In a recent article on Burke and the emergence of nonhuman rhetoric, Steven B. Katz argues for a syncretic view of this rhetorical turn, despite it being inspired by a number of different philosophical perspectives: “To varying degrees, these new philosophies, loosely collected under the nomer New Materialisms, seem to be in a process of sublimating if not supplanting and replacing the physical human body as the source of motivated agency, intelligence, audience, and language, the traditional subjects of most (...) rhetorical study”. Katz’s synthesis of feminist new materialism, object-oriented ontology, speculative realism, and actor-network theory may ignore the differences of these systems but... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Senecan Moment:Patronage and Philosophy in the Eighteenth CenturyEdward AndrewThis piece examines the place of patronage in eighteenth-century thought and specifically Diderot's analysis of Seneca's philosophy of the art of graceful giving and grateful receiving.1 Patronage, in Burke's definition, is "the tribute which opulence owes to genius."2 However, the patronage of thought has been rarely discussed by political theorists, and when mentioned favorably by thinkers such as Rousseau (...) or Burke, their accounts were not a central theme of their work. When patronage was a central theme, such as Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield or D'Alembert's Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands, the practice is deprecated as obsolete.3 Thinkers who pride themselves on their independence of thought have usually been reluctant to declare their dependence upon patrons. However, most of the thinkers of the eighteenth century who preached intellectual independence depended upon royal or aristocratic patronage.4 Indeed, one might say that the ideal of intellectual [End Page 277] autonomy was forged in conditions of intellectual dependence on royal or aristocratic patrons.Francis Bacon wrote that "books, such as are worthy of the name of books, ought to have no other patrons but truth and reason." Yet Bacon's Advancement of Learning, dedicated to James I, is forthright in admitting that most scholars are not independently wealthy and thus must court the rich and must submit to the powerful. In the same work Bacon denounced Seneca as a "Trencher Philosopher" who served and supped well at a royal court.5 Seneca's De Benefiis, the classic text on patronage, was often translated into English and French in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries6 ; and it was highly regarded by eighteenth-century thinkers, such as La Mettrie, Lagrange, Rousseau, D'Holbach, Hume, Smith, and Diderot.7 Since Rousseau shared Hume's admiration for Seneca, Hume concluded his account of Rousseau's ingratitude for Hume's patronage, Exposé succinct de la contestation que s'est élevée entre M. Hume et M. Rousseau, with a quotation from Seneca's De Beneficiis.8 Diderot's Essai sur la vie de Sénèque le philosophe, sur ses écrits, et sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron and Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron et sur les Moeurs et les Écrits de Sénèque were unique among eighteenth-century thinkers in providing an extended defense of patronage. Diderot's work is a sustained analysis of Seneca's important treatise on the arts of graceful giving, graceful receiving, and graceful requiting, the three graces that made the world go around.In Rameau's Nephew Diderot and Rameau agreed that everyone has to get into unnatural postures and jump through hoops to please their patrons. But, Diderot added, "there is one human being who is exempted from this pantomime. That is the philosopher who has nothing and asks for nothing."9 Diderot seems to celebrate the self-sufficient Cynic Diogenes who lived from nature: "Whom does the savage beg from? The earth, the animals and fishes, the trees and plants and roots and streams." But Diderot knew that Diogenes was not [End Page 278] one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's self-sufficient savages; Diogenes lived by begging from his fellow citizens and taking what he needed from others—for all property is common for the wise man. Indeed, the honest Diogenes lived much as did the truth-telling sponge, Rameau. Moreover, Diderot agreed with Rameau's form of Epicureanism—not that money is the chief good but that money is essential for life's vital pleasures. Diderot wrote: "I am far from despising sensual pleasures. I have a palate too and it is tickled by a delicate wine or dish" as well as by beautiful women and drunken parties with his friends.10In short, Diogenes's life would not have satisfied Diderot. The more useful model of the philosophic life was the immensely rich Stoic, Seneca. Diderot devoted two of his last and longest works to a justification of the life of Seneca, and the place of patronage... (shrink)

