• We define a notion of order of indiscernibility type of a structure by analogy with Mitchell order on measures; we use this to define a hierarchy of strong axioms of infinity defined through normal filters, the α-weakly Erdős hierarchy. The filters in this hierarchy can be seen to be generated by sets of ordinals where these indiscernibility orders on structures dominate the canonical functions.• The limit axiom of this is that of greatly Erdős and we use it to calibrate (...) some strengthenings of the Chang property, one of which, CC+, is equiconsistent with a Ramsey cardinal, and implies that where K is the core model built with non-overlapping extenders — if it is rigid, and others which are a little weaker. As one corollary we have:TheoremIf then there is an inner model with a strong cardinal. • We define an α-Jónsson hierarchy to parallel the α-Ramsey hierarchy, and show that κ being α-Jónsson implies that it is α-Ramsey in the core model. (shrink)

Animalism is the view that human persons are human animals – biological organisms that belong to the species Homo sapiens. This paper concerns a family of modal objections to animalism based on the essentiality of personhood (persons and animals differ in their persistence conditions; psychological considerations are relevant for the persistence of persons, but not animals; persons, but not animals, are essentially psychological beings). Such arguments are typically used to support constitutionalism, animalism’s main neo-Lockean rival. The problem with such arguments (...) is that they wrongly assume that animalism is incompatible with our essentially being psychological beings. In this paper, I discuss a formulation of animalism, what I call psychologically-serious animalism, according to which human persons are essentially human animals and essentially persons. I show how the availability of this neglected formulation of animalism undermines objections based on the essentiality of personhood. (shrink)

What follows is a work of critical reconstruction of Camus' thought. It aims to answer to the wish Camus expressed in his later notebooks, that he at least be read closely. Specifically, I hope to do three things. In Part I, we will show how Camus' famous philosophy of the absurd represents a systematic scepticism whose closest philosophical predecessor is Descartes' method of doubt, and whose consequence, as in Descartes, is the discovery of a single, orienting certainty, on the basis (...) of which Camus would proceed to pass beyond the 'nihilism' that conservative critics continued to level against him (MS 34). Part II will unfold the central tenets of Camus' mature thought of rebellion, and show how Camus' central political claims follow from his para-Cartesian claim to have found an irreducible or 'invincible' basis for a post-metaphysical ethics, consistent with the most thoroughgoing epistemic scepticism. Part III then undertakes to show that the neoclassical rhetoric and positioning Camus claimed for his postwar thought—as a thought of moderation or mesure, and a renewed Greek or Mediterranean naturalism—is more than a stylistic pretension. It represents, so I argue, a singular amalgam of modern and philosophical classical motifs which makes Camus' voice nearly unique in twentieth century ideas, and all the more worth reconsidering today. So let us proceed. (shrink)

This essay is a critique of Derrida's ethical works, using Camus's last novella The Fall as a critical sounding board. It argues that a danger pertains to any such highly self-reflexive position as Derrida's: a danger that Camus identified in The Fall, and staged in his character, Jean-Baptiste Clamence. Clamence is a successful Parisian lawyer, on top of his personal and professional life, whose equanimity is troubled after he is the unwitting passer-by as a young woman suicides one night on (...) the Seine. After this time, he comes to consider all his former virtues as concealed vices. He also becomes acutely aware of what he terms the 'duplicity' of human beings as such. In Part I, I consider how Clamence's fall from innocence can be read 'with' Derrida's deconstructive registration of a 'double bind' pertaining to our standing vis-á-vis what he terms 'logocentrism'. I argue that Derrida's is a post-lapsarian philosophy, which challenges all attempts to construct closed conceptual systems that would confer an epistemic and/or moral certitude upon their expositors. In Part II, I then enter into a more detailed exposition of Derrida's 'later' works broaching friendship, the invitation, the gift, and other 'matters moral'. I read these texts in the light of an examination of what is involved, for Camus, in being a 'judge-penitent' (what Clamence in The Fall calls his profession). I suggest that Derrida runs the risk of a certain 'puritanism of difference' in his moral reflections, which defend the aporetic formulation: 'tout autre est tout autre' [every other is every bit other] (The Gift of Death). The problem is that, while Derrida's position allows one (everywhere) to say what one is against, it problematizes any affirmative moral stance. Like Clamence, who assumes the right to judge everyone else because he has subjected himself to a severe penitence, I suggest that we have a right to wonder whether Derrida's deconstructive critique of metaphysics can validate only endless repetitions of itself. Key Words: Camus • Derrida • ethics • The Fall • innocence • 'puritanism of difference. (shrink)

