This essay asks why Aristotle, certainly no friend to unlimited democracy, seems so much more comfortable with unconstrained rhetoric in political deliberation than current defenders of deliberative democracy. It answers this question by reconstructing and defending a distinctly Aristotelian understanding of political deliberation, one that can be pieced together out of a series of separate arguments made in the Rhetoric, the Politics, and the Nicomachean Ethics.

Abstract The idea of a purely civic nationalism has attracted Western scholars, most of whom rightly disdain the myths that sustain ethnonationalist theories of political community. Civic nationalism is particularly attractive to many Americans, whose peculiar national heritage encourages the delusion that their mutual association is based solely on consciously chosen principles. But this idea misrepresents political reality as surely as the ethnonationalist myths it is designed to combat. And propagating a new political myth is an especially inappropriate way of (...) defending the legacy of Enlightenment liberalism from the dangers posed by the growth of nationalist political passions. (shrink)

In 1944 Horkheimer and Adorno warned that industrial society turns reason into rationalization, and Polanyi warned of the dangers of the self-regulating market, but today, argues Stiegler, this regression of reason has led to societies dominated by unreason, stupidity and madness. However, philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century abandoned the critique of political economy, and poststructuralism left its heirs helpless and disarmed in face of the reign of stupidity and an economic crisis of global proportions. New theories (...) and concepts are required today to think through these issues. The thinkers of poststructuralism Lyotard, Deleuze, Derrida must be re-read, as must the sources of their thought, Hegel and Marx. But we must also take account of Naomi Klein’s critique of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School and her account of the ‘shock doctrine’. In fact, argues Stiegler, a permanent ‘state of shock’ has prevailed since the beginning of the industrial revolution, intensified by the creative destruction brought about by the consumerist model. The result has been a capitalism that destroys desire and reason and in which every institution is undermined, above all those institutions that are the products par excellence of the Enlightenment the education system and universities. Through a powerful critique of thinkers from Marx to Derrida, Stiegler develops new conceptual weapons to fight this destruction. He argues that schools and universities must themselves be transformed: new educational institutions must be developed both to take account of the dangers of digitization and the internet and to enable us to take advantage of the new opportunities they make available. (shrink)

Bernard Berofsky addresses that metaphysical picture directly.Nature's Challenge to Free Willoffers an original defense of Humean Compatibilism.

Tractatus, 5.62 famously says: ‘… what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language mean the limits of my world.’ The later part of this repeats what was said in summary at 5.6: ‘the limits of my language mean the limits of my world’. And the key to the problem ‘how much truth there is in solipsism’ has (...) been provided by the reflections of TLP, 5.61. (shrink)

This review demonstrates that an individualist view of emotion and regulation is untenable. First, I question the plausibility of a developmental shift away from social interdependency in emotion regulation. Second, I show that there are multiple reasons for emotional experiences in adults to elicit a process of social sharing of emotion, and I review the supporting evidence. Third, I look at effects that emotion sharing entails at the interpersonal and at the collective levels. Fourth, I examine the contribution of emotional (...) sharing to emotion regulation together with the relevant empirical evidence. Finally, the various functions that the social sharing of emotion fulfills are reviewed and the relevance of the social sharing of emotion for emotion scientists is discussed. (shrink)

In his recent address to the Aristotelian Society, Aurel Kolnai suggests that games exhibit what he calls a “genuine paradoxy.” I do not believe that he has shown this to be the case, even on the most permissive interpretation of what it means to be a paradox. Kolnai has, however, called attention to an aspect of games which invites further investigation, and I should like to advance the following considerations not so much as a criticism of Kolnai as an attempt (...) to take the investigation along a path which Kolnai has indicated, but which he has not himself, in my opinion, followed. It is not that Kolnai does not say many interesting, indeed penetrating, things about games, for he does. That Kolnai's inquiry is an important contribution to the philosophy of games is not in question. What is questionable is whether paradox has very much to do with that contribution. (shrink)

How I became a philosopher -- To love, to love me, to love us.

