Explores the notion of selfhood in the wake of the post-structuralist debates.

In From History to Theory, Kerwin Lee Klein writes a history of the central terms of the discipline of theory of history, such as “historiography,” “philosophy of history,” “theory of history,” and “memory.” Klein tells us when and how these terms were used, how the usage of some declined during the twentieth century, and how other terms became increasingly popular. More important, Klein also shows that the use of these words is not innocent. Using words such as “theory” or “historiography” (...) implies certain specific ideas about what the writing of history should be like, and how theoretical reflection on the nature of history and its writing relates to the practical issues of the discipline.In the second half of his book, Klein focuses more on the concept of memory and the memory boom since the later part of the 1980s. He observes that “memory” came to be seen as a kind of “counterhistory,” a postcolonial, fragmented, and personal alternative to the traditional mainstream discourse of history. Klein does not necessarily disagree with this view, but he does warn us about unwanted side effects. More specifically, he argues that the discourse of memory is surprisingly compatible with that of extremist right-wing groups, and should be treated with suspicion. Although Klein certainly has a point, he presents it in a rather dogmatic fashion. However, a more nuanced version of Klein's criticism of memory can be developed by building on Klein's suggestion that there is an intimate connection between memory and identity. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Watsuji Tetsurô’s Ethics is one of the most important works in Japanese ethical thought. But scholarly research in English has largely focused on the first of three volumes of Ethics, leaving the latter two oft-neglected. In order to balance out the views of Watsuji’s ethics, this paper focuses on the contributions of the second and third volumes of Ethics. These volumes are essential for any concrete understanding of Watsuji’s ‘ethics of emptiness’. The second volume develops the ideas of the first, (...) particularly how the dual-structure is concretely realized through the various stages of ethical organization. The third volume develops the notions of space and time from the first volume into a theory of climate and history. By analyzing these, we can understand Watsuji’s system as a whole and clarify Watsuji’s unique contribution to ethical theory. (shrink)

The recent introduction of the concepts of tenderness, vulnerability, and parental care in the field of moral emotions has brought us closer to an understanding of the underlying mechanisms, but has not yet resulted in a systematic evolutionary and proximate analysis. Applying such an analysis, the present article proposes a hypothetical care mechanism that produces different motivational states or moral emotions in response to individuals perceived as vulnerable. The mechanism consists of a care system automatically triggered by vulnerability cues, a (...) system for defense and aggression, and a process of causally attributing changes in the vulnerable object’s well-being. The mechanism may also be useful in explaining moral responses in domains other than harm prevention. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In recent debates about conceptual engineering, it appears that the internalist has an explanatory advantage when it comes to accounting for meaning change and conceptual change. In this paper, I argue against this impression. I show how two different varieties of externalism, originalism and anti-individualism, can coherently explain various cases of meaning change, irrespective of whether they involve proper names or kind terms; and also irrespective of whether they occur in everyday, legal, or scientific contexts. I point out which (...) mechanisms and interpretational strategies the originalist and anti-individualist can invoke, relative to their respective background assumptions about the nature of concepts. Furthermore, I offer an argument in favour of the claim that externalism as such has no implications concerning whether concepts can undergo change. I establish this by showing that originalism allows for conceptual change while anti-individualism insists on conceptual stability. (shrink)

From time to time, when I explain to a new acquaintance that I’m a philosopher of science, my interlocutor will nod agreeably and remark that that surely means I’m interested in the ethical status of various kinds of scientific research, the impact that science has had on our values, or the role that the sciences play in contemporary democracies. Although this common response hardly corresponds to what professional philosophers of science have done for the past decades, or even centuries, it (...) is perfectly comprehensible. For there are large questions of the kinds just indicated, questions that deserve to be posed and answered, and an intelligent person might well think that philosophers of science are the people who do the posing and the answering (Kitcher in Science, truth and democracy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. xi, 2001).This programmatic passage from the very first page of Philip Kitcher’s Science, Truth and Democracy is probably one of the most concise and accurate descri. (shrink)

