Abstract. In this paper, which was among Don Browning's last writings before he died, we review and evaluate the main arguments against the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (the “CRC”) that conservative American Christians in particular have opposed. While we take their objections seriously, we think that, on balance, the CRC is worthy of ratification, especially if it is read in light of the profamily ethic that informs the CRC and many earlier human rights instruments. More (...) fundamentally, we think that the CRC captures some of the very best traditional Western legal and theological teachings on marriage, family, and children, which we retrieve and reconstruct for our day. (shrink)

The article presents an interpretation of certain aspects of John Dewey’s psychological works. The interpretation aims to show that Dewey’s framework speaks directly to certain problems that the discipline of psychology faces today. In particular the reflexive problem, the fact that psychology as an array of discursive practices has served to constitute forms of human subjectivity in Western cultures. Psychology has served to produce or transform its subject-matter. It is shown first that Dewey was aware of the reflexive problem, and (...) found that it needed to be addressed. Next, three concepts of Dewey’s psychology are drawn in: subjectivity, habit and morality. Dewey is interpreted as articulating what we today would call a practice-orientated approach to psychology, in which moral and practical reasoning is seen as a dimension of all knowledge and action. Subjectivity is understood as a function emerging with complex interaction. Finally, a Deweyan approach to how psychology and other social sciences can cope with, and make positive use of, the reflexive problem, is outlined. By acknowledging their existence in the world they study, i.e. by becoming moral sciences that realize their moral and political implications, the social sciences can become problem-solving instruments that serve to help create a democratic public, a community as an actual social idea. It is pointed out that Dewey had an attractive view both of psychology – the subject-matter and of Psychology – the discipline and its practices – and ventured on the rare attempt at explicating how they are connected in what he called Great Societies, what we today would call post- or late-modernity, and how Psychology can help to constitute Great Communities in which human beings might flourish. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate the human act of spectatorship as found in the work of John Dewey and Paulo Freire. I will show that each is thoroughly anti-watching when it comes to educational practices. I then problematize their positions by looking at their spectatorial commitments in the realm of aesthetics. Both Dewey and Freire have a different opinion about spectatorship when it is a matter of watching art. I claim that this different in opinion derives from the practice of (...) ‘educational humanism’. By educational humanism, I mean the tendency to posit stock human traits that derive from pedagogical practices. Ultimately, I will take a stand against educational humanism, against the process of back-forming, from educational circumstances, the desirability, or the undesirability, of human traits. (shrink)

This essay undertakes a reexamination of the notion of the receptacle/chōra in Plato's Timaeus, asking what its value may be to feminists seeking to understand the topology of the feminine in Western philosophy. As the source of cosmic motion as well as a restless figurality, labile and polyvocal, the receptacle/chōra offers a fecund zone of destabilization that allows for an immanent critique of ancient metaphysics. Engaging with Derridean, Irigarayan, and Kristevan analyses, Bianchi explores whether receptacle/chōra can exceed its reduction to (...) the maternal-feminine, and remain answerable to contemporary theoretical concerns. (shrink)

The history of pedagogics gives the impression that pedagogics has never had an identity of its own. Throughout history it has borrowed its identity from philosophy, theology, psychology and sociology. Against the background of this historical challenge, the article proposes pedagogical practice as an alternative identity to pedagogics, although not in the classical sense of an absolute and self‐sufficient identity, and it develops one particular ontological theory of pedagogical practice viewed from a life‐world approach with the ambition of suggesting a (...) theoretical point of departure for pedagogical research. (shrink)

Plato’s tripartite soul plays a central role in his account of justice in the Republic. It thus comes as a surprise to find him apparently abandoning this model at the end of the work, when he suggests that the soul, as immortal, must be simple. I propose a way of reconciling these claims, appealing to neglected features of the city-soul analogy and the argument for the soul’s division. The original true soul, I argue, is partitioned, but in a finer manner (...) than how we encounter it in our everyday lives. (shrink)

