In my ‘Reponses’ to critics (McDowell 2002), I devoted three pages to Pippin’s ‘Leaving Nature Behind, or Two Cheers for ‘‘Subjectivism’’ ’ (Pippin 2002). Pippin reprinted that paper in his The Persistence of Subjectivity (Pippin 2005),1 with a fifteen-page postscript, in which he connects a response to my response with some of the broader themes of the book. This is a response to Pippin’s response to my response, and I suppose I should worry about diminishing (...) returns. But there is room for clarification of some issues. (shrink)

As McDowell makes clear in ‘On Pippin’s Postscript’ and in many other works, the interpretive question at issue in this exchange—how to understand the relation between Kant and Hegel, especially as that concerns Kant’s central ‘Deduction’ argument in the Critique of Pure Reason1—brings into the foreground an even larger problem on which all the others depend: the right way to understand at the highest level of generality the relation between active or spontaneous thought and our receptive and corporeal sensibility (...) and bodily embodiment. From Mind and World on, McDowell has indicated that this is in fact a problem so inclusive as to be common to theoretical and practical philosophy; that the issue of how thought informs our sensibility is at bottom the same (raises the same logical or conceptual issue) as the issue of how thought could be said to inform, to be active ‘in’, bodily action; that we can be in the grip of the same bad, misleading picture in accounting for executing an intention as in accounting for acquiring perceptual knowledge.2 I agree with, and follow his lead in, setting the basic framework for the particular issues in just this way. With matters so set out, there are two main areas of disagreement: (i) how to state the role of concepts and especially conceptual activity in the sensible uptake of the world and (ii) what to make of Hegel’s claim for a speculative ‘identity’ between inner and outer in action, or how to state the role of intentions ‘in’ bodily activity. In both cases, McDowell thinks I go too far; too far in terms of what is philosophically correct, and too far in attributing those positions to Hegel. It is the former topic that is in play in this exchange, although elements of the latter arise as well. There is first an issue lingering from the first exchange in Reading McDowell. (shrink)

Among Kant's innovations in the understanding of logic (‘general logic’) were his claims that logic had no content of its own, but was the form of the thought of any possible content, and that the unit of meaning, the truth-bearer, judgement, was essentially apperceptive. Judging was implicitly the consciousness of judging. This was for Kant a logical truth. This article traces the influence of the latter claim on Fichte, and, for most of the discussion, on Hegel. The aim is to (...) understand the relations among self-consciousness, reason and freedom in the idealist tradition. (shrink)

An assessment of Buddhist ethical theory through a Western lens can run the risk of overlooking or dismissing some of the pertinent aspects of the Buddhist traditions. Although the latter do not speak with one voice, for hundreds of years they all have directed their attention towards liberation from suffering, which is also the presumed goal of human rights theories. At the time of the Buddha, there were no historical circumstances as widespread and horrible as those of the twentieth century (...) that served as a catalyst for the creation of human rights theory. Early Buddhist political ideals focused on the qualities of the good king as an archetype of enlightened leadership, rather than providing a framework for governance. Today, many Buddhists express a deep concern for the welfare of all living beings, but few have recognized the importance of addressing the structural causes of suffering on social and political levels. (shrink)

Iconography has been used to represent the experience of awakening in the Buddhist traditions for millennia. The Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions are especially renowned for their rich pantheons of buddhas and bodhisattvas who illuminate and inspire practitioners. In addition, the Vajrayāna branch of Mahāyāna Buddhism presents a host of meditational deities (yidam) who serve as catalysts of awakening. These awakened beings are regarded as objects of refuge for practitioners, both female and male, who visualize themselves in detail as embodiments of specific (...) enlightened figures, female or male, with all their enlightened qualities. These meditational deities, which are mentally constructed and insubstantial by nature, are distinguished from worldly deities (deva) who also inhabit the Buddhist pantheon and may be supplicated for attaining worldly boons. This article explores the philosophical foundations of Varjrayāna Buddhist practices, the ontological status of these archetypes of awakening, and the epistemological process of visualizing oneself an enlightened being as a skillful means to achieve awakened realization. (shrink)

Throughout years of war and political upheaval, Buddhist women in Laos have devotedly upheld traditional values and maintained the practice of offering alms and other necessities to monks as an act of merit. In a religious landscape overwhelmingly dominated by bhikkhus, a small number have renounced household life and become maekhaos, celibate women who live as nuns and pursue contemplative practices on the periphery of the religious mainstream. Patriarchal ecclesiastical structures and the absence of a lineage of full ordination for (...) women have combined to render the religious roles of Buddhist nuns and laywomen virtually invisible throughout most of Lao history. With limited access to Buddhist learning, maekhaos live at the margins of Lao society, both spatially and economically. Based on interviews gathered during fieldwork in Laos and at a Lao temple in California, this paper examines the lives of Lao Buddhist women, their relationship to religious authority, and ways they might move from the margins to full inclusion in Lao religious life. (shrink)

