This collection demonstrates the strong influence that humanism and freethought had in developing the history and ideals of black intellectualism. Most people are quick to note the profound influence that religion has played in African-American history: consoling the downtrodden slave or inspiring the abolitionists, the underground railroad, and the civil rights movement. But few are aware of the role humanism played in shaping the black experience: developing the thought and motivating the actions of powerful African-American intellectuals. Section One of this (...) book offers biographical sketches of such prominent black humanists as Frederick Douglass, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert H. Harrison, and Richard Wright. Section Two features essays by black humanists: Douglass, DuBois, Charles W. Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Jaffree, Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, and Bruce Wright. Section Three offers the views of contemporary black African humanists: Freda Amakye Ansah, Emmanuel Kofi Mensah, Nkeonye Otakpor, Franz Vanderpuye, and Kwasi Wiredu. Section Four contains interviews conducted by Allen on the subjects of black humanist activism, the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, and the Harlem Renaissance with: Martin G. Bernal, Charles Faulkner, Leonard Harris, Norman Hill, and Alaine Locke. (shrink)

This book features papers from CEPE-IACAP 2015, a joint international conference focused on the philosophy of computing. Inside, readers will discover essays that explore current issues in epistemology, philosophy of mind, logic, and philosophy of science from the lens of computation. Coverage also examines applied issues related to ethical, social, and political interest. -/- The contributors first explore how computation has changed philosophical inquiry. Computers are now capable of joining humans in exploring foundational issues. Thus, we can ponder machine-generated explanation, (...) thought, agency, and other quite fascinating concepts. The papers are also concerned with normative aspects of the computer and information technology revolution. They examine technology-specific analyses of key challenges, from Big Data to autonomous robots to expert systems for infrastructure control and financial services. -/- The virtue of a collection that ranges over philosophical questions, such as this one does, lies in the prospects for a more integrated understanding of issues. These are early days in the partnership between philosophy and information technology. Philosophers and researchers are still sorting out many foundational issues. They will need to deploy all of the tools of philosophy to establish this foundation. This volume admirably showcases those tools in the hands of some excellent scholars. -/- . (shrink)

Norm Phelps has long been one of the leading theoreticians, historians, and strategists of the animal advocacy movement. His new book collects his recent writings on this subject, as well as offers in print for the first time a fully revised and updated version of the e-book he published with Lantern in 2013 (978-1-59056-379-3). Phelps argues that faced with the overwhelming wealth and power of the animal exploitation industries, animal activists are like David trying to stand up to Goliath. (...) But rather than following the unsuccessful strategies of the past, Phelps proposes that we change the game by adopting David's strategy of refusing to play by Goliath's rules. Additional essays explore class and race in animal advocacy, the place of public policy vs. private morality in creating social change, and the unyielding barrier of human exceptionalism. Trenchant, wise, and deeply committed to the reduction of suffering and the liberation of animals, Changing the Game is sure to offer animal advocates much food for thought as the movement charts a way forward for all sentient beings. (shrink)

: The focus of questions of justice in health policy has shifted during the last 20 years, beginning with questions about rights to health care, and then, by the late 1980s, turning to issues of rationing. More recently, attention has focused on alternatives to cost-effectiveness analysis. In addition, health inequalities, and not just inequalities in access to health care, have become the subject of moral analysis. This article examines how such trends have transformed the philosophical landscape and encouraged some in (...) bioethics to seek guidance on normative questions from outside of the contours of traditional philosophical arguments about justice. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus attention on the role of computer system complexity in ascribing responsibility. We begin by introducing the notion of technological moral action (TMA). TMA is carried out by the combination of a computer system user, a system designer (developers, programmers, and testers), and a computer system (hardware and software). We discuss three sometimes overlapping types of responsibility: causal responsibility, moral responsibility, and role responsibility. Our analysis is informed by the well-known accounts provided by Hart and Hart (...) and Honoré. While these accounts are helpful, they have misled philosophers and others by presupposing that responsibility can be ascribed in all cases of action simply by paying attention to the free and intended actions of human beings. Such accounts neglect the part played by technology in ascriptions of responsibility in cases of moral action with technology. For both moral and role responsibility, we argue that ascriptions of both causal and role responsibility depend on seeing action as complex in the sense described by TMA. We conclude by showing how our analysis enriches moral discourse about responsibility for TMA. (shrink)

