Radical virtue serves two distinct purposes: consolation in unfavorable circumstances, and prescription to achieve better ones. This paper maps out the theoretical nuances important for practical guidance. For a Stoic, radical virtue is a way to live well through environmental tragedy. For a consequentialist, it is an instrument to motivate us to combat climate change. For an Aristotelian, it is both. I argue that an Aristotelian approach fares the best, balancing the aim of external success with the aim of living (...) well through practical wisdom. This involves criticizing assumptions about living well that underlie behaviors that contribute to climate change. Some might object virtue theory suffers from application problems, and an Aristotelian approach suffers even more because it does not tell the virtuous person how to negotiate her aims. In response, Aristotelian revision starts with moral perception that adds valuable content by navigating through the messiness. (shrink)

This paper explores the prospects of radical hope for addressing the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. Hope is useful for conceptualizing the proper balance between too much fear and too little about our uncertain future. First, I describe the ethical challenge of the pandemic as a wicked problem. Because accepted ethical theories fail to motivate solutions, wicked problems pressure us to develop our value systems, exercise moral imaginations, and discover creative solutions. Second, I develop an Aristotelian account of radical hope, (...) drawing from ancient philosophy, virtue ethics, and recent climate ethics. Radical hope is a novel form of courage, which balances the goal of external success, that something good will emerge from the tragedy, against the goal of living well for its own sake through practical wisdom. I conclude by applying some lessons to our present situation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Virtue Ethics for the Real World: Improving Character without Idealization by Howard J. CurzerBenjamin HoleCURZER, Howard J. Virtue Ethics for the Real World: Improving Character without Idealization. New York: Routledge, 2023. 272 pp. Cloth, $160.00The development of virtue ethics has been in a lull. This book is a welcome treatise in theory-building, developing a novel Aristotelian approach to virtue ethics that, first, avoids idealization and, second, provides a (...) method for character improvement. It is divided into two parts reflecting these themes.The front matter before the title page brandishes a "No Don Quixotes" sign, warning the reader the following pages are no place for a misguided idealist. Part 1, "Against Idealization," contains six chapters. Chapter 2 argues that idealization is not a useful guide, but an impediment to virtue, since ideals can be misleading, psychologically damaging, and used for nefarious purposes. Chapters 3 through 7 construct a virtue ethical theory without idealization. Idealization may seem central to a virtue-oriented approach to ethics. For example, Rosalind Hursthouse's famous biconditional claims that an act is right if and only if it is what the virtuous person would characteristically do in the same circumstances. By contrast, chapter 3 provides counterexamples separating virtuous action from what the virtuous person would characteristically do, and separating virtuous action from right action. Sacrificing Hursthouse's biconditional is a fundamental change to the way many conceive of Aristotelian virtue ethics, demanding revisions to the rest of the theory. For instance, to address moral dilemmas, chapter 4 defends two psychological mechanisms under which there are virtuous, morally wrong acts that are admirably immoral, and vicious, morally right acts that leave the agent with dirty hands.Chapter 5 provides the grounding for contemporary Aristotelian virtue ethics without idealization, by answering what makes character traits [End Page 541] virtues and what makes acts virtuous. Two-level eudaimonism involves a thin theory, where virtue consists in responding well to different spheres of human activity, and a thick theory, where responding well contributes to the agent's eudaimonia. Since virtuous people may characteristically perform nonvirtuous actions, virtuous actions are not necessarily what virtuous people characteristically do but actions that are endorsed by virtuous people from the perspective of virtue. The "Perspectives Doctrine" claims that virtuous people decide how to respond from the perspective of different virtues, and those perspectives offer incomplete and sometimes incompatible ways of responding. For instance, a temperate person endorsing an action as temperate from the perspective of temperance makes it temperate, but would not make it courageous, and an endorsement from the perspective of courage would not make her action temperate. Agents determine what is virtuous by asking virtuous people to consider, from the perspective of virtue, what should be done; when virtuous people are unavailable, agents can consult philosophers and social scientists who research the responses of virtuous people. Chapter 6 rejects the "Reciprocity of the Virtue Doctrine," which claims possessing one virtue entails possessing the rest, in favor of the "Unevenly Virtuous People Doctrine," on which people can have some but not all of the virtues; character typically improves at different paces in different areas of life. Chapter 7 rejects Philippa Foot's "Corrective Doctrine" of virtue as implausible idealization in favor of a traditionally Aristotelian "Doctrine of the Mean," and argues that the virtues of integrity, forgiveness, tolerance, open-mindedness, and civility are governed by that doctrine.Although character improvement seems to depend on idealization, by striving to achieve some end, part 2's five chapters paint an alternative picture. Chapter 8 defends a medical analogy over competing models philosophers typically employ to understand character improvement, including skill (Aristotle and Julia Annas), stage or path (Aristotle and Wouter Sanderse), self-cultivation (Mengzi), and self-construction (Xunzi) analogies. To improve character, one must look to a fine-grained list of possible character flaws, diagnose deficits in character, and then heal character flaws by employing targeted strategies, including "inculcation strategies, rehabilitation strategies, and strategies to improve society's ethical climate." Character improvement is complex and becomes more so when considering all of the ways one might err. Chapter 9 introduces an Aristotelian model for moral decision-making within each... (shrink)

