This book lays out and examines three central aspects of the moral philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand: his notions of value, value response, and value blindness. This discussion is supplemented by analysis of the relationship between happiness and morality in von Hildebrand. Martin Cajthaml is the main author of the book; Vlastimil Vohánka contributed most of chapter 5.

The first part of the paper focuses on the elements of von Hildebrand’s general and moral epistemology that can be related to Brentano’s philosophy. The salient concepts discussed are those of Kenntnisnahme (taking cognizance) and Stellungnahme (response). I explain their meaning and show their role in von Hildebrand’s critical assessment of Brentano’s conception of the acts of higher (or correct) love and hate. In the second part of the paper, I argue that von Hildebrand’s material ethics is based on the (...) basic ontological presupposition of Scheler’s material value ethics and that it is, therefore, to be considered a version of it, notwithstanding some quite basic differences from Scheler in other respects. In the third part of the paper, I discuss von Hildebrand’s most important analyses of the different epistemic acts through which values are given. The salient concepts are those of the seeing and feeling of values. (shrink)

The first part of the paper focuses on the elements of von Hildebrand’s general and moral epistemology that can be related to Brentano’s philosophy. The salient concepts discussed are those of Kenntnisnahme and Stellungnahme. I explain their meaning and show their role in von Hildebrand’s critical assessment of Brentano’s conception of the acts of higher love and hate. In the second part of the paper, I argue that von Hildebrand’s material ethics is based on the basic ontological presupposition of Scheler’s (...) material value ethics and that it is, therefore, to be considered a version of it, notwithstanding some quite basic differences from Scheler in other respects. In the third part of the paper, I discuss von Hildebrand’s most important analyses of the different epistemic acts through which values are given. The salient concepts are those of the seeing and feeling of values. (shrink)

Článek seznamuje s kritikou psychologismu v logice, která je jedním z hlavních témat Husserlových Prolegomen k čisté logice. Psychologismus v logice spočíval v podstatě v tom, že logika byla chápána jako součást psychologie, příp. že psychologie se považovala za jediný a dostatečný teoretický základ logiky. Pozornost je věnována dvěma hlavním liniím kritiky psychologismu, které se v tomto Husserlově díle objevují. První z nich vychází z analýzy povahy zákonů čisté logiky (zákon sporu, sylogistické figury aj.). Analýza ukazuje, že tyto zákony se (...) nemohou zakládat na empirických psychologických pravidlech, a psychologie (jako empirická věda) tudíž nemůže být základem logiky. Druhá linie Husserlovy kritiky psychologismu v logice směřuje k prokázání vnitřní rozpornosti psychologistického stanoviska, jsou-li z něj vyvozeny jeho nejzazší důsledky. Tato rozpornost spočívá v tom, že psychologismus na jedné straně vystupuje jako vědecká teorie, na straně druhé však svou základní tezí popírá některé z nutných podmínek možnosti každé vědecké teorie vůbec, a tím sám sebe ruší jako teoreticky věrohodnou tezi. Závěrem upozorníme na jedno z pokračování boje proti psychologismu v rané fenomenologické tradici, a to na Ingardenovu kritiku psychologismu v pojetí literárního díla.The article outlines some of the main argumentation-strategies deployed by Husserl in his famous critique of the psychologistic logic in Prolegomena to pure logic. Fundamentally, the psychologism in logic consisted in considering logic to be a part of psychology, resp. in considering psychology as the exclusive and sufficient foundation of logic. The attention is given to the two main lines of argumentation against psychologism appearing in the work of Husserl. The starting point of the first one is an analysis of the laws of pure logic (principle of contradiction, the figures of syllogism etc.). It shows that these laws can not be based on mere empirical rules of psychology, and thus psychology (as an empirical discipline) can not be the foundation of logic. The second line of Husserl’s critique of psychologism aims at showing the contradictions in the psychologistic standpoint that become visible if one uncovers its ultimate implications. The main contradiction consists in that while psychology claims to be a scientific theory it contradicts at the same time by its fundamental claim some of the necessary conditions of a scientific theory as such, and thus it cancels itself as a theoretically credible set of claims. Toward the end of the paper the attention is given to one of the continuations of the fight against psychologism in the phenomenological tradition, namely to R. Ingarden’s critique of the psychologism in the conception of the literary work of art. (shrink)

