ABSTRACTAs the Spanish Civil War came to an end, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards who had opposed the military rebellion which initiated the war and remained loyal to the democratically elected government were forced into exile. Amongst them was the philosopher María Zambrano. While little known to an English-speaking readership, she represents a unique voice engaging with some of the fundamental problems of our times. Her life was marked, like that of her contemporaries Benjamin, Husserl, Arendt, Patočka, Adorno, Lacan, Derrida (...) and Blumenberg by the crisis of modernity culminating in the two World Wars. Her work is part of the same philosophical debates, currents and problems facing the Europe of her time. The aim of the volume María Zambrano amongst the philosophers, introduced in this article, is to focus on the links between Zambrano’s thought and a wide range of themes and ideas associated with these other European thinkers. A summary of Zambrano’s main philosophical concepts and preoccupations is also offered to help the reader situate the translated anthology of texts by the philosopher included in the volume. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of papers from the Poincaré Project of the Center for the Philosophy of Science, University of Lisbon, bringing together an international group of scholars with new assessments of Henri Poincaré's philosophy of science-both its historical impact on the foundations of science and mathematics, and its relevance to contemporary philosophical inquiry. The work of Poincaré (1854-1912) extends over many fields within mathematics and mathematical physics. But his scientific work was inseparable from his groundbreaking philosophical reflections, and (...) the scientific ferment in which he participated was inseparable from the philosophical controversies in which he played a pre-eminent part. The subsequent history of the mathematical sciences was profoundly influenced by Poincaré's philosophical analyses of the relations between and among mathematics, logic, and physics, and, more generally, the relations between formal structures and the world of experience. The papers in this collection illuminate Poincaré's place within his own historical context as well as the implications of his work for ours. (shrink)

“Se han cumplido en 2016 cuarenta años de la aparición de El exilio español de 1939”. Así comienza un libro que quiere seguir la estela abierta por José Luis Abellán en su trabajo de recuperación de la cultura exiliada. Este nuevo libro, coordinado por Mari Paz Balibrea bajo el título de Líneas de fuga. Hacia otra historiografía cultural del exilio republicano español, será en este caso una obra coral, en la que participan destacadísimos especialistas en la materia. Pero además es (...) una obra que se propone indagar en las limitaciones estructurales que ha podido encontrar aquel trabajo, en su intento de recuperar aquel legado intelectual expulsado de España por el franquismo... (shrink)

The #metoo movement has forced many fans to consider what they should do when they learn that a beloved artist has acted immorally. One natural thought is that fans ought to give up the artworks of immoral artists. In Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists, Mary Beth Willard argues for a more nuanced view. Enjoying art is part of a well-lived life, so we need good reasons to give it up. And it turns out good (...) reasons are hard to find. Willard show that it's reasonable to believe that most boycotts of artists won't succeed, so most of the time there's no ethical reason to join in. Someone who manages to separate the art from the artist isn't making an ethical mistake by buying and enjoying their art. She then considers the ethical dimensions of canceling artists and so-called "cancel culture," arguing that canceling is ethically risky because it encourages moral grandstanding. Willard concludes by arguing that the popular debate has overlooked the power of art to change our lives for the good. It's of course OK to decide to give up the artwork of immoral artists, but--as Willard shows in this provocative little volume--it's OK to continue to enjoy their art, as well. Key Features Offers accessible discussions of complicated philosophical topics like aesthetic value, collective action problems, and epistemic justice Provides a unique perspective and underexplored argument on the popular issue of cancellation Explores the role of aesthetic value in our lives, including its relation to our ethical decisions and our well being. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally concentrated on the qualities that make human beings different from other species. In _Beast and Man_ Mary Midgley, one of our foremost intellectuals, stresses continuities. What makes people tick? Largely, she asserts, the same things as animals. She tells us humans are rather more like other animals than we previously allowed ourselves to believe, and reminds us just how primitive we are in comparison to the sophistication of many animals. A veritable classic for our age, _Beast (...) and Man_ has helped change the way we think about ourselves and the world in which we live. (shrink)

