The peculiarities of the worldview of a "typical" European student of the second half of the 20th century in Robert Merle's novel "Behind the Glass" are determined, his ability to live and communicate in society, to remain himself and at the same time to be a "cell" of a single whole among the large organism of the university. The author justifies the students' worldview positions by comparing the views of people from different strata of French society, as well as emigrants.Dissimilar (...) rebellious characters, "adaptive" moods, and individual interests of the students of that time are considered through personal relationships. The analysis of modern approaches of scientists to the work of Robert Merle is carried out, the modern realities of the "world of students" and "student life" are taken into account in comparison with the previous era. The aim – to reveal peculiarities in the worldview of a European student of the second half of the 20th century based on Robert Merle's novel "Through the Looking Glass". The tasks of the research are the analysis of the novel "Behind the Glass", the characteristics of the inner world of man in the creative vision of Robert Merle and its significance for the present. Research methodology. The leading research methods were: retrospective, which contributes to the study of the phenomenon of R. Merle's work against the background of the era from his early to late works; terminological selection – for the purpose of selection, clarification and modification of the system of individual terms used by the author in his novels; the method of personalization, which ensures the study of R. Merle's works through the images of his heroes. Research results: the problems raised by R. Merle in this novel affect not only student life, but also their teachers and the entire French society. for example, Professor Fremencourt cannot be heard in the hall, also because he "announces" as if into the void: there is no element of discussion in the lecture, only a few manage to get answers to questions after the lecture, the system of seminars is poorly developed in France, and they are not conducted by professors, and ordinary teachers. The student is assigned the role of a submissive and passive listener; verbally they call him to independent thinking, and demand spiritual obedience. It is not surprising that a selective but representative sociological questionnaire showed that 52% of French respondents assessed the May student riot as a "revolt of youth against outdated structures" of school and society. Conclusion. Through the events of one day, the characters of the main characters – typical students and professors of the middle of the last century – are gradually revealed, and at the same time, the worldview of a "typical" European student of the second half of the 20th century is revealed. However, we still feel similarities with them today, they are concerned about problems similar to ours, they feel the same as we do. Therefore, Robert Merle's novel "Through the Glass" will never lose its relevance, because it reflects inevitable values – the inheritance of generations, the interests of young people, social contradictions and ways of solving one's own problems. (shrink)

One of the issues of discussion between Ahl al-Sunnah and the Mu‛tazila, who differ in many issues, is the relationship between divine command and divine will. Among those who express their opinion on is the Ash‛arī theologian Salmān al-Nīsābūrī. The author, who first cites his sect’s approach on this issue and then explains that Mu‛tazila’s contrary view, adopted the view that the belief, which follows as worship and good deeds commanded by Allah will be the same from his servants. In (...) this matter he basically elaborates three arguments the Mu‛tazila. He states that they build the first of these proofs on the impossibility of the commandment and the will being in a separate direction, and secondly on the fact that the desire for evil is bad. Finally, he adds that they bring evidence from the verses which translates as Allah desires the good of his servants and doesn’t intend his evil deeds. Nīsābūrī, doesn’t pass on these Mu‛tazilite proofs with an immediate answer, but also puts on his agenda possible other objections to those answers that he is giving. He makes the debate very comprehensive, especially on the first evidence he attributes to them. In this sense, he tries to refute the Mu‛tazila argument that the ruler cannot have a will contrary to what he ordered, based on some other rulers who would not want their orders to be fulfilled. Nīsābūrī, who cites some other objections on this issue, states that while there are claims regarding the necessity of order-will harmony, it isn’t consistent that these claimants develop their objections to the examples that show the opposite of their views. In other words, he says that these regarding cases invalidate Mu‛tazila’s claim of necessity. Nīsābūrī includes abrogation in the later stages of the debate and argues that abrogation, which means the abolition of a decree, hits a blow to their understanding of the necessity of order-will. The author also takes objections to his agenda and responds to them. He also examines Mu‛tazila’s approach on the content that if the will is contrary to the order, the rebel and the submissive will be confused, so they must be compatible. Since this claim confirms the meaning that the unbelievers obey Allah’s will with their blasphemy, he makes explanations that obedience will be achieved by order, not by will. On the other hand, the author tries to bind his interlocutors by emphasizing that there’s no room for discussion when it is seen at the relevant verses and seen that Allah doesn’t wish (some) unbelievers to believe. Nīsābūrī, also examines the argument made by Mu‛tazila as to the necessity of conformity between divine command and divine will, that wishing for evil is also evil. Nīsābūrī, who makes relatively more concise explanations on this subject, pointing to the source of this evidence and stating that it is reached from the realm of the perceptible (qiyas bi’l-shāhid). Then, he makes some explanations that the visible realm and the invisible realm cannot be evaluated in the same way and draws attention to the fact that Allah’s being unwise isn’t inferred from the worldly affairs that are happening against Muslims. Nīsābūrī also deals with Mu‛tazila’s evidence for the harmony of divine will and divine order through verses stating that Allah wouldn’t wish his servants to harm. At this stage, he makes comments that the relevant verses are suitable to be evaluated in another way. For this, sometimes makes linguistic explanations, sometimes refers to the content of other verses, and sometimes points to the meaning of the verse used as the evidence. In all of them, he ultimately tries to show that the verses raised by Mu‛tazila do not support their claim. While the author refutes those evidences, he also points out the problems that may arise if the view defended by Mu‛tazila would accepted. In this sense, Nīsābūrī points out that this view will also mean the occurrence of deeds that Allah does not want, and this would bring harm to the divine judgement. As a result, Nīsābūrī underlines that at least Allah’s order towards His servants, whom He knows won’t believe, isn’t in the same direction. (shrink)

