his own view of the Phenomenology in “Let’s Not ‘Leave out the Ethical’: A ‘Conscientious’ Response to S.K.”, starting from a discussion of Hegel’s theory of truth and how this shapes the structure of this work. Finally, in “The ‘Unhappy Consciousness’ and Conscious Unhappiness,” Simon Jarvis examined Adorno’s critique of Hegel, and emphasized the continuing importance and value of this critique for any truly living contemporary Hegelianism. (shrink)

Although this conference, held at Oxford on September 6–7, 1993, did not completely fulfil the ambitions of its subtitle, it nonetheless provided a stimulating forum for the presentation and exchange of ideas on various topics arising from Hegel’s Phenomenology. In the first paper, “Rupture, Closure, and Dialectic,” Joseph Flay dealt with the Phenomenology in its role as an introduction or beginning to the system. David Duquette then discussed the master/slave dialectic and the political significance of Hegel’s concept of recognition in (...) the Phenomenology. Following this, Jay Bernstein focussed on Hegel’s treatment of conscience and guilt, and related this to his views of ethical action, arguing that Hegel leaves room for moral autonomy and hence tragic suffering even within his conception of Sittlichkeit. In the fourth paper, “The Presence of Aristotle in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” Nicholas Walker analyzed the relation between Hegel and Aristotle, and the complexities of the latter’s influence on the Phenomenology. H.S. Harris then offered a sketch of his own view of the Phenomenology in “Let’s Not ‘Leave out the Ethical’: A ‘Conscientious’ Response to S.K.”, starting from a discussion of Hegel’s theory of truth and how this shapes the structure of this work. Finally, in “The ‘Unhappy Consciousness’ and Conscious Unhappiness,” Simon Jarvis examined Adorno’s critique of Hegel, and emphasized the continuing importance and value of this critique for any truly living contemporary Hegelianism. (shrink)

In trying to reach some view regarding the philosophical exchanges that went on between F. H. Bradley and William James at the turn of the century, it is in some respects tempting to endorse Bradley's view that ‘our differences may perhaps on the whole be small when compared with the extent of our agreement’. Indeed, in most of the articles, letters and books in which the debate between these two men was carried on, one finds the protagonists claiming to be (...) mystified as to the grounds of the dispute, and to see no great distinction in their respective outlooks. (shrink)

The content of a work of literature, Walter Benjamin reminds us in “The Author as Producer,” is inextricably bound up with its form. Hence, it is hardly astounding that much critical attention has been focused on the proper generic classification of Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig . This task, though, has not been easy. Henry Louis Gates, rediscoverer and earliest critic of Our Nig, for example, goes to great length discussing parallels between Wilson’s work and Nina Baym’s ‘overplot’ of the (...) ‘women’s novel,’ before settling on reading it as a new form of distinctly African-American lit- erature that combines “conventions of the sentimental novel with certain key conventions of the slave narratives” . Elizabeth Ammons, by contrast, places Our Nig squarely in the feminist tradition of the sentimental novel and argues that “the ideal of mother love explicit in Uncle Tom’s Cabin operates implicitly in Our Nig.” 4 2 3 Contesting Ammons’ claim, Eric Gardner asserts that Our Nig is not a ‘novel of abolition’ but “a novel about Northern racial issues, a young black woman’s bildungsroman, and, as such, is far from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” 5 Echoing some of Gardner’s points, Elizabeth Breau contends that Our Nig “is actually satiric” and therefore gives an overly “bleak picture of northern antebellum society.” Foregrounding neither Bildung nor “ironic inversions” but the “politics of rage at work in Wilson’s tale,” Julia Stern argues that Our Nig “used the sentimental form to mask a gothic message.” 7 Rejecting Gates’ attempt to posit Our Nig as “a significant beginning of an African-American literary mode, a distinctive first in a century of firsts,” John Ernest wants to read Wilson’s work as a traditional “blend of autobiography and fiction,” hoping to ‘re-place’ it “within the racial, gender, and economic matrix of secular history.” R.J. Ellis, while accepting Gates’ assessment that Our Nig “draw[s] on the genres of sentimental fiction and abolitionist slave narrative,” stresses the ways in which the ‘hybrid’ work “fractures generic boundaries” in order to provide a “full retrieval of Frado’s pain, her experience of body politics.” Lastly, offering a reading that links Our Nig to the Puritan tradition, Elizabeth West argues that Our Nig “manipulates well-known trappings of the conversion narrative” by telling “the story of the heroine’s failed initiation into the community of earthly saints.”. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to criticize Thomas Baldwin's claim, that in developing an identity theory of truth, F H Bradley was following Hegel. It is argued that Baldwin has incorrectly understood certain passages from Hegel which he cites in defense of this view, and that Hegel's conception of truth was primarily material, not propositional.