Ernst Fehr’s experimental research on altruistic behaviour aims at superseding the classical homo oeconomicus in micro-economic behaviour theory. This essay discusses Fehr’s results from two points of view: first, in regard to the understanding of social action associated with the term “altruism”; second, in regard to the ‘anthropological’ strategy of research that is based on the laboratory method. Against the emphasis on altruism it will be argued that it misleads into providing a distorted description of social acting, and that, due (...) to insufficient clarity about motives for acting, Fehr’s empirical results give evidence not of altruism but rather of phenomena of social recognition. The objection against the anthropological strategy will be that it makes visible only local phenomena within prevailing social conditions and that it thus assumes more than it explains. (shrink)

This critical review concentrates on four important parts of Raimo Tuomela’s analytical theory of social action. It examines the book’s reconstructions of social action, of practical reasoning in this context, of social norms and it investigates its claim to a conceptual individualism. The result is critical in several aspects. Tuomela’s most original idea in the analysis of joint action, that of we-intentions, is not broad enough to cover more than a part of social action in the commonly understood sense. His (...) ‘social’ practical reasoning incorporates an implausible premiss. The game-theoretical reconstruction of social norms strikes one as unlikely to be fulfilled in social reality. Hardly any of these analyses back up the individualist claims of Tuomela’s project. (shrink)

This work augments its companion volume Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy.

Paper edition ($18.95) not seen. The essays in this collection have been selected from a much larger set of papers on Aristotle's ethics, presented before the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy during the past decade.

Capitalism is in crisis. Is a better world possible and what would it look like? Taking Socialism Seriously breaks important new paths for significant social change by examining detailed questions seriously that had previously been neglected.

This essay reviews Iain Morley’s The Prehistory of Music, an up-to-date and authoritative overview of recent research on evolution and cognition of musicality from an interdisciplinary viewpoint. Given the diversity of the project explored, integration of evidence from multiple fields is particularly pressing, required for any novel evolutionary account to be persuasive, and for the project’s continued progress. Moreover, Morley convincingly demonstrates that there is much more to understanding musicality than is supposed by some theorists. I outline Morley’s review of (...) the archaeological and ethnographic literature, and then go on to critique his assessment of philosophical and evolutionary theories, offering some alternative perspectives that might better benefit his project. (shrink)

Some goods cannot, according to MacLean, be dealt with adequately by cost-benefit analysis. An explanation for this thesis is given, linking these goods to the altruism implied in intimate social relations. MacLean’s argument is then shown to be insufficient when extended to matters of public relevance. The integration of political values and economic costs should be possible, on a level doing justice to both.

Myers' offer of cooperation as a medicine for ailing moral theories is welcomed as potentially helpful, even if his handling of it is diagnosed as implicitly one-sided consequentialist. His search for an ethically “substantive way of engaging with others” is shown as not coherent with his remarks on the tasks cooperation as an ethical concept has to fulfil. Instead, it is proposed that the concept be disentangled from the micro- problems Myers' wants it to solve, and that it be read (...) more freely, from the perspective of Rawls' conception of cooperation. (shrink)

Es soll die These begründet werden, daß die Suche nach Wahrheitskriterien als philosophische Anstrengung sinnlos ist, weil einerseits mit Wahrheit ein Absolutheitsanspruch der Erkenntnis erhoben werden muß, andererseits aber ein solcher Anspruch mit Hilfe von Wahrheitskriterien nicht eingelöst werden kann. Die Begründung faßt den spezifischen Geltungscharakter des Wahrheitsanspruchs und einen unausweichlichen Regreß bei Wahrheitsfragen als geeignete Hinweise auf, daß und wieso Wahrheitskriterien logisch unmöglich sind; daß und wieso die Erkenntnispraxis darunter keinen Schaden erleidet; daß und wieso Wahrheit als die regulative (...) Rolle verstanden werden soll, welche der Wahrheitsanspruch in der Erkenntnis hat. (shrink)

During the last years Anglosaxon discussion about Marx and Marxism has been characterized by an intensified interest in historical materialism as a general theory of history. The most extensive, careful and analytically rigorous among several new treatments is the one by G.A. Cohen, which is the subject of four critical articles in the present issue of Analyse & Kritik. To make these articles and Cohen’s project understandable to the German reader, an attempt is made in the following to summarize the (...) main arguments of Cohen’s defence of historical materialism and of the ensuing comprehensive and detailed discussion. (shrink)