In this paper, I argue that Rousseau is an important precursor of the Counter-Enlightenment. To this end, I will examine the parallels between his partial critique of the Enlightenment and that of Joseph de Maistre, whose work represents one of the most comprehensive and systematic indictments of the central ideas and objectives of the Enlightenment. Despite his frequent denunciations of Rousseau's ideas and influence, Maistre shares with him a profound concern for what he takes to be the disastrous social and (...) political ramifications of eighteenth-century ideas, and he selectively appropriates many of Rousseau's arguments to support his own, more radical critique of the Enlightenment. Between 1749, when Rousseau's Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts first appeared, and the publication of Maistre's Soir?es de Saint-Petersbourg in 1821, a movement gradually developed against the Enlightenment, culminating in a complete rejection of its central ideas and assumptions by many writers of the early nineteenth century. Rousseau is a crucial figure in this movement. His writings, beginning with his first discourse, contain one of the earliest major critiques of the Enlightenment project. In a sense, Maistre's works are the consummation of many of the ideas and arguments first directed against the Enlightenment by Rousseau. (shrink)

In a recent paper Edwards, Kirchin, and Huxtable have argued that research ethics committees (RECs) are often wrongfully paternalistic in their approach to medical research. They argue that it should be left to competent potential research subjects to make judgments about the acceptability of harms and benefits relating to research, and that this is not a legitimate role for any REC. They allow an exception to their overall antipaternalism, however, in that they think RECs should have the power to prohibit (...) the use of financial inducements to recruit research subjects into trials. In this paper it is argued that these claims are unjustified and implausible. A sketch is provided of an alternative model of the role of the REC as an expert body making judgments about the acceptability of research proposals through a consensual weighing of different moral considerations. (shrink)

The idea of passive euthanasia has recently been attacked in a particularly clear and explicit way by an “Ethics Task Force” established by the European Association of Palliative Care in February 2001. It claims that the expression “passive euthanasia” is a contradiction in terms and hence that there can be no such thing. This paper critically assesses the main arguments for the Task Force’s view. Three arguments are considered. Firstly, an argument based on the wrongness of euthanasia and the permissibility (...) of what is often called passive euthanasia. Secondly, the claim that passive euthanasia cannot really be euthanasia because it does not cause death. And finally, a consequence based argument which appeals to the bad consequences of accepting the category of passive euthanasia.We conclude that although healthcare professionals’ nervousness about the concept of passive euthanasia is understandable, there is really no reason to abandon the category provided that it is properly and narrowly understand and provided that “euthanasia reasons” for withdrawing or withholding life-prolonging treatment are carefully distinguished from other reasons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Joseph de Maistre’s Civilization and its DiscontentsGraeme GarrardIn his study of Sigmund Freud’s social and political thought Paul Roazen claims that Freud was the first to depict the human psyche as torn between two fundamentally antithetical tendencies:The notion of a human nature in conflict with itself, disrupted by the opposition of social and asocial inclinations, the view that the social self develops from an asocial nucleus but that the (...) social trends are also dynamic and emotional in nature, and finally the conception that reason’s control can be extended by a detailed knowledge of the repressed asocial tendencies—all this was not known before Freud. 1Although Freud is undoubtedly the most famous modern exponent of this conception of human nature at war with itself, he was by no means its first, let alone only, proponent. Kant, for example, wrote of the “unsocial sociability of men” over a century earlier. 2 An even more unlikely precursor of this basic assumption of Freudian social psychology is the Catholic reactionary Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821). The social theory elaborated by this arch-paladin of throne and altar—who was, quite literally, plus royalist que le roi, plus catholique que le Pape—is strikingly similar to that expressed by Freud in his famous essay Civilization and Its Discontents (1929). 3 [End Page 429]Both conceived of the individual as “a being both social and evil,” 4 perpetually struggling to prevent the innate aggressiveness of the species from plunging society into a Hobbesian war of all against all. That is why Freud insisted that it “has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man’s aggressive instincts,” 5 a view advanced over a century earlier by Maistre. Events in Europe after 1789 led many conservatives such as Maistre, as events after 1914 would lead Freud, to reject the common Enlightenment view of human beings as naturally sociable and of social life as a reflection of the spontaneous harmony of a natural world governed by laws established by God and discoverable by reason. In Maistre’s view, social and political life are better understood as the artificial and fundamentally precarious imposition of order on the violent flux of nature. Anticipating Freud, he asserts that individuals, if left to their own devices in society, would soon be plunged into a state of social warfare identical to that which Hobbes had attributed to the state of nature. His particular brand of extreme conservative thought derives its social and political authoritarianism from these deeply pessimistic social assumptions, which leave him with more in common (on this subject) with Freud than with either the Enlightenment or fellow conservatives such as Edmund Burke.Homo Homini LupusThe pessimistic, even tragic, argument of Civilization and Its Discontents is that human beings are driven by extremely powerful instincts, the full satisfaction of which is incompatible with social life. According to Freud, the “cultural frustration” that ensues from this incompatibility “dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings. As we already know, it is the cause of the hostility against which all civilizations has to struggle.” 6 Unhappiness, understood as the non-satisfaction of these basic libidinal urges, is therefore a necessary part of human association. “One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be ‘happy,’” Freud writes pessimistically, “is not included in the plan of ‘Creation.’” 7Freud also argues that, in addition to these basically erotic instincts, there is a “constitutional inclination in human beings to be aggressive towards one another,” 8 which “constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.” 9 [End Page 430] This ineliminable tendency accounts for Freud’s Hobbesian view of the precariousness of civilization: 10[M]en are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbour is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to... (shrink)

