This paper aims to investigate some important elements of the thought of George Bernard Shaw, more commonly known as one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century. Shaw’s philosophy dwells on the relationship between man and nature and especially the concept of freedom. Among all his works, it was decided here to analyse Saint Joan. In re-imagining the historical Joan as a heroine in a play of ideas, Shaw made use of the known facts about Joan of Arc (...) and Joan’s statements at her trial. Nonetheless, he made changes to emphasize her personal dignity and independence by contrast with the tyranny of institutions. Although he departed from the historical background, whitewashed her adversaries, and condensed episodes in Joan’s biography, he sought to be true to her confidence, courage, integrity, and common sense. His theatrical presentation is, in some respects, at odds with the Preface that accompanies the published play. (shrink)

Ayn Rand's career as a writer of fiction, accordingly, was preceded and accompanied by her work on the system of philosophic thought she ultimately called Objectivism. This chapter introduces her writing by showing how the chosen actions of a life consciously devoted to a conscious purpose were integrated with the texts she crafted, in both fiction and non‐fiction. Ayn Rand's major project was The Fountainhead. The money from the movie rights to The Fountainhead bought Ayn Rand time to begin her (...) next novel, Atlas Shrugged. Whereas the theme of The Fountainhead was individualism versus collectivism, not in politics but in man's soul, The Strike (as Atlas Shrugged was initially called) was designed to dramatize the conflict between individualism and collectivism within the political/economic realm. Rand was active in the American Writers Association and the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. (shrink)

This is the first scholarly study of Atlas Shrugged, covering in detail the historical, literary, and philosophical aspects of Ayn Rand's magnum opus. Topics explored in depth include the history behind the novel's creation, publication, and reception; its nature as a romantic novel; and its presentation of a radical new philosophy.

The essays in this collection treat historical, literary, and philosophical topics related to Ayn Rand's Anthem, an anti-utopia fantasy set in the future. The first book-length study on Anthem, this collection covers subjects such as free will, political freedom, and the connection between freedom and individual thought and privacy.

Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, offers an early form of the author's nascent philosophy—the philosophy Rand later called Objectivism. Robert Mayhew's collection of entirely new essays brings together pre-eminent scholars of Rand's writing. In part a history of We the Living, from its earliest drafts to the Italian film later based upon it, Mayhew's collection goes on to explore the enduring significance of Rand's first novel as a work both of philosophy and of literature.

A dazzling blend of business vision, history, social psychology, and economics, The Support Economy starts with a compelling premise: People have changed more than the corporations upon which their well-being depends. In the chasm that now separates the new individuals from the old organizations is the opportunity to forge a capitalism suited to our times and so unleash a vast new potential for wealth creation. In recent years, many books have offered fixes for this crisis, but they have dealt only (...) with its symptoms. The Support Economy is the first book to critically examine its cause: Managerial capitalism has outlived the society it was once designed to serve. It successfully achieved the efficient production of goods and services, but today's individuals want more. They want to take their lives into their own hands and are ready to pay for the support and advocacy necessary to fulfill that yearning. The next leap forward in wealth creation depends upon developing a new capitalism that speaks to the needs of people today. The Support Economy will be the next "must read" big think book. It speaks to every business and technology leader, as well as every reader interested in the future of the economy and society. (shrink)

Commentators commonly assume that Descartes regards it as a function of the passions to inform us or teach us which things are beneficial and which are harmful. As a result, they tend to infer that Descartes regards the passions as an appropriate guide to what is beneficial or harmful. In this paper I argue that this conception of the role of the passions in Descartes is mistaken. First, in spite of a number of texts appearing to show the contrary, I (...) argue that Descartes does not regard it as the role of the passions to inform us about what is beneficial or harmful. Second, although Descartes calls the passions good and useful, I argue that Descartes does not think we should allow ourselves to be guided by them. When we recognize that the function of the passions is largely motivational and not informative, we can more easily understand Descartes's practical advice in The Passions of the Soul that happiness requires us to guide our passions instead of letting our passions guide us. (shrink)

