This book presents a thorough study and an up to date anthology of Plato’s Protagoras. International authors' papers contribute to the task of understanding how Plato introduced and negotiated a new type of intellectual practice – called philosophy – and the strategies that this involved. They explore Plato’s dialogue, looking at questions of how philosophy and sophistry relate, both on a methodological and on a thematic level.

This book presents a thorough study and an up to date anthology of Plato's Protagoras. International authors' papers contribute to the task of understanding how Plato introduced and negotiated a new type of intellectual practice - called philosophy - and the strategies that this involved. They explore Plato's dialogue, looking at questions of how philosophy and sophistry relate, both on a methodological and on a thematic level. While many of the contributing authors argue for a sharp distinction between sophistry and (...) philosophy, this is contested by others. Readers may consider the distinctions between philosophy and traditional forms of poetry and sophistry through these papers. Questions for readers' attention include: To what extent is Socrates' preferred mode of discourse, and his short questions and answers, superior to Protagoras' method of sophistic teaching? And why does Plato make Socrates and Protagoras reverse positions as it comes to virtue and its teachability? This book will appeal to graduates and researchers with an interest in the origins of philosophy, classical philosophy and historical philosophy. (shrink)

Plato's philosophical dialogues can be seen as his creation of a new genre. Plato borrows from, as well as rejects, earlier and contemporary authors, and he is constantly in conversation with established genres, such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, and rhetoric in a variety of ways. This intertextuality reinforces the relevance of material from other types of literary works, as well as a general knowledge of classical culture in Plato's time, and the political and moral environment that Plato addressed, when (...) reading his dramatic dialogues. The authors of Philosophy as Drama show that any interpretation of these works must include the literary and narrative dimensions of each text, as much as serious the attention given to the progression of the argument in each piece. Each dialogue is read on its own merit, and critical comparisons of several dialogues explore the differences and likenesses between them on a dramatic as well as on a logical level. This collection of essays moves debates in Plato scholarship forward when it comes to understanding both particular aspects of Plato's dialogues and the approach itself. Containing 11 chapters of close readings of individual dialogues, with 2 chapters discussing specific themes running through them, such as music and sensuousness, pleasure, perception, and images, this book displays the range and diversity within Plato's corpus. (shrink)

This collection of essays provides a reassessment of the question of sexual difference, taking into account important shifts in feminist thought, post-humanist theories, and queer studies. The contributors offer new and refreshing insights into the complex question of sexual difference from a post-feminist perspective, and how it is reformulated in various related areas of study, such as ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, biology, technology, and mass-media.

This article explores the contribution of the virtue of integrity to the concept of mature care. The virtue of integrity is understood as both a personal and a social virtue. The argument is that the virtue of integrity is a necessary condition for providing mature care. An example from a psychiatric acute ward illustrates that a nurse acting with the virtue of integrity displays clear self‐boundaries and self‐respect as well as respect towards the inherent integrity of the patient. The article (...) also addresses some problems related to lack of the virtue of integrity by discussing the problems connected to detachment and rigidity. (shrink)

Bart Streumer argues that it is not possible for us to believe the error theory, where by ‘error theory’ he means the claim that our normative beliefs are committed to the existence of normative properties even though such properties do not exist. In this paper, we argue that it is indeed possible to believe the error theory. First, we suggest a critical improvement to Streumer’s argument. As it stands, one crucial premise of that argument—that we cannot have a belief while (...) believing that there is no reason to have it—is implausibly strong. We argue that for his purposes, Streumer’s argument only requires a weaker premise, namely that we cannot rationally have a belief while believing that there is no reason to have it. Secondly, we go on to refute the improved argument. Even in its weaker form, Streumer’s argument is either invalid or the crucial premise should be rejected. (shrink)

Trusting and its Tribulations -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1 Unfixed Trust -- 2 Witchcraft -- 3 Trusting the Untrustworthy -- 4 The Puzzle of the Animal Witch -- 5 'Sharing Secrets' -- 6 Eddies of Distrust -- 7 Intimate Documents -- 8 Trustworthy Bodies -- 9 Habitus of Trust -- 10 'You Can Tell the Company We Done Quit' -- Index.

