Illustrates Plato’s theory of the philosopher-king in the context of medieval and Renaissance Jewish thought.

A history of the philosopher-king in Greco-Roman antiquity, examining the persistence of Plato's ideas in political philosophy.

Reeve's classic work provides an interpretation of Republic that makes a case for the coherence of Plato's argument.

Question: How do you turn a democracy into a tyranny? Answer (as those familiar with Plato's Republic will know): Do nothing. It will become a tyranny all by itself. My essay argues that for democracy to function it must inculcate in its citizens something of the moral and intellectual virtues of Plato’s Philosopher-Kings, who identify their own personal good with the good of society as a whole. Only thereby can Kant’s ideal of the ‘Kingdom of Ends’ - a (...) society in which each citizen willingly affirms a duty to respect the freedom and dignity of every other - be realized. The alternative to this, as Plato understood, is a society of appetitively driven individuals competing each with the other for dominance, in which those most skilled at the arts of grasping and manipulation will eventually seize power. In this way, as Plato foresaw, democracy will degenerate into tyranny. (shrink)

Philosopher Kings? The Adjudication of Conflicting Human Rights and Social Values, by George C. Christie, examines the attempts by courts to sort out conflicts involving freedom of expression, including religious expression, on the one hand, and rights to privacy and other important social values on the other. It approaches the subject from a comparative perspective, using principally cases decided by European and United States courts. A significant part of this book analyzes conflicts between freedom of expression and the (...) right to privacy. In a world in which, freedom of expression and privacy are said to be of equal value, the book explores whether it is possible to develop, through case-by-case adjudication, a legal regime which can give clear direction as to what expression is or is not permitted. Otherwise, if such a regime proves impossible, in the guise of recognizing the equal value of expression and privacy, privacy may become de facto the preferred value. (shrink)

Late antique political Platonism was not unoriginal in its thought. The paper takes as an example the Justinianic dialogue On Political Science (ca. 550), which creatively engages with Plato’s political works. It shows that the dialogue tries – and manages, as I argue – to combine two apparently inconsistent Platonic models: what I call the “divine” model, in which a philosopher-king endowed with divine knowledge rules unhindered by civic laws; and the “human” model, characterized by the rule of law. (...) The divine model comes mostly from Plato’s Republic and Statesman; the human one, from the Laws. On Political Science demonstrates that its (anonymous) author was acquainted with these three Platonic texts, in addition to other texts. That is philologically noteworthy, but also philosophically interesting: the dialogue manages to integrate the two models into a common framework. It puts forward an original political model, in which a philosopher-king, although endowed with divine knowledge, still has to be bound by civic laws because of his human frailty. The article concludes by discussing the polemical import the dialogue could have had in its Justinianic context. (shrink)

It is common for philosophers to offer philosophical accounts or analyses, as they are sometimes called, of knowledge, autonomy, representation, (moral) goodness, reference, and even modesty. These philosophical analyses raise deep questions.What is it that is being analyzed (i.e. what sorts of things are the objects of analysis)? What sort of thing is the analysis itself (a proposition? sentence?)? Under what conditions is an analysis correct? How can a correct analysis be informative? How, if at all, does the production of (...) philosophical analyses differ from what scientists do? The purpose of the present paper is to provide answers to these questions. (shrink)

The arguments in the Republic are predicated upon a prior argument which can be expressed as follows:There is moral knowledge.Possession of it qualifies one to rule.Those who do possess it are therefore entitled to rule.

This article examines the main lines of contemporary thinking about analysis in philosophy. It first considers G. E. Moore’s statement of the paradox of analysis. It then reviews a number of accounts of analysis that address the paradox of analysis, including the account offered by Ernest Sosa 1983 and others by Felicia Ackerman ; the latter gives an account of analysis on which properties are the objects of analysis. It also discusses Jeffrey C. King’s accounts of philosophical analysis, before turning (...) to views of analysis that are not aimed at addressing the paradox of analysis, including those associated with David Lewis, Frank Jackson, and David Chalmers. In particular, it comments on Lewis’s argument that conceptual analysis is simply a means for picking out the physical state that occupies a certain role, where formulating what that role is constitutes a conceptual analysis of the relevant notion. (shrink)