The first of John Henry Newman’s Oxford University Sermons is often neglected as an integral part of this collection. Yet Newman considered these individual sermons as a unit. There is an important theme that runs unchanged from the first to the last of these Sermons: the primacy of faith over human reason. The main burden of his first Sermon is the need for its hearers to return to their “early, religious training.” Although the worth of human reason is much amplified (...) in his last Sermon, even there faith remains paramount. Newman depicted faith in his fifteenth Sermon as the chief form of human knowledge, as the bedrock and the guarantor of every other form of human knowledge: the one thing necessary is the childlike “obedience of Faith.”. (shrink)

I maintain that Hegel’s reading of the Antigone underestimates the power of the negativity to which Antigone’s action is dedicated. I argue that the negativity of death and the sacred cannot, contrary to Hegel, to be sublated and thus incorporated into the progression of Spirit. Bataille’s treatment of the sacred better characterizes the unworldly force and the otherness with which Antigone and Creon are confronted when their actions bring the divine and the human into conflict. Antigone’s obedience to what (...) she understands to be her divine obligation is a devotion to a negativity which exceeds and subverts all dialectical comprehension. Although her action brings the divine and the human political sphere into a moment of identity, allowing for the sublation of the ethical world, Antigone’s action is a transgression in Bataille’s sense of the term, and it points toward the limits of reason. The Antigone narrative thus exceeds Hegel’s use of it and is ultimately more consistent with Bataille’s understanding of the sacred. (shrink)

Mainstream social psychology focuses on how people characteristically violate norms of action through social misbehaviors such as conformity with false majority judgments, destructive obedience, and failures to help those in need. Likewise, they are seen to violate norms of reasoning through cognitive errors such as misuse of social information, self-enhancement, and an over-readiness to attribute dispositional characteristics. The causes of this negative research emphasis include the apparent informativeness of norm violation, the status of good behavior and judgment as unconfirmable (...) null hypotheses, and the allure of counter-intuitive findings. The shortcomings of this orientation include frequently erroneous imputations of error, findings of mutually contradictory errors, incoherent interpretations of error, an inability to explain the sources of behavioral or cognitive achievement, and the inhibition of generalized theory. Possible remedies include increased attention to the complete range of behavior and judgmental accomplishment, analytic reforms emphasizing effect sizes and Bayesian inference, and a theoretical paradigm able to account for both the sources of accomplishment and of error. A more balanced social psychology would yield not only a more positive view of human nature, but also an improved understanding of the bases of good behavior and accurate judgment, coherent explanations of occasional lapses, and theoretically grounded suggestions for improvement. Key Words: Bayesian inference; biases; normative models; personality; positive psychology; rationality; reasoning; social behavior; social judgment; social psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Richard Price, the Debate on Free Will, and Natural RightsGregory I. MolivasWhen Richard Price projected metaphysical assumptions onto his ethical theory, he elaborated a conception of man as a normatively self-regulating being. Endowed with rationality, man is a “law unto himself.” Price’s political writings postulated accordingly that man should be his own legislator. The first proposition appeared in his ethics in the context of man’s identification with his higher (...) faculties, and the second in the context of man considered as a member of civil society. Crucial to the transition from the first context to the second was Price’s notion of man’s inward constitution as permeating his conception of practical virtue, a view he expanded in his discussion on free will. This conception was built on a sharp contrast between reason and passion, which he described in terms of a relationship like that of sovereign to subject. The contrast is between those faculties which are destined to command, and those who ought to obey. This analogy facilitated comparison with normative relationships obtaining in civil society, where Price identified subservience to passion with obedience to an external-to-the-“self “ power, which in a political context manifested as the wishes of other people.These successive steps from ethical supposition to political claims, formed a body of assumptions underlying beliefs that were shared by many of his contemporaries. They did not constitute a unified system of principles, and it is vain to seek theoretical consistency in all those who seemed to have espoused ideas similar to those of Price. His assumptions do, however, help to explain why some of his contemporaries found his ideas familiar or self-evident, while to others they were incomprehensible. Nor is it a coincidence that Price’s most able critics happened to be psychological determinists (Richard Hey, John Lind, Edmund Burke), who attacked his conception of political liberty after undermining, or disputing, Price’s conception of man. [End Page 105]I. In the writings of all those who inveighed against the rights of man, the words “natural rights” and “metaphysics” are often found together. Thomas Paine was accused of having “crudely stolen” his “crazy metaphysics” from others, 1 and studies of Edmund Burke have continuously pointed to his dislike of the “professor of metaphysics.” Burke’s aversion to abstract speculation and metaphysics has often been interpreted as the natural reaction of an English politician confronting the generalities of continental writers. Frederick Dreyer, however, argues that when Burke wrote his Reflections, he had in mind Price’s philosophical arguments rather than the events of the French Revolution. 2 According to him, the anonymous “metaphysician” whom Burke so often and so vehemently denounced was, in fact, Richard Price.In substantiating his position Dreyer quotes, among other things, a revealing passage from Burke: “There are people who have split and anatomized the doctrine of free government, as if it were an abstract question concerning metaphysical liberty and necessity, and not a matter of moral prudence and natural feeling.” 3 Although Dreyer does not pursue the full implications of the evidence he presents, this is a remarkable statement, because it indicates what Price had undertaken in his political writings. In his philosophical works Price had defended the idea of metaphysical or philosophical liberty as a precondition of moral agency. In the first and most important theoretical section of his influential Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, 4 which set out to analyze the nature of liberty, Price summarized his earlier philosophical views. As William King noted in this section of his political pamphlet Price was “totally out in his philosophy.” 5Price defined liberty as the power of self-government and approached it through its four general divisions: physical liberty, moral, religious, and civil liberty. Commentators on Price have often acknowledged that his conception of liberty, as expounded in his political pamphlet, is indebted to his earlier philosophical work and notably his Review of the Principal Questions in Morals; 6 but they have not followed up with a clear exposition of how the divisions of liberty Price put forward in his Observations are related. [End Page 106]Although J. C. D. Clark claims that... (shrink)