What are the worst conditions under which someone can be virtuous and happy? In this paper, I argue that a minimum threshold of favorable circumstances is necessary for moral virtue and human flourishing or happiness. Stoic and Aristotelian traditions make different and important claims about the role of external circumstances in our moral lives. Retrieving the ancient dispute benefits contemporary ethics. For one, the relevance of external circumstances is an important question for the development of present-day virtue ethics. For another, (...) identifying the minimal ingredients for virtue and happiness is helpful for wider ethical concerns such as discussions of our moral obligations to future generations. After explaining the ancient dispute, I describe categories of circumstances that seem intuitively relevant to virtue and happiness. Then, I investigate which are necessary and examine commonsense examples. I conclude that a minimum threshold of favorable circumstances from the following categories is necessary: the necessities for biological life, cognitive ability, and moral education. (shrink)

Many students feel despair when addressing systemic issues of ethical significance, such as climate change, and student despair has been exacerbated by the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. This creates an unwelcoming space for authentic student engagement. To address the problem, we present an imaginary of radical hope, a pedagogical tool informed by trauma, for developing a brave space for class discussion. It is psychologically beneficial to acknowledge negative emotions, clearing the emotional space for students to engage. Therefore, we frame (...) ethics courses with an uncomfortable discussion, asking students to draw from their positionality and share their feelings of hope and despair, related to course material. In this paper, we explain the problem of despair motivating the project, describe the pedagogical and ethical support of our strategy, share the assignment, activity, and examples, and discuss takeaways. (shrink)

Tragedy feels disempowering and the confluence of tragedies since the beginning of 2020 can overwhelm one’s sense of agency. This paper describes how we use a civic engagement (CE) project to nurture radical hope for our students. Radical hope involves a desire for a positive outcome surpassing understanding, as well as an activity to strive to achieve that outcome despite its uncertainty. Our CE project asks students to identify ethical issues they care about and respond in a fitting way, questioning (...) the assumption that their efforts do not matter, and imagining creative ways to make a difference that are in their power. We scaffold our CE project in order to nurture hopeful possibilities for students by offering real-world, feasible pathways for addressing systemic problems. -/- . (shrink)

Consider a contemporary retrieval of Aristotle’s account of moral perception. Drawing from EN.VI.8, Martha Nussbaum argues that we perceive moral particulars prior to ethical principles. First, I explain her priority of the particular thesis. The virtuous person perceives value in the world, as part of her moral deliberation. This perceptual skill is an important aspect of her virtuous activity, and hence also part of her eudaimonia. Second, I present her priority thesis with a dilemma: our perception of moral particulars is (...) either non-inferential or it is inferential. If Nussbaum accepts a non-inferential interpretation, then she is committed to an unsavory view about moral epistemology –one that invites intuitionism and relativism. But if she accepts a non-inferential account, then the moral particular is no longer prior to the ethical principle. I suggest that her better option is to grab the second horn. This move avoids the problems of the first horn without sacrificing her neo-Aristotelian commitments or her overarching view that the perception of moral particulars is ineliminable to moral deliberation. At the same time, this move renders her priority thesis trivial. (shrink)

