This chapter contains sections titled: Site One: The Terms of Cooperation Site Two: Ontological “Sources” and Their Resistance to Full Articulacy Site Three: Recognizing Identity Conclusion Notes.

In The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen, Stephen K. White contends that Western democracies face novel challenges demanding our reexamination of the role of citizens. White argues that the intense focus in the past three decades on finding general principles of justice for diversity-rich societies needs to be complemented by an exploration of what sort of ethos would be needed to adequately sustain any such principles. Accessible, pithy, and erudite, The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen (...) will appeal to a wide audience. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 253—278. A Sense of French Politics Politics itself is not the exercise of power or struggle for power. Politics is first of all the configuration of a space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the setting of objects posed as "common" and of subjects to whom the capacity is recognized to designate these objects and discuss about them.(1) On April 14, 2011, France implemented its controversial ban of the niqab and burqa , commonly (...) referred to as the Islamic veil, in public places. On the coattails of the 2004 prohibition of religious artifacts, including the less concealing hijab or Islamic headscarves, in schools, the veil ban sparked equal outrage across both political and theological spectra, and many on both sides of the debate were quick to inquire about enforcement. As Steven Erlanger reports, “The police do not have the authority under the law to remove full veils, only to fine or require citizenship lessons for those who violate the new law.”(2) While the legal and social implications of this interdiction are ripe for study, the reprisals for breaking the law, notably compulsory citizenship classes, illuminate the strategic governmentality underlying the French government's targeting of the Muslim community, particularly those elements it considers affiliated with fundamentalist factions and/or terrorist organizations, if only through fashion—an integral component of French citizenship. Indeed, in allowing the (fashion) police to mandate instructional courses in citizenship for offenders, France implies that any Muslim choosing to wear the niqab or burqa , perhaps even for those who are already citizens, must not be aware of the subtle nuances of dress indicative of the French citizenry within public space. Furthermore, the degree of instruction requisite to citizenship, which clearly can and must be updated as the state sees fit, cements the imagined relation between citizens and states within the discourses on the veil ban. As Sharma contends, “Concepts of citizenship are the ideological glue that bonds the nation to the state. Citizenship provides the legal framework through which the state performs its role as ruler for the nation.”(3) Speaking for/as the state, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in a 2009 presentation before members of the government and other citizens that the burqa “is not welcome on the territory of France.”(4) Although there is nothing unique, especially recently, about a nation-state taking extreme measures to guard itself against what it deems to be threats to its sovereignty, the way in which the ongoing discourses on hijab have (d)evolved, which coincide with recent pronouncements by governmental leaders in Germany, Britain, and France that policies of multiculturalism have “failed,”(5) points toward nationalist reterritorializations, which is also to say physical and ideological re-appropriations, of public space within democratic milieux, which remain predicated upon the mediation of spaces. As Panagia deduces from Rancière, “Democracy […] is not an institutional form of government […], but an appearance whose visibilities and audibilites arise out of the dissonant blur of the everyday.”(6) Ultimately, the veil ban represents a calculated move to regulate the every day, which is to say the micropolitics of, that which is visible and invisible within French society, which makes it nothing short of a struggle to manage (the sensation of) bodies. Re-situating the political within the context of sense, Rancière argues that the fundamental essence of politics lies within the distinction between consensus and dissensus , and whereas most consider politics proper as fundamentally concerned with the fluid operations of the state— consensus , Rancière actually locates the political within events that disrupt the normative sensory order of things— dissensus . He explains, “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”(7) This reformulation of politics centers on agency and, albeit perhaps unintended, representationality and offers a useful formulation for spatializing the discourses surrounding the Islamic veil, which are mired within seemingly senseless policies and practices of objectification. Instituting a normative “regime of visibility,” the French veil ban encapsulates the political economy of agency, now both mediated and representational, under the rule of nationalist governmentalities in increasingly transnational contexts.(8) Adjudicating presence within public space signals a concern with the sensory aspects of agency itself—what Rancière terms the “distribution of the sensible,” which is “a matrix that defines a set of relations between sense and sense: that is, between a form of sensory experience and an interpretation which makes sense of it.”(9) To be concerned with sense is to focus upon the body, and this somatic repositioning of the (fashionable) citizen within the territory of the state augurs the resurgence of nationalist bio-politics within Europe, since, as Hage explicates, “Nationalism, before being an explicit practice or a mode of classification, is a state of the body. It is a way of imagining one's position within the nation and what one can aspire to as a national.”(10) The French government's attempt to make (bodily) sense of public space for its citizens by and through policies aimed against a burqa-clad Muslim minority, which might only apply to “less then 400 to fewer than 2,000” women(11), reveals the necessary, yet mercurial, transmutation of public space into national space through bio-political strategies of sense-making, which, as Hage observes, denotes that “nationalists perceive themselves as spatial managers.”(12) At the center of this concern over public space is the equally contentious dimension of governing female Islamic identity, which has become one of the main critiques levied against Islam from outsiders who view the veil in its various forms as a clear sign of the religion's actual and symbolic violence against women, even if such critiques remain ensconced within nationalist discourses. As Halim and Meyers argue, “Although Western news media may focus their coverage of Muslim women on the debate over whether and the extent to which the veil may by oppressive to the women who wear it, they have exhibited little interest in the physical oppression of violence against women in Islamic countries.”(13) While it falls outside of the scope of this analysis to arbitrate all of the dimensions of this debate, understanding some of the issues related to female identity and hijab within public space are crucial to this study. As these topics are extraordinarily complex, even and perhaps especially within the Muslim community, it is necessary to provide some context concerning the value, purpose, and meaning of the Islamic veil, which has a rich and arduous history. The Art of the Veil At present, there are only two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that require women to wear hijab , which is a decidedly problematic term and concept whose locus is itself caught within a struggle of sensation. Noting the strategic reterritorialization of the term, Berger explains: The choice of the name, hijab , now widely adopted to designate the “Islamic veil,” it itself interesting, although the semantic shift it operates is not directly commented upon by its users. Although the design (both the cut and the symbolic function) of the hijab and the Iranian chador are indeed the same, as opposed, for instance, to the traditional Algerian haik , the word hijab has come to replace the term chador popularized by the Iranian revolution, as a properly Arabic (hence Koranic) designation. This discursive shift points to the successful reclaiming of the national revolution in Iran by a transnational pan-Islamic movement, whose language of reference can only be Koranic Arabic.(14) While the hijab is certainly a point of contention within various countries dealing with immigrant Islamic populations (of which France has the largest in Europe as part of its colonial legacy in Algeria), it is clear that the veil is a historically contextualized artifact of Muslim identity with a variety of manifestations, even as forces outside of and within Islam seek to codify its actual and symbolic value. Ultimately, the varieties of hijab , including the full-faced burqa and niqab , are complex assemblages of meaning that speak to the multitudinous flows of Islamic identities over time and space. As Gökariksel and McLarney observe, “Wearing a certain style of veil may simultaneously be a disciplinary practice crucial to the cultivation of piety (Mahmood 2005; Gokariksel 2009) and a gendered performance of social distinction in terms of class, taste, and urbanity (White 1999; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Gokariksel and Secor 2009) or of ethnicity and race (Dwyer 1999).”(15) The ideological marketplace from which the varieties of hijab ebb and flow serves both as a reflection of the ever-present materiality and dynamic functionality of spiritual economies, which are derivative of the equally ubiquitous flows of transnational capital driving agency and representationality within our historical moment. Keeping these dual, yet deeply interconnected, capital ecologies as the site of exploration for how the veil is represented within public space, one might begin to sense what lurks behind such veiled agendas. Examining the symbolic and representational nature of the Islamic “veil” in its various forms, this project situates the decidedly political contestations of public space at stake in the French ban alongside recent condemnations of multiculturalism as calculated efforts to re-distribute the sensible so as to valorize national identity within increasingly transnational and globalized socio-economic spaces, which collapse exchange values between distinct, yet interwoven, economies of (cultural/material/spiritual) capital. As the discourses on the veil rely upon representational imag(in)ings, it seems fitting to explore the political economy and art of the veil through the phenomenon of street art, which, much like hijab , is a complex assemblage of meaning of sensation mired in representationality and capital exchange. As street artists have taken up hijab in various forms, the movement offers a lens with which to situate critical responses to the veil debate across both spiritual and material economies. Situating this street art both aesthetically and historically, Lewisohn explains, “'Street art' is a sub-genre of graffiti writing and owes much to its predecessor. Though there is a good deal of crossover between the genres, they are distinct and separate in their own right.”(16) Evolving out of the graffiti explosion of the late 1970's and 1980's, street art broke the unspoken rules of the artistic underground by challenging and re-examining one's sensory experience of art in public space by experimenting with both content and form in ways that harken back to the Situationist International, which as a collective challenged one's experience of urban space through various media and experiential phenomena. Again, Lewisohn observes, “It's important to note street art's break with the tradition of the tag, and its focus on visual symbols that embrace a much wider range of media than graffiti writers would use.”(17) From stencils to prints and murals to one-liners, street artists developed a reputation for critical social and political commentary, and while it is certainly the case that not all street art is intentionally political, in challenging the normative “regime of visibility,” as Rancière puts it, of public space, street artists—even if unconsciously—call into question the common sensory experience of the politics underlying the formation of (nationalist) space.(18) Indeed, Rancière refers to the partisan sensory managers as “police,” who ultimately forge “the rules governing the circulation of appearances, of their visibility and audibility, and the proper distribution of bodies therein.”(19) As such, one can sense that street art's relationship with the police is tenous for a variety of reasons. Writing about his own experience as a street artist, Shepard Fairey observes, “With street art, there's no committee deciding whether I can put my work up on the street, there's no censorship, and I have total freedom of expression, and that concept of freedom is expressed just by using the street as a medium.”(20) As Fairey and other street artists demonstrate, the medium, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the most glaring aspect of street art's message, and even as it now finds itself in galleries and usurped by private collectors, the ethos of the movement remains relavent to politics as it is, first and foremost, concerned with the configuration and experience of space. Just as examining the punishments for breaking the veil ban can map the terrain of French politics, a representational genealogy of street artist's deployment of hijab and female Muslim identity can assist in mining the depths of public space as a site of bio-political control and contestation in light of recent events in France and the rising tide of anti-multiculturalist rhetoric across Europe, even though the Islamic presence there is radically heterogenous. Using the work of Shepard Fairey, Princess Hijab, br1, and Banksy, this paper sets out to answer a number of key questions concerning the deployment of hijab, and female Islamic identity in particular, within street art as a movement now integral to and critical of the economies of exchange underlying global capitalism, which as a force of influence cannot be underestimated as a driver in the resurgence of nationalist biopolitical governmentalities. Although there exists a litany of artists to choose from, the aforementioned quartet of designers integrate hijab into their work in a seminal and critical fashion, and all have been working with the veil in some way prior to the French ban, which grants some additional context to their usage of it as a symbol in regards to the breakdown of multiculturalism across Europe, even if unconsciously. Although each artist depicts various amalgamations of hijab in their respective corpus, they share common tropes that raise significant questions concerning the veil debate, namely: what are the conditions of possibility for hijab to become a marker of Islamic identity within public space? How can we make sense of the representational topologies within street art's utilization of the hijab and female Islamic identity in light of the French ban? How might these aesthetic imag(in)ings simultaneously inhabit and combat normative discourses concerning hijab , multiculturalism, female Islamic identity, and public space? With these considerations as a backdrop, it is first necessary to outline more fully the hijab as a representative marker of female Islamic identity. The (Veiled) Writing on the Wall

