The first collection of Leibniz's key writings on the binary system, newly translated, with many previously unpublished in any language. -/- The polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is known for his independent invention of the calculus in 1675. Another major—although less studied—mathematical contribution by Leibniz is his invention of binary arithmetic, the representational basis for today's digital computing. This book offers the first collection of Leibniz's most important writings on the binary system, all newly translated by the authors with many (...) previously unpublished in any language. Taken together, these thirty-two texts tell the story of binary as Leibniz conceived it, from his first youthful writings on the subject to the mature development and publication of the binary system. -/- As befits a scholarly edition, Strickland and Lewis have not only returned to Leibniz's original manuscripts in preparing their translations, but also provided full critical apparatus. In addition to extensive annotations, each text is accompanied by a detailed introductory “headnote” that explains the context and content. Additional mathematical commentaries offer readers deep dives into Leibniz's mathematical thinking. The texts are prefaced by a lengthy and detailed introductory essay, in which Strickland and Lewis trace Leibniz's development of binary, place it in its historical context, and chart its posthumous influence, most notably on shaping our own computer age. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan has recently defended the view that it is morally worse for a human being to suffer some harm than it is for a lower animal (such as a dog or a cow) to suffer a harm that is equally severe (ceteris paribus). In this paper, I argue that this view receives rather less support from our intuitions than one might at first suppose. According to Kagan, moreover, an individual’s moral status depends partly upon her ‘modal capacities.’ In this (...) paper, I argue that the most natural strategy for justifying Kagan’s theory faces some important challenges. More generally, I argue that philosophers who wish to defend the view that human beings have a higher moral status than that of the lower animals face a dilemma. Either their theory of moral status will imply (unacceptably) that some severely cognitively impaired human beings have a significantly lower moral status than that of typical human beings, or these philosophers will be forced to ground moral status in a set of properties so far removed from a subject’s actual capacities that it will become difficult to see why these kinds of properties should have such moral importance. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of gentrification have tended to focus on residential displacement. However, the prevalence of residential displacement is fiercely contested, with many urban geographers regarding it as quite uncommon. This lends some urgency to the underexplored question of how one should evaluate other forms of gentrification. In this paper, I argue that one of the most important harms suffered by victims of displacement gentrification is loss of access to the goods conferred by membership in a thriving local community. Leveraging the (...) social scientific literature, I go on to argue that non-displacement gentrification also often damages local communities. One can hence extend existing philosophical critiques of displacement gentrification to argue that non-displacement gentrification likewise poses a threat to relational equality, and often violates certain basic occupancy rights. Focusing on the value that inheres in thriving local communities also suggests some new possibilities for critiquing gentrification. For instance, existing occupancy rights critiques focus on incumbent land users’ interests in stability. However, one can also argue in a Lockean mode that incumbent land users’ occupancy rights are at least partially grounded in their community having laboured together to create objects of value. An extension of Michael Walzer’s theory of justice to incorporate community goods as a separate ‘sphere’ might also have widespread appeal. Taken together, these arguments constitute a sustained and theoretically ecumenical case for the pro tanto moral objectionability of gentrification. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that mere temporal proximity always and without exception strengthens certain moral duties, including the duty to save – call this view Robust Temporalism. Although almost all other moral philosophers dismiss Robust Temporalism out of hand, I argue that it is prima facie intuitively plausible, and that it is analogous to a view about special obligations that many philosophers already accept. I also defend Robust Temporalism against several common objections, and I highlight its relevance to a (...) number of practical policy debates, including longtermism. My conclusion is that Robust Temporalism is a moral live option, that deserves to be taken much more seriously in the future. (shrink)

We discuss potential biorisks from large language models (LLMs). AI assistants based on LLMs such as ChatGPT have been shown to significantly reduce barriers to entry for actors wishing to synthesize dangerous, potentially novel pathogens and chemical weapons. The harms from deploying such bioagents could be further magnified by AI-assisted misinformation. We endorse several policy responses to these dangers, including prerelease evaluations of biomedical AIs by subject-matter experts, enhanced surveillance and lab screening procedures, restrictions on AI training data, and access (...) controls on biomedical AI. We conclude with a suggestion about future research directions in bioethics. (shrink)