Solidarität wird in Krisenzeiten sowie bei Ungerechtigkeit und Marginalisierung gefordert. Sie tritt dabei in unterschiedlichen Reichweiten und Akteurskonstellationen auf und basiert auf verschiedenen Motiven und Ausgangslagen. Julia Masurkewitz-Möller nimmt sich dieser Vielfalt an und erarbeitet eine Systematisierung der Solidarität, die Ordnung in den begrifflichen Dschungel des Konzepts bringt. Sie zeigt, dass verschiedene Solidaritätsformen trotz ihrer Unterschiede einen gemeinsamen Kern und eine Beziehung zueinander haben - und damit die Transformationen von Solidaritätsformen möglich machen.

In 2003, Ruth Faden and eighteen other colleagues argued that a.

Work—family policy strategies reflect gendered assumptions about the roles of men and women within families and therefore may lead to significantly different outcomes, particularly for families headed by single mothers. The authors argue that welfare states have adopted strategies based on different assumptions about women's and men's roles in society, which then affect women's chances of living in poverty cross-nationally. The authors examine how various strategies are associated with poverty rates across groups of women and also examine more directly the (...) effects of specific work—family policies on poverty rates. They find that while family benefits and child care for young children unequivocally lower poverty rates, particularly for families headed by a single mother, long parental leaves have more ambivalent effects. The findings suggest that it is critical to examine the gendered assumptions underlying work—family policies rather than viewing all work—family policies as the same. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Dutch case of Brongersma presents novel challenges to the definition and evaluation of voluntary euthanasia since it involved a doctor assisting the suicide of an individual who was (merely?) ‘tired of life’. Legal officials had called on the courts to ‘set a principled boundary’, excluding such cases from the scope of permissible voluntary euthanasia, but they arguably failed. This failure is explicable, however, since the case seems justifiable by reference to the two major principles in favour of that (...) practice, respect for autonomy and beneficence. Ultimately, it will be argued that those proponents of voluntary euthanasia who are wary of its use in such circumstances may need to draw upon ‘practical’ objections, in order to erect an otherwise arbitrary perimeter. Furthermore, it will be suggested that the issues raised by the case are not peculiarly Dutch in nature and that, therefore, there are lessons here for other jurisdictions too. (shrink)

In a thought experiment we want to test how the emergence of adult neural stem cells could constitute an example for a scientific revolution in the sense of Thomas Kuhn. In his major work, The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd edn, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (Kuhn 1996), the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, states that scientific progress is not a cumulative process, but new theories appear by a rather revolutionary sequence of events. Kuhn built his theory on landmark events (...) taken from chemistry and physics, lacking examples from biology. Beginning with Ramon y Cajal’s famous quote, no new neurons after birth , from the early years of the twentieth century, and Reynolds and Weiss’s conflicting finding in 1992 of adult neural stem cells giving rise to new neurons, we will test how the finding of neural stem cells in the adult brain matches with Kuhn’s theory. The pivotal problem of defining a paradigm will be our main focus, since the emergence of adult neural stem cells has been acclaimed by the scientific community as the rebuttal of Ramon y Cajal’s paradigm. (shrink)

Pt. 1. Conceputal issues -- pt. 2. Qualitative research -- pt. 3. Quantitative approaches.