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Iako je tek u Kantovoj kritickoj filozofiji pojam "uma" dobio precizno znacenje i jasno omedjeno podrucje svog vazenja, ovaj termin ima dugu genezu u evropskoj duhovnoj istoriji. Koreni pojma uma nalaze se u grckom pojmu logosa i mogu se svesti na sest osnovnih znacenja kojima se oznacava logicka struktura ljudskog misljenja i racionalna struktura sveta. Anaksagora je sveopsti duhovni princip nus smatrao izvorom svekolike racionalnosti. Kod filozofa Stoe izraz logos spermaticos predstavlja aktivni princip koji deluje na pasivnu materiju da bi (...) se stvorio svet. Za Stoike pojam logosa cini temeljni princip celokupnog morala. U hriscanskoj teologiji bog je logos, sveti duh - pneuma, dusa. U novovekovnoj filozofiji osnovna znacenja grckog logosa preuzeli su latinski termini "intellectus" i "ratio". Ovi pojmovi sasvim jasno ocrtavaju dve glavne linije evropskog misljenja koje karakterise neposredno i posredovano diskurzivno shvatanje istine. Kant je prvi u istoriji filozofije uveo bitnu razliku izmedju razuma i uma (Verstand i Vernunft). Razum je analitican i apstraktan, a um je izvor apriornih principa kojima se povezuje i utemeljuje celokupno nase saznanje i volja. Stoga Kant razlikuje teorijski i prakticki um. Za razliku od teorijskog uma, cije pojmove i nacela primenjuje, prakticki um ima primat jer za njega ima prakticki realitet i ono sto je teorijski nesaznatljivo (sloboda, bog i besmrtnost duse). Primat praktickog uma u svom Ucenju o nauci posebno je naglasio Fihte. Um je za njega cista svrsishodna delatnost. Potpunu artikulaciju ideja uma dobija u Hegelovoj filozofiji apsolutnog duha. Kod Hegela um je pre svega svetski princip a ne samo ljudska sposobnost. Za razliku od Kanta ciji um je u osnovi statican, bitna novina Hegelovog shvatanja objektivnog uma jeste njegov dinamizam koji mu omogucava da u svom dijalektickom razvitku sve vise dolazi do svesti o "samom sebi". Ukljucujuci ideju progresa u svoje shvatanje uma Hegel je uneo jedan vrednosni elemenat u pojam umnosti i time omogucio povezivanje uma i etosa u epohi moderne. Najdublji razdor izmedju uma i etosa izazvala je moderna nauka, koja je s jedne strane svojim otkricima i novim saznanjima unapredila ljudski zivot, oslobadjajuci coveka od religijskog sujeverja i drugih oblika potcinjenosti, ali je s druge strane pokazala restriktivan odnos, ne samo prema svim vrstama vrednosnih sudova, vec i prema mnogim dimenzijama uma. Pozitivno znanje novovekovne nauke bez ikakvog etosa liseno je bilo kakve kriticke samosvesti o svrsi znanja, o tome kako se ono moze upotrebiti na dobro coveka i kako moze biti zloupotrebljeno. Za uspostavljanje humanisticke naucne kulture neophodna je reafirmacija veze uma i etosa u modernoj nauci. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Breakdown of C i M phy " artes an eta sacs RICHARD A. WATSON WITHIN CARTESIANISMthere arose many problems deriving from conflicts between Cartesian principles. Inadequate attempts to solve these problems were crucial reasons for the breakdown of Cartesian metaphysics in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The major difficulties derived from the acceptance of a dualism of substances seated in a system which included epistemological and (...) causal likeness principles plus an ontological framework in which the categories of substance and modification were exhaustive. The major solutions involved either denying the likeness principles or altering the ontological framework. The first led to unintelligibility ; the second, culminating in Hume, opened the way to non-Cartesian metaphysics. The first section of this study contains a characterization of late seventeenth -century Cartesian metaphysics. The second is an exposition of Foucher 's four major criticisms of this system. In the third section, monistic solutions suggested in Descartes and by Spinoza, Foucher, Leibniz, and Locke are considered; in the fourth, the dualistic solutions of the orthodox Cartesians Rohault, R~gis, Desgabets, La Forge, Le Grand, and Arnauld; and in the fifth, the occasionalist solution of Malebranche. The sixth section is an analysis of these orthodox and occasionalist solutions, showing how each ultimately fails because of dependence upon the ontology of substance and modification. The seventh section is a consideration of Berkeley and Hume in the Cartesian context. A consideration of their systems as offering solutions to Cartesian problems illuminates in new light both the systems and the problems. In broad terms, this study moves from a consideration of problems arising from an ontology of two substances, to a consideration of problems arising from the ontological pattern of substance and modification. The Cartesians were concerned with relationships between two substances, but they saw no difficulties connected with the relationship between a substance and its modifications (or properties). Berkeley's treatment (deriving from Male- [177] 178 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY branche) of the relationships between mind and idea, and between mind and notion, is illuminated by a consideration of the extent to which he took these relationships for granted in the Cartesian way, and of the extent to which he saw difficulties in the relationship between substance and modification. The Berkeleian solution to Cartesian problems, like that of Malebranche before him, was not successful; Malebranche belittled, and Berkeley denied the dualism of substances, but neither philosopher could break entirely with the ontological pattern of substance and modification. The final breakdown of Cartesian metaphysics came with Hume, who, in providing the culmination of a most important trend in modern philosophy, opened the way to new metaphysics and became the father of contemporary philosophy. I A model late seventeenth-century Cartesian metaphysical system. The last grand expositor of the Cartesian philosophy was Antoine Le Grand who in 1694 published An Entire Body of Philosophy. The characterization of the late seventeenth-century Cartesian system given below follows Le Grand's exposition more closely than others, but it also incorporates elements from those of Rohault, R6gis, Desgabets, La Forge, Malebranche, and Arnauld.1 None of these philosophers professed a system of exactly the sort this characterization pictures, nor is it implied here that they do. The guide and rationale for drawing from them such a model Cartesianism is the polemical writing of Simon Foucher. Foucher's series of attacks upon Cartesianism (of which the second is his criticism of Malebranche of 1675, Critique de la Rdcherche de la veritd) give clearly the most important objections against Cartesian metaphysics.2The system outlined below, while more com1Le Grand, Antoine, An Entire Body of Philosophy According to the Principles of the Famous Renate des Cartes (London, 1694); Rohault, Jacques, Traitd de physique (Paris, 1671); R6gis, Pierre-Sylvain, Syst~me de philosophie, contenant la logique, la mdtaphysique, la physique et la morale (Lyon, 1690); Desgabets, Robert, Critique de la Critique de la Recherche de la veritd, oCt l'on decouvre le chemin qui conduit aux connoissances solides. Pour servir de rdsponse gtla Lettre d'un academicien (Paris, 1675); La Forge, Louis de, Traitd de l'dme humaine, de ses facultds et fonctions et de son union avec le corps, d'apr~s les principes de... (shrink)