The information‐transference account of teaching takes it to be a process in which information is transferred from one person's mind to another's. Augustine argues that this is impossible, since in order to understand something the person who understands must come to see why it is so, and that is an internal episode of awareness that isn't caused by an outside source. Augustine's insight here is contrasted with the contemporary view, following Wittgenstein, that learning is a matter of conformity to rules (...) (public norms). The case is made that teaching and learning pose philosophical problems that contemporary theories don't address, and a brief examination of Searle's Chinese Room example suggests that its plausibility derives from Augustine's insight that mere rule‐following behavior isn't enough to explain the phenomenon of understanding at the heart of knowledge. A reconstruction of Augustine's epistemological claims, divorced from his discredited views in the philosophy of language, is also provided. (shrink)

Belief in propositions has had a long and distinguished history in analytic philosophy. Three of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and G. E. Moore, believed in propositions. Many philosophers since then have shared this belief; and the belief is widely, though certainly not universally, accepted among philosophers today. Among contemporary philosophers who believe in propositions, many, and perhaps even most, take them to be structured entities with individuals, properties, and relations as constituents. For example, the (...) proposition that Glenn loves Tracy has Glenn, the loving relation, and Tracy as constituents. What is it, then, that binds these constituents together and imposes structure on them? And if the proposition that Glenn loves Tracy is distinct from the proposition that Tracy loves Glenn yet both have the same constituents, what is about the way these constituents are structured or bound together that makes them two different propositions? In The Nature and Structure of Content, Jeffrey C. King formulates a detailed account of the metaphysical nature of propositions, and provides fresh answers to the above questions. In addition to explaining what it is that binds together the constituents of structured propositions and imposes structure on them, King deals with some of the standard objections to accounts of propositions: he shows that there is no mystery about what propositions are; that given certain minimal assumptions, it follows that they exist; and that on his approach, we can see how and why propositions manage to have truth conditions and represent the world as being a certain way. The Nature and Structure of Content also contains a detailed account of the nature of tense and modality, and provides a solution to the paradox of analysis. Scholars and students working in the philosophy of mind and language will find this book rewarding reading. (shrink)

This article offers a reading of the “transcendental” character of Alain Badiou’s and Giorgio Agamben’s ontologies. While neither Badiou nor Agamben are “transcendental” philosophers in the Kantian sense, this article argues that their respective projects of ontology both recover aspects of the “classical” conception of the transcendentals. Not unlike how pre-modern philosophers conceived of oneness, truth and goodness as transcendental properties of all things, both Badiou’s and Agamben’s ontologies present various structures which can be universally predicated of all being. However, (...) as opposed to the essentialist or even theological tendencies of traditional metaphysics, Badiou’s and Agamben’s ontologies are committedly “inessential” and atheistic at their very core. By replacing the divine names of the one, the true and the good in traditional metaphysics with a new yet quasi-classical transcendental notion of “the void” as a universal predicate of all beings, Badiou’s and Agamben’s works may be regarded as projects that go beyond both the pre-Kantian “theological” and the post-Kantian “subjective” conceptions of transcendental philosophy, thereby marking a new development in the history of western metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper examines the neglected topic of Martin Luther King's comprehension and employment of dialectics. When we examine King's political and ideological development dialectically, we see that there are stages in the development of his thought. Most importantly, the material context of the African-American liberation struggle, as a process of objective development, shaped and directed his thinking as a dialectician. Consequently, the materialcontext of the African-American liberation movement served as a dynamic process which greatly affected King's understanding of dialectics as (...) a tool of analysis. King's early conception of dialectics is not Hegelian. However, after 1965, King becomes more Hegelian, approximating a regulative dialectic. (shrink)

One of the major themes of Plato's Republic is unity, and it has seemed anomalous to many that a work devoted to advocating unity should itself be read as lacking that very feature. Yet much appears to tell against the unity of the Republic and to thwart attempts to find a synthetic whole amidst the rich complexity of the dialogue. Hence, it is not surprising that in this book Reeve tries to demonstrate the unity of the Republic; what is surprising (...) is that he succeeds so well. Written with clarity, thoroughness, philosophical subtlety, and yet with a certain boldness, Philosopher-Kings meets challenge after challenge as it builds its four-fold structural interpretation of a unified Republic. In the end Reeve's effort may not persuade the reader, but it will surely provoke and instruct, with new readings of familiar passages, novel uses of neglected ones, interesting philosophical analyses, and an innovative overall integration of the dialogue's various strands. (shrink)

