This essay explores the development of Simone Weil's conception of obedience across religious, political, and ethical contexts. By bringing together these strands of Weil's thought, it aims to illuminate some important connections in her treatment of obedience throughout these diverse topics. The author argues that Weil's political treatment of obedience is deeply influenced by ideas in Christian thought, and that this account is situated within an understanding of obedience in the natural world which is itself ethically (...) loaded. Hence it is suggested that Weil's account of obedience has something to offer philosophy today: namely, a conception of obedience which recognises the practical and ethical need for obeying others, but which is distinct from the mere submission to power. (shrink)

Simone Weil is one of the most profound thinkers of the twentieth century. Her writings encompass an extraordinary breadth of subjects, including philosophy, religion, sociology, and politics. A political activist and resistance fighter, her accomplishments are even more astonishing in light of her death in 1943 at the age of thirty-four. Whilst Weil was concerned with deep philosophical questions - the nature of human thought and human faculties, the limits of language, and thought's contact with reality through (...) mediation, science and beauty - the full significance of her work has frequently been obscured by her categorization as a purely religious writer or Christian mystic. Simone Weil: Basic Writings is an expertly edited anthology of her most important writings, presenting Weil's philosophy as it relates to politics, the nature of work, human nature in its duality, necessity, beauty and goodness. D. K. Levy and Marina Barabas have translated all the extracts anew, including translations of important notes and references missing from existing English language editions of Weil's work. Following an extensive introduction by D. K. Levy which places Weil's life and thought in context, each section opens with a short introduction situating the chosen passages within Weil's oeuvre. Simone Weil: Basic Writings is an outstanding starting point for anyone seeking an introduction to Weil's philosophy, and also essential reading for students and scholars of Weil's thought in related disciplines. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to introduce the reader to some intellectual origins of Simone Weil’s philosophy through a summary of and comment on her Lectures on Philosophy given when she was a teacher at a girls’ school at Roanne in the Loire region of central France. The article provides a comment on Simone Weil’s Lectures on Philosophy. There is a brief Introduction followed by a summary of Weil’s life which indicates her various interest (...) as a religious thinker, mystic, anarchist, and political activist and some of the important academic commentaries on these aspects of her life and work. The source of the Lectures on Philosophy edited by her pupil Anne Reynaud-Guérithault is then discussed followed by a detailed summary of and comment on the Lectures themselves. They are grouped under five headings which are considered in turn. These are: The materialist point of view; after the discovery of mind; politics and social theory; ethics and aesthetics; miscellaneous topics and essay plans. There is a further discussion of Simone Weil’s later philosophical thought which shows that what she published reveals classical learning and intellectual quality, but also the several antimonies with which she struggled in her thinking, the two major influences on her thought being Ancient Greece and Christianity. There is a short Conclusion and Bibliography. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo queremos desarrollar las nociones que Simone Weil tiene del trabajo humano a lo largo de su obra. Comenzaremos con una revisión de sus primeros escritos políticos y sociales sobre la condición obrera y luego ahondaremos en sus obras influenciadas por la experiencia cristiana. Revisaremos su permanente deseo de poder conjugar el trabajo manual con el trabajo intelectual y las negativas consecuencias que ella ve en su separación, además de su análisis de la condición obrera antes (...) y después de su experiencia de trabajo en las fábricas. Finalmente, intentaremos responder cuál es la postura metafísica y antropológica que reside tras esta propuesta weiliana y las posibilidades de proponer en propiedad la tesis de la filósofa francesa como una noción cristiana del trabajo. Concluiremos resaltando lo que, a nuestro modo de ver, son los principales aportes de la filósofa a una doctrina del trabajo liberador para la condición humana.In this article we want to develop the notions that Simone Weil has of human labor through-out his work. We begin with a review of his early political and social writings on the working condition and then delve into his works influenced by the Christian experience. We will review her permanent desire to be able to combine manual labor with intellectual work and the negative consequences she sees in her separation, as weil as her analysis of the working class before and after her experience of working in factories. Finally, we will try to answer what is the metaphysical and anthropological posture that resides behind this weilian proposal and the possibilities of proposing in property the thesis of the french philosopher as a Christian notion of the work. We will conclude by highlighting what, in our view, are the main contributions of the philosopher to a doctrine of liberating work for the human condition. (shrink)

Emerging from thought-provoking discussions and correspondence Simone Weil had with the Reverend Father Perrin, this classic collection of essays contains her most profound meditations on the relationship of human life to the realm of the transcendant.An enlightening introduction by Leslie Fiedler examines Weil's extraordinary roles as a philosophy teacher turned mystic. "One of the most neglected resources of our century ", Waiting for God will continue to influence spiritual and political thought for centuries to come.

This volume brings together a range of influential essays by distinguished philosophers and political theorists on the issue of global justice. Global justice concerns the search for ethical norms that should govern interactions between people, states, corporations and other agents acting in the global arena, as well as the design of social institutions that link them together. The volume includes articles that engage with major theoretical questions such as the applicability of the ideals of social and economic equality to (...) the global sphere, the degree of justified partiality to compatriots, and the nature and extent of the responsibilities of the affluent to address global poverty and other hardships abroad. It also features articles that bring the theoretical insights of global justice thinkers to bear on matters of practical concern to contemporary societies, such policies associated with immigration, international trade, and climate change. -/- Contents: Introduction; Part I Standards of Global Justice: (i) Assistance-Based Responsibilities to the Global Poor: Famine, affluence and mortality, Peter Singer; We don't owe them a thing! A tough-minded but soft-hearted view of aid to the faraway needy, Jan Narveson; Does distance matter morally to the duty to rescue? Frances Myrna Kamm. (ii) Contribution-Based Responsibilities to the Global Poor: 'Assisting' the global poor, Thomas Pogge; Should we stop thinking about poverty in terms of helping the poor?, Alan Patten; Poverty and the moral significance of contribution, Gerhard Øverland. (iii)Cosmopolitans, Global Egalitarians, and its Critics: The one and the many faces of cosmopolitanism, Catherine Lu; Cosmopolitan justice and equalizing opportunities, Simon Caney; The problem of global justice, Thomas Nagel; Against global egalitarianism, David Miller; Egalitarian challenges to global egalitarianism: a critique, Christian Barry and Laura Valentini. Part II Pressing Global Socioeconomic Issues: (i) Governing the Flow of People: Immigration and freedom of association, Christopher Wellman; Democratic theory and border coercion: no right to unilaterally control your own borders, Arash Abizadeh; Justice in migration: a closed borders utopia?, Lea Ypi. (ii) Climate Change: Global environment and international inequality, Henry Shue; Valuing policies in response to climate change: some ethical issues, John Broome; Saved by disaster? Abrupt climate change, political inertia, and the possibility of an intergenerational arms race, Stephen M. Gardiner; Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change, Elinor Ostrom. (iii) International Trade: Responsibility and global labor justice, Iris Marion Young; Property rights and the resource curse, Leif Wenar; Fairness in trade I: obligations arising from trading and the pauper-labor argument, Mathias Risse; Name index. -/- See: www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calctitle=1&pageSubject=483&sort=pubdate&forthcoming=1&title_i d=9958&edition_id=13385. (shrink)

"Anyone interested in Simone Weil will want, and need, to read this superb collection." —Diogenes Allen, Princeton Theological Seminary “These essays—some written by leading specialists in Simone Weil's thought, others by prominent theologians and philosophers of religion—are especially valuable not only for elucidating Weil's reading of Plato but also for showing what one or another form of Christian Platonism can mean for us today.” —James A. Wiseman, O.S.B., Catholic University of America "This remarkable and penetrating collection of (...) essays on Simone Weil's religious philosophy illumines the living intersection between serious metaphysics and ethics. The authors carefully examine this relation that much post-modern reflection has until now only skimmed, but that Weil herself managed to embrace with breathtaking intellectual discipline and self-giving. The book is a bracing testimony to the deep moral consequences of classical ontology and its challenging Christian reorientation." —The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, Ascension Episcopal Church, Pueblo, Colorado In this book a group of renowned international scholars seek to discern the ways in which Simone Weil was indebted to Plato, and how her provocative readings of his work offer challenges to contemporary philosophy, theology, and spirituality. This is the first book in twenty years to systematically investigate Weil’s Christian Platonism. (shrink)

