This paper elucidates how the thinking about opposition that we find in the surviving passages of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and in the fragments of Heraclitus of Ephesus informs discussions of the separability of the body and the soul in the Phaedo. I offer a reconstruction of the way in which these pre-Socratic ideas of opposition are appropriated and refracted in Plato’s Phaedo (especially at 85e–86e, 92a–95a, 102c–e, 102b–107a). I treat Anaxagoras first, in order to explicate how his ideas make up (...) the background of the dialogical study of the separation of the soul from the body (102b–107a). My analysis of Heraclitus comes second and shows how his ideas inform the interlocutors’ assessment of the unity characteristic of the body and the soul (92a–95a). I set the stage for the discussion of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus by relating these thinkers to the broader Pythagorean background that is apparent in the dialogue. (shrink)

It has been argued that Kant's all-consuming efforts to place autonomy at the center of philosophy have had, in the long-run, the unintended effect of leading to the widespread discrediting of philosophy and of undermining the notion of autonomy itself. The result of this 'Copernican revolution' has seemed to many commentators the de-centring, if not the self-destruction, of the autonomous self. In this major reinterpretation of Kant and the post-Kantian response to his critical philosophy, Karl Ameriks argues that such a (...) view of Kant rests on a series of misconceptions. By providing the first systematic study of the underlying structure of the reaction to Kant's critical philosophy in the writings of Reinhold, Fichte and Hegel, Karl Ameriks challenges the presumptions that dominate popular approaches to the concept of freedom, and to the interpretation of the relation between the Enlightenment, Kant and post-Kantian thought. (shrink)

Now, for the first time, a philosopher undertakes a systematic investigation of the moral and aesthetic issues to which cultural appropriation gives rise. Cultural appropriation is a pervasive feature of the contemporary world Young offers the first systematic philosophical investigation of the moral and aesthetic issues to which cultural appropriation gives rise Tackles head on the thorny issues arising from the clash and integration of cultures and their artifacts Questions considered include: “Can cultural appropriation result in (...) the production of aesthetically successful works of art?” and “Is cultural appropriation in the arts morally objectionable?” Part of the highly regarded New Directions in Aesthetics series. (shrink)

Social appropriateness is an important topic – both in the human-human interaction (HHI), and in the human-machine interaction (HMI) context. As sociosensitive and socioactive assistance systems advance, the question arises whether a machine’s behavior should include considerations regarding social appropriateness. However, the concept of social appropriateness is difficult to define, as it is determined by multiple aspects. Thus, to date, a unified perspective, encompassing and combining multidisciplinary findings, is missing. When translating results from HHI to HMI, it remains unclear whether (...) such insights into the dynamics of social appropriateness between humans may in fact apply to sociosensitive and socioactive assistance systems. To shed light on this matter, we propose the Five Factor Model of Social Appropriateness (FASA) which provides a multidisciplinary perspective on the notion of social appropriateness and its implementation into technical systems. Finally, we offer reflections on the applicability and ethics of the FASA Model, highlighting both strengths and limitations of the framework. (shrink)

Can Hegel, a philosopher who claims that philosophy lsquo;has no other object but God and so is essentially rational theologyrsquo;, ever be taken as anything emother than/em a religious philosopher with little to say to any philosophical project that identifies itself as emsecular/em?nbsp; If the valuable substantive insights found in the detail of Hegelrsquo;s philosophy are to be rescued for a secular philosophy, then, it is commonly presupposed, some type of global reinterpretation of the enframing idealistic framework is required. In (...) this essay, this assumption is challenged. br /br /Kantrsquo;s interpretation of space and time as a response to Newtonrsquo;s theologically based spatio-temporal emrealism/em is taken as a model of what it is to be a Kantian emidealist/em about God and the self. In turn, Hegelrsquo;s philosophy is taken as a development of this approach that overcomes the limitations of Kantrsquo;s formal approach. Hegelrsquo;s major contribution to Kantrsquo;s revolutionary transformation of the task of philosophy is, it is argued, his recognitive conception of lsquo;spiritrsquo;. While this has been widely appreciated with regard to the relations between lsquo;subjectiversquo; and lsquo;objectiversquo; spirit, it is suggested that a fuller understanding of the nature of Hegelrsquo;s emabsolute/em idealism requires a proper understanding of how this approach also applies to the domain of lsquo;absolute spiritrsquo;. br /br /. (shrink)