The Gompertz distribution is commonly used in biology for modeling fatigue and mortality. This paper studies a class of models proposed by Adham and Walker, featuring a Gompertz type distribution where the dependence structure is modeled by a lognormal distribution, and develops a new multivariate formulation that facilitates several numerical and computational aspects. This paper also implements the FBST, the Full Bayesian Significance Test for pertinent sharp (precise) hypotheses on the lognormal covariance structure. The FBST’s e-value, ev(H), gives the epistemic (...) value of hypothesis, H, or the value of evidence in the observed in support of H. (shrink)

This volume brings together 14 classic papers by interpersonal pioneers. Collectively, these papers not only demonstrate the coherence and explanatory richness of interpersonal psychoanalysis; they anticipate the emphasis on relational patterns and analyst-analysand interaction that typifies much recent theorizing. Each paper receives a substantial introduction from a leading contemporary interpersonalist. The pioneers of interpersonal psychoanalysis are: H. Sullivan, F. Fromm-Reichmann, J. Rioch, C. Thompson, R. Crowley, E. Schachtel, E. Tauber, E. Fromm, H. Bone, E. Singer, D. Schecter, J. Barnett, S. (...) Arieti, and J.Schimel. (shrink)

In his study of Lichtenberg Stern presents us with a vivid picture of the eighteenth century physicist, astronomer, psychologist. Of special interest to the philosopher are Stern's attempts to show that a certain world view finds its most apt expression in the aphorism. This is illustrated by pointing out parallels between Lichtenberg and Wittgenstein. A collection of Lichtenberg's aphorisms is given in the appendix.--K. H.

In spite of, or perhaps because of the wealth of material found in this book, it makes a rather arid impression. One wishes for more structure and a clearer statement of the author's own position. Kainz professes to "have patterned his aesthetics on the philosophical personalism of William Stern"; but other influences, such as that of phenomenology and Gestalt psychology, are also prominent. The great variety of views mentioned and discussed gives this book considerable value as a bibliographical guide (...) to recent literature on aesthetics in German. Schueller's introduction is helpful in placing Kainz's position in a larger context.--K. H. (shrink)

These volumes provide a large introduction to the works of modern value theory from their beginnings in J. Bentham, F. Nietzsche, and H. Lotze to the more recent Anglo-American studies. Volume I is concerned with "the German-Language Group." Extensive discussion is devoted to the views of F. Brentano, A. Meinong, C. von Ehrenfels, J. C. Kreibig, E. Heyde, H. Rickert, H. Münsterberg, M. Scheler, K. Wiederhold, W. Stern, F. Wilken, M. Beck, and V. Krafts. It provides a good conspectus (...) of varieties of nineteenth century value theories. The author aims at an exposition rather than critical treatment of the various philosophers. Each chapter contains a useful bibliography. Of more contemporary interest is Volume II which deals with the Anglo-American Group. One finds here a detailed presentation of the theories of W. M. Urban, J. Dewey, B. Bosanquet, D. Prall, C. G. Shaw, R. B. Perry, D. H. Parkel, W. Stern, A. C. Garnett, J. N. Findlay, E. Brightman, B. E. Jessup, C. I. Lewis, R. Lepley, S. C. Pepper, Everett Hall, R. Hartman, and W. D. Lamont. Shorter discussions deal with works of A. L. Hillard, E. M. Adams, and K. Aschenbrenner. Liberal quotations from original sources are interspersed throughout the exposition. The clarification of issues is not always successful. The author does provide a good focus, however, for important passages from the works discussed. Regrettably, one finds an omission of the view of David Pole, the absence of a summary section on each theory discussed, and the absence of an index. Nevertheless, the students of value theory can find in this work a useful tool of research. The comprehensive scope provides a rich variety of contributions to the important field of value theory.—A.S.C. (shrink)