From the beginning the French philosopher Claude Lefort has set himself the task of interpreting the political life of modern society-and over time he has succeeded in elaborating a distinctive conception of modern democracy that is linked to both historical analysis and a novel form of philosophical reflection. This book, the first full-scale study of Lefort to appear in English, offers a clear and compelling account of Lefort's accomplishment-its unique merits, its relation to political philosophy within the Continental tradition, and (...) its great relevance today. Much of what passes for political philosophy in our day is merely politicized philosophical concepts, a distinction author Bernard Flynn underscores as he describes the development of Lefort's truly political philosophy-its ideas formed in response to his own political experience and to the work of certain major figures within the tradition of political thought. Beginning with Lefort's most important single work, his book on Machiavelli, Flynn presents the philosopher's conceptions of politics, modernity, and interpretation in the context within which they took shape. He then draws on a wide variety of Lefort's works to explicate his notions of premodern and modern democracy in which totalitarianism, in Lefort's singular and highly influential theory, is identified as a permanent problem of modernity. A valuable exposition of one of the most important Continental philosophers of the post-World War II period, Flynn's book is itself a noteworthy work of interpretive philosophy, pursuing the ideas and issues addressed by Lefort to a point of unparalleled clarity and depth. (shrink)

In Nietzsche's Psychology of Ressentiment, Guy Elgat develops an interpretation of some of the central themes of Nietzsche's GM, which is one of his most systematic works and a pivotal part of his critique of the modern moral outlook that grew out of Christianity. Elgat's original approach is framed by two fundamental ideas: first, Nietzsche takes the concept of "moral justice" to be central to the morality he sets out to criticize; second, Nietzsche's suspicion toward moral justice is rooted in (...) its association with the affect of ressentiment. Thus, Elgat notes that ressentiment is frequently supposed either to express a sense of justice, or to... (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes was the first great English political philosopher. His work excited intense controversy among his contemporaries and continues to do so in our own time. In this masterly introduction to his work, Bernard Gert provides the first account of Hobbes’s political and moral philosophy that makes it clear why he is regarded as one of the best philosophers of all time in both of these fields. In a succinct and engaging analysis the book illustrates that the commonly accepted (...) view of Hobbes as holding psychological egoism is not only incompatible with his account of human nature but is also incompatible with the moral and political theories that he puts forward. It also explains why Hobbes’s contemporaries did not accept his explicit claim to be providing a natural law account of morality. Gert shows that for Hobbes, civil society is established by a free-gift of their right of nature by the citizens; it does not involve a mutual contract between citizens and sovereign. As injustice involves breaking a contract, the sovereign cannot be unjust; however, the sovereign can be guilty of ingratitude, which is immoral. This distinction between injustice and immorality is part of a sophisticated and nuanced political theory that is in stark contrast to the reading often incorrectly attributed to Hobbes that “might makes right”. It illustrates how Hobbes’s goal of avoiding civil war provides the key to understanding his moral and political philosophy. _Hobbes: Prince of Peace_ is likely to become the classic introduction to the work of Thomas Hobbes and will be a valuable resource for scholars and students seeking to understand the importance and relevance of his work today. (shrink)

These twenty-five essays span from ancient philosophy to Wittgenstein and express Williams’s conviction that studying the history of philosophy is an essential part of philosophy. Williams distinguishes a historical approach , which is focused on the context of a historical text and aims at the question of why some theory came up, from doing “history of philosophy,” aiming at a contribution to current philosophical debates by denying transhistorical identity and making use of the “alienation effect.”.

Thomas Hobbes was the first great English political philosopher. His work excited intense controversy among his contemporaries and continues to do so in our own time. In this masterly introduction to his work, Bernard Gert provides the first account of Hobbes’s political and moral philosophy that makes it clear why he is regarded as one of the best philosophers of all time in both of these fields. In a succinct and engaging analysis the book illustrates that the commonly accepted (...) view of Hobbes as holding psychological egoism is not only incompatible with his account of human nature but is also incompatible with the moral and political theories that he puts forward. It also explains why Hobbes’s contemporaries did not accept his explicit claim to be providing a natural law account of morality. Gert shows that for Hobbes, civil society is established by a free-gift of their right of nature by the citizens; it does not involve a mutual contract between citizens and sovereign. As injustice involves breaking a contract, the sovereign cannot be unjust; however, the sovereign can be guilty of ingratitude, which is immoral. This distinction between injustice and immorality is part of a sophisticated and nuanced political theory that is in stark contrast to the reading often incorrectly attributed to Hobbes that “might makes right”. It illustrates how Hobbes’s goal of avoiding civil war provides the key to understanding his moral and political philosophy. _Hobbes: Prince of Peace_ is likely to become the classic introduction to the work of Thomas Hobbes and will be a valuable resource for scholars and students seeking to understand the importance and relevance of his work today. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes was the first great English political philosopher. His work excited intense controversy among his contemporaries and continues to do so in our own time. In this masterly introduction to his work, Bernard Gert provides the first account of Hobbes’s political and moral philosophy that makes it clear why he is regarded as one of the best philosophers of all time in both of these fields. In a succinct and engaging analysis the book illustrates that the commonly accepted (...) view of Hobbes as holding psychological egoism is not only incompatible with his account of human nature but is also incompatible with the moral and political theories that he puts forward. It also explains why Hobbes’s contemporaries did not accept his explicit claim to be providing a natural law account of morality. Gert shows that for Hobbes, civil society is established by a free-gift of their right of nature by the citizens; it does not involve a mutual contract between citizens and sovereign. As injustice involves breaking a contract, the sovereign cannot be unjust; however, the sovereign can be guilty of ingratitude, which is immoral. This distinction between injustice and immorality is part of a sophisticated and nuanced political theory that is in stark contrast to the reading often incorrectly attributed to Hobbes that “might makes right”. It illustrates how Hobbes’s goal of avoiding civil war provides the key to understanding his moral and political philosophy. _Hobbes: Prince of Peace_ is likely to become the classic introduction to the work of Thomas Hobbes and will be a valuable resource for scholars and students seeking to understand the importance and relevance of his work today. (shrink)