This article further elaborates on the “pre-crime society” thesis as developed and examined by Arrigo and Sellers. Specifically, the article focuses on the ultramodern era of digital inter-connectivity and argues that productive psychic desire is held clinically captive. Ultra-modernity is populated by cyber-forms of human relating and of economic exchange that nurture hyper-securitization. We discuss how the maintenance of hyper-securitization supports a pre-crime society, and how hyper-securitization’s object of desire consists of sign-optics. We argue that the co-constitutive forces of this (...) desire represent the sign-exchange values of post-criminology. Post-criminology’s signifiers include, among others, “predictive policing”, “crime mapping”, and “actuarial penology.” Post-criminology’s signifieds produce captivity-generating bio-digital “laws” of human relatedness. Among others, these laws sanction the neurosis of de-vitalization and certify the psychosis of finalization. We explain how the unchecked excess neutralizations of de-vitalization and finalization cultivate clinical captivity. Clinical captivity is a social anxiety in which reciprocal consciousness, inter-subjectivity, and mutual power are limited in existence or are denied an existence. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is often proposed as a third way in health‐care ethics, that while consequentialism and deontology focus on action guidelines, virtue focuses on character; all three aim to help agents discern morally right action although virtue seems to have least to contribute to political issues, such as austerity. I claim: This is a bad way to characterize virtue ethics. The 20th century renaissance of virtue ethics was first proposed as a response to the difficulty of making sense of ‘moral (...) rightness’ outside a religious context. For Aristotle the right action is that which is practically best; that means best for the agent in order to live a flourishing life. There are no moral considerations besides this. Properly characterized, virtue ethics can contribute to discussion of austerity. A criticism of virtue ethics is that fixed characteristics seem a bad idea in ever‐changing environments; perhaps we should be generous in prosperity, selfish in austerity. Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that people indeed do change with their environment. However, I argue that virtues concern fixed values not fixed behaviour; the values underlying virtue allow for different behaviour in different circumstances: in austerity, virtues still give the agent the best chance of flourishing. Two questions arise. In austere environments might not injustice help an individual flourish by, say, obtaining material goods? No, because unjust acts undermine the type of society the agent needs for flourishing. What good is virtue to those lacking the other means to flourish? The notion of degrees of flourishing shows that most people would benefit somewhat from virtue. However, in extreme circumstances virtue might harm rather than benefit the agent: such circumstances are to be avoided; virtue ethics thus has a political agenda to enable flourishing. This requires justice, a fortiori when in austerity. (shrink)

The codes of ethics and conduct of a number of psychology bodies explicitly refer to human rights, and the American Psychological Association recently expanded the use of the construct when it amended standard 1.02 of the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. What is unclear is how these references to human rights should be interpreted. In this article I examine the historical development of human rights and associated constructs and the contemporary meaning of human rights. As human rights (...) are generally associated with law, morality, or religion, I consider to which of forms of these references most likely refer. I conclude that these references in ethical codes are redundant and that it would be preferable not to refer to human rights in codes. Instead, the profession should acknowledge human rights as a separate and complimentary norm system that governs the behavior of psychologists and should ensure that they have adequate knowledge of human rights and encourage them to promote human rights. (shrink)

In this paper I ask how educational researchers can believe the subjective perceptions of qualitative participant-observers given the concern for objectivity and generalisability of experimental research in the behavioural and social sciences. I critique the most common answer to this question within the educational research community, which posits the existence of two (or more) equally legitimate epistemological paradigms—positivism and constructivism—and offer an alternative that places a priority in educational research on understanding the purposes and meanings humans attribute to educational practices. (...) Only within the context of what I call a transcendent view from somewhere—higher ideals that govern human activities—can we make sense of quantitative as well as qualitative research findings. (shrink)

Effective person-centred care requires recognition of the personhood not only of patients but of practitioners. This chapter explores the consequences of this recognition for major debates in medical epistemology, regarding clinical reasoning and the relationship between research and practice. For too long these debates have been dominated by false dichotomies - subjectivity versus objectivity, judgement versus evidence, reason versus emotion. Based on flawed understandings of such core concepts as “objectivity” and “engagement”, this distorted dissection of the subject-object relationship has served (...) to depersonalise practice. The costs of this depersonalisation include over-regulation and micromanagement of healthcare processes by administrators and payers at the same time that information from clinical research remains under-utilized and the personhood of patients risks being ignored. Science is a human practice, founded in a broader conception of human reasoning, ontologically dependent on human beings living and engaging with the world in social, emotional and ethical contexts. After looking at different conceptions of epistemic hierarchies and their uses in the analysis and evaluation of reasoning in a range of practice contexts, we propose a “nested hierarchy” that effectively turns upside-down the flawed evidence hierarchies that have helped to depersonalise care. T.S. Eliot’s “wisdom, knowledge, information” scheme (to which we add “data” below “information”) provides a model for a person-centred epistemic hierarchy. This crucial, person-centred inversion represents levels of awareness that characterise more or less developed thinking and judgement on the part of the particular practitioner. (shrink)