As scientists advance knowledge of the brain and develop technologies to measure, evaluate, and manipulate brain function, numerous questions arise for religious adherents. If neuroscientists can conclusively establish that there is a functional network between neural impulses and an individual’s capacity for moral evaluation of situations, this will naturally lead to questions about the relationship between such a network and constructions of moral value and ethical human behavior. For example, if cognitive neuroscience can show that there is a neurophysiological basis (...) for the moral appraisal of situations, it may be argued that the world’s religions, which have traditionally been the keepers and purveyors of ethical values, are rendered either spurious or irrelevant. The questions point up broader dilemmas in the interface between science and religion, and raise concerns about the ethics of neurological research and experimentation. Since human beings will still arbitrate what is “moral” or “ethical,” how can religious perspectives enrich the dialogue on neuroethical issues and how can neuroscience enrich dialogue on religion? Buddhist views on the nature of consciousness and methods of practice, especially meditation practice, may contribute to discussions on neuroscience and theories about the interrelationship between consciousness and ethical awareness by exploring the role that karma, intentionality, and compassion play in Buddhist understandings of the interrelationship between consciousness and ethics. (shrink)

O presente artigo toma como diretriz uma pergunta fundamental: o que significa ver a filosofia do ponto de vista de uma vida afirmável e sustentável? Com base nessa pergunta, examina-se a natureza da alternativa filosófica proposta por Nietzsche ao ascetismo entranhado no âmago da filosofia ocidental, a autoridade com que esta alternativa é enunciada, bem como a relação existente entre a referida alternativa e o ascetismo por ela radicalmente criticado.

This is the most important book on Hegel to have appeared in the past ten years. Robert Pippin offers a completely new interpretation of Hegel's idealism, which focuses on Hegel's appropriation and development of kant's theoretical project. Hegel is presented neither as a precritical metaphysician nor as a social theorist, but as a critical philosopher whose disagreements with Kant, especially on the issue of intuitions, enrich the idealist arguments against empiricism, realism and naturalism. In the face of the dismissal (...) of absolute idealism as either unintelligible or implausible, Pippin explains and defends an original account of the philosophical basis for Hegel's claims about the historical and social nature of selfconsciousness, and so of knowledge itself. (shrink)

This fresh and original book argues that the central questions in Hegel's practical philosophy are the central questions in modern accounts of freedom: What is freedom, or what would it be to act freely? Is it possible so to act? And how important is leading a free life? Robert Pippin argues that the core of Hegel's answers is a social theory of agency, the view that agency is not exclusively a matter of the self-relation and self-determination of an individual (...) but requires the right sort of engagement with and recognition by others. Using a detailed analysis of key Hegelian texts, he develops this interpretation to reveal the bearing of Hegel's claims on many contemporary issues, including much-discussed core problems in the liberal democratic tradition. His important study will be valuable for all readers who are interested in Hegel's philosophy and in the modern problems of agency and freedom. (shrink)

Résumé — La tradition à laquelle Rousseau a donné le plus indiscutablement ses lettres de noblesse, celle de la guerre républicaine, a été presque totalement ignorée. Ses écrits sur la guerre, et sur les lois de la guerre – ce que l’on nomme aujourd’hui le droit humanitaire international –, constituent l’une de ses plus importantes contributions au droit, et son legs intellectuel le plus durable, à parité avec ses considérations sur la justice politique et ses écrits sur la démocratie et (...) le gouvernement dans DuContrat social, avec lesquels ils entretiennent d’ailleurs des liens étroits.The most powerful tradition Rousseau articulated, that of republican war, has been almost entirely ignored. His writings on war, and on the laws of war – what is today termed international humanitarian law – can be seen as one of his most important contributions and enduring legacies, as well as being intimately linked to his view of political justice in the domestic arena, such as his writings on democracy and government in The Social Contract. (shrink)

In the most influential chapter of his most important philosophical work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel makes the central and disarming assertions that "self-consciousness is desire itself" and that it attains its "satisfaction" only in another self-consciousness. Hegel on Self-Consciousness presents a groundbreaking new interpretation of these revolutionary claims, tracing their roots to Kant's philosophy and demonstrating their continued relevance for contemporary thought. As Robert Pippin shows, Hegel argues that we must understand Kant's account of the self-conscious nature of (...) consciousness as a claim in practical philosophy, and that therefore we need radically different views of human sentience, the conditions of our knowledge of the world, and the social nature of subjectivity and normativity. Pippin explains why this chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology should be seen as the basis of much later continental philosophy and the Marxist, neo-Marxist, and critical-theory traditions. He also contrasts his own interpretation of Hegel's assertions with influential interpretations of the chapter put forward by philosophers John McDowell and Robert Brandom. (shrink)

Die Grenzen der Vernunft. Eine Untersuchung zu Zielen und Motiven des Deutschen Idealismus. By Rolf‐Peter Horstmann. Frankfurt a.M.: Anton Hain, 1991, 321 pp. ISBN 3–445‐08568‐4Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus. By Ludwig Siep. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1992, 348 pp. ISBN 3–518‐28635‐8 pb.

