David Denz; Bioethics and the Literature of Pluralism, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 7, Issue 3, 1 January 2001, Pages.

Early modern theorists linked the idea of sovereign power to a conception of absolute power developed during the medieval period. Ockham had reframed the already extant distinction between God's absolute and ordained powers in order to argue that God was free of moral constraint in ordaining natural law for human beings. Thus, the natural law could command the opposite of what God had ordained if He wished to make it so. Bodin extended Ockham's argument to earthly sovereigns, who do not (...) (he argued) have to obey civil law. However, Bodin undermined his absolutism by maintaining that civil law has to be consistent with natural and divine law. Hobbes more consistently argued that while mortal sovereigns are accountable to God, the power of sovereigns to command is not subject to moral constraints. Underlying Ockham's view of God's sovereignty, and Bodin's and Hobbes's view of earthly sovereigns, is a notion of the will's unconstrained power. But this notion is self-referentially incoherent. This incoherence, in turn, infects the very notion of sovereignty. (shrink)

Ralph Waldo Emerson is often seen as the early American prophet of autonomy. This essay suggests a perhaps surprising fellow traveler in this prophetic call: Joseph Smith. Smith opposed religious creeds for the same reason that Emerson denounced them, namely that creeds represent a threat to the autonomy of a person's beliefs. Smith and Emerson also forward similar defenses of individual autonomy in action. Furthermore, they encounter a shared problem: how can autonomy be possible in a society where other individuals (...) hold some kind of authority? I propose that each thinker resolves this tension through an insight with a Kantian echo. A suitably qualified version of authority can sometimes count as an expression of, rather than hindrance to, autonomy. I describe the overlap in Emerson and Smith as a “frontier” version of Kantianism. They favor determining one's own beliefs and actions in a way that looks forward to an open future of possibility. (shrink)

Although bioethics is a lively and expanding interdisciplinary field, there is not enough research about the patient‐doctor relationship, a central issue in philosophy of medicine. This article surveys the state of the field, paying attention to recent work by Alfred Tauber, and supplementing it with insights from Hans Jonas's philosophy of technology in order to propose a principle of responsible autonomy for health care. Based on a comparative look across different sub‐fields in bioethics, the resulting model claims that physician responsibility (...) is essential to professional integrity, providing an alternative to other active trends emphasizing patient autonomy, such as Robert Veatch's contractual model. (shrink)

The idea that humans should abandon their individuality and use technology to bind themselves together into hivemind societies seems both farfetched and frightening – something that is redolent of the worst dystopias from science fiction. In this article, we argue that these common reactions to the ideal of a hivemind society are mistaken. The idea that humans could form hiveminds is sufficiently plausible for its axiological consequences to be taken seriously. Furthermore, far from being a dystopian nightmare, the hivemind society (...) could be desirable and could enable a form of sentient flourishing. Consequently, we should not be so quick to deny it. We provide two arguments in support of this claim – the axiological openness argument and the desirability argument – and then defend it against three major objections. (shrink)

This article presents a case that former President of the United States Donald Trump was a tyrant-like leader in the mold of the tyrant in Plato’s Republic. While he does not perfectly embody the tyrant as presented in the Republic, he captures its core feature. Like the tyrant, Trump is driven by unregulated desires that reflect what Plato describes as an extreme freedom that underlies and threatens democratic regimes. Extreme freedom is manifested in Trump’s disregard for social and legal norms, (...) which mirrors the lawlessness of the tyrant. The people, in turn, interpret that posture as a mark of authenticity. Understanding Trump’s appeal in the United States helps alert friends of democracy to the possible rise of tyrant-like figures. In closing, and as a way of remedying the harm done by the tyrannical soul, the article recommends that society help temper tyrant-like passions in the people through a rededication to civic equality. (shrink)

Someone once told me that the average number of readers of a philosophy article is about six. That is a particularly depressing thought when one takes into account the huge influence of certain articles. When I think of, say, Gettier's article on knowledge, or Quine's ‘Two Dogmas’, I begin to wonder whether anyone is ever likely to read anything I write. Usually the arguments of these very influential articles have been subjected to widespread analysis and interpretation. The case of Elizabeth (...) Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, published in 1958, is something of an exception. That article has played a significant part in the development of so-called ‘virtue ethics’, which has burgeoned over the last three decades in particular. But there has been less close attention to its arguments than one might have expected. (shrink)