In this work I propose a theory of evolution as a process of unfolding. This theory is based on four logically concatenated principles. The principle of evolutionary order establishes that the more complex cannot be generated from the simpler. The principle of origin establishes that there must be a maximum complexity that originates the others by logical deduction. Finally, the principle of unfolding and the principle of actualization guarantee the development of the evolutionary process from the simplest to the most (...) complex. These logical principles determine the existence of a virtual ideological matrix that contains the sequence of the preformed and folded morphogenetic fields. In this manner, the evolutionary process consists of the sequential unfolding and actualization of these fields, which is motorized by a process of teleologization carried out by the opening consciousness of the forms included in the fields of the ideological matrix. This theory leads to a radical change of perspective regarding the materialist worldview, and places life at the center of the evolutionary process as an activity carried out by a consciousness that seeks to fulfill a purpose by actualizing its own potentialities. (shrink)

Phronesis is a fundamental term in Ancient Greek Philosophical tradition. This term is based on »wise- ruler« in Plato and »legislator- philosopher« thought in Plato. Most of Philosophers and commentators of Aristotle work relate methodical use of this term to Aristotle. This affair is the result of the manner of these two philosopher’s expression. But their ambiguity shows phronesis less importance in Plato’s intellectual tradition.Phronesis in Plato is brightness that results from good perception. But in his last work, means Plato, (...) phronesis hasn’t only divine origin, but in the meaning of Grief and Political Knowledge, is the supplement of sophia that is the highest coordination between reason and desire in spirit. Phronesis in Plato is responsible for creating governmental- philosophical rules and practical judgment through experience and council. By this, phronesis owners can merge wisdom and politics and see better than others. So, sophia and phronesis aren’t synonyms in Plato, but their conceptual application are related to each other: as phronesis owner has practical wisdom- sophia in Aristotle thought. (shrink)

After decades of receiving a lot of attention on the epistemological level, the so-called ‘problem of intuitions’ is now in the center of debates on the metaphilosophical level. One of the reasons for this lies in the unfruitfulness of the epistemological discussions that recently subsided without producing any significant or broadly accepted theory of intuitions. Consequently, the metaphilosophical level of discussion of the ‘problem of intuitions’ inherits the same difficulties of the epistemological level. The significance of Max Deutsch’s book The (...) Myth of the Intuitive is his effort to resolve these problems in a clear and persuasive way. He is not only trying to debunk problems behind the vagueness of the ‘intuition-talk’ by drawing important distinctions that usually go under the radar in the contemporary literature, but also develops his own account of philosophical methodology. In this paper I will present some of his arguments against the traditional view of intuitional methodology, as well as his own solutions to the presented problems. Regardless of Deutsch’s insightful account of the ‘problem of intuitions’, I find that some difficulties in his own proposal are inherited from the unresolved issues of intuitions on the epistemological level. (shrink)

Sex robots are likely to play an important role in shaping public understandings of sex and of relations between the sexes in the future. This paper contributes to the larger project of understanding how they will do so by examining the ethics of the “rape” of robots. I argue that the design of realistic female robots that could explicitly refuse consent to sex in order to facilitate rape fantasy would be unethical because sex with robots in these circumstances is a (...) representation of the rape of a woman, which may increase the rate of rape, expresses disrespect for women, and demonstrates a significant character defect. Even when the intention is not to facilitate rape, the design of robots that can explicitly refuse consent is problematic due to the likelihood that some users will experiment with raping them. Designing robots that lack the capacity to explicitly refuse consent may be morally problematic depending on which of two accounts of the representational content of sex with realistic humanoid robots is correct. (shrink)

We share our world with many people who ignore the principles of justice and who regularly take advantage of others by breaching trust or breaking agreements. This dissertation is about the irrationality of the actions of these covenant-breakers. A covenant-breaker typically believes that unjust behavior is to his advantage and that only a fool would act in any other way. Would it not be disturbing if this were true? My central claim will be that adherence to the precepts of justice (...) is a rational strategy for a self-interested actor. I intend to demonstrate that con men and covenant-breakers do not act rationally when violating an agreement. I will trace the concept of justice as it evolves through philosophical history and show that, while the concept of justice changes as the underlying concept of human nature and psychology changes, the argument in favor of the rationality of just behavior remains coherent throughout. Each historical interpretation will advance some form of the claim that the consistent observance of cooperative agreements is a rational strategy, and at each point an interlocutor will object. I will show that these interlocutors are mistaken. My motivating goal is to show that justice, understood as the consistent observance of cooperative agreements, is rational. I want to respond to the clandestine cheaters and other skeptics who believe that just behavior is for suckers, because, if the skeptics are right, and justice is indeed irrational, then those among us who are acting in a just manner are paying an unnecessary cost. (shrink)

