Working from the post-Workerist tradition, this essay re-specifies the phenomenon of immaterial labor. Immaterial labor is not simply a mode of work relevant to the information-based global economy. Instead, immaterial labor is inherent to the human condition: human beings materialize realities through the immaterial means of communication. This ontological approach to immaterial labor enables us to rethink the radical project: rather than trying to “change the world,” we are now called to create alternative realities that resist the subjugation of our (...) immaterial laboring. Since we are all immaterial laborers, we all have a stake in revolutionizing our realities. This essay provides a preliminary sketch of this political philosophy. (shrink)

This essay investigates a particular form of “affection” that has been neglected by the phenomenological tradition. This particular phenomenon is often referred to as the vibe, vibrations, or some variation thereof. This essay rearticulates “the vibe” as bodily emanation: human beings emanate feeling that is experienced by and through our bodies. My study of bodily emanation begins with Edmund Husserl’s notion of affectivity and then moves to Eugene T. Gendlin’s notion of the sentient body. This discussion enables my own argument: (...) Our bodies do not simply respond to the world in a sentient fashion, but also solicit sentience from one another. This solicitation of sentience is the basis of bodily emanation. I explicate bodily emanation through two realms of experience: the pre-conscious and the conscious. The first realm designates the manner in which our bodies summon emanation from one another in a continuous, multilateral fashion. Such preconscious solicitation precedes our conscious control and recognition. The second realm designates our ability to willfully project and direct particular vibes for particular purposes. This latter realm is what most people think of when they refer to “the vibe.” In general, this essay provides a detailed account of a particular phenomenon that most of us experience, but do not fully consider or attend to. (shrink)

Suppose all of the particles in the universe should happen to come to rest at the same time, in positions so arranged that all of the forces on every particle balance to zero at that time. What would happen next? Or rather, what does Newtonian mechanics say will happen next? Preface Inertia and Stasis 2.1 Stating the Law of Inertia more precisely 2.2 The stasis scenario Indeterministic Examples 3.1 Abstract example 3.2 Second example Non-Lipschitz Forces and Determinism Beyond the Stasis (...) Scenario CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Inspirados en el poeta Romantico John Keats (1795-1821), en este artículo meditamos sobre lo que puede ocurrir en el espacio educativo si los docentes cultivan y alimentan el carácter poético y la capacidad negativa. El artículo busca retratar una disposición docente particular, y el impacto que esa disposición podría tener en la experiencia educativa de los docentes y sus estudiantes. Comenzando con algunas consideraciones sobre el carácter poético y la capacidad negativa, el artículo se propone ponderar cómo un docente con (...) carácter poético desafía la concepción familiar de la educación como una "búsqueda por la certeza" haciendo de la educación una travesía sin norte por las aguas de lo que no se sabe ni conoce. (shrink)

This paper examines the assumptions underpinning one of the constitutive elements of the modern concept of art: the idea of aesthetic autonomy. I argue that the orientation of recent art practice towards what has come to be termed ‘site-specificity’ is best understood as a progressive relinquishment of the principle of aesthetic autonomy. I develop this position through a close analysis of the work of Miwon Kwon. The paper is intended as a case-study that investigates the problematic relation between historical and (...) philosophical enquiry. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

En este texto se examina la alteración de la subjetividad kantiana propuesta por Jean-Luc Marion. Marion cuestiona la noción de un sujeto estable y autónomo, argumentando que el sujeto debe estar en constante relación con lo saturado y lo otro. Rechaza la idea de un yo cogito cartesiano y busca una reconcepción del ser en relación con el otro y lo trascendente. Marion destaca la importancia del amor como centro de la subjetividad y plantea que el sujeto no busca tanto (...) su subsistencia como el amor y ser amado. El texto explora las implicaciones de esta perspectiva en relación con la temporalidad y la manifestación fenomenológica. Marion propone una reconfiguración del sujeto que se revela en la relación con lo saturado y la co-constitución con el otro. (shrink)

Precis by the autor of the book How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015).Sinopsis del autor del libro How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015).