The paper describes the theory of the so-called “value-blindness” created by Dietrich von Hildebrand. The importance of the topic becomes apparent especially as its elaboration reveals a complex and dynamic relationship between moral cognitivity and fundamental moral attitudes of the cognizing subject. The article presents Hildebrand’s teaching on moral blindness as a coherent theory that was first introduced in the early work Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntnis, and subsequently in the late Graven Images. By way of a conclusion the author examines (...) the relation between Hildebrand’s theory of moral blindness to Aristotle’s doctrine of acrasia. The significance of Hildebrand’s theory for fundamental systematic questions and problems of moral philosophy thus becomes manifest. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to compare and critically evaluate Kant’s, Aristotle’s, and von Hildebrand’s approach to the question of the moral accountability of emotions. Notoriously, Kant, in his practical philosophy, leaves hardly any place for the moral value of emotions. The only emotion that he acknowledges to possess a moral value is “Achtung für’s Gesetz”. According to Aristotle, emotions can be object of praise and blame in so far as they are formed by good or bad habits. Von (...) Hildebrand, not objecting to this approach of Aristotle, off ers a fi ne phenomenological analysis of how a “morally conscious” person modifi es emotions while experiencing them by either “sanctioning” or “disavowing” them. This analysis implies that emotions can be morally good or bad in still diff erent sense than the one considered by Aristotle. (shrink)

The paper focuses on MacIntyre’s account of teleology and the role of teleology in explaining value language and grounding ethical normativity. It isolates three distinct albeit interrelated notions of teleology emerging gradually from Macintyre’s philosophical project. It investigates how moral language is explained and moral norms justified on the bases of these three articulations of the teleological motif. It subjects the weakness of this reasoning to criticism.

The paper aims to present a critical evaluation of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s account of value. This account is von Hildebrand’s most important and original contribution, not just to general value theory but to philosophy as such. I first present this account by explaining, in detail, his analysis of the so-called categories of importance. Then I critically examine the philosophical originality and merit of von Hildebrand’s account of value. I do so by arguing against his claim that value, in the sense (...) of the important in itself, is not in the centre of “traditional ethics”. (shrink)

In this article, I present and analyze Dietrich von Hildebrand’s explanation of how acting against one’s better knowledge is possible. I do so by comparing it to Plato’s analysis of the same problem. By this comparison, I seek to show the specificity of von Hildebrand’s approach to the phenomenon which, since Aristotle’s time, has been known as “akrasia.”.

Martin Wrights original ground-breaking and influential analysis of the defects of the adversarial system of justice, plus the arguments in favour of a more ...

Heidegger in America explores the surprising legacy of his life and thought in the United States of America. As a critic of modern life, Heidegger often lamented the growing global influence of all things American. However, it was precisely in America where his thought inspired the work of generations of thinkers – not only philosophers but also theologians, architects, novelists, and even pundits. As a result, the reception and dissemination of Heidegger's philosophical writings transformed the intellectual and cultural history of (...) the United States at a time when American influence was itself transforming the world. A case study in the complex and sometimes contradictory process of transnational exchange, Heidegger in America recasts the scope and methods of contemporary intellectual and cultural history in the age of globalization, challenging what we think we know about Heidegger and American ideas simultaneously. (shrink)

In this lively collection ten philosophers tackle the notoriously elusive issues raised by religious discourse in a series of linked debates. The debates focus on reason and faith; the logic of mysticism; the meaning of the word 'God'; language, biblical interpretation and worship; and religion and ethics. Through contemporary philosophical analysis it is possible to shed new light on teh status and language of religion, and in many ways the contributors to Religion and Philosophy break new ground in this perennially (...) controversial field. The collection is addressed to philosophers, theologians and anyone with a general intellectual interest in religion. Certainly it will be a valuable addition to the reading list of all teachers or students of the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The discussion of collective agency involves the reduction problem of the concept of a collective. Individualism and Cartesian internalism have long restricted orthodox theories and made them face the tension between an irreducible concept of a collective and ontological reductionism. Heterodox theories as functionalism and interpretationism reinterpret the concept of agency and accept it as realized on the level of a collective. In order to adequately explain social phenomena that have relations as their essence, in this paper we propose a (...) relational, holistic account of collective agency and argue that functionalism and interpretationism can be integrated into such an account. (shrink)

Moral luck is a puzzling aspect of our psychology: Why do we punish outcomes that were not intended (i.e. accidents)? Prevailing psychological accounts of moral luck characterize it as an accident or error, stemming either from a re‐evaluation of the agent's mental state or from negative affect aroused by the bad outcome itself. While these models have strong evidence in their favor, neither can account for the unique influence of accidental outcomes on punishment judgments, compared with other categories of moral (...) judgment. Why might punishment be particularly sensitive to moral luck? We suggest that such sensitivity is easily understood from the broader perspective of punishment's ultimate adaptive goal: Changing others’ behavior by exploiting their capacity to learn. This pedagogical perspective accounts for the exceptional influence of outcomes on punitive sentiments and makes predictions for additional moderators of punishment. We review evidence supporting the pedagogical hypothesis of punishment and discuss fruitful directions for future research. (shrink)