Em 1845, ainda durante o período de redação da obra que seria o Pós-Escrito Conclusivo Não-Científico às Migalhas Filosóficas – trabalhado sob o título provisório de Problemas Lógicos –, Kierkegaard esboça em seus Papirer (IV A 145) um curioso esquete que se passaria nos Infernos – ou Submundo – envolvendo um diálogo entre Sócrates e Hegel. Neste diálogo acerca do famigerado problema do início da filosofia hegeliana, Kierkegaard descreve Hegel fazendo a leitura da página 198 do segundo volume das Logische (...) Untersuchungen, de F. A. Trendelenburg. A citação precisa da página, feita por Kierkegaard, não poderia ser senão uma indicação da relevância de seu conteúdo para o tema debatido entre os dois filósofos no diálogo imaginário. De fato, está aí presente, entre outros argumentos, a acusação da intromissão da Anschauung no reino do pensamento puro, em especial no início da Lógica de Hegel. Assim, pretendemos neste trabalho (1) explicitar o argumento trendelenburguiano relativo à Anschauung, bem como (2) fazer alguns apontamentos da recepção kierkegaardiana do argumento a partir das relações deste com as teses centrais do Pós-Escrito. (shrink)

Is there something morally wrong with cultural appropriation in the arts? I argue that the little philosophical work on this topic has been overly dismissive of moral objections to cultural appropriation. Nevertheless, I argue that philosophers working on epistemic injustice have developed powerful conceptual tools that can aid in our understanding of objections that have been levied by other scholars and artists. I then consider the relationship between these objections and the harms of cultural essentialism. I argue that (...) focusing on the systematic nature of appropriative harms may allow us to sidestep the problem of essentialism, but not without cost. (shrink)

James Tully and others have argued recently that the theory of property Locke defends in the Second Treatise was designed to justify European settlement on the lands of North American Natives. If this view becomes generally accepted, and Tuck suggests it will be, doubts may arise about the impartiality of Lockean property theories. Locke, as is well established and documented again by Tully, had huge vested interests in the European settlement of North America and possibly in the enslavement of Native (...) Peoples. Doubts about Locke may reflect on all rights theories of property and thus bring into question ‘one of the major political philosophies of the modem world’ (Tully, ‘Rediscovering America,’ 165). Raising these doubts is part of Tully's declared intention (Tully, ‘Rediscovering America,’ 166). His article tries to show that the Native systems of property and government which Locke defines away as illegitimate are in fact interesting and potentially beneficial alternatives to Lockean individual rights theories. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an outline of the oppression account of cultural appropriation and argue that it offers the best explanation for the wrongfulness of the varied and complex cases of appropriation to which people often object. I then compare the oppression account with the intimacy account defended by C. Thi Nguyen and Matt Strohl. Though I believe that Nguyen and Strohl’s account offers important insight into an essential dimension of the cultural appropriation debate, I argue (...) that justified objections to cultural appropriation must ultimately be grounded in considerations of oppression as opposed to group intimacy. I present three primary objections to the intimacy account. First, I suggest that in its effort to explain expressive appropriation claims (those that purportedly lack an independent ground), the intimacy account doubles down on the boundary problem. Second, I question whether group intimacy possess the kind of bare normativity that Nguyen and Strohl claim for it. Finally, I argue that these objections give us reason to accept the importance of group intimacy to the cultural appropriation debate, but question the source of its significance as identified by Nguyen and Strohl. (shrink)

The Age of Enlightenment is more global and complex than the standard Eurocentric Colonial Canon narrative presents. For example, before the advent of unscientific racism and the systematic negligence of the contributions of Others outside of “White Europe,” Raphael centered Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in his Vatican fresco “Causarum Cognitio” (1511); the astronomer Edmund Halley taught himself Arabic to be more enlightened; The Royal Society of London acknowledged the scientific method developed by Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen). In addition, if we study the (...) Transatlantic texts of the late 18th century, it is not Kant, but instead enlightened thinkers like Anton Wilhelm Amo (born in present-day’s Ghana), Phillis Wheatley (Senegal region), and Toussaint L’Ouverture (Haiti), who mostly live up to the ideals of reason, humanism, universalism, and human rights. One obstacle to developing a more balanced presentation of the Age of the Enlightenment is the influence of colonialism, Eurocentrism, and methodological nationalism. Consequently, this paper, part II of two, will also deal with the European Enlightenment’s unscientific heritage of scholarly racism from the 1750s. It will be demonstrated how Linnaeus, Hume, Kant, and Hegel were among the Founding Fathers of intellectual white supremacy within the Academy. Hence, the Age of Enlightenment is not what we are taught to believe. This paper will demonstrate how the lights from different “Global Enlightenments” can illuminate paths forward to more dialogue and universalism in the 21st century. (shrink)