I outline some of my work and results on my matter-gravity entanglement hypothesis, according to which the entropy of a closed quantum gravitational system is equal to the system’s matter-gravity entanglement entropy. The main arguments presented are: that this hypothesis is capable of resolving what I call the second-law puzzle, i.e. the puzzle as to how the entropy increase of a closed system can be reconciled with the asssumption of unitary time-evolution; that the black hole information loss puzzle may be (...) regarded as a special case of this second law puzzle and that therefore the same resolution applies to it; that the black hole thermal atmosphere puzzle can be resolved by adopting a radically different-from-usual description of quantum black hole equilibrium states, according to which they are total pure states, entangled between matter and gravity in such a way that the partial states of matter and gravity are each approximately thermal equilibrium states ; that the Susskind–Horowitz–Polchinski string-theoretic understanding of black hole entropy as the logarithm of the degeneracy of a long string cannot be quite correct but should be replaced by a modified understanding according to which it is the entanglement entropy between a long string and its stringy atmosphere, when in a total pure equilibrium state in a suitable box, which ) goes over, at strong-coupling, to a black hole in equilibrium with its thermal atmosphere. The modified understanding in is based on a general result, which I also describe, which concerns the likely state of a quantum system when it is weakly coupled to an energy-bath and the total state is a random pure state with a given energy. This result generalizes Goldstein et al.’s ‘canonical typicality’ result to systems which are not necessarily small. (shrink)

Let $D_{tt} $ denote the set of truth-table degrees. A bijection π: $D_{tt} \to \,D_{tt} $ is an automorphism if for all truth-table degrees x and y we have $ \leqslant _{tt} \,y\, \Leftrightarrow \,\pi (x)\, \leqslant _{tt} \,\pi (y)$ . We say an automorphism π is fixed on a cone if there is a degree b such that for all $x \geqslant _{tt} b$ we have π(x) = x. We first prove that for every 2-generic real X we have (...) X' $X' \le _{tt} \,X\, \oplus \,0'$ . We next prove that for every real $X \ge _{tt} \,0'$ there is a real Y such that $Y \oplus 0{\text{'}}\, \equiv _{tt} \,Y{\text{'}} \equiv _{tt} \,X$ . Finally, we use this to demonstrate that every automorphism of the truth-table degrees is fixed on a cone. (shrink)

Les croyances sont aujourd'hui mieux respectées, mais la crédulité est ignorée tandis qu'on s'évertue à croire. Banalisation derrière laquelle se cache une fonction psychique inquiétante. Il a donc semblé urgent de situer, préciser et expliquer celle-ci. Ceci alors que la penséee active, constructive, se voit fragiliséee, menacée, ou même étoufféee par l'explosion médiatique et informatique. Polémiquer en faveur de la vérité est une nécessité.

L'ouvrage a pour but d'introduire le lecteur à la philosophie japonaise contemporaine, en portant l'attention sur son représentant le plus célèbre : Nishida Kitarô, fondateur de l'Ecole de Kyôto. Au fil d'un décryptage des notions cardinales de sa pensée, il s'agit de montrer en quoi a consisté l'effort philosophique de Nishida et quel peut être son intérêt intrinsèque au milieu du paysage intellectuel international. C'est ici la proximité avec le courant phénoménologique qui est soulignée. Mais par-delà l'œuvre propre de Nishida, (...) il s'agit également d'exposer le contexte intellectuel dans lequel est née sa pensée, les sources de celle-ci dans la tradition orientale et l'influence que son travail philosophique a pu avoir sur l'évolution des idées au japon, au cœur du XXe siècle. Sont ainsi brièvement abordées, dans la foulée de la percée nishidienne, la dialectique praxique de Tanabe, l'ontologie religieuse de Nishitani, l'éthique de Watsuji et l'esthétique de Kuki. (shrink)