This paper subjects Dan Brown’s most recent novel Origin to a philosophical reading. Origin is regarded as a literary window into contemporary technoscience, inviting us to explore its transformative momentum and disruptive impact, focusing on the cultural significance of artificial intelligence and computer science: on the way in which established world-views are challenged by the incessant wave of scientific discoveries made possible by super-computation. While initially focusing on the tension between science and religion, the novel’s attention gradually shifts to the (...) increased dependence of human beings on smart technologies and artificial intelligence. Origin’s message, I will argue, reverberates with Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, which aims to outline a morphology of world civilizations. Although the novel starts with a series of oppositions, most notably between religion and science, the eventual tendency is towards convergence, synthesis and sublation, exemplified by Sagrada Família as a monumental symptom of this transition. Three instances of convergence will be highlighted, namely the convergence between science and religion, between humanity and technology and between the natural sciences and the humanities. (shrink)

The development of four-dimensional ultrasound pre-natal scans carries with it an intriguing range of philosophical questions. While ultrasound in pregnancy is a medical test for detecting foetal abnormalities, it has also become a social ritual in Western culture. The scan has become embedded within a discourse of the parent’s ante-relationships with their future child as much as it is a screening function. Within such a scene, the advance of technology – the move, for example, the increasing addition of dimensions to (...) pre-natal imaging, from 2D to 3D and 4D – is inextricably merged with the spatial rhetoric of the foetus. Drawing on both Heidegger’s insights into the relationship between the human and technology, and debates within feminist cultural theory, this paper explores how these spatial and temporal rhetorics of the foetal ultrasound relate to the philosophical motifs around self, knowledge, gender and the technical image. It charts these relationships through an analysis of two classic images of the foetal self, before considering how the fourth dimension of ultrasound – that of real-time image streaming of a foetal scan – enhances, develops and critiques these motifs. (shrink)

Eine der frühesten Schriften des jungen Karl Marx — die Dissertationsschrift „Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie“ — legt wichtige Fundamente für das gesamte Marx’sche Denken. In der Dissertationsschrift versucht Marx anhand des Vergleichs der antiken Naturphilosophien Demokrits und Epikurs grundlegende Erkenntnisse der theoretischen und praktischen Philosophie in einem komplexen, von Hegel inspirierten ontologischen System zu verbinden. Aus dieser kritischen Synthese antiker Naturphilosophien entsteht so eine auf Hegelschen Begriffen basierende, aber gleichzeitig reformierte Idee der Praxis. Auf diesen Grundlagen sowie mit (...) Hilfe des über die Kritik an Epikur und Hegel gewonnenen Begriffs der Entfremdung entwickelt Marx den dialektischen Materialismus der Naturphilosophie. Dem inhaltlichen Aufbau der Dissertationsschrift folgend wird in dem Aufsatz die Marx’sche Naturphilosophie diskutiert. Dabei werden die wichtigsten Begriffe des Marx‘schen Denkens, wie etwa Materialismus, Dialektik, Entfremdung oder Einheit von Theorie und Praxis in der Dissertationsschrift von Karl Marx ausgearbeitet. (shrink)

Enega izmed največjih izzivov sodobnega utopianizma predstavlja protislovje med pozitivno usmerjenostjo v prihodnost in njenimi negativnimi reprezentacijami. V nasprotju s prevladujočimi pristopi, ki so usmerjeni k širokim in vseobsegajočim opisom utopije na podlagi nekega koncepta, avtor pričujočega prispevka zagovarja prepričanje, da obstaja ustreznejši način dojemanja utopije in utopianizma, ki napreduje prek vrste dihotomij, nasprotij ali celo paradoksov. Od zgodnjih utopičnih strategij, katerim lahko sledimo več tisočletij v preteklost, do primerov iz dvajsetega in enaindvajsetega stoletja, je utopija vedno izražala nasprotujoče si (...) težnje, ki zahtevajo temeljitejšo obravnavo. Lahko si je namreč zamisliti, da v tej kontradiktorni naravi utopije leži ne samo ključ do razumevanja preteklosti in sedanjosti, temveč tudi prihodnosti. V tem kontekstu se kot najpomembnejša kaže razlika med »resnično« utopijo in »lažno« utopijo. Kljub temu, da se je v dvajsetem stoletju utopično upanje sprevrnilo v distopični strah, pot k drugačni in po možnosti boljši prihodnosti ponuja le »resnična«, ikonoklastična utopija, ki ohranja pri življenju bržkone najpomembnejši vidik človeške eksistence: upanje. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to introduce and examine the concept of the “spirit of luxury.” Accordingly, we commence by delineating the philosophical idea of luxury, emphasizing its discursive meaning, and contemplating its earliest historical and etymological origins. We continue through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by means of a discussion of the philosophical, political, and economic writings of David Hume, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, Émile Louis Victor Laveleye, and Werner Sombart. Employing Sombart’s sociological work on the spirit of (...) capitalism, we advance and elaborate on the notion of the spirit of luxury. Offering a “Sombartian” account of recent luxury research, specifically the core contributions to this special issue of Cultural Politics, we conclude by critically assessing the concepts of luxury, spirit, and capitalism. (shrink)