Every ten years United States congressional districts are drawn, physically constructing political representation based on domicile. Why do we do it this way? Is territorial representation consistent with the broader normative ends of political representation). ;In section one I argue that territorial constituencies were never intended to represent local "communities of interest." Instead, physical proximity between voters was necessary to achieve the normative aims of representative government in a large nation. I begin in 13 th century England, and proceed through (...) the political theory of Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Burke, the Federalists and their critics. I also provide a novel interpretation of Federalist 10. ;In sum, territory was a habit of mind for the founders of the United States, and thus there were no explicit reasons given for using territory. The silence of territory as a definer of electoral constituencies has continued to the present day. I argue that the continued silence about territorial constituencies constitutes a substantial breech of legitimacy. ;In the second section , I argue that "constituency definition" is a normatively rich institution and how constituencies are defined ought not to be determined by interested third parties. I argue that Hanna Pitkin incorrectly conflated "political representation" and "legitimacy." I argue that citizen consent to constituency definition is a central part of legitimating any representative government. Finally, I argue that there are no persuasive normative arguments for territorial constituencies today. Justifying territorial constituencies on the normative claim that "communities of interest" ought to define constituencies for political representation is simply unpersuasive. If one believes such particularity ought to be represented in one branch of the national legislature, then other kinds of particularity---race, ideology, class, et al---simply dominate. ;In section three I argue against "particularity" for electoral constituencies. I conclude with a thought experiment: randomly assign voters into 435 national, electoral constituencies for life. Having established that the concept of "constituency" is itself normatively robust and separable from "electoral systems," I argue that important considerations of "voice," can be introduced through novel means of reform. (shrink)

This volume features a careful selection of major works in political and social philosophy from ancient times through to the present. Every reading has been painstakingly annotated, and each figure is given a substantial introduction highlighting his or her major contribution to the tradition. The anthology offers both depth and breadth in its selection of material by central figures, while also representing other currents of political thought. Thirty-two authors are represented, including fourteen from the 20th century. The editors have made (...) every effort to include translations that are both readable and reliable. In order to ensure the highest standards of accuracy and accessibility, the editors have consulted dozens of leading academics during the course of the volume’s development . The result is an anthology with unparalleled pedagogical benefits; The Broadview Anthology of Social and Political Thought sets the new standard for social and political philosophy instruction. (shrink)

Implicit Rhetoric examines the implications of Kenneth Burke's concept of entelechy, the most transcendent term in Burke's philosophical system. The author discusses Burke's ideas on the existence of 'implicit' rhetoric which goes against Aristotle's view that rhetoric includes an essentially 'explicit' view of criticism.

This collection of texts on the Sublime provides the historical context for the foundation and discussion of one of the most important aesthetic debates of the Enlightenment. The significance of the Sublime in the eighteenth century ranged across a number of fields - literary criticism, empirical psychology, political economy, connoisseurship, landscape design and aesthetics, painting and the fine arts, and moral philosophy - and has continued to animate aesthetic and theoretical debates to this day. However, the unavailability of many of (...) the crucial texts of the founding tradition has resulted in a conception of the Sublime often limited to the definitions of its most famous theorist Edmund Burke. Andrew Ashfield and Peter de Bolla's anthology, which includes an introduction and notes to each entry, offers students and scholars ready access to a much deeper and more complex tradition of writings on the Sublime, many of them never before printed in modern editions. (shrink)