Carol Gilligan has identified two orientations to moral understanding; the dominant justice orientation and the under-valued care orientation. Based on her discernment of a voice of care, Gilligan challenges the adequacy of a deontological liberal framework for moral development and moral theory. This paper examines how the orientations of justice and care are played out in medical ethical theory. Specifically, I question whether the medical moral domain is adequately described by the norms of impartiality, universality, and equality that characterize the (...) liberal ideal. My analysis of justice -oriented medical ethics, focuses on the libertarian theory of H.T. Engelhardt and the contractarian theory of R.M. Veatch. I suggest that in the work of E.D. Pellegrino and D.C. Thomasma we find not only a more authentic representation of medical morality but also a project that is compatible with the care orientation's emphasis on human need and responsiveness to particular others. (shrink)

This inquiry is situated at the intersection of two enigmas. The first is the enigma of the status of Kant's practice of critique, which has been the subject of heated debate since shortly after the publication of the first edition of The Critique of Pure Reason. The second enigma is that of Foucault's apparent later 'turn' to Kant, and the label of 'critique', to describe his own theoretical practice. I argue that Kant's practice of 'critique' should be read, after Foucault, (...) as a distinctly modern practice in the care of the self, governed by Kant's famous rubric of the 'primacy of practical reason'. In this way, too, Foucault's later interest in Kant - one which in fact takes up a line present in his work from his complementary thesis on Kant's Anthropology - is cast into distinct relief. Against Habermas and others, I propose that this interest does not represent any 'break' or 'turn' in Foucault's work. In line with Foucault's repeated denials that he was interested after 1976 in a 'return to the ancients', I argue that Foucault's writings on critique represent instead both a deepening theoretical self-consciousness, and part of his project to forge an ethics adequate to the historical present.
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Edmund Pellegrino has argued that the dramatic changes in American health care call for critical reflection on the traditional norms governing the therapeutic relationship. This paper offers such reflection on the obligation to do no harm. Drawing on work by Beauchamp and Childress and Pellegrino and Thomasma, I argue that the libertarian model of medical ethics offered by Engelhardt cannot adequately sustain an obligation to do no harm. Because the obligation to do no harm is not based simply on a (...) negative duty of nonmaleficence but also on a positive duty of beneficence, I argue that it is best understood to derive from the fiduciary nature of the healing relationship. (shrink)

This paper examines Slavoj Zizek’s reading of Immanuel Kant. Its undergirding argument is that Zizek’s work as a whole- up to and including his politically radical statements, which have become more and more prominent since 1997- is conceivable as a project in the rereading of the Kantian ‘Copernican Revolution’ via Lacanian psychoanalysis. Critics now agree that Zizek’s orienting aim is to write a philosophy of politics, as more recent texts, like The Ticklish Subject make clear. (Kay, 2003; Sharpe, 2004; (...) Dean 2006) If Zizek’s philosophy is ultimately a philosophy of politics, however, Zizek’s political philosophy is grounded in a wider post or ‘neo’-Kantian philosophy of subjectivity.
The essay has three major parts. Part I gives Zizek’s reading of Kant on the subject of apperception. Part II recounts Zizek’s pivotal reading of Kant on the sublime, which he ties closely to the problematics of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ of the first Critique. Part III then examines Zizek’s conception of subjectivity in terms of the faculties (and especially the faculty of imagination) that Kant argues are involved in the transcendental constitution of objects in the first half of The Critique of Pure Reason.
In the Conclusion, the force of the paper’s subtitle—‘Politicising the Transcendental Turn’—will become manifest. I lay out three principles of Zizek’s ‘neoKantian/Hegelian’ ontology. These also make clear how his philosophy of political agency is grounded in this apparently suprapolitical or solely philosophical reading of Kant.
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Eleonore Stump has recently argued that Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy of mind is consistent with a nonreductive physicalist approach to human psychology. Iargue that by examining Aquinas’s account of the subsistence of the rational soul we can see that Thomistic dualism is inconsistent with physicalism of every variety. Specifically, his reliance on the claim that the mind has an operation per se spells trouble for any physicalist interpretation. After offering Stump’s reading of Aquinas and her case for the supposed consistency with (...) nonreductive physicalism, I use Aquinas’s discussion of the mind’s operation per se to argue that the human mind is incapable of being physically realized. To support this general argument, I offer a detailed examination of Stump’s use of two criteria of physicalism drawn from contemporary functional analyses of the mind and argue that both are inconsistent with Aquinas’s theory. (shrink)