As a Catholic nun, to suggest Jacqueline Pascal as autonomous might at first glance seem contradictory. We show that her moral deference to the divine is not at all forfeiting her autonomy, but that aligning her own law with God's law is to align her own law with rationality itself, that is, the laws of nature. Her theoretical structure begins with a theory of virtue—viz., how and to whom we have an obligation to be moral. For her, acting in accordance (...) with cultural restrictions or following church orders against her own conscience would be living by the laws of another and so not acting autonomously. Pascal would not live by other's laws, regardless of whether her actions conform to the categories by which society expected her to act. The framework for her laws laid in Pascal's understanding of self-governance: if she wants to act virtuously then she must autonomously follow God's law by making it her own through the sentiments of her heart. Thus, she cannot live by the laws of men, but by the laws of her human nature and in alignment with a rightly ordered universe, that is, God's law, which we show parallels with a Stoic framework of autonomy. (shrink)

Research to improve the health of pregnant and fetal patients presents ethical challenges to clinical investigators, institutional review boards, funding agencies, and data safety and monitoring boards. The Common Rule sets out requirements that such research must satisfy but no ethical framework to guide their application. We provide such an ethical framework, based on the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient. We offer criteria for innovation and for Phase I and II and then for Phase III clinical trials (...) to improve the health of pregnant patients and of fetal patients and also criteria to responsibly manage the transition from investigation to clinical practice. Basing ethical criteria for research involving pregnant women on the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient insulates the proposed ethical framework and therefore research on pregnant women from the divisive and politicized concepts and discourses of personhood, fetal rights, and unborn child. (shrink)

In virtue of what is something a reason for action? That is, what makes a consideration a reason to act? This is a metaphysical or meta-normative question about the grounding of reasons for action. The answer to the grounding question has been traditionally given in ‘pure’, univocal terms. This paper argues that there is good reason to understand the ground of practical normativity as a hybrid of traditional ‘pure’ views. The paper 1) surveys the three leading ‘pure’ answers to the (...) question of a normative ground, 2) examines one or two of the most difficult problems for each, proposing along the way a new objection to one, and 3) argues that a particular hybrid view about normative grounds –‘hybrid voluntarism’ – avoids each of the main problems faced by the three leading ‘pure’ views. (shrink)

The beatific vision plays a prominent role in the history of Christian ethics. Reformed ethics has an ambiguous relationship to this history, on two counts. First, it offers some qualified critiques of the role of vision in ordering ethical understanding, and second, on some accounts, Reformed ethics shares some responsibility for the loss of transcendence in the modern world, and the narrowing of the ethical field that has resulted from this loss. This essay argues that the vision of God in (...) John Calvin’s understanding of the Christian life offers resources to defend a Reformed ethics from some recent detractors. Further, it provides a constructive contrast with the role of eschatology in a prominent strand of 20th century ethics. This argument is sustained through a close reading of Calvin’s biblical commentaries on the role of theophanies and the promise of the vision of God, and of Book III, chapters 6-10 of the Institutes. (shrink)

This article explores the tensions between autonomy and expectations of mother-caregivers, in the context of normative trends in post-separation parenting law. Going back to first principles of feminism, the article asks what scope for autonomy there is for modern mothers in the face of socio-legal norms that prioritise shared parenting. The very relationship between mother-caregivers and children illustrates the important connection between relationships and autonomy: the caregiving that mothers provide enables children to become autonomous persons yet, at the same time, (...) this caregiving relationship constrains maternal autonomy. In the current context that encourages shared parenting, the potential for maternal autonomy may be even more compromised—a deep irony in a supposedly post-feminist era. A responsible mother is now expected to nurture a child’s relationship with the father, unless he is proven to be harmful. The ability of women to be at all autonomous from the fathers of their children in the face of this normative expectation is dubious, even when the adults live separately. Moreover, the dominance of the heterosexual and patriarchal family—always a challenge for women’s autonomy—is reproduced in this imposition of equal parenting in the name of children’s rights. This article uses a contextual approach to relational autonomy to point to an approach that might challenge the normative climate of shared parenting. (shrink)