The idea of enlightenment entails liberty, equality, rationalism, secularism, and the connection between knowledge and human well being. In spite of the setbacks of revolutionary violence, political mass murder, and two world wars, the spread of enlightenment values has become the yardstick by which moral, political, and even scientific advances are measured. Indeed, most critiques of the enlightenment ideal point to failure in implementation rather than principle. By contrast, David Stove, in On Enlightenment, attacks the intellectual roots of enlightenment thought, (...) to define the limitations of its successes and the areas of its likely failures. Stove is not insensitive to the many valuable aspects of enlightenment thought. He champions the use of reason and rationality, and recognizes the falsity of religious claims as well as the importance of individual liberty. What he rejects is the enlightenment's uncritical optimism regarding social progress and its willingness to embrace revolutionary change. What evidence is there that the elimination of superstition will lead to happiness? Or that it is possible to accept Darwinism without Social Darwinism? Or that the enlightenment's liberal, rationalistic outlook will ever lead to the kind of social progress envisioned by its advocates. Despite their best intentions, social reformers who attempt to improve the world as a whole inevitably make things worse. He advocates a conservative "go slow" approach to change, pointing out that today's social structures are so large and complex that any widespread social reform will have innumerable unforeseen consequences. For example, the welfare state may diminish individual initiative, the use of pesticides may increase the food supply while polluting the water supply, the popularizing of university education may lead to a decline in academic standards. Since government has a virtual monopoly on large-scale change, it follows, in Stove's view, that its powers must be limited in order to prevent large-scale damage. Instead, he argues that reforms, when they are to be made at all, must be realistic, local, necessary and never coercive. Writing in the conservative tradition of Edmund Burke with the same passion for clarity and intellectual honesty as George Orwell, David Stove was one of the most precise, articulate, and insightful philosophers of his day. "Never just an academic, Stove was also a prominent, often crotchety, public intellectual of a conservative and, all too often, reactionary bent, many of whose views were extremist on any account, and his targets were many.... For Stove the important question about a belief is not whether it is extreme or mainstream, but whether it is true, or probable, or has sound evidentiary and/or rational credentials. In this he was surely right." -D. D. Todd, Philosophy in Review David Stove taught philosophy at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. He is the author of Against the Idols of the Age and Scientific Irrationalism, both available from Transaction. Andrew Irvine is professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Roger Kimball is managing editor of the New Criterion. (shrink)

This detailed commentary covers Hegels entire political philosophy, which Franco regards as the high water mark of late-modern philosophies of positive freedom. Although he frequently refers to Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Burke, Hobbes, and others, Francos more immediate context is the philosophic tradition of radical self-dependence initiated by Rousseau and developed by Kant and Fichte. The book begins with a brief discussion of this tradition, continues with chapters on Hegels development, and then turns to a close analysis of the Philosophy of (...) Right that also treats Hegels lectures on the subject. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION In an age of specialists, Kenneth Burke's writings offend those who are content with a partial view of human motivation. ...

This eloquent 1757 treatise examines how interactions with the physical world affect formulation of ideals related to beauty and art. Tremendously influential on the development of aesthetic theory, this formative dissertation was among the first explorations of the concept of the sublime and remains a thought-provoking study for modern readers.

This paper examines the idea of objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

Knowledges and their histories -- Concepts -- Processes -- Problems and prospects -- Timeline.

Some accounts of moral responsibility hold that an agent's responsibility is completely determined by some aspect of the agent's mental life at the time of action. For example, some hold that an agent is responsible if and only if there is an appropriate mesh among the agent's particular psychological elements. It is often objected that the particular features of the agent's mental life to which these theorists appeal (such as a particular structure or mesh) are not necessary for responsibility. This (...) is because there appear to be cases in which an agent acts at an earlier time which causes her to lack the appropriate psychological features at some later time and yet, intuitively, she is responsible at that later .. (shrink)

Perception is riddled with cases of reliable misperception. These are cases in which a perceptual state is tokened inaccurately any time it is tokened under normal conditions. On the face of it, this fact causes trouble for theories that provide an analysis of perceptual content in non-semantic, non-intentional, and non-phenomenal terms, such as those found in Millikan (1984), Fodor (1990), Neander (2017), and Schellenberg (2018). I show how such theories can be extended so that they cover such cases without giving (...) up their core commitments. (shrink)

We are all familiar with the phenomenon of a proposition seeming true. Many think that these seeming states can yield justified beliefs. Very few have seriously explored what these seeming states are. I argue that seeming states are not plausibly analyzed in terms of beliefs, partial beliefs, attractions to believe, or inclinations to believe. Given that the main candidates for analyzing seeming states are unsatisfactory, I argue for a brute view of seemings that treats seeming states as irreducible propositional attitudes.