Structural properties are properties something has in virtue of its mereological structure in that they are properties whose instantiation by a particular involves the parts of the particular being propertied and related in the appropriate way. Most of the literature on structural properties has focused on problems that arise from the pairing of two assumptions: (1) structural properties are universals and (2) structural properties are, in some sense, composed of the properties they involve. Chief among these difficulties is David Lewis’ (...) claim that the conjunction of (1) and (2) require non-unique composition and hence entail the denial of the extensionality of parthood: butane, as well as methane, is composed of the universals carbon, hydrogen and bonded, yet they are distinct properties. This is the extensionality problem. In this paper I discuss a different problem for the conjunction of (1) and (2) and propose a single solution to both problems. First, in section two, I introduce the idea of multiple decomposition and suggest that at least some structural properties are multiply decomposable. In section three, I introduce the “problem of multiple decompositions.” This problem arises when it seems possible for a structural property to be composed of some xs and some ys even when the xs ≠ ys. Finally, in section four I show how both problems admit of a single solution by focusing on the parthood relation that holds between structural properties and their constituents. While the solution I propose is theoretically costly, I argue that this cost should be paid to retain both (1) and (2). (shrink)

Eleonore Stump has recently argued that Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy of mind is consistent with a nonreductive physicalist approach to human psychology. Iargue that by examining Aquinas’s account of the subsistence of the rational soul we can see that Thomistic dualism is inconsistent with physicalism of every variety. Specifically, his reliance on the claim that the mind has an operation per se spells trouble for any physicalist interpretation. After offering Stump’s reading of Aquinas and her case for the supposed consistency with (...) nonreductive physicalism, I use Aquinas’s discussion of the mind’s operation per se to argue that the human mind is incapable of being physically realized. To support this general argument, I offer a detailed examination of Stump’s use of two criteria of physicalism drawn from contemporary functional analyses of the mind and argue that both are inconsistent with Aquinas’s theory. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that to understand Plato's philosophy, we must understand why Plato presented this philosophy as dialogues: namely, works of literature. Plato's writing of philosophy corresponds to his understanding of philosophy as a transformative way of life, which must nevertheless present itself politically, to different types of people. As a model, I examine Lacan's famous reading of Plato's Symposium in his seminar of transference love in psychoanalysis. Unlike many other readings, Lacan focuses on Alcibiades’ famous description of (...) what caused his desire for Socrates: the supposition that beneath Socrates’ Silenus-like language and appearance, there were agalmata, treasures, hidden in his belly. I argue that this image of Socrates can also stand as an image for how we ought to read and to teach Plato's philosophy: as harbouring different levels of insight, couched in Plato's philosophy as literature. (shrink)

This paper stages an argument in five premises: 1. That the insight to which post-structuralist ethics responds—which is that there is an 'unmistakable particularity of concrete persons or social groups'—leads theorists who base their moral theory upon it into a problematic parallel to that charted by Kant in his analysis of the sublime. 2. That Kant's analysis of the sublime divides its experience into what I call two 'moments', the second of which involves a reflexive move which the post-structuralists are (...) unwilling to sanction in the ontological and/or ethical realm, even if they are performatively committed to doing it. 3. That, drawing on the parallel established in 1, it could be argued that the same reflexive move as Kant describes in the second 'moment' of the sublime is also at the heart of our moral experience, wherein we are faced by the Otherness of concrete Others. This amounts to the argument that asking Others to follow an impersonal or 'dumb' law which fails to do justice to their noumenal Otherness is at the same time the only possible way to respect this Otherness. 4. That what game theory shows us is that, at the limits of our ability to calculatively predict the conduct of other subjects, the only 'rational' thing to do is precisely to presume the pre-existence of impersonal social norms regulating our own conduct and that of others. 5. That, accordingly, to borrow a formulation from Slavoj Zizek, respect for the Other is always respect for their 'castration'- that is, respect for their capacity to follow norms that do not directly do justice to their concrete particularity but which, in this very 'dumbness', let this Otherness indirectly show itself. In the conclusion, I reflect on what this argument does, and upon its limits—that is, what it does not. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the notion of accountability and its historical evolution in health care. Using medical mistakes and adverse patient outcomes as my focus, I examine the interests served by particular models of accountability and argue for a model of collective fiduciary responsibility in U.S. health care today.