In Natural Right and History Leo Strauss argues for the continuing "relevance " of the classical understanding of natural right. Since this relevance is not a matter of a direct return, or a renewed appreciation that a neglected doctrine is simply true, the meaning of this claim is somewhat elusive. But it is clear enough that the core of Strauss's argument for that relevance is a claim about the relation between human experience and philosophy. Strauss argues that the classical understanding (...) articulates and is continuous with the "lived experience" of engaged participants in political life, the ordinary, and he argues that such an ordinary or everyday point of view has been "lost." The author presents here an interpretation and critique of such a claim. (shrink)

'Modernity' has come to refer both to a contested historical category and to an even more contested philosophical and civilisational ideal. In this important collection of essays Robert Pippin takes issue with some prominent assessments of what is or is not philosophically at stake in the idea of a modern revolution in Western civilisation, and presents an alternative view. Professor Pippin disputes many traditional characterisations of the distinctiveness of modern philosophy. In their place he defends claims about agency, (...) freedom, ethical life and modernity itself, all of which are central to the German idealist philosophical tradition, and in particular, to the writings of Hegel. Having considered the Hegelian version of these issues the author explores other accounts as found in Habermas, Strauss, Blumenberg, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. (shrink)

Hegel frequently claimed that the heart of his entire system was a book widely regarded as among the most difficult in the history of philosophy, The Science of Logic. This is the book that presents his metaphysics, an enterprise that he insists can only be properly understood as a “logic,” or a “science of pure thinking.” Since he also wrote that the proper object of any such logic is pure thinking itself, it has always been unclear in just what sense (...) such a science could be a “metaphysics.” -/- Robert B. Pippin offers here a bold, original interpretation of Hegel’s claim that only now, after Kant’s critical breakthrough in philosophy, can we understand how logic can be a metaphysics. Pippin addresses Hegel’s deep, constant reliance on Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics, the difference between Hegel’s project and modern rationalist metaphysics, and the links between the “logic as metaphysics” claim and modern developments in the philosophy of logic. Pippin goes on to explore many other facets of Hegel’s thought, including the significance for a philosophical logic of the self-conscious character of thought, the dynamism of reason in Kant and Hegel, life as a logical category, and what Hegel might mean by the unity of the idea of the true and the idea of the good in the “Absolute Idea.” The culmination of Pippin’s work on Hegel and German idealism, no Hegel scholar or historian of philosophy will want to miss this book. (shrink)

Purpose Advances in electronic performance monitoring have raised employees’ concerns regarding the invasion of privacy and erosion of trust. On the other hand, EPM promises to improve performance and processes. This paper aims to focus on how the alignment of EPM design and organizational culture through effective organizational mechanisms can address privacy concerns, and, hence, positively affect employees’ perception toward technology. Design/methodology/approach Based on a theoretical lens extending two conceptual frameworks, a qualitative approach was used to analyze interview data collected (...) from a comparative case study of two organizations in the USA and Qatar within the oil and gas sector. These two contexts were selected to emphasize the cross-cultural and organizational differences in employees’ acceptance of EPM. Findings The study revealed that national and corporate cultures affected employees’ perception and acceptance of monitoring in both countries. Because of diversity, though EPM was better accepted in Qatar, as they are an easy way to enforce standardization and to push employees to adapt to a dominating corporate culture. Conversely, in the USA where culture is more innovation-oriented, organizational mechanisms shifted the perceptions of EPM to being mean to obtain feedback rather than to impose standards. Research limitations/implications This qualitative study is based on a descriptive comparative case study of two organizations with two cultural contexts. The limited sample size and cross-sectional nature of data may need to be extended to a larger cultural scope that is observed over a longer period to safely generalize the findings. Practical implications Decision-makers in multinational corporations with different cultural backgrounds may benefit of this study’s outcomes, as it emphasizes the importance of the fit between EPM designs and the cultural settings. Furthermore, organizations aiming to conduct analytics on EPM data have to justify and prove its benefits to employees to facilitate acceptance. Social implications The study shows that employees in Qatar have a different cultural frame of reference in their perception of fairness and ethics than their counterparts in the USA because of changes in the meaning of social relations, personal goals and behavioral norms. Originality/value The originality of this study lays in its empirical validation of a composite framework examining both national and corporate cultures on employees’ reactions to EPM systems. It also proves the critical importance of organizational mechanisms to align the EPM design with the organization cultural settings. (shrink)