This paper takes a new look at Francis Hutcheson's moral sense theory and examines it in light of the views of his rationalist critics and opponents who claim that there has to be an antecedent moral standard prior to any sense or affections. I examine how Gilbert Burnet, Samuel Clarke, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn each argue for the priority of reason over a moral sense and how Hutcheson responds or could respond to their views. Furthermore, I consider the proposal that (...) rather than regarding Hutcheson's moral sense theory as fundamentally opposed to moral rationalism, Hutcheson and Clarke endorse a shared moral metaphysics, as argued by Patricia Sheridan. Although I consider this proposal as too broad and believe it overlooks relevant metaphysical differences between Clarke and Hutcheson, I argue that the dispute between Hutcheson and his critics and opponents will not be settled without taking their underlying moral metaphysics into consideration. (shrink)

We offer a reconstruction of Richard Price’s intuition-based epistemology of normative essences, highlighting its key elements and showing how it differs from the approaches taken by other intuitionists such as Thomas Reid and G. E. Moore, as well as sentimentalists such as Francis Hutcheson and David Hume. While our analysis aims to shed light on Price’s moral epistemology, it also seeks to contribute to contemporary debates about the epistemology of essence, advancing a general intuition-based theory. These two goals are related, (...) for the former operates in the service of the latter. In this way, our discussion illustrates the role that historical research might play in contemporary inquiries into intuition. (shrink)

In his later lectures, Foucault analyzes confession as a key exercise of the Christian pastoral power. The pastoral power’s creation of a lifelong obligation to speak the truth of oneself is a ‘prelude’ to modern practices of government, and a key facet of modernity. There has been some confusion regarding the scope of Foucault’s study. Is it medieval Christian confessional practices or Christian obedience itself that is his theme? In this article, I revisit all of the later lectures touching on (...) confession and avowal in order to clarify Foucault’s ambivalence about Christian proto-governmentality. Foucault exposes two regimes of truth, belief and confession, and offer a practice-based, confession-centred history of the pre-modern self. Connecting his lectures to his method of anarchaeology clarifies how the force of truth (the ‘you have to’) is, for Foucault, a fundamental if ambivalent historical-cultural problem of government. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to the analysis of Kant’s approach to the ideas of universality and autonomy as the constitutive features of morality. The paper shows that Kant’s findings concerning these ideas were anticipated by the previous history of moral philosophy, mainly by the modern moral philosophers, who focused specifically on the elaboration of the philosophical concept of morality. Kant’s peculiar role was that, firstly, he conceptualized the ideas of universality and autonomy and formulated corresponding principles; secondly, Kant integrated both (...) principles into the concept of moral law and revealed the way by which the formula of universality and the formula of autonomy together with formula of humanity constitute the supreme principle of morality and essentially express the sense of morality itself. Kant believed that the reason for the failure of the previous attempts to explicate the supreme principle of morality was inability to understand that the moral agent is subject not only to universal but at the same time his own legislation. Thirdly, Kant, unlike his predecessors, in his examination of universality didn’t appeal to the human nature or nature of things. Fourthly, he underlined that the principle of universality and the principle of autonomy were not only interconnected but also shaped each other: the determination of will may be identified as a universal principle only if it is given through a moral agent’s rational will. And a moral agent may be identified as autonomous only if in his decisions and actions he is guided by principles that are universalizable. (shrink)

Despite their contemporaneity and obvious similarities, Richard Price and Immanuel Kant are rarely discussed together. This essay examines the common background of their work, similarities in their methodology and principles, and their common concern with connecting rationalist philosophical systems with knowledge at the level of ordinary life and politics – all this despite their lack of reference to each other. Their normative principles are assessed in connection with major documents and political events in their revolutionary era. A concluding section evaluates (...) their work in relation to contemporary discussions that concern the relationship between pre-reflective and reflective levels of moral knowledge. The essay draws on the work of contemporary scholars such as Danielle Allen, David Brink, Robert Audi, Sarah McGrath, and Thomas Kelly. (shrink)