I argue that David Oelhoffen's 2014 film Far From Men, while departing from the letter of Camus' 1957 story, “The Guest/Host”, does remarkable cinematic justice to its spirit. Oelhoffen's Daru and the Arab character Mohamed, it is suggested, represent embodiments of Camus’ idealised Algerian “first men”, in the vision Camus was developing in Le Premier Homme at the time of his death in January 1960. Part 1 frames the film in light of Camus’ “The Guest/Host”, and Part 2 frames Camus’ (...) story in light of Camus’ agnonised struggle to come to terms with the Algerian situation. Part 3 makes the case that Oelhoffen's departures from Camus’ original story present in cinematic form Camus’ ideal of a post-colonial, post-ethnic solidarity between people, predicated on the overcoming of all arche-ideological fantasies of untained prelapsarian community. (shrink)

I shall describe yet another problem about fiction, similar in some respects to the ‘paradoxes of fiction’ on which so much ink has been spilt over the last quarter of a century. Since fictions are ‘made up’, what considerations stop us from making up our own endings to a fiction which is incomplete or whose ending we have lost or missed or whose ending is unpalatable?

In this note I have presented the essentials of a view of how laws are falsified, a view which has been held by some notable philosophers but which is radically opposed to that of Professor Popper. I have not scrupled to ?improve? upon it, so the view of no one philosopher is presented. I try to show that an interesting and convincing account of scientific simplicity is implicit in the theory and I conclude by suggesting how we can bring the (...) argument to bear on the problem of the logical status of laws of nature, showing that through their manner of falsifiability, laws share some characteristics with necessary statements as well as with empirical generalizations. (shrink)

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders? And even if one were to suddenly take me to its heart, I would vanish into its stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear, and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains to destroy us...."So what are you telling me, there's no God, but there's you?"Peter Weir's film Fearless appeared in 1993 to critical acclaim and middling (...) box office fortune. The film draws on all of Weir's considerable art, a stunning sound track, and powerful performances by Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez, and Isabella Rossellini. Based on the... (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas’ aesthetics has been critically discussed much less than other components of his philosophy. In one way, this is not surprising, given Levinas’ wider post-war project. Nevertheless, in the late 1940s, the very time his influential later philosophy was taking shape, Levinas published a series of papers on literary criticism, and on the nature of art. istents and Existence, the text where Levinas first announces his project of “leaving the climate” of Heidegger’s thought, contains in its heart a remarkable (...) discussion of modernist painting. 2 Levinas’ aesthetics, moreover, represents a provocative standpoint within modern aesthetic theory in its own right. As such, it stands as a partial corrective to the comparative and surely surprising – dearth of phenomenological analyses of art, which at the same time contrasts markedly with Heidegger’s renowned position in “The Origin of the Work of Art.” From a critical perspective, however, an examination of Levinas’ aesthetics is interesting in another, and perhaps deeper way. As critics have intimated, 3 Levinas’ aesthetics arguably marks what could be called a “supplement” within his texts. As is well known, Levinas’ post-war works defend his own post-Husserlian version of what Kant called “the primacy of practical reason” which he calls – in a more classical vein – “ethics as first philosophy.” 4 In this light, Levinas’ texts feature an axiological devaluation of aesthetics in comparison with the ethical encounter with the Other. What this paper will argue – in line with but beyond Derrida’s masterful “Violence and Metaphysics” 5 – is that aesthetic experience as analysed by Levinas has an uncanny structural proximity to his analyses of “ethics.” And recognition of this primacy might well cause us to reconsider Levinas’ classically “Greek” as much as Judaic devaluation of aesthetics as one dimension of human experience. Part I takes a poem as the basis to construct Levinas’ account of the aesthetical or art-quality of artworks. Part II examines what Levinas takes his analysis of the work of art to point towards in terms of a more general [de]ontology, wherein the reality given in phenomenological perception is doubled by its own “shadow.” Part III questions not Levinas’ aesthetics but how it signifies in terms of his avowed project of elevating ethics as “first philosophy.” –. (shrink)

Michael Ruse's writings explore what sociobiology says about morality. Further, he claims that sociobiology undermines the base for Christian morality. After responding to criticisms of Ruse, especially those of Arthur Peacocke, I lay a base for meeting his challenge.

Compatibilists respond to the problem of causal exclusion for nonreductive physicalism by rejecting the exclusionist’s ban on overdetermination. By the compatibilist’s lights there are two forms of overdetermination, one that’s problematic and another that is entirely benign. Furthermore, multiple causation by “tightly related” causes requires only the benign form of overdetermination. Call this the tight relation strategy for avoiding problematic forms of overdetermination. To justify the tight relation strategy, modal compatibilists appeal to a widely accepted counterfactual test. The argument of (...) this paper is that the counterfactual test fails to legitimize the tight relation strategy as it fails to adequately distinguish between problematic and benign overdetermination. Contrary to modal compatibilists, modal dependence does not suffice for benignity. I conclude by arguing that adequately addressing overdetermination worries requires a much heavier metaphysical burden than modal compatibilists have typically recognized. (shrink)