How do people excluded from political life achieve political agency? Through a series of historical events that have been mostly overlooked by political theorists, Martin Breaugh identifies fleeting yet decisive instances of emancipation in which people took it upon themselves to become political subjects. Emerging during the Roman plebs's first secession in 494 BCE, the _plebeian experience_ consists of an underground or unexplored configuration of political strategies to obtain political freedom. The people reject domination through political praxis and concerted (...) action, therefore establishing an alternative form of power. Breaugh's study concludes in the nineteenth century and integrates ideas from sociology, philosophy, history, and political science. Organized around diverse case studies, his work undertakes exercises in political theory to show how concepts provide a different understanding of the meaning of historical events and our political present. _The Plebeian Experience_ describes a recurring phenomenon that clarifies struggles for emancipation throughout history, expanding research into the political agency of the many and shedding light on the richness of radical democratic struggles from ancient Rome to Occupy Wall Street and beyond. (shrink)

The philosophical papers comprising this volume range from process metaphysics and theology, through the phenomenological study of intentionality, to the foundations of geometry and of the system of real numbers. New light, it is thought, is shed on all these topics, some of them being of the highest interest and under intensive investigation in contemporary philosophical discussion. Metaphysi cians, process theologians, semanticists, theorists of knowledge, phenomenologists, and philosophers of mathematics will thus find in this book, it is hoped, helpful materials (...) and methods. The categoreal scheme of Whitehead's Process and Reality is discussed rather fully from a logical point of view in the first paper [I] in the light of the author's previous work on the logico-metaphysical theory of events. The clarification that results is thought to provide a new depth and precision to the problem of interpreting one of the most difficult books in the recent history of metaphysics and cosmol ogy. A detailed examination of some aspects of Hartshorne's recent Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method is given in II. This book is perhaps the most significant work on process philosophy since Process and Reality itself, and its logical underpinnings thus merit a full critical discussion. (shrink)

As founder of modern political economics and prominent theorist of the commercial society, Adam Smith’s importance is universally recognized. Little, however, has been done so far to develop Adam Smith’s virtue ethics in the context of modern business, characterized by digitalization. This article aims to rediscover Adam Smith’s virtue of prudence and its relevance for the “e-commercial society”: It presents a framework that considers the central place of prudence in the relationship between a prosperous e-commercial system and societal flourishing. In (...) Smith’s view of the commercial society, prudence enables people to develop habits of character related to industriousness, genuineness, spirit of sacrifice, and self-command, which help in the conduct of a prosperous business activity. This article translates Smith’s virtue of prudence into a language typical of consumers in the current e-commerce scenario, considering their development as persons and the contribution of their activities to the good of society. (shrink)

Time and being.--Summary of a seminar on the lecture "Time and being."--The end of philosophy and the task of thinking.--My way to phenomenology.

This book explores a question central to philosophy--namely, what does it take for a belief to be justified or rational? According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one's evidence. In this book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one's evidence must normically support it--roughly, one's evidence must make the falsity of that proposition (...) abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here. (shrink)

These are the basis of lectures to philosophy students in universities, colleges and seminaries. The text has been revised repeatedly in use with students in different years of philosophical studies.

Heidegger hielt die unter dem Titel Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs angekundigte Vorlesung im Sommer-Semester 1925 in der Marburger Universitat. Er gelangte jedoch nicht mehr zur Ausfuhrung der zentralen Thematik. Der Themenkreis der Vorlesung ist mit der Nennung des Untertitels abgesteckt: Prolegomena zu einer Phanomenologie von Geschichte und Natur. Heideggers thematische Uberlegungen beginnen mit einer Kennzeichnung der Situation von Philosophie und Wissenschaft in der zweiten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und stellen das seiner Deutung nach entscheidende Ereignis dieser Zeit heraus: den Durchbruch der (...) Phanomenologie als philosophische Forschung. Er untersucht ihre wesentlichen Entdeckungen, verteidigt sie gegen Missverstandnisse, um dann seinerseits Kritik vorzubringen, wo die Phanomenologie ihrer Forderung zu den Sachen selbst nicht gerecht wird. (shrink)