In her paper “Radical Externalism”, Amia Srinivasan argues that externalism about epistemic justification should be preferred to internalism by those who hold a “radical” worldview (according to which pernicious ideology distorts our evidence and belief‐forming processes). I share Srinivasan's radical worldview, but do not agree that externalism is the preferable approach in light of the worldview we share. Here I argue that cases informed by this worldview can intuitively support precisely the internalist view that Srinivasan challenges, offer two such cases, (...) and explain away the externalist‐friendly intuitions that Srinivasan's cases solicit. I then articulate and defend a “radical” internalism, arguing that internalists’ aversion to epistemic hubris and emphasis on subjecting one's beliefs to critical scrutiny are especially attractive in realistic cases involving multiple intersecting axes of oppression—that is, precisely the sort of case that permeates our social world. I also argue that externalism's lack of interest in action‐guiding principles leaves it with little to offer us in the fight against epistemic oppression. (shrink)

This paper examines the neglected topic of Martin Luther King's comprehension and employment of dialectics. When we examine King's political and ideological development dialectically, we see that there are stages in the development of his thought. Most importantly, the material context of the African-American liberation struggle, as a process of objective development, shaped and directed his thinking as a dialectician. Consequently, the materialcontext of the African-American liberation movement served as a dynamic process which greatly affected King's understanding of dialectics as (...) a tool of analysis. King's early conception of dialectics is not Hegelian. However, after 1965, King becomes more Hegelian, approximating a regulative dialectic. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative reading of the ontologies of David Bentley Hart and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as their respective appeals to phenomenology as a philosophical method. While it may seem odd to compare one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated atheists with one of contemporary Christianity’s most highly-acclaimed critics of atheism, this article shows that there are many surprising parallels between the ontological outlooks of Hart and Sartre, namely their conceptions of God as the unity of being and (...) consciousness and their accounts of human consciousness as a desire to ‘become God’. By examining the similarities and differences between Sartre’s and Hart’s philosophical and theological works, this article seeks to highlight the phenomenological aspects of Hart’s theological outlook and consider how Hart’s appeal to the phenomenological analysis of intentional consciousness in his theological work can illuminate our understanding of the ongoing engagements between theology and phenomenology. (shrink)

Philosophical work on testimony has flourished in recent years. Testimony roughly involves a source affirming or stating something in an attempt to transfer information to one or more persons. It is often said that the topic of testimony has been neglected throughout most of the history of philosophy, aside from contributions by David Hume (1711–1776) and Thomas Reid (1710–1796).1 True as this may be, Hume and Reid aren’t the only ones who deserve a tip of the hat for recognizing the (...) importance of testimony: St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) affirms the place of testimony in human cognition, at least in his later writings. (shrink)

Presents profiles of one hundred philosophers, from ancient times to the present day.

This article offers a philosophical reading of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels by bringing the tetralogy into conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology. In addition to highlighting the striking similarities between Ferrante’s notion of smarginatura (‘dissolving margins’) and Sartre’s depiction of the existential sensation of nausea, this article argues that the two main characters of Ferrante’s tetralogy, Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco, respectively exemplify Sartre’s ontological categories of ‘being-for-oneself’ and ‘being-for-others’ in his phenomenological account of human existence. However, Ferrante—like Simone de (...) Beauvoir before her—goes beyond Sartre in her ability to offer an account of the imperfect existential freedom of women, who remain constrained in their pursuit of authenticity by social and cultural factors. Drawing on Ferrante’s assertion that readers ‘are both Elena and Lila’ as well as her recent claim that there are within her two kinds of writing (broadly equated to the ‘compliant’ Elena and ‘impetuous’ Lila), we establish Ferrante’s exploration of the ambivalent features of human subjectivity as a consummate philosophical and literary project. (shrink)

Globalism makes news every day, yet world trade is hardly greater today than 30 years ago; it is the movement of capital that is far greater now, thanks to technology. The irresistible force for one world is not the United Nations, ever an arena for the contest of national interests, but money, particularly the United States dollar, which is an unofficial world currency, often with more influence than U.S. foreign policy. One of the results of monetary globalism is to make (...) national reserve and international banks all the more important. National central banks, like the United States Federal Reserve, make monetary policy. Together with international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, reserve banks have always been among the most important public institutions on the world stage, yet they are seldom examined as public institutions (Knott 1986). All references to banks and bankers in these pages are to central and international banks unless otherwise stated. (shrink)