For John Ziman, 'the essence of the human condition' is the 'two-way, interactive character' of interpersonal relationships, and he argues that '[t]he bias towards atomic individualism not only bedevils the human and social sciences: it also distorts the whole philosophy of nature.' But in spite of his recognition of the importance of 'escap[ing] from the Cartesian cage' of the 'solipsist stance', Ziman himself has not entirely escaped the influence of a residual Cartesianism. This is evident in his tendency to over-intellectualize (...) the character of interactive relationships with talk of 'a theory of mind' and to imply that such relationships are only possible with other people like ourselves. Both of these ideas stem from the Cartesian position that knowledge starts from an introspective awareness of one's own mental states and that the mental states of others can only be inferred by analogy. Having first observed that my mental state x is accompanied by behaviour y, my observation of behaviour y in another is taken as an indication that he is experiencing mental state x. I will argue that our ability to understand the behaviour of others depends neither on a theory of mind nor on their being 'like us'. (shrink)

To support faculty who teach sections of a new general education course that focuses on ethical reasoning skills, I offered a three-day Ethics Across the Curriculum (EAC) workshop. I wanted to ground the faculty development experience by framing it in terms of expected student learning. In other words, I structured the workshop so as to put faculty in the position of students for the workshop. This student-based experience was supported by having a student serve as co-facilitator of the workshop. The (...) decision to make the EAC workshop a faculty-student collaboration proved to be the most important one I made in the design of the workshop. This essay will document parts of this faculty-student collaboration and review some of the important faculty learning that took place as a result of student involvement and leadership. (shrink)

In his book _The Moral Case against Religious Belief_, the author argued that some important virtues cease to be virtues at all when set in a religious context, and that, consequently, a religious life is, in many respects, not a good life to lead. In this sequel he takes up the theme again because 'the intervening decade has brought home to us the terrible results of religious conviction'. He writes in the Introduction: ‘Most religious people are conventionally devout. Religion does (...) not play a huge part in their everyday lives and their moral life is not continuously under its gaze. I regard this as a thoroughly good thing.... My suspicion is that the more intense the religious devotion the more the morality is in danger.’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article claims that today’s reading of Francis Bacon’s Essayes as a solely literary text turns upon philosophers’ having largely lost access to the renaissance culture which Bacon inherited, and the renaissance debates about the role of rhetoric in philosophy in which Bacon participated. The article has two parts. Building upon Ronald Cranes’ seminal contribution on the place of the Essayes in Bacon’s ‘great instauration’, Part 1 examines how the subjects of Bacon’s Essayes need to be understood as Baconian contributions (...) to ‘morrall philosophye’ and ‘civile knowledge’, rather than rhetorical or poetic exercises. In Part 2, contesting the interpretations of Crane, Fish, Ferrari and others, I will argue that the Essayes’ striking rhetorical form needs to be conceptualized in light of Bacon’s renaissance account of the ‘duty and office’ of rhetoric in any moral and civil philosophy that would look to actively cure mental afflictions and cultivate the virtuous or canny conduct it extols. Bacon’s Essayes, in this light, are best understood as a legatee and transformation of the popular early modern genre of books of apothegms and maxims designed to guide conduct. (shrink)