Many of us have experienced a peculiar feeling of freedom, of the world being open before us. This is the feeling that is captured by phrases like “the freedom of the open road” and “free spirits,” and, to quote Phillip Larkin, “free bloody birds” going “down the long slide / To happiness, endlessly.” This feeling is associated with the ideas that my life could go in many different directions and that there is a vast range of things that I could (...) become. It arises in concert with a wide range of human experiences, including experiences of artistic creation, play, fun, and resistance to authority. This freedom of openness and spontaneity, which I call spontaneous freedom, is central to our ordinary talk about freedom. Yet it is a phenomenon largely ignored in discussions of freedom in contemporary moral philosophy. This is because moral philosophers are primarily concerned to identify the sort of freedom that is a prerequisite for moral responsibility, and so focus on deliberate, voluntary action rooted in rational choice. When moral philosophers do discuss spontaneous freedom, it is often to disparage it as, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, the freedom of “the wanton” whose liberty is merely that of “anarchic impulsive behavior.” My dissertation develops a theory of spontaneous freedom and of the role it does and should play in our lives, including our moral and political lives. I argue that, to do full justice to the human aspiration for freedom, moral and political theory must recognize the value of spontaneity. Through a study of characters from stories and films by Virginia Woolf, Saki, Akira Kurosawa, and Aman Sethi, I develop a phenomenological account of the nature of spontaneous freedom. I argue that we experience spontaneous freedom when we experience our actions as arising out of ourselves but not fixed in advance either by the decisions of other agents or by our own preexisting commitments or plans. I further argue that spontaneous freedom is valuable because it allows for the distinctive pleasure of feeling that one’s life is unforetold and that one is among the sources of novelty in the world, a feeling that is central to artistic creativity. It also affords solace from the anxiety associated with the inevitability of death. As with many experiences, like falling in love or seeing an alpine lake, experiences of spontaneous freedom are most valuable when they are veridical. But even the subjective experience of spontaneous freedom, I suggest, activates our awareness of and openness to possibility. Achieving this awareness, at least on occasion, is valuable because it provides us with a sense of our own psychological potential and sharpens a skill that contributes to practical deliberation. My claim that spontaneous freedom is valuable conflicts with a popular account of the self. According to that account—endorsed by a number of moral philosophers but most famously associated with Christine Korsgaard—the ideal self is one that is well-ordered, actively constituted through rational deliberation. Such integrity theories of the self are attractive because they provide an account of agency according to which ideal moral agents invariably endorse their own actions and beliefs. Integrity theories view freedom as involving rational, deliberative control of one’s actions. But I argue that integrity theories forbid well-constituted moral agents to seek out experiences of spontaneous freedom: such agents must act in a manner that they antecedently and reflectively endorse, while spontaneous freedom requires acting in a manner not antecedently fixed by one’s own decisions. Insofar as spontaneous freedom is a kind of freedom that we do and should value, my account exerts pressure on this standard view of agency and the self. My account of spontaneous freedom also has important political implications. One version of liberal theory holds that the only sort of political freedom worth having is the freedom of each individual to effectively exercise choice compatibly with every other individual doing likewise. On this picture, I have all of the freedom that I could want if I am able to choose autonomously and act in accordance with my choices. But I argue that a community that secures this liberal variety of freedom does not yet provide its members with all the freedom for which people rightly yearn. When public and private institutions arrange our circumstances in ways that make the courses of our lives predictable, our own choices about how to act may be largely settled by the plans and decisions of other agents. This in turn makes it difficult for us to regard our futures as open in the way that is characteristic of experiences of spontaneous freedom. States should promote spontaneous freedom by providing the material and social preconditions for us to feel that our lives could head in radically different and unanticipated directions. (shrink)