I argue that there is a mutually illuminating parallel between the concept of obedience and the concept of believing a person. Just as both believing what a person says and believing what a person says for the reason that the person says it are insufficient for believing the person, so acting as a person demands and acting as a person demands for the reason that the person demands it are insufficient for obeying the person. Unlike the concept of believing (...) a person, however, the concept of obedience has two distinct senses, one applying to coerced action and one applying to non-coerced action based on authoritative directives. While the former sense of obedience has no theoretical analogue, the latter sense of obedience can be understood as the practical analogue of the theoretical case of believing a person, making room for a deep parallel between believing and acting on authority. (shrink)

In the United States, all military personnel swear to obey “the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.” Military personnel must obey orders promptly in order to facilitate effective military functioning. Yet, obedience to orders has been associated with the commission of war crimes. Military personnel of all ranks have committed torture, rape, genocide, and murder under orders. “I was just following orders” (respondaet superior) is no longer accepted as (...) a complete defense to a charge of war crimes. In the words of the Nuremberg court: “The obedience of a soldier is not the obedience of an automaton. A soldier is a reasoning agent”. This means that military personnel cannot evade responsibility for their actions under orders. But when and under what conditions should military personnel disobey orders? If obedience is sometimes morally wrong, how can obedience be a military virtue? In this chapter I argue that the only plausible conception of military obedience as a virtue is reflective obedience: obedience governed and constrained by the ends of the military profession serving a legitimate state and by the laws of armed conflict. Section 1 explains the concept of obedience and outlines the idea of virtuous obedience. Section 2 explores when the military has legitimate authority to compel obedience. Section 3 concludes by exploring the limits on obedience that derive from the military’s status as a profession and the legitimacy of the military’s authority to issue orders. (shrink)

PART I PROLEGOMENA ACTING ON ORDERS "First, words are our tools, and, as a minimum, we should use clean tools: we should know what we mean and what we do ...

It has become fashionable to try to prove the impossibility of there being a God. Findlay's celebrated ontological disproof has in the past quarter century given rise to vigorous controversy. More recently James Rachels has offered a moral argument intended to show that there could not be a being worthy of worship. In this paper I shall examine the position Rachels is arguing for in some detail. I shall endeavor to show that his argument is unsound and, more interestingly, that (...) the genuine philosophical perplexity which motivates it can be dispelled without too much difficulty. (shrink)

Robert Dunn, David Finkelstein and Richard Moran have recently contributed to broadening the debate on self-knowledge within the analytic tradition. They raise questions concerning the sort of awareness that may have a healing effect in psychoanalytic therapy, and enhance the relevance to self-knowledge of a deliberative, and practically committed, attitude toward oneself. They reject, however, that self-observation could play a significant role in a strictly first-person attitude toward oneself, since they conceive of it as essentially detached and, in this respect, (...) similar to the kind of attitude that a third party might adopt. I will appeal to Simone Weil's distinction between two sorts obedience and to the contrast between two characters in *The Karamazov Brothers* to elucidate a kind of self-awareness that involves a kind of observation that is constitutively committed. This line of reasoning will also serve to elucidate a fundamental sort of self-knowledge that derives from the subject's capacity to acknowledge her own position within the ethical world and is closely associated to the goal of psychoanalytic therapy. (shrink)

I investigate the contemporary problem of obedience through an exploration of Michel Foucault and Étienne de La Boétie, showing how the former drew on the latter’s concept of voluntary servitude as a way of thinking through the paradoxical relationship between power, freedom and subjectivity. My argument is that Foucault’s theory of government as the ‘conduct of conduct’ may be understood as a reflection on the question of voluntary servitude. My aim here is twofold. First, it is to show that (...) obedience is an ethical and political problem just as relevant today as it was in La Boétie’s time. Secondly, it is to suggest that voluntary servitude should be interpreted in an emancipatory way, as a problematic that reveals the ontological primacy of freedom and the fragility and instability of power. ‘Voluntary inservitude’ is something that can be expressed in acts of civil disobedience, and alternate modes of ethical conduct and association. (shrink)

As Mark Murphy has recently shown, standard justifications of universal divine authority are insufficient. [1] By “divine authority” I shall mean the doctrine that obedience is morally owed to God by all. God would not give us a command that we did not have a reason to act in accordance with, Murphy argues, but it does not follow that we would be obliged, much less morally obliged, to have the fact of God’s having commanded the action be among our (...) practical reasons for the action. We might, for instance, think that what God has commanded us is prudentially the best policy for us or that it is the best possible evidence for what is on independent grounds morally obligatory. (shrink)

In this paper I give an account and defence of the thought and practice associated with the notion of obedience in religious ethics, especially in reply to the claim that obedience is necessarily unconscientious. First, I argue that it is conscientious to give weight to commands if they are identifiable as pieces of authoritative advice, or, as theists commonly believe, if they have intrinsic moral force. Second, I argue that a theist's strictly moral reasons for fulfilling obligations are (...) not replaced but reinforced by reasons arising out of a personal relationship with God. Anyone who loves God will want to please God, to act in accordance with His teaching and to avoid His punishment, and theists can do these things by respecting existing moral reasons for action. Third, I show how it can be valuable that people submit to God in further ways, by doing what God commends, and by committing themselves to obeying divine commands which would not otherwise be addressed to them. Finally, I argue that subordinating oneself to God's will is itself a partial attainment of the spiritual ideal of mystical union with God. (shrink)