The article addresses issues at the nexus of physician industrial action, moral agency, and responsibility. There are situations in which we find ourselves best placed to offer aid to those who may be in vulnerable positions, a behavior that is consistent with our everyday moral intuitions. In both our interpersonal relationships and social life, we make frequent judgments about whether to praise or blame someone for their actions when we determine that they should have acted to help a vulnerable person. (...) While the average person is unlikely to confront these kinds of situations often, those in the medical professions, physicians especially, may confront these and similar situations regularly. Therefore, when physicians withhold their services for whatever reason in support of industrial action, it raises issues of moral responsibility to patients who may be in a vulnerable position. Using theories of moral responsibility, vulnerability, and ethics, this paper explores the moral implications of physician industrial action. We explore issues of vulnerability of patients, as well as the moral responsibility and moral agency of doctors to patients. Determining when a person is vulnerable, and when an individual becomes a moral agent, worthy of praise or blame for an act or non-action, is at the core of the framework. Notwithstanding the right of physicians to act in their self-interest, we argue that vulnerability leads to moral obligations, that physicians are moral agents, and the imperatives of their obligations to patients clear, even if limited by certain conditions. We suggest that both doctors and governments have a collective responsibility to prevent harm to patients and present the theoretical and practical implications of the paper. (shrink)

This chapter examines the views of seventeenth-century British philosophers on passions and affections. It explains that about 8,000 books published during this period mentioned passion and that it started with Thomas Wright's Passions of the Mind in General. The chapter also explores the intellectual basis of the writers who wrote about passion – which includes Augustinianism, Aristotelianism, stoicism, Epicureanism, and medicine – and furthermore, analyzes the relevant works of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Henry More, and Lord Shaftesbury.

In this paper I argue that Leibniz's ethics is a kind of virtue ethics where virtues of the agent are explanatorily primary. I first examine how Leibniz obtained his conception of justice as a kind of love in an early text, Elements of Natural Law. I show that in this text Leibniz's goal was to find a satisfactory definition of justice that could reconcile egoism with altruism, and that this was achieved through the Aristotelian virtue of friendship where friends treat (...) each other as “other selves.” Following this decisive moment, Leibniz adopted an Aristotle‐inspired ethical framework where the virtuous agent is central for moral evaluations. I then show that, despite certain developments, Leibniz's ethics retained this essential feature throughout his career. In Leibniz's later writings, God constitutes the foundation of the moral realm, and the fundamental moral endeavor of human beings consists in the imitation of God. (shrink)

Demokratien geraten zunehmend unter Druck. Dabei wird die Bedeutung von Demokratie selbst zum Gegenstand der Auseinandersetzung. Diese Auseinandersetzungen nimmt der vorliegende Band zum Anlass, die Bedeutung von Demokratie grundsätzlich zu untersuchen. Mit dem Begriff der Konstituenzien sind dabei jene wesentlichen Bedingungen gemeint, die Demokratie ausmachen. Die meisten dieser Bedingungen sind normativ. Was Demokratie ist, wird auch und gerade dadurch bestimmt, was Demokratie sein sollte. Damit geht es um jene Normen, deren Verwirklichung politische Praktiken zu demokratischen Praktiken macht. Sind diese Normen (...) nur eingeschränkt verwirklicht, mindert sich der demokratische Gehalt von Politik. Inwieweit ist dann nun aber eigentlich der Fall? Und was können wir dagegen tun? Antworten auf diese Fragen geben einschlägige Vertreterinnen und Vertreter aus Philosophie, Politik- und Rechtswissenschaft. (shrink)

Advice is interesting because it is a relationship that is built upon two asymmetries. Advice concerns what the advisee ought to do. For that reason, considerations of autonomy suggest that the advisee has a greater claim on what matters in deliberation. However, the advisor is wiser than the advisee. That suggests that the advisor has a greater insight into what matters in deliberation. These are the asymmetry of autonomy and the asymmetry of wisdom. To account for both, I argue for (...) informed subjectivism. Informed subjectivism is the view that the quality of advice is determined by the likelihood that the advisee would consistently prefer acting on the advice to not acting the advice. The theory captures the asymmetry of autonomy by making the quality of advice based on the advisee’s judgment. It captures the asymmetry of wisdom by making the relevant judgments of the advisee be ones that are informed by experience. (shrink)