Teachers committed to seeing philosophy as a way of life (PWOL) often focus on assignments that help students develop personal practices, so they experience peace of mind, independence, and a cure from anguish. While we applaud these goals, our work highlights another important aspect of philosophy as a way of life that sometimes is overlooked. We want our students to experience a transformation toward seeing themselves as moral agents, growing in civic virtues, and developing “cosmic consciousness.” To reach this end, (...) we utilize a civic engagement (CE) project that we call the “Experiments in Ethics.” This CE project consists of a series of small, interrelated assignments or “experiments” that help students develop habits and certain civic dispositions. While students complete the experiments throughout the semester, we argue that civically engaged philosophy as a way of life extends beyond the confines of the classroom and the semester as our students cultivate the ability to see themselves as ethical agents capable of making changes in their own lives and the communities in which they live. (shrink)

In a naïve realist approach to reading an ontology off the models of a physical theory, the invariance of a given theory under permutations of its property-bearing objects entails the existence of distinct possible worlds from amongst which the theory cannot choose. A brand of Ontic Structural Realism attempts to avoid this consequence by denying that objects possess primitive identity, and thus worlds with property values permuted amongst those objects are really one and the same world. Assuming that any successful (...) ontology of objects is able to describe a universe containing a determinate number of them, I argue that no version of OSR which both retains objects and understands ‘structure’ in terms of relations can be successful. This follows from the fact that no set of relational facts is sufficient to fix the cardinality of the collection of objects implied by those facts. More broadly, I offer reasons to believe that no version of OSR is compatible with the existence of objects, no matter how ontologically derivative they are taken to be. Any such account would have to attribute a definite cardinality to a collection of objects while denying that those objects are possessed of a primitive identity. With no compelling reason to abandon the classical conception of cardinality, such an attribution is incoherent. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 64.4 (2003) 619-637 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming Gnosticism:Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the Legitimacy of the Natural World Benjamin Lazier University of Chicago In 1984, about a decade before his own murder, the Romanian scholar of religion Ioan Culianu complained of a more widespread, if decidedly less grisly form of assault. 1 The gnostics, he declared in a moment of high (...) jocularity, had "taken hold of the whole world, and we were not aware of it. It is a mixed feeling of anxiety and admiration, since I cannot refrain myself from thinking that these alien body-snatchers have done a remarkable job indeed." 2Though offered in jest, Culianu's designation "alien body-snatchers" quite accurately sums up what has remained since 1934 the leading view of gnosticism as a delimited, identifiable phenomenon. In that year appeared the first monumental volume of Gnosis und spätantiker Geist (Gnosis and the Spirit of Late Antiquity) composed by the young Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas as a dissertation under Martin Heidegger and the theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Over the next sixty years Jonas returned again and again to the movement as he defined it. Above all, gnosticism had as its guiding principle the notion of das Fremde. The term includes in its linguistic domain not only "the alien," by which it is most usually translated, but its cognates as well: the strange, the foreign, the other, the unknown, the uncanny, and the like. This sense of alienation is wildly overdetermined in gnostic theology: man is alienated from himself, from a fully transcendent God, and most powerfully from the material, [End Page 619] sensuous universe in which he lives, created as it was by an evil, malicious demiurge. Such anti-cosmism could license both ascetic retreat from the world as well as an antinomian descent into the worldly abyss, with the intent to defeat it from within. The locution "body-snatcher" now acquires relevance, for gnostic theology made impossible any positive appraisal of the physical body, or of the physical world at all for that matter. As the political philosopher Leo Strauss put it in a letter to Jonas, gnosticism may well have been the most radical rebellion in Western history against the Greek notion of physis.In stylized terms Jonas's philosophical career represents what I would like to call gnosticism's "third overcoming." Such terms signal an allegiance to the work of the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. But they signal a departure as well. In Legitimität der Neuzeit (Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 1966), Blumenberg undertook what must count among the most ambitious revisions of Western intellectual history ever ventured. Against a rash of attacks on the modern age as an ill-concealed, secularized derivative of an earlier Christian era, he stepped up in its defense. He linked the emergence of the modern age—defined preeminently by man's need for self-assertion, to act in the world—to a "second overcoming" of gnosticism at the end of the Middle Ages. The gnostic spirit he found revived by the nominalism and theological voluntarism of late-medieval scholastic theology, a loose confluence of thought centripetally bound by the black hole of the deus absconditus or hidden god. Whereas gnosticism's first overcoming was Augustine's work and but a partial success, its second, and for Blumenberg "final" overcoming was the work of an ethos of human self-assertion best instantiated by the scientific program of Francis Bacon.To argue for its third overcoming in the late 1920s and '30s is therefore to take leave of Blumenberg's account, if also to extend it. The condition for the possibility of this argument, of course, is that gnosticism had in fact returned. Gnosticism, or at the very least a host of phenomena going by the name and generally understood as such, did indeed return, and with a vengeance—on the occult scene, in philosophy, in theology of all persuasions, even in natural-scientific discourse. This period also witnessed the return of the... (shrink)