As well as disagreeing about how much one should donate to charity, moral theories also disagree about where one should donate. In light of this disagreement, how should the morally uncertain philanthropist allocate her donations? In many cases, one intuitively attractive option is for the philanthropist to split her donations across all of the charities that are recommended by moral views in which she has positive credence, with each charity’s share being proportional to her credence in the moral theories that (...) recommend that particular charity. Despite the fact that something like this approach is already being used by real-world philanthropists to distribute billions of dollars of donations, it is not supported by any of the approaches to moral uncertainty that have been proposed thus-far in the philosophical literature. In this paper, we will develop a bargaining-based approach to moral uncertainty that honors the proportionality intuition in favor of splitting one’s donations. We also show how this bargaining-based approach has several further advantages over the best alternative proposals. (shrink)

Moral latitude is only ever a matter of coincidence on the most popular decision procedure in the literature on moral uncertainty. In all possible choice situations other than those in which two or more options happen to be tied for maximal expected choiceworthiness, Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness implies that only one possible option is uniquely appropriate. A better theory of appropriateness would be more sensitive to the decision maker’s credence in theories that endorse agent-centred prerogatives. In this paper, we will develop (...) and defend a modified version of this view that allows for agent-centred prerogatives and supererogation as part of its verdicts about appropriateness. (shrink)

Responding to volatile criticisms frequently leveled at Leo Strauss and those he influenced, the prominent contributors to this volume demonstrate the profound influence that Strauss and his students have exerted on American liberal democracy and contemporary political thought. By stressing the enduring vitality of classic books and by articulating the theoretical and practical flaws of relativism and historicism, the contributors argue that Strauss and the Straussians have identified fundamental crises of modernity and liberal democracy.

Article reviews the book "Essays on Kant's Political Philosophy," edited by Howard Lloyd Williams.

Professor Errol E. Harris in his review in The Owl of Minerva of Dr. Petry’s translation of the Naturphilosophie attributes Hegel’s “firm rejection of theories of biological evolution” to the lack of scientific evidence. “He had the philosophical insight but he refused to claim support for it from scientific theories which were largely based on speculation.” The inference seems to be that if Hegel had lived to read Darwin’s Origin of Species he would have accepted a theory of evolution. Professor (...) Harris is, of course, very far from being alone in holding this view, but it is one which I cannot share. But before giving my reason for disagreeing with him, I wish to point out an oversight on my part which should be corrected. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Late-Marxist, Post-Poststructuralist Critical NebulosityWendell V. HarrisIllustration, by J. Hillis Miller; 168 pp. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992, $35.00.The title of J. Hillis Miller’s Illustration is apt in a way other than the author anticipated: it is a composite illustration of most of what makes so much of contemporary literary and aesthetic criticism unsatisfying if not nugatory. Initial evidence of the lack of cogent conceptualization is the disparateness (...) of the two long essays jammed between the covers of the book. Part One is entitled “The Work of Cultural Criticism in the Age of Digital Reproduction” and Part Two “Word and Image.” Miller explains the relationship by saying what while the first section of the book “will attempt to understand” the shift in literary studies toward theory and especially cultural studies, the second section “will explore the relations of picture to word as one practical and theoretical issue important to cultural studies” (p. 9). But that connection is (fleetingly) asserted in the midst of an argument so fragmented and confused that whole sections must here be passed over without comment.What is most striking about Part One is the thought-disabling imprecision of many of the key terms and the not unrelated way in which the argument follows well-travelled modes of Marxist and poststructuralist thought. The title of Part One, “The Work of Cultural Criticism in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” is of course intended to [End Page 127] link Miller’s first essay to what is probably the best-known of Walter Benjamin’s essays, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Both seek not only to link changing technological possibilities to the direction of cultural change, but to suggest that such changes should be harnessed to the work of political revolution. Miller might have been warned by the deficiencies of Benjamin’s over-rated essay. Benjamin begins his essay by applauding Marx for so cogently showing “what could be expected of capitalism in the future”: the prophecy Benjamin derives from Marx is “that one could expect [capitalism] not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself” (p. 217). 1 There is still plenty of exploitation to be found in the world, not excluding the most economically (capitalistically) developed countries, but it requires real intellectual contortions to argue that the growth and exploitation of a proletariat has increased where capitalism has most developed; the assertion that the world is moving toward the abolition of capitalism hardly requires comment.Benjamin’s closing argument, the point toward which his entire essay is presumably driving, substitutes a clever slogan for thought. “The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life” (p. 241). But, writes Benjamin in his closing sentence, “Communism responds by politicizing art” (p. 242). Miller attempts to explain the distinction: “To aestheticize politics is to treat the state as though it were a work of art” while the “politicizing of art... means affirming the political value and force of art” (p. 10). Well, it is of course possible to assume such a meaning for Benjamin’s words, especially since it is hard to know exactly what they mean, but why make so much of an essay which begins by endorsing a prophecy that has become increasingly dubious, ends in an ambiguous formulation, and in between mixes obvious and trivial observations with a highly questionable argument about the disappearance of the “aura” of a work as a result of mechanical reproduction? As for the latter, the cheap reproduction of, for example, certain of Van Gogh’s paintings can be argued to “debase” them, but if they mean little to those who encounter them only on cheap posters or computer screens, they can scarcely mean less than they did to those unaware of their existence before the age of mechanical reproduction. And after all, if the original paintings have not retained their “aura,” museums could simply fill their rooms with reproductions.The reason Miller links his essay to that of Benjamin is presumably to demonstrate his allegiance to the form of Marxist thought so frequently... (shrink)