Comparative pride—that is, pride in how one compares to others in some respect—is often thought to be warranted. In this paper, I argue that this common position is mistaken. The paper begins with an analysis of how things seem when a person feels pride. Pride, I claim, presents some aspect of the self with which one identifies as being worthy. Moreover, in some cases, it presents this aspect of the self as something one is responsible for. I then go on (...) to argue that when the focus of one's pride is comparative, things are never as pride makes them seem. The core problem is that if the performance in which one takes pride is really valuable, the fact that it is superior to the performance of others does nothing to contribute to that value. I conclude with a discussion of why so many are inclined to validate comparative pride and a response to those who claim that comparisons are essential to pride because they must be used to set standards of excellence. (shrink)

Does the decision to relax by taking a drive rather than by taking a walk cause harm? In particular, do the additional carbon emissions caused by such a decision make anyone worse off? Recently several philosophers have argued that the answer is no, and on this basis have gone on to claim that act-consequentialism cannot provide a moral reason for individuals to voluntarily reduce their emissions. The reasoning typically consists of two steps. First, the effect of individual emissions on the (...) weather is miniscule: the planet’s meteorological system is so large, and the size of individual emissions so tiny, that whatever impact an individual emission has on the weather must be vanishingly small. Second, vanishingly small impacts aren’t morally relevant because no one could possibly tell the difference between such an impact occurring and it not occurring. In this paper, we show why both steps are mistaken, and hence why act-consequentialism implies that each of us has an individual obligation to do what we can to stop damaging the climate, including by refraining from, or perhaps by purchasing offsets against, our own individual luxury carbon emissions. (shrink)

Descartes's approach to practical judgments about what is beneficial or harmful, or what to pursue or avoid, is almost exactly the opposite of his approach to theoretical judgments about the true nature of things. Instead of the cautious skepticism for which Descartes is known, throughout his ethical writings he recommends developing the habit of making firm judgments and resolutely carrying them out, no matter how doubtful and uncertain they may be. Descartes, strikingly, takes irresolution to be the source of remorse (...) and repentance, of vice, and of a weak soul. In order to explain its dangerousness, this essay offers an analysis of irresolution as a failure of the will to determine itself to follow a judgment in the face of ignorance or uncertainty. This analysis connects irresolution to weakness of will and explains why Descartes regards resolution as an essential component of virtue. (shrink)

Although downloading music through unapproved channels is illegal, statistics indicate that it is widespread. The following study examines the attitudes and perceptions of college students that are potentially engaged in music downloading. The methodology includes a content analysis of the recommendations written to answer an ethical vignette. The vignette presented the case of a subject who faces the dilemma of whether or not to download music illegally. Analyses of the final reports indicate that there is a vast and inconsistent array (...) of actions and underlying feelings toward digital music downloading. The findings reveal inconsistencies between participants’ recommendations (what the subject should do) and their attitudes and opinions on the matter (what they would do in a similar situation). These inconsistencies support the notion that as technology evolves, it creates discrepancies between the way things are and the way the law expects them to be, leaving society in a muddle, trying to reconcile the two. What remains to be seen is whether the discrepancy in the case of music downloading becomes extreme enough that the law changes to accommodate an increasingly prevalent behavior, or whether new business models will emerge to bridge the gap between legality and reality. (shrink)

Contemporary moral egalitarians hold that all people have equal moral standing and that we deserve this standing in virtue of satisfying some descriptive criterion. These two claims appear to be in tension, however, as none of the proposed criteria are attributes that all people possess equally. Many egalitarians have hoped to eliminate this tension by holding that the descriptive criterion of moral standing is a "range property" – that is, a property one either possesses fully or not at all. I (...) argue that the prospects of this strategy succeeding are not good. The problems I raise stem from the vagueness of the egalitarians’ descriptive criteria. Appealing to what I call the moral ideal of proportionality, I show that this vagueness forces us to allow that moral standing can be possessed to finely differentiated degrees. But once this is granted, it is difficult to see how the claim that all people are moral equals can be justified. (shrink)