This article considers two related and fundamental issues about morality in a virtual world. The first is whether the anonymity that is a feature of virtual worlds can shed light upon whether people are moral when they can act with impunity. The second issue is whether there are any moral obligations in a virtual world and if so what they might be. -/- Our reasons for being good are fundamental to understanding what it is that makes us moral or indeed (...) whether any of us truly are moral. Plato grapples with this problem in book two of The Republic where Socrates is challenged by his brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon. They argue that people are moral only because of the costs to them of being immoral; the external constraints of morality. -/- Glaucon asks us to imagine a magical ring that enables its wearers to become invisible and capable of acting anonymously. The ring is in some respects analogous to the possibilities created by online virtual worlds such as Second Life, so the dialogue is our entry point into considering morality within these worlds. These worlds are three dimensional user created environments where people control avatars and live virtual lives. As well as being an important social phenomenon, virtual worlds and what people chose to do in them can shed light on what people will do when they can act without fear of normal sanction. -/- This paper begins by explaining the traditional challenge to morality posed by Plato, relating this to conduct in virtual worlds. Then the paper will consider the following skeptical objection. A precondition of all moral requirements is the ability to act. There are no moral requirements in virtual worlds because they are virtual and it is impossible to act in a virtual world. Because avatars do not have real bodies and the persons controlling avatars are not truly embodied, it is impossible for people to truly act in a virtual world. We will show that it is possible to perform some actions and suggest a number of moral requirements that might plausibly be thought to result. Because avatars cannot feel physical pain or pleasure these moral requirements are interestingly different from those of real life. Hume’s arguments for why we should be moral apply to virtual worlds and we conclude by considering how this explains why morality exists in these environments. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the different understandings of “harmony”, which are rooted in ancient Greek and Chinese thought, can be recapitulated in the name of “dialectic harmony” and “ambiguous harmony” regarding the representation of the beautiful. The different understandings of the concept of harmony lead to at least two kinds of aesthetic value as well as ideality – harmony in conciliation and harmony in diversity. Through an explication of the original meaning and relation between the concept of harmony (...) and beauty, we can learn more about the cosmo-metaphysical origins in Western and Eastern aesthetics, with which we may gain insights for future aesthetics discourse. (shrink)

It is well-known in Western scholarship that Rousseau has been the forerunner of integral value-based pedagogies; in any case, his name stands as one of the main educationists of the West. However, the pedagogic reflections of two major philosophers of modern Europe, Kant and Hegel, have been largely overlooked, especially in the last decades. Dr. Ferrer shows in this paper that Kant and Hegel can also be regarded as forerunners of holistic value-based pedagogies. Their enlightening contributions to philosophy of education (...) and ethics, deeply complementary with Rousseau, can enrich the educational scenario of the Western world, dramatically impoverished by materialism, utilitarianism and technocracy. Before them, Plato already outlined a profound philosophy of education that can be regarded as integral and value-based; beyond contextual factors and the historical distance, Plato can still inspire Western education in a spiritual, ethical and humanistic horizon, just like Rousseau, Kant and Hegel. (shrink)

In this thesis, I discuss the aggregation problem for T. M. Scanlon’s “contractualism”. I argue that Scanlonian contractualists have the following two options when it comes to the aggregation problem. First, they can choose to limit aggregation directly via a specific version of the Relevance View, “Sequential Claims-Matching”. Second, Scanlonian contractualists can adopt a so-called “mixed solution” of which I propose a specific version. My mixed solution does not limit aggregation. Rather, it either avoids some of the counterintuitive results in (...) certain cases, or at least makes these same results look a lot less counterintuitive by putting them into perspective thanks to a plausible plurality of precisely specified values. The stakes between these two options are as follows. The first option justifies Scanlon’s intuition in one vs. many cases of which his “World Cup Case” is one example, but it comes at the cost of a seemingly quite limited range of application: any version of the Relevance View only works in cases in which we have no more than two groups of competing claimants. The second option has the exact opposite implications: my mixed solution cannot justify Scanlon’s intuition in one vs. many cases, but it could be applied to any case with any number of groups of competing claimants. In this choice between pre-theoretical intuition and feasibility, I would urge Scanlonian contractualists to choose feasibility. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the importance of wonder in human flourishing and is orientated towards the dynamics between the two, but with an emphasis on how the former is important for illuminating the latter. It begins with a preliminary sketch of both wonder and human flourishing and subsequently moves on to highlight three aspects of human flourishing: 1) ‘Individuality’, 2) ‘Relations’ and 3) ‘The political’, and why these play to wonderment.