Polygamy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, punishing women for being raped, differential access for men and women to health care and education, unequal rights of ownership, assembly, and political participation, unequal vulnerability to violence. These practices and conditions are standard in some parts of the world. Do demands for multiculturalism — and certain minority group rights in particular — make them more likely to continue and to spread to liberal democracies? Are there fundamental conflicts between our commitment to gender equity (...) and our increasing desire to respect the customs of minority cultures or religions? In this book, the eminent feminist Susan Moller Okin and fifteen of the world’s leading thinkers about feminism and multiculturalism explore these unsettling questions in a provocative, passionate, and illuminating debate. Okin opens by arguing that some group rights can, in fact, endanger women. She points, for example, to the French government’s giving thousands of male immigrants special permission to bring multiple wives into the country, despite French laws against polygamy and the wives’ own bitter opposition to the practice. Okin argues that if we agree that women should not be disadvantaged because of their sex, we should not accept group rights that permit oppressive practices on the grounds that they are fundamental to minority cultures whose existence may otherwise be threatened. In reply, some respondents reject Okin’s position outright, contending that her views are rooted in a moral universalism that is blind to cultural difference. Others quarrel with Okin’s focus on gender, or argue that we should be careful about which group rights we permit, but not reject the category of group rights altogether. Okin concludes with a rebuttal, clarifying, adjusting, and extending her original position. These incisive and accessible essays — expanded from their original publication in Boston Review and including four new contributions — are indispensable reading for anyone interested in one of the most contentious social and political issues today. The diverse contributors, in addition to Okin, are Azizah al-Hibri, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Homi Bhabha, Sander Gilman, Janet Halley, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka, Martha Nussbaum, Bhikhu Parekh, Katha Pollitt, Robert Post, Joseph Raz, Saskia Sassen, Cass Sunstein, and Yael Tamir. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Dutch case of Brongersma presents novel challenges to the definition and evaluation of voluntary euthanasia since it involved a doctor assisting the suicide of an individual who was (merely?) ‘tired of life’. Legal officials had called on the courts to ‘set a principled boundary’, excluding such cases from the scope of permissible voluntary euthanasia, but they arguably failed. This failure is explicable, however, since the case seems justifiable by reference to the two major principles in favour of that (...) practice, respect for autonomy and beneficence. Ultimately, it will be argued that those proponents of voluntary euthanasia who are wary of its use in such circumstances may need to draw upon ‘practical’ objections, in order to erect an otherwise arbitrary perimeter. Furthermore, it will be suggested that the issues raised by the case are not peculiarly Dutch in nature and that, therefore, there are lessons here for other jurisdictions too. (shrink)

A one-stop resource on the current developments in word order research, this comprehensive survey provides an up-to-date, critical overview of this widely debated topic, exploring and evaluating research carried out in four major ...

全书分为“科教兴国”、“走向世界”、“弘扬科智”、“控制论与人口”、“断代工程”以及“师师仰贤”六个部分,共收入作品80余篇。.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 6, June 2022.

It is natural for those with permissive attitudes toward abortion to suppose that, if they have examined all of the arguments they know against abortion and have concluded that they fail, their moral deliberations are at an end. Surprisingly, this is not the case, as I argue. This is because the mere risk that one of those arguments succeeds can generate a moral reason that counts against the act. If this is so, then liberals may be mistaken about the morality (...) of abortion. However, conservatives who claim that considerations of risk rule out abortion in general are mistaken as well. Instead, risk-based considerations generate an important but not necessarily decisive reason to avoid abortion. The more general issue that emerges is how to accommodate fallibilism about practical judgment in our decision-making. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 6, June 2022.

The recent global movement for women's human rights has achieved considerable re-thinking of human rights as previously understood. Since many of women's rights violations occur in the private sphere of family life, and are justified by appeals to cultural or religious norms, both families and cultures (including their religious aspects) have come under critical scrutiny.