The Persistence of Subjectivity examines several approaches to, and critiques of, the core notion in the self-understanding and legitimation of the modern, 'bourgeois' form of life: the free, reflective, self-determining subject. Since it is a relatively recent historical development that human beings think of themselves as individual centers of agency, and that one's entitlement to such a self-determining life is absolutely valuable, the issue at stake also involves the question of the historical location of philosophy. What might it mean to (...) take seriously Hegel's claim that philosophical reflection is always reflection on the historical 'actuality' of its own age? Discussing Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Leo Strauss, Manfred Frank, and John McDowell, Robert Pippin attempts to understand how subjectivity arises in contemporary institutional practices such as medicine, as well as in other contexts such as modernism in the visual arts and in the novels of Marcel Proust. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most elusive thinkers in the philosophical tradition. His highly unusual style and insistence on what remains hidden or unsaid in his writing make pinning him to a particular position tricky. Nonetheless, certain readings of his work have become standard and influential. In this major new interpretation of Nietzsche’s work, Robert B. Pippin challenges various traditional views of Nietzsche, taking him at his word when he says that his writing can best be understood as (...) a kind of psychology. Pippin traces this idea of Nietzsche as a psychologist to his admiration for the French moralists: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Stendhal, and especially Montaigne. In distinction from philosophers, Pippin shows, these writers avoided grand metaphysical theories in favor of reflections on life as lived and experienced. Aligning himself with this project, Nietzsche sought to make psychology “the queen of the sciences” and the “path to the fundamental problems.” Pippin contends that Nietzsche’s singular prose was an essential part of this goal, and so he organizes the book around four of Nietzsche’s most important images and metaphors: that truth could be a woman, that a science could be gay, that God could have died, and that an agent is as much one with his act as lightning is with its flash. Expanded from a series of lectures Pippin delivered at the Collège de France, _Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy_ offers a brilliant, novel, and accessible reading of this seminal thinker. (shrink)

With the rise of review sites and social media, films today, as soon as they are shown, immediately become the topic of debates on their merits not only as entertainment, but also as serious forms of artistic expression. Philosopher Robert B. Pippin, however, wants us to consider a more radical proposition: film as thought, as a reflective form. Pippin explores this idea through a series of perceptive analyses of cinematic masterpieces, revealing how films can illuminate, in a concrete (...) manner, core features and problems of shared human life. Filmed Thought examines questions of morality in Almodóvar’s Talk to Her, goodness and naïveté in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, love and fantasy in Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, politics and society in Polanski’s Chinatown and Malick’s The Thin Red Line, and self-understanding and understanding others in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place and in the Dardennes brothers' oeuvre. In each reading, Pippin pays close attention to what makes these films exceptional as technical works of art and as intellectual and philosophical achievements. Throughout, he shows how films offer a view of basic problems of human agency from the inside and allow viewers to think with and through them. Captivating and insightful, Filmed Thought shows us what it means to take cinema seriously not just as art, but as thought, and how this medium provides a singular form of reflection on what it is to be human. (shrink)

This article examines the ‘Oath of Allegiance’ of an international semisecret society, Young Europe. The society’s programme defined the struggle to create democratic republics throughout Europe in the first half of the 19th century. Its founding documents and charter in 1834 represented radical shifts in both the ideas and practice of European republicans on the principles of liberty and equality, and in the conceptualization of a trinity that linked republican patriotism to both nationalism and internationalism. The society also offered new (...) understandings of both fraternity and humanity. The doctrine combined the working of international and national organizations as the blueprint with which to construct republics. The emergence of Young Europe signified a change in both the ideological language and in the core values of republicans. It also represented a break in its organizational principles; in its conception of the nation and the nation’s role within the republic; and in the appreciation of the international role of republicans. (shrink)

Traditions of War brings together developments in political and legal thought, the conduct of military occupations, and the attempts by the international community to regulate the treatment of civilians within this aspect of warfare.

Robert Pippin reviews Slavoj Žižek’s Less than Nothing, a serious attempt to re-actualize Hegel in the light of Lacanian metapsychology. But does Žižek’s attempt to think Hegel with Lacan produce, as Žižek hopes, a political figuration adequate to the present? Or does it land us rather in the Hegelian zoo, along with such well-known specimens as the Beautiful Soul, the Unhappy Consciousness, and The Knight of Virtue?