So far the "Science Wars" have generated far more heat than light. Combatants from one or the other of what C. P. Snow famously called "the two cultures" (science versus the arts and humanities) have launched bitter attacks but have seldom engaged in constructive dialogue about the central issues. In The One Culture?, Jay A. Labinger and Harry Collins have gathered together some of the world's foremost scientists and sociologists of science to exchange opinions and ideas rather than insults. (...) The contributors find surprising areas of broad agreement in a genuine conversation about science, its legitimacy and authority as a means of understanding the world, and whether science studies undermines the practice and findings of science and scientists. The One Culture? is organized into three parts. The first consists of position papers written by scientists and sociologists of science, which were distributed to all the participants. The second presents commentaries on these papers, drawing out and discussing their central themes and arguments. In the third section, participants respond to these critiques, offering defenses, clarifications, and modifications of their positions. Who can legitimately speak about science? What is the proper role of scientific knowledge? How should scientists interact with the rest of society in decision making? Because science occupies such a central position in the world today, such questions are vitally important. Although there are no simple solutions, The One Culture? does show the reader exactly what is at stake in the Science Wars, and provides a valuable framework for how to go about seeking the answers we so urgently need. Contributors include: Constance K. Barsky, Jean Bricmont, Harry Collins, Peter Dear, Jane Gregory, Jay A. Labinger, Michael Lynch, N. David Mermin, Steve Miller, Trevor Pinch, Peter R. Saulson, Steven Shapin, Alan Sokal, Steven Weinberg, Kenneth G. Wilson. (shrink)

A radical, optimistic exploration of how humans evolved to develop reason, consciousness, and free will. Lately, the most passionate advocates of the theory of evolution seem to present it as bad news. Scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, and Sam Harris tell us that our most intimate actions, thoughts, and values are mere byproducts of thousands of generations of mindless adaptation. We are just one species among multitudes, and therefore no more significant than any other living creature. Now comes (...) Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller to make the case that this view betrays a gross misunderstanding of evolution. Natural selection surely explains how our bodies and brains were shaped, but Miller argues that it’s not a social or cultural theory of everything. In The Human Instinct, he rejects the idea that our biological heritage means that human thought, action, and imagination are pre-determined, describing instead the trajectory that ultimately gave us reason, consciousness and free will. A proper understanding of evolution, he says, reveals humankind in its glorious uniqueness—one foot planted firmly among all of the creatures we’ve evolved alongside, and the other in the special place of self-awareness and understanding that we alone occupy in the universe. Equal parts natural science and philosophy, The Human Instinct is a moving and powerful celebration of what it means to be human. (shrink)