Članek ponovno odpira razpravo o recepciji dela Louisa Althusserja v teoriji in kritiki kulture v luči nedavnih angleških prevodov posthumnih del tega francoskega filozofa, vključno z nedokončanim Sur la reproduction, ki vsebuje tudi spis »Ideologija in ideološki aparati države«. Izmed marksističnih mislecev njegove generacije ni bil nihče v tolikšni meri tarča očitkov teoreticizma in političnega odpadništva kot prav Althusser, kar Rancière opisuje kot »althusserjansko zanikanje političnih učinkov«. Članek predstavi pregled zgodovinskih teženj in nasprotnih teženj, ki jih najdemo v Althusserjevih spisih (...) med »dolgimi šestdesetimi«, in trdi, da ne smemo podcenjevati vloge teorije in teoretikov v prid osvobajajočih praks maja 1968, ampak moramo Althusserjev domnevni teoreticizem misliti v kontekstu politično motiviranih teoretskih bojev in rivalstev, ki so določali »politiko njegovega časa«. V zaključku opažamo, da bi preusmeritev pozornosti k tem bojem lahko pripeljala do drugačnega pojmovanja vloge teorije po letu ‘68. (shrink)

Questo articolo esplora la nascita della Fenomenologia americana nella "Nuova Fenomenologia" di Josiah Royce, proposta nel suo Thought Diary (1878-1880), in dialogo sia con il tema della pratica contemplativa di Husserl sia con la versione del pragmatismo di Peirce.

The Philosophy of Mixed Martial Arts: Squaring the Octagon, edited by Jason Holt and Mark Ramsay, is part of the Ethics and Sport Routledge book series. It is a general academic text that encompass...

¿Cómo reacciona la ciudadanía en un sistema político polarizado ante una emergencia como la pandemia de la COVID-19?, ¿cómo procesa la ciudadanía las narrativas polarizadas que están en conflicto?, y ¿qué imagen se forman de la gestión política de la amenaza de la pandemia? En EE. UU, hay que retrotraerse a la epidemia de la polio de hace 70 años para encontrar una emergencia sanitaria como la pandemia de la COVID-19. No obstante, hay importantes diferencias; en la década de 1950, (...) el clima político de los EE.UU. era mucho más uniforme y consensuado que el actual, profundamente dividido y polarizado. Este trabajo utiliza datos de un estudio longitudinal realizado durante 35 años en personas jóvenes de la Generación X (ahora ya en la cuarentena) y datos provenientes de encuestas realizadas en Estados Unidos durante tres décadas, con el propósito de examinar los patrones de adquisición de la información en la comprensión de una nueva amenaza. Nuestro análisis de los últimos 35 años de la Generación X muestra que, en las elecciones de 2020, el factor predictivo del voto individual que tuvo más fuerza fue una ideología política polarizada, pero, aquellas personas que contaban con una mejor comprensión del coronavirus fueron más críticas con la gestión de la pandemia de la COVID-19 que realizó la administración de Donald Trump y estuvieron más predispuestas a votar por Joe Biden que a votar por Trump. Un análisis paralelo de una muestra probabilística representativa de personas adultas estadounidenses en 2020 reveló el mismo patrón de influencia del partidismo ideológico, la comprensión del coronavirus y la evaluación de la administración de Trump. Los resultados muestran que el conocimiento y la comprensión pueden proporcionar un efecto moderador crítico en un sistema político polarizado y dividido. (shrink)

In this article Jason Brennan’s arguments about the moral duties relating to our practice of voting are examined. These arguments provide an epistocratic approach of politics and present a conception of abstention at four levels: abstention as a personal choice, as a moral responsibility, as a duty legally enforceable and as an obligation decided by lot. The contrast with John Stuart Mill’s positions helps to highlight the postdemocratic ambivalences and the latent paternalism behind Brennan’s rejection of massive voting and (...) electoral democracy. A deliberative, Millian-inspired understanding of abstention also allows questioning the assumption in Brennan’s successive proposals that there is no significant loss in overlooking the political valence of qualified abstention. (shrink)