This paper examines the theoretical ideas of Friedrich von Hayek, arguably the key progenitor of the global economic orthodoxy of the past two decades. It assesses Hayek's thought as he presents it: namely as a form of liberalism. Section I argues that Hayek's thought, if liberal, is hostile to participatory democracy. Section II then argues the more radical thesis that neoliberalism is also in truth an illiberal doctrine. Founded not in any social contract doctrine, but a form of constructivism, neoliberal (...) thought at its base accepts the paradoxical need to "discipline subjects for freedom", however this might contravene peoples' natural, social inclinations. The argument is framed by reference to Aristophanes' great comedy, The Birds, whose off shore borderless empire ironically prefigures the dream of neoliberal social engineers, and their corporate supporters.
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It is possible to argue that the first world is presently living through a period of radical global reaction against the social democratic consensus of the twentieth century. In this context, the use of Slavoj Zizek's Lacnaian theory of ideology to critique the traditions of thought which inform this reaction becomes a vital task. In this paper, I use Zizek's Lacanian theory of ideology to critically analyse de Maistre's remarkable work: particularly his 'Considerations on France'. Zizek's emphasis on the role (...) of the Real in ideology, it is argued, allows us unique purchase on de Maistre's ideological position. It allows us to show, furthermore, how reactionary conservatism does not 'conserve' the symbolic Other of the discourse of the master, since it is animated by fear and trembling that the symbolic can no longer hold in conditions of secularisation. In this context, the proximity of de Maistre with de Sade emerges as something that goes beyond superficially similar celebrations of the role of violence in human affairs. What is minimally at stake in reactionary thought per se, this paper argues, is the attempt to reground lost authority in the unmediated Real, a procedure in which the laying down of the law verges into the need to divide and sacifice others for the Jouissance of the Other. In this way, Lacan's comment that right-wing intelectuals are knaves who, if pushed, are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve power is vindicated and also elaborated. For De Maistre, the paper shows, was nothing if not a
collosally royal knave
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This paper examines the apology for the life of the mind Francis Bacon gives in Book I of his 1605 text The Advancement of Learning. Like recent work on Bacon led by the ground-breaking studies of Corneanu, Harrison and Gaukroger, I argue that Bacon’s conception and defence of intellectual inquiry in this extraordinary text is framed by reference to the classical model, which had conceived and justified philosophising as a way of life or means to the care of the inquirer’s (...) soul or psyche. In particular, Bacon’s proximities and debts to the Platonic Apology and Cicero’s defence of intellectual pursuits in Rome are stressed, alongside the acuity and eloquence of Bacon’s descriptions of the intellectual virtues and their advertised contributions to the theologically and civically virtuous life. (shrink)

John Polkinghorne proposes that God interacts with the world by feeding information into chaotic systems. This influences the course of these systems and, since they underlie what goes on in the world, enables God to influence the world. While I applaud Polkinghorne’s insistence that God interacts physically with the world, his model for this faces several problems. Some of these he might rectify, but others look quite thorny. I also suggest an alternative God-world relation where God is the world-as-a-whole. This (...) includes many of the benefits of Polkinghorne’s central chaos idea and avoids its problems. (shrink)

This paper stages an argument in five premises:1. That the insight to which post-structuralist ethics responds—which is that there is an 'unmistakableparticularity of concrete persons or social groups'—leads theorists who base their moral theory upon itinto a problematic parallel to that charted by Kant in his analysis of the sublime.2. That Kant's analysis of the sublime divides its experience into what I call two 'moments', the secondof which involves a reflexive move which the post-structuralists are unwilling to sanction in theontological (...) and/or ethical realm, even if they are performatively committed to doing it.3. That, drawing on the parallel established in 1, it could be argued that the same reflexive move asKant describes in the second 'moment' of the sublime is also at the heart of our moral experience,wherein we are faced by the Otherness of concrete Others. This amounts to the argument that askingOthers to follow an impersonal or 'dumb' law which fails to do justice to their noumenal Otherness is atthe same time the only possible way to respect this Otherness.4. That what game theory shows us is that, at thelimits of our ability to calculatively predict the conduct of other subjects, the only 'rational' thing to dois precisely to presume the pre-existence of impersonal social norms regulating our own conduct andthat of others.5. That, accordingly, to borrow a formulation from Slavoj Zizek, respect for theOther is always respect for their ‘castration’—that is, respect for their capacity to follow norms that do not directly do justice to their concrete particularity but which, in this very 'dumbness', let this Otherness indirectly show itself.In the conclusion, I reflect on what this argument does, and upon its limits—that is, what it does not. (shrink)

This paper stages a consideration of Slavoj Zizek’s recent texts discussing the Christian ethics of agape. Iread Zizek’s ‘turn’ to Christian ethics as not a violation of his earlier Kantianism, but as an attempt toovercome two related problems which haunt Kantian deontological moral philosophy. The first is theproblem that Kant severs morality too totally from the realm of ‘pathological’ inclination, and does notoffer us a realistic depiction of moral psychology. The second is that the formal emptiness of thecategorical imperative, especially (...) as this had hitherto been read by Zizek, seems incapable of leading toany concrete ethicopolitical prescriptions. The key move, which is mapped in Part I, is Zizek’s adaptationof a Freudian moral psychology, which he reads as already anticipated in Saint Paul. The key notion is that human desire is generated 'from the ground up' as a perverse desire to transgress what is legislated by law. In Part II, I then look at Zizek’s reading of the JudaeoChristian heritage as one which addresses its ethical call to subjects, independently of their social stations or personal inclinations. Part III then stages Zizek’s recent reading of agape as an affirmative drive to do the good, which is premised on individuals ‘dying tothe law’, and therefore liberating their ‘pathology’ from the perverse dialectic of law and its transgression. When one has attained to this subjective position, Zizek suggests, the need to follow the moral law is no longer experienced as a humiliation of our ‘natural’ self-conceit, but as an affirmative act of bestowal to the Other[s]. (shrink)