Introduction -- Great Mother Nature -- The gendering of nature as female : from prehistory through the Middle Ages -- Nature and art in the Quattrocento : from pupil to equal -- Technology and the mastery of physical nature : Brunelleschi and Alberti -- Genesis and the reproduction of life : Masaccio and Michelangelo -- The rebirth of Venus and the feminization of beauty : Botticelli -- A balance of power : pictorial metaphors for nature in transition -- Nature's special (...) child : Leonardo da Vinci -- The goddess in Arcady : Giorgione -- Art and nature in the Cinquecento : from competitor to master -- Love and death in Venice : Titian -- Art against nature : Raphael, the early Mannerists, and late Michelangelo -- Natura bound : the later Tuscan Mannerists -- Epilogue. (shrink)

The Enlightenment and its legacy are still actively debated, with the Enlightenment acting as a key organizing concept in philosophy, social theory and the history of ideas. Counter-Enlightenments is the first full-length study to deal with the history and development of the Counter-Enlightenment thought from its inception in the eighteenth century right through to the present. Engaging in a critical dialogue with Isiah Berlin's work, this book analyses the concept of Counter-Enlightenment and some of the most important conceptual issues and (...) problems it raises. Graeme Garrard explores the diverse forms of Counter-Enlightenment thought, with a wide-ranging review of the principle figures of the past two hundred and fifty years, and he assesses the persuasiveness of the most common and important criticisms of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

We conducted a meta-analysis of 17 studies that tested for an association between grandparental survival and grandchild survival in patrilineal populations. Using two different methodologies, we found that the survival of the maternal grandmother and grandfather, but not the paternal grandmother and grandfather, was associated with decreased grandoffspring mortality. These results are consistent with the findings of psychological studies in developed countries (Coall and Hertwig Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33:1-59, 2010). When tested against the predictions of five hypotheses (confidence of (...) paternity; grandmothering, kin proximity, grandparental senescence, and local resource competition), our meta-analysis results are most in line with the local resource competition hypothesis. In patrilineal and predominantly patrilocal societies, the grandparents who are most likely to live with the grandchildren have a less beneficial association than those who do not. We consider the extent to which these results may be influenced by the methodological limitations of the source studies, including the use of retrospective designs and inadequate controls for confounding variables such as wealth. (shrink)

In this paper, the principal objections to unconditional forgiveness are canvassed, primarily that it fails to take wrongdoing seriously enough, and that it displays a lack of self-respect. It is argued that these objections stem from a mistaken understanding of what forgiveness actually involves, including the erroneous view that forgiveness involves some degree of condoning of the offence, and is incompatible with blaming the offender or punishing him. Two positive reasons for endorsing unconditional forgiveness are considered: respect for persons and (...) human solidarity; and it is argued that the latter provides more plausible grounds for it than the former. (shrink)

Existing arguments against paid organ donation are examined and found to be unconvincing. It is argued that the real reason why organ sale is generally thought to be wrong is that (a) bodily integrity is highly valued and (b) the removal of healthy organs constitutes a violation of this integrity. Both sale and (free) donation involve a violation of bodily integrity. In the case of the latter, though, the disvalue of the violation is typically outweighed by the presence of other (...) goods: chiefly, the extreme altruism involved in the giving. There is usually no such outweighing feature in the case of the former. Given this, the idea that we value bodily integrity can help to account for the perceived moral difference between sale and free donation. (shrink)

Forgiveness usually gets a very good press in our culture: we are deluged with self-help books and television shows all delivering the same message, that forgiveness is good for everyone, and is always the right thing to do. But those who have suffered seriously at the hands of others often and rightly feel that this boosterism about forgiveness is glib and facile. Perhaps forgiveness is not always desirable, especially where the wrongdoing is terrible or the wrongdoer unrepentant. In this book, (...) Garrard and McNaughton suggest that the whole debate suffers from a crippling lack of clarity about what forgiveness really amounts to. They argue that it is more difficult, complex and troubling than many of its advocates suppose. Nevertheless, they conclude, a proper understanding of forgiveness allows us to avoid cheap and shallow forms of it, and enables us to see why it is right and admirable to forgive even unrepentant wrongdoers. (shrink)