Today even ambitious philosophers are ironic about pretensions to wisdom. Perhaps their single most characteristic pose in this age of debunking criticism is as "conversationalists" in the "great conversation of mankind" anxious "to help the argument along." The metaphor of culture as a conversation is telling in itself. It has replaced the "enlightened" image of "the republic of letters," that lost common homeland of intellectuals. The polity of ideas has given way to the marketplace on the one hand and the (...) "private" conversation on the other. It is, then, immensely difficult for us to understand a thinker like Fichte who saw himself as not only a sovereign citizen in the Republic of Letters, but as one of its magistrates, who perceived his thinking not as a "voice in the conversation of mankind" but as a "science of sciences," the embodiment of "reason's own self-produced knowledge of itself," the articulation of a principle from which all other sciences must be, in principle, strictly "deducible." It would be utterly quixotic for a contemporary philosopher to write a Wissenschaftslehre. (shrink)

This article discusses the conditions under which the use of expert knowledge may provide an adequate response to public concerns about high-tech, late modern risks. Scientific risk estimation has more than once led to expert controversies. When these controversies occur, the public at large – as a media audience – faces a paradoxical situation: on the one hand it must rely on the expertise of scientists as represented in the mass media, but on the other it is confused by competing (...) expert claims in the absence of any clear-cut standard to judge these claims. The question then arises, what expertise can the public trust? I argue that expert controversies cannot be settled by appealing to neutral, impartial expertise, because each use of expert knowledge in applied contexts is inextricably bound up with normative and evaluative assumptions. This value-laden nature of expert contributions, however, does not necessarily force us to adopt a relativist conception of expert knowledge. Nor does it imply active involvement of ordinary citizens in scientific risk estimation – as some authors seem to suggest. The value-laden, or partisan, nature of expert statements rather requires an unbiased process of expert dispute in which experts and counter-experts can participate. Moreover, instead of being a reason for discrediting expert contributions, experts'' commitment may enhance public trustworthiness because it enlarges the scope of perspectives taken into account, to include public concerns. Experts who share the same worries as (some of) the public could be expected to voice these worries at the level of expert dispute. Thus, a broadly shaped expert dispute, that is accessible to both proponents and opponents, is a prerequisite for public trust. (shrink)

This book probes the sources and nature of the 'discontents of modernity'. It proposes a new approach to the philosophic-critical discourse on modernity. The Enlightenment is widely understood to be the foundational moment of modernity. Yet despite its appeal to reason as the ultimate ground of its authority and legitimacy, the Enlightenment has had multiple historical manifestations and, therefore, can hardly be said to be a homogenous phenomenon. The present work seeks to identify a unitive element that allows us (...) to speak of the Enlightenment. To do so, it enjoins the concept of 'ethos' and its relation to the 'discontents of modernity'. This book proposes a new theoretical framework for the examination of the interrelationships between 'critical thought' and 'modernity', based on a fundamental distinction between criticism and negation. It will appeal to scholars and students of critical theory, the history of ideas, philosophy, the sociology of knowledge, and political science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:39 HUME'S JUSTICE AS A COLLECTIVE GOOD David Hume would probably regard his 'system of morals' as the most important part of his treatise of human nature. Yet his moral theory, particularly his theory of justice, continues to baffle commentators. Many have found it difficult to follow his line of reasoning to the conclusions that it is an artificial virtue to obey the rules of justice, and that such (...) rules command our respect even though we do not have any natural tendencies to respect them. The most troubling claim seems to be the claim that justice is ultimately based on self-interest, the motive that, on the surface at least, tends to induce people to ignore justice, particularly justice of the kind Hume is talking about. Jonathan Harrison, for instance, goes through a series of examples in an attempt to get close to Hume's meaning. In this paper I wish to argue that by justice Hume has in mind something very much like what modern economists call collective good. In the economic theory of public finance, which was born in the late Fifties, a distinction is made between collective goods and private goods. I wish to argue that this distinction can be employed to elucidate the nature of Hume's concept of justice, as well as to pinpoint the source of the moral force making justice a virtue rather than just a matter of prudence. I Most goods (and services) bought and sold in any economy have the following characteristics. First, as one person purchases (and consumes) a quantity of a particular good, there is less of it available for others to consume (that is, before more is produced). If the market is cleared (i.e. all that is produced is bought and sold), the total production or supply (X_, say) is the sum of individual purchases (X =X +X + etc.). 40 Second, the benefit of consumption is confined largely to the person who consumes the good. The overall benefit is said to be divisible among consumers. Third, the cost of production is also divisible and can be calculated for each unit of the good (which is not to say that such calculation can be easily or accurately carried out). Goods such as bread and butter, shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages, and so on, are of this nature. There are also certain goods and services which do not have these characteristics. John Stuart Mill was actually the first to notice the fact that a good such as a lighthouse, once provided, confers benefits equally on all "consumers" (i.e. ships that navigate by it). Unlike the goods in the class above, the amount of service generated by a lighthouse does not diminish as more of it is "consumed." The total X available is actually what is available for each and every consumer, so that X =X =X = etc. Once available, the benefit is not confined to any one user: to make it available to one user is to make it available to other users. The overall benefit is not divisible among consumers. Finally, it is often meaningless to speak of units of the good, hence meaningless to speak of cost per unit. Costs are also not divisible. In this class of goods we can include, in addition to the lighthouse, national defense, clean air, pleasant surroundings, etc. In the economic literature of public finance, these goods are referred to as 2 collective goods (and those above, private goods). The nature of collective goods poses a number of problems. One is that it is difficult to extract payments from consumers, once the good has been provided. Since it is difficult, if not impossible, to exclude those who refuse to pay from consuming the good or service, it is unrealistic to expect any payments, or full payments. This being so, no private entrepreneur would be willing to produce collective goods. Generally, 41 they will not be provided unless there is some collective effort, hence the name collective goods. The second problem, as economists see it, is to work out the optimum level of production. This turns out to be theoretically simple, assuming that potential consumers truly reveal their... (shrink)