Power is now measured by economic strength. The world is becoming more integrated. Europe and the Pacific are challenging US dominance. The debt crisis is a crisis in capital and job creation. In the future, key economic issues will be job creation, increased production, grassroots development and safeguarding the poor from the debt crisis. The most viable form of employment will be in small scale enterprises. These meet the real needs of the poorest, are locally owned and controlled, produce (...) products for a local market and use locally available resources. They contribute to economic stability, are not subject to international currency fluctuations and use an environmentally sustainable technology. (shrink)

This article argues that resolutions are reason-giving: when an agent resolves to φ, she incurs an additional normative reason to φ. Resolution-making is therefore a normative power: an ability we have to alter our normative circumstances through sheer acts of will. I argue that the reasons we incur from forming resolutions are importantly similar to the reasons we incur from making promises. My account explains why it can be rational for an agent to act on a (...) past resolution even if temptation causes a shift in her preferences and even her judgment about what to do, and offers a response to a common objection to the normativity of resolutions known as the bootstrapping problem, on which if resolutions were reason-giving, they would problematically allow us to bootstrap any action into rationality simply by resolving to perform it. (shrink)

A normative power is a power to alter rights and duties directly. This paper explores what it means to alter rights and duties directly. In the light of that, it examines the kind of argument that might support the existence of normative powers. Both simple and complex instrumentalist accounts of such powers are rejected, as is an approach to normative powers that is based on the existence of normative interests. An alternative is sketched, where (...) normative powers arise based on the appropriateness of a person responding to a decision by limiting their freedom. (shrink)

Agents have powers to bring about change. Do agents have normative powers to bring about normative change directly? This chapter distinguishes between direct normative change and descriptive and institutional changes, which may indirectly be normatively significant. This article argues that agents do indeed have the powers to bring about normative change directly. It responds to a challenge claiming that all normativity is institutional and another claiming that exercises of normative powers would violate considerations of supervenience. (...) The article also responds to a challenge - generalizing Kent Hurtig’s recent challenge about consent - which states that exercises of normative powers are valid only in cases that do not matter - they never bring about a “normative transformation” of what the agent overall ought to do. It turns out that consent is normatively transformative in some cases, but the main contribution of exercises of normative powers is at the contributory level not that of overall oughts. Invalid exercises of normative powers are void of any normative effects. Rational agents as possessors of normative powers are not merely responsive to pre-existing normative reasons, but they can also create normative reasons. A “responsive” view of rational agency sees us as being able to track existing normative reasons and make descriptive changes (on which normative changes supervene). The “creative” view of rational agency sees us as being able not only to construct institutions but also to create normative reasons directly. The chapter concludes that agents are both responsive and creative. (shrink)

‘Normative powers’ are capacities to create normative reasons by our willing or say-so. They are significant, because if we have them and exercise them, then sometimes the reasons we have are ‘up to us’. But such powers seem mysterious. How can we, by willing, create reasons? In this paper, I examine whether normative powers can be adequately explained normatively, by appeal to norms of a practice, normative principles, human interests, or values. Can normative explanations of (...) normative powers explain how an exercise of the will can afford us special freedom in determining our reasons? I argue that normative approaches to answering this question prove to be inadequate. To vindicate the thought that normative powers can make our reasons ‘up to us’, we need an altogether different approach to understanding them, one that is located not in the normative but in the metaphysical. I end the paper by sketching a metaphysical explanation of normative powers. This metaphysical defence of normative powers provides a window into a different, more agent-centered way of thinking about rational agency. (shrink)

This paper offers an original argument for a Humean thesis about promising that generalises to the domain of normative powers. The Humean ‘natural unintelligibility’ thesis – prominently endorsed by Rawls, Hart, and Anscombe, and roundly rejected or forgotten by contemporary writers (conventionalists and non – conventionalists alike) – holds that a rational, suitably informed agent cannot so much as make a promise (much less a morally-binding promise) without exploiting conventional norms that confer promissory significance on act types (e.g., signing (...) on the dotted line) that would not otherwise have such significance. The argument (like Hume’s) is action-theoretic in character; its central premise is the Contribution Condition on acting with an aim: roughly, that doing X in order to (bring about) Y requires that the agent believe that their having X-ed on the occasion might come to fully or partly account for Y’s coming to pass. The argument generalises to the broader domain of exercises of normative powers, i.e., to acts that modify normative properties by ‘fiat’ or ‘stipulation’. This stipulative act has been characterised in three different ways, each of which is given due consideration. Finally, two different ways of accommodating the ‘natural unintelligibility’ thesis are considered, as is the thesis’s normative significance. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to the critiques of my book, The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, made by Nikolas Kompridis, Paul Patton, Allison Weir and Moira Gatens. My response is organized around three overlapping themes that are raised in these four astute papers: a defence of my account of normativity, of my reading of Foucault’s conception of power, and of my analysis of gender subordination/identity.