This article takes a close look at the discussion of singularity in Jean-Luc Nancy’s Inoperative Community and Being Singular Plural with the aim to comment on subject-object dichotomy and create a new context for its relationship with resistance. The philosophy of singularity is critical of humanism and the individualist model of subjectivity it advocates. By placing a challenging scenario of antihumanism against the humanist sense of responsibility, the philosophy of singularity questions whether it is possible to do philosophy without saying (...) ‘I’. This antihumanist stance, which replaces the ‘I’/‘other’ differentiation with Nancy’s ‘the other of another,’ chooses to strengthen the link between ontology and resistance in the notion of coexistence; beyond traditional hypotheses on immanence and transcendence. To discuss the merits and limits of this coexistence, the article digs under the notion of individualistic subjectivity and proceeds to ground Nancy’s ‘ekstasis’ on the Freudian theory of drives. Against this theoretical background, the values of modesty and responsibility come to formulate an alternative moral consciousness, which no longer relies on the humanist jargon to work toward the common ground between 'I' and 'we'. (shrink)

While there is a prolific debate surrounding the issue of conscientious objection of individuals towards performing certain clinical acts, this debate ignores the fact that there are other reasons why clinicians might wish to object providing specific services. This paper briefly discusses the idea that healthcare workers might object to providing specific services because they are against their professional judgement, they want to maintain a specific reputation, or they have pragmatic reasons. Reputation here is not simply understood as being in (...) good standing with a professional body. Rather, reputation is treated in the sense that a craftsman might wish to be known for providing a specific type, quality, and style of service. Professionalism is understood as acting according to the philosophical and scientific principles that are the basis of healthcare (such as acting for the benefit of the patient’s health and following well- evidenced treatment pathways). (shrink)

There are alternative models, which are based on the evaluation of certain properties, based on physiology or evolutionary psychology. Classical philosophers have addressed emotions as responses to certain types of events that are related to a subject, causing bodily and behavioral changes. In the last century emotions were neglected, being considered a disturbing factor. Lately, emotions have returned to the attention of philosophers and psychologists, corroborating them with other disciplines such as psychology, neurology, evolutionary biology and even economics. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28869.06881 (...) . (shrink)

Prof. Miščević has long been an ardent defender of the use of thought experiments in philosophy, foremost metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. Recently he has, in his typically sophisticated manner, extended his general account of philosophical thought-experimenting to the domain of normative politics. Not only can the history of political philosophy be better understood and appreciated, according to Miščević, when seen as a more or less continuous, yet covert, practice of thought-experimenting, the very progress of the discipline may crucially (...) depend on finding the right balance between the constraints of (biological, psychological, economic, political, and so on) reality and political-moral ideals when we set to design our basic political notions and institutions. I have much less confidence in this project than prof. Miščević does. As a subspecies of moral TE, political TE share all their problems plus exhibit some of their own. In the paper, I present and discuss two types of evidence that threaten to undermine political philosophers’ trust in thought-experiments and the ethical/political intuitions elicited by them: (i) the dismal past record of thought-experimentation in moral and political philosophy; and (ii) the variety, prevalence, and stubbornness, of bias in ordinary social/political judgment. (shrink)

the Mona Lisa, the Mondscheinsonate, the Chanson d’automne are works of art, the salt shaker on your table, the car in your garage, or the pijamas on your bed are not. the basic question of the metaphysics of works of art is this: what makes a thing a work of art? that is: what sort of property do works of art have in virtue of which they are works of art? or more simply: what sort of property being a work (...) of art is? In this paper we argue that things are works of art in virtue of what they are like, their intrinsic features, that is, in virtue of the fact that they have the perceptual (auditory, visual, etc.) properties they have. In other words: being a work of art supervenes on perceptual-intrinsic features. Currently, this metaphysical view is extremely unpopular within the philosophy of art. It is unpopular because there allegedly exists a knock-down objection to it, the well-known argument from indiscernible counterparts. our thesis implies, among other things, that every perceptual duplicate of a work of art is also a work of art. according to the argument from indiscernible counterparts, however, there could be (or even: there are) indiscernible counterparts such that one of them is a work of art while the other is not. hence things cannot be works of art solely in virtue of what they are like. Our paper divides into three parts. In the first part we state our views. In the second part we defend it against various versions of the argument from indiscernible counterparts. (In doing so our position will become more plausible, we hope). In the final part we provide some meta-reflections on the matter. (shrink)