In contrast to the readings that oppose a first 'revolutionary' Simone Weil to a second 'conservative' Simone Weil, this article supports the thesis of a profound continuity and coherence in Weil's political thought, parallel to the overall unity of her philosophy. Just as there is no opposition between her political thought of the early and the late 1930s, there is no opposition between her 'mystical' philosophy from the period in Marseille and her "political" (...) philosophy from the period in London. However, this does not abolish the distance that must be maintained between religion, mysticism and politics, because the "synthesis" of these levels is not historical-political, but eschatological. Ultimately, we show that Weilian thought supports both the dual necessity and the mutual insufficiency of mysticism and politics, which enables it to escape both totalitarian idolatry and the mysticism of a pure afterlife. If she ignores the opposition so common in modern thought between "Amor Dei" and "Amor Mundi", it is because she wishes to comply with the dual Platonic and Christian injunction to bring the Good down into necessity without confusing both, thus making political action the criterion of truth of political thought. (shrink)

This article aims to examine the mystical meanings of food in the texts Gravity and Grace, Waiting for God, and First and Last Notebooks by the French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943). The main questions posed over the course of this study are as follows: How does Weil interpret food in her mystical texts? What relationship do her ideas have with her context of the Second World War, with Judaism, with her body? Are biomedical understandings of behavior, such as anorexia (...) nervosa, applicable to Weil? The methodology will involve an in-depth reading of the three texts mentioned above, sketching the key theories of decreation and affliction. The main thesis of the paper is that food has an irremediably ambiguous status in Weil, marking both the degrading subjection of the human being to the earthly laws of necessity and gravity, and paradoxically, a path to salvation, where, through the spiritual transformation of decreation, the human being eats and is eaten by God. The author argues that this quasi-Christian mysticism must first be understood in Weil’s context of the Second World War, and that it also involves a problematic relationship with Judaism. Moreover, this study contends that interpretations utilizing primarily medical frameworks to understand Weil's food deprivation, such as anorexia nervosa, are insufficient. Such pathologization, as will be demonstrated, neglects the complex and often ambiguous mystical, ethical, and ontological meanings that Weil locates in hunger. (shrink)

This paper argues that the influential French thinker, Simone Weil, has something distinctive and important to offer educational and ethical inquiry. Weil’s ethical theory is considered against the backdrop of her life and work, and in relation to her broader ontological, epistemological and political position. Pivotal concepts in Weil’s philosophy – gravity, decreation and grace – are discussed, and the educational implications of her ideas are explored. The significance of Weil’s thought for educationists lies in the unique (...) emphasis she places on the development of attention, a notion elaborated here via the key themes of truth, beauty and love. (shrink)

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, anarchist, feminist, labor activist and teacher. She was described by T. S. Eliot as "a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints," and by Albert Camus as "the only great spirit of our time." Originally published posthumously in two volumes, these newly reissued notebooks, are among the very few unedited personal writings of Weil's that still (...) survive today. Containing her thoughts on art, love, science, God and the meaning of life, they give context and meaning to Weil's famous works, revealing a unique philosophy in development and offering a rare private glimpse of her singular personality. (shrink)

The present book reflects on the life, work, and legacy of an exceptional and enigmatic woman: the philosopher and French Jewish mystic Simone Weil. It constitutes a testimony so unique that it is impossible to ignore. In a Europe where authoritarian regimes were dominant and heading, in a sinister manner, toward World War II, this woman of fragile health but indomitable spirit denounced the contradictions of the capitalist system, the brutality of Nazism, and the paradox of bourgeois thought. At (...) the same time, her spiritual journey was one of zeal and sorrow--that of a true mystic--but her radical intransigence and passion for freedom kept her from actually approaching the institutional church. Curious and insatiable, she wanted to experience, in the flesh, the suffering of society's least fortunate and the truths of other religions. The reader will need to develop a discerning empathy for Simone Weil's sensibility, beyond her particular passion and zeal, in order to appreciate her in depth. But undeniable are this truly singular woman's authenticity, her capacity to suffer, her identification with the other, her inner passion, her almost magical perception of the depths of the human spirit. And that is why her story merits being told as one of the great witnesses of our age. (shrink)

Résumé — Le rapport de Simone Weil au marxisme est paradoxal en ce qu’il dévoile une fidélité à Marx par-delà les ruptures et les renonciations à la théorie marxiste. Au premier abord, les liens de Weil au marxisme semblent discontinus puisque après avoir adopté certaines idées révolutionnaires pendant ses premières années d’activité politique, elle critique Marx dès les années 1930, et finit apparemment par l’abandonner dans la dernière partie de sa vie. Ce constat, cependant, loin de révéler la disparition (...) lente et inexorable des concepts de Marx, semble plutôt démontrer leur persistance et leurs métamorphoses dans la philosophie de Weil. Nous voudrions ainsi suggérer que sa critique de la révolution elle-même, ainsi que le " christianisme " développé à la suite de son année d’usine, constituent sa façon singulière d’être marxiste dans le moment même où celui-ci semble avoir perdu pour elle toute utilité.— S. Weil’s relationship to Marxism is paradoxical because it unveils a loyalty to Marx in spite of ruptures and renunciations of the Marxist theory. S. Weil’s ties to Marxism seem discontinuous because after having adopted certain revolutionary ideas during her first years of political activism she criticizes Marx in the 30’s and ends up seemingly abandoning him in the last part of her life. This path, however, far from revealing the slow and inexorable disappearance of Marx’s concepts, rather, demonstrates the persistence and metamorphoses in S. Weil’s philosophy. We suggest then, that a criticism of the revolution followed by a kind of Christianity developed in the wake of a year spent in the factory, constitute S. Weil’s own special manner of being Marxist, even though Marxism seems to have become useless to her. (shrink)

Simone Weil was a French philosopher and theologian, political activist and mystical writer. She graduated from the Ecole Normale Superieure, and was licensed to teach philosophy in 1931. For the following six years, Weil taught in a number of lycees and was active in radical politics. ;Beginning in late 1937, Weil had a series of mystical experiences which turned her thoughts and actions toward Catholic belief and the Christian way of action. Though never baptized, she recorded (...) in great detail her spiritual insights and reflections in a series of essays and notebooks that reflect the Christian Platonist tradition of Catholic spirituality. She died in England while working on the staff of the office of the Free French Forces. ;The quest to understand the widely divergent paths of Simone Weil's life and thought has led interpreters to characterize her as a Christian Platonist philosopher, a Catholic spiritual innovator, a mystical theologian, a left-wing political theorist, a critic of modern culture, and a martyr to sacrificial, self-emptying love. The central question about the unity of her thought remains unresolved. This dissertation argues that the unifying idea in her life and thought is the understanding and pursuit of the good of others. ;The Introduction briefly summarizes the importance in her career of the good. The first chapter analyzes Weil's discussion of the good in her student years, and the second examines her metaphysical ideas then. ;Chapters three and four discuss Weil's political philosophy in light of her focus on the synergy of thought and action in the process of understanding and pursuing the good. Chapter five takes a look at Weil's discussion of the cultural roles force and science play in opposition to the good. Finally, chapters six and seven examine in some detail Weil's theological account of the good. ;As a contribution to the study of the thought of Simone Weil, the dissertation shows that much of her intellectual, political and religious career can best be understood as a continuous effort to define the good and to integrate this understanding with actions that attend to it. (shrink)