Normative powers like promising allow agents to effect changes to their reasons, permissions and rights by the means of communicative actions whose function is to effect just those changes. An attractive view of the normativity of such powers combines a non-reductive account of their bindingness with a value-based grounding story of why we have them. This value-based view of normative powers however invites a charge of wishful thinking: Is it not bad reasoning to think that we have a (...) given power because it would be good? In this article, I offer a defence of the value-based view of normative powers against this surprisingly under-discussed objection. First, I clarify the challenge by distinguishing between two components of normative powers, which I call the material and normative components, respectively. Secondly, I defend the form of normative explanation involved, showing that it is needed to give convincing value-based explanations for other important normative phenomena, especially rights of autonomy. (shrink)

Much of the literature on practical authority concerns the authority of the state over its subjects—authority to which we are, as G. E. M. Anscombe says, subject “willy nilly”. Yet many of our “willy” (or voluntary) relationships also seem to involve the exercise of practical authority, and this species of authority is in some ways even more puzzling than authority willy nilly. In this paper I argue that voluntary authority relies on a form of voluntary obligation that is akin (in (...) some respects) to the kind of obligation one undertakes in making a promise. Voluntary authority depends, that is, on the possibility of taking on certain obligations more or less at will. It is generated through an interpersonal transaction that involves a directed act of deference, on one side, paired with appropriate uptake of that deference, on the other. Deference, in the relevant sense, should be understood as a normative power that is exercised when agents transfer deliberative discretion to others, undertaking directed obligations to treat others’ directives as content-independent and peremptory reasons. Voluntary authority, thus understood, is both grounded in and constrained by the equal moral authority or autonomy of the participants, since only autonomous agents have the standing to defer in a normatively significant way. (shrink)

Research regulations around the world do not impose any limits on the risks to which consenting adults may be exposed. Nonetheless, most review committees regard some risks as too high, even for consenting adults. To justify this practice, commentators have appealed to a range of considerations which are external to informed consent and the risks themselves. Most prominently, some argue that exposing consenting adults to very high risks has the potential to undermine public trust in research. This justification assumes that (...) it is not the magnitude of the risks themselves which raises concern, but the way in which the public might respond to them. This justification thus depends on the possibility that the public will find out about the risks and respond to them in the specified way. Like the other proposed external justifications, it thereby fails to offer a reason to think that exposing consenting adults to very high risks is problematic in itself. In the present paper, we describe and endorse a different justification. Rather than appealing to external factors, we argue that limits on risks for consenting adults trace to internal limits on informed consent, to limits on the things consent can and cannot make ethically permissible. In doing so, we aim to provide a firmer conceptual basis for the view that some research risks are unacceptably high, no matter how the research is conducted. (shrink)

Moral indeterminacy can be problematic: prospectively it can give rise to deliberative anguish, and retrospectively, it can leave us in a limbo as to what attitudes it is appropriate to form with respect to past actions with indeterminate moral status. These problems give us reason to resolve ethical indeterminacy. One mechanism for doing so involves the use of our normative powers to place obligations on ourselves and to waive our claims against others. This mechanism could operate through an explicit (...) agreement, but could also operate through implicit endorsement of a social convention. However, there are important limits on when the mechanism can eliminate moral indeterminacy. (shrink)

This book analyzes the main problems of Friedrich Nietzsche's critical philosophy, such as the theory of being, the theory of knowledge and the theory of values. It also addresses his positive program which is based on a number of fundamental conceptions, namely the will to power, the Übermensch, bestowing virtue and the notion of the eternal recurrence. The «death of God» must, in Nietzsche's opinion, lead to a revolution in human consciousness which requires the creation of a new frame (...) of reference for values. To realize this aim, Nietzsche invokes the will which has the normative power to create values and even to overcome time. The author sets his focus on the «tragic gay science» that has never been fully elucidated and still affords new perspectives for interpretation. (shrink)

