This volume explores the ethical dimensions of a wide selection of philosophical and theological topics in Aquinas's texts.

In exploring this tradition of philosophical reflection on the nature of goodness, the twelve essays in this book (all but two published here for the first time) present some of the best recent historical scholarship in...

The purpose of the article is to offer a detailed exegetical analysis of the argument in chapter four of "de ente et essentia" in which aquinas argues for a distinction between "esse" and essence and to develop an interpretation of it on the basis of the analysis. I argue that the reconstructed argument shows that aquinas argues for a real distinction and that he establishes it earlier in the argument than some commentators have thought. I criticize a rival interpretation of (...) the argument defended recently by joseph owens. (shrink)

As more and more instances of corporate hypocrisy become public, consumers have developed an inherent general skepticism towards firms’ corporate social responsibility claims. As CSR skepticism bears heavily on consumers’ attitudes and behavior, this paper draws from Construal Level Theory to identify how it can be pre-emptively abated. We posit that this general skepticism towards CSR leads people to adopt a low-level construal mindset when processing CSR information. Across four studies, we show that matching this low-level mindset with concrete CSR (...) messaging works to effectively mitigate the negative effects of inherent CSR skepticism on consumers’ attitudes, purchase intentions, and word of mouth. The resulting construal-mindset congruency strengthens the favorability of consumer responses through increased positive elaboration and perceptions of CSR message credibility. Furthermore, this congruency effect is shown to persist over time in skeptical domains but to dissipate in less skeptical domains. (shrink)

First, I engage Del McWhorter's confessional voice in the context of her thought and emphasize her claim that even "objective knowledge" often has an indirectly confessional aspect. Second, I give an account of the value of historicity and genealogy in McWhorter's understanding of knowing and subjectivity. Third, I address her reconfiguration of the subjectivity of desiring by prioritizing pleasure in the project of "becoming truly gay." Finally, I assess the meaning of her phrase, "straying afield from myself.".

When we consider the concepts and assumptions of a way of interpreting we are not abstracting ourselves from concrete analytical practice, but are dealing with one dimension of that practice. When a person’s assumptions and concepts change, aspects of his therapeutic work will also change. The philosophical ideal of conceptual clarity means that one strives to be able to recognize how he interprets what is going on—he strives to recognize how he proceeds with the therapeutic process in relation to other (...) options. In that way he has a far better chance of allowing the experience to speak for itself to him, i.e., when he knows something about his own assumptions in relation to a variety of other assumptions, he is able to hear how an occurrence exceeds or differs from his own accustomed ways in which he makes sense of things. (shrink)

Why Fichte? I wondered, when the six-day Fichte Tagung was announced for Zwettl, Austria. Hegel and Kant and Hume had had their festivals. I expected that. But in spite of some party spirit for Fichte there is hardly a competitive passion on the part of Fichte people against Kant and Hegel and Hume people that would prompt a world congress. There is no International Society for the study of Fichte. There is indeed intense interest in his work, witnessed in the (...) new and carefully edited collection of his works, which is still in progress, the numerous, excellent and recently published studies, and the number of excellent Fichte articles appearing in leading journals. There is particular and growing interest in his revisions of his Wissenschaftslehre, in which his notion of intuition develops remarkably. His fully developed position does indeed offer a subtle and profound option to Hegel’s interpretation of consciousness. His influence on nineteenth century figures in literature as well as in philosophy is striking and important. But that has been so for a century and a half, and the same can be said of Schelling’s later work and influence, which is much less studied. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 47, Issue 1, pp 19 - 38 In its engagement with Derrida’s _unheimlich_ responsibility elaborated in _The Beast and the Sovereign_, Volume One, this essay is about death, words, silence, and lives of people and animals. It is also about experiences that to varying degrees bring lives to words and words to lives. Its guiding hypotheses are that death, words, silence, and lives in their _happenings exceed_ the laws that function to identify them and that none of (...) their happenings is sovereign in relation to the others. The essay culminates with Derrida’s engagement with ungrounded time when completion and beginning are simultaneous. That simultaneity constitutes a threshold in which people must respond. For Derrida the threshold is shadowed by his own approaching death. (shrink)

