In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conversations from the Shin Buddhist-Muslim-Christian Workshops, 2016–2019:IntroductionDennis HirotaIn 2016, members of the Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures at Ryukoku University initiated a project that came to be titled "Conversations in Comparative Theology: Shin Buddhism, Christianity, Islam." The basic plan called for a small number of scholars of the three traditions to meet to present papers on shared themes and discuss vital topics in their own traditions. The hope (...) was that participants would, through the presentations, reflect critically on issues within their own tradition in the light of the theological thinking of other traditions.The first meeting was held at Ryukoku University in 2016. The planning for the project was joined, at various stages, by Perry Schmidt-Leukel of Münster University, Peter Phan of Georgetown University, and David Matsumoto of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, all of whom hosted a meeting at their home institution. In all, four meetings were held in four consecutive years in Kyoto, Münster, Washington, D.C., and Berkeley.For the first three meetings, panels were organized around set themes, with one panelist presenting for each tradition. The themes for all the panels were largely determined at the outset of the project. They were intended to be topics of major significance with broad resonance across the traditions. It was anticipated that each topic would be viewed as harboring issues requiring current deliberation. In this respect, some of the panel topics were more fruitful than others.The panel topics for the first meeting were: (i) Buddha's teaching, revelation, truth; (ii) universality and exclusivism; (iii) myth and history; and (iv) Amida, Allah, Trinity.The panel topics for the second meeting: (i) karmic evil, sin, suffering, and predestination; (ii) practice, prayer, and transformation; (iii) repentance and forgiveness, aspiration, and hope; and (iv) human existence.The topics for the third meeting: (i) wisdom-compassion, divine love/mercy, and transcendence; (ii) shinjin, nembutsu, surrender/faith, remembrance, and the prophetic voice; (iii) Amida's directing of virtue; grace, justice, and moral life; and (iv) naturalness (jinen), fitra, spirit. [End Page 239]At the final meeting, participants presented revised or augmented papers reflecting their experience during the entire project. The eight articles gathered here were originally written as part of the project at various points during the four-year course of its proceedings.Readers will be able to determine the success of the project itself by the merits or limitations of the contributions. It may be useful, however, to offer a reflection on the meetings as a whole. Students of religion experienced in interreligious, intercultural, or comparative theological dialogue will recognize some of the difficulties surrounding the project. I will mention simply that a tension or polarity of concerns quickly emerged that might be characterized as the distance between "comparative" approaches, on the one hand, and more traditional "theological" practices, on the other hand. We learned that students of religion engage in comparison based on diverse hermeneutical presuppositions, and that theological reflection within religious communities of discourse can vary widely as well.Another challenge, at least initially, was limited knowledge of other traditions. This may have inclined presenters to focus on clarifying concepts in their own tradition or highlighting points of convergence with other traditions. This tendency seems heightened when three traditions are involved, although participants were not required to include all three in their research. The basic goal of the project was to foster work in constructive theological treatments of pressing issues in our respective traditions by means of critical engagement with another tradition. This goal may be ambitious, but we learned it is worth the effort. [End Page 240]Dennis HirotaRyukoku UniversityCopyright © 2022 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

This essay explores Dennis Schmidt’s notion of an “original ethics,” asking how language, freedom and history are at work in this original ethics. The essay first examines Schmidt’s claim that philosophy has traditionally understood ethical and political life as rooted in a subject ruled entirely by what he calls “the law of the common.” The essay specifically looks at how Plato and Hobbes embrace the law of the common, expelling thereby the law of the idiom from their respective ethical (...) and political thought. The essay then turns to an examination of Schmidt’s “original ethics” which he claims offers a way out from the law of the common and the logic of Machenschaft that animates this law. In conclusion, the essay expresses a concern on whether Schmidt can move as seamlessly as he seems to claim from an original ethics to political being in common, asking of the role of judgment in Schmidt’s original ethics. (shrink)

When Gadamer speaks of the “unavoidability” or “uncircumventability” [Unhintergehbarkeit] of art,Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer . there are at least two claims involved: he has in mind both the concrete autonomy of a given artwork—its independence from systems of signification and representation—as well as the crucial importance that art bears for any account of human understanding. Yet even if this central significance remains a distinct concern and peculiar inheritance of the continental philosophical tradition as such, it still remains unclear what it would (...) even mean for the question of art to be properly raised, let alone resolved. If anything, art’s significance currently lies in its continuing questionability.In Between Word and Image, Dennis Schmidt attunes the reader to this questionability and ends up bolstering the validity of Gadamer’s claims, broadly carrying the latter’s legacy forward in a number of ways: by extending the inquiry concerning the ontology of the artwork into .. (shrink)