Simone Weil (1909-1943) is a French philosopher who is also a prominent figure in the tradition of Christian mysticism. In her early philosophical writings and lectures, she describes her understanding of the aim of philosophy as “the Search for the Good”. Very much influenced by Plato, Descartes and Kant, Weil states that God as the absolute Good is beyond known truths and can only be reached through Love. This treatment of love as a destructive power whereby the (...) Self effaces itself in order to get closer to God, echoes a somewhat mystical scheme. Weil believes that the only way to reach such knowledge and therefore God, which in her view is the sole purpose of life and should also be the purpose of philosophy. This dissertation focuses on the grounds that bring her to such conclusions as well as providing an analysis of whether Weil’s philosophical approach as an alternative to metaphysical and ethical problems in philosophy is able to stand firm on its own. (shrink)

It is often claimed by environmental philosophers and green political theorists that liberalism, the dominant tradition of western political philosophy, is too focused on the interests of human individuals to give due weight to the environment for its own sake. In "How to be a Green Liberal", Simon Hailwood challenges this view and argues that liberalism can embrace a genuinely 'green', non-instrumental view of nature. The book's central claim is that nature's 'otherness', its being constituted of independent (...) entities and processes that do not reflect our purposes, is a basis for value and can be incorporated within liberal political philosophy as a fundamental commitment alongside human freedom and equality. Hailwood argues that the conceptual resources already exist within mainstream liberalism for a thoroughly non-instrumental perspective. Adopting a rigorous philosophical approach Hailwood tackles a wide range of themes across environmental ethics, including holistic theories, deep ecology, eco-feminism and eco-anarchism, as well as issues in value theory and political philosophy more generally. In making the case for liberalism's green credentials "How to be a Green Liberal" is a formidable challenge to recent green political theory and will be required reading not only for students of political philosophy but for all those interested in the natural world and man's relationship to it. (shrink)

Workplace spirituality deals with paradoxes. This concept has been taken on board since the late 1980s, but very few human resource managers have realised that workplace spirituality could make an essential contribution to a better understanding of workplace and corporate reality. Increasing numbers of academic papers are being published on this subject but mere remain many grey areas for researchers. The aim of this paper is to use Simone Weil’s philosophy as a reading grid to get an insight (...) into workplace spirituality as a new paradigm of management. Initial studies attempting to apply Weil’s philosophy to management highlight the necessity for all the actors within the organisation to define their job tasks and contents according to their own way of thinking. Our interpretation of Weil’s philosophy also sheds light on the impossibility of dissociating thinking and acting and reminds us that work is done to nourish both the body and the soul. By concentrating on the spirituality of work, we can establish new links between ethics and human resource management. (shrink)

Robert Zaretsky’s The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas offers a nuanced and engaging account of a thinker who to this date is mostly shunned by academic philosophy. As indicated by its subtitle, it explores five key concepts in Weil’s thought that according to Zaretsky “still reso-nate today. Or, I believe, should resonate”, given Weil’s obscurity. By linking each of these con-cepts to a particular episode or development in Weil’s more-than-eventful life, Zaretsky makes both his protagonist (...) and the contemporary challenges she deals with in her writings palpable. Es-pecially the first is no easy task, in view of the many paradoxes that surround Weil’s life and per-sonality: A secular Jew in the search of a Christian God, a pacifist eager to fight in the Spanish Civil war, a rationalist with mystic leanings, “a communist with a small c” (68) mistrustful of par-ties on either side of the political spectrum. Zaretsky demonstrates that it is precisely this ambiva-lence of Weil which makes her such a “subversive” and fascinating author who defies expectations and unnerves her readers. (shrink)

It is often claimed by environmental philosophers and green political theorists that liberalism, the dominant tradition of western political philosophy, is too focused on the interests of human individuals to give due weight to the environment for its own sake. In "How to be a Green Liberal", Simon Hailwood challenges this view and argues that liberalism can embrace a genuinely 'green', non-instrumental view of nature. The book's central claim is that nature's 'otherness', its being constituted of independent (...) entities and processes that do not reflect our purposes, is a basis for value and can be incorporated within liberal political philosophy as a fundamental commitment alongside human freedom and equality. Hailwood argues that the conceptual resources already exist within mainstream liberalism for a thoroughly non-instrumental perspective. Adopting a rigorous philosophical approach Hailwood tackles a wide range of themes across environmental ethics, including holistic theories, deep ecology, eco-feminism and eco-anarchism, as well as issues in value theory and political philosophy more generally. In making the case for liberalism's green credentials "How to be a Green Liberal" is a formidable challenge to recent green political theory and will be required reading not only for students of political philosophy but for all those interested in the natural world and man's relationship to it. (shrink)

In Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks , Simone Weil discusses precursors to Christian religious ideas which can be found in ancient Greek mythology, literature and philosophy. She looks at evidence of "Christian" feelings in Greek literature, notably in Electra, Orestes, and Antigone , and in the Iliad , going on to examine God in Plato, and divine love in creation, as seen by the ancient Greeks.

This volume documents the 16th Münster Lectures in Philosophy and examines five themes that are prominent in the work of philosopher and political theorist Philip Pettit. These themes are: Epistemology and Semantics, Philosophy of Mind, Consequentialism, Group Agency, and Republicanism. The book provides insight into Pettit's work and demonstrates the central role his work plays in a number of contemporary philosophical debates. Pettit’s contributions to the philosophy of mind and action, rational choice theory, the philosophy (...) of the social sciences, as well as metaethics, normative ethics and political philosophy are main points of reference, and have advanced ongoing and initiated new discussions. The book shows that a striking feature of Pettit's work has been the depth of his analyses and arguments regarding individual topics – ranging from rule-following to free will, from group agency to social ontology and the methodology of the social sciences, from a defense of consequentialism to the revival of the republican tradition in the theory of democracy and to value theory, but also their systematic overall coherence. The book contains Pettit’s lecture "Freedom and Other Robustly Demanding Goods", nine critical papers on Pettit’s philosophy, and a reply article entitled "Self-Defense on Five Fronts: A Reply to My Commentators". (shrink)

Inspired by the recovery of natural law and virtue ethics in recent ethical discourse, certain members of the American Maritain Association have written essays to stimulate this recovery further. Their efforts are assembled in this volume, Freedom, Virtue, and the Common Good. Writing under the influence of Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon, they herein examine the requirements of a satisfactory natural law and virtue ethics, broadly understood as a moral philosophy giving primacy to character-formation and to the development (...) of individual and social habits necessary to perfect human life. The ethics herein envisioned is one that must first be grounded in a sound philosophy of the human person. (shrink)

The notion of being-at-home-in-otherness is the distinctive way of thinking of freedom that Hegel develops in his social and political thought. When I am at one with myself in social and political structures they are not external powers to which I am subjected but are rather constitutive of my self-relation, that is my self-conception is mediated andexpandedthrough those objective structures. How successfully Hegel may achieve being-at-home-in-otherness with regard to these objective structures of right in thePhilosophy of Rightis arguable. (...) What is at issue in this paper is however to argue that there is a blind spot in the text with regard to nature. In Ethical Life the rational subject's passions and inclinations are brought into the subject such that she is ‘with herself’ in them; with regard to external nature no such reconciliation is achieved or even attempted. In Abstract Right external nature is effectively dominated by and subsumed into the will and it is never something in which one is with oneself. It remains outside the model of freedom that Hegel develops in thePhilosophy of Right. There is something troubling about this formulation, since it excludes nature from freedom, but also something accurate, as it reflects the unresolved attitude of moderns to the natural world. (shrink)

Is it allowable for your government, or anyone else, to influence or coerce you 'for your own sake'? This is a question about paternalism, or interference with a person's liberty or autonomy with the intention of promoting their good or averting harm, which has created considerable controversy at least since John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Mill famously decried paternalism of any kind, whether carried out by private individuals or the state. In this volume of new essays, leading moral, political (...) and legal philosophers address how to define paternalism, its justification, and the implications for public policy, professional ethics and criminal law. So-called 'libertarian' or non-coercive paternalism receives considerable attention. The discussion addresses the nature of freedom and autonomy and the relation of individuals to law, policy and the state. The volume will interest a wide range of readers in political philosophy, public policy and the philosophy of law. (shrink)