"... stimulating and insightful... a thoroughly researched and timely contribution to the secondary literature of ethics... " —Library Journal "His important new work establishes Scott... as one of the foremost interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition of the US.... Necessary for anyone working in ethics or the Continental tradition." —Choice "... a provocative discourse on the consequences of the ethical in the thought of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Heidegger." —The Journal of Religion Charles E. Scott's challenging book advances (...) the broad claim that ethics as a way of judging and thinking has come into question as philosophers have confronted suffering and conflicts that arise from our traditional systems of value. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an understanding of philosophy of education as cultural and intercultural work and philosophers of education as cultural and intercultural workers. In our view, the discipline of philosophy of education in North America is currently suffering from measures of insularity and singularity. It is vital that we justly and respectfully engage with and expand our knowledge and understanding of sets of conceptual and life-practice resources, and honor and learn from diverse histories, cultures, and traditions. Such honoring (...) provides responsive conditions for our coming together in and across differences in order that we may productively and creatively address and overturn grammars of violence, destruction, and dis-ease in these complexly troubled times. Committing ourselves to deconstructing historical and contemporary beliefs, values, and practices that are compromising human and planetary flourishing, we undertake responsibilities to go cross-cultural and intercultural. (shrink)

What does living well look like in the Anthropocene? Despite our brief tenure on planet Earth, we have reached an epoch--the Anthropocene--that is characterized by our species' uncanny ability to spoil our own nest. In the face of this somber reality of ecological degradation, The Book of Ecological Virtues asks the all-important question, "What does living well look like in the Anthropocene?" It is vitally important that we turn towards the cultivation of ecovirtues, a new set of values by which (...) to live, if there is to be hope for us and other species to continue. These essays inspire readers not just to ponder but to embody and live the ideals of these timeless ecological virtues. (shrink)

In theCompanion to Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophyan international group of fourteen Heidegger scholars shares strategies for reading and understanding this challenging work.

A proposal for individual responsibility in communal life.

I mean by the phrase "taking differences seriously" freeing differences from the conceptual and linguistic formations that promote recognitions based on categorical grouping and what we might call domination by images of familiar normalcy and global similarities. 1 I have in mind a discipline of turning out of those ways of speaking and thinking that intend to bring unity and essential harmony to highly diverse events and entities. Those are ways of thinking and speaking that assume that original identities define (...) basic resemblances among classes of things. I understand this claim to mean that many current and established ways of thinking are dangerous for this country's diverse culture and for our .. (shrink)

This essay is written in two sections. The first, following a short introduction, is made up of three scenarios drawn from the life and work of Martin Buber. As well as demonstrating his obvious interest in human relationships with the other-than-human, each scenario describes an encounter between either Buber himself or a stand-in character and a member of the other-than-human world. Together, these scenes not only suggest that I/Thou encounters are possible with the other-than-human, and that they are important for (...) the development of the human I, but also outline characteristics that make such encounters possible. The second section focuses on Buber's description of the “great actor” in order to offer a way teachers might engage their own students with the other-than-human world. Just as the actor embodies both the character and his or her own person in a dramatic role, so the teacher might embody the I/Thou relationship with the natural world, becoming Teacher/Tree, and exemplifying that relationship with the students. (shrink)

Questions of whether anything exceeds reasonable sense and meaning have persisted throughout the history of philosophy. These questions have even continued in postmodern thought as well as in liberatory philosophies in which many kinds of events and lineages are experienced and seen as beyond philosophy. In this cowritten text, distinguished philosophers Nancy Tuana and Charles Scott pay particular attention to lineages and their dynamism as they develop the idea of things beyond philosophy, beyond norms. This is not a (...) history of philosophy or a critical study of a particular philosopher but a way to engage experience around dimensions of events that are beyond measuring, counting, meaning, and value. These attunements, they assert, are vitally important for the ways people orient themselves in the world and comport themselves in it. Tuana and Scott build on the alternatives to normative ethics that they find in the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Anzaldúa. They urge attunement to the world as a way to speak about what is impossible to give voice to, to live in the spaces between speech and the unspeakable, and to conceptualize and articulate the boundaries of rational sensibility. (shrink)