This paper takes up the somewhat neglected work of one of the earliest pioneers of modern European aesthetic theory, Jean-Baptiste Du Bos. It aims to correct views in which Du Bos is pigeon-holed as a ‘sentimentalist’, dismissed as a radical subjectivist, or, at best, acknowledged as an influence on the more important work of David Hume. Instead, it presents Du Bos as an original thinker whose highly intuitive approach to the arts is still relevant to contemporary concerns, and can be (...) favourably contrasted with the tradition of disinterested, universalist aesthetics that rose to such strong prominence in the century following his work. It highlights several of his ideas that have not received sufficient attention, including his emphasis on boredom as a motivation for turning to artifice, his notion of the ‘artificial emotions’ that can result from such encounters, his community-based conception of taste, his faith in the general public as legitimate judges of artwork, and the importance he places on different forms of interest when thinking about art. In the course of this discussion, Du Bos’s work is presented as presciently questioning clear cut distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural spheres, as well as exploring contemporary questions about the constitution of ‘the public’ and the legitimacy of its judgement. It also argues that the vocabulary of ‘artificial emotion’ can be as helpfully applied to the increasingly sophisticated world of mass entertainment as it can be to the world of contemporary art. (shrink)

Long before Siri and ChatGPT uttered their first automated words, there was only one way to program synthetic speech: with paint and brush. During the transformative years between 1930 and 1960, artists, linguists, and engineers mixed sound and image in a way that combined artistic production with new technologies. What was known as “synthesis-by-art” grew into the rules that power computer speech today. This article concentrates on the emergence of rule-based speech synthesis at Haskins Laboratories in mid-twentieth-century America. An unexpected (...) outgrowth of their work with disabled Second World War veterans, members of the Haskins group had developed a new machine that converted visual patterns into sound: the Pattern Playback. Like holes in a player-piano roll, painted shapes were mechanically translated into distinct sounds. Early experiments at the laboratory promised “a new art form.” Researchers painted pictures of music and listened to geometric shapes. This work eventually grew into a psycholinguistic program committed to painting the shapes of speech. But these early aesthetic experiments had helped researchers cultivate a familiarity with paint, brush, and subjective bodily knowledge. This allowed them to intuitively develop a recipe for painting synthetic speech. In other words, their painting hands enacted knowledge long before they could articulate the complex rules that govern how phonemes interact. By the late 1950s, lab member Frances Ingemann successfully converted this “embodied knowing” into a machine-legible code that rigorously detailed how to paint synthetic speech. She had hoped that her rules might result in a reading machine for blind users that would automatically convert text into speech. Instead, her work was coopted by J. C. R. Licklider, who described Ingemann’s rulebook as “a digital code, suitable for use by computing machines.” While Licklider would use the work of Haskins Laboratories to spearhead his novel concept of man-computer symbiosis, he obscured the extent to which this digital code grew from the anomalous bodies of wounded war veterans and the subjective knowing of painting hands. Indeed, the forgotten history of early text-to-speech shows the indivisibility of interactive computing and digital codes from the material practices and embodied cognition from which they grew. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is to present and defend a new argument for rights contributionism – the view that the notion of a moral claim-right is a contributory (or pro tanto) rather than overall normative notion. The argument is an inference to the best explanation: it is argued that (i) there are contributory moral factors that contrast with standard moral reasons by way of having a number of formal properties that are characteristic of rights, even though they (...) can be overridden, and (ii) that this is best explained by a view that takes these factors to correlate with rights. The second aim is to show that the truth of rights contributionism matters for normative ethics. More specifically, it is argued that rights contributionism clears the way for deontologists to justify the pre-theoretically plausible verdict that we have a duty to save the greater number in so-called Taurek scenarios – scenarios in which we have to choose between saving either a greater or a smaller number of different people. The chapter offers a novel and distinctively deontological explanation of this verdict that is based on the assumption that everyone has a pro tanto right to be saved in a Taurek scenario. (shrink)

This collection explores, in Adorno's description, `philosophy directed against philosophy'. The essays cover all aspects of Benjamin's writings, from his early work in the philosophy of art and language, through to the concept of history. The experience of time and the destruction of false continuity are identified as the key themes in Benjamin's understanding of history.

Sells encourages a radical departure from the usual introspection and self-centeredness of psychology in our time. By placing style first, Sells argues that we must turn our eyes and minds outward to the greater world. Emphasizing beauty over emotion and appreciation over feeling, he attempts to break the stranglehold of the self so as to reconstitute our proper place among the many things of the world.

Dans ce long inédit, Benjamin Fondane révèle les implications philosophiques révolutionnaires qui découlent des travaux de Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939) sur la mentalité primitive. En mettant à jour les mécanismes d'une logique différente, Lévy-Bruhl fait voler en éclat l'universalité de la logique d'Aristote sur laquelle repose notre pensée occidentale. Dès lors cette logique n'est rien d'autre qu'une arme politique qui fonde l'hégémonie de la rationalité.0La démonstration de Fondane est implacable et bouleverse notre conception de la philosophie. Il nous incite à reconsidérer (...) nos manières de penser et de vivre sous la contrainte de la raison, faisant écho à une tradition non aristotélicienne qu'incarnent des penseurs comme Michelstaedter, Lukasiewicz ou Alfred Korzybski. (shrink)

Given that as much as half of human thought arises in a stimulus independent fashion, it would seem unlikely that such thoughts would play no functional role in our lives. However, evidence linking the mind-wandering state to performance decrement has led to the notion that mind-wandering primarily represents a form of cognitive failure. Based on previous work showing a prospective bias to mind-wandering, the current study explores the hypothesis that one potential function of spontaneous thought is to plan and anticipate (...) personally relevant future goals, a process referred to as autobiographical planning. The results confirm that the content of mind-wandering is predominantly future-focused, demonstrate that individuals with high working memory capacity are more likely to engage in prospective mind-wandering, and show that prospective mind-wandering frequently involves autobiographical planning. Together this evidence suggests that mind-wandering can enable prospective cognitive operations that are likely to be useful to the individual as they navigate through their daily lives. (shrink)