This article begins by asking if the project to write a philosophical novel is not inherently flawed; it would seem that the novelist must either write an ambiguous text, which would not create a strong enough argument to count as philosophy, or she must write a text with a clear argument, which would not be ambiguous enough to count as good fiction. The only other option available would be to exemplify a preexisting abstract philosophical system in the concrete literary world. (...) To move beyond such an impasse, this article turns to the work of Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir's unique aesthetic theory in “Literature and Metaphysics” envisions philosophy as an integral part of the literary text and sees the novel not as an argument but as something called a “philosophical appeal”. In her first novel, She Came to Stay, such a concept of the philosophical novel allows Beauvoir to make an original contribution to the philosophical tradition—one in which Beauvoir rethinks the problem of solipsism—while still creating a stunning literary work. A study of the theory and the novel together thus provides a solid understanding of what philosophers stand to gain from the philosophical novel. (shrink)

This article begins by asking if the project to write a philosophical novel is not inherently flawed; it would seem that the novelist must either write an ambiguous text, which would not create a strong enough argument to count as philosophy, or she must write a text with a clear argument, which would not be ambiguous enough to count as good fiction. The only other option available would be to exemplify a preexisting abstract philosophical system in the concrete literary world. (...) To move beyond such an impasse, this article turns to the work of Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir's unique aesthetic theory in "Literature and Metaphysics" envisions philosophy as an integral part of the literary text and sees the novel not as an argument but as something called a "philosophical appeal" (Beauvoir 2004b). In her first novel, She Came to Stay, such a concept of the philosophical novel allows Beauvoir to make an original contribution to the philosophical tradition—one in which Beauvoir rethinks the problem of solipsism—while still creating a stunning literary work (Beauvoir 1954). A study of the theory and the novel together thus provides a solid understanding of what philosophers stand to gain from the philosophical novel. (shrink)

Hypatia was born in Alexandria in the fourth century CE (there's disagreement about her age at death, so that different scholars put her year of birth at either about 370 or about 355CE). The daughter of the mathematician and philosopher, Theon, who taught at the university of Alexandria, attached to the world-famous library, and who seems to have been responsible for Hypatia's education, though she might also have been taught by Plutarch the Younger in Athens. She helped her father (...) with his books on mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, and became a teacher at his school, eventually becoming its head. (shrink)

唐君毅先生是近代中國最重要的哲人之一， 事業和學問與當時仍是英國殖民地的香港有密不可分的關係。 唐君毅的努力，豐富了香港的文化氣息， 改變了香港純然商業社會的狀況； 香港的環境，也影響了唐君毅對事情的理解， 對唐君毅的哲學發展有極大的影響。 《唐君毅與香港》討論唐君毅與香港的重要關係，冀能一方面幫助讀者更了解唐君毅其人，另一方面幫助讀者更了解香港其地。本書分為三章，第一章討論唐君毅在香港的文化運動；第二章介紹唐君毅在香港的足跡；第三章評論 唐君毅留在香港的一批藏書，同時也收錄了唐君毅留在香港新亞研究所的藏書照片，這些照片從未曝光，價值尤其珍貴。.

This article offers a critical interpretation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a philosophical notion which exemplifies a secular conception of thinking. One way in which AI notably differs from the conventional understanding of “thinking” is that, according to AI, “intelligence” or “thinking” does not necessarily require “life” as a precondition: that it is possible to have “thinking without life.” Building on Charles Taylor’s critical account of secularity as well as Hubert Dreyfus’ influential critique of AI, this article offers a theological (...) analysis of AI’s “lifeless” picture of thinking in relation to the Augustinian conception of God as “Life itself.” Following this critical theological analysis, this article argues that AI’s notion of thinking promotes a societal privilege of certain rationalistic or calculative ways of thought over more existential or spiritual ways of thinking, and thereby fosters a secularization or de-spiritualization of thinking as an ethical human practice. (shrink)

For some of the world's great thinkers, including Aristotle, Aquinas, and Hegel, philosophy is a vast system of fixed, capital-T Truth for humankind to discover, explore and comprehend. For others, even among those with philosophies as diverse as William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosophy is simply a tool, or a process for ascertaining individual factual truths specific to a given time and place. It is often said that if you ask any ten philosophers to define their subject, you're likely to (...) get ten different answers. Here, presented for non-specialist readers, is an easy-to-understand survey of ideas put forth by 100 important philosophers, from the pre-Socratics of ancient Greece to the analytic philosophers of the present day. Each thinker is summarized in a single illustrated page, or in many instances, in a two-page spread. Each entry includes the philosopher's birth and death dates, titles of major works, major influences, a capsule biographical sketch, and a brief summary of his or her most important ideas. In addition to philosophers in our own Western tradition, readers will find Chinese sages, including Confucius and Lao-tzu, the Indian Buddhist philosopher Ngrjuna, and thinkers representing other cultures. Just a few of the 100 important thinkers represented in this book are: Plato Aristotle Augustine of Hippo Roger Bacon Thomas Aquinas Thomas Hobbes John Locke Rene Descartes Baruch Spinoza Immanuel Kant G.W.F. Hegel Friedrich Nietzsche William James Ludwig Wittgenstein Martin Heidegger Jean-Paul Sartre Alfred Jules Ayer Willard V.O. Quine Thomas Kuhn Donald Davidson and many othersThe text is enhanced with more than 250 illustrations and a glossary of philosophical terms. (shrink)