How can we critique political theory when all we have to use are its own conceptual tools? As Hannah Arendt observed, it can only be done through leaps, inversions, and the turning of concepts upside-down. But this twisting operation must be done in order to turn those who philosophize back to the hard work of real life change. In Turning Operations, renowned theorist Mary G. Dietz challenges specific contemporary modes of theorizing politics-from feminist theory to Habermasian discourse- -while appropriating (...) some of political theory's own approaches and some of its most striking figures, including Aristotle, Nietzsche, Weber, Beauvoir, and Arendt in order to foment some leaps, inversions, reversals and turns on politics along the way. Dietz confronts a number of current debates, arguing that most are filled with artificial division and empty terms. She argues that we must abandon commonly supported dichotomies-masculine versus feminine, speech versus action, liberty versus community -to create abetter discourse, and a better world. Turning Operations is an essential new contribution to democratic and feminist political thought. (shrink)

This 1997 book was the first English translation of all of Kant's writings on moral and political philosophy collected in a single volume. No other collection competes with the comprehensiveness of this one. As well as Kant's most famous moral and political writings, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace, the volume includes shorter essays and reviews, some of which have never been translated before. The volume has (...) been furnished with a substantial editorial apparatus including translator's introductions and explanatory notes to each text by Mary Gregor, and a general introduction to Kant's moral and political philosophy by Allen Wood. There is also an English-German and German-English glossary of key terms. (shrink)

We present a new method for characterizing the interpretive possibilities generated by elliptical constructions in natural language. Unlike previous analyses, which postulate ambiguity of interpretation or derivation in the full clause source of the ellipsis, our analysis requires no such hidden ambiguity. Further, the analysis follows relatively directly from an abstract statement of the ellipsis interpretation problem. It predicts correctly a wide range of interactions between ellipsis and other semantic phenomena such as quantifier scope and bound anaphora. Finally, although the (...) analysis itself is stated nonprocedurally, it admits of a direct computational method for generating interpretations. (shrink)

This 1997 book was the first English translation of all of Kant's writings on moral and political philosophy collected in a single volume. No other collection competes with the comprehensiveness of this one. As well as Kant's most famous moral and political writings, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace, the volume includes shorter essays and reviews, some of which have never been translated before. The volume has (...) been furnished with a substantial editorial apparatus including translator's introductions and explanatory notes to each text by Mary Gregor, and a general introduction to Kant's moral and political philosophy by Allen Wood. There is also an English-German and German-English glossary of key terms. (shrink)

Published in 1785, Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written. In Kant's own words, its aim is to identify and corroborate the supreme principle of morality, the categorical imperative. He argues that human beings are ends in themselves, never to be used by anyone merely as a means, and that universal and unconditional obligations must be understood as (...) an expression of the human capacity for autonomy and self-governance. As such, they are laws of freedom. This volume contains Mary Gregor's acclaimed translation of the text into English, revised by Jens Timmermann, and an accessible, updated introduction by Christine Korsgaard. (shrink)

Reading the Shape of Nature vividly recounts the turbulent early history of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and the contrasting careers of its founder Louis Agassiz and his son Alexander. Through the story of this institution and the individuals who formed it, Mary P. Winsor explores the conflicting forces that shaped systematics in the second half of the nineteenth century. Debates over the philosophical foundations of classification, details of taxonomic research, the young institution's financial struggles, and the (...) personalities of the men most deeply involved are all brought to life. In 1859, Louis Agassiz established the Museum of Comparative Zoology to house research on the ideal types that he believed were embodied in all living forms. Agassiz's vision arose from his insistence that the order inherent in the diversity of life reflected divine creation, not organic evolution. But the mortar of the new museum had scarcely dried when Darwin's Origin was published. By Louis Agassiz's death in 1873, even his former students, including his son Alexander, had defected to the evolutionist camp. Alexander, a self-made millionaire, succeeded his father as director and introduced a significantly different agenda for the museum. To trace Louis and Alexander's arguments and the style of science they established at the museum, Winsor uses many fascinating examples that even zoologists may find unfamiliar. The locus of all this activity, the museum building itself, tells its own story through a wonderful series of archival photographs. (shrink)