We readily claim that great moral catastrophes such as the Holocaust involve evil in some way, although it' not clear what this amounts to in a secular context. This paper seeks to provide a secular account of what evil is. It examines what is intuitively the most plausible account, namely that the evil act involves the production of great suffering (or other disvalue), and argues that such outcomes are neither necessary nor sufficient for an act to be evil. Only an (...) appeal to distinctive patterns of motivation, so it is argued, will allow us to accommodate our intuitionsabout which acts are evil, and hence will provide an adequate account of the nature of evil. (shrink)

On the day on which Dr Harold Shipman, the Manchester serial killer, was convicted, there was wall-to-wall coverage of it in the media. During the course of one of the many reports, the daughter of one of his victims was interviewed, and asked for her views on why Shipman had acted as he did. What she said was this: she’d tried and tried to understand or explain his deeds, and she could only come to the conclusion that he was a (...) really evil man. In saying this, she clearly meant to convey more than the obvious truth that what Shipman did was very wrong and entirely to be condemned. It seems to me that a secular as well as a religious audience would find the daughter’s appeal to evil as an appropriate explanation perfectly comprehensible. But what exactly was it that was being attributed to Shipman, and how was it thought to explain his actions? (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

In this paper we defend a version of moral internalism and a cognitivist account of motivation against recent criticisms. The internalist thesis we espouse claims that, if an agent believes she has reason to A, then she is motivated to A. Discussion of counter-examples has been clouded by the absence of a clear account of the nature of motivation. While we can only begin to provide such an account in this paper, we do enough to show that our version of (...) internalism can be defended against putative counter-examples. All theories of motivation which take what motivates to be a psychological state run foul of the following plausible constraint: the reason why you ought to do an action and the reason why you do it can be the same. In our view, however, while what motivates is a reason (which is a fact) the state of being motivated is a cognitive stage, viz. the belief that one has reason to act. In cases where the agent's relevant beliefs are false, then she has no reason to act, but nontheless her action can be explained in other ways. (shrink)

Arguing that the question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's relationship to the Enlightenment has been eclipsed and seriously distorted by his association with the French Revolution, Graeme Garrard presents the first book-length case that shows Rousseau as the pivotal figure in the emergence of Counter-Enlightenment thought. Viewed in the context in which he actually lived and wrote -- from the middle of the eighteenth century to his death in 1778 -- it is apparent that Rousseau categorically rejected the Enlightenment "republic of (...) letters" in favor of his own "republic of virtue." The philosophes, placing faith in reason and natural human sociability and subjecting religion to systematic criticism and doubt, naively minimized the deep tensions and complexities of collective life and the power disintegrative forces posed to social order. Rousseau believed that the ever precarious social order could only be achieved artificially, by manufacturing "sentiments of sociability", reshaping individuals to identify with common interests instead of their own selfish interests. (shrink)

Jelson Roberto de Oliveira, autor de “Compreender Hans Jonas”, é graduado em Filosofia pela Universidade Federal do Paraná, com especialização em Sociologia Política e mestrado em História da Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea pela mesma universidade. Atualmente é professor da pós-graduação em Filosofia na PUC-PR, e coordenador do GT Hans Jonas, da Anpof, que reúne vários pesquisadores de nível nacional na área. Ética para a civilização tecnológica e A solidão como virtude moral em Nietzsche são alguns dos diversos títulos que compõem (...) o acervo de obras do autor. (shrink)

This paper considers whether we have any reason to forgive the perpetrators of the most terrible atrocities, such as the Holocaust. On the face of it, we do not have reason to forgive in such cases. But on examination, the principal arguments against forgiveness do not turn out to be persuasive. Two considerations in favour of forgiveness are canvassed: the presence of rational agency in the perpetrators, and the common human nature which they share with us. It is argued that (...) the presence of rational agency does not generate a reason to forgive. However, our common human nature may be sufficient to provide such a reason, and evidence for its general reason-giving power can be seen in phenomena such as vicarious shame, and the moral significance which we attach to the notion of crimes against humanity. A reason for forgiveness based on common human nature will not be a strong one, but a weak reason still has some force. (shrink)