In Understanding Moral Obligation (2012), Robert Stern sets out to provide a fresh interpretation of the role of autonomy in Kant’s moral philosophy and attempts to rectify J. B. Schneewind’s standard account in The Invention of Autonomy (1998). While Stern agrees that Kant’s resort to autonomy is at the basis of a constructivist account of moral obligation, he claims that autonomy plays no role in Kant’s theory of value, such that, in this respect, Kant remains a realist. Accordingly, Stern characterizes (...) Kant’s moral philosophy as a “hybrid” view because he sees it as involving a compromise between realism with regard to value and constructivism with regard to obligation. Stern’s interpretation relies on a sharp distinction between value and obligation. The purpose of the present article is to question his reliance on that rigid distinction, which involves intermixing theoretical and practical reason and assumes a distorted view of human agency. (shrink)

Ordinary thinking about morality and rationality is inconsistent. To arrive at a view of morality that is as faithful to common thought as consistency will allow we must admit that it is not always irrational to knowingly act against the weight of reasons.

Despite the differences, there is some convergence between Adam Smith's and Immanuel Kant's theories of moral motivation. Both rely on a peculiar feeling, respect, as the proper source of motive in moral matters. An analysis of Smith's and Kant's conception of respect shows that both recognize that it has a specific normative import and plays a decisive role in morality. This convergence offers some support to the idea that Smith's sentimentalism and Kant's rationalism are compatible, at least as far as (...) moral motivation is at issue. (shrink)

Freud (and later commentators) have failed to explain how the origins of psychoanalytical theory began with a positivist investment without recognizing a dual epistemological commitment: simply, Freud engaged positivism because he believed it generally equated with empiricism, which he valued, and he rejected ‘philosophy’, and, more specifically, Kantianism, because of the associated transcendental qualities of its epistemology. But this simple dismissal belies a deep investment in Kant’s formulation of human reason, in which rationality escapes natural cause and thereby bestows humans (...) with cognitive and moral autonomy. Freud also segregated human rationality: he divided the mind between (1) an unconscious grounded in the biological and thus subject to its own laws, and (2) a faculty of autonomous reason, lodged in consciousness and free of natural forces to become the repository of interpretation and free will. Psychoanalysis thus rests upon a basic Kantian construction, whereby reason, through the aid of analytic techniques, provides a detached scrutiny of the natural world, i.e. the unconscious mental domain. Further, sovereign reason becomes the instrument of self-knowing in the pursuit of human perfection. Herein lies the philosophical foundation of psychoanalytic theory, a beguiling paradox in which natural cause and autonomous reason — determinism and freedom — are conjoined despite their apparent logical exclusion. (shrink)

Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679- 1749) fu poetessa, drammaturga e filosofa. La vivacità intellettuale e la forte determinazione le permisero di aggirare il pregiudizio di genere e di sottrarsi alle dinamiche di marginalizzazione femminile tipiche dell’età moderna. Pur celandosi dietro l’anonimato, Cockburn prese parte attiva al dibattito filosofico del tempo, intervenendo soprattutto in materia di morale. Le sue opere filosofiche, scritte in difesa di Locke o di Clarke, custodiscono, nonostante il dichiarato intento apologetico, tratti di originalità e indipendenza, particolarmente evidenti nella (...) teoria dell’obbligo morale, nell’interpretazione modale della dottrina lockeana d’identità personale, nell’ipotesi di una natura ontologica dello spazio. (shrink)