With the resurgence in recent years of Hegelian studies a veritable spate of new translations have appeared of that philosopher’s works. For a long time we have had Wallace’s inimitable version of the lesser Logic and the main text of the Philosophy of Mind. We have had also Johnson and Struther’s translation of the greater Logic, Baillie’s Phenomenology, the History of Philosophy done by E. S. Haldane and The Philosophy of History by Sibree, not to mention various fragmentary editions of (...) the Introduction. Besides these there have been Sir Malcolm Knox’s excellent translations of the Rechtsphilosophie and, more recently, of Lectures on Aesthetics. But in the last few years A. V. Miller has given us a new and much improved version of the Science of Logic and the hitherto untranslated Philosophy of Nature as well as a new and revised edition of Wallace’s Encyclopaedia Logic and his Philosophy of Mind with the addition now of the Zusätze in English. At the same time another translation of the Naturphilosophie by Petry appeared, with voluminous historical and explanatory notes. Now attention is being given to the earlier works, and new translations have appeared, under the imprint of the State University of New York Press, of Hegel’s Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophic and Glauben und Wissen, by Walter Cerf and Henry S. Harris, supplementing the Early Theological Writings earlier provided by Knox and Kroner. (shrink)

An adequate review of a work as large and as complex as Dr. Petry’s translation of Hegel’s Naturphilosophie would need to perform at least three tasks. It should critically assess his account of Hegel’s development and philosophical system given in the long introduction; it should comment on the faithfulness and adequacy of the translation of the text, and it should estimate the value of the voluminous notes and commentary. So stupendous an accomplishment as Dr. Petry’s warrants a longer and more (...) detailed discussion than this reviewer can undertake, limited as he is in competence and the availability of space and time. But some attempt, even if too brief to be satisfactory, will be made to fulfill all three of the above tasks. This is the second full length translation of the Naturphilosophie that has appeared in English within a year - after nearly two centuries of complete dearth. So there is also some call for comparison between Dr. Petry’s translation and that of A. V. Miller, and so far as this can be done at all here, it will be only very partial and only when needed to throw light on special issues. (shrink)

In a number of recent papers, Michael Bratman has defended a policy-based theory of identification which represents the most sophisticated and compelling development of a broadly hierarchical approach to the problems about identification which Harry Frankfurt drew our attention to over thirty years ago. Here I first summarize the bare essentials of Bratman's view, and then raise doubts about both its necessity and sufficiency. Finally I consider his objections to rival value-based models, and find those objections to be less (...) compelling than he makes them out to be. (shrink)

An adequate review of a work as large and as complex as Dr. Petry’s translation of Hegel’s Naturphilosophie would need to perform at least three tasks. It should critically assess his account of Hegel’s development and philosophical system given in the long introduction; it should comment on the faithfulness and adequacy of the translation of the text, and it should estimate the value of the voluminous notes and commentary. So stupendous an accomplishment as Dr. Petry’s warrants a longer and more (...) detailed discussion than this reviewer can undertake, limited as he is in competence and the availability of space and time. But some attempt, even if too brief to be satisfactory, will be made to fulfill all three of the above tasks. This is the second full length translation of the Naturphilosophie that has appeared in English within a year - after nearly two centuries of complete dearth. So there is also some call for comparison between Dr. Petry’s translation and that of A. V. Miller, and so far as this can be done at all here, it will be only very partial and only when needed to throw light on special issues. (shrink)

This is a book review, which I promised to write for the PIR last month.

The Gongyang Commentary on The Spring and Autumn Annals: A Full Translation. By Harry Miller. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pp. viii + 311. $95.