Theocritus I. 49: δ', π πρ πντα δλον κεύθοισα, τ παιδον ο πν νσειν φατ πρν κρτιστν π ξηροȋσι καθξ. For a very long time I have held a view of this sentence which differs very greatly from any which I have seen advocated elsewhere. Mr. Campbell's discussion in the last number of C. Q. will render it possible to abbreviate my presentation of it. For many of Mr. Campbell's criticisms on page 99 are, I believe, sound, if occasionally overstated. (...) Many will agree, with some hesitations, in his methods of disproving the rendering ‘set him breakfasting upon dry stuff’ on page 98. This has always seemed to me a bad rendering for quite other reasons. Unfortunately for my purpose, which is not to expose modern misrenderings, but to find out what κρτωτν means, much is immaterial. Mr. Campbell's real objections to κρτιστν seem to be confined: To an alleged ‘active’ sense. To an alleged equivalence with a ‘present’ participle. To a violation of a law which he attributes to Mehlhorn. ‘It is the only occurrence of κρατζομαι outside Comedy and Late Prose.’. (shrink)

This article provides a survey of Walker Percy's criticism of what Pope Benedict XVI calls “scientificity,” which entails a constriction of the dynamic interaction of faith and reason. The process can result in the diminishment of ethical considerations raised by science's impact on public policy. Beginning in the 1950s, Percy begins speculating about the negative influence of scientificity. The threat of a political regime using weapons of mass destruction is only one of several menacing developments. The desacrilization of human (...) life from cradle to grave leads Percy to assert that modern science's impact is often radically incoherent. In The Moviegoer, Percy finds his existential and theistic voice that would enable him to advance his critique of science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of HobbesWilliam WalkerReason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, by Quentin Skinner; xvi & 477 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, $49.95.Having shown in his earlier work how the classical Roman texts on rhetoric governed to an important extent the formulation of republican ideas in Italian Renaissance and therefore modern political thought, Skinner now returns to these texts in order (...) to treat more comprehensively one of the major subjects of his research over the last thirty years—Thomas Hobbes. Determined to understand not so much what Hobbes’s writings mean as what Hobbes is doing, what “traditions he reacts against, what lines of argument he takes up, what changes he introduces into existing debates” (p. 8), Skinner devotes the entire first half of the book to “classical eloquence in Renaissance England” (p. 17). Citing mainly the Ad Herennium and the texts on rhetoric by Cicero and Quintilian, he provides a superb account of the classical Roman theory of persuasive speaking, as well as the ideal of citizenship which underlies it: for the Romans, the vir civilis, the good citizen, is the virtuous, wise, rational man [End Page 204] who exercises his mastery of the art of rhetoric to serve his community by pleading for just verdicts in the courts and beneficial policies in the assemblies. Citing the Tudor humanists who were instituting and teaching at the grammar schools, but also several sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English rhetoricians, poets, and prose writers, Skinner then observes how this classical theory of persuasion and its ideal of citizenship achieved “widespread currency” (p. 1) in England and served as the foundation for “the rhetorical culture of Renaissance humanism” (p. 250).It is in relation to this culture, Skinner insists in the second part of the book, that Hobbes must be understood. For although, as many have pointed out, Hobbes’s thinking was in part formed by the scientific developments of the century, “his intellectual formation was overwhelmingly indebted not to the culture of science but to the humanist literary culture” (p. 216). But this is not to say that Hobbes abides peacefully within this culture. After observing how his education, career, and publications up to 1640 are those of the “typical Renaissance humanist” (p. 217), Skinner argues that in his two major works of the early 1640s, Hobbes powerfully repudiates the entire classical theory of eloquence and its ideal of the vir civilis. For in The Elements of Law and De Cive, Hobbes claims to have made the study of moral and political theory into a scientific discipline. On the basis of this assertion, Skinner argues, Hobbes claims that reason unaided by eloquence is sufficient to persuade others of the truths of civil science, that eloquent men have not sustained but destroyed civil life, and that the most important duties of citizenship lie in the private sphere. In short, “Hobbes’s argument culminates in a view of citizenship and its obligations diametrically opposed to the image of the vir civilis” (p. 291). He does so, moreover, in prose which studiously avoids the invocation of commonplaces and authorities, the establishment of any ethos, the manipulation of definitions, the redescription of vices as virtues and virtues as vices (paradiastole), and the tropes and figures—Hobbes practices the repudiation of rhetoric he preaches.But then there is Leviathan (1651). Responding primarily out of his understanding of how Presbyterian and House of Commons demagogues incited civil war, Hobbes in his most celebrated work “reverts to the typically humanist assumption that, if we are to succeed in persuading others to accept our arguments, we shall have to supplement the findings of reason with the moving force of eloquence” (p. 426). Though he continues to understand himself transforming politics and morality into a scientific discipline, Hobbes ultimately reaffirms the premises of the rhetorical culture that produced him and that he repudiated in his first major political works. And though he continues to be critical of commonplaces, reliance on authorities, and tropes and figures, Hobbes in this work again practices what he preaches. In the final chapter of the book, Skinner meticulously documents how Hobbes uses the tropes and... (shrink)

Lynch’s book should take its place as an important study of late 13th century Franciscan cognition theory. Vital du Four is an important figure in the regard that he bridges the gap between Bonaventura and Duns Scotus. Moreover, he is one of the earliest Franciscan writers to have come to grips with Henry of Ghent. Even more important is the fact that much of Vital’s work was for some time mistakenly held to be that of Duns Scotus. Hence the need (...) for a clarification of Vital’s own doctrine is necessitated by the demand for separating out what is Scotus from what is not. Finally, Vital du Four is a pioneer thinker in the area of intuitive knowledge. A proper understanding of intuitive knowledge would seem to require seeing it in its complete historical perspective; and Vital du Four inevitably plays a part in that perspective. Vital du Four shows remarkable anticipations of classical modern formulations of the problems involved in cognition theory, particularly the problem of self-knowledge. The recent discussion regarding the inference and performance aspects of the Cartesian cogito is anticipated in Vital’s distinction between reasoned self-knowledge and intuitive self-knowledge. (shrink)

Rare is the scholarship that does not somewhere refer to Hobbes's philosophy as a system, but nowhere does Hobbes refer to his philosophy by this term. Since Hobbes in most recognized for his moral and political philosophy, and since the interpretation of his moral and political concepts varies with the variety of views about the systematic relationship between his political and natural philosophy, the issue of system is the most crucial in Hobbes interpretation. ;The standard interpretation is that Hobbes's anthropology (...) is the direct logical result of his mechanistic materialism, that his thoroughly modern moral and political philosophy is the logical consequence of that anthropology. Taylor and Strauss for different reasons denied a systematic relationship between Hobbes's political and natural philosophy, thus ushering in almost fifty years of Hobbes research following their insights, as well as a new generation of scholars who sought to render Hobbes's philosophy systematic by finding in his works new principles of systematization. But as late as 1982, even Willms noted that a comprehensive book on system had not yet emerged. ;This dissertation attempts to show that Hobbes's political philosophy is demonstrative, as he intended it to be, only if it is based upon his natural philosophy. Chapter one traces the history of the system concept to the Seventeenth Century to find an historically accurate operational description of system against which to view Hobbes's philosophy. Chapter Two spells out the systematicity in Hobbes's philosophy and shows how the formal concept of system developed in Chapter One applies accurately to Hobbes's philosophy. Chapter Three confirms the view of Hobbes's system established in Chapter Two by showing that Hobbes's view of Aristotle depends upon his own view of philosophic system. Chapter Four argues that Hobbes did intend a system in which the political philosophy depends upon the natural and that, as a result, Hobbes's moral and political concepts, particularly natural right and natural law, are not "moral" in any traditionally recognized sense. (shrink)