Barely seventeen years into the twenty-first century, our world continues to be plagued by endless wars and violence. Africa is not immune from these crises. As many countries in Africa celebrate more than fifty years of independence from colonial rule, Africa is still the poorest continent in the world. Religious wars, genocides, ethnic and tribal cleansings have come to define the continent’s contemporary history. Corruption, nepotism, dictatorship, disregard for human life, tribalism, and many social vices are normalized realities in many (...) parts of the continent. Rather than despair, a radical refocusing on Africa’s rich history of hospitality that affirms the flourishing of all life ought to be embraced. This article aims to do exactly this by exploring Africa’s role and place in the history of three Abrahamic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While celebrating Africa’s unique role as the gateway for the realization of divine hospitality, this article aims to serve as a witness to an ethic of life that is relevant for the global church’s vision and mission to a pluralistic world and for the mission of the churches of Africa to addressing the social, cultural, and political crises faced by the continent. To achieve these, this work appropriates a comparative theological method that sheds light on the centrality of Africa in these three Abrahamic religions with a bias for the flourishing of life. Keywords: Africa, Hospitality, Life, Christianity, Islam, Judaism. (shrink)

In thePhilosophy of RightHegel argues that modern life has produced an individualized freedom that conflicts with the communal forms of life constitutive of Greek ethical life. This individualized freedom is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but it is in modernity seemingly resolved into a more adequate form of social freedom in the family, aspects of civil society, and ultimately the state. This article examines whether Hegel’s state can function as a community and by so doing satisfy the need for a substantial ethical life (...) that runs through Hegel’s social thought. The article also examines why Hegel does not provide a detailed analysis of community, as a distinct sphere between the private and the public political sphere in thePhilosophy of Right, and why it is not a key platform of his social freedom. (shrink)

Simone Weil's Leçons de Philosophie are derived from a course she taught at the lyce;e for girls at Roanne in 1933-4. Anne Reynaud-Gue;rithault was a pupil in the class; her notes are not a verbatim record but are a very full and, as far as one can judge, faithful rendering, often catching the unmistakable tone of Simone Weil's voice as well as the force and the directness of her thought. The lectures form a good general introduction to (...) class='Hi'>philosophy, ranging widely over problems about perception, mind, language, reasoning and problems in moral and political philosophy too. Her method of presentation is a characteristic combination of abstract argument, personal experience and literary or historical reference. Peter Winch points out in his introduction to the book some of the more systematic connections in her philosophical work (and between this philosophical work and her other concerns), and makes a number of suggestive comparisons between Simone Weil and Wittgenstein. The translation is by Hugh Price from the Plon edition of 1959. Dr Price has added some notes to explain references in the text that might be unfamiliar to English speaking students beginning philosophy. (shrink)

Economic inequality is a pressing issue that the global community must address in an urgent and detailed manner if global peace is to be sustained. This paper makes the claim that viable alternative solutions to global economic inequality can be found outside the boundaries of western capitalism. This claim is defended via three movements: first, a critique of Christian teachings on the common good is presented as a pathway to this economic alternative. Second, insights from Dr. Martin Luther King, (...) Jr. that call for strategic solidarity to help undo structures of inequality in our world are appropriated. Third, a cultural and philosophical notion of what it means to be human in African thought is presented as a means for justifying the relevance of the African ethic of Ubuntu as a global economic alternative; one that grounds cosmic flourishing in a vision and praxis of relationality and shared identity for all. Keywords: African Philosophy, Inequality, Political Theology, Ubuntu, Ujamaa, Wealth. (shrink)

After briefly describing the history and significance of the nature–reason dualism for philosophy this article examines why much of the Kantian inspired examination of norms and ethics continues to appeal to this division. It is argued that much of what is claimed to be rationally legitimated norms can, at least in part, be understood as binding on actions and beliefs, not because they are rationally legitimated, but because they are habituated. Drawing on Hegel’s discussion of ethical life and habit (...) it is argued that human subjects identify most practices and norms as their own through self-feeling, not reason. It is on this basis that norms are taken not just as the basis for action but are constitutive of human identity, an identity that is spiritual, embodied and affective. While habit is central to the way Hegel reconfigures ethics and norms, as well as the distinct model of freedom that he develops in his social and political thought, it will be argued that habit has its limits as a model for human freedom, limits of which Hegel is well aware. (shrink)

This long-awaited book is the first English-language edition of.Simon’s first book, Critique de la connaissance morale (1934). Not only does this work clarify the first stages of Simon’s intellectual career, it is also a major contribution to moral philosophy. A Critique of Moral Knowledge addresses fundamental issues. How does moral knowledge differ from other practical knowledge? What is the relationship between the moral sense, moral philosophy, and cognition in action? Is politics moral philosophy or simply a neutral (...) technique? This elegant translation will be an important contribution to the conversation on philosophy, politics, religion, and ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Karl Barth and Christian Ethics: Living in Truth by William WerpehowskiJames W. SkillenKarl Barth and Christian Ethics: Living in Truth William Werpehowski BURLINGTON, VT: ASHGATE, 2014. 172 PP. $54.95 (PAPERBACK), $153.00 (CLOTH)In this two-part volume, William Werpehowski aims in part 1 to elucidate Karl Barth's "approach to the nature and source of the good, the divine command in its relation to the personal history of a (...) moral agent, and the place of narrative in Christian ethics" (xii). The author does this both by exposition of Barth's writings and by engaging with the arguments of other students of Barth, including James Gustafson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Webster, Matthew Rose, and Gerald McKenny. The titles of the chapters of part 1 indicate the ground being covered: "Divine Commands and Philosophical Dilemmas," "Command and History," "Narrative and Ethics," and "Realism and Discernment." In part 2 the author presents diverse essays on "virtue, moral practices, and discernment," most of which deal with the rearing and education of children, which shows the author's sympathy with Barth even as he draws on other traditions of Christian ethics.Werpehowski's exposition is generally clear and detailed as he seeks to explain and defend Barth's identification of the norm for human ethics with the subject, Jesus Christ. According to Barth, "humanity's obedience to God … must always be obedience to and conformity with Jesus Christ. He is the criterion by which is measured all demands on our behavior" (6). Furthermore, "God's eternal will is for humanity in Jesus Christ; the normative criterion is identical to God's will and the history it accomplishes" (7). Although the response to God's electing love in Christ should be willing obedience, Barth (with Werpehowski) does not deal substantively with the accountability of those who do not so respond. In the end, for Barth, God's "Yes" in Christ always trumps God's "No" to sin (see 65–69).At times the author's defense of Barth appears to be more a deflection of, than an engagement with, the criticism. One example: the author offers a brief summary of Nigel Biggar's sympathetic criticism of Barth at the point where he believes Barth deals inadequately with human responsibility and accountability. Werpehowski acknowledges the legitimacy of Biggar's point—"that the temporal world of eternal grace may be depicted as our one common world only if creaturely rationality and non-arbitrary moral justification are prominently affirmed" (63); he states that Biggar is trying to save Barth "at his best" from a weakness in his position. Yet Werpehowski's next step is to say that Biggar's correction "is in danger of being an overcorrection" because his [End Page 212] moral justification requirement "belongs more to the periphery of the ethics of [Barth's] divine command" (64). That requirement, says Werpehowski, "must be governed by the central significance of the gracious God who commands in the reality of the ethical event" (64).Werpehowski's book is worthy of careful study, especially by those who want to understand Barth in relation to other ethicists. A criticism I have concerns the limits of Barth's ethics with respect to human institutions and social practices for which humans bear communal responsibility. Werpehowski acknowledges that those limits are due to Barth's focus on the relation of Christ to the individual person in the "ethical event." By contrast, at a few points in part 2, Werpehowski draws in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who insists that it is in "friendships, families, work, citizenship, and life in the church" where Christ is present preserving and reconciling the world to God (141). Despite all the attention in recent decades to Christian social and political ethics, the author does little with that subject in either his assessment of Barth or in the chapters of part 2.James W. SkillenPresident (retired), Center for Public JusticeCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Gehen zu können, wenn man will – das ist für viele Menschen eine Kurzformel für Freiheit. Wegzugehen bedeutet in vielen Fällen aber auch einen verlustreichen Abschied von Personen und einer gemeinsamen Lebenspraxis. Die Freiheit zu gehen ist deshalb vor allem als Option wichtig, von der wir Gebrauch machen können, aber nicht müssen. Ausstiegsoptionen sind ein wichtiger Bestandteil freiheitlicher Gesellschaften und Lebensformen. Oft sind sie mit Konflikten verbunden, wenn Freiheits- und Autonomiebestrebungen auf eingespielte Verbindlichkeiten und Abhängigkeiten treffen. Für jede Gesellschaft und (...) jede soziale Beziehung stellt sich daher die Frage, inwieweit und in welchen Bereichen Ausstiege zugelassen und unterstützt werden.Dieser Band bietet eine kontextübergreifende Analyse von Ausstiegsoptionen, sowohl ihrer generellen Aspekte als auch ihrer spezifischen Erscheinungsformen. Er ermöglicht es, ihre Bedeutung für eine freiheitliche Gesellschaft besser zu verstehen. Der Inhalt · ​Einleitung · Politische Ausstiege · Ausstiege aus persönlichen Beziehungen · Der Ausstieg aus dem Leben Die Herausgeber Prof. Dr. Simone Dietz lehrt Praktische Philosophie an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. Hannes Foth promoviert an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf und ist Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Medizingeschichte und Wissenschaftsforschung der Universität zu Lübeck. Svenja Wiertz hat an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf promoviert und ist Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Internationalen Zentrum für Ethik in den Wissenschaften der Universität Tübingen. (shrink)