Introduction. Rest and motion. Stability and progress.--The meaning of justice. The science of values.--The equilibration of interests. Cause and effect. The individual and society. Liberty and government.--Liberty and government. Conclusion.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps, and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may (...) freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The current research investigates the interaction between thought suppression and individuals’ explicit awareness of their thoughts. Participants in three experiments attempted to suppress thoughts of a prior romantic relationship and their success at doing so was measured using a combination of self-catching and experience-sampling. In addition to thoughts that individuals spontaneously noticed, individuals were frequently caught engaging in thoughts of their previous partner at experience-sampling probes. Furthermore, probe-caught thoughts were: associated with stronger decoupling of attention from the environment, more likely (...) to occur under cognitive load, more frequent for individuals with a desire to reconcile, and associated with individual differences in the tendency to suppress thoughts. Together, these data suggest that individuals can lack meta-awareness that they have begun to think about a topic they are attempting to suppress, providing novel insight into the cognitive processes that are involved in attempting to control undesired mental states. (shrink)

The first English translation of the major political works of Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), one of the most important of the French political figures in the aftermath of the revolution of 1789, and a leading member of the liberal opposition to Napoleon and later to the restored Bourbon monarchy. The texts included in this volume are widely regarded as one of the classic formulations of modern liberal doctrine.

The 2013 Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa, as of writing, is declining in reported human cases and mortalities. The resulting devastation caused highlights how health systems, in particular in West Africa, and in terms of global pandemic planning, are ill prepared to react to zoonotic pathogens. In this paper we propose One Health as a strategy to prevent zoonotic outbreaks as a shared goal: that human and Great Ape vaccine trials could benefit both species. Only recently have two phase (...) 2/3 Ebola human vaccine trials been started in West Africa. This paper argues for a conceptual change in pandemic preparedness. We first discuss the ethics of One Health. Next, we focus on the current Ebola outbreak and defines its victims. Third, we present the notion of a ‘shared benefit’ approach, grounded in One Health, and argue for the vaccination of wild apes in order to protect both apes and humans. We believe that a creation of such inter-species immunity is an exemplar of One Health, and that it is worth pursuing as a coextensive public health approach. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 348-355, May 2022.

I defend a deontological social contract justification of punishment for philosophers who deny free will and moral responsibility (FW/MR). Even if nobody has FW/MR, a criminal justice system is fair to the people it targets if we would consent to it in a version of original position deliberation where we assumed that we would be targeted by the justice system when the veil is raised. Even if we assumed we would be convicted of a crime, we would consent to the (...) imprisonment of violent criminals if prison conditions were better than the state of nature but deterring enough to prevent the state of nature. (shrink)

Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human psychology has no relevance to the prescriptive goal of traditional epistemology, that of providing first-person guidance in determining the truth. Contrary to both, I apply insights about the psychology of human perception and concept-formation to a very traditional epistemological project: the foundationalist approach to the epistemic regress problem. I argue that direct realism about perception can help solve the regress problem and support a foundationalist account of justification, (...) but only if it is supplemented by an abstractionist theory of concept-formation, the view that it is possible to abstract concepts directly from the empirically given. Critics of direct realism like Laurence BonJour are correct that an account of direct perception by itself does not provide an adequate account of justification. However a direct realist account of perception can inform the needed theory of concept-formation, and leading critics of abstractionism like McDowell and Sellars, direct realists about perception themselves, fail to appreciate the ways in which their own views about perception help fill gaps in earlier accounts of abstractionism. Recognizing this undercuts both their objections to abstractionism and (therefore) their objections to foundationalism. (shrink)

Sheds new light on Heidegger's early theological development.