Las teorías relativistas acerca de las atribuciones de conocimiento sostienen que el valor de verdad de una atribución de conocimiento está determinado por el contexto de evaluación de la atribución. Me ocuparé de dos de las principales críticas que se le han formulado al relativismo. Por un lado, Jason Stanley niega que el relativismo pueda dar cuenta de la factividad del conocimiento. Por otra parte, Manuel García Carpintero sostiene que el relativismo se compromete con una inaceptable imagen sobre las (...) normas que rigen la práctica asertiva. Responderé ambas objeciones. Presentaré primero un modo de dar cuenta de la factividad no evaluado por Stanley. La respuesta a García Carpintero, por su parte, supondrá distinguir en qué sentido la verdad es, y en que otro no es, una norma de la aserción.Relativist’s theories about knowledge attributions maintain that the truth value of such assertions is partially fixed by the assessment context. I will answer two of the main objections that it has received. On the one side, Jason Stanley denies that relativism can explain the factivity of knowledge. On the other side, Manuel García Carpintero believes that relativism is commited to an unacceptable picture of assertion. The answer to Stanley’s objection involves a way of explaining factivity that he has not evaluated. The answer to García Carpintero involves distinguishing in what way truth is, and in what way it isn’t, a norm of assertion. (shrink)

Jason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works characterises and explores one democratically problematic kind of propaganda, ‘undermining propaganda’, which involves ‘[a] contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet is of a kind that tends to erode those very ideals’. Stanley’s model for how undermining propaganda functions is Rae Langton and Caroline West’s treatment of moves in pornographic language games. However, Stanley doesn’t consider whether his theory of propaganda might in turn illuminate the harmful nature (...) of pornography, in light of the familiar contention that some pornography acts as a kind of misogynistic propaganda. Drawing on Catharine MacKinnon’s writings on pornography, this paper will explore one way of developing the claim that pornography sometimes functions as undermining propaganda, in something close to Stanley’s sense. Moreover, I will suggest that the discussion points to a new response to the so-called authority problem for Rae Langton’s silencing argument against the protected status of pornography.El libro de Jason Stanley How Propaganda Works caracteriza y explora un tipo de propaganda democráticamente problemático, la ‘propaganda debilitadora’, que envuelve ‘[una] contribución al discurso público que se presenta como si incorporase determinados ideales, pero que es de un tipo que tiende a erosionar esos mismos ideales’. El modelo de Stanley para el funcionamiento de la propaganda debilitadora es el del tratamiento de los movimientos en los juegos de lenguaje pornográficos debido a Rae Langton y Caroline West. Sin embargo, Stanley no reflexiona acerca de si su teoría sobre la propaganda podría, a su vez, iluminar la dañina naturaleza de la pornografía, a la luz de la conocida tesis de que hay pornografía que actúa como una forma de propaganda misógina. A partir de los trabajos de Catharine MacKinnon sobre pornografía, este artículo pretende explorar una forma de desarrollar la tesis de que la pornografía funciona en ocasiones como propaganda debilitadora, en un sentido próximo al de Stanley. Además, sugeriré que la discusión apunta a una nueva respuesta al llamado problema de la autoridad en relación con el argumento del silenciamiento debido a Rae Langton en contra de un estatuto de protección para la pornografía. (shrink)