The essentialism story is a version of the history of biological classification that was fabricated between 1953 and 1968 by Ernst Mayr, who combined contributions from Arthur Cain and David Hull with his own grudge against Plato. It portrays pre-Darwinian taxonomists as caught in the grip of an ancient philosophy called essentialism, from which they were not released until Charles Darwin's 1859 Origin of Species. Mayr's motive was to promote the Modern Synthesis in opposition to the typology of idealist morphologists; (...) demonizing Plato served this end. Arthur Cain's picture of Linnaeus as a follower of 'Aristotelian' (scholastic) logic was woven into the story, along with David Hull's application of Karl Popper's term, 'essentialism', which Mayr accepted in 1968 as a synonym for what he had called 'typological thinking'. Although Mayr also pointed out the importance of empiricism in the history of taxonomy, the essentialism story still dominates the secondary literature. The history of the first telling of the essentialism story exposes its scant basis in fact. (shrink)

To look into the darkness of the human soul is a frightening venture. Here Mary Midgley does so, with her customary brilliance and clarity. Midgley's analysis proves that the capacity for real wickedness is an inevitable part of human nature. This is not however a blanket acceptance of evil. Out of this dark journey she returns with an offering to us: an understanding of human nature that enhances our very humanity.

The current widespread belief that taxonomic methods used before Darwin were essentialist is ill-founded. The essentialist method developed by followers of Plato and Aristotle required definitions to state properties that are always present. Polythetic groups do not obey that requirement, whatever may have been the ontological beliefs of the taxonomist recognizing such groups. Two distinct methods of forming higher taxa, by chaining and by examplar, were widely used in the period between Linnaeus and Darwin, and both generated polythetic groups. Philosopher (...) William Whewell congratulated pre-Darwinian taxonomists for not adhering to the rigid ideal of definition used in the mathematical sciences. What he called the method of types is here called the method of exemplars because typology has been equated with essentialism, whereas the use of a type species as the reference point or prototype for a higher category was a practice inconsistent with essentialism. The story that the essentialism of philosophers dominated the development of systematics may prove to be a myth. (shrink)

Why should anybody take an interest in philosophy? Is it just another detailed study like metallurgy? Or is it similar to history, literature and even religion: a study meant to do some personal good and influence our lives? In her last published work, Mary Midgley addresses provocative questions, interrogating the various forms of our current intellectual anxieties and confusions and how we might deal with them. In doing so, she provides a robust, yet not uncritical, defence of philosophy and (...) the life of the mind. This defence is expertly placed in the context of contemporary debates about science, religion, and philosophy. It asks whether, in light of rampant scientific and technological developments, we still need philosophy to help us think about the big questions of meaning, knowledge, and value. (shrink)

Crude materialism, reduction of mind to body, extreme individualism. All products of a 17th century scientific inheritance which looks at the parts of our existence at the expense of the whole. Cutting through myths of scientific omnipotence, Mary Midgley explores how this inheritance has so powerfully shaped the way we are, and the problems it has brought with it. She argues that poetry and the arts can help reconcile these problems, and counteract generations of 'one-eyed specialists', unable and unwilling (...) to look beyond their own scientific or literary sphere. Dawkins, Atkins, Bacon and Descartes all come under fire as Midgely sears through contemporary debate, from Gaia to memes, and organic food to greenhouse gases. After years of unquestioned imperialism, science is finally forced to take a step back and acknowledge the arts. (shrink)

The works of Mary Wollstonecraft ranged from the early Thoughts on the Education of Daughters to The Female Reader, a selection of texts for girls, and included two novels. But her reputation is founded on A Vindication of the Rights of Woman of 1792. This treatise is the first great document of feminism—and is now accepted as a core text in western tradition. It is not widely known that the germ of Wollstonecraft's great work came out of an earlier (...) and much shorter vindication—A Vindication of the Rights of Men , written in the context of the issues raised by the French Revolution. This edition, which follows the model of other Broadview Editions in including a range of materials that help the reader to see the work in the context of its era out of which it emerged, is arranged chronologically, opening with Wollstonecraft's "other vindication." It also includes a wide range of other documents in appendices, as well as a comprehensive and authoritative introduction, chronology, and full index. (shrink)

This book constitutes the first volume of a projected two-volume intellectual biography of Auguste Comte, the founder of modern sociology and a philosophical movement called positivism. Volume One offers a reinterpretation of Comte's "first career," (1798-1842) when he completed the scientific foundation of his philosophy. It describes the interplay between Comte's ideas and the historical context of postrevolutionary France, his struggles with poverty and mental illness, and his volatile relationships with friends, family, and colleagues, including such famous contemporaries as Saint-Simon, (...) the Saint-Simonians, Guizot, and John Stuart Mill. Pickering shows that the man who called for a new social philosophy based on the sciences was not only ill at ease in the most basic human relationships, but also profoundly questioned the ability of the purely scientific spirit to regenerate the political and social world. (shrink)