The idea that all people are moral equals enjoys broad support. Practically speaking, there is no doubt that this is a great moral victory. Inegalitarian views are often morally arbitrary, and many have been used to support self-serving and deeply harmful actions and policies. Coming, as it does, on the heels of ideas of racial, ethnic, religious, and gender-based superiority, there is no question that the world is a far better place for our commitment to the idea that all (normal (...) adult) humans deserve to be shown equal moral respect or concern. (shrink)

(Shoshana Smith now goes by her married name, Shoshana Brassfield: http://philpapers.org/profile/37640) Descartes famously claims that everything we perceive clearly and distinctly is true. Although this rule is fundamental to Descartes’s theory of knowledge, readers from Gassendi and Leibniz onward have complained that unless Descartes can say explicitly what clear and distinct perception is, how we know when we have it, and why it cannot be wrong, then the rule is empty. I offer a detailed analysis of clear and (...) distinct perception, showing how Descartes answers these questions. Many doubts about the usefulness of the clarity and distinctness rule arise from the mistaken assumption that in clear and distinct perception, like sense perception, we must be able to establish a correspondence between perception and reality before we can have knowledge. I show that Descartes has a different metaphysical picture of clear and distinct perception. Clear and distinct perception is direct perception, typically of essences. On this view, by relying on the intellect instead of the senses, we can have direct perception not only of our own ideas, but also of a mind-independent reality. Because clear and distinct perception is direct perception, problems of correspondence do not arise. My account of clear and distinct perception also yields unique insight into other issues in Descartes, such as the Cartesian Circle and the doctrine of the free creation of the eternal truths. Completed at the University of California, 2005. Dissertation advisers: Janet Broughton, Hannah Ginsborg, Anthony A. Long. ProQuest UMI: 3187156. (shrink)

Premeiotic association of homologous chromosomes in the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been shown, by means of fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH)(1,2). Time course and mutant studies show that the premeiotic associations are disrupted upon entry into meiosis, to be reestablished shortly before synapsis. The data are consistent with a model in which multiple, unstable interactions bring homologues together, prior to stable joining by recombination(3).

This paper deals with problems that vagueness raises for choices involving evaluative tradeoffs. I focus on a species of such choices, which I call ‘qualitative barrier cases.’ These are cases in which a qualitatively significant tradeoff in one evaluative dimension for a given improvement in another dimension could not make an option better all things considered, but a merely quantitative tradeoff for the given improvement might. Trouble arises, however, when one of the options constitutes a borderline case of an evaluative (...) kind. I argue that in such cases we can neither affirm nor deny that trading off losses in one evaluative dimension for gains in another yields a better outcome. Theoretically, this result provides a way to defuse an argument that has been presented by both Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels that purports to show that the ‘better than’ relation is intransitive. Practically, it allows us to undermine the claim that rational agents are better off withholding their contribution to a public good in certain instances of the free-rider problem, and thus to take an important step towards solving these problems. (shrink)

How cautious should regulators be? A standard answer is consequentialist: regulators should be just cautious enough to maximize expected social value. This paper charts the prospects of a nonconsequentialist - and more precautionary - alternative. More specifically, it argues that a contractualism focused on ex ante consent can motivate the following regulatory criterion: regulators should permit a socially beneficial risky activity only if no one can be expected to be made worse off by it. Broadly speaking, there are two strategies (...) regulators can use to help risky activities satisfy this criterion: regulators can mandate strict safety standards that protect those who would otherwise stand to lose, and they can require that some of the benefits of the activity be redirected to them. In developing these themes, the paper aims to provide a theoretical grounding for those who oppose using risk-cost-benefit analysis as the primary regulatory standard, and in particular, for advocates of the precautionary principle. (shrink)