This excerpt from Kenneth Kings essay, The Dancing Philosopher, traces its genesis from Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra that, in tandem with the emerging technology of the writing machine, camera and kinetoscope, conjoined the kinetropic and lexigraphemic to inaugurate the kinetic cogito. Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenological exposition of corporeality further amplified the reflexive potential of movement and the philosophical understanding of kinesthesia, and King cites as well the technosophic synergy of John Cages and Merce Cunninghams long artistic collaboration that furthered (...) the frontier of a mind-body epistemic. (shrink)

Robin Barrow; Who are the Philosopher-Kings?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 200–221, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-.

Bertrand Russell was perhaps the last great philosopher to take an active interest in economics. After a brief, youthful engagement with the economics of socialism in 1889, Russell wrote on economic questions in three separate periods up to 1918, and in each case there was a clear political motivation. The first, in 1895–96, arose from his investigation of Marxism as a creed and of German social democracy as its principal contemporary political expression. The second, in 1903–04, was provoked by (...) his intervention on the free trade side of the tariff controversy. Finally, in 1915–18, Russell's commitment to Guild Socialism and to war resistance led him to some profound, if rather speculative, reflections on the economics of libertarian socialism. In this paper I discuss each of these three phases in Russell's economic thought and conclude that he never went far enough in his opposition to neo-classical theory in general, or to its utilitarian foundations in particular. (shrink)

Debate continues to rage among philosophers of religion over Anthony Flew's famous little paper ‘Theology and Falsification’ and the responses it provoked, most notably R. M. Hare's response that religious claims are in no way like scientific hypotheses. For now, twenty years later, we still find many theists taking a similar tack to Hare's. A particularly interesting example is J. F. Miller in Religious Studies , 1969, who replies to Flew that propositions like ‘God loves mankind’ cannot be subject to (...) falsifiability conditions because they are used as claims expressing ‘ religious first-order principles of the Judaeo-Christian Weltanschauung and as such are not amenable to falsification’ . Miller seems to put his faith in some kind of great gulf fixed between what he would consider decently falsifiable scientific hypotheses and what he takes to be unfalsifiable first-order principles both of theology and of contemporary science. In what follows we will try to sketch a more rational strategy for modern believers of a liberal empiricist type, for those whose interest in appealing and deferring to experience includes but is not restricted to so-called ‘sense experience’. This will involve accepting analogies between theological statements and so-called hypotheses, insofar as the latter are propositions held and put forward in a somewhat tentative spirit with a view to explaining what we experience. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, Giorgio Agamben and Charles Taylor have produced important and influential genealogical works on the philosophical and political conceptions of secularity. Yet in their recent work, both of these thinkers have respectively returned to a prominent theme in their earlier works: Human life. This essay offers a parallel reading of Agamben and Taylor as post-Heideggerian critics of the modern conception of human subjectivity. Through examining these their respective characterizations of modern subjectivity — namely Taylor’s account of (...) the “disengaged self” and Agamben’s conception of the “excluded-included” bare life, this essay seeks to highlight not only the Heideggerian currents underlying the philosophical anthropologies of Agamben and Taylor, but also the ontological paradoxicalities they detect in the conception of human existence and subjectivity in politico-philosophical modernity. After reviewing the different aspects of Agamben’s and Taylor’s critiques of modern subjectivity as well as the traditional metaphysical conception of humans as “language animals”, this essay concludes by sketching a robust and affirmative “paradoxical” conception of human beings as “language animals” which simultaneously takes into account the insights from Taylor’s (post)analytic philosophical renewal of Aristotelianism and Agamben’s critical analysis of contemporary biopolitics in the continental philosophical tradition. (shrink)

"This collection of essays owes its inception to a symposium held in Munich 8-10th September 2003"--P. [i].

Danis and colleagues (Danis, Wilson, and White 2016) fault bioethicists for insufficient action toward addressing racism and racially motivated violence, then proceed to assign them an expansive ro...