The environmental crisis is most frequently viewed through the lens of science, policy, law, and economics. In recent years the moral and spiritual dimensions of this crisis are becoming more visible. Indeed, the world religions are bringing their texts and traditions, along with their ethics and practices, into dialogue with environmental problems. In a lecture delivered at the University of Utah, Tucker explores this growing movement and highlights why it holds great promise for long term changes for the flourishing of (...) the Earth community. Mary Evelyn Tucker delivered this lecture on April 11, 2013, at the 18th annual symposium sponsored by the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment at the S. J. Quinney College of Law, The University of Utah. (shrink)

Background:Clinical investigation is a growing field employing increasing numbers of nurses. This has created a new specialty practice defined by aspects unique to nursing in a clinical research context: the objectives, setting, and nature of the nurse–participant relationship. The clinical research nurse role may give rise to feelings of ethical conflict between aspects of protocol implementation and the duty of patient advocacy, a primary nursing responsibility. Little is known about whether research nurses experience unique ethical challenges distinct from those experienced (...) by nurses in traditional patient-care settings.Research objectives:The purpose of the study was to describe the nature of ethical challenges experienced by clinical research nurses within the context of their practice.Research design:The study utilized a qualitative descriptive design with individual interviews.Participants and research context:Participating nurses self-identified as having experienced ethical challenges during screening. The majority were Caucasian, female, and worked in outpatient settings. Approximately 50% had > 10 years of research experience.Ethical considerations:The human subjects review board approved the study. Written informed consent was obtained.Findings:Predominant themes were revealed: the inability to provide a probable good, or/do no harm, and dual obligations. The following patterns and subthemes emerged: conflicted allegiances between protocol implementation, needs of the participant, desire to advance science, and tension between the nurse–patient therapeutic relationship versus the research relationship.Discussion:Participants described ethical challenges specific to the research role. The issues are central to the nurse–participant relationship, patient advocacy, the nurse’s role in implementing protocols, and/or advancing science.Conclusion:Ethical challenges related to the specialized role of clinical research nurses were identified. More research is warranted to fully understand their nature and frequency and to identify support systems for resolution. (shrink)

Paving the way for modern feminist thinking, Mary Wollstonecraft dared to challenge traditional eighteenth-century attitudes towards women. First published in 1787, this book discusses how girls can best be educated to become valuable wives and mothers. It argues that women can offer the most effective contribution to society if they are brought up to display sound morals, character and intellect, rather than superficial social graces. Wollstonecraft later developed her ideas in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which (...) she attacked the educational restrictions imposed upon women. Her writings formed a cornerstone of the battle for women's rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Prompting deeper reflection upon the role and status of women in modern society, the present work remains an instructive and provocative read for those seeking to learn about the roots of feminism in its social and historical context. (shrink)

Retaliation against whistleblowers is a well-recognized problem, yet there is little explanation for why uninvolved peers choose to retaliate through ostracism. We conduct two experiments in which participants take the role of a peer third-party observer of theft and subsequent whistleblowing. We manipulate injunctive norms and descriptive norms. Both experiments support the core of our theoretical model, based on social intuitionist theory, such that moral judgments of the acts of wrongdoing and whistleblowing influence the perceived likeability of each actor and (...) ultimately influence intention to ostracize each actor and indicate more willingness to ostracize the whistleblower than the wrongdoer. When we vary norms for the wrongdoing in Experiment 1, we find that descriptive and injunctive norms indirectly influence intentions to ostracize both the wrongdoer and whistleblower. These relationships are serially mediated by the observers’ moral judgments of the act and likeability of the actor. When we vary norms for whistleblowing in Experiment 2, the injunctive norm manipulation affected moral judgment of the action of whistleblowing, and we do not observe any other significant effects of the norm manipulations on moral judgments of the actions of wrongdoing or whistleblowing. (shrink)

According to a profile in The Guardian , Mary Midgley is 'the foremost scourge of scientific pretensions in this country; someone whose wit is admired even by those who feel she sometimes oversteps the mark'. Considered one of Britain's finest philosophers, Midgley exposes the illogical logic of poor doctrines that shelter themselves behind the prestige of science. Always at home when taking on the high priests of evolutionary theory - Dawkins, Wilson and their acolytes - she has famously described (...) evolution as 'the creation-myth of our age'. In Evolution as a Religion , she examines how science comes to be used as a substitute for religion and points out how badly that role distorts it. As ever, her argument is flawlessly insightful: a punchy, compelling, lively indictment of these misuses of science. Both the book and its author are true classics of our time. (shrink)

In this chapter, Mary Whiton Calkins examines available conceptions of time and develops her own reconceptualization of it.