Understanding disgustingness is philosophically important partly because claims about disgustingness play a prominent role in moral discourse and practice. It is also important because disgustingness has been used to illustrate the promise of “neo‐sentimentalism.” Recently developed by moral philosophers such as David Wiggins, John McDowell, Simon Blackburn. Justin D'Arms and Dan Jacobson, neo‐sentimentalism holds that for a thing to be disgusting is for it to be “appropriate” to respond to it with disgust. In this paper, I argue that from what (...) we currently know about the disgust response. these accounts are mistaken. Instead, disgustingness is best understood as a descriptive property: fundamentally, things that are disgusting‐for‐S are things that possess triggers for S's disgust mechanism. Theoretically, my account puts pressure on neo‐sentimentalists to show that the responses they appeal to can anchor normative properties. Practically, my account shows that we must abandon authoritative claims that certain things really are—or are not—disgusting. (shrink)

Since materially opulent lifestyles are a significant cause of environmental degradation, environmentalists often call for us to live more simply. This call is typically focused on consumption. But our environmental footprint is a function of our paid work as well as our purchases. Consequently, environmentalists should also urge us to work less. Defending this claim is the project of this paper. Reducing our economic productivity, I argue, can often be expected to make both the world and our characters better. And, (...) contrary to what some have suggested, working less than is normal needn’t involve unfairly free-riding on the productive efforts of others. (shrink)

Envy of others' material possessions is a potent motivator of consumerism. This makes it a prudentially and morally hazardous emotional response. After outlining these hazards, I present an analysis of the emotion of envy. Envy, I argue, presents things in the following way: the envier lacks some good that her rival possesses; this difference between them is bad for the envier; this difference reflects poorly on the envier's worth; and this difference is undeserved. I then discuss the conditions under which (...) these presentations can be satisfied by differences in material possessions. My conclusion is that no difference in material possessions can simultaneously be all the ways envy presents it as being. Consequently, economic envy is systematically irrational: it is never a warranted response to the distribution of material wealth. Recognising this bolsters the prudential and moral case for reducing the degree to which we feel it and for resisting the inclinations it gives rise to when we do. (shrink)

We force a property of cardinals first proved relatively consistent by Sargsyan, that of being supercompact but not equation image-supercompact, starting from a model of set theory which does not satisfy equation image and that contains supercompact cardinals.

This article offers a critical discourse analysis of the Israeli television series In Treatment. The series unfolds the therapy sessions of a 40-year-old single female attorney with her therapist. The main objective of the study was to identify the scripted tactics or narrative strategies that establish and maintain singlehood. The findings indicate that the therapeutic discourse plays a central role in the construction and interpretation of single women’s subjectivities, prompting a narrative that encourages the ‘discarding’ of singlehood as well as (...) therapeutic work slanted towards a more familial and maternally oriented subjectivity. This narrative unfolds through two dominant scripted tactics: the symbolic annihilation of singlehood and the construction of feminine identity hierarchies. Moreover, it is also prompted by the discursive alliance between the therapeutic discourse and the postfeminist discourse. Consequently, long-term singlehood is portrayed as an unnatural and pathological life script characterized by its lack and deficiency. Furthermore, as opposed to childless singlehood, single motherhood by choice emerges as a preferred and desirable life option. The category of single motherhood is endowed with new forms of legitimacy, reinforcing new-old patriarchal and postfeminist conceptions of women’s reproductive potential and what is considered to be women’s primary life purpose. (shrink)

Casi todos hemos tenido la experiencia de encontrarnos con alguien lejos de casa, que, para nuestra sorpresa, resulta compartir con nosotros un conocido mu- tuo. Esta clase de experiencia ocurre con la suficiente frecuencia como para que nuestro idioma proporcione un cliché, para proferirlo en el momento apropiado, al descubrir conocidos comunes. Decimos "el mundo es un pañuelo".