In this essay, the author argues that Dennis Schmidt’s considerations of ethical life, when taken together, comprise a prescient and distinctive response to Heidegger’s call to pursue an ‘original ethics.’ In this, Schmidt disavows discourses within the discipline of ethics that seek to establish an ethical theory or position, arguing instead that the demands of ethical life require us to focus on the incalculable singularity of the factical situations in which we find ourselves. The author suggests that Schmidt’s contributions (...) to such an original ethical turns on Schmidt’s claims that the context of ethical life is fraught because bound up with radical finitude—though, for that very reason, also tender because marked by the need to care for one another in our vulnerability and fragileness. (shrink)

Dennis Schmidt is developing a way of thinking that has at its core his understanding of "idiom," especially in what he calls "original ethics" and "idiomatic truth." This paper engages that understanding, distinguishes linguistic idioms and "event idioms," shows the transformative effects in both his thought and his life that his focus on idioms has had and is having in the present direction of his constructive philosophy, and further shows that this direction has the potential to change considerably major (...) aspects of contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

I’m going to argue that omniscience is impossible and therefore that there is no God. The argument turns on the notion of grounding. After illustrating and clarifying that notion, I’ll start the argument in earnest. The first step will be to lay out five claims, one of which is the claim that there is an omniscient being, and the other four of which are claims about grounding. I’ll prove that these five claims are jointly inconsistent. Then I’ll argue for the (...) truth of each of them except the claim that there is an omniscient being. From these arguments it follows that there are no omniscient beings and thus that there is no God. (shrink)

"This is vintage Krell—he is as always, a reader in the best sense of the word...." —Dennis J. Schmidt "Krell is a strong and often eloquent writer.

Was ein Gegenstand ist, in welcher Weise seine Gegenständlichkeit begegnet und worin deren Objektivität besteht, bleibt ein zentrales Thema zeitgenössischer Erkenntnistheorie. Deshalb erörtert der vorliegende Band den Begriff des Gegenständlichen im Hinblick auf die Themen Welt, Subjektivität, Personalität, Freiheit, Sprache, Interpretation und Wissenschaft, und dies geschieht im Spannungsfeld einer Neubewertung von Objektivität. Ausgangspunkt und Anlaß der Beiträge dieses Bandes ist ein neuerer Ansatz in der Hermeneutik, wie er von Günter Figal in seinem Werk 'Gegenständlichkeit' vorgelegt worden ist. Da die Reflexion (...) auf die Bedingungen, unter denen Gegenstände gegeben sind, nicht nur ein hermeneutisches Anliegen ist, sondern bereits im Deutschen Idealismus, im Neukantianismus und in der Phänomenologie (Husserl, Heidegger und Merleau-Ponty) ein zentrales Thema philosophischer Reflexion darstellt, ist der Band als sach- und richtungsübergreifender Dialog konzipiert. Mit Beiträgen von:Emil Angehrn, Damir Barbari¿c, Rudolf Bernet, David Espinet, Theodore D. George, Pavel Kouba, Birgit Recki, Friederike Rese, James Risser, John Sallis, Dennis Schmidt, Christian Sommer, Michael Steinmann, Tilo Wesche, Günter Zöller. (shrink)

This paper argues that epistemologists should theorize about wisdom and critically examines a number of attempts to do as much. It then builds and argues for a particular theory of what wisdom is.

This article critically examines numerous attempts to build a knowledge-first ethics of belief. These theories specify a number of potential "knowledge norms for belief".

I start with a critical discussion of some attempts to ground epistemic normativity in curiosity. Then I develop three positive proposals. The first of these proposals is more or less purely philosophical; the second two reside at the interdisciplinary borderline between philosophy and psychology. The proposals are independent and rooted in different literatures. Readers uninterested in the first proposal (and the critical discussion preceding it) may nonetheless be interested in the second two proposals, and vice versa. -/- The proposals are (...) as follows. First I argue that, among several ways in which the notion of curiosity might be used to delineate significant truths from trivial ones, a particular way is the most promising. Second, I argue that curiosity has some underappreciated epistemic roles involving memory. Third, I argue that curiosity has some underappreciated epistemic roles involving coherence. (shrink)