There is still something to be said about these figures for the Athenian hoplite force, the more so as the most reasonable discussion of them, Meyer's, is spoilt by some unsound inferences and has in consequence not found support. Their difficulty is apparent: a muster πανσημει in 338 meant calling up all classes up to the age of 50 , and since Socrates fought at Delion and Amphipolis when he was in his late forties, and not at Mantineia when he (...) was over 50, we may assume that it meant the same in the fifth century; we also assume that ‘the youngest’ are those in their nineteenth and twentieth years, as in the fourth century, certainly after the reform of the Ephebeia, perhaps earlier ; military service ceased at 60. But how could the number of men in these twelve classes, 19-20 and 51-60, stand in the proportion of 13: 17 to the men between 21 and 50 ? They could not be more than a third, and might be less. (Beloch, 1923, tries to make the problem more difficult by the arbitrary assumption that the 13,000 citizen hoplites are all the men of 21-60, instead of 21-50. Meyer, who accepts Thucydides’ figures, forgets that there must have been ‘oldest and youngest’ metics, besides the 3,000 who marched into Megara. Busolt and Meyer also argue that the classes 51-60 will have suffered specially heavy losses in the battles of 459-445, while the eight youngest classes would have seen no fighting. (shrink)

In eighteenth‐century Britain, there was more than one way of thinking about poverty. For some, poverty was an essentially moral problem. Another way of conceiving of poverty was in economic terms. In this article, however, I want to consider some eighteenth‐century versions of the idea that poverty might be a political issue. What I have in mind is the idea that a society containing a large proportion of very poor people might be, just for that reason, an unstable and (...) disordered society. I argue, first, that this idea is central to Smith's treatment of poverty in The Wealth of Nations. Then, after a brief account of how Paine and Godwin imagined the end of poverty, I describe the further development and refinement of Smithian lines of thought in Burke and Malthus. My conclusion is that Smith, Burke, and Malthus constitute evidence that present‐day ideas of social justice derive more from the nineteenth century and subsequent developments in moral and political thought than from the early modern period. (shrink)

Despite broad influence on the history of philosophy, Stoicism has lain long dormant as a practical philosophy. Of late, however, some have sought to modernize Stoicism for the contemporary world.1 It has found success in the military, as Stockdale and Sherman report. While the promise of tranquility through reason and self-discipline presents an appealing vision in emotional times, some tenets of Stoicism cannot gain purchase among society at large: predetermination, absolute morality at all times, and the idea of a (...) non-relational conception of virtue sound dated to a modern audience, particularly Americans. (shrink)

A plausible scenario for the future of electronic mass media news goes something like this. On the one hand, there will be the nightly television news, some of it brought to us by public entities and some by private, increasingly concentrated, corporate entities. On the other hand, there will be continually streaming sources of news available over the internet; and each of us will be able to construct, in effect, a tailor-made, continually revisable package of news. What I want to (...) do in this paper is reflect on the normative ideals in terms of which we ought to assess developments along these two paths. I will be assuming, along with the conference organizers, that these ideals must draw upon our notion of democratic dialogue. But what exactly is our notion of democratic dialogue? And how exactly should we bring it to bear on the two media paths? (shrink)

In the critical assessment of the rise of what Jameson has termed the modern centred subject … the lived experience of individual consciousness as a monadic and autonomous centre of activity, significant attention has been devoted to the impact of the institutions of the late eighteenth century ‘bourgeois cultural revolution’ such as the family and the school. Less consideration has been given in this history of regulated subjectivity to the emergence within key centres of cultural production of the discourse of (...) maternity and its lasting consequences for the understanding and representation of the mother–child bond as a matrix of both affectional relations and infant development. The late eighteenth century reconfiguration of the family as, in Jameson's words a private space within the nascent public sphere of bourgeois society intensified the ‘separation of the spheres’ begun in the early modern period and further formalised the zoning of the domestic experience as the defining site of emotional specialisation and individual growth. In the culture of early romanticism, this differentiation of domestic roles elevated children as the primary objects of a new regime of intergenerational care, replacing disciplinary control with intimate nurture and valorising a particular construction of motherhood as the ethical base of domestic piety and social stability beyond even the semantic reach of reason. Understanding the cultural processes by which this important ideological shift reshaped the paradigm of parent–child relations in industrial society – radiating beyond the realm of the family into the wider systems of childcare and education – enables us better to discern its continuing influence on perceptions of family life and motherhood today and to critically evaluate its potential contribution to changing conceptions of the place of the family in contemporary democratic society. (shrink)

Democracy in the twenty-first century faces a number of major challenges, populism, neoliberalism and globalisation being three of the most prominent. This book examines such challenges by investigating how the conditions of democratic statehood have been altered at several key historical intervals since 1945. It demonstrates that the formal mechanisms of democratic statehood, such as elections, have always been complemented by civic, cultural, educational, socio-economic and constitutional institutions that mediate between citizens and state authority. Rearticulating critical theory with a contemporary (...) focus, the book shows why a sociological approach is urgently needed to address conceptual deficits and explain how the formal mechanisms of democratic statehood need to be complemented and updated in new ways today. (shrink)

It is conventional to distinguish between an old liberalism, with a robust conception of private property and a limited role for government in the economy, and a new liberalism that permits government to override individual property rights in the pursuit of the general welfare. The New Deal is often taken to mark the dividing line between these two forms of liberal governance. But when we focus on property rights through the magnifying lens of Takings Clause jurisprudence, we find that the (...) movement away from strong property rights begins not with the New Deal but in the late 19th century, at what is normally taken to be the peak of constitutionally protected private property. The much-criticized decision in Kelo v. New London (2005) represents, not a break with past doctrine, but rather its logical consequence. Protecting individual property-holders against expansive state powers of eminent domain runs into a structural conundrum: while categorical restraints on state power limit government's ability to promote important public purposes, an explicitly purposive approach renders all limits on government power (including individual rights) vulnerable to an aggregative calculus. The most plausible response is a two-tier approach: respect for legally established categories in ordinary circumstances, regardless of their aggregate consequences, and consequentialism in circumstances of emergency, when the lives or basic wellbeing of citizens are at stake. Judged against this template, the consequentialism guiding modern takings clause jurisprudence in ordinary, non-emergency circumstances is hard to justify. (shrink)