This paper explores the Eichmann trial in its dimension as a living, powerful event, whose impact is defined and measured by the fact that it is "not the same for all." I examine this legal event from two perspectives: Hannah Arendt's and my own. I pledge my reading against Arendt's, in espousing the State's vision of the trial, but in interpreting the legal meaning of this vision us one that exceeds its own deliberateness and distinct from the State's ideology. I (...) use Nietzsche's terms to contrast "critical history" with "monumental history." Whereas the official State vision of the trial is, I propose, precisely one of "monumental history, " Arendt's vision offers a substitutive "critical history." I analyze, one against the other, what I call the monumental legal vision of the Eichmann trial and the critical vision offered by Arendt. Exploring thus the monumental versus the critical as two opposed but non-exclusive and, in fact, profoundly complementary perspectives, I examine, side by side, the Eichmann trials' monumental focus on the victims and Arendt's critical objections to this focus: her objections, I show, are based in a jurisprudential conservatism coexisting with a historiographical radicalism. The Eichmann trial, in my view, is on the contrary and diametrically, historiographically conservative, but jurisprudentially revolutionary. I argue that Arendt failed to see the way in which the trial in effect did not simply repeat the victim's story, but historically created it for the first time. I submit, in other words, that the Eichmann trial legally created a radically original and new event: not a rehearsal of a given story, but a groundbreaking narrative event that is itself historically and legally unprecedented. Examining the trial's transformation of victims into prosecution witnesses, I analyze the victim-oriented focus of the trial as s legal process of translation of private traumas into public ones and as a public scene of the recovery of language and legal subjecthood by victims who were formerly defined by the oppressor's language and who were, therefore, not just injured, but essentially robbed of a language in which to articulate their injury and name their victimization. I argue that the Eichmann trial expanded the space available for moral deliberation in creating a new legal language: the trial was the victim's trial only insofar as it was now the victims who, against all odds, were precisely writing their own history. To enable such a writing, the Eichmann trial had to enact not simply memory, but memory as change. It had to dramatize upon its legal stage before the audience nothing less than a conceptual revolution in the victim. And this, in fact, is what the trial did This historically unprecedented revolution in the victim that was operated in and by the Eichmann trial is, I suggest, the trial's major contribution not only to Jews, but to history, to law, to culture - to humanity at large. I further argue that as a singular legal event, the Eichmann trial calls for a rethinking - and sets in motion a transvaluation - of the structures and the values of conventional criminal law. I submit that the quintessence of the Eichmann trial is the acquisition of semantic authority by victims. It was the newly acquired semantic and historical authority of this revolutionary story that, for the first time, created what we know today as the Holocaust: a theme of international discussion and world conversation designating the experience of the victims and referring to the crime against the Jewish people independently from the political and military story of the Second World War. (shrink)

The responses to this discovery, in the press and elsewhere, seem to focus on the act of passing judgment, a judgment that reopens with some urgency the question of the ethical implications of de Man’s work and, by extension, of the whole school of critical approach known as “deconstruction.”The discourse of moral judgment takes as its target three distinct domains of apparent ethical misconduct:1. the collaborationist political activities themselves;2. de Man’s apparent erasure of their memory—his radical “forgetting” of his early (...) past;3. the silence that de Man chose to keep about his past: the absence of public confession and public declaration of remorse.The question of ethics thus seems to be linked to the separate questions of the nature of political activities, of the nature of memory, and of the nature of silence. It is judged unethical, of course, to engage in acts that lent support to Germany’s wartime position; but it is also judged unethical to forget; and unethical, furthermore, to keep silent in relation to the war and to the Holocaust. The silence is interpreted as a deliberate concealment, a suppression of accountability that can only mean a denial of responsibility on de Man’s part. Shoshana Felman, the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Yale University, is the author of The Literary Speech Act: Don Juan with Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages , Writing and Madness: Literature/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis , and Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture: Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight . She is also the editor of Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading—Otherwise . She is currently working on a book entitled Testimony in History, Literature and Psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Artículo considerado un clásico en el ámbito de la psicología social, describe los resultados de la investigación realizada por su autor en los años sesenta del siglo pasado, los que muestran que una considerable mayoría de personas normales, en acatamiento a la autoridad, pueden realizar conductas éticamente reprobables que causan daño a otros. Estas conclusiones confirman, experimentalmente, la hipótesis de la Escuela de Frankfurt de que existe en todos nosotros una dimensión autoritaria de la personalidad, que en la mayoría de (...) las personas genera una obediencia incondicional a la autoridad. (shrink)