Benjamin Barber is one of America's preeminent political theorists. He has been a significant voice in the continuing debate about the nature and role of democracy in the contemporary world. A Passion for Democracy collects twenty of his most important writings on American democracy. Together they refine his distinctive position in democratic theory. Barber's conception of "strong democracy" contrasts with traditional concepts of "liberal democracy," especially in its emphasis on citizen participation in central issues of public debate. These essays (...) critique the "thin representation" of liberal democracy and buttress the arguments presented in Barber's twelve books, most recently in his well-received Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Re-shaping the World. In these pieces, Barber argues for participatory democracy without dependence on abstract metaphysical foundations, and he stresses the relationship among democracy and civil society, civic education, and culture. A Passion for Democracy is divided into four sections. In the first, "American Theory: Democracy, Liberalism, and Rights," Barber addresses issues of ongoing relevance to today's debates about the roots of participatory democracy, including individualism vs. community, the importance of consent, and the irrelevance of Marxism. Essays in the second section, "American Practice: Leadership, Citizenship, and Censorship" provide a "strong democracy" critique of American democratic practice. "Education for Democracy: Civic Education, Service, and Citizenship" applies Barber's theories to three related topics and includes his much-discussed essay "America Skips School." The final section, "Democracy and Technology: Endless Frontier or End of Democracy?" provides glimpses into a future that technology alone cannot secure for democracy. In his preface, Barber writes: "In these essays... I have been hard on my country. Like most ardent democrats, I want more for it than it has achieved, despite the fact that it has achieved more than most people have dared to want." This wide-ranging collection displays not only his passion for democracy, but also his unique perspective on issues of abiding importance for the democratic process. (shrink)

Featuring a new, explanatory Foreword by Justice Cardozo's premier biographer, this renowned and much-used analysis of the process of judicial decision-making includes embedded page numbers from the original 1921 edition for continuity of citations and syllabi.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, open science has become central to experimental, public health, and clinical responses across the globe. Open science is described as an open commons, in which a right to science renders all possible scientific data for everyone to access and use. In this common space, capitalist platforms now provide many essential services and are taking the lead in public health activities. These neoliberal businesses, however, have a problematic role in the capture of public goods. This paper (...) argues that the open commons is a community of rights, consisting of people and institutions whose interests mutually support the public good. If OS is a cornerstone of public health, then reaffirming the public good is its overriding purpose, and unethical platforms ought to be excluded from the commons and its benefits. (shrink)

Marshall and colleagues (2024) offer a framework for emergency physicians (EPs) tasked with caring for “resuscitated opioid users”—or patients who have recently overdosed on opioids. This framework...

This paper analyzes the varying conceptions of ethics underpinning the accounts of community in Blanchot, Nancy, and Esposito. A focus on ethics brings into relief points of divergence amongst accounts of community that otherwise overlap and share in many significant ways. Furthermore, it provides a basis to better assess Esposito's contribution. I focus on the concepts of difference and transcendence and the figure of the lovers, a shared topos in Nancy and Blanchot, to demonstrate these subtle variations. In turning to (...) Esposito, Kantian-inflected notions of duty, obligation, and law shape a community where others recede into the background and the lovers lose their visibility. I suggest that Esposito's focus on duty has consequences that give cause for further reflection. The law renders each of us other, but in its universality it risks losing a sense of the exceptional. Relying etymologically on the notion of duty as that which, following his reading of Kant, undermines the subject and renders possible the impossible community, grounds the Communitas in a law that risks congealing the meaning of community around this impossible obligation. (shrink)

v. 1. Charmides. Lysis. Laches. Protagoras. Euthydemus. Cratylus. Phaedrus. Ion. Symposium.--v. 2. Meno. Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Georgias. Appendix I: Lesser Hippias. Alcibiades I. Menexenus. Appenddix II: Alcibiades II. Eryxias.--v. 3. Republic. Timaeus. Critias.--v. 4. Pharmenides. Theaetetus. Sophist. Statesman. Philebus.--v. 5 Laws. Index to the writings of Plato.