El presente capítulo se propone, en primer lugar, elucidar algunos aspectos de la dimensión política de distintos textos nodales de la obra de Hans-Georg Gadamer, como Plato und die Dichter [1934], Platos Staat der Erziehung [1942], y el más tardío Idee des Guten zwischen Plato und Aristoteles [1978]. Para ello, se realizará una revisión crítica de una de las lecturas contemporáneas de estos aspectos, aquella realizada por Dennis Schmidt. En las conclusiones, tras analizar la relación entre phrónesis, areté y (...) andreía en los diálogos platónicos, intentaré demostrar cómo estas nociones alumbran la cuestión de la seducción del poder (descuidada por Schmidt en su lectura del Platón gadameriano), así como la inseparabilidad de este problema con respecto a la concepción dialéctica de la utopía. A partir de esto último se sugerirá que es posible, desde y más allá de la lectura gadameriana de Platón, repensar la idea de desobediencia civil y el valor político del mito desde el punto de vista de la utopía. (shrink)

Suppose that you are engaging with someone who is your oppressor, or someone who espouses a heinous view like Nazism or a ridiculous view like flat-earthism. In contexts like these, there is a disparity between you and your interlocutor, a dramatic normative difference across which you are in the right and they are in the wrong. As theorists of humility, we find these contexts puzzling. Humility seems like the *last* thing oppressed people need and the *last* thing we need in (...) dealing with those whose views are heinous or ridiculous. Responding to such people via humility seems uncalled for, even inappropriate. But how could this be, given that humility is a *virtue*? The purpose of the paper is to explore this puzzle. We explain what the puzzle is and then attempt to draw some lessons from it: first, the lesson that the importance of humility is limited in several ways, and second, the lesson that humility nonetheless has several important roles to play, even for people who are in the right in contexts of disparity. (shrink)

This article offers an approach to advance the use of virtue ethics in the training of business managers and leaders, as well as in the education of business students. A thesis is that virtue ethics offers a valuable way to think about how we want to be and what we should strive to become qua businessperson, manager, and leader. The article provides a framework for thinking about virtue ethics in the context of business and leadership, with emphasis on building trust (...) in organizations. It includes a brief summary of Aristotelian virtue ethics, core concepts, and how they apply to management and leadership decision-making. The article concludes with a summary of an approach for teaching a virtue ethics module, which has evolved over the past 20 years. Included are exercises, a survey tool, and a business case as components of the module. The module has been used in corporate training, as well as graduate and undergraduate business education. It is hoped this approach will spur others to explore other ways to bring virtue ethics to business and business education. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s sustained reflection on Greek thought has been increasingly recognized as a decisive feature of his own philosophical development. At the same time, this important philosophical meeting has generated considerable controversy and disagreement concerning the radical originality of Heidegger’s view of the Greeks and their place in his groundbreaking thinking. In Heidegger and the Greeks, an international group of distinguished philosophers sheds light on the issues raised by Heidegger’s encounter and engagement with the Greeks. The careful and nuanced essays (...) brought together here shed light on how core philosophical concepts such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and ethics are understood today. For readers at all levels, this volume is an invitation to continue the important dialogue with Greek thinking that was started and stimulated by Heidegger. Contributors are Claudia Baracchi, Walter A. Brogan, Günter Figal, Gregory Fried, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Drew A. Hyland, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, William J. Richardson, John Sallis, Dennis J. Schmidt, and Peter Warnek. (shrink)

Epistemology is normative. This normativity has been widely recognized for a long time, but it has recently come into direct focus as a central topic of discussion. The result is a recent and large turn towards focusing on epistemic value. I’ll start by describing some of the history and motivations of this recent value turn. Then I’ll categorize the work within the value turn into three strands, and I’ll discuss the main writings in those strands. Finally, I’ll explore some themes (...) that are ripe for further development. (shrink)

This paper examines Hannah Arendt’s contribution to recent debate concerning the urgency of Martin Heidegger’s original ethics. To this end, I turn to Arendt’s existential interpretation of birth as this takes shape in her discourse on the miracle. Though recent commentators have criticized Arendt’s emphasis on the miracle, I argue that she deepens a conversation about birth that Dennis Schmidt, following Jacques Derrida, has set in motion in his efforts to contribute to a more original ethics. Whereas Schmidt prioritizes (...) the helplessness of the newborn, Arendt’s interpretation of the miracle suggests that birth reminds us not simply of our responsibility to help the helpless, but also of our responsibility to prepare the world for the incalculable possibilities of the newcomer. In this, I argue that Arendt brings into focus the ground of our responsibility to make space in the world for what cannot be reduced and decided on in advance by calculative procedure, thereby opening new paths to thinking the task of original ethics. (shrink)