Legitimacy challenges are part of human societies. Whenever we recognise a person, law, ideal or institution as authoritative, questions can be raised about their legitimacy. Why follow this law? Why strive to honour this moral ideal? If such questions are repeatedly raised, they pose an undermining threat to the authorities in question. This is good if the challenged law or ideal is harmful, but problematic, if it is beneficial. Where the first kind of legitimacy challenges are raised by ethical pioneers (...) and moral critics, the last kind are posed by cynics, who disregard the demands of law and morality when they conflict with their interests. The threat to human society caused by cynicism is part of the reason why philosophers since Plato have sought to address and rid society of it.This article discusses how philosophy can deal with cynicism. It does so by firstly looking at how Anthony Holiday defends a moral realist theory and disproves ‘the theory of cynicism’ as well as tries to subvert real life cynics. Secondly, the work of the later Wittgenstein is used to discuss Holiday’s approach, finding it to some extent wanting in both its theoretical and practical aims.Lastly, inspired by Stanley Cavell’s thinking it is suggested that cynicism calls for not only problem solving and problem dissolving, but also something we might call reconciliation. (shrink)

Political and economic internationalization and globalization, the rise of sub-national self-governing regions and spheres, governance replacing government and many related processes change the role and context of the nation-state, the protector of mass democracy. The concept of representation, representation as ‘acting for,’ can help develop answers to the threat that this ‘loss of polity’ poses to equal and universal access to decision-making, i.e., the ideals behind mass democracy. Examining the reasons why the two most prominent conceptions of representation – substantive (...) and descriptive – would be valuable, I argue that we can only make an uncontroversial case for substantive representation. I show that currently popular cures for ‘loss of polity’ cannot be construed as new versions of or alternatives for mass democracy. Finally, I discuss two ideal-types of more reasonable interpretations of the ideals behind mass democracy. (shrink)

This paper uses an extended discussion of Nietzsche’s essay “The Greek State” to uncover the political aspects of his early thinking. The paper builds on a similar discussion of another essay from the same period, “Homer on Competition,” in arguing that Nietzsche’s thinking is based on a confrontation with the work of Plato. It is argued that the key to understanding “The Greek State” is seeing it, in its entirety, as an enigmatic interpretation and re-writing of Plato’s Republic. Nietzsche interprets (...) the Republic as Plato’s accomplishment of the task of the genuine philosopher: the legislation of values and the moulding of human character. (shrink)

The paper is a close reading of Nietzsche's early essay, "Homer on Competition". It explores the understanding of nature as strife presented in that essay, how this strife channels itself into cultural or state forms, and how these forms cultivate the creative individual or genius. The article concludes by asserting that Nietzsche's central point in "Homer on Competition" concerns the contest across the ages that is fought by these geniuses. For Nietzsche, therefore, competition has a political significance — the forging (...) of the unity and identity of a particular community — and a transpolitical significance — the forging of a "republic of geniuses" on the part of artists and philosophers across the expanse of the tradition. (shrink)

Michelle’s thesis explores the extent to which a researcher could contribute to change by engaging leaders in conversations that might intensify commitment to or the direction of their actions around socio-environmental decline in Bermuda as a country historically organised in the tradition of an entrepreneurial for-profit enterprise. The framing of a space to reflect on highlighted the significance of time that led to the bricolage design of a heuristic device called a moon gate. Time, the keystone of the moon gate, (...) created a prism lighting up the twists and turns of kaleidoscopic images of the chaos of the markets and the creative diversity of human and nonhuman participants. She undertook a philosophical approach with her study of the contested space of time around sensitivity to maintaining a fulcrum point based on the wellbeing of people and planet. (shrink)

The thought that children should be given greater opportunity to participate meaningfully in affairs which concern them and to show their capacity for reasonable measured thoughts and choices has been displayed by many others (COHEN, 1980; FARSON, 1974; KENNEDY, 1992). It has also been suggested than in order to ensure that we are fair to all individuals, regardless of their age, that our primary consideration should be the capacity for decision making and agency. However, whether or not children are indeed (...) capable of this kind of decision-making and developed agency is greatly contested (most notably perhaps by Plato and Aristotle), and so too are the reasons for this. In what follows then, I will examine the ways in which children may be encouraged to gain this kind of agency, and what our role in facilitating this may be. Moreover, I will show that while difficult, it is possible to approach ‘teaching’ young people to become autonomous agents in ways that do not interfere with their agency, either presently or in a future-oriented sense. Establishing this is essential as in order to make authentic choices, and allow for holding individuals responsible for their choices, they must be a result of the deliberation of their own choices, and not some other influence, be that external or internal. Finally, in relation to educative aims as a whole, I will follow Seneca’s statement above: that education should go beyond inculcating only learning and practises that are of immediate use to the institutions in which they are learned. (shrink)