Considerable scholarship over the last dozen years has greatly increased our understanding of Apology and Crito. However, the knottiest problem between these dialogues--the frequently noted apparent contradiction between Apology 29c-30c and Crito 51b-c, between Socrates’ pledge to disobey a court order to give up philosophy and his argument that legal authority absolutely obligates a citizen to obedience--is far from being resolved. In the end I argue that this contradiction is unresolved, despite numerous ingenious attempts to eliminate it, because it (...) is rooted in deep inconsistencies in Socrates’ principles and character. In the course of reaching a conclusion that most scholars have striven to avoid I review and dispute the major strategies on resolving the contradiction: that it is only apparent, because one of the views is not (unqualifiedly) Socrates’ or a sophisticated analysis of the rhetorical purposes of the dialogues eliminates any contradiction. (shrink)

Considerable scholarship over the last dozen years has greatly increased our understanding of Apology and Crito. However, the knottiest problem between these dialogues--the frequently noted apparent contradiction between Apology 29c-30c and Crito 51b-c, between Socrates’ pledge to disobey a court order to give up philosophy and his argument that legal authority absolutely obligates a citizen to obedience--is far from being resolved. In the end I argue that this contradiction is unresolved, despite numerous ingenious attempts to eliminate it, because it (...) is rooted in deep inconsistencies in Socrates’ principles and character. In the course of reaching a conclusion that most scholars have striven to avoid I review and dispute the major strategies on resolving the contradiction: that it is only apparent, because one of the views is not (unqualifiedly) Socrates’ or a sophisticated analysis of the rhetorical purposes of the dialogues eliminates any contradiction. (shrink)

Considerable scholarship over the last dozen years has greatly increased our understanding of Apology and Crito. However, the knottiest problem between these dialogues--the frequently noted apparent contradiction between Apology 29c-30c and Crito 51b-c, between Socrates’ pledge to disobey a court order to give up philosophy and his argument that legal authority absolutely obligates a citizen to obedience--is far from being resolved. In the end I argue that this contradiction is unresolved, despite numerous ingenious attempts to eliminate it, because it (...) is rooted in deep inconsistencies in Socrates’ principles and character. In the course of reaching a conclusion that most scholars have striven to avoid I review and dispute the major strategies on resolving the contradiction: that it is only apparent, because one of the views is not (unqualifiedly) Socrates’ or a sophisticated analysis of the rhetorical purposes of the dialogues eliminates any contradiction. (shrink)

Daly, Brendan About a month before my ordination as a priest on 7 May 1977, my diocesan bishop asked me to come and see him at his office. He said after my ordination I was going to be appointed to Mairehau parish as an assistant priest. Two weeks later I was making my pre-ordination retreat and the bishop arrived to see me. He was embarrassed and said 'We have a problem. One parish priest won't take the assistant priest that I (...) want to give him, and another assistant priest won't go where he is appointed, so the end result is that you are now going to Addington parish. Is that okay?' I replied 'Yes.' Both parishes were in Christchurch city, and I did not know either parish priest personally, so it really did not matter at all. However, two weeks later at my ordination ceremony, it came time for the promise of obedience. I knelt down before the bishop who asked me did 'I promise him and his successors obedience and respect.' At the same time as he said this I was conscious of the thought going through my mind, 'what does it all mean anyway?'. (shrink)

Kant's views on revolution have been widely discussed, and commentators have long been astounded that the philosopher who made famous the principle that persons are ends in themselves could reach such abhorent conclusions as that citizens owe unqualified obedience to their supreme ruler. I address an important and ignored sub-issue of this topic: the relations between Kant's doctrine of the division of governmental powers and his doctrine of absolute obedience. I argue that these two doctrines are not compatible; (...) Kant's defense of absolute obedience undermines his own division of powers. Examining exactly why this is the case leads to several further results. First, a constitutional court is crucial to a republic. Second, Kant is closer to a consistent view of government and obedience than first appears. Third, Kant's account of the division of powers was theoretically behind his times. Fourth, there is a crucial distinction between the separation of governmental powers and a system of checks and balances among the three branches of government. Fifth, Kant did grasp the relevant principles governing impeachment - a far more drastic measure than a constitutional court. Finally, most of the principles needed to revise Kant's constitutional theory are already contained in his published writings. Kants Thesen zur Revolution sind viel diskutiert worden, und lange Zeit waren Kommentatoren darüber verwundert, daß der Philosoph, der das Prinzip berühmt gemacht hat, wonach Personen Zwecke an sich selbst sind, insbesondere zu der abschreckenden Schlußfolgerung kommen konnte, die Bürger eines Staates hätten dem Herrscher unbedingten Gehorsam zu leisten. Ich befasse mich mit einem wichtigen und regelmäßig übersehenen Aspekt dieses Problemfeldes: Dem Verhältnis zwischen Kants Lehre von der Gewaltenteilung und seiner These vom absoluten Gehorsam des Staatsbürgers. Ich behaupte, daß diese beiden Lehren nicht miteinander vereinbar sind; Kants Verteidigung des absoluten Gehorsams unterminiert seine Gewaltenteilungsthese. Eine genaue Untersuchung der Frage, warum das so ist, führt zu weiteren Resultaten: Erstens ist ein Verfassungsgericht wesentlich für eine Republik. Zweitens ist Kant näher an einer konsistenten Auffassung von Staat und Gehorsam als dies auf den ersten Blick zu sein scheint. Drittens bleibt Kants Auffassung zur Gewaltenteilung hinter der Entwicklung seiner Zeit zurück. Viertens besteht ein wesentlicher Unterschied zwischen der Trennung der Staatsgewalten einerseits und einem System von "checks and balances" der drei Zweige der Staatslenkung andererseits. Fünftens hat Kant durchaus die relevanten Prinzipien eines "impeachment" erkannt - eine wesentlich drastischere Einrichtung als die eines Verfassungsgerichts. Schließlich sind die meisten der Prinzipien, die für eine Revision von Kants Verfassungstheorie notwendig sind, bereits in seinen eigenen Werken enthalten. (shrink)