In The Elm and the Expert, Jerry Fodor tries to reconcile three philosophical positions he is presently committed to: a computational theory of mind, intentional realism and a denotational theory of meaning. One problem he faces is this: a denotational semantics, according to which the meaning of a singular term like a name is exhausted by its referent, seems to rule out there being true intentional generalizations, or generalizations which advert to the contents of a subject's mental states. That there (...) are such true generalizations is a major element in Fodor's intentional realism. Accordingly, Fodor is forced to find a way of dissolving this apparent incompatibility. This paper looks at his attempts to do so and concludes that they fail. (shrink)

Robert Nozick has suggested that risky actions are a problem for a moral view based on rights. We ordinarily think that some actions are too dangerous to be permissible, taking into account both the harm risked and the degree of the risk. Other actions, although they run some risk of serious harm, are thought permissible. The problem is to draw this distinction in a principled way by looking to rights.I think that Nozick's argument about risk can be answered but a (...) different argument has convinced me that the rights view cannot handle risk in a satisfactory way. The inability is a function of the basic nature of the view. (shrink)

This study proposes a conceptual model to explain persistent, accepted-as-normal corporate wrongdoing (hereafter banality of wrongdoing), particularly for high performance organizations. The model describes five explanatory variables: the culture of competition, ends-biased leadership, missionary zeal, legitimizing myth, and the corporate cocoon. Our thesis is that the nature of competition drives both legitimate and illegitimate goal-seeking to adopt an iconoclastic (rule-breaking) orientation. High performance organizations are favorable hosts for wrongdoing because high performance requires aggressive behavior at the ethical margins of what (...) is acceptable. The way leadership reacts to competition sets the stage for ethical or unethical cultures to develop. Ends-biased leadership will project strong vision, using ideology and legitimizing myth as tools to inspire and motivate. The resulting missionary zeal justifies using questionable means because of the perceived value of the end. One critical method for building strong culture is creating a sense of being separate and apart from the ordinary. This cocoon effect may create a self-referential value system that is significantly at odds with mainstream culture and in which wrongdoing is banal. We intend an empirical study of the variables described in this model. (shrink)

Abstract:This study explores a phenomenon that has been shown to adversely affect managers’ decisions—competitive irrationality. Managers are irrationally competitive in their decisions when they focus on damaging the profits of competitors, rather than improving their own profit performance. Studies by Armstrong and Collopy (1996) and Griffith and Rust (1997) suggest that the phenomenon is common but not universal. We examine the question of why some individuals exhibit competitive irrationality when making decisions, while others do not by focusing on four aspects (...) of moral philosophy—deontological orientation, cognitive moral development, idealism, and relativism. Results suggest that individuals high in deontological orientation, high in cognitive moral development, high in idealism, and low in relativism will be less competitively irrational than those who are not. (shrink)

Kant’s Critique of Judgment represents one of the most important texts in modern philosophy. However, while its importance for 19th-century philosophy has been widely acknowledged, scholars have often overlooked its far-reaching influence on 20th-century thought. This book aims to account for the various interpretations of Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgment formulated in the last century. The book approaches the subject matter from both a historical and a theoretical point of view and in relation to different cultural contexts, also exploring in (...) an unprecedented way its influence on some very up-to-date philosophical developments and trends. It represents the first choral and comprehensive study on this missing piece in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, capable of cutting in a unique way across different traditions, movements and geographical areas. All main themes of Kant’s aesthetics are investigated in this book, while at the same time showing how they have been interpreted in very different ways in the 20th century. With contributions by Alessandro Bertinetto, Patrice Canivez, Dario Cecchi, Diarmuid Costello, Nicola Emery, Serena Feloj, Günter Figal, Tom Huhn, Hans-Peter Krüger, Thomas W. Leddy, Stefano Marino, Claudio Paolucci, Anne Sauvagnargues, Dennis J. Schmidt, Arno Schubbach, Scott R. Stroud, Thomas Teufel, and Pietro Terzi. (shrink)

