ABSTRACT The essay elucidates the intellectual and historiographical phenomenon of migration to the forefront by engaging with the perceptions of the Teutonic/germanic migrations of the fifth century among a few major Victorian ethnologists and historians. It focuses particularly on the unique view of the ethnologist and philologist Robert Gordon Latham. While many Victorian historians of the mid-nineteenth century became obsessed with the Teutonic narrative, arguing that these ancient tribes had conquered vast territories of Europe, Latham, in contrast, downplayed the impact (...) of Teutonism, discounted the vastness of the Teutonic expansion in Europe and expressed his doubts regarding the alleged Teutonic purity of the English nation. Instead, Latham advocated for an ethnological investigation, drawing conclusions which were critical of the very influential Teutonic narrative that he considered misleading, since it was founded solely on superfluous ancient historical sources. Latham’s challenge of the prevailing thesis, hence, reflected a heightened mid-nineteenth century debate between ethnology and history. Rather than delving into the historical migrations themselves, the study of the perception of Teutonic migrations contributes to the understanding of how these historians and ethnologists differentiated between ‘ideal’ and ‘destructive’ historical migrations while inserting different meanings to the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘language’. (shrink)

L’objet de cet article est double: 1) montrer que la Science de la logique de Hegel est incapable de rendre compte de la nature de la relation de causalité. Hegel explique plutôt la relation de causalité en la réduisant à une relation de conditionnalité. 2) Soutenir ensuite que cet échec n’est pas le propre de l’hégélianisme mais qu’il est le résultat inévitable de tout effort intellectuel pour comprendre la relation de causalité, quand on ne prend pas en compte la contribution (...) de la perception sensible à la connaissance. L’analyse philosophique peut alors conclure que la causalité, bien qu’elle soit perceptible par les sens, n’est pas compréhensible, tandis que la conditionnalité qui s’y substitue est compréhensible bien qu’elle ne soit pas perceptible. (shrink)

Érotiques, le titre du dossier du numéro 31 de Clio HFS peut intriguer. D’emblée, disons qu’il ne s’agit pas d’un adjectif qui caractériserait les femmes et les hommes dont il sera question dans ce numéro, comme d’autres titres de la revue pourraient le suggérer. Pas davantage celles et ceux qui y ont contribué. Il ne dénote pas non plus le ton des articles du dossier qui reste, on le déplorera peut-être, d’autant plus marqué par l’austérité universitaire que le sujet paraît (...) ne pas l’être. En... (shrink)

: This paper examines the main Jewish sources relevant to end-of-life ethics, two Talmudic stories, the early modern code of law (Shulhan Aruch), and contemporary Halakhaic (religious law) responsa. Some Orthodox rabbis object to the use of artificial life support that prolongs the life of a dying patient and permit its active discontinuation when the patient is suffering. Other rabbis believe that every medical measure must be taken in order to prolong life. The context of the discussion is the recent (...) release of the "Steinberg Report," which proposes a law regulating end-of-life issues in Israel. It is argued that the Orthodox rabbis base their views on a strongly positivist concept of the religious law. The rabbis deliberate the law as a manifestation of the will of God and try to stretch the law as much as possible in order to benefit the patient, even when it is good for the patient to die. Direct and active actions that kill are prohibited; certain forms of passive euthanasia and contrivances that terminate life support without needing direct human action are accepted. (shrink)

Walter Savage Landor's exasperated marginal comment on line 13 of Horace, C. 1. 4 has sent modern commentators scurrying to the poem's defence. The skirmish has been won for Horace, but at the expense perhaps of magnifying the importance of line 13: A. Y. Campbell insisted that pallida mors, far from being irrelevant, was ‘the focus of the whole poem’.

La philosophie aussi bien que la religion sont d'accord sur la posibilité d'atteindre par l'homme la vérité en tant que domaine obscurci primitivement par la conviction familiére (et par cela meme évidente), que la vérité est simple et visible partout. Les pensées des grands de ce monde indiquent souvent la valeur illusoire que nous attribuons à cette conviction commune et irréfléchie. Que l'on soit dans l'état de rêve ou sous l'emprise d'une illusion créée celui qui tente, ils s'y opposent en (...) disant qu'il ne s'agit là que fausse foi hantée par un effort de surpasser les pensées les lus primitives et les plus simples. Tenté, l'homme engage un combat solitaire et dramatique. Il quite l'ancien univers sans atteindre le nouveau. De ce fait, il se situe dans une liberté dangereuse venant des privations – il doit tout quitter pour tout gagner. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of commentators have expressed dissatisfaction with Spinoza’s account of practical reason. In this paper, I defend his account against the most prominent objections, showing that the dictates of reason play an important role in guiding thought and action. However, against the standard interpretation, I propose that we view these rules not as exceptionless, instrumental prescriptions—hypothetical imperatives with necessary antecedents, as Curley memorable put it—but rather as adaptable guideposts that aid us in the complex, dynamic process (...) of acquiring a habit of virtue. The dictates of reason are best understood as defeasible policies that help to orient one in the ars vivendi. (shrink)