"... remarkable account of the impact of postmodern philosophy on the question of ethics and politics... commendable also for its balanced view of Heidegger’s relationship to politics and ethics.... an excellent account of Heidegger’s philosophical understanding of technology..." —Choice This book takes as its point of departure the question of ethics: that values and their pursuit in the West often perpetuate their own worst enemies. At issue are the dangers in the structures and movements of images, values, and ways of (...) knowing that are most intimately a part of our lives. (shrink)

A problem which was widely recognised during Schleiermacher's life, and one which I think is not yet satisfactorily solved, concerned the integration of feeling and concepts within human consciousness. Within the domain of philosophy of religion it may be phrased as follows: How does religious feeling relate to rational reflection such that each complements and enriches the other? Schleiermacher was convinced that religion never originates in human understanding or autonomy and that one's understanding of the world is not necessarily dependent (...) on religious faith. But he was equally convinced that reflection and religion ought to enjoy a harmony which reflects the harmony of the universe, and this ideal motivated his continuous attempt to construct a complementary philosophy and theology. His hope was to show that ‘understanding and feeling… remain distinct, but they touch each other and form a galvanic pile.… The innermost life of the spirit consists in the galvanic action thus produced in the feeling of the understanding and the understanding of the feeling, during which, however, the two poles always remain deflected from each other.’. (shrink)

Constitutes a thoughtful survey of contemporary hermeneutics in its historical context.

Foucault's genealogies and archeologies provide occasions in which one may come to know the powers, accidents, and influences that have structured a particular knowledge or discipline. The Birth of the Clinic shows the development of modern medicine in a process by which rational inference and emphasis on the history of a disease are replaced by pathological anatomy. In modern anatomy, the corpse, not reason, became the “space” of modern medical knowledge. In this “space” developed a confederation of dead body, knowledge, (...) trained and noninferential gaze, organic unity, and the increased importance of bodily space instead of physical time. The discussion shows how Foucault's genealogy of modern medicine is influenced by and overcomes the knowledge that it describes. In this context, his genealogy is also shown to be self-overcoming and to raise important questions for medical ethics when ethical thought is conceived within the structures of knowledge that have been exposed by the genealogy. (shrink)

Living with Indifference is about the dimension of life that is utterly neutral, without care, feeling, or personality. In this provocative work that is anything but indifferent, Charles E. Scott explores the ways people have spoken and thought about indifference. Exploring topics such as time, chance, beauty, imagination, violence, and virtue, Scott shows how affirming indifference can be beneficial, and how destructive consequences can occur when we deny it. Scott’s preoccupation with indifference issues a demand for (...) focused attention in connection with personal values, ethics, and beliefs. This elegantly argued book speaks to the positive value of diversity and a world that is open to human passion. (shrink)

This book punctuates the moments of crisis in continental thought from the foundational crisis of reason in Husserl’s call for a rigorous science of phenomenology to the current crisis of postmodernism and its rejection of Husserl’s metanarrative of history and rationality. The mediating links between these moments is the centrality of the epochal history of Being, the power of cultural and disciplinary practices, and the dispersal of meaning in the post-Husserlian and post-subjective philosophies of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and others. Included (...) here are the thoughts of leading scholars who critically discuss Husserl’s analysis of the crisis of Western thought and the importance of the concepts of “world” in Husserl’s early writings. The authors analyze the deprivileging of philosophy as social critique through the text of Husserl, Habermas, Foucault, and recent feminist theory. They examine the end of the epistemological and morally autonomous subject in continental thought. Together, these thoughts articulate multiple points or moments of crisis without cure or end. (shrink)

Ethics and Danger examines Heidegger’s association with German National Socialism and attempts to understand both the question of politics in Heidegger’s thought and the thought that gives rise to that question. It explores the contribution of Heidegger’s work to issues of ethics, technology, and social theory, as well as his relationship to other thinkers such as Parmenides, Aristotle, Hegel, Husserl, Benjamin, Levinas, Rorty, Foucault, and Derrida. Finally, it addresses the more general question of the future of ethical thought within continental (...) philosophy. In order to engage the ethical issues surrounding Heidegger’s life and thought, the authors speak of dangers such as facism and the facile, self-congratulatory moral stance that Heidegger exemplifies. The question of how to speak in the wake of Heidegger’s thought takes many forms, and the answers represent a diversity of viewpoints from both American and continental thinkers. (shrink)