What makes trust such a powerful concept? Is it merely that in trust the whole range of social forces that we know play together? Or is it that trust involves a peculiar element beyond those we can account for? While trust is an attractive and evocative concept that has gained increasing popularity across the social sciences, it remains elusive, its many facets and applications obscuring a clear overall vision of its essence. In this book, Guido Möllering reviews a broad range (...) of trust research and extracts three main perspectives adopted in the literature for understanding trust. Accordingly, trust is presented as a matter of reason, routine or reflexivity. While all these perspectives contribute something to our understanding of trust, Möllering shows that they imply, but cannot explain, ‘suspension’ – the leap of faith that is typical of trust. He therefore proposes a new direction in trust research that builds on existing perspectives but places the suspension of uncertainty and vulnerability at the heart of the concept of trust. Beyond a purely theoretical line of argument, the author discusses implications for empirical studies of trust and presents original case material that captures the experience of trust in terms of reason, routine, reflexivity and suspension. Möllering concludes by suggesting how the new approach can enhance the relevance of trust research and its contributions to broader research agendas concerning the constitution of positive expectations in the face of prevalent uncertainty and change at various levels in our economies and societies. The book is essential reading for anyone who wants to gain a thorough understanding of trust. It can serve as a general introduction for advanced students and scholars in the social sciences, especially in economics, sociology, psychology and management. For more experienced researchers, it is a challenging and provocative critique of the field and a new approach to understanding trust. (shrink)

Political realists’ rejection of the so-called ‘ethics first’ approach of political moralists, has raised concerns about their own source of normativity. Some realists have responded to such concerns by theorizing a distinctively political normativity. According to this view, politics is seen as an autonomous, independent domain with its own evaluative standards. Therefore, it is in this source, rather than in some moral values ‘outside’ of this domain, that normative justification should be sought when theorizing justice, democracy, political legitimacy, and the (...) like. For realists the question about a distinctively political normativity is important, because they take the fact that politics is a distinct affair to have severe consequences for both how to approach the subject matter as such and for which principles and values can be justified. Still, realists have had a hard time clarifying what this distinctively political normativity consists of and why, more precisely, it matters. The aim of this paper is to take some further steps in answering these questions. We argue that realists have the choice of committing themselves to one of two coherent notions of distinctively political normativity: one that is independent of moral values, where political normativity is taken to be a kind of instrumental normativity; another where the distinctness still retains a justificatory dependence on moral values. We argue that the former notion is unattractive since the costs of commitment will be too high, and that the latter notion is sound but redundant since no moralist would ever reject it. Furthermore, we end the paper by discussing what we see as the most fruitful way of approaching political and moral normativity in political theory. (shrink)

Susan Moller Okin. AFTERWORD or greater weighting of these over “masculine" values. For how are women to continue to assume all of the nurturing activities that allegedly both follow from and reinforce their “naturally” superior virtues, and  ...

Empirical evidence indicates that bereaved spouses are surprisingly muted in their responses to their loss, and that after a few months many of the bereaved return to their emotional baseline. Psychologists think this is good news: resilience is adaptive, and we should welcome evidence that there is less suffering in the world. I explore various reasons we might have for regretting our resilience, both because of what resilience tells us about our own significance vis-à-vis loved ones, and because resilience may (...) render us incapable of comprehending how things really stand, valuewise. I also compare our actual dispositions to extreme alternatives (“sub-resilience” and “super-resilience”), and consider whether we might endorse (plain) resilience as a kind of mean. (shrink)

This book argues that political libertarianism can be grounded in widely shared, everyday moral beliefs--particularly in strictures against shifting our burdens onto others. It also seeks to connect these philosophical arguments with related work in economics, history, and politics for a wide-ranging discussion of political economy.

An intensified discussion on the role of normative ideals has re-emerged in several debates in political philosophy. What is often referred to as “ideal theory,” represented by liberal egalitarians such as John Rawls, is under attack from those that stress that political philosophy at large should take much more seriously the nonideal circumstances consisting of relations of domination and power under which normative ideals, principles, and ideas are supposed to be applied. While the debate so far has mainly been preoccupied (...) with defending or rejecting ideal theory through a defense or rejection of a specific ideal theory, this paper instead focuses on a number of general philosophical concerns on which the critique relies. More specifically, it brings up for scrutiny, and ultimately rejects, three charges against ideal theory: the charge that ideal theory is not action-guiding, that ideal theory is impossible, and that ideal theory is distorting. By investigatingthese charges in tandem, the paper shows that the criticism against ideal theory is premised on assumptions about the relationships between thought and action and between concepts and the world for which there is little or no support. (shrink)