Sustaining hope in patients is an important element of health care, allowing improvement in patient welfare and quality of life. However in the palliative care context, with patients who are terminally ill, it might seem that in order to maintain hope the palliative care practitioner would sometimes have to deceive the patient about the full nature or prospects of their condition by providing a ‘false hope’. This possibility creates an ethical tension in palliative practice, where the beneficent desire to improve (...) patient welfare through sustaining hope appears to be in conflict with an autonomy-based requirement not to deceive patients about their condition. In order to resolve this ethical tension, we provide an analysis of the concept of hope and argue that there is at least one conception – the ‘absolute’ conception of hope – which when properly understood allows practitioners to foster hope in terminally-ill patients while avoiding any need to deceive them about their condition. Practitioners therefore do not need to shy away from using the language of hope in the palliative setting, as on this understanding of hope it can be used in a way that both promotes patient welfare and respects patient autonomy. (shrink)

Although studies show that those who are physically or psychologically overwhelmed by the needs of others do experience a stressful burden that can have significant negative health consequences, little attention has been given to whether there are health benefits from helping behaviour that is fulfilling, not overwhelming. In this book, Stephen Post brings together distinguished researchers from basic science to address this question in objective terms. The book provides heuristic models, from evolution and neuroscience, to explain the association between altruism (...) and health, and examine potential public health and practical implications of the existing data. (shrink)

This book draws from previously unpublished letters and interviews with physicists, theologians, and Sir John’s close associates and family to present Sir John’s ideas on pure unlimited love. Post, who was in dialogue with Sir John for fifteen years on this topic and who had founded the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, addresses how John Templeton arrived at his philosophy as a youth growing up in Tennessee. Post also shares how classical Presbyterian ideas came to synergize in his mind (...) with the more eastern influences of American transcendentalism and the Unity School of Christianity and ponders if Sir John truly believed that science and spiritualty might fully converge on the same view of Ultimate Reality with their very different ways of knowing. _Is Ultimate Reality Unlimited Love?_ presents Sir John’s hope for spiritual progress with the eventual convergence of ultimate reality and unlimited love at its very center. (shrink)

Recent investigations and theorising about category-specific deficits have begun to focus upon patients with progressive brain disease such as semantic dementia and Alzheimer's disease. In this commentary we briefly review what insights have been gained from studying patients of this type. We concentrate on four specific issues: the sensory/functional distinction, correlation between features, neuroanatomical considerations, and confounding factors.

In the eighteenth century, Rousseau argued that the principal source of human unhappiness was our tendency to make invidious comparisons when humans were forced to cooperate in the pre-social state of nature. This increased proximity fuelled a desire for status and relative position which is the main source of the unhappiness in modern civilisation. I argue, first, that there is now substantial evidence supporting Rousseau's view that status matters much more to individuals than do absolute levels of wealth. However, I (...) also argue that there is mounting evidence that Rousseau failed to appreciate the extent to which our desire for status is natural. According to some evolutionary biologists, human beings evolved in an environment of scarcity and resource competition, where each individual's position was closely linked to his or her prospects for survival and reproductive success. Consequently, we are adapted by evolution to compete for status and relative position, which leads to a situation in which most people end up less happy. (shrink)

Some of the virtues have a very stable place in our understanding of goodness – beneficence and courage are unlikely ever to lose their high standing. But other virtues have something like a life cycle: they move from a marginal status to to a central one, and sometimes they move back again to the margins, or even beyond the domain of virtue altogether. Chastity is one example of this; humility is another. There was a period in which humility wasn’t a (...) virtue at all (see Aristotle on the great-souled man); with the rise of Christianity (blessed are the meek) it became, not a cardinal, but still a central, virtue, though possibly more honoured in the breach than in the observance; now in the post-Christian world it seems, if a virtue at all, a somewhat creepy one. Why is this – what is it about humility that made it so important during the Christian period, and now makes us so ambivalent about it? And is there any way of rescuing it for a secular context, so that we can once again wholeheartedly endorse and admire it as one of the virtues? (shrink)

In "The Nature of Evil"2 I offer an analysis of evil action, in a sense distinct from merely very wrong action, in which I claim that the evil act is one in which the agent silences overwhelming considerations against performing the act. Christopher Hamilton 's interesting commentary raises five objections against my account of evil in terms of silenced reasons I shall argue that all five objections can be met.

The repentant offender has placed himself on the side of right, so to speak – he now stands with the victim against his own previous bad behaviour, which he now rejects. He’s a proper recipient for the gift of forgiveness. It can be morally appropriate to wipe the slate clean for him. But the unrepentant offender has undergone no such change. Why should we wipe the slate clean for such a person?

The repentant offender has placed himself on the side of right, so to speak – he now stands with the victim against his own previous bad behaviour, which he now rejects. He’s a proper recipient for the gift of forgiveness. It can be morally appropriate to wipe the slate clean for him. But the unrepentant offender has undergone no such change. Why should we wipe the slate clean for such a person?