I analyze Jason Stanley’s model for how propaganda works, paying close attention to Stanley’s own rhetoric. I argue that Stanley’s language be supplemented with a vocabulary that helps us to attend to what sorts of things move democratic knowers (epistemically speaking), what sorts of things do not, and why. In addition, I argue that the reasonableness necessary for considering the views of others within democratic deliberation ought to be understood, not as an empathic, but as an interactive capacity. Finally, (...) I critique some of the ways in which Stanley speaks about the marginalized populations he aims to support.Analizo el modelo debido a Jason Stanley sobre el modo en que funciona la propaganda, prestando atención en particular a la retórica del propio Stanley. Argumento la conveniencia de que el lenguaje de Stanley se complemente con un vocabulario que nos ayude a prestar atención a las cosas que motivan a los agentes de conocimiento democráticos (epistémicamente hablando), a las que no lo hacen, y por qué. Adicionalmente, argumento que la razonabilidad que se necesita para tomar en consideración los puntos de vista de otros en la deliberación democrática debería entenderse como una capacidad no de empatía, sino de interacción. Finalmente, critico alguna de las formas en que Stanley habla de las poblaciones marginadas a las que quiere dar apoyo. (shrink)

This article examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon, “Epistemic Landscapes and the Division of Cognitive Labor”, that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the division of cognitive labor, identifying the errors that led (...) to their conclusions. Furthermore, we generalize the epistemic landscape model, showing that one should be skeptical about the benefits of social learning in epistemically complex environments. (shrink)

Research into the roots of ideological extremism has traditionally focused on the social, economic, and demographic factors that make people vulnerable to adopting hostile attitudes toward outgroups. However, there is insufficient empirical work on individual differences in implicit cognition and information processing styles that amplify an individual’s susceptibility to endorsing violence to protect an ideological cause or group. Here we present original evidence that objectively assessed cognitive inflexibility predicts extremist attitudes, including a willingness to harm others, and sacrifice one’s life (...) for the group. Across two samples (N = 1,047) from the United Kingdom and United States, structural equation models demonstrated that cognitive inflexibility predicted endorsement of violence to protect the national ingroup, which in turn predicted a willingness to die for the group. These statistical models accounted for an average of 31.4% of the variance in willingness to die for the group, after accounting for demographic variables. Furthermore, cognitive inflexibility was related to greater confidence in the decision to sacrifice one’s life in an ingroup trolley problem scenario. Analysis of participants’ performance on the cognitive tasks revealed that cognitive rigidity – distinctly from other aspects of cognition – was specifically implicated as a cognitive antecedent of extremist attitudes. Implications for the study of radicalization and identity fusion throug... (shrink)

Alongside a revival of interest in Thomism in philosophy, scholars have realised its relevance when addressing certain contemporary issues in bioethics. This book offers a rigorous interpretation of Aquinas's metaphysics and ethical thought, and highlights its significance to questions in bioethics. Jason T. Eberl applies Aquinas’s views on the seminal topics of human nature and morality to key questions in bioethics at the margins of human life – questions which are currently contested in the academia, politics and the media (...) such as: When does a human person’s life begin? How should we define and clinically determine a person’s death? Is abortion ever morally permissible? How should we resolve the conflict between the potential benefits of embryonic stem cell research and the lives of human embryos? Does cloning involve a misuse of human ingenuity and technology? What forms of treatment are appropriate for irreversibly comatose patients? How should we care for patients who experience unbearable suffering as they approach the end of life? _Thomistic Principles and Bioethics_ presents a significant philosophical viewpoint which will motivate further dialogue amongst religious and secular arenas of inquiry concerning such complex issues of both individual and public concern. (shrink)

The questions of whether there is a shared nature common to all human beings and, if so, what essential qualities define this nature are among the most widely discussed topics in the history of philosophy and remain the subject of perennial interest and controversy. This book offers a metaphysical investigation of the composition of the human essence-that is, with what is a human being identical or what types of parts are necessary for a human being to exist: an immaterial mind, (...) a physical body, a functioning brain, a soul? It also considers the criterion of identity for a human being across time and change-that is, what is required for a human being to continue existing as a person despite undergoing physical and psychological changes over time? Jason Eberl's investigation presents and defends a theoretical perspective from the thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas. Advancing beyond descriptive historical analysis, this book places Aquinas's account of human nature into direct comparison with several prominent contemporary theories: substance dualism, emergentism, animalism, constitutionalism, four-dimensionalism, and embodied mind theory. There are practical implications of exploring these theories as they inform various conclusions regarding when human beings first come into existence-at conception, during gestation, or after birth-and how we ought to define death for human beings. Finally, each of these viewpoints offers a distinctive rationale as to whether, and if so how, human beings may survive death. This book's central argument is that the Thomistic account of human nature includes several desirable features that other theories lack and offers a cohesive portrait of one's continued existence from conception through life to death and beyond. (shrink)