This paper stages a consideration of Slavoj Zizek’s recent texts discussing the Christian ethics of agape. I read Zizek’s ‘turn’ to Christian ethics as not a violation of his earlier Kantianism, but as an attempt to overcome two related problems which haunt Kantian deontological moral philosophy. The first is the problem that Kant severs morality too totally from the realm of ‘pathological’ inclination, and does not offer us a realistic depiction of moral psychology. The second is that the formal emptiness (...) of the categorical imperative, especially as this had hitherto been read by Zizek, seems incapable of leading to any concrete ethicopolitical prescriptions. The key move, which is mapped in Part I, is Zizek’s adaptation of a Freudian moral psychology, which he reads as already anticipated in Saint Paul. The key notion is that human desire is generated 'from the ground up' as a perverse desire to transgress what is legislated by law. In Part II, I then look at Zizek’s reading of the JudaeoChristian heritage as one which addresses its ethical call to subjects, independently of their social stations or personal inclinations. Part III then stages Zizek’s recent reading of agape as an affirmative drive to do the good, which is premised on individuals ‘dying to the law’, and therefore liberating their ‘pathology’ from the perverse dialectic of law and its transgression. When one has attained to this subjective position, Zizek suggests, the need to follow the moral law is no longer experienced as a humiliation of our ‘natural’ self-conceit, but as an affirmative act of bestowal to the Other[s]. (shrink)

Political philosopher Leo Strauss’s extensive engagements with Aristophanes’s comedies represent a remarkable perspective in debates concerning the political and wider meaning of Aristophanes’s plays. Yet they have attracted nearly no critical response. This paper argues that for Strauss, Aristophanes was a very serious, philosophically-minded author who wrote esoterically, using the comic form to convey his conception of man, and his answer to the Socraticquestion of the best form of life. Part I addresses Strauss’s central reading of the Clouds, which positions (...) this play as Aristophanes’s powerful, exoteric criticism of any purely theoretical philosophy that feels no need to explain or accommodate its pursuit to political life. Part II looks at Strauss’s remarkable reading of the Platonic Aristophanes’s central speech in the Symposium, which suggests that Aristophanes was a secret friend and admirer of philosophy conceived in the Platonic manner, as an erotic search for the truth of nature, beneath Aristophanes’s religiously pious and culturally conservative veneer. Indeed, Part III of the paper shows that Strauss’s readings of the Birds, Peace and Wasps indicate that Strauss believed that Aristophanes was such an esoteric friend to the philosophy he had lampooned in the Clouds. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical response to the claims of Sivin and Lloyd and Mattice to the effect that Greek and Roman philosophy was characterised by a predominance of combat metaphors. Drawing on Plato and Plutarch, as well as contemporary studies led by Nussbaum, I argue that a host of different metaphors was demonstrably used in the Greek tradition to describe philosophy and its subjects, led by the therapeutic or medicinal metaphor of philosophy as ‘therapy of desire’ or of desiderative (...) opinion. I propose that it was the sophists like Protagoras, at least as they are depicted by Plato, who sought to conceive of philosophising as a strategic, warlike activity. In conclusion, I reflect on the invisibility of the medicinal metaphor, outside of certain dedicated studies in the history of ideas, in contemporary thinking about Western philosophy and its past. (shrink)

Animalists, those who hold that human persons are identical to human animals, seem committed to holding that, in becoming incarnate, the Son of God became a human animal. Unsurprisingly, a number of philosophers have argued that this is impossible. In this paper, I consider several objections to an animalist account of the incarnation based on kind membership, viz. objections drawing on kind essentialism, constitution essentialism, and the persistence conditions of animals. After developing each objection in detail, I respond by drawing (...) on my preferred formulation of animalism. My goal in addressing these objections is to take the first steps toward demonstrating the compatibility of animalism and the incarnation. (shrink)