It is often noted that Spinoza’s conception of striving (conatus) reflects the influence of Hobbes. While this is undoubtedly true, in this chapter I explore how an important difference in how Hobbes and Spinoza understand “striving” drives a wedge between them, resulting in remarkably different views of goodness, happiness, liberty, and the function of the state.

A wider social stage -- Girls will be boys : gender, envy, and the Freudian social contract -- Anna-Antigone : experiments in group upbringing -- The defense of psychoanalysis/the anxiety of politics -- Conclusion : ego politics.

Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder suggest that it is possible for an omnipotent being, Jove, to create randomly a world from a continuum of ever more perfect possible worlds. They then go on to argue that Jove could be characterized as morally unsurpassable despite creating a surpassable world. I raise a number of problems for the view that Jove could be characterized as morally unsurpassable when he creates (randomly or not) a surpassable world.

In The Afterlife of Moses, Steinberg addresses the story of Moses and the Exodus as a foundational myth of politics, of the formation not of a nation but of a political community grounded in universal law. Motivated in part by this recent period of reactionary insurgency in the US, Europe, and Israel, this work of intellectual history articulates the way in which a critique of myths of origin as a principle of democratic government, affect, and citizenship has equal relevance (...) in these places and equal fragility. (shrink)

In this paper I seek to shed light on Spinoza’s understanding of the relationship between the citizen and the state by briefly examining two interpretative questions: (1) Is the state an individual? (2) What grounds Spinoza’s claim that the human individual ought always to comply with civil laws? Several scholars, whom I refer to as Restrictive Individualists, have worried that answering (1) in the affirmative would entail an intolerable understanding of (2), according to which the human individual would be engulfed (...) in the functioning of the state. I argue that (1) should be answered affirmatively and that the worries of the Restrictive Individualists are unfounded. I then propose a way of answering (2) that is consistent with the normative priority of the human individual. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende contribuir en alguna medida a la descripción de la forma de las Odas de Píndaro. Teniendo en cuenta que el decir poético es en primera instancia un proyecto de mímesis, intentamos mostrar en qué sentido los epinicios están diseñados para romper constantemente la ilusión mimética. Esta ruptura asume diversas formas, entre las cuales paremias, deixis y pasajes autorreferenciales son quizá las más relevantes. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the description of the form of (...) the Pindaric Odes. Considering that poetry is in the first place a certain project of ‘mimesis’, we propose that the Odes accomplish a constant break of the ‘mimetic’ illusion. This break can assume different figures among which gnomic statements, deixis and ‘I’-poetics are perhaps the most conspicuous. (shrink)

La Meditación de la técnica contiene las reflexiones de José Ortega y Gasset sobre un fenómeno de invasora presencia en el mundo contemporáneo. Trata, en suma, de inscribir el hecho de la técnica en el marco de una antropología filosófica, fundada en el sistema orteguiano, para así contribuir a la comprensión del momento histórico contemporáneo. El volumen incluye, además del curso ¿Qué es la técnica?, desarrollado en 1933 en la Universidad de Santander, otros textos afines: la conferencia El mito del (...) hombre allende a la técnica pronuncida en Darmstadt y varios ensayos sobre el conocimiento científico, que prueban la permanente atención que Ortega prestó a las novedades de la ciencia contemporánea. En esta nueva edición el texto se ha revisado y corregido conforme a los manuscritos originales o las primeras ediciones. La principal novedad es una Introducción al curso ¿Qué es la técnica?, sólo editada póstumamente. (shrink)