This essay argues that Stoicism is the ancient philosophy most relevant to modern politics and civic education. Its relevance is due not to the advocacy of any specific political system or public policy but to its theory that the human good depends primarily on rationality and excellence of character rather than on material prosperity and productivity. According to Stoicism, all human beings are related to one another in virtue of our communal nature as rational animals. Reflection on the norms of (...) human nature persuaded the Stoics that we all share a common interest in living just and mutually beneficial lives. This principle, though it favors an equitable distribution of goods and services, makes rationality and integrity, rather than material prosperity, the essential values of community and the measure of normative citizenship and lawmaking. Our goal as Stoic citizens is to practice the art of what is always possible or in our power—doing our best to live mutually beneficial and well-reasoned lives—while recognizing that the external success we are naturally inclined to aim at may be frustrated because we live in a world we can never fully control. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editor’s IntroductionGerard A. HauserThe call for papers for this special issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric1 acknowledged the continuous centrality of human agency across the history of Western thought on rhetoric. At its ancient Greek origins, the Sophists and philosophers were at swords points over the question of what constituted responsible speech and who had responsibility for the consequences of moving the demos to public actions that bore on the (...) city-state and the lives of its citizens. On the one hand, sophistic understood the human world as indeterminate, progressing or regressing through appeals that would establish social and political reality for the community through the power of language and argument to move the minds and hearts of citizens. Protagoras expressed this vision with his aphorism, "Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not." Central to their understanding of the human world was a recognition and exploration of language's psychogogic powers. For the philosophers, on the other hand, sophistic's position represented a problematic abandonment of the quest for Eternal Truth.The tension between the quest for contingent truth and Eternal Truth is illustrated by Xenophon's rendition of the aftermath of the Athenian naval victory at Arginoussai, in 406 BCE. In his Hellenika,2 he recounts how some of the victorious fleet's sailors became separated from it during the confusion of battle and were left behind. Although the commanders sent a group to rescue them, violent seas thwarted their efforts and the men drowned. Upon returning to Athens as victors, the commanders were arrested and charged with cowardice. The Ecclesia met to decide whether to bind them over for trial. The commanders seemed to have persuaded most of their innocence, but time ran out for that day's proceedings before a vote on whether to bind them over for a trial could be taken. That evening, at a festival in the city, opponents of the commanders attended dressed in [End Page 181] black mourning clothes and pretended to be grieving relatives of the lost sailors. Their displays of sorrow over the sailors' deaths were so convincing that they swung the emotions of many in the opposite direction.The next day, opponents of the commanders played upon the events of the night before and the citizens, remembering the displays of grief they had witnessed, were persuaded to try the commanders themselves, rather than deciding whether to bind them over to the courts for trial. Arguments went back and forth on how to interpret the tragic event—were the commanders brave but foiled by nature, or was their conduct spineless? Did they deserve a laurel wreath for their victory in battle, or to be executed for cowardice in allowing the stranded sailors to drown? Finally a vote was taken and, reversing their sentiment from the day before, the citizens voted to condemn the commanders. The military leaders were taken away to be executed. Soon thereafter, Xenophon tells us, the citizens had a change of heart and wished to reverse their verdict. However, since it was too late—the generals having already been put to death!—they lodged a complaint against those who had persuaded them to convict for "deceiving the People."The story may be read as a representative anecdote of rhetoric's fatal flaw or of rhetoric's constitutive powers of agency. On one reading, Athenian Ecclesiasts, convulsed with emotion, were stripped of their agency by arguments seeking the probable through sensory engagement structured by phantasia and mimesis3 while lacking a foundation in the Eternally True. However, it also may be read as disclosing the absence of Eternal Truth on which to ground a human world, and the agential power of language—of rhetoric—to constitute understanding and action.4 On one side, agency resided in the self-aware person who made responsible arguments with reference to pure reason and ideal justice. On the other, agency resided in the powers of language to engage thoughts and emotions, of discourse to circulate, and of representative thinking5 for discovering human reality. These latter were products of human... (shrink)

How are we disposed to the problem of natural resources scarcity that we face today and to the fact that certain natural sources remain unused, whereas the exploitation of others puts further strain on the already degraded biosphere? The scarcity of natural resources not only imposes a series of ecological issues on us; it also challenges democracy as organizational system and way of life, because it increases inequality, conflict, authoritarianism, and repression. One way to address this predicament would be the (...) re-appropriation of our relation with the biosphere by ceasing to see it as a limitless source of extraction and consumption. This essay suggests that a certain part of this.. (shrink)

This dissertation is concerned with the viability of the idea of liberal public reason. This idea belongs to the realm of contemporary political philosophy and is a term which seems to have few direct correlates in the history of philosophy, though it has a few namesakes and several analogues. "Public Reason'' may be contrasted obviously with "private reason"- a concept as dubious no doubt as that of the idea of a private language. But this contrast is not (...) what is here meant. Here the concept of public reason may be thought of as an account of the moral practical reasoning appropriate to democratic citizenship in the public sphere. This account of the moral practical reason" particular to the role of government officials and of citizens is made through delimiting those moral concepts suitable for public deliberation and through the imposition of duties to reason from a "public" point of view rather than self interest. Naturally, this idea of public reason is analogous to many previous theories on the nature of right. Some of the more obvious examples are the use of the natural law by jurists of the Roman Republic such as Cicero, the idea of the "common good'' which is to be found in political theorists of the late medieval republics of Italy, or the use of natural rights language by the founders of the American Constitution... (shrink)

This chapter interrogates the figure “without soil” in relation to pivotal concerns in Theodor W. Adorno's thought. Freedom, the element of philosophy, proves itself as much in the conscious dismissal as in the rescuing return. The return is not that of something repressed, a claim suppressed by another claim, by the blank refusal to have anything to do with something. The fact that Adorno's thinking draws on dialectical motifs means that the conscious dismissal turns against what exists, against what is (...) merely natural, isolated, abstract in life; the life of the spirit that has freed itself from abstraction no longer sets itself in opposition to death. It no longer takes control of death as negativity and, for that very reason, no longer succumbs to it. If one wanted to revert to Kantian terminology, one could say that philosophy is concerned with neither inclination nor respect, but with favor. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern PracticeFrancis A. BeerPrudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice. Ed. Robert Hariman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 337. $65.00, cloth."Would it be prudent?" The phrase echoes in memory, linking Dana Carvey from Saturday Night Live to the presidency of the first George Bush. Robert Hariman has been wrestling with prudence for over a decade, and he has now produced a powerful (...) volume that brings together not only his thoughts but also those of a number of other distinguished authors. The result is a book that will become a standard reference for those interested in prudence.The subtitle, Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice, and the title of the first chapter, "Theory without Modernity," give some idea of the subtexts that drive the book. This is a book about prudence, and more. It is about virtue in classical, modern, and postmodern settings. It is about the dynamic complexity of practice—decision, judgment, and action in public and private life.Hariman gives us a definition: "Prudence is a mode of reasoning about contingent matters in order to select the best course of action" (5). That would be too easy. He also surrounds prudence with a penumbra of related words to broaden our understanding of the complex lattice of semantic meaning. Our legacy from the Greek and Roman lexicon includes words like phronesis and prudentia. Contemporary nouns involve cautiousness, circumspection, and care. Related adjectives are "careful, judicious, tactful, discerning, sensible, frugal, wise, sage, level-headed, balanced, moderate, politic, practical pragmatic, expedient" (vii). These synonyms, for Hariman, describe a narrow, modern form of prudence, part of the calculative tradition inherited from Aristotle, that ultimately leads to the saddle points of rational choice. They are, however, only a part of the story. Hariman aims to relieve their "stodginess" by recovering the performative tradition of prudence from Cicero. Prudence, from this perspective, is defined not just abstractly as a set of rules but more dynamically as a set of roles. Prudence includes character, and is performed by characters. Pericles in Athens is an iconic example of superb political leadership that blends the honor of the leader with the glory of the state. Prudence combines integrity of the self with respect for others. This is a broad, ambitious interpretation [End Page 176] of prudence. It recuperates not only a classical vision of prudence but also one of politics. It rearranges other virtues to revolve in a constellation around prudence. In this reconstituted form, prudence reemerges to shine as "a crucial element of political leadership," the central political virtue.The book is divided into three parts: "Conceptual Frameworks," "Rhetorical Structures," and "Provisional Networks." All three of the sections are identified in structural terms, which is interesting since Hariman's conception of prudence as a primary political virtue is very agent-centered. The structures, however, provide the settings in which the political observers and actors perform. The first section provides a sample of the rich literature that focuses on philosophical concepts of prudence in earlier times and places. It begins with a chapter by Robert W. Cape Jr. that discusses "Cicero and the Development of Political Practice in Rome." This chapter is critical to the book, since it lays a part of the foundation. It is the first substantive essay and it must also make the case for combining calculative and performative prudence. Cape gives us a fine exposition of prudentia in the Roman context. Interestingly, he suggests that "prudentia is a contraction of providentia, "'foresight.'" (37).The virtue of prudence was typically associated with age and experience. Imprudence, on the other hand, was associated with youth, recklessness, and impropriety (37). Prudence involved knowledge of practical matters, law, and custom as well as proper speech, including rhetoric, and behavior. Prepon mattered. Prudence for Cicero, however, was much more than simply knowing how things work: it was ultimately the extended performance of justice on the public stage. The next chapter, by Eugene Garver, entitled "After Virtù: Rhetoric, Prudence, and Moral Pluralism in Machiavelli," moves the story of prudence from the late classical to the early modern period. As the title indicates, Garver's concern is also with the relation of... (shrink)