Like Henry Harris, I began doing intensive research on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in the mid-sixties. I recall going through all the chapters as a graduate student during one academic year, and looking around for commentaries. The only English-language commentary available was Loewenberg's Hegel's Phenomenology: Dialogues in the Life of Mind, which was suggestive of the dialectic taking place in the book, but not much help in getting over the “rough spots”. This gave me an incentive to work through Jean (...) Hyppolite's commentary, not yet translated into English, with my basic reading-knowledge of French. My 1976 Hegel's Phenomenology, Part I: Analysis and Commentary was one of the first in a long line of Anglophone commentaries. Harris in his introduction to Vol. I. mentions this effort at “analysis”, along with Findlay's “analysis” accompanying the 1977 Miller translation of the Phenomenology, as incentives for the inclusion of his own improved running analysis in the present commentary. I have included discussions of numerous partial or complete commentaries on Hegel's Phenomenology in review articles published in 1971 in the American Philosophical Quarterly and Teorema, in 1979 in the American Philosophical Quarterly, and in 1981 in Hegel-Studien. Harris has the advantage of producing the most recent of all these commentaries, and in a way offers us a compendium of everything that has been done on the Phenomenology. His analysis and commentary includes a survey of the literature, in which almost all previous laborers in the field can find themselves commended or criticized in the endnotes. Thus I find comments like “Kainz has completely misunderstood the argument here”, “This is a point which Kainz has grasped more definitely than most commentators”, “[Kainz] does not deserve the brickbat Flay hurls at him”, and so forth. Other commentators, living and dead – Flay, Pöggeler, Navickas, Kenneth and Merold Westphal, Heidegger, Lauer, Werner Becker, Kojève, Wahl, Hyppolite, Labarrière, Bonsiepen, Forster, Shklar, Solomon, Werner Marx, and Robert Williams — are similarly discussed and critiqued. For some of us Anglophone commentators, such remarks may seem like red marks on essays from a patient professor. But certainly no one will mind, since Harris has spent more time and energy on this very specialized project than any of us. In fact, some former commentators almost have a “conflict of interest” in reviewing Harris' work, since so many of us have benefited at various points in our research from Harris' personal support and criticism. But in academics, as in life, mentors cannot always be assured of loyalty. (shrink)

Like Henry Harris, I began doing intensive research on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in the mid-sixties. I recall going through all the chapters as a graduate student during one academic year, and looking around for commentaries. The only English-language commentary available was Loewenberg's Hegel's Phenomenology: Dialogues in the Life of Mind, which was suggestive of the dialectic taking place in the book, but not much help in getting over the “rough spots”. This gave me an incentive to work through Jean (...) Hyppolite's commentary, not yet translated into English, with my basic reading-knowledge of French. My 1976 Hegel's Phenomenology, Part I: Analysis and Commentary was one of the first in a long line of Anglophone commentaries. Harris in his introduction to Vol. I. mentions this effort at “analysis”, along with Findlay's “analysis” accompanying the 1977 Miller translation of the Phenomenology, as incentives for the inclusion of his own improved running analysis in the present commentary. I have included discussions of numerous partial or complete commentaries on Hegel's Phenomenology in review articles published in 1971 in the American Philosophical Quarterly and Teorema, in 1979 in the American Philosophical Quarterly, and in 1981 in Hegel-Studien. Harris has the advantage of producing the most recent of all these commentaries, and in a way offers us a compendium of everything that has been done on the Phenomenology. His analysis and commentary includes a survey of the literature, in which almost all previous laborers in the field can find themselves commended or criticized in the endnotes. Thus I find comments like “Kainz has completely misunderstood the argument here”, “This is a point which Kainz has grasped more definitely than most commentators”, “[Kainz] does not deserve the brickbat Flay hurls at him”, and so forth. Other commentators, living and dead – Flay, Pöggeler, Navickas, Kenneth and Merold Westphal, Heidegger, Lauer, Werner Becker, Kojève, Wahl, Hyppolite, Labarrière, Bonsiepen, Forster, Shklar, Solomon, Werner Marx, and Robert Williams — are similarly discussed and critiqued. For some of us Anglophone commentators, such remarks may seem like red marks on essays from a patient professor. But certainly no one will mind, since Harris has spent more time and energy on this very specialized project than any of us. In fact, some former commentators almost have a “conflict of interest” in reviewing Harris' work, since so many of us have benefited at various points in our research from Harris' personal support and criticism. But in academics, as in life, mentors cannot always be assured of loyalty. (shrink)