This essay poses a critical response to Strauss’ political philosophy that takes as its primary object Strauss’ philosophy of Law. It does this by drawing on recent theoretical work in psychoanalytic theory, conceived after Jacques Lacan as another, avowedly non-historicist theory of Law and its relation to eros. The paper has four parts. Part I, ‘The Philosopher’s Desire: Making an Exception, or “The Thing Is...’’’, recounts Strauss’ central account of the complex relationship between philosophy and ‘the city’. Strauss’ Platonic conception (...) of philosophy as the highest species of eros is stressed, which is that aspect of his work which brings it into striking proximity with the Lacanian-psychoanalytic account of the dialectic of desire and the Law. Part II, ‘Of Prophecy and Law’, examines Strauss’ analysis of Law as first presented in his 1935 book, Philosophy and Law, and central to his later ‘rebirth of classical political philosophy’. Part III, ‘Primordial Repression and Primitive Platonism’, is the central part of the paper. Lacan’s psychoanalytic understanding of Law is brought critically to bear upon Strauss’ philosophy of Law. The stake of the position is ultimately how, for Lacanian psychoanalysis, the Law is transcendental to subjectivity, and has a founding symbolic force, which mitigates against speaking of it solely or primarily in terms of more or less inequitable ‘rules of thumb’, as Plato did. Part IV, ‘Is the Law the Thing?’ then asks the question of what eros might underlie Strauss’ paradoxical defense of esoteric writing in the age of ‘permissive’ modern liberalism – that is, outside of the ‘closed’ social conditions which he, above all, alerts us to as the decisive justification for this ancient practice. (shrink)

This attempts to explain the limited political incorporation of Latin American Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) (LAN) in Japan 1990–2004. A 1990 reform provides Nikkeijin a renewable visa that has enabled some 300,000 LAN to emigrate to Japan on the basis of Japanese blood descent or ethnicity. Long-term marginalized minority groups, such as Zainichi Koreans and Chinese, are comparatively better incorporated in Japan's political system and their demands increasingly recognized as more legitimate. I argue Japan's changing ethnic citizenship regime, political opportunity structure, (...) and structure of civil society combined with LAN language difficulties, newness of residence, small size, low minority status, and powerful myth of return limits their immigrant political incorporation in Japan. (shrink)

In her newest book, Alex Sharpe makes a persuasive case against the bringing of sexual offence prosecutions on the basis of “gender identity fraud”. Adopting a perspective in which queer and gender non-conforming identities are acknowledged and centred rather than doubted and dissected, Sharpe aims to destabilise the conceptual foundations upon which such prosecutions depend. In this review I place Sharpe’s contribution in its legal context, and offer an overview of her argument along with some reservations.

In this paper, I explore the complex ethical dynamics of violence and nonviolence in Mahāyāna Buddhism by considering some of the historical precedents and scriptural prescriptions that inform modern and contemporary Buddhist acts of self-immolation. Through considering these scripturally sanctioned Mahāyāna ‘case studies,’ the paper traces the tension that exists in Buddhist thought between violence and nonviolence, outlines the interplay of key Mahāyāna ideas of transcendence and altruism, and comments on the mimetic status and influence of spiritually charged texts. It (...) is the contention of this paper that violent scriptural metaphors can create paradigms of enactment that are paradoxically illustrative of the core ‘non-violent’ Mahāyāna virtues of compassion, giving, patience, and vigor. The discussion will show that these virtues are underpinned by the Mahāyāna philosophical mainstays of non-duality, bodhisattvic transcendent altruism, skillful means, and dependent co-origination. (shrink)

In the 11th chapter of the second book of Samuel, we read how King David saw Bathsheba in the evening: ‘v.2. And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.’.

Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker ; Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1998; Kevin Sharpe, Re-Mapping Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000; Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000. ☆ I am grateful to Peter Lake, David Harris Sacks, and David Underdown for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this (...) article. (shrink)

This paper sees me clarify, elaborate, and defend the conclusions reached in my ‘Musical Works as Eternal Types’ in the wake of objections raised by Robert Howell, R. A. Sharpe, and Saam Trivedi. In particular, I claim that the thesis that musical works are discovered rather than created by their composers is obligatory once we commit ourselves to thinking of works of music as types, and once we properly understand the ontological nature of types and properties. The central argument (...) of the paper is ‘the argument from the eternal existence of properties’, its moral being that types are eternal entities because they inherit their existence conditions from their eternally existent property-associates. The two key premises in this argument—that properties exist eternally, and that a type exists just in case its property-associate exists—are motivated and then defended at length. (shrink)

To the student of the recent history of theological ideas in the West, it sometimes seems as though, of all the ‘new’ subjects that have been intro duced into theological discussion during the last hundred or so years, only two have proved to be of permanent significance. One is, of course, biblical criticism, and the other, the subject which in my University is still called ‘comparative religion’—the dispassionate study of the religions of the world as phenomena in their own right.

Disorder and suffering are increasing significantly in our society. Violent crime, unemployment, escape through drug-taking are all on the increase. It is apparent, also, that much of this disorder and suffering, and the anxiety it fosters, is rooted in science and its technological off-spring. The un-employment produced by a micro-technology is only one small example. It is also apparent that one of the principal foundation stones for the scientific enterprise was Christianity.