The Babylonian Talmud has reached us in multiple versions in medieval manu- scripts, early printed editions, and in citations in the works of medieval and early modern scholars. The field of Talmud criticism has developed criteria for working with these materials and the scholar E. S. Rosenthal famously theorized about the implications of textual variants for the history of the Talmud’s redaction. Tractate Temurah of the Babylonian Talmud received special attention due to the frequency and, at times, unique usage of (...) the term, lishana ’aḥarina, meaning “alternative textual reading,” found in it. In Temurah the term lishana ’aḥarina does not only signal a difference in formulation, as in other tractates of the Talmud, but some- times also seems to introduce a separately redacted text of the tractate that was integrated into a widespread and known base text. (shrink)

This article develops and defends an account of prudential value that is inspired by ideas found in Thoreau’s Walden. The core claim is that prudential value consists in responding appropriately to those things that make the world better, and avoiding those things that make it worse. The core argument is that this is our aim in so far as we are evaluative creatures, and that our evaluative nature is essential to us in the context of inquiring into our good. I (...) also illustrate how the account can be developed to inform an intuitively plausible theory of well-being, and conclude by discussing its virtues relative to some contemporary alternatives. (shrink)

The article deals with the concept or the image of God in the Hebrew Bible and the various understandings and interpretations of it by Jewish thinkers through generations. The biblical text, full of contradictions and anthropomorphic assertions about God, was a source of discomfort for Jewish philosophers and theologians. Therefore, the sublimation and distillation of the text was necessary, and it was done by use of different hermeneutical methods. The article deals with various attributes of the biblical God, and presents (...) different theological and philosophical interpretations of that issue by major Jewish thinkers. (shrink)

The article presents the conception of interreligious dialogue developed by Abraham Joshua Heschel in his legendary text No Religion Is an Island. Then, it illustrates the approach to this issue by the next generation of Jewish thinkers, Heschel’s disciples, Harold Kasimow and Byron Sherwin. Another interesting Heschel’s disciple is Alon Goshen-Gottstein who takes a step further in his explicating interfaith dialogue. The last part of the article analyses the understanding of Kasimow and Sherwin of the thought and deeds of Pope (...) John Paul II in the field of interreligious dialogue, and especially, in the attitude of the Catholic Church toward Jews. (shrink)

I consider ethics to be the essence and the end of the philosophy of both Wittgenstein and Nietzsche. While in Nietzsche’s case this statement is quite obvious, especially in the light of his Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals, one may think, mistakenly in my opinion, that Wittgenstein thought was very little related to ethical problems for they were for him a part of the domain which one must be silent about. I argue that the aim of (...) Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is a sort of secular salvation. I call it salvation having in mind some the ideas common to both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein for whom the concepts of freeing, releasing, healing and overcoming oneself, as well as of removing misunderstandings, were main aims of their philosophies. It is a salvation because both philosophers strove for a change in human life, a revolution within the self, and they evidently did not accept our ‘being in the world’ as it is. In conclusion I argue that Nietzsche and Wittgenstein are philosophers who aimed to define the good available to humans, and the life worthy of humanity. Key words WITTGENSTEIN, NIETZCHE, ETHICS. (shrink)

According to most contemporary theorists, free riding on the cooperative contributions of others is unfair. At the same time, obligations to contribute to cooperative schemes can compel conformity with conventional practices, and can do so to a degree that poses a real threat to individuality. This paper exposes this tension between fairness and individuality, and proposes a way to resolve it. The resolution depends on an alternative approach to understanding fairness—one that appeals to the relational goods fairness is meant to (...) maintain. In particular, norms of fairness protect against the interactions within a relationship becoming disrespectful. Many instances of free riding are indeed disrespectful and hence unfair. But this is not always so: one can choose to live a lifestyle that fails to return the benefits their community provides without disrespecting one's fellows. It is thus possible to free ride without being unfair, and so duties of fairness need not add to those already formidable forces that threaten to extinguish valuable individuality. (shrink)