In Ethics–Politics–Subjectivity, Simon Critchley takes up three questions at the centre of contemporary theoretical debate: What is ethical experience? What can be said of the subject who has this experience? What, if any, is the relation of ethical experience to politics? Through spirited confrontations with major thinkers, such as Lacan, Nancy, Rorty, and, in particular, Levinas and Derrida, Critchley finds answers in a nuanced “ethics of finitude” and defends the political possibilities of deconstruction. Democracy, economics, friendship, and technology are (...) all considered anew in Critchley’s bold excursions on the meaning and value of recent French philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we challenge the usual argument which says that competition is a fair mechanism because it ranks individuals according to their relative preferences between effort and leisure. This argument, we claim, is very insufficient as a justification of fairness in competition, and we show that it does not stand up to scrutiny once various dynamic aspects of competition are taken into account. Once the sequential unfolding of competition is taken into account, competition turns out to be unfair even (...) if the usual fairness argument is upheld. We distinguish between two notions of fairness, which we call U-fairness, where 'U' stands for the 'usual' fairness notion, and S-fairness, where 'S' stands for the 'sequential' aspect of competition. The sequential unfairness of competition, we argue, comprises two usually neglected aspects connected with losses of freedom: first of all, there is an 'eclipse' of preferences in the sense that even perfectly calculating competitors do not carry out a trade-off between effort and ranking; and second, competitive dynamics leads to single-mindedness because the constraints on the competitors' choices always operate in the sense of increased competitiveness and, therefore, in the direction of an increased effort requirements. We argue (1) that competition is S-unfair even if it is U-fair, (2) that as S-unfairness increases, the ethical relevance of U-fairness itself vanishes, so that (3) by focusing as they usually do on U-fairness alone, economists neglect a deeper aspect of unfairness. (shrink)

In this paper, we challenge the usual argument which says that competition is a fair mechanism because it ranks individuals according to their relative preferences between effort and leisure. This argument, we claim, is very insufficient as a justification of fairness in competition, and we show that it does not stand up to scrutiny once various dynamic aspects of competition are taken into account. Once the sequential unfolding of competition is taken into account, competition turns out to be unfair even (...) if the usual fairness argument is upheld. We distinguish between two notions of fairness, which we call U-fairness, where ‘U’ stands for the ‘usual’ fairness notion, and S-fairness, where ‘S’ stands for the ‘sequential’ aspect of competition. The sequential unfairness of competition, we argue, comprises two usually neglected aspects connected with losses of freedom: first of all, there is an ‘eclipse’ of preferences in the sense that even perfectly calculating competitors do not carry out a trade-off between effort and ranking; and second, competitive dynamics leads to single-mindedness because the constraints on the competitors’ choices always operate in the sense of increased competitiveness and, therefore, in the direction of an increased effort requirements. We argue (1) that competition is S-unfair even if it is U-fair, (2) that as S-unfairness increases, the ethical relevance of U-fairness itself vanishes, so that (3) by focusing as they usually do on U-fairness alone, economists neglect a deeper aspect of unfairness. (shrink)

Written from September 1939 to January 1941, Simone de Beauvoir’s Wartime Diary gives English readers unabridged access to one of the scandalous texts that threaten to overturn traditional views of Beauvoir’s life and work. The account in Beauvoir’s Wartime Diary of her clandestine affair with Jacques Bost and sexual relationships with various young women challenges the conventional picture of Beauvoir as the devoted companion of Jean-Paul Sartre, just as her account of completing her novel She Came to Stay at (...) a time when Sartre’s philosophy in Being and Nothingness was barely begun calls into question the traditional view of Beauvoir’s novel as merely illustrating Sartre’s philosophy. Most important, the Wartime Diary provides an exciting account of Beauvoir’s philosophical transformation from the prewar solipsism of She Came to Stay to the postwar political engagement of The Second Sex. Cast in the crucible of the Nazi Occupation, Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics reflects dramatic collective experiences, such as joining the tide of refugees fleeing the German invasion in June 1940, as well as the courageous reaffirmation of her individuality in constructing a humanist ethics of freedom and solidarity in January 1941. (shrink)

Davis demonstrates how Simone Weil's Marxism challenges current neoliberal understandings of the self and of human rights. Explaining her related critiques of colonialism and of political parties, it presents Weil as a twentieth-century political philosopher who anticipated and critically responded to the most contemporary political theory.