I would have preferred that the Special Section on Children as Organ Donors had focused on the donation of a specific organ because morally relevant differences are obscured when the subject is discussed in general terms. The donation of a lobe of liver and peripheral blood or bone marrow stem cells does not result in the permanent loss of vital tissue because these organs regenerate; however, a kidney does not regenerate and its donor loses a vital organ permanently. Liver tissue (...) and peripheral blood or bone marrow stem cells are typically required to save a life, but, because most patients with end-stage renal disease can be kept alive on dialysis, the donation of a kidney is rarely life saving. Also, donor risk is organ specific; for example, it is more dangerous to donate a lobe of liver than it is to donate peripheral blood or bone marrow stem cells. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Some epistemologists hold that all rational norms are fundamentally concerned with the agent’s states or attitudes at an individual time [Hedden 2015, 2016; Moss 2015]; others argue that all rational norms are fundamentally concerned with processes [Podgorski 2017]. This distinction is not drawn in discussions of emotional rationality. As a result, a widely held assumption in the literature on emotional rationality has gone unexamined. I employ Abelard Podgorski’s argument from rational delay to argue that many emotional norms are fundamentally (...) concerned with emotional processes. I also claim that the main response available to the synchronist about belief is not available to the synchronist about emotions and, therefore, fundamental process norms are more plausible than epistemologists tend to believe. (shrink)

This paper develops Bernard Williams’s claim that moral incapacity – i.e., one’s inability to consider an action as one that could be performed intentionally – ‘is proof against reward’. It argues that we should re-construe the notion of moral incapacity in terms of self-identification with a project, commitment, value, etc. in a way that renders this project constitutive of one’s self-identity. This consists in one’s being insensitive to incentives to reconsider or get oneself to change one’s identification with this project. (...) More precisely, self-identification with a project implies that no state-given reason can justify for oneself reconsidering, or getting oneself to revise, or abandon one’s identification with that project. This view ties together integrity and self-identification, and avoids problems common to competing views: it avoids regress problems faced by hierarchical theories of identification; it demonstrates that integrationist views of identification overlook the fact that a deep, well-integrated attitude may fail to be incentive-insensitive; and it helps explain what’s wrong with ‘perverse’ cases, where one values acting in a way that one does not all things consider value. It also improves on Williams’s own view, by construing moral incapacity not merely in terms of one’s incapacity to perform an action (that undermines one’s project and thus violates one’s integrity), but also in terms of one’s incapacity to reconsider one’s commitment (to said project). (shrink)

A joke is amusing if and only if it’s fitting to be amused by it; an act is regrettable if and only if it’s fitting to regret it. Many philosophers accept these biconditionals and hold that analogous ones obtain between a wide range of additional evaluative properties and the fittingness of corresponding responses. Call these the _fit–value biconditionals_. The biconditionals give us a systematic way of recognizing the role of fit in our ethical practices; they also serve as the bedrock (...) of various metaethical projects, such as fitting-attitude analysis of value and the ‘fittingness first’ approach. Yet despite the importance of the biconditionals, there is very little discussion of their proper interpretation. This paper argues that any plausible interpretation of the fit_–_value biconditionals must disarm several kinds of apparent counterexample. For instance, that an achievement is pride-worthy doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to take pride in it because the achievement might not be mine or that of anyone close to me; that a joke is amusing doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to be amused by it for six straight months; and that a person is loveable doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to love him romantically because that person might be my sibling. We consider possible responses to such counterexamples and develop what we consider the most promising interpretation of the biconditionals. The upshot is that certain widespread assumptions about fit and its relation to value and reasons should be reconsidered. (shrink)

This chapter introduces inferential role semantics (IRS) and some of the challenges it faces. It also introduces inferentialism and places it into the wider context of contemporary philosophy of language. The chapter focuses on what is standardly considered both the most important test case for and the most natural application of IRS: logical inferentialism, the view that the meanings of the logical expressions are fully determined by the basic rules for their correct use, and that to understand a logical expression (...) is to use it in accordance with the appropriate rules. It discusses some of the benefits of logical inferentialism, chiefly with regard to the epistemology of logic, and considers a number of objections. The chapter critically examines Robert Brandom's inferentialism about linguistic and conceptual content in general. Finally, it considers a number of general objections to IRS and possible responses on the inferentialist's behalf. (shrink)

Food in Ancient Judah: Domestic Cooking in the Time of the Hebrew Bible. By Cynthia Shafer-Elliott. Bible World. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2013. Pp. xiii + 239, illus. $99.95.