This essay seeks to contribute to current debates about value in Kant's ethics. Its main objective is to dislodge the widely shared intuition that his view of autonomy requires constructivism or some other alternative to moral realism. I argue the following. Kant seems to think that the value of persons is due to their very nature, not to what anyone decides is the case (however rational or pure those decisions may be). He also seems to think that when we treat (...) persons as ends in themselves we are responding appropriately to the fact that their very nature elevates them above all other concerns. Neither of these beliefs is incompatible with his view of autonomy. So it is a mistake to think that Kant's ethics requires constructivism or any other form of anti-realism. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Kant has a far more communitarian theory of aesthetic life than is usually acknowledged. I focus on two aspects of Kant’s theory that might otherwise be taken to support an individualist reading, namely, Kant’s emphasis on aesthetic autonomy and his characterization of judgments of taste as involving demands for agreement. I argue that the full expression of autonomy in fact requires being a member of an aesthetic community and that within such a community, judgments (...) of taste are issued as invitations to others to engage their faculties towards the goal of shared aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

The consensus is that in his 1755 Nova Dilucidatio, Kant endorsed broadly Leibnizian compatibilism, then switched to a strongly incompatibilist position in the early 1760s. I argue for an alternative, incompatibilist reading of the Nova Dilucidatio. On this reading, actions are partly grounded in indeterministic acts of volition, and partly in prior conative or cognitive motivations. Actions resulting from volitions are determined by volitions, but volitions themselves are not fully determined. This move, which was standard in medieval treatments of free (...) choice, explains why Kant is so critical of Crusius’s version of libertarian freedom: Kant understands Crusius as making actions entirely random. In defense of this reading, I offer a new analysis of the version of the principle of sufficient reason that appears in the Nova Dilucidatio. This principle can be read as merely guaranteeing grounds for the existence of things or substances, rather than efficient causes for states and events. As such, the principle need not exclude libertarian freedom. Along the way, I seek to illuminate obscure aspects of Kant’s 1755 views on moral psychology, action theory, and the threat of theological determinism. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus that Emilie Du Châtelet’s challenging essay “On Freedom” defends compatibilism. I offer an alternative, libertarian reading of the essay. I lay out the prima facie textual evidence for such a reading. I also explain how apparently compatibilist remarks in “On Freedom” can be read as aspects of a sophisticated type of libertarianism that rejects blind or arbitrary choice. To this end, I consider the historical context of Du Châtelet’s essay, and especially the dialectic between various (...) strands of eighteenth-century libertarianism and compatibilism. (shrink)

Kant claims that love ‘is a matter of feeling,’ which has led many of his interpreters to argue that he conceives of love as solely a matter of feeling, that is, as a purely pathological state. In this paper I challenge this reading by taking another one of Kant’s claims seriously, namely that all love is either benevolence or complacence and that both are rational. I place Kant’s distinction between benevolence and complacence next to the historical inspiration for it, namely (...) Francis Hutcheson’s very similar distinction, in order to argue that love is rational, for Kant, in that it requires certain rational capacities on the part of the agent. I conclude by illustrating that this has important implications for how we understand Kant’s conception of love more generally. (shrink)

Libertarians often rely on arguments that subordinate the principle of liberty to the value of its economic consequences. This invites the question of what a pure libertarian theory of justice—one that takes liberty as its overriding concern—would look like. Grotius's political theory provides a template for such a libertarianism, but it also entails uncomfortable commitments that can be avoided only by compromising the principle of liberty. According to Grotius, each person should be free to decide how to act as long (...) as her actions do not violate the equal liberty of others. According to this principle, however, people are free to enter any contract and alienate any rights, permitting even contracts of slavery or the alienation of rights of bodily integrity. Libertarians can escape this commitment to absolute freedom of contract only by adopting ad-hoc amendments to the principle of liberty. (shrink)

Die Debatte um die Differenz von „Verantwortung“ und „Pflicht“ ist kein bloßer Streit um Wörter, geht es doch um Begriffe, für die der Anspruch erhoben wird, sie seien konstitutiv für moralische Normativität oder gar für Normativität per se. Doch welchen Unterschied macht es, die besondere Bindungskraft von Normativität über Verantwortung oder über Pflicht zu explizieren? Die Genealogie der philosophischen Reflexionen auf Verantwortung lokalisiert die Differenz zwischen Pflicht und Verantwortung in den jeweiligen Selbstverhältnissen, die mit diesen Begriffen verbunden werden. Die Analyse (...) der Struktur dieser Selbstverhältnisse erklärt sowohl, warum Verantwortung häufig als moderner Ersatzbegriff für Pflicht gedacht wird, als auch, welchen Unterschied die Explikation der Bindungskraft von Normativität über Verantwortung oder Pflicht macht: Je nachdem, mit welchem Begriff normative Kraft erläutert wird, wandert das entsprechende Selbstverhältnis in die Verfasstheit von Normativität ein. (shrink)