_Gravity and Grace_ shows Weil's religious thoughts and ideas, drawn from many sources - Christian, Jewish, Indian, Greek and Hindu - and focusing on suffering and redemption. It brings the reader face to face with the profoundest levels of existence as Weil explores the relationship of the human condition to the realm of the transcendent.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth’s Moral Theology by Gerald McKenny, and: Christian Ethics as Witness: Barth’s Ethics for a World at Risk by David HaddorffVictor ThasiahThe Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth’s Moral Theology Gerald McKenny New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 310 pp. $120.00Christian Ethics as Witness: Barth’s Ethics for a World at Risk David Haddorff Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010. 482 pp. $54.00Karl Barth’s theology (...) remains a resource for Christian ethics. Let me suggest why. Instead of marginalizing or bracketing out consideration of divine agency, Barth presupposes God’s past, present, and future action; God’s inalienable subjectivity and indissoluble over-againstness in relationship (irreducible, for example, to ecclesial action); and God’s ongoing judgment of good and evil, and thus of moral thought and practice. These presuppositions determine the method, structure, content, and purpose of his theology and ethics. His concept of grace consists of God accomplishing the good in our place and on our behalf, a perspective more substantive than supplementary in nature. Finally, his eschatological view of human freedom involves resistance and responsibility—the freedom to resist evil (having been delivered from the determination of evil by grace) and the freedom to witness to God’s action in faith, love, and hope in the world. Barth’s work serves the field of Christian ethics well, burdened as we are by unprecedented global awareness with its challenges and uncertainties.Two new books on Barth’s theology and ethics seek to increase our understanding of his work and engage contemporary Christian moral thought and practice. Gerald McKenny’s The Analogy of Grace is now the indispensable guide to Barth’s ethics. His exposition is comprehensive, critical, and contextual as it relates Barth’s dogmatics to current academic work in Christian ethics and moral philosophy. The tradeoff, however, is that it pays insufficient attention to the ecclesial, cultural, and political contexts for embodying Barth’s ethics. McKenny makes an important contribution to our understanding of Barth’s work. By closely reading primary texts and secondary literature, McKenny shows that many of Barth’s critics and friends continue to misunderstand [End Page 192] him by resolving the unresolvable, airbrushing ambiguities and thus converting Barth’s “strange” ethics into a more conventional moral theory. McKenny argues that it is precisely the strangeness of Barth’s theology—with all its implications—that continues to challenge and contribute constructively to contemporary Christian ethics.What is so strange and significant about Barth’s work? For McKenny, it is Barth’s claim that “God resolves on the good from eternity in the determination of humanity in Jesus Christ to commission and service as active witnesses of God’s glory; fulfills it in time in the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, who performs this commission and service in place of all of humanity; and summons, empowers, and directs human beings in every time to correspond to this fulfillment in their conduct” (288). Thus, our action should be modeled on God’s action; it should be an analogy of grace. “The telos of God’s grace is realized,” McKenny concludes, “when human beings in their action become the image of God” (208). The Analogy of Grace traces the way Barth develops this ontological and analogical vision as McKenny differentiates Barth’s work from modern theories that presuppose that people are relatively capable of knowing and doing the good.McKenny suggests that there is a possible deficiency in the way Barth’s account of divine agency determines the form and content of his theology and ethics. Barth’s consistent opposition to moral theories that emphasize observable signs of moral progress in either self or society results in the “liability” of the “extraordinarily qualified affirmation he gives to visible human goodness” (223). McKenny asks if Barth “does justice to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives” and “can make sense of the participation of our action in God’s action or of the way in which the Holy Spirit accomplishes this participation” (223). In other words, Barth’s “extraordinarily qualified affirmation” might neglect the work of the Spirit in... (shrink)

Scholars disagree about the proper justification of human rights and which rights qualify as human rights. While some argue for a very limited set of human rights, others defend more comprehensive accounts. In this paper I suggest that a defence of a comprehensive set of human rights can be strengthened by combining constructivist deontological and well-being based teleological justifications. To this end, I discuss two prominent proponents of constructivism and the well-being approach: Rainer Forst and Simon Caney. Forst criticises teleological (...) justifications for grounding human rights in non-universalizable conceptions of the good, such as autonomy, that can reasonably be rejected by others. Constructivism, in contrast, does not rest on any particular idea of the good life and thus allows for greater ethical plurality. I reject this specific criticism, arguing that Caney’s approach ultimately allows for the same plurality. I also highlight that constructivism on its own cannot justify rights of people who are not (yet) able to reason. The well-being approach provides substantive arguments for the rights of these individuals. However, these arguments are made with the framework provided by constructivism. I hold, contra Caney, that Forst’s right to justification is primary in that it is the unavoidable basis from which justice issues can be dealt with in a reasonable way and that the main function of human rights is to protect the equal moral status of persons. I conclude that Forst’s constructivist and Caney’s well-being approach are complementary rather than rivalrous: when combined they provide a more robust justification for a comprehensive set of human rights than considered separately. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading The Second Sex Sixty Years LaterJulia KristevaTranslated by Timothy HackettPublished in 1949, today The Second Sex is a youthful sixty-year-old woman who has created a scandal, but also a school of thought: She marks a decisive stage in women's liberation and continues to accelerate it.Let's try to place ourselves in that year, 1949: The world has barely dressed its wounds from World War II and onto the scene (...) steps a young French woman—from an aristocratic and Catholic background, enjoying a liberal lifestyle and endowed with philosophical tenacity, pedagogical talents, and contagious style without precedent—who announces to her dumbfounded readers that the second sex is free. To be sure, she immediately issues the following qualification, "the free woman is just being born" (Beauvoir 2010, 751), and this remains the case today. It is, however, already a global phenomenon, one that has not yet finished leaving its effects, since what is at stake is a veritable anthropological revolution: I say "anthropological revolution" for, beyond the freedom of choice with respect to maternity and the right to social, economic, and political equality, what is at stake is a new form of assuring the continuity of the human species along with the bold definition of transcendence as freedom. What becomes of humanity if birth, freedom, and the spectacle are put in the hands of women? Obscurantists, fundamentalists, and puritans of all stripes become alarmed and decry the scandal. If the future is hereby opened up—with all the risks that this entails—does it welcome and offer new possibilities?This anthropological revolution has been in preparation since the beginning of time. The British suffragettes inscribed it in their political agenda and feminist movements after May '68 intended to deepen it. But this revolution [End Page 137] [elle] only became conscious of its magnitude and took the world by storm, thanks to the experience and the pen of Simone de Beauvoir.Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) is already a well-known philosopher and writer by 1949, when she begins to create something of a scandal: she has already published She Came to Stay, Pyrrhus and Cineas, The Blood of Others, Who Shall Die?, All Men Are Mortal, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and America Day By Day. Along with Jean-Paul Sartre and in the wake of the burgeoning (naissant) existentialist movement (whose genesis she would intimately describe in Les Mandarins, 1954), Simone de Beauvoir pursues an experience that is at once personal and political, as well as a philosophical project whose central theme and absolute objective is freedom, which she understands as a form of revolt and non-consent. It remains important to emphasize this today as we begin the third millennium, a time in which freedom, revolt, and non-consent tend to disappear in favor of other concerns that reflect a globalized world: fear, security, adaptation, and integration."Freedom" lies at the heart of the life and the work of the one whom the hostile press disparagingly calls "Sartrean." The freedom of Madame Roland, who acknowledged, "Oh what crimes are committed in thy name," is the same freedom whose risks Simone de Beauvoir downplays in The Ethics of Ambiguity, a work that denounces the ambivalent fascination with communism found in other existentialists.Freedom nevertheless; above all and at all costs: For Simone de Beauvoir, freedom (elle) remains and will remain the inextinguishable star that has incessantly guided philosophical inquiry since Socrates; inspired the noble heights of Christian thought, particularly in Pascal (who deemed man more noble than the universe that crushes him, for he knows that he dies while the universe doesn't). It is the same freedom that fueled the rebellious bodies and spirits of the Enlightenment; that forged the style of great European literature; it is the same freedom that animates Hegel's dialectic and even modern phenomenology, which existentialism takes as its support. So many references and experiences resonate in the work of this forty-year-old author as she sets out to write The Second Sex.Her first novels recount the relentless struggles that women undergo (jealousy, abandonment, solitude, violence, various injustices) in order to extricate themselves from their... (shrink)