Amodel for inventing newsignals is introduced in the context of sender–receiver games with reinforcement learning. If the invention parameter is set to zero, it reduces to basic Roth–Erev learning applied to acts rather than strategies, as in Argiento et al. (Stoch. Process. Appl. 119:373–390, 2009). If every act is uniformly reinforced in every state it reduces to the Chinese Restaurant Process—also known as the Hoppe–Pólya urn—applied to each act. The dynamics can move players from one signaling game to another during (...) the learning process. Invention helps agents avoid pooling and partial pooling equilibria. (shrink)

The process of engaging in historical empathy holds the potential for significant curricular and dispositional benefits for students in history classrooms. In order to realize these benefits, classroom teachers must be able to integrate historical empathy into their existing planning and teaching; a process that would benefit from empirical examination. This single subject case study examined the pedagogical reasoning process of an experienced classroom teacher who integrated historical empathy into an existing instructional unit designed to foster student knowledge of social (...) control as an enduring historical understanding. The findings of this study suggest that experienced teachers may only be able to partially anticipate the unique pedagogical needs integrating historical empathy requires, and that a holistic examination of pedagogical reasoning during all phases of planning and teaching may be most suitable for the task. (shrink)

A clear and concise introduction to the political philosophy of Alain Badiou, centred in a political context.

Disability-positive philosophers often note a troubling tendency to dismiss what disabled people say about their well-being. This chapter seeks to get clearer on why this tendency might be troubling. It argues that recent appeals to lived experience, testimonial injustice, and certain challenges to adaptive-preference reasoning do not fully explain what is wrong with questioning the happiness of disabled people. It then argues that common attempts to debunk the claim that disabled people are happy are worrisome because they threaten everyone’s well-being (...) and are further challenged by an argument from moral risk. (shrink)

This paper develops the outlines of a pragmatic, adaptive management-based approach toward the control of invasive nonnative species (INS) through a case study of Kings Bay/crystal River, a large artesian springs ecosystem that is one of Florida’s most important habitats for endangered West Indian manatees (Trichechus manatus). Building upon recent critiques of invasion biology, principles of adaptive management, and our own interview and participant–observer research, we argue that this case study represents an example in which rigid application of invasion biology’s (...) a␣priori imperative to minimize INS has produced counterproductive results from both an ecological and social standpoint. As such, we recommend that INS control in Kings Bay should be relaxed in conjunction with an overall program of adaptive ecosystem management that includes meaningful participation and input from non-institutional stakeholders. However, we also note that adaptive management and INS control are by no means mutually exclusive, in Kings Bay or elsewhere. Instead, we suggest that adaptive management offers a means by which INS control efforts can emerge from—and be evaluated through—ongoing scientific research and participatory dialogue about the condition of specific places, rather than non-contextual assumptions about the harmfulness of INS as a general class. (shrink)

I have argued that substance ontology cannot be used to determine the moral status of embryos. Patrick Lee, Christopher Tollefsen, and Robert George wrote a Reply to those arguments in this Journal. In that Reply, Lee, Tollefsen, and George defended and clarified their position that their substance ontology arguments prove that the zygote and the adult into which it develops are the same entity that share the same essence. Here, I show the following: Even using the substance ontology framework to (...) which Lee, Tollefsen, and George subscribe, we cannot know when in development substance changes cease. Substance ontology cannot therefore be used to assign moral status to embryos. The Lee, Tollefsen, and George substance ontology framework should not be applied to the study of development or to biological discourse in general, because this framework depends on premises that do not apply. (shrink)