This paper is a critical study of Christians among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches. It has four parts. First, I consider several possible responses to G. E. M. Anscombe’s famous challenge to modern moral philosophy in order to provide a framework in which the project of Hauerwas and Pinches can be located. Next I criticize their attempt to eliminate the realm of obligation from morality. Then I examine their treatment of (...) Martha Nussbaum’s work onAristotle in order to explore differences between secular and Christian appropriations of Aristotle. Finally, I discuss their views on the virtue of obedience and criticize their arguments against rival Kantian and divine command views. (shrink)

Contemporary debates on obedience and consent, such as those between Thomas Senor and A. John Simmons, suggest that either political obligation must exist as a concept or there must be natural duty of justice accessible to us through reason. Without one or the other, de facto political institutions would lack the requisite moral framework to engage in legitimate coercion. This essay suggests that both are unnecessary in order to provide a conceptual framework in which obedience to coercive political (...) institutions can be understood. By providing a novel reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan, this article argues that both political obligation and a natural duty to justice are unnecessary to ground the ability of political institutions to engage in legitimate coercion. This essay takes issue with common readings of Hobbes which assume consent is necessary to generate obedience on the part of citizens, and furthermore that political obligation is critical for the success of political institutions. While the failure of the traditional Hobbesian narrative of a consenting individual would seem to suggest the Leviathan is indefensible as a project, this paper argues that the right of war in the state of nature was more central for Hob- bes’s understanding of political institutions than obligation. Furthermore, Hobbes provides an adequate defense of political institutions even if his arguments about consent, obligation and punishment are only rhetorical. In this way Hobbesian law is best understood as a set of practical requirements to avoid war, and not as moral requirements that individuals are bound to comply with. Thus Hobbesian political institutions are not vulnerable to contemporary philosophical anarchist criticisms about political obligation and political institutions as such. To develop this reading, I focus primarily on the Leviathan, including interpretations by Skinner, Kateb, Flathman, and Oakeshott. Ultimately, this argument provides insight into contem- porary political institutions of the state, citizenship, criminality, and the law in a world where political obligation has not been adequately justified. (shrink)

Thomistic hylomorphism holds that human persons are composed of matter and a form that is also a subsistent entity. Some object that nothing can be both a form and a subsistent entity, and some proponents of Thomistic hylomorphism respond that our experience, as described by phenomenology, provides us with evidence that this theory is true. Some might object that that would be more easily seen to be a good way to defend Thomistic hylomorphism if the scholastics themselves had provided such (...) evidence. I show how some scholastics do give evidence for Thomistic hylomorphism from their descriptions of our experience of forming and using habits. I consider their account of experiences of different acts of habit formation and exercise, and of experiences founded upon different kinds of potencies and obedience to reason that underlie their habits. Then I show that these experiences, when reasoned about in an effect to cause manner, provide evidence for Thomistic hylomorphism, and that the objection fails. (shrink)

Meredith Williams is unimpressed by ‘constructive/theoretical’ and ‘resolute/therapeutic’ approaches to the Philosophical Investigations . She takes Wittgenstein’s repudiation of speculation in philosophy seriously but resists interpreting him as engaged in a purely critical endeavour. There is, she holds, ‘a complex interweaving of the diagnostic and positive’ and ‘[a] consequence of the critical diagnostic work is a positive picture’ . Taking the Investigations to be ‘a highly structured argumentative text directed to pursuing a fundamental new problem in philosophy’ , Williams interprets (...) Wittgenstein as resolving ‘the problem of normative similarity’ , i.e. the problem of how meaningful goings-on differ from brute physical happenings. She suggests that ‘Wittgenstein’s diagnostic method is tied to his use of two powerful arguments . By uncovering hidden contradictions and exposing grammatical errors, she argues, Wittgenstein shows that important philosophical theories of language and the mind are ‘self-defeating’ and ‘[i]n removing them, [his] “normative naturalism” can be seen’ . Williams begins by discussing ‘the structure and content of the Investigations . She then examines Wittgenstein’s remarks about word-object relations , rule-governed practice and self-knowledge and sensations . In her view, Wittgenstein recognizes and explains the irreducibility of the normative to the natural in each …. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Berkeley’s Passive Obedience, moral duties are negative and positive as well as civil or legal and natural. Natural duties are from God and therefore valid norms. The supreme civil authority makes civil laws. We must obey the law because loyalty to supreme civil power is one of our natural duties: to be loyal is to obey, which means ‘do not rebel.’ This is a negative duty and as such categorical or unconditional. Positive duties are conditional on conscientious (...) acceptance. I show in detail how this system of norms and duties works. These key ideas have not been studied in detail before. Next, can we criticize Berkeley’s unquestioning acceptance of chattel slavery if we apply his own notion of duties to it? The slave laws are necessarily evil, and hence they, according to Berkeley’s own doctrine, cannot be accepted. But first we need a clear conception of his idea of conscience and, a fortiori, conscientious objection and its legitimate scope. This paper fills the gap and helps us understand Passive Obedience better. (shrink)

Scholars disagree about the nature of the doctrinal apparatus that supports Berkeley’s case for passive obedience to the sovereign. Is he a rule-utilitarian, or natural law theorist, or ethical egoist, or some combination of some or all these elements? Here I argue that Berkeley is an act-utilitarian who thinks that one is more likely to act rightly by following certain sorts of rules. I also argue that Berkeley mischaracterizes and misevaluates Locke’s version of the social contract theory. Finally, I (...) consider the potentially practically self-defeating nature of Berkeley’s claim that there is no obligation to submit to the rule of “madmen” or “usurpers.”. (shrink)