Walter Reese-Schäfer, Karl-Otto Apel, Zur Einführung (with an Afterword by Jürgen Habermas), Junis Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 1990, 176pp. DM 17.80 -/- The author, presently a freelance writer published in the newspaper “Die Zeit” and the magazine “Stern,” pro­vides in this small book a clear and concise introduction to sources, themes and conclusions in the philosophy of Karl-Otto Apel. Apel, Emeritus Pro­fessor at Frank­furt, and close colleague of Habermas, characterizes his viewpoint as a “transcen­dental pragmatism” in which a Kantian concern (...) for question regarding “the conditions for the possi­bility of some­thing,” (p.10) mixes with deontological discourse-ethics, semeiotic themes from Peirce, an ap­proach to fallibilism, the demand for “final justifica­tions” (Letzt­begründung) and German her­meneutics. In view of the “den­sity and concentration” of Apel’s texts, which often have a “deterrent effect” upon those not already at home with “the phil­osophical language game,” it is the announced aim of this book to provide a work of translation and clarification of Apel’s special­ized efforts --in effect an orientation to Apel’s work. The book divides into an Introduction, 8 chapters and a summary conclusion --with Habermas’ appreciation, “A Master Builder with Hermeneutic Feeling --The Way of Philosopher Karl-Otto Apel,” bringing up the rear. There is also a bibliography of primary and secondary sources and a short table outlining highlights of Apel’s career. The “Introduction” provides a good overview of the aims of the book and gets one started on central themes. (shrink)

No point of John C.Calhoun's political thought has been more disputed than exactly where it is situated in the theoretical landscape. Calhoun has been treated as the �Marx of the master class� by Richard Hofstadter; a �reactionary conservative� arguing eclectically from liberal premises by Louis Hartz; an authentic conservative by Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter and August Spain; and a precursor to the pluralist vision of politics by Peter Drucker. Two of the most engaging treatments of Calhoun's thought are Darryl Baskin's (...) and Peter Steinberger's, both of relatively recent vintage. Baskin argues that despite Calhoun's use of vocabulary borrowed from organic conservatism he is essentially a classical liberal and, as such, is engaged in the typically liberal �flight from community�. He has no true notion of civic virtue and his concept of the public interest is only a mechanistic sum of private interests. Steinberger agrees that Calhoun is a liberal, but argues that his contribution to American liberalism is precisely to sublate selfishness to an authentic civic virtue. These disputes are interesting, but I suggest that in the efforts to contain Calhoun within the conservative/liberal scheme of categorization some of the subtlety of his thought is lost. Too often an appreciation of his thought is sacrificed to an underlying agenda of attacking or defending one ideology or another. In the present critique I attempt to recover some insights that have been submerged in other treatments. Calhoun's constitutional theory of concurrent majoritarianism, rather than his liberal or conservative bent, is the focal point of sections III and IV. I argue that Calhoun's theory exposes -- sometimes unwittingly -- the stern limits of what constitutions can accomplish. In section V I suggest that insofar as Calhoun is generally a liberal (as Hartz, Baskin and Steinberger contend) an internal contradiction within his theory points to a paradox at the very heart of liberalism. (shrink)