Frederick Douglass (1817?–1875) is a monumental American figure. As a runaway slave and leading black thinker, speaker, and writer in the abolitionist movement and during Reconstruction and its tragic collapse, his legacy in American history is singular. His ideals and scorching criticisms have marked American political thought about democracy, religion, race, racism, liberty, and equality. American political parties claim him, especially the Republican Party, with which he has an early connection and which has used his figure as cover (...) for their less than egalitarian projects, as do different ideological camps. One can find accounts of Douglass as an existentialist, revolutionary, proto-libertarian, liberal, civic republican thinker. His North Star continues to guide those who welcome its light, although it may lead them down different political-ideological paths.In all of this, one can imagine that those not familiar with the details of Douglass’s narratives and deeds might, in the context of all of that national hagiography, lose track of the fact that he was a black man. Frederick Douglass was a black man born into slavery, survived that brutal regime for twenty-one years, and then escaped and became a principal leader of the American abolition movement and leading black political thinker. Shortly after escaping slavery, he wrote his first famous autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and subsequently two more, in addition to volumes of speeches, articles, and a novel. It is as if his monumentality, like marble, alabaster, or bronze—the stuff of civic memorials—would obscure that irreducible fact in its grand monotones.Nick Brommell’s The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass reminds readers that that irreducible fact is a nontrivial, essential element of Douglass’s life and work. Bromell argues that this includes the political theory, a product of Douglass’s black political philosophy that runs through it all. He contends that Douglass argued for an inclusive conception of personhood and active citizenship, which America’s founding public philosophy, distorted by white supremacy, purposefully did not. Its elements include a defense of the moral personhood of blacks and their full and equal citizenship and a view of political community enlivened by group solidarities and active citizenship in defense of justice.In the course of his analysis, Bromell, a literary theorist, draws on an assortment of contemporary philosophical, rhetorical, and political theories, all of which have a critical theoretical bent, to explicate Douglass’s ideas. This method bears fruit in an instructive analysis of the rhetorical structure of Douglass’ his arguments. Brommell’s analysis of Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom usefully explains how it stands out, not only in terms of updated autobiographical details, but also style and analytical and argumentative intent. This is a reading that other scholars have pioneered, but his rhetorical analysis fleshes out, for example, the role of moral sentiments, care, and intimate and social relations in Douglass’s narrative.A central feature of Bromell’s analysis is that Douglass employs what he and others call a “fugitive rhetoric” that comprises an emphasis on the perspective of his and other black Americans’ standpoints, the holding of opposite ideas in tension, and the use of the rhetorical technique “chiasmus,” where a statement is repeated in reverse order in successive phrases or clauses. It is an illuminating analysis, but Bromell goes further by claiming that Douglass was committed to the tenets of contemporary standpoint epistemology. Douglass certainly referenced and employed his experience and viewpoint as a black man and former slave in his work, just as he directly addressed the viewpoints and interests of black Americans. However, whether this means that Douglass was committed to the set of ideas that we now call standpoint epistemology is another matter. This concern applies to Bromell’s reading of Douglass’s method of holding seemingly contrasting ideas in tension and his use of chiasmus. Contemporary philosophical theories of chiasmus carry particular metaphysical and epistemological implications, and those theories might shed light on Douglass’s political projects. However, their incidental utility does not mean they definitively describe Douglass’s intent or public philosophy. This is a specifically important point because those theories lead to subjective conceptions of truth, especially relating to ethics and politics, while Douglass, as Bromell recognizes, repeatedly and emphatically endorsed what he took to be universal normative truths.In the same vein, Bromell makes several additional claims regarding the conceptual distinctiveness of Douglass’s view of power, dignity, rights, and citizenship. Douglass employed conceptions of each and other important ideas specific to his style, approach, and ends. As other black political thinkers did before him, he used these concepts to condemn slavery, racism, and the hypocrisy of American Republicanism and Christianity to assert the equal moral personhood and dignity of blacks and demand equal rights and citizenship. Bromell rightly emphasizes the role of “power,“ as an individual capability, in Douglass’s view of natural rights, moral dignity, and citizenship. It is an emphasis that is in keeping with both Douglass’s personal narrative and his national political projects. Douglass did not think that Americans—that Black Americans or abolitionists—should passively wait for deliverance from either God or national political leadership. Likewise, Bromell is correct to push back on reductions of Douglass’s views to Lockean, Rousseauian, or Kantian interpretations. Douglass is more than an incarnation of standard deontological, liberal, or civic republican philosophy. As a nineteenth-century black radical thinker, he stood in relation and contributed to those moral and political philosophical traditions. However, Bromell’s claim that Douglass’s conceptions of power, natural rights, and citizenship are conceptually distinct from the large host of major philosophical, theological, and political theoretical accounts that preceded him and influenced those ideas in his time is suggestive but not decisive.Like other writers and theorists before him, Bromell offers us another Douglass—as a black critical political theorist. This is a testament to the fecundity of Douglass’s black political-philosophical legacy. It is a legacy that leads to competing interpretations of him; all the same and for all their differences, his scorching prophetic vision of liberty, equality, citizenship, and progress unites them all. (shrink)