Globalizations from Below uses a Constructivist International Relations approach that emphasizes the centrality of normative power to analyze and compare the four globalizations 'from below'. These are: (1) the counter-hegemonic globalization represented by the 'movement of movements' of alter-globalization transnational social activists, who try to put an end to the Neoliberal nature of the Western-centered globalization 'from above;' (2) the non-hegemonic globalization enacted by 'ant traders' that are part of the transnational informal economy; (3) the partially similar Chinese-centered (...) globalization, whose entrepreneurial migrants are strongly influenced and instrumentalized by the Chinese state; and (4) the first wave globalization 'from below' that paralleled (and outlived) the 1870-1914 globalization 'from above.' This book identifies their common features and uses them to define the concept of globalization 'from below' as a set of socio-economic or socio-political processes that involve large transnational flows of people, goods, and/or ideas characterized at least in part by informality. They are enacted by entrepreneurial or activistic individuals who either take advantage of the normative power of the hegemon at the origin of an international order and an associated globalization 'from above,' or - explicitly or implicitly - transgress, contest, and try to redefine dominant economic, legal, political, and socio-cultural norms, thus challenging the existing international order and globalization 'from above.' By constructing a unified theoretical framework, this book attempts to open a new field of interdisciplinary research that should take globalizations 'from below' out of their current scholarly marginality. This is one of the first scholarly works to collectively present more than one globalization 'from below,' and will be of great interest to students, scholars, and researchers of International Relations, International Political Economy, Development Studies, Economic History, Anthropology, Diaspora Studies, and Chinese Studies. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, the first translation into English of the ground-breaking 'Normativität und Macht' (Suhrkamp 2015), Rainer Forst presents a new approach to critical theory. Each essay reflects on the basic principles that guide our normative thinking. Forst's argument goes beyond 'ideal' and 'realist' theories and shows how closely the concepts of normativity and power are interrelated, and how power rests on the capacity to influence, determine, and possibly restrict the space of justifications for others. (...) By combining insights from the disciplines of philosophy, history, and the social sciences, Forst revaluates theories of justice, as well as of power, and provides the tools for a critical theory of relations of justification. Translated from German. (shrink)

According to cultural evolutionary theory in the tradition of Boyd and Richerson, cultural evolution is driven by individuals' learning biases, natural selection, and random forces. Learning biases lead people to preferentially acquire cultural variants with certain contents or in certain contexts. Natural selection favors individuals or groups with fitness-promoting variants. Durham (1991) argued that Boyd and Richerson's approach is based on a "radical individualism" that fails to recognize that cultural variants are often "imposed" on people regardless of their individual decisions. (...) Fracchia and Lewontin (2005) raised a similar challenge, suggesting that the success of a variant is often determined by the degree of power backing it. With power, a ruler can impose beliefs or practices on a whole population by diktat, rendering all of the forces represented in cultural evolutionary models irrelevant. It is argued here, based on work by Boehm (1999, 2012), that, from at least the time of the early Middle Paleolithic, human bands were controlled by powerful coalitions of the majority that deliberately guided the development of moral norms to promote the common good. Cultural evolutionary models of the evolution of morality have been based on false premises. However, Durham (1991) and Fracchia and Lewontin's (2005) challenge does not undermine cultural evolutionary modeling in nonmoral domains. (shrink)

Supporters of political realism and republicanism as well as students of political feasibility and non-ideal theory progressively focus on the dimension of power in the political relation. Yet we lack the theoretical framework to represent these features of power. In this essay, I take a first step towards designing the necessary conceptual tools for such a framework by analyzing the relations between the concepts of power and normativity that define the political relation. Adopting a ‘methodological cynicism’, I (...) analyse the reasons that motivate cynics who are only interested in power to obey a norm against force or violence and to seek legitimacy. This allows us to characterize external or mediate relations between power and normativity (such as the relation underlying political theory’s ambition of offering normative guidance for power) and identify internal and immediate relations between power and normativity. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is an embattled political project. It is accused of political naiveté for it only talks about power without taking power. Others, meanwhile, take issue with deliberative democracy’s dominance in the field of democratic theory and practice. An industry of consultants, facilitators, and experts of deliberative forums has grown over the past decades, suggesting that the field has benefited from a broken political system. This book is inspired by these accusations. It argues that deliberative democracy’s tense relationship (...) with power is not a pathology but constitutive of deliberative practice. Deliberative democracy gains relevance when it navigates complex relations of power in modern societies, learns from its mistakes, remains epistemically humble but not politically meek. These arguments are situated in three facets of deliberative democracy—norms, forums, and systems—and concludes by applying these ideas to three of the most pressing issues in contemporary times—post-truth politics, populism, and illiberalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTP.F. Strawson claimed that forgiveness is such an essential part of our moral practices that we could not extricate it from our form of life even if we so desired. But what is it about forgiveness that would make it such a central feature of our moral experience? In this paper, I suggest that the answer has to do with what I will call the normative significance of forgiveness. Forgiveness is normatively significant in the sense that, in its paradigmatic (...) instances, forgiving alters the operative norms bearing on the interaction between the victim and the wrongdoer in certain characteristic ways. My project here is, first, to clarify the ways that paradigmatic cases of forgiveness alter the norms of interaction between victim and wrongdoer and to argue that it is in this respect that forgiveness is a normatively significant feature of our moral responsibility practices. Second, I show that most extant theories of forgiveness fail to explain the characteristic ways in which forgiving alters norms. Th... (shrink)