'Pain and pleasure are simple ideas, incapable of definition.'In 1757 the 27-year-old Edmund Burke argued that our aesthetic responses are experienced as pure emotional arousal, unencumbered by intellectual considerations. In so doing he overturned the Platonic tradition in aesthetics that had prevailed from antiquity until the eighteenth century, and replaced metaphysics with psychology and even physiology as the basis for the subject. Burke's theory of beauty encompasses the female form, nature, art, and poetry, and he analyses our delight (...) in sublime effects that thrill and excite us. His revolution in method continues to have repercussions in the aesthetic theories of today, and his revolution in sensibility has paved the way for literary and artistic movements from the Gothic novel through Romanticism, twentieth-century painting, and beyond. In this new edition Paul Guyer conducts the reader through Burke's Enquiry, focusing on its place in the history of aesthetics and highlighting its innovations, as well as its influence on many subsequent authors from Kant and Schiller to Ruskin and Nietzsche. (shrink)

Probes the nature of linguistic or symbolic action as it relates to specific novels, plays, and poems.

This is a discussion of the state of discussion on pragmatic reasons for belief.

This book brings together an international group of scholars to discuss the ramifications of Heidegger's Black Notebooks for philosophy and the humanities. In contrast to both those who seek to exonerate Heidegger and those who simply condemn him, they urge careful reading and rereading of his work to turn Heideggerian thought against itself.

For Kant, knowledge involves certainty. If “certainty” requires that the grounds for a given propositional attitude guarantee its truth, then this is an infallibilist view of epistemic justification. Such a view says you can’t have epistemic justification for an attitude unless the attitude is also true. Here I want to defend an alternative fallibilist interpretation. Even if a subject has grounds that would be sufficient for knowledge if the proposition were true, the proposition might not be true. And so there (...) is sometimes still rational room for doubt. The goal of this paper is to present four different models of what “certainty” amounts to, for Kant, each of which is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

In his 1978 paper “Mathematical Explanation”, Mark Steiner attempts to modernize the Aristotelian idea that to explain a mathematical statement is to deduce it from the essence of entities figuring in the statement, by replacing talk of essences with talk of “characterizing properties”. The language Steiner uses is reminiscent of language used for proofs deemed “pure”, such as Selberg and Erdős’ elementary proofs of the prime number theorem avoiding the complex analysis of earlier proofs. Hilbert characterized pure proofs as those (...) that use only “means that are suggested by the content of the theorem”, a characterization we have elsewhere called “topical purity”. In this paper we will examine the connection between Steiner’s account of mathematical explanation and topical purity. Are Steiner-explanatory proofs necessarily topically pure? Are topically pure proofs necessarily Steiner-explanatory? Answers to these questions will shed light on the general question of the relation between purity and explanatory power. (shrink)

The aim of the Analytic of Concepts is to derive and deduce a set of pure concepts of the understanding, the categories, which play a central role in Kant’s explanation of the possibility of synthetic a priori cognition and judgment. This chapter is structured around two questions. First, what is a pure concept of the understanding? Second, what is involved in a deduction of a pure concept of the understanding? In answering the first, we focus on how the categories differ (...) from the pure forms of sensibility and examine whether they are known only to be the pure forms of human thinking or rather the forms of discursive cognition as such. In answering the second, we draw a distinction between the application and the exemplification of the categories and use it to identify different ways of understanding Kant’s project in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. These questions connect because the answer to the first determines how we should understand the kind of entitlement which is to be established in the Deduction. (shrink)