_Simone Weil and the Politics of Self-Denial_ delivers what no other book on Weil has—a comprehensive study of her political thought. In this examination of the development of her thought, Athanasios Moulakis offers a philosophical understanding of politics that reaches beyond current affairs and ideological advocacy. Simone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—unites a profound reflection on the human condition with a consistent and courageous existential and intellectual honesty manifest in the moving testimony of her life and her death. Moulakis examines (...) Weil's political thought as an integral part of a lived philosophy, in which analysis and doctrine are inseparable from the articulation of an intensely personal, ultimately religious experience. Because it is impossible to distinguish Weil's life from her thought, her writings cannot be understood properly without linking them to her life and character. By situating Weil's political thought within the context of the intellectual climate of her time, Moulakis connects it also to her epistemology, her cosmology, and her personal experience. _Simone Weil and the Politics of Self-Denial_ presents the unfolding of Weil's philosophical life against the backdrop of the political and social conditions of the last days of the Third French Republic, the Spanish Civil War, and the rise and clash of totalitarian ideologies. The ideological climate of the age—of which Weil herself was not quite free—was indeed the major "obstacle" in the struggle against which she fashioned her critical, intellectual, and moral tools. Weil has been categorized a number of ways: as a saint and a near convert to Roman Catholicism, as a social critic, or as an analytic philosopher. Moulakis examines _all_ aspects of Weil's thought in the indissoluble unity in which she lived them. This thorough investigation pursues the particular intellectual affiliations and the social and political experiential stimuli of Weil's work while simultaneously teasing out the timeless themes that her own timely analysis was intended to reveal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 105-107 [Access article in PDF] Richard H. Popkin. The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xxiv + 415. Cloth, $74.00. Paper, $24.95. Richard Popkin tells the story that once a long time ago when he asked a question at a conference that made reference to late-eighteenth-century skeptics like (...) Maimon and Platner, Myles Burnyeat turned to the audience and asked, "Does anyone else read these people that Popkin reads?" The answer, by the time we get to this, the fourth edition of a book that first appeared in 1960, is that lots of people are reading the people that Popkin reads. Now [End Page 105] Myles Burnyeat is quoted on the cover of this volume for graciously saying "I regard it as one of the seminal books in the history of ideas." In one of the three Festschriften that have been published in Popkin's honor, David Katz even reports that some of those who work in areas Popkin pioneered refer to themselves as "Popkinites" (James E. Force and David S. Katz, eds., Everything Connects [Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1999], ix).Popkin was also founding editor of this journal, and his name has been footnoted in numerous articles over the years, so it will not be unknown to many. But readers will want to know what is new in this latest version of the classic work. For openers, it is roughly fifty percent longer, now 18 chapters instead of the 12 chapters of the last version. The original book was subtitled "From Erasmus to Descartes" and the later California edition subtitle became "From Erasmus to Spinoza." This edition pushes the envelope in both directions: back to Savonarola and forward to Pierre Bayle.The Savonarola connection comes from the unlikely discovery that the famous monk collected manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus and was planning to have them translated as tools for use against pagan philosophy and in favor of revealed religion. This brings out one of Popkin's favorite points: that what we think of as philosophical skepticism was part and parcel of religious debate early on. Among other new findings in this edition, Popkin finds clues that Leone Ebreo (Judah Abravanel) may have helped Gianfrancesco Pico read anti-Aristotelian Hebrew texts. Jews could use this sort of skepticism against the dogmatic Christians who tried to refute them.The religious connection is fundamental throughout the text. In his new introduction, Popkin admits that "I am more in sympathy with those who used the sceptical and fideist views of the nouveaux pyrrhoniens for religious rather than secular purposes" (p. xxiii). He has developed this sympathy into research on millenarianism in volumes such as Popkin and David S. Katz, Messianic Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998) and Popkin, et al., eds., Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, 4 vols. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).Other new materials follow the discussion of Descartes with a chapter on Henry More, Pascal, and the Quietists and another one on Hobbes's political and practical answer to skepticism. There are new chapters on Wilkins, Boyle, and Glanvill of the Royal Society, and on late seventeenth-century metaphysics. New material on Simon Foucher and Pierre-Daniel Huet is followed by the concluding chapter on Pierre Bayle as a "super sceptic."The book has never been uncontroversial. Although they could follow the skeptical undercutting of the Bible in Spinoza, many scholars could not see how the master of the geometrical method in ethics could be anything but a dogmatist in the final analysis. (Popkin has an answer.) The same doubt will now apply to the treatment of Pierre Bayle in this version. To Popkin, as we have seen, Bayle is a "super sceptic" who "carried scepticism to its ultimate extreme" (300); to Gianluca Mori (Bayle philosophe, Paris: Champion, 1999) and others, he is a dogmatic philosophical atheist as well as moral rigorist. To his credit... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger DeltaMelissa BrowningEthics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta Nimi Wariboko Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010. 193 pp. $60.00In Ethics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta, Nimi Wariboko offers a new definition of temporal orientation, arguing that this new (...) understanding of time can help us rethink social ethics, particularly economic ethics. He begins by citing literature showing that temporal orientation has always been used to speak about how a sociocultural group sees itself in light of a “time or origin” (such as a sacred past) or “time preference” (such as a preference for past, present, or future). Wariboko proposes a third way, redefining temporal orientation as a break or clearing in time between the past and the future—a kairos event. He goes on to say that understanding how members of a sociocultural group understand time is essential to understanding how they see themselves and their moral sources.Wariboko speaks of temporal orientation in terms of “time gaps,” contending that freedom and new beginnings are found within these gaps. Suggesting that these gaps are important to the process of defining subjectivity—since human beings live in a time-defined gap between birth and death—he coins the term “chronomethics” to refer to a new methodology where ethics is studied [End Page 213] through the lens of temporal orientation with attention to the analysis of cultural forms.Wariboko provides an exemplar of this methodology by doing an in-depth analysis of the Kalabari community of the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria. Through the use of ethnography, Wariboko explores politics, religious imagination, apocalypticism, and the philosophy of history in Kalabari beliefs and practices—setting African studies in dialogue with Western philosophy and theology. Here, and throughout the book, he draws heavily on the work of Hannah Arendt in his analysis.Although this ethnographic analysis makes an important contribution to ethical reflection, it is not without problems. Wariboko focuses almost exclusively on the chiefs of the Kalabari community, using both male language and male concepts. When Wariboko moves to a discussion of traditional Kalabari religion, he speaks mainly of the male or neuter aspect of God (which is called So, or so) and only briefly mentions the female aspect (Teme-órú). This leaves the reader to wonder whether the actors and agents Wariboko refers to include women. In sum, his descriptive analysis of Kalabari culture lacks a critique of patriarchy, which should be present in any analysis that seeks to make a contribution to Christian ethics.Perhaps the most significant contribution of the book is found in its chapter on imagination. Here Wariboko examines the ways in which the Kalabari people imagine their own society and construct a moral imagination. He pays significant attention to African conceptions of community and the ways in which individuals relate to their communities. Although Wariboko contributes an important original voice to this dialogue, this voice could be strengthened by incorporating the voices of other African philosophers and theologians rather than relying primarily on Western sources in his analysis of Kalabari culture.The book concludes by relating the newly proposed methodology (and to some extent the ethnography) to concrete applications within the realm of economic development. Here Wariboko focuses on the “kairos-ordering of society,” arguing that economic development will only be attained when the state maintains the rules of just conduct, nurtures kairos, develops human capabilities, embraces pluralism, and uses social practices to disperse knowledge. Although this final section is brief, it invites further reflection by delineating how temporal orientation could be used as a new methodology for Christian ethics. [End Page 214]Melissa BrowningLexington Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Politics of Practical Reason: Why Theological Ethics Must Change Your Life by Mark RyanDavid ElliotThe Politics of Practical Reason: Why Theological Ethics Must Change Your Life Mark Ryan eugene, or: cascade books, 2011. 229 pp. $20.80If the spirited debate between Stanley Hauerwas and Jeffrey Stout remains front-page news in theological ethics, then Mark Ryan’s subtle and penetrating The Politics of Practical Reason will help keep it there. (...) Ryan argues that practical reason is the hinge of ethical thinking and that it is “political” in the sense of shaping the community or polis. Given this hinge, the pressing question is of course, “Whose practical reason?” To answer this, Ryan probes major contemporary ethicists from Charles Taylor to Alasdair MacIntyre, but the book always circles back to Hauerwas and Stout. Their debate is ultimately decided by proxy, through a mediating philosopher whose work on practical reason Ryan sees both as the gold standard and as the indispensable background for understanding Hauerwas. Expecting this to be MacIntyre, the reader may be surprised—and perhaps even convinced—that the philosopher who best explains and possibly vindicates Hauerwas is in fact Elizabeth Anscombe, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s protégé, close friend, and translator.The book opens with Anscombe’s Intention (1957), which Donald Davidson called “the most important treatment of action since Aristotle.” In it, Anscombe argued that intention presupposes desire and is declared in public language within a context of social practices presupposed for agency to be intelligible. The implication is that we form intentions as members of a community with a particular form of life sustained by social practices. With human desire as its motivating nisus, Ryan insists that intention “is part of the very form of practical reasoning, then, to be political” (144).Having retrieved Anscombe’s model of practical reason, Ryan examines the field of contemporary ethics to see who measures up. Charles Taylor fails to place agents in a particular community, locating us instead in that bloated abstraction called “modernity.” Ryan therefore concludes that Taylor’s is an “ethics for anybody,” which leaves the self finally disembodied (94–98). Stout fares little better due to his refrain that Hauerwas went astray when he abandoned justice talk. Ryan counters that Stout’s sort of justice should be abandoned; lacking a substantive vision of the good and a teleology of freedom, Stout’s justice is reckoned a blind guide who cannot see or say why the polis should pursue one end and not another. Hauerwas, on the other hand, specifies a particular polis within which practical reason can intelligibly function: the church. It has [End Page 218] a substantive vision of the good (i.e., the peaceable kingdom) located in a scriptural narrative displayed by social practices requiring formation in the virtues (119–21). Ryan therefore endorses Hauerwas’s politics of practical reason, indebted to MacIntyre and made possible by Anscombe.I see one lacuna in this otherwise excellent book. Ryan seemingly advocates a pragmatic model of practical reason that is wholly internal to the polis rather than grounded in “truths of human nature as such” (101). This makes Anscombe an uneasy ally. Her “Modern Moral Philosophy” famously proposed a retrieval of virtue that required an overhauled “account of human nature … and above all of human flourishing” (41). This move opened the door for ethical naturalism, perhaps even natural law—both of which Anscombe and the later MacIntyre endorse. But these look suspiciously like what Ryan calls an “ethics for anybody.” So in the end are Anscombe and MacIntyre turncoats, or do Hauerwas and Ryan not follow them far enough? This crucial question remains unanswered.Despite this wrinkle, Ryan’s book is the best intervention in the Hauerwas–Stout debate that we now have. It throws light on Hauerwas, challenges Stout, shows why Anscombe matters, and gives practical reason its generous due. Philosophically deft and charitable in tone, it deserves to be read and studied as a major contribution to the field.David ElliotUniversity of Notre DameCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

As the editor of this volume writes in his introduction: 'Simone Weil's philosophy is one that interrogates and contemplates our culture; it makes us aware of our lack of attention to words and empty ideologies, to human suffering, to the indignity of work, to our excessive use of power, to religious dogmatisms. Rather than set out a system of ideas, Simone Weil uses her philosophical reflections to show how to think about work and oppression, freedom and the (...) good, necessity and power, love and justice - even how to think about, or not think about, God. In this way we are asked to examine the human condition and learn to discern a way through it.' This is one of the very few books available in English to present a comprehensive interpretation of the philosophy of Simone Weil and how her thought can cast light on issues of contemporary importance such as work, justice, the law, war and peace, and issues of more general moral and theological concern. (shrink)