Harry C. Boyte. Craig Calhoun. Geoff Eley. Nancy Fraser. Nicholas Garnham. JürgenHabermas. Peter Hohendahl. Lloyd Kramer. Benjamin Lee. Thomas McCarthy. Moishe Postone. Mary P.Ryan. Michael Schudson. Michael Warner. David Zaret.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 387 and contributed an important and helpful study. This dissertation is a model of its kind. One hopes the author will continue his scholarly efforts. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. WILLIAM E. MAY John Henry Newman: A Biography. By IAN KER. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Pp. xii + 764. $24.95 (paper). The Achievement of John Henry Newman. By IAN KER. Notre Dame: University (...) of Notre Dame Press, 1990. Pp. x + 209. $24.95 (cloth). Ian Ker has inherited the mantle of the late Charles Stephen Dessain as the finest textual expositor of the Newman corpus, and Ker's biography should become a standard reference tool in the field. Ker ap· prenticed under Dessain in the production of the monumental (31volume ) Letters and Diaries, and his biography shows his command of the materials of that as yet unfinished project. Ker's hook joins the biographies of W. Ward (1912) and M. Trevor (1962) as significant "lives of Newman" to consider, and it addresses their earlier shortcomings : Ward's inadequate appraisal of the Anglican Newman and Trevor's unconcern for Newman's theological writings. Of Newman's intellectual contribution, Ker's treatment is similar to Dessain's John Henry Newman, an exposition of the major themes and intellectual moves, and theologically-minded inquirers need read both. Ker offers the hook as a personal life, a literary appraisal, and an intellectual study. The personal life and literary analysis are ably carried off; Ker's background in English literature and his editorial work on the letters have served him well. The intellectual study takes the form of synopses of Newman's hooks and articles, which are woven into the chronological narrative of the life. This aspect of Ker's hook is by no means "the theological achievement of JHN" (cf. Tracy's work on Lonergan); such a project still awaits Newman studies and someone of the conceptual breadth of the late Jan Walgrave to achieve it. Ker provides accurate and readable summaries of Newman's writings, and if a biography is meant to introduce the sundry aspects of a person, especially a complex thinker like Newman, then Ker's treatment of the intellectual aspect offers a fine introduction. I shall consider these three dimensions of the biography, and first the personal life. Newman considered that a person's life is best told 888 BOOK REVIEWS through that person's correspondence. Ker's biography is approached chronologically, and Newman's published letters guide the tale. Newman 's advice is particularly apropos for his own biographer, since Newman 's hooks and articles often displayed a "reserve" in which his true feelings were couched and nuanced. His letters, especially to confidants, were candid and often hard-hitting, as when he described the Curia in these words: " And who is Propaganda? one sharp man of business, who works day and night, and dispatches his work quick off, to the East and West, a high dignitary, [perhaps an Archbishop], hut after all little more than a clerk... with two or.three clerks under him " (p. 519). (Ker displays some reserve himself, omitting Newman's episcopal aside.) Ker's use of the letters is most revealing during Newman's Roman Catholic period when he encountered opposition from Archbishop Manning and W. G. Ward in England, from Archbishop Cullen in Dublin, and from Cardinal Barnaho in Rome. One senses how the laity rallied round him. Some of Newman's most pungent thoughts on ·theological freedom, on the suspicious nature of the clergy toward educated laity, on the wherewithal to make an institution a genuine university, on the role of patience and.trust in God when authorities are hearing down, are to he found in Ker's choice of letters. With so much material to mine-Newman wrote 20,000 letters-it is understandable that Ker does not include, save rarely, what Newman's opponents were thinking. Ker's account of Newman's Anglican period is equally illuminating, and indeed it is a highlight of the biography. While the Apologia has provided the main lines of the story, Ker puts flesh and hones to Newman 's struggle with his conscience. In coming to Oxford, Newman... (shrink)

This beautifully written book by one of the world's leading moral philosophers argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love. Harry Frankfurt writes that it is through caring that we infuse the world with meaning. Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns; it shapes the framework of aims and (...) interests within which we lead our lives. The most basic and essential question for a person to raise about the conduct of his or her life is not what he or she should care about but what, in fact, he or she cannot help caring about. The most important form of caring, Frankfurt writes, is love, a nonvoluntary, disinterested concern for the flourishing of what is loved. Love is so important because meaningful practical reasoning must be grounded in ends that we do not seek only to attain other ends, and because it is in loving that we become bound to final ends desired for their own sakes. Frankfurt argues that the purest form of love is self-love. This sounds perverse, but self-love--as distinct from self-indulgence--is at heart a disinterested concern for whatever it is that the person loves. The most elementary form of self-love is nothing more than the desire of a person to love. Insofar as this is true, self-love is simply a commitment to finding meaning in our lives. (shrink)