Worship is a topic that is rarely considered by philosophers of religion. In a recent paper, Tim Bayne and Yujin Nagasawa challenge this trend by offering an analysis of worship and by considering some difficulties attendant on the claim that worship is obligatory. I argue that their case for there being these difficulties is insufficiently supported. I offer two reasons that a theist might provide for the claim that worship is obligatory: a divine command, and the demands of justice with (...) respect to God's redemption of humanity. I also challenge the soundness of some of the analogies they employ in their argument. (shrink)

This paper is about the moral status of those human beings with profound intellectual disabilities (PIDs). We hold the common sense view that they have equal status to ‘normal’ human beings, and a higher status than any non-human animal. We start with an admission, however: we don’t know how to give a fully satisfying theoretical account of the grounds of moral status that explains this view. And in fact, not only do we not know how to give such an account, (...) but the most satisfying account of moral status that we know (which we call ‘the standard account’) entails that our view is false. It entails that those with PIDs have a lower status than ordinary human beings and an equal status to non-human animals. Now, in this paper, we do absolutely nothing to try to show where the standard account goes wrong, and we do absolutely nothing to resolve the difficulties we see in developing an alternative account that supports our view. Indeed, we do not give any argument against the standard account or in favour of our own view. Instead, we raise the following question: in order to be justified in continuing to hold our view, are we obliged to give such an account? Our answer will be that we are not. (shrink)

The polarization of the individual and the community that underlies much of the debate between individualists and communitarians is made possible in part by the literal vanishingof civil society—the domain whose middling terms mediate the stark opposition of state and private sectors and offer women and men a space for activity that is both voluntary and public. Modern democratic ideology and the reality of our political practices sometimesseem to yield only a choice between elephantine and paternalistic government or a radically (...) solipsistic and nearly anarchic private market sector—overnment gargantuanism or private greed. Americans do not much like either one. President Clinton's callfor national service draws us out of our selfishness without kindling any affection for government. Private markets service our avarice without causing us to like ourselves. The question of how America's decentralized and multi-vocal public can secure a coherentvoice in debates over public policy under the conditions precipitated by so hollow and disjunctive a dichotomy is perhaps the most important issue facing both the political theory and social science of democracy and the practice of democratic politics in America today. Two recent stories out of Washington suggest just how grave the situation has become. Health-care reform failed in a paroxysm of mutual recrimination highlighted by the successful campaign of the private sector against a presidential program that seemed to be widely misunderstood. The public at large simply went missing in the debates. (shrink)

Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) discuss the ethical concerns associated with employing what they term conversational artificial intelligence as therapist substitutes. Given their apprehensions, they...

Wie andere aufgeschlossene Fachvertreter seiner Generation hat der kanadische Jesuit Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) dazu beigetragen, die katholische Theologie umfassend zu erneuern. Angesichts der offenkundigen Grenzen der Neuscholastik, die sich im Laufe des 19. Jahrhunderts als das Modell durchgesetzt hatte, suchte er schon früh nach einer Alternative. Bei aller Skepsis gegenüber dem herrschenden Thomismus schätzte er Thomas von Aquin in hohem Maß. Das betraf insbesondere dessen Bemühen, die damals aktuellen wissenschaftlichen und methodischen Erkenntnisse einzubeziehen. Lonergan wollte dies ebenso tun. Es ging (...) ihm darum, der katholischen Theologie eine neue Richtung zu geben, also von der Neuscholastik abzurücken. Denn diese berücksichtigte weder das erkennende Subjekt noch das zu erkennende Objekt hinreichend. (shrink)

_Lectures from the late period of Fichte’s career, never before available in English._.

What does the law want? -- How the law thinks -- How the law works -- The litigious mind -- Tyranny of the mind -- Lawyers in love -- Staying and going -- Soul values.

What is the nature of time? Does it flow? Do the past and future exist? Drawing connections between historical and present-day questions, A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Time provides an up-to-date guide to one of the most central and debated topics in contemporary metaphysics. Introducing the views and arguments of Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Newton and Leibniz, this accessible introduction covers the history of the philosophy of time from the Pre-Socratics to the beginning of the 20th Century. The (...) historical survey presents the necessary background to understanding more recent developments, including McTaggarts 1908 argument for the unreality of time, the open future, the perdurance/endurance debate, the possibility of time travel, and the relevance of current physics to the philosophy of time. Informed by cutting-edge philosophical research, A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Time evaluates influential historical arguments in the context of contemporary developments. (shrink)