Most people seem to believe that it is wrong to cause needless suffering and death to non-human animals, and yet most people also contribute to the needless suffering and death of a great many animals. If speciesism is understood as a psychological prejudice—the tendency of an individual human agent to disregard the interests of animals—then this fact is extremely difficult to explain. I argue that once speciesism is understood structurally—as a matter of injustice rather than a matter of interpersonal wrongdoing (...) or individual prejudice—the project of explaining how so many humans are implicated in animal suffering becomes much more tractable. Drawing on the work of feminist theorists such as Sally Haslanger and Catharine MacKinnon, I suggest a way of reconceiving the question of the moral status of animals as a political question about the construction of animals and animality through our social, cultural, legal, and linguistic practices. (shrink)

Some feminists and animal advocates defend what I call the Linked Oppressions Thesis, according to which the oppression of women and the oppression of animals are linked causally, materially, normatively, and/or conceptually. Alasdair Cochrane offers objections to several versions of the Linked Oppressions Thesis and concludes that the Thesis should be rejected in all its forms. In this paper I defend the Thesis against Cochrane's objections as well as objections leveled by Beth Dixon, and argue that the failure of these (...) objections illuminates the idea of linked oppressions as well as misunderstandings of the Linked Oppressions Thesis, and may provide guidance to philosophers theorizing animal rights from a feminist perspective. (shrink)

Given the significance of Nicholas of Cusa’s ecclesiastical career, it is no surprise that a good deal of academic attention on Nicholas has focused on his role in the history of the church. Nevertheless, it would also be fair to say that a good deal of the attention that is focused on the life and thought of Nicholas of Cusa is the legacy of prior generations of scholars who saw in his theoretical work an opportunity to define the most salient (...) features of transformations in the habits of thinking leading from the Middle Ages into the epoch of modernity. Thus, although contemporary scholars have not been able to achieve any clear consensus on the question of whether Nicholas belongs to the Middle Ages or to modernity, the field of Cusanus studies has become much more attentive to the possibility that the uniqueness and significance of Nicholas’s vision is a function of his ability to synthesize and redeploy a variety of strands in the Catholic intellectual tradition—strands that are as apt to involve practical matters of canon law and church reform as they are to hinge on a unique and richly developed mystical theology. Given the flourishing of the attention devoted to Nicholas in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the choices about which texts to include in this article were difficult ones. The rationale for this article’s predominant focus on scholarship of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that, insofar as the recent studies listed here enter into the debates that have been shaped by their predecessors, the sources mentioned here will point readers to the prior work in the field not acknowledged here. (shrink)

During the 1970s and 1980s, political psychologists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook focused political scientists’ attention on online processing. Borrowing from the new field of social cognition in psychology, they argued that voters’ evaluations of candidates are the products of a summing up of reactions to happenings during a campaign. Voters might not remember the specific events later on, but their running tallies of reactions over the duration of the campaign would ensure that they take (...) the forgotten information into account when entering the voting booth. Later, these same scholars yet again borrowed from (a very changed) psychology, and argued that many people, especially the most politically sophisticated, try to confirm their current political evaluations—for example, by seeking out confirmatory evidence and dismissing evidence that challenges their attitudes. We ask whether online processing and motivated reasoning have the same or different implications for democratic governance, and whether the two empirical perspectives can be reconciled. (shrink)