Late Modernity is one of those imprecise concertina concepts like postmodernity or indeed modernity itself that expands to fill the theoretical void. These concepts are very broad historical catego...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Being and Freedom: On Late Modern Ethics in Europe by John SkorupskiJ. P. MessinaJohn Skorupski. Being and Freedom: On Late Modern Ethics in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 560. Hardcover, $130.00.John Skorupski's Being and Freedom traces the development of modern ethics in France, Germany, and England, as set in motion by two great revolutions: the French Revolution and Kant's methodological revolution in the Critique of Pure (...) Reason. I begin this review by offering [End Page 714] a brief summary of the book (which consists of eight lengthy chapters, an introduction, and a brief conclusion). I then raise some interpretive worries and offer an overall assessment.In chapter 1, Skorupski reminds us that the French Revolution, a physical struggle between opposing factions, was also a battleground of ideas. In opposing the ancien régime, revolutionaries took aim at the "Catholic-feudal order" (27). Underlying this order was an ethical view, "holism," according to which a person lives well through excellent performance of community roles assigned by family, state, and church. When individual interests conflict with these social roles, the latter take precedence. Revolutionaries (partially inspired by Rousseau) railed against this. On their view, persons were born for freedom, not the chains of traditional life. To realize such freedom demanded a radical democratic state. Here, too, fidelity to the ethical whole (the Republic) sometimes required sacrifices on the part of individuals. But in a properly constituted republic, these sacrifices would be self-imposed requirements of the general will.As revolution turned to terror and blood became the regular currency of sacrifice, critics like Guizot saw the ancien régime's parochialism as a symptom of a larger problem with its underlying ethics, one it shared with the radicals aligned against it: its commitment to holism. Holism says that some social entities have a good not reducible to the good of their members. Additionally, these social wholes have their own rights that sometimes override individual rights (28, 59). These features make it easy for holist orders to justify sacrificing individuals for collective goods. If this is the disease, individualism of the sort associated with Kantian ethics can seem to be the cure.Chapter 2 argues that the new critical philosophy resulting from Kant's "Copernican" Revolution is a mixed bag. On the one hand, Kant offers no good reason for positing a noumenal world and locating freedom there (77–79). On the other hand, there is lasting promise in the idea that morality follows from each person's individual autonomy. And yet, in the end, Kant's arguments fail here, too. For deriving morality from autonomy requires an explicit commitment to impartiality, which does not follow from autonomy (83–102). And, even when suitably modified, Kant's ethical principles risk emptiness if they fail to take content from our relationships and social roles (112, 148). Unfortunately, Kant suggests that doing so would perpetrate heteronomy, making such emptiness inevitable (102).By chapter 3, the tension between holist and individualist conceptions of ethics has become Skorupski's central leitmotif. On the one hand, individualists are well positioned to resist oppression and terror. On the other hand, individualism risks atomism and alienation from our attachments and feelings. Such alienation leads Schiller to reject Kant's views on freedom and virtue (161). For our author, this is as it should be.Skorupski next turns to Fichte. Although Fichte takes a step away from transcendental idealism by making intellectual intuition the hallmark of our subjectivity (173), he agrees with Kant that morality follows from autonomy. Indeed, for Fichte, autonomy commits us to striving for full self-sufficiency, which appears to court a similar atomism. Yet this impression is corrected when Fichte turns to politics. There, Fichte grounds rights (as permissible demands) in mutual recognition (182–83). This positions him to see the state and the family as ethical wholes (187–88), pointing away from Kantian individualism back toward holism.Hegel takes these steps away from Kant to their logical conclusion. As Skorupski explains in chapter 4, Hegel argues that the individualist systems grounded in autonomy and abstract right (Moralität) mark but stages on the way to moral... (shrink)

This article shows to what extent the new situation in our late-modern societies can see a further deepening of the social control typical of soft totalitarianism we experience in our globalised democracies, through the mechanisms already denounced by Arendt in her The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951): the promotion of rootlessness and superfluity. In particular, the paper focus on what Eliot (1927) called the hollow man or what philosophy and sociology have called the one-dimensional man, the absent subject or the saturated (...) self, which the technological, social, cultural and economic environment in which we live so favours. The article diagnoses the reasons and means by which the alienation of the subject occurs, but proposes narrative and testimony as ways of combating social control of a psychopolitical kind [1]. [1] Investigación financiada por el proyecto del Banco de Santander – CEU titulado “Control social, posmodernidad y comunidad política” (COSOPOC) con código B920PR02 // FUSPBC-PPC14/2018. (shrink)

The Institute of Social Research, from which the Frankfurt School developed, was founded in the early years of the Weimar Republic. It survived the Nazi era in exile, to become an important centre of social theory in the postwar era. Early members of the school, such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, developed a form of Marxist theory known as Critical Theory, which became influential in the study of class, politics, culture and ideology. The work of more recent members, and in (...) particular Habermas, has received wide attention throughout Europe and North America. Tom Bottomore's study takes a new and controversial look at the contributions of the Frankfurt School to modern sociology, examining several issues not previously discussed elsewhere. He discusses the neglect of history and political economy by the critical theorists, and considers the relationship of the later Frankfurt School to the radical movements of the 1960s and the present time. His critical analysis makes the school's writers accessible, through an assessment of their work and an exploration of the relationship of Critical Theory to other forms of sociological thought, especially positivism and structuralism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy by John DeweyCharles A. HobbsJohn Dewey. Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012, 351 pp., index.John Dewey’s latest publication marks a watershed moment for scholarship in American philosophy, and, in addition to Dewey himself, we have editor Phillip Deen to thank for discovering it (among the Dewey papers in Special Collections at Morris Library of Southern Illinois (...) University) and editing it. We see Dewey late in life (early 1940s) engaged mainly in a critique of the modern, ancient, and (fragmentarily) medieval philosophical periods, which Dewey argues, are eras not nearly as distinct as traditional understanding admits. In the Introduction, Deen helpfully explains how we are now bequeathed incomplete but in most [End Page 122] cases quite robust chapter drafts that amount to another substantial work by Dewey. While published by Southern Illinois University Press, this volume is not itself part of The Collected Works of John Dewey. Still, the careful editing (of what are actually a number of manuscripts) is comparable in its excellence. There is also a well-done Index.The scope is twofold: retrospective and prospective. Chapters one through seven trace the development of so-called modern philosophy along with its central epistemological problem, with the aim being to demonstrate how thoroughly “unmodern” such philosophy has been. Then, chapters eight through fourteen constitute a genuinely modern approach that naturalistically and functionally undercuts the epistemic problem of subject/object and points to a revolution in the process of knowing.We turn to the retrospective, beginning in the first chapter with the acknowledgement that Dewey comes to philosophy itself as a kind of anthropologist, something we note as consistent with the influence of Franz Boas on Dewey (with whom Dewey was a colleague and intellectual ally at Columbia for about thirty-five years). This is further underscored by a lengthy quotation of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski on the meaning of culture (p. 290). The ongoing history of philosophy is itself a cultural activity. Indeed, citing James, Dewey declares that “The sickliest way in which a student of philosophy can approach his subject-matter is that of a search for ultimate impersonal revelation of truth.” (p. 16) Rather, let the philosopher have the pragmatic attitude of openness “... to truth from whatever source it comes” (ibid).With that, Dewey once again turns to the Greeks, who initiated “The Discovery of Rational Discourse” (Ch. III) as underscored by the Socratic means of cooperative discourse, with the dialogues—not lectures—being evidence of the Athenian philosophical revolution in turning “from discussing nature and giving an account of it to the examination of the nature and procedure of discussion and report” (p. 38). Yet this project, despite its initial promise, failed for lack of a genuine logic of experimentation or inquiry. Then philosophy focused on going beyond the natural, beginning with the medieval “Search for Salvation” (Ch. IV, a significantly less developed and unified chapter draft). “Modern” philosophers then rightly replaced grand cosmic schemes with a focus on human nature (Ch. V), but they went too far with their introspective methods, gradually resulting in the same consequence supernaturalism had produced: a dualism of mind and nature, as if human nature is somehow not a part of nature. As we recall from Human Nature and Conduct (1922), human nature is not independent of but rather interdependent (or, using Dewey’s later term, transactional) with the rest of nature. The key is to avoid hypostatizing mind and better to talk of culture as nature. [End Page 123]With the Renaissance onward, humans have been “Wandering between Two Worlds” (Ch. VI), and endless arguments between “rationalists” and “empiricists” overlook what these camps share, namely a psychology assuming a fundamental split between subjective/objective and assumptions about certainty as founded upon various first principles or substances. The result is the stagnation of philosophy while science flourishes. Dewey cites Bertrand Russell as an example of continued insistence on such a priori principles (p. 106).We find ourselves in an epoch split between scientism and moral and religious fundamentalism, the result of a lingering tenacious investment in bad elements from ancient and medieval... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to the formulation of a non-excluding concept of solidarity which is of relevance to contemporary society. The assumption is that in the present individualized and culturally diverse society there is an urgent need for a new form of solidarity to create social cohesion. The central theme is that contemporary solidarity is about recognition and a fair distribution of chances for recognition. This ideal may function as a normative standard for critical research and (...) as a guideline for people in their moral struggles. What ultimately needs to be done is not a purely theoretical question but something which must be settled by a judgement that constitutes a battlefield where conflicting values and perceptions of reality confront each other. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY PRESENTS AN EXTENDED MEDITATION ON THE DEVELOPING practice of scriptural reasoning insofar as it may contribute to our thinking about political discourse in the context of late-modern liberal democracies. Concerns are raised about the account of argument and practical reason expressed by practitioners of scriptural reasoning, particularly with respect to an antimetaphysical bias. Following Franklin Gamwell, I suggest that a coherent theoretical account of democracy should be open to the critical assessment of metaphysical claims. I conclude that (...) scriptural reasoning does provide a helpful resource for thinking about argument across religious traditions in a democratic context but requires a clearer position on metaphysics to make a truly distinctive contribution to reforming our understanding of democratic politics in the context of religious pluralism. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), the author of Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, is the pivotal figure of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Jewish philosophy and theology. The Jewish thinkers influenced by him include Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Mordecai Kaplan, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Emmanuel Levinas. A thoroughgoing rationalist, Cohen was an opponent of mythology and mysticism, which he viewed as cheapening and corrupting religion. Cohen summoned Jews back to the truths of reason, the centrality of ethics, (...) the primacy of humanity in theology, and the moral law as the essence of religious life and thought. What is essential to Cohen is the notion that God can be discovered by the processes of reason itself. It is not necessary to "believe" in God. God can be known through the exercise of reason and the pursuit of the ethical life. In this important study, Rabbi Jehuda Melber presents a comprehensive reformulation, analysis, and interpretation of Cohen's philosophy of Judaism for the contemporary reader. Book jacket. (shrink)