The articles in the symposium “Teaching Early Modern Philosophy: New Approaches” provide theoretical reflections and practical advice on new ways of teaching undergraduate survey courses in early modern philosophy. This introduction lays out the rationale for the symposium and summarizes the articles that compose it.

Constitutions enshrine the fundamental values of a people and they build a framework for a state’s public policy. With regard to generational change, their endurance gives rise to two interlinked concerns: the sovereignty concern and the forgone welfare concern. If constitutions are intergenerational contracts, how (in)flexible should they be? This article discusses perpetual constitutions, sunset constitutions, constitutional reform commissions and constitutional conventions, both historically and analytically. It arrives at the conclusion that very rigid constitutions are incompatible with the principle of (...) intergenerational justice. Recurring constitutional reform commissions in fixed time intervals would give each generation of citizens a say without leaning too much to the side of flexibility. (shrink)

In the 17th century, ‘reflexivity’ was coined as a new term for introspection and self-awareness. It thus was poised to serve the instrumental function of combating skepticism by asserting a knowing self. In this Cartesian paradigm, introspection ends in an entity of self-identity. An alternate interpretation recognized how an infinite regress of reflexivity would render ‘the self’ elusive, if not unknowable. Reflexivity in this latter mode was rediscovered by post-Kantian philosophers, most notably Hegel, who defined the self in its self-reflective (...) encounter with an other, and whose full articulation would occur at the final culmination of Reason's evolution. In the rising tide of 19th-century individualism, Emerson and Kierkegaard formulated constructions both in debt to, and in opposition against, Hegelian metaphysics. For each, although employing distinct strategies of self-consciousness, ‘the self’ reached its apogee through divine encounter. Characterized by personal responsibility and individual choice, their philosophies would later be subsumed by secular existentialists committed to defining moral individualism and asserting the possibilities for human freedom and selfauthentication. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

There is a consensus that Kant's aim in the Groundwork is to clarify, systematize and vindicate the common conception of morality. Philosophical theory hence serves a restorative function. It can strengthen agents' motivation, protect against self-deception and correct misunderstandings produced by uncritical moral theory. In this paper, I argue that Kant also corrects the common perspective and that Kant's Groundwork shows in which senses the common perspective, even considered apart from its propensity to self-deception and without being influenced by misleading (...) theory, is deficient. Critical practical philosophy needs to set right agents about the stringency of some of their duties, and agents need to be made aware that they have certain other duties. I discuss how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of the stringency of the duty to not make false promises and how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of duties to self. I finally discuss how his critical practical philosophy can become popular and achieve the correction of the common perspective. I stress the role of education informed by philosophical theory for this and contrast it with so called ‘popular philosophy’. (shrink)

This essay is about the relationship between the moral and political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the related concepts of autonomy, social science and industrialism. Its aim is to show why these three concepts throw more light both on Rousseau's theory of the relationship between democratic sovereignty and representative government, and on his explanation of the sharply counterintuitive historical trajectory followed by democracy in its passage from ancient to modern times.