This article aims to take under consideration the relationship between identity and political obedience. First, it explains the famous encouragement of De la Bo?tie: it is sufficient to decide to quit serving to be instantly free. Nevertheless, man often renounces his freedom in favor of obeying authority. Why does it happen? At the bottom of this surrender there is an?animal? factor: as Alexandre Koj?ve has shown, in the master-slave dialectic the first is able to dominate the animal within himself, (...) while the servant has not the same capability and doesn?t want to accept the risk of death. Finally, it is with respect to the latter that everyone decides for himself, which opens the possibility for a full and actual identity through the appropriation of his own mortality. nema. (shrink)

Many philosophers working today on the normativity of language have concluded that linguistic activity is not a matter of rule following. These conversations have been framed by a conception of linguistic normativity with roots in Wittgenstein and Kripke. In this paper I use conceptual resources developed by the classical American pragmatists and their descendants to argue that punctate linguistic acts are governed by rules in a sense that has been neglected in the recent literature on the normativity of language. In (...) the course of arguing for this conclusion I defend a Kantian conception of rationality as rule-obeying activity, and I argue that this conception is compatible with a naturalistic understanding of ourselves as rational beings governed by rules of thought and action. (shrink)

In his later lectures, Foucault analyzes confession as a key exercise of the Christian pastoral power. The pastoral power’s creation of a lifelong obligation to speak the truth of oneself is a ‘prelude’ to modern practices of government, and a key facet of modernity. There has been some confusion regarding the scope of Foucault’s study. Is it medieval Christian confessional practices or Christian obedience itself that is his theme? In this article, I revisit all of the later lectures touching (...) on confession and avowal in order to clarify Foucault’s ambivalence about Christian proto-governmentality. Foucault exposes two regimes of truth, belief and confession, and offer a practice-based, confession-centred history of the pre-modern self. Connecting his lectures to his method of anarchaeology clarifies how the force of truth (the ‘you have to’) is, for Foucault, a fundamental if ambivalent historical-cultural problem of government. (shrink)

In an award-winning essay, Shu-Shan L ee discusses scholarly commentary about obedience to the emperor, focusing on public and hidden records of protest. The thesis of Lee’s essay is that the relationship between authority and subject in imperial Confucianism was built on a conditional obligation of obedience, despite traditional accounts of it as absolute. On his account, the obligation of obedience should be conceived through the rubric of imperial Confucianism as being conditional on fulfillment of reciprocal obligations. (...) As part of my response, I suggest that there is a third way to understand the obligation of obedience through the Confucian lens, which is less transactional than reciprocal obligation, while also providing a plausible alternative to absolute obligation as the correct understanding of imperial Confucian thinking about obedience to the emperor. (shrink)

There are important synergies for the next generation of ethical leaders based on the alignment of modified or adjusted mental models. This entails a synergistic application of moral imagination through collaborative input and critique, rather than "me too" obedience. In this article, we will analyze the Milgram results using frameworks relating to mental models (Werhane et al., Profitable partnerships for poverty alleviation, 2009), as well as work by Moberg on "ethics blind spots'' (Organizational Studies 27(3): 413-428, 2006), and by (...) Bazerman and Chugh on "bounded awareness" (Harvard Business Review, 2006; Mind & Society 6: 1-18, 2007) Using these constructs to examine the Milgram experiment, we will argue that the ways in which the experiments are framed, the presence of an authority figure, the appeal to the authority of science, and the situation in which the naïve participant finds herself or himself, all create a bounded awareness, a narrow blind spot that encourages a climate for obedience, brackets out the opportunity to ask the moral question: "Am I hurting another fellow human being?" and may preclude the subject from utilizing moral imagination to opt out of the experiment. We will conclude that these forms of almost blind obedience to authority are correctable, but with difficulty. We will argue that linking the modification of mental models to an unbinding of awareness represents an important synergistic relationship and one that can build effectively on the lessons learned from our experience with moral imagination. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to explain why Plato's Socrates devotes himself to philosophy. In so doing, I hope also to show that he does not sincerely believe that any of his decisions, about philosophy or anything, involve any kind of divine intervention. As my conclusions are contrary to a good bit of first-rate, recent scholarship on the subject, and also contrary to part of what Socrates himself says in Plato's Apology of Socrates, I think it is especially (...) important to clarify (…) - 12. Plato 12 (2012). (shrink)

Voluntarists in the early modern period speak of an agent’s following the law because she was ordered to do so or because it’s the law. Contemporary philosophers tend either to ignore or to dismiss the possibility of justified obedience of this sort – that is, they ignore or dismiss the possibility that something’s being the law could in itself constitute a good reason to act. In this paper, I suggest that this view isn’t taken seriously because of certain widespread (...) beliefs about practical reason – in particular, it’s due to the belief that it’s impossible for reasons to be “bootstrapped” into existence. I argue, though, that a plausible account of practical reasoning should allow that reasons can be bootstrapped into existence, and so there’s no reason to be suspicious about the possibility of a person’s being justified in following the law because it’s the law. I end by suggesting that this conclusion opens up important new avenues of inquiry for philosophers working on topics related to legal obedience. (shrink)

Baumrind provides a fifty-year updating of her pioneering, extraordinarily influential ethical critique of the Milgram obedience experiments. She essentially reaffirms her earlier objections. These include the extensive use of deception, particularly in the informed consent phase, the destructive obedience exhibited by Milgram’s research personnel, violations of the experimenter’s fiduciary role of trust and empathy, the likelihood of lasting psychological harm experienced by at least some participants, and unwarranted generalizations made to the Nazi Holocaust in World War II. I (...) consider each of these concerns, among others, and find areas of agreement and disagreement with Baumrind. Her argument against the use of deception in the informed consent phase is convincing, as is her cautionary stance on generalizations made to the Nazi genocide. I take issue with her views on lasting harm, the epistemological value of deception, and the experimenter as fiduciary. Regardless of one’s agreement with Baumrind, her ethical arguments, considered in historical context, remain integral to an understanding of the impact of the obedience experiments. Her views have been seminal in changing the ethical monitoring of research with human participants. (shrink)