"Charming, interesting, thought-provoking and a great read." Rosalind Hursthouse The daughter of a pacifist rector who answered "No!" when his congregation asked him "Is everything in the bible true?", perhaps Mary Midgley was destined to become a philosopher. Yet few would have thought this inquisitive, untidy, nature-loving child would become "one of the sharpest critical pens in the west." This is her remarkable story. Probably the only philosopher to have been in Vienna on the eve of its invasion by (...) Nazi Germany in 1938 and dance in Trafalgar Square on VE day seven year later, she studied philosophy at Oxford in the same year as Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot, all of whom became close friends. Midgley tells us in vivid and humorous fashion how they cut a swathe through the arid landscape of 1950s British philosophy, writing and arguing - often with each other - about the grand themes of character, beauty and the meaning of rudeness while the spectral figure of Ludwig Wittgenstein hovered in the background. She also charts the highs and lows of philosophy and academia in Britain. On joining the Reading philosophy department on £400 a year in 1949, she doubled its staff complement. But her many years at Newcastle University - where Mike Brearley, who later captained England at cricket, also used to teach - were rewarded with the closure of the philosophy department in the 1980s. The mother of three children, her journey is also one of a woman who in the 1950s and 1960s was fighting to combine a professional career with raising a family. In startling contrast to many of the academic stars of her generation, we learn that Midgley nearly became a novelist and started writing philosophy only when in her fifties, suggesting that Minerva's owl really does fly at dusk. Plainly told like her philosophy, this is an elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching all too rarely acknowledged today. (shrink)

"Multiverse" cosmologies imagine our universe as just one of a vast number of others. While this idea has captivated philosophy, religion, and literature for millennia, it is now being considered as a scientific hypothesis--with different models emerging from cosmology, quantum mechanics, and string theory. Beginning with ancient Atomist and Stoic philosophies, Mary-Jane Rubenstein links contemporary models of the multiverse to their forerunners and explores the reasons for their recent appearance. One concerns the so-called fine-tuning of the universe: nature's constants (...) are so delicately calibrated that it seems they have been set just right to allow life to emerge. For some thinkers, these "fine-tunings" are evidence of the existence of God; for others, however, and for most physicists, "God" is an insufficient scientific explanation. Hence the allure of the multiverse: if all possible worlds exist somewhere, then like monkeys hammering out Shakespeare, one universe is bound to be suitable for life. Of course, this hypothesis replaces God with an equally baffling article of faith: the existence of universes beyond, before, or after our own, eternally generated yet forever inaccessible to observation or experiment. In their very efforts to sidestep metaphysics, theoretical physicists propose multiverse scenarios that collide with it and even produce counter-theological narratives. Far from invalidating multiverse hypotheses, Rubenstein argues, this interdisciplinary collision actually secures their scientific viability. We may therefore be witnessing a radical reconfiguration of physics, philosophy, and religion in the modern turn to the multiverse. (shrink)

The current picture of the history of taxonomy incorporates A. J. Cain's claim that Linnaeus strove to apply the logical method of definition taught by medieval followers of Aristotle. Cain's argument does not stand up to critical examination. Contrary to some published statements, there is no evidence that Linnaeus ever studied logic. His use of the words “genus” and “species” ruined the meaning they had in logic, and “essential” meant to him merely “taxonomically useful.” The essentialism story, a narrative that (...) has most pre-Darwinian biologists steeped in the world view of Plato and Aristotle, is ill-founded and improbable. (shrink)

In the study of gender and society, science is a strategic analytic research site—because of the hierarchical nature of gendered relations, generally, and the hierarchy of science, particularly. Academic science, especially, is crucial to, and revealing of, status in science and society. This article focuses on three questions: What is the status of women in scientific careers and the role of graduate education in these careers? What are the implications for the analysis of gender? Where can we intervene, and how? (...) In addressing these questions, the arguments concentrate on the social and organizational context of science and its relationship to gender and status. (shrink)