The constitutional monarchy of present-day Britain hardly seems the same sort of institution as fourteenth-century feudal kingdoms, but Dante’s Monarchia (c. 1313) and Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution (1872) share fundamental assumptions about what the purpose and strengths of monarchy are. In the Monarchia, Dante lays out the essential attributes of monarchy that endure even today: authority, impartiality, and unity. Dante values and promotes monarchy as final arbiter of conflicts, sole just judge without cupidity, and unifying will. More than 550 (...) years later, Bagehot, despite his distrust concerning the Crown’s actual effectiveness, conceives of monarchy in surprisingly similar terms. The monarch is ‘the regulating wheel of our Constitution’, an authority outside and above partisan politics, and the ‘dignified’, ‘intelligible’, unifying element of government. In both cases, the monarch functions as the government’s source of impartial, unifying authority – whether monarch or Parliament ultimately wields that authority. The broad outlines of monarchy are surprisingly similar for both writers, suggesting a basic continuity in the conceptualization of monarchy from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century (and beyond) and an abiding store of reserve symbolism within the monarchic concept that writers, thinkers, and politicians throughout those centuries are able to tap at will. (shrink)

All the paradoxes in the Engberg-Pedersen interpretation and all the present-day discussions about whether energeia is an activity or a state, are not, in my opinion, the result of a defective reading of Aristotle but, rather, the influence of the prevailing values of our industrial society. These values - held, as it seems, by these commentators - are conspicuously teleological: they prevent us from grasping the qualitative difference between praxis and poesis and between energeia and kinesis. Indeed, since these teleological (...) values do not take this difference into account, the commentators only ask, when Aristotle distinguishes between praxis and poesis, how much time praxis takes, or if it takes time at all, which is totally irrelevant. Duration in time is incompatible with praxis, not because praxis does not take time nor because it is a state, but because duration in time relates only to purposeful thinking and productive activity, which praxis is not. Commentators fail therefore to analyze successfully the meaning of the expression “actions in which the end (telos) inheres.” It is not clear to them what is meant by activities that are ends in themselves. Failing to grasp this fact, they resort to analysing the temporality of the activity, which is irrelevant to it.Time is a measure of efficiency, and therefore relevant in poesis which is concerned with achievement. The relation of poesis to time is an inverse one: the shorter the time taken for an activity the better the poesis.In ancient-Greek consciousness a valuable activity was that which was undertaken for its own sake and therefore without concern for the amount of time employed in its performance; whereas an action taken as a means to an end was regarded as immoral. In modern society, on the other hand, utilitarian values tend to make it almost incomprehensible that something should be done for its own sake: every human action is evaluated by its result, and when the focus is on the result the criteria of efficiency and utility are obviously relevant. The Greeks valued praxis more than poesis, whereas our culture values poesis and techne more than praxis. The understanding of Aristotle's concept of praxis is useful therefore not only in order to understand ancient-Greek culture, but also to understand better our own presuppositions. (shrink)

The argument for modal collapse is partly responsible for the widespread rejection of the so-called Principle of Sufficient Reason in recent times. This paper discusses the PSR against the background of the recent debate about grounding and develops principled reasons for rejecting the argument from modal collapse.

Bentham argues that Nature has placed mankind under the governance of pain and pleasure. They determine what we ought to do, as well as what we shall do. Bentham tries to answer two different questions. The first is whether people are actually looking for pleasure. It is a cognitive question about human nature, formulated at a meta-ethical level. The second is whether people ought to look for pleasure. The question is formulated on the ethical level and Bentham asserts that people (...) ought to look for pleasure. In the first case, Bentham is a partner in a non-normative meta-ethical discussion about the character of human values. In the second case, he is not a partner and he is not making statements about facts. Is Bentham aware that the answer to one question does not necessarily imply the answer to the other? (shrink)

HEGEL says that "when enquiry is made as to the kind of predicate belonging to [a] subject, the act of judgement necessarily implies an underlying concept [Begriff]; but this concept is expressed only by the predicate." According to this, some concept of the subject must precede predication. This circularity can be formulated as follows: If the statement is the "factory" in which concepts are produced, how is it that the concepts precede the statement and are not merely produced within it (...) in their function as subjects? And, on the other hand, if the subject is not, prior to predication, a concept--if it has by itself no meaning--how can a predicate be matched to it? There would, in fact, be nothing to match. We are caught in a circular thesis that requires for its elucidation a fresh analysis of the relationship between concept and statement. (shrink)