Argument and imagination are often interdependent. The Aesthetics of Argument is concerned with how this relationship may bear on argument's concern with truth, not just persuasion, and with the enhancement of understanding such interdependence may bring. The rationality of argument, conceived as the advancement of reasons for or against a claim, is not simply a matter of deductive validity. Whether arguments are relevant, have force, or look foolish cannot always be assessed in these terms. Martin Warner presents a series (...) of case studies which explore how analogy, metaphor, narrative, image, and symbol can be used in different ways to frame one domain in terms of another, and how criteria drawn from the study of imaginative literature may have a bearing on their truth-aptness. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept that, as well as having a right that others not harm us, we also have a right that others not subject us to a risk of harm. And yet, when we attempt to spell out precisely what this ‘right against risk imposition’ involves, we encounter a series of notorious puzzles. Existing attempts to deal with these puzzles have tended to focus on the nature of rights – but I propose an approach that focusses instead on the nature (...) of risk. The key move is to distinguish two different ways in which to conceptualise the risk that a given action presents – one of which is linked to the notion of probability and the other to the notion of normalcy. (shrink)

Discussion of sexuality in African cultures has a long history, but since the 1990s ethical reflections on homosexuality on the continent have often degenerated into furors and provoked a spate of anti-gay legislation in several countries. Refutations of homophobic dispositions encounter as barrier a pervasive belief in African cultures, that childbearing for community replenishment is a cherished moral duty. Several philosophers consider these to be exaggerated inhibitions that unjustifiably impede social acceptance of homosexuality, and have proposed as a solution what (...) they consider to be self-justifying political-moral principles, that terminate in value-pluralistic ideas such as the acceptance of the equality of sexual orientations and vindication of the right to the freedom to choose and satisfy sexual desire. I question the adequacy of such self-justificatory normative principles and consider the solutions they proffer as depreciating the moral point of the African pro-natalist position. Consequently, I develop a moral argument grounded in the ontology of Kwame Gyekye’s moderate communitarian theory of personhood as the most persuasive justification for homosexuality. (shrink)

In recent years consciousness has become a significant area of study in the cognitive sciences. The Frontiers of Consciousness is a major interdisciplinary exploration of consciousness. The book stems from the Chichele lectures held at All Souls College in Oxford, and features contributions from a 'who's who' of authorities from both philosophy and psychology. The result is a truly interdisciplinary volume, which tackles some of the biggest and most impenetrable problems in consciousness. The book includes chapters considering the apparent explanatory (...) gap between science and consciousness, our conscious experience of emotions such as fear, and of willed actions by ourselves and others. It looks at subjective differences between two ways in which visual information guides behaviour, and scientific investigation of consciousness in non-human animals. It looks at the challenges that the mind-brain relation presents for clinical practice as well as for theories of consciousness. The book draws on leading research from philosophy, experimental psychology, functional imaging of the brain, neuropsychology, neuroscience, and clinical neurology. Distinctive in its accessibility, authority, and its depth of coverage, Frontiers of Consciousness will be a groundbreaking and influential addition to the consciousness literature. (shrink)

Die im Wintersemester 1929/30 an der Freiburger Universität vierstündig gehaltene Vorlesung ist in zweierlei Hinsicht erregend. Zum einen enthält sie eine breit durchgeführte Analyse der in der Freiburger Antrittsvorlesung 'Was ist Metaphysik?' nur gestreiften Langeweile, zum anderen bietet sie eine ebenso ausführliche Wesensbestimmung des Organismus und des Lebens - eine Thematik, die Heidegger in 'Sein und Zeit', § 12, nur benennt. 'Diese Vorlesung ist wohl die bedeutendste, die Heidegger gehalten hat, und schon fast ein zweites Hauptwerk.' Rüdiger Safranski.

Book description: The capacity to represent and think about time is one of the most fundamental and least understood aspects of human cognition and consciousness. This book throws new light on central issues in the study of the mind by uniting, for the first time, psychological and philosophical approaches dealing with the connection between temporal representation and memory. Fifteen specially written essays by leading psychologists and philosophers investigate the way in which time is represented in memory, and the role memory (...) plays in our ability to reason about time. They offer insights into current theories of memory processes and of the mechanisms and cognitive abilities underlying temporal judgements, and draw out fundamental issues concerning the phenomenology and epistemology of memory and our understanding of time. The chapters are arranged into four sections, each focused on one area of current research: Keeping Track of Time, and Temporal Representation; Memory, Awareness and the Past; Memory and Experience; Knowledge and the Past: The Epistemology and Metaphysics of Time. A general introduction gives an overview of the topics discussed and makes explicit central themes which unify the different philosophical and psychological approaches. (shrink)

This book critically explores the depths of Nkrumah’s philosophical thought in order to broaden understanding of it and measures his contributions to contemporary thought in a world in which Africa totters precariously on the peripheries of intellectual influence on human experience.

In these essays, written between 1909 and 1954 and first published as a collection in 1957, the eminent philosopher relates the "I-Thou" dialogue to such varied fields as religion, social thought, philosophy, myth, drama, literature, and art. Buber thus responds to the crises and challenges of the 20th century and enables the reader to follow his lifelong struggles toward "authentic existence.".