Three of the readings sections in this anthology treat specifically ethical problems: a) Determinism, Freedom, and Responsibility, b) Responsibility, Blame, and Punishment, and c) Self-love and the Claims of Morality. Related material is treated in the section on Reason and Religious Faith. A particularly well-balanced section on modern versions of the mind-body problem is contained in a section entitled Mind and Its Place in Nature. Finally, in the section on Human Knowledge: Its Grounds and Limits, the focus is on (...) the lines that are drawn between rationalism and empiricism. The selections generally achieve their objective of being intensive rather than representative. It is difficult to say what type of college course this anthology could best serve as a text for, but its incorporation of a good deal of quite recent material make it valuable as an ancillary text in the areas mentioned.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This book is concerned with the history of metaphysics since Descartes. Taking as its definition of metaphysics 'the most general attempt to make sense of things', it charts the evolution of this enterprise through various competing conceptions of its possibility, scope, and limits. The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the early modern period, the late modern period in the analytic tradition, and the late modern period in non-analytic traditions. In its unusually wide range, A. W. Moore's (...) study refutes the tired old cliché that there is some unbridgeable gulf between analytic philosophy and philosophy of other kinds. It also advances its own distinctive and compelling conception of what metaphysics is and why it matters. Moore explores how metaphysics can help us to cope with continually changing demands on our humanity by making sense of things in ways that are radically new. (shrink)

This book is our century’s most comprehensive and wise treatment of nihilism in all of its guises, comparing favorably with Rosen, Cavell, and indeed with Spengler. Crosby argues that our culture is genuinely haunted by nihilism expressing itself in the fideism of fundamentalism as well as in the debilitating alienation from all orientation. This results from a one-sided development of Western culture. Unlike most writers on this topic, Crosby acknowledges many sources colluding to frame the culture of nihilism, including “the (...) death of God,” the objectification of nature, the meaninglessness of suffering in a mechanical universe, the ephemerality of time in a world where value does not accumulate, the arbitrariness of historicized reason, the reduction of value to will, and the alienation of the Cartesian ego. These sources are reviewed in the first two parts of the book with the result that the phenomenon of nihilism becomes understandable. In its third and fourth parts, Crosby provides a critical analysis of the religious and philosophical forces leading to nihilism by discussing authors from the early modern period through Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Russell, and Derrida. He shows that these forces are skewed and impoverished and should not be allowed to determine our situation. The comprehensive attention to detail and the multi-perspectival interpretation demonstrates as well as asserts the richness of the culture that puts nihilism in its place. Part Five, finally, rephrases the criticism of the sources of nihilism in positive ways. Part Four in particular is a tour de force of philosophical argument. Its richness of nuance, plurality of views examined, and adroitness of critical interpretation provide cumulatively a powerful, non-nihilistic reading of the philosophic tradition. The force of the argument derives from its comprehensive, cumulative character. Crosby distinguishes and relates five areas of nihilism: political, moral, epistemological, cosmic, and existential. Throughout the book, he illustrates and examines these as they are expressed in literature and art, in daily life and practical affairs, and in philosophy. The book is richly erudite in its marshalling of consciousness from so many domains. (shrink)

For John Skorupski, as of course for many historians of Western thought, the end of the eighteenth century was a moment of radical transformation. European cult.

In the late summer of 1998, the authors, a cognitive scientist and a logician, started talking about the relevance of modern mathematical logic to the study of human reasoning, and we have been talking ever since. This book is an interim report of that conversation. It argues that results such as those on the Wason selection task, purportedly showing the irrelevance of formal logic to actual human reasoning, have been widely misinterpreted, mainly because the picture of logic current in psychology (...) and cognitive science is completely mistaken. We aim to give the reader a more accurate picture of mathematical logic and, in doing so, hope to show that logic, properly conceived, is still a very helpful tool in cognitive science. The main thrust of the book is therefore constructive. We give a number of examples in which logical theorizing helps in understanding and modeling observed behavior in reasoning tasks, deviations of that behavior in a psychiatric disorder (autism), and even the roots of that behavior in the evolution of the brain. (shrink)

While the loss of the second book of the Poetics has deprived us of Aristotle’s most extensive account of laughter and comedy, his discussion of eutrapelia (wittiness) as a virtue in his ethical works and in the Rhetoric points toward the importance of humor for his ethical and political thought. This article offers a reconstruction of Aristotle’s account of wittiness and attempts to explain how the virtue of wittiness would animate the everyday interactions of ordinary citizens. Placing Aristotle’s account of (...) wittiness in dialogue with recent work within the ethical turn in contemporary political theory can help articulate what a late-modern ethos of democratic laughter might look like. (shrink)

9 Eastern Christianity and Jesuit Scholarship on Arabic and Islam: Modern History and Contemporary Theological Reflections -- 10 Autonomy, Dignity, Human Rights: Correcting a Popular Error -- 11 Liberal and Authoritarian Approaches to Raising Good Citizens -- 12 Stewardship as Welcome and Respect for the Dignity of the Vulnerable: An Essay in Bioethics -- 13 Dialogue in a Pluralist Context: Theological Ethics and the New Interest in Happiness -- Index.