This essay develops a new account of the work the self must perform on itself in disciplinary relations through the cultivation of resources from Foucault’s later work. By tracing the ethical self-relation from Greco-Roman antiquity to the Benedictine monastery, I am able to provide insight into the relationship of self-renunciation that underlies disciplinary docility and obedience. This self-renunciation undermines individuals’ ability to lead themselves and makes them reliant on another who has mastery of the truth through which the subject (...) must be constituted. Disciplinary relations were thus seen to be doubly efficacious in producing relations of domination: they attempt to eliminate the self- leadership of the individual which not only un- dermines the individual’s potential to resist; it leaves them in need of the dominating training that disciplinary relations institute. This insight into the activity of the individual in the produc- tion of their own docility was then used to clarify and develop aspects of two perennially enigmatic but powerful areas of Foucault’s work, his focus on “bodies and pleasures” and his turn to the “aesthetics of existence.”. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes’s political theory contains conceptual theses on law, including an analysis of the way legal requirements affect practical reasoning. However, Hobbes’ account of law and the structure of reasons for political obedience is extremely ambiguous. In this paper, I show that Hobbes develops not one but two different accounts. Also, I argue that the two theories are in tension, something that Hobbes himself seems to recognize to some extent.

The tension between Kant’s egalitarian conception of persons as ends in themselves and his rejection of the right of revolution has been widely discussed. The crucial issue is more fundamental: Is Kant’s defense of absolute obedience consistent with his own principle of legitimate law, that legitimate law is compatible with the Categorical Imperative? Resolving this apparent inconsistency resolves the subsidiary inconsistencies that have been debated in the literature. I argue that Kant’s legal principles contain two distinct grounds of obligation (...) to obey political authority. One lies in his metaphysical principles of law, according to which there is only a duty to obey legitimate law or fully legitimate authorities. Another lies in his moral-pragmatic principles. He believes that membership in the state helps improve one’s character by counter-balancing one’s immoral inclinations. This is his ultimate ground for obedience to de facto, imperfectly legitimate states. On this ground, the duty to obey an actual state is conditional. Kant’s strong statements about the duty to obey actual states is explained by the ease with which he thinks the relevant condition is met by extant states. The apparent ambiguities in his discussion of obedience point to some important philosophical and historical shortcomings of his analysis of the division of govemmental powers and of judicial competence which hamper his analysis of the duty to obey the state. (shrink)

The tension between Kant’s egalitarian conception of persons as ends in themselves and his rejection of the right of revolution has been widely discussed. The crucial issue is more fundamental: Is Kant’s defense of absolute obedience consistent with his own principle of legitimate law, that legitimate law is compatible with the Categorical Imperative? Resolving this apparent inconsistency resolves the subsidiary inconsistencies that have been debated in the literature. I argue that Kant’s legal principles contain two distinct grounds of obligation (...) to obey political authority. One lies in his metaphysical principles of law, according to which there is only a duty to obey legitimate law or fully legitimate authorities. Another lies in his moral-pragmatic principles. He believes that membership in the state helps improve one’s character by counter-balancing one’s immoral inclinations. This is his ultimate ground for obedience to de facto, imperfectly legitimate states. On this ground, the duty to obey an actual state is conditional. Kant’s strong statements about the duty to obey actual states is explained by the ease with which he thinks the relevant condition is met by extant states. The apparent ambiguities in his discussion of obedience point to some important philosophical and historical shortcomings of his analysis of the division of govemmental powers and of judicial competence which hamper his analysis of the duty to obey the state. (shrink)

This article engages with Michel Foucault’s idea of confession as the central Christian strategy of subjection or subjectivation and the link he proposes between confession and obedience. The article also wishes to show how confession can become counter-conduct. I apply Foucault’s conceptions to early modern Lutheran confessionalism, elucidating how the confessional apparatus of the orthodox Lutheranism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sweden strived to mold obedient subjects who are able to conduct themselves. I also examine the transformation and overthrow of (...) these subjectivation techniques in Radical Pietism, analyzing a dissident confession of faith by the Radical Pietist Peter Schaefer, who exemplifies perfect subjection, constituting himself as a perfectly obedient subject, and yet a failure of subjectivation in the sense of submission, insofar as for him, obedience becomes a strategy of empowerment. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between violence and the domination of speech in Spinoza’s political thought. Spinoza describes the cost of such violence to the State, to the collective epistemic resources, and to the members of the polity that domination aims to script and silence. Spinoza shows how obedience to a dominating power requires pretense and deception. The pressure to pretend is the linchpin of an account of how oppression severely degrades the conditions for meaningful communication, and thus the (...) possibilities for thinking and acting in common. Because it belongs to human nature to desire to share our thoughts with others, Spinoza believes that most people experience efforts to control our communication to be acutely intolerable. As a result, such unbearable violence threatens the political order that deploys it. I conclude with some speculative remarks about why, in the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza consistently deploys the superlative form of the adjective violentus in reference to the domination of thought and speech rather than to other modes of political violence. (shrink)

In this research the problem of liberty is considered in the context of religion as I am searching for an answer of the question if religion is not the main reason for limitation of freedom? My research is based on the philosophical essay of John S. Mill “On liberty”. An essential specification for this analysis is the fact that it is mainly interested in Christianity and to rather less extent, in the other religions. I am inclined to agree with the (...) critical opinion of Mill regarding religion and I am asking myself if religion is not the social-historical phenomenon which suppresses free thought, obliterates individuality in people and aspires to reigning greater masses of people as possible. And one more thing. Is it possible that to the final results of the influence on society’s life between religions and ideologies isput sign of equality? Isn’t it the free critical thought that is limited in both the cases and therefore society’s progress that is also limited? However inspiring with hope is the fact that such powerful ideological movements lack these days and the influence of religions is not as big as it was in previous periods of history. And – “thanks God”…. (shrink)