Jan Patočka holds that both the Husserlian and the Heideggerian descriptions of history remain abstract because they lack an authentic reflection on historical sense’s appearing, which presupposes a description of the transition from the nonhistorical and prehistorical states of humanity to its final historical state. Nevertheless, it seems that Patočka would confront an internal aporia here because, even if he sought to think the continuity of these three movements, he tends to affirm the rupture between them. To overcome that aporia, (...) it becomes necessary to formulate the hypothesis according to which the prehistorical is characterized by a repression of sense’s problematic character, whereas the historical as such is characterized by a conversion of consciousness toward this problematic character. Justifying this hypothesis requires exploring Patočka’s anthropology, confronting it with Arendt’s anthropology, and formulating metaphysical perspectives. (shrink)

Since we have learned that human organs can be used to treat severe health problems, only donation has been considered for organ procurement. Among the other possibilities that can be used after a person’s death, purchase or systematic removal have been a priori rejected. However, we will show that the appeal to individual altruism have resulted in some of the aporias of the present situation. Subsequently, we will consider how systematic organ removal from deceased persons can be made acceptable in (...) liberal and democratic societies. Finally, we will suggest that individual choices with regard to systematic organ removal could well be registered in a way that allows proper implementation of present French legislation. (shrink)

L'interconnexion globale du monde redistribue beaucoup plus en profondeur qu'on ne voudrait l'admettre les enjeux technolinguistiques et technoculturels. L'Extrême-Orient notamment devient un acteur incontournable tant pour la production de contenus que pour les composants et les machines à communiquer. La montée en puissance de cette production la conduit à devenir un acteur de premier plan dans la recherche et la définition normative des TIC. Cette nouvelle donne peut à moyen terme influer radicalement sur le monopole nord-américain. Si la diversité culturelle (...) des sociétés d'écriture partiellement ou entièrement idéographique s'accommode déjà très mal de cette vision unique, elle ne l'exprimera certainement pas par des discours mais plutôt par des actes notamment en tissant de nouvelles alliances. L'Afrique, le Moyen-Orient, l'Amérique latine, la Francophonie, l'Europe non anglophone et le reste de l'Asie ont sans doute intérêt à s'inscrire dans la redistribution favorisée par l'émergence de cette bipolarité latente, en déployant leur diversité culturelle et en l'instrumentalisant dans les nouveaux paradigmes d'une information structurée, normalisée, et réellement articulée sur la diversité et non plus sur un marché unique, quelquefois dissimulé sous des localisations incertaines.The global interconnectedness of the world redistributes much deeper one would like to admit and techno-technolinguistic issues. The Far East in particular is a key player in both content production for components and communication devices. The rise of this production led to become a leading player in research and the normative definition of ICT. This new medium-term can radically affect the North American monopoly. If the cultural diversity of companies partially or wholly ideographic writing adapts already badly this unique vision, it does not certainly express by words but by actions including forging new alliances. Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, La Francophonie, the non-English speaking Europe and the rest of Asia may have to register interest in the redistribution favored by the emergence of latent bipolarity, deploying their cultural diversity and the instrumentalisation in the new paradigms of structured information, standardized, and actually articulated on diversity rather than on a single market, sometimes hidden under uncertain locations. (shrink)

An examination of the rise in prestige of the Bible as a literary and aesthetic model during the late eighteenth century.

This paper reads Simone de Beauvoir's travel journal "America Day by Day" for its philosophical content. I argue that this work provides a unique approach to feminist, embodied philosophy, one that has been overlooked by the categorization of her writing into philosophical works and feminist ones. Such an approach, I contend, is enacted here through her use of Heidegger's concept of the everyday to inform her own treatment of understanding and experience.

What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation which are not grounded by independent considerations such as property rights or harm? We propose that such restrictions can be grounded by considerations of intimacy. Consider the familiar phenomenon of interpersonal intimacy. Certain aspects of personal life and interpersonal relationships are afforded various protections in virtue of being intimate. We argue that an analogous phenomenon exists at the level of large groups. In many cases, members of a group engage in shared (...) practices that contribute to a sense of common identity, such as wearing certain hair or clothing styles or performing a certain style of music. Participation in such practices can generate relations of group intimacy, which can ground certain prerogatives in much the same way that interpersonal intimacy can. One such prerogative is making what we call an appropriation claim. An appropriation claim is a request from a group member that non-members refrain from appropriating a given element of the group’s culture. Ignoring appropriation claims can constitute a breach of intimacy. But, we argue, just as for the prerogatives of interpersonal intimacy, in many cases there is no prior fact of the matter about whether the appropriation of a given cultural practice constitutes a breach of intimacy. It depends on what the group decides together. (shrink)