Integrated assessment models of climate and the economy provide estimates of the social cost of carbon and inform climate policy. We create a variant of the Regional Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (RICE)—a regionally disaggregated version of the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE)—in which we introduce a more fine-grained representation of economic inequalities within the model’s regions. This allows us to model the common observation that climate change impacts are not evenly distributed within regions (...) and that poorer people are more vulnerable than the rest of the population. Our results suggest that this is important to the social cost of carbon—as significant, potentially, for the optimal carbon price as the debate between Stern and Nordhaus on discounting. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley’s work was for a long time neglected by English speaking philosophers. He had virtually ceased to have any readers by the time of his death in 1924. But in the last few years there has been a small resurgence of interest in his work. Richard Wollheim produced a significant monograph for the Penguin Philosophers series in 1959; and Barnes and Noble published Anthony Manser’s sympathetic study of Bradley’s logic in 1983. But MacNiven has now returned to his (...) first book, Ethical Studies, and in so doing has enabled us to put the later metaphysical and logical work in what I believe is the right perspective. (shrink)

The beginnings of Hegel’s interest in “logic” as a branch of philosophy are somewhat obscure. In a lecture of 1830 Schelling claimed that Hegel first began to attend to the subject only because “his friends at the University” suggested that it was a good topic for his lectures because it was being neglected. Schelling’s object by then was evidently to suggest that Hegel’s “logic” had always been a superficial pretense. But Hegel was alive to contradict him. So I think his (...) statement of the facts must be right as far as it goes. I do not therefore believe that Hegel came to Jena with any “logical” manuscripts. In my view, it was Schelling himself—especially in his System of Transcendental Idealism —who sparked Hegel’s interest in the subject. (shrink)

The only observational quantity which quantum mechanics needs to address islocation. The typical primitive observation on a microsystem (e.g., photon) isdetection at alocation (e.g., by a photomultiplier “looking at” a grating). To analyze an experiment, (a) form a conceptual ensemble of replicas of it, (b) assign a wave function (in “position representation”) to its initial condition, (c) evolve the wave function by the Schrödinger equation (known, once and for all, as a function of the system's composition), (d) compute the probability (...) for particle detection at various times and places. The initial wave function is chosen on the basis of experience with such treatments. Key experiments are thus treated: (i) time-of-flight, (ii) Stern-Gerlach, (iii) Franck-Hertz, (iv) photon recoil, (v) photoionization. Quantum states, dynamical variables, and measurements, and the usual postulates about them, are superfluous. The explicit treatments are nonrelativistic; the existence of relativistic generalizations is left open. (shrink)

Hegel established the modern standpoint of the philosophy of religion by creating a "phenomenology" in which all modes of religious experience prior to his own philosophical religion were viewed as "finite." It is our task now to work out the logic of the "absolute religion". This excellent book is valuable spade-work for that task; but it is still only spade-work.--H. S. Harris, Glendon College, York University.

The first translation into English and the first detailed interpretation of Hegel’s System der Sittlichkeit and of Philosophie des Geistes, the two earliest surviving versions of Hegel’s social theory. Hegel’s central concept of the spirit evolved in these two works. An 87-page interpretation by Harris precedes the translations.

The first translation into English and the first detailed interpretation of Hegel’s System der Sittlichkeit and of Philosophie des Geistes, the two earliest surviving versions of Hegel’s social theory. Hegel’s central concept of the spirit evolved in these two works. An 87-page interpretation by Harris precedes the translations.

As the title indicates, Faith and Knowledge deals with the relation between religious faith and cognitive beliefs, between the truth of religion and the truths of philosophy and science. Hegel is guided by his understanding of the historical situation: the individual alienated from God, nature, and community; and he is influenced by the new philosophy of Schelling, the Spinozistic Philosophy of Identity with its superb vision of the inner unity of God, nature, and rational man. Through a brilliant discussion of (...) the philosophies of Kant, Fichte, and other luminaries of the period, Hegel shows that the time has finally come to give philosophy the authentic shape it has always been trying to reach, a shape in which philosophy’s old conflicts with religion on the one hand and with the sciences on the other are suspended once for all. This is the first English translation of this important essay. Professor H. S. Harris offers a historical and analytic commentary to the text and Professor Cerf offers an introduction to the general reader which focuses on the concept of intellectual intuition and on the difference between authentic and inauthentic philosophy. (shrink)