Human Nature offers a wide-ranging and holistic view of human nature from all perspectives: scientific, historical, and sociological. Mary Clark takes the most recent data from a dozen or more fields, and works it together with clarifying anecdotes and thought-provoking images to challenge conventional Western beliefs with hopeful new insights. Balancing the theories of cutting-edge neuroscience with the insights of primitive mythologies, Mary Clark provides down-to-earth suggestions for peacefully resolving global problems. Human Nature builds up a coherent, and (...) above all positive, picture of who we really are. (shrink)

The phenomenon of multimodality is central to our everyday interaction. 'Hybrid' modes of communication that combine traditional uses of language with imagery, tagging, hashtags and voice-recognition tools have become the norm. Bringing together concepts of meaning and communication across a range of subject areas, including education, media studies, cultural studies, design and architecture, the authors uncover a multimodal grammar that moves away from rigid and language-centered understandings of meaning. They present the first framework for describing and analysing different forms of (...) meaning across text, image, space, body, sound and speech. Succinct summaries of the main thinkers in the fields of language, communications and semiotics are provided alongside rich examples to illustrate the key arguments. A history of media including the genesis of digital media, Unicode, Emoji, XML and HTML, MP3 and more is covered. This book will stimulate new thinking about the nature of meaning, and life itself, and will serve practitioners and theorists alike. (shrink)

With the challenge of communicating climate science in the United States and making progress in international negotiations on climate change there is a need for other approaches. The moral issues of ecological degradation and climate justice need to be integrated into social consciousness, political legislation, and climate treaties. Both science and religion can contribute to this integration with differentiated language but shared purpose. Recognizing the limits of both science and religion is critical to finding a way forward for addressing the (...) critical challenges of climate change. How we value nature and human–Earth relations is crucial to this. We need a broader environmental ethics in dialogue with the science of climate change. (shrink)

Between 1937 and 1940 the Taxonomic Principles Committee of the newly-founded Association for the Study of Systematics in Relation to General Biology (later the Systematics Association) attempted to define the relationship between evolution and taxonomy. The people who took part in the discussion were W.T. Calman, C.R.P. Diver, J.S.L. Gilmour, J.S. Huxley, W.D. Lang, J.R. Norman, R. Melville, O.W. Richards, M.A. Smith, T.A. Sprague, H. Hamshaw Thomas, W.B. Turrill, B.P. Uvarov, A.F. Watkins, E.I. White, and A.J. Wilmott. Most of the (...) botanists asserted that taxonomy was a practical matter to be kept distinct from phylogenetic speculation, and most of the zoologists insisted that taxonomists must strive to represent evolution if they wished to be scientific. The disagreement seemed to be hardening rather than approaching compromise when World War Two stopped the committee's work. (shrink)

This article explains how li 禮 or ‘ritual propriety’ is the ‘body language’ of ren 仁 or the authentic expression of our humanity. Li and ren are interdependent aspects of a larger creative human way (rendao 仁道) that can be conceptually distinguished as follows: li refers to the ritualized social form of appropriate conduct and ren to the more general, authentically human spirit this expresses. Li is the social instrument for self-cultivation and the vehicle of harmonious human interaction. More, li (...) must mean something that is effectively communicated to others for an authentic, human (ren) interaction to occur. Li is the body language of ren in being the ritual vehicle for its’ expression; however, li is underdetermined by ren and so must be distinguished from it in on further grounds: authentic human activity must not just be equivocated with social convention because conclusively establishing whether a particular action is li (or is a truly ren action) is impossible. As a result, li is often confused with social power and privilege that is easier to empirically identify than ren conduct is, but this is a mistake since li has to express ren or it is not li at all. The inescapable ambiguity of li – an ambiguity that attaches to any language – can be critiqued by the Western view that sees something ‘essential’ to the ‘self,’ and that makes one a ‘self’ in and of oneself and not in a way that depends on others. I show that such Western individualism – while resting on a fundamentally different way of thinking of being a person and living a good life – does not reduce Confucian ritual to being an instrument for social discrimination and subordination. My argument is indebted to twentieth-century philosophy of language in the West that offered the idea that some words are actions. (shrink)