Gaslighting is a form of domination which builds upon multiple and mutually reinforcing strategies that induce rational acquiescence. Such abusive strategies progressively insulate the victims and inflict a loss in self-respect, with powerful alienating effects. In arguing for these claims, I reject the views that gaslighting is an epistemic or structural wrong, or a moral wrong of instrumentalization. In contrast, I refocus on personal addresses that use, affect, and distort the very practice of rational justification. Further, I argue that the (...) social dimension of gaslighting cannot be fully explained by reference to bare social structures because this compound wrong succeeds via emotional person-to-person addresses. Rational justification becomes, then, the locus where the struggle for power takes place. This struggle involves and is operated by not only victims and wrongdoers but also third parties. They are crucial actors in wrongdoing as well as in rescuing the victims and restoring their normative status. Ultimately, this study shows that the deontic structure of wrong is multifocal, and its relationality points to modes of epistemic and moral rehabilitation that are also modes of social empowerment. (shrink)

According to Rainer Forst, a critical theory of power must break with the tendency of political theorists to conceive of power in opposition to normativity. Appropriately, Forst proposes a noumenal definition according to which power is normative: It works through recognition of reasons and is thereby open to critical assessment. In this discussion note, I first clarify the normativity of power in Forst’s noumenal theory by means of Donald Davidson’s theory of action and then explain (...) how theory of action leads to a different understanding of force and violence from Forst’s noumenal theory. In doing this, I find reason to endorse a non-normative definition of power on the lines proposed by Robert Dahl and endorsed by most authors in analytical political theory. This definition nevertheless remains faithful to Forst’s methodological guideline that a theory of power must keep in view the relations between power and normativity. (shrink)

Realism criticizes the idea, central to what may be called ‘the priority view’, that philosophy has the task of imposing from the outside general norms of morality or standards of reasonableness on politics understood as the domain of power. According to realism, political philosophy must reveal the specific standards internal to the political practice of handling power appropriately and as it develops in actual circumstances. Framed in those terms, the debate evokes the idea that political power itself (...) is lacking normativity until such time as norms are devised that govern its use. In contrast, this essay identifies a normative dimension internal to power. Power depends on recognition and support in the form of belief. This dependence explains how an interest in power introduces a responsiveness to normative considerations into the domain of politics. (shrink)

Realism criticizes the idea, central to what may be called ‘the priority view’, that philosophy has the task of imposing from the outside general norms of morality or standards of reasonableness on politics understood as the domain of power. According to realism, political philosophy must reveal the specific standards internal to the political practice of handling power appropriately and as it develops in actual circumstances. Framed in those terms, the debate evokes the idea that political power itself (...) is lacking normativity until such time as norms are devised that govern its use. In contrast, this essay identifies a normative dimension internal to power. Power depends on recognition and support in the form of belief. This dependence explains how an interest in power introduces a responsiveness to normative considerations into the domain of politics. (shrink)

There can be little doubt that the “will to power” remains one of Nietzsche’s most controversial philosophical concepts. Leaving aside its colorful and controversial political history in the first half of the twentieth century, the will to power poses considerable problems for any serious reconstruction of Nietzsche’s project. This is particularly the case for analytic reconstructions, which view Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism largely through the lens of metaethical concerns that are themselves grounded in a psychological reading of will, affect, (...) value, or ressentiment.1 The will to power, though, defies interpretations that are schooled in contemporary philosophy of mind, or cognitive psychology. Even.. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a formal analysis of the idea of normative co-ordination. We argue that this idea is based on the assumption that agents can achieve flexible co-ordination by conferring normative positions to other agents. These positions include duties, permissions, and powers. In particular, we explain the idea of declarative power, which consists in the capacity of the power-holder of creating normative positions, involving other agents, simply by proclaiming such positions. In addition, we (...) account also for the concepts of representation, namely the representatives capacity of acting in the name of his principal, and of mandate, which is the mandatees duty to act as the mandator has requested. Finally, we show how the framework can be applied to represent the contract-net protocol. Some brief remarks on future research and applications conclude this contribution. (shrink)