This paper shows how moral concepts are definable in terms of reasons for the blame sentiment. It then shows how, given that definition, the categoricity of moral obligation follows from some plausible principles about reasons for blame. The nature of moral agency is further considered in this light. In particular, in what sense is it self-governing agency? Self-governing actors must be at least self-determining: that is, they must be able to think about what reasons they have, in order in order (...) to assess what they have sufficient reason to believe, feel, or do. Thus any moral assessment implies that the person assessed is capable of self-governance in that sense. Furthermore, this notion of self-governance implies that an agent's moral obligations are relative to the agent's warranted beliefs. However it does not entail that moral agents must be autonomous, in the strong sense intended by Kant. Some consequences for modern conceptions of morality are considered. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:I reflect critically on the early modern philosophical canon in light of the entrenchment and homogeneity of the lineup of seven core figures: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. After distinguishing three elements of a philosophical canon—a causal story, a set of core philosophical questions, and a set of distinctively philosophical works—I argue that recent efforts contextualizing the history of philosophy within the history of science subtly shift the central philosophical questions and allow for a greater range of (...) figures to be philosophically central. However, the history of science is but one context in which to situate philosophical works. Looking at the historical context of seventeenth-century philosophy of mind, one that weaves together questions of consciousness, rationality, and education, does more than shift the central questions—it brings new ones to light. It also shows that a range of genres can be properly philosophical and seamlessly diversifies the central philosophers of the period. (shrink)

In this paper, I give a reconstruction of the so‐called Reinhold–Sidgwick objection and show that Korsgaard‐style Kantian constructivists are committed to two key premises of the underlying argument. According to the Reinhold–Sidgwick objection, the Kantian conception of autonomy entails the absurd conclusion that no one is ever morally responsible for a morally wrong action. My reconstruction of the underlying argument reveals that the objection depends on a third premise, which says that freedom is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. After (...) mapping the common replies to the objection, I demonstrate that none of these replies is available to Kantian constructivists. But they need not be committed to the absurd conclusion that no one is ever morally blameworthy. Kantian constructivists who want to resist the Reinhold–Sidgwick objection are well advised to subject the third premise of the underlying argument to critical scrutiny. (shrink)

Moral theories usually aspire to be explanatory – to tell us why something is wrong, why it is good, or why you ought to do it. So it is worth knowing how moral explanations differ, if they do, from explanations of other things. This paper uncovers a common unarticulated theory about how normative explanations must work – that they must follow what I call the Standard Model. Though the Standard Model Theory has many implications, in this paper I focus primarily (...) on only one. It plays a crucial role in an argument originally due to Cudworth that has been widely held to conclusively establish that voluntaristic ethical theories are incoherent. But if Cudworth’s argument works, then so would similar arguments against many other moral theories. All of these theories therefore need a different model for how normative explanations can work. So I also motivate and sketch one such alternative model. The result enables us to make progress in evaluating the prospects for a successful reductive view about the normative. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel Hegelian view of the relationship between aesthetics and democratic politics. My account avoids the drawbacks associated with approaches that reconceive all of the political in aesthetic terms or reduce the aesthetic to art. Instead, I maintain that the aesthetic is best understood as a distinct relationship of individual freedom. My argument proceeds by highlighting shortcomings of Honneth’s account of democratic Sittlichkeit and then addressing these impasses by integrating aesthetic freedom into the picture. The first two (...) steps of my argument concern the fact that the form of life outlined by Honneth aspires to be a form of free life, yet his account of democratic Sittlichkeit gives rise to two dimensions of unfreedom. The first problem of unfreedom pertains to the scope of freedom. The relationships of freedom incorporated into Honneth’s account fail to turn given social roles into the subject matter of a sufficiently unrestricted practice of freedom. The second problem of freedom concerns conformism. In a final step, I complete my argument that Honneth’s account is unsatisfactory and incomplete by showing that aesthetic freedom is socially valid and thus ought to form part of our accounts of democratic ethical life. (shrink)

Conway characterizes freedom in apparently contradictory ways. She describes God as the most free, yet he is necessitated to act perfectly due to his wisdom and goodness. Created beings, by contrast, sin. They are not necessitated to do so. This suggests that Conway has a binary account of freedom: divine freedom is a matter of being necessitated by wisdom and goodness, whereas creaturely freedom consists in indifference, understood as a power to act, or not act. Despite the apparently conflicting remarks, (...) I argue that Conway has a single account of freedom as spontaneity. Conway defines spontaneity in terms of causing one’s own action independent of external causes. I suggest that spontaneity is more precisely understood as an intrinsic power aimed at the good in Conway’s metaphysics, and that this account of freedom can combine necessity and contingency. Rather than a binary, Conway offers an account of freedom in creation that has it on a continuum with divine freedom. (shrink)