During the 1970s and 1980s, political psychologists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook focused political scientists’ attention on online processing. Borrowing from the new field of social cognition in psychology, they argued that voters’ evaluations of candidates are the products of a summing up of reactions to happenings during a campaign. Voters might not remember the specific events later on, but their running tallies of reactions over the duration of the campaign would ensure that they take (...) the forgotten information into account when entering the voting booth. Later, these same scholars yet again borrowed from (a very changed) psychology, and argued that many people, especially the most politically sophisticated, try to confirm their current political evaluations—for example, by seeking out confirmatory evidence and dismissing evidence that challenges their attitudes. We ask whether online processing and motivated reasoning have the same or different implications for democratic governance, and whether the two empirical perspectives can be reconciled. (shrink)

Some authors have claimed that ante rem structuralism has problems with structures that have indiscernible places. In response, I argue that there is no requirement that mathematical objects be individuated in a non-trivial way. Metaphysical principles and intuitions to the contrary do not stand up to ordinary mathematical practice, which presupposes an identity relation that, in a sense, cannot be defined. In complex analysis, the two square roots of –1 are indiscernible: anything true of one of them is true of (...) the other. I suggest that ‘i’ functions like a parameter in natural deduction systems. I gave an early version of this paper at a workshop on structuralism in mathematics and science, held in the Autumn of 2006, at Bristol University. Thanks to the organizers, particularly Hannes Leitgeb, James Ladyman, and Øystein Linnebo, to my commentator Richard Pettigrew, and to the audience there. The paper also benefited considerably from a preliminary session at the Arché Research Centre at the University of St Andrews. I am indebted to my colleagues Craige Roberts, for help with the linguistics literature, and Ben Caplan and Gabriel Uzquiano, for help with the metaphysics. Thanks also to Hannes Leitgeb and Jeffrey Ketland for reading an earlier version of the manuscript and making helpful suggestions. I also benefited from conversations with Richard Heck, John Mayberry, Kevin Scharp, and Jason Stanley. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The relationship between Goethe and Salomon Maimon has only been touched on once in the literature, and further clarification of the link between them remains a desideratum. Below I propose that the way to grasp their seeing eye to eye is through Spinoza, and specifically Spinoza's notion of scientia intuitiva. Initially I provide some context in order to illustrate what makes Maimon's role here rather unique. Then I sketch the relationship Maimon and Goethe had both to Spinoza and each other (...) while emphasizing what is at stake. I conclude with various new findings. (shrink)

This chapter considers Nietzsche's and Spinoza's views on freedom – a theme of central interest to both thinkers. It draws from Yonover in order to provide an outline of their rejections of one conception of freedom: freedom of the will. The chapter also considers their positive visions of a very different kind of freedom, which rather consists in self‐determination. Nietzsche's naturalism surely plays a major role in his rejection of freedom of the will, too. Nietzsche and Spinoza praise a comparable (...) kind of freedom characterized especially by the primary elements. Spinoza writes in the first appendix of the Ethics that at least one portion of the foremost “prejudice” to undermine is the idea that God “directs all things to some certain end”. (shrink)

The essay examines the ancient Greek origin of philosophy relative to the concept of wisdom. The nature of the sage is first considered. The sage is one who is deemed wise in his or her performances. But what is ‘wise’ about such performances? The Socratic denial of sage status is considered in reference to this. Socrates concludes that he is not wise as the gods are wise, but that he is wise insofar as he knows that he is not wise. (...) The apparent contradiction is resolved through the distinction between human (finite) and divine (infinite) wisdom. The latter notion is further examined in the works of Aristotle who articulates the “classical paradigm” of philosophy in pursuit of infinite wisdom. The attributes of infinite wisdom are identified, and the essay concludes with a discussion of the sagely performance of infinite wisdom, Aristotle himself serving as the representative example. (shrink)

I argue that the simple foreknowledge view, according to which God knows at some time t 1 what an agent S will do at t 2 , is incompatible with human free will. I criticize two arguments in favor of the thesis that the simple foreknowledge view is consistent with human freedom, and conclude that, even if divine foreknowledge does not causally compel human action, foreknowledge is nevertheless relevantly similar to other cases in which human freedom is undermined. These cases (...) include those in which certain human actions are logically, rather than causally, foreclosed. (shrink)