The paper argues for a normative rather than psychological interpretation of Nietzsche's conceptions of power and will - and hence will to power. It does so with a view to rethinking the questions of Nietzsche's relationship to Enlightenment thought. Jürgen Habermas's view of Nietzsche's philosophy of power as epitomizing a counter-Enlightenment instrumentalism is contrasted with Maudmarie Clark's attempt to divest it of its power aspect in order to place him within the tradition of Enlightenment. Both (...) approaches, it is argued, ignore the irreducibly normative basis of Nietzsche's conception of will to power. This normative basis suggests that Nietzsche's thought can in fact contribute to the reconfiguration of our concept of rationality recently urged by Habermas.In der Abhandlung wird in Abgrenzung zur psychologischen ein normative Interpretation von Nietzsches Auffassung von Macht und Willen, und folglich seiner Idee vom Willen zur Macht, vorgestellt, mit der zugleich Nietzsches Beziehung zum Denken der Aufklärung revidiert werden soll. Dazu wird zunächst Jürgen Habermas' verkürzte Deutung von Nietzsches Philosophie der Macht als eines Instruments der Gegenaufklärung mit Maudmarie Clarks Versuch konfrontiert, Nietzsches Philosophie ihres Machtaspektes zu berauben und ihn so in die Tradition der Aufklärung zu stellen. Es wird gezeigt, das beide Interpretationsversuch die nicht reduzierbar normative Basis von Nietzsches Begriff des Willens zur Macht ignorieren. Dagegen legt die normative Deutung nahe, dass Nietzsches Denken tatsächlich zur Rekonfiguration unseres Vernunftkonzeptes beitragen kann, wie sie jüngst von Habermas gefordet wurde. (shrink)

Mutualistic theory explains convincingly the prevalence of fairness norms in small societies of foragers and in large contemporary democratic societies. However, it cannot explain the U-shaped curve of egalitarianism in human history. A theory based on bargaining power is able to provide a more general account and to explain mutualism as a special case. According to this approach, social norms may be more variable and malleable than Baumard et al. suggest.

This article proposes, with a focus on discussions around norms and bodies, to expose the conceptions of power, as well as the application of its concept, in Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. It begins by exposing the conception of power found in Foucault. After that, the connection between Foucault's thought and Butler's thought begins, explaining how Foucault's conception of power is inserted in the North American philosopher's theory of gender. Finally, the appropriations made by Butler of Foucault's (...) thought regarding the productive aspects of power in the fabrication of intelligible genres are exposed. (shrink)

The past decade and a half has seen a considerable flowering of interest in Nietzsche’s metaethics. In this time, Nietzsche has been presented with nearly as wide a range of views in metaethics as there are exegetical options on the table—views ranging from nihilism to subjective realism to expressivism to fictionalism to objective realism to, most recently, constructivism and constitutivism. Interpreters must square Nietzsche’s apparently skeptical remarks about the objectivity of value with his seeming commitment to a certain privileged set (...) of values, in light of which he purports to “revalue” the values of the moral tradition. Is this apparent commitment nothing more than rhetorical bluster? Or does he think... (shrink)

This paper treats a recalcitrant problem in Spinoza scholarship, namely, how to reconcile the conception of 'power' in his political writings with that found in his Ethics. Some have doubted the capacity of Spinoza's political philosophy to yield an adequate normative theory. If he is unable to provide a normative ground for political philosophy then perhaps this exposes a problem in Spinoza's philosophy taken as a whole. I argue that the considerable normative resources of his ethical (...) and political philosophy, as well their continuing relevance today, are best appreciated through attending to his notion of the exemplar. (shrink)

Whitehouse adapts insights from evolutionary anthropology to interpret extreme self-sacrifice through the concept of identity fusion. The model neglects the role of normative systems in shaping behaviors, especially in relation to violent extremism. In peaceful groups, increasing fusion will actually decrease extremism. Groups collectively appraise threats and opportunities, actively debate action options, and rarely choose violence toward self or others.