This is an introductory talk on why I am not a consequentialist. I am not going to go into the details of consequentialist theory, or to compare and contrast different versions of consequentialism. Nor am I going to present all the reasons I am not a consequentialist, let alone all the reasons why you should not be one. All I want to do is focus on some key problems that in my view, and the view of many others, make consequentialism (...) a totally unacceptable moral theory – a theory about what is right, what is good, or obligatory, or forbidden, or permissible, or praiseworthy. So let me begin by giving a basic definition of consequentialism, one all supporters of the view can agree on. Consequentialism is the theory that the fundamental aim of morality is to maximize value. Now I was tempted to say ‘sole aim’, but some consequentialists will disagree with that. They might hold, for instance, that one of the aims of morality is to abide by certain rules, or to cultivate certain virtues. But for them, what gives obedience to a rule or the cultivation of a virtue its point is that, ultimately, such behaviour maximizes value. So although maximizing value might not be the sole aim of morality – the sole answer to the question ‘What should I do to be good?’ and similar questions – still it is the fundamental aim of morality, and all other kinds of decision, action, and so on, derive their justification by reference to it. For my purposes, then, the difference between ‘sole’ and ‘fundamental’ is merely terminological. Now the first thing that might occur to someone is a pair of simple questions. Why should anyone believe that the fundamental aim of morality is to maximize value? What intuitive force does the idea even have in the first place? These are good questions. I was a consequentialist once, and I don’t think I ever posed them to myself. I just took it as understood that since so many philosophers were consequentialists, and since so many of my fellow students were as well, then even if it were ultimately shown not to be true, the maximization thought (as I will call it) was at least the obvious place to start when one did ethics.. (shrink)

This essay is an analysis of the central arguments in Plato’s Crito. The dialogue shows, in a variety of ways, that the opinion of another person can have practical relevance in one’s deliberations about what to do – e.g. as an argument, as a piece of expert advice, as a threat. Especially important among these forms of practical relevance is the relevance of authoritative commands. In the dialogue, the Laws of Athens argue that Socrates must accept his sentence of death, (...) because he must regard the court’s verdict as a command from a practical authority – the city. The Laws’ arguments rely on special features of authority-reasons that many commentators have overlooked. This article explains why the Law’s arguments are unsuccessful. Finally, it is argued that Socrates’ description of ‘the many’ suggests that the city lacks the deliberative capacity necessary for possessing practical authority. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Tract 16:What I Did Not Steal, Must I Now Restore?AnonymousThe field of modern theology is replete with varied, often competing, attempts to craft a comprehensive theology of salvation. One could say many things about this phenomenon, but the difficulty of the task arises largely from the fact that Scripture nowhere gives us a tidy soteriology of that kind. Instead, we have a wide variety of ways of speaking about (...) the unique work of Christ, interpreting his life, death, and resurrection "according to the Scriptures." In keeping with this, we find among the Fathers, and even within single authors, a variety of ways of speaking about salvation and its accomplishment. The Fathers ponder, praise, and marvel at Christ and his work in a variety of literary modes. They sing the praise of the saving triune God in a variety of biblical keys.1 [End Page 313]In this essay, I will look at Christ's offering of his life for our salvation from one particular vantage-point, that of Ps 69:4:What I did not steal,Must I now restore?Ps 69 is a striking Messianic psalm.2 It shows up in explicit quotations or fairly clear allusions at least eight times in the New Testament (Matt 27:34 and parallels; John 2:17; 15:25; 19:28–29; Acts 1:20; Rom 11:9; 15:13; 2 Cor 6:2), several of which are tied to the Passion in the Gospel of John (2:17; 15:28; 19:28–29). It has close parallels with the servant songs in Isaiah. It is widely seen in the Christian tradition as a psalm that speaks of the sufferings of Jesus Christ, a key text for the apostolic authors' interpretation of Christ.3Broadly speaking, Ps 69 falls into the category of a psalm of petition in [End Page 314] the face of enemies.4 The psalmist cries out to God in the midst of severe suffering that threatens to overwhelm him like a flood. He is sunk in deep mire, unable to get a foothold. The foes who surround him outnumber the hairs of his head, and they hate him, he says at first, without cause. Later, he goes on to say that there is, in fact, a cause: his zeal for God's house, which incites his enemies to insult him, mock him, gossip about him. After pleading with God for help, the psalm concludes in a way remarkably similar to the other great psalm that the New Testament takes as a prophecy of Christ's passion, Ps 22, with a great hymn of praise (vv. 30–36). One can imagine this psalm on the lips of Christ, not only on the Cross, but in the garden, where, the author of Hebrews says: "Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear" (5:7).Verse 4 of Ps 69 does not show up explicitly in the New Testament, but I will argue that it neatly encapsulates one dimension of Christ's redeeming work. On the literal level, the couplet simply states that the psalmist is innocent but is treated as guilty; he might even be quoting a proverb to that effect.5 Viewed in light of Christ's work as depicted in the New Testament as a whole, however, Ps 69:4 fits into the broad typology of Christ as the second, or last, and sinless Adam, who reverses the effect of the first human's sin. I will approach the topic by asking three questions: What was stolen? How was it restored? In what does this restoration consist?What Was Stolen?When Christ cries out in this psalm, "What I did not steal," to what is he referring? What is the stolen good that Christ must now restore? One clear candidate for this is the honor due to God, expressed fundamentally through obedience and worship,6 the honor which Adam failed to offer, choosing [End Page 315] instead to attempt to seize the glory of God for himself.7 Commenting on John 15:29–31, Augustine... (shrink)