Different people live different lives. Each life consists of experiences that are not shared with the other lives. These facts are sometimes referred to as the ‘separateness of persons.’ Some writers have appealed to the separateness of persons to support or to criticize moral views. John Rawls thinks that the separateness of persons supports egalitarianism, while Robert Nozick believes that it supports a rights view. I will call the claim that the separateness of persons counts in favor of a particular (...) moral view the ‘positive connection.’ Both these writers think that utilitarianism is objectionable because it ignores the moral importance of the separateness of persons. I will call the claim that the separateness of persons counts against a moral view the ‘negative connection.’In this paper I will discuss several different attempts at explaining the connection between the separateness of persons and specific moral views. I will begin by describing how egalitarianism, unlike utilitarianism, treats individual lives as morally important units. I will discuss the kind of egalitarianism that aims at equality, but the same points could be made about egalitarian views that give priority to helping the worst off or require that everyone should receive at least a specified minimum share of resources or happiness. (shrink)

Some of us believe in giving priority to people who are badly off in designing social policies and in acting ourselves to help others. As Thomas Nagel puts it, the badly off should be first in the queue when benefits are distributed. This idea is one way of explaining moral views that are called ‘egalitarian.’ Egalitarian moral views can depend either on the idea of valuing equality itself or on the idea of giving priority to the interests of the badly (...) off. This paper is concerned with the second kind of egalitarianism.The purest form of the idea explains the priority in this way: a benefit for someone badly off can be more important morally, or can have more value, than a benefit of the same size for someone better off. This is to suppose that the priority in question cannot be explained by thinking in utilitarian terms and accepting the principle of diminishing marginal utility. (shrink)

The paper attempts to provide a basis for exploring the continued relevance of Catholic social teaching to business ethics, byinterpreting the historic development of a Catholic work ethic and the traditions of Catholic social teaching in light of contemporary discussions of economic globalization, notably those of Robert Reich and Peter Drucker. The paper argues that the Catholic work ethic and the Church’s tradition of social teaching has evolved dynamically in response to the structural changes involved in the history of modern (...) economic development, and thus is well poised to speak to the ethical challenges implicit in the advent of a knowledge-based society. In order to test this thesis, the author sketches an approach to the ethical challenge of corporate downsizing that he believes illustrates the continued relevance of Catholic social teaching to business ethics. (shrink)

Although it might go without mention, editor Bret Davis nevertheless reminds us on the first page of his introduction to Key Concepts that “Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is widely considered to be the most famous, influential, and controversial philosopher of the twentieth century.” This really fine new companion put together by Davis promises to elucidate the main lines of Heidegger’s thought at a moment when Heidegger is perhaps receiving more scholarly attention and, indeed, more diverse scholarly attention, than at any previous (...) time. Alongside the vast and ever-growing body of literature on Heidegger, not only has a new edition of Joan Stambaugh’s English translation of Being and Time, revised by Dennis Schmidt, now appeared (State University of New York Press, 2010) but also previously untranslated writings are being put into English at an impressive clip. The purpose of Key Concepts, as Davis indicates in the “Acknowledgements,” is to facilitate readers’ access to Heidegger’s thought with a companion that strikes a mean between more advanced scholarly treatments of Heidegger’s ideas and more introductory surveys. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has a marvelously precise account of epistemic justification in terms of knowledge and probability. I argue that the account runs aground on certain cases involving the probability values 0 and 1.

This paper attempts to define Dennis J. Schmidt’s distinctive contribution to philosophy and to contemporary hermeneutics in particular under the heading of an ethical hermeneutics. The idea of an ethical hermeneutics is considered in relation to four aspects: 1) the element of practice as the constitutive element of ethical hermeneutics; 2) the force of practice: finitude; 3) the idiom as the place of finitude; 4) ethical hermeneutics and the domain of the common. The fourth aspect constitutes the critical engagement (...) with the idea of an ethical hermeneutics, arguing that the notion of the common, which is underdeveloped in Schmidt’s writings, serves as a practical “concept” that takes the place of the theoretical concept in an ethical hermeneutics. (shrink)

No presente artigo, propomo-nos a explicitar em que medida Gadamer retoma o conceito de metafísica em sua proposta hermenêutica, com o objetivo principal de explorar como esse aspecto ressalta seu posicionamento em relação à tentativa heideggeriana de refundar uma linguagem propriamente metafísica — com base nas pesquisas de Jean Grondin e Dennis J. Schmidt — e à crítica que caracteriza a hermenêutica gadameriana como relativista, sob um prisma conceitual niilista — especialmente sob a ótica de Gianni Vattimo. Ao final, (...) algumas limitações de tal crítica relativista poderão ser revistas à luz da compreensão das condições ontológicas e metafísicas latentes na obra gadameriana, que contribuem para uma revisão da herança heideggeriana e da crítica pós-moderna contemporânea. (shrink)