There are problems with egoism as a theory, but what matters here is the point that intuitively ethics is thought to be about the good of others, so that focusing on your own good seems wrong from the start. Virtues are not just character traits, however, since forgetfulness or stubbornness are not virtues. Virtues are character traits which are in some way desirable. Criticism is generally renewed at this point on the grounds that claims about flourishing are now including claims (...) about virtue, and are thus no longer common ground to the defender and the critic of virtue ethics. But virtue ethics has never held that they are, so this is not a problem. It is only to be expected that the virtuous will differ from the nonvirtuous in their assessments of flourishing, because we are dealing here with virtue in the context of a formally characterized conception of flourishing. (shrink)

This paper investigates the norm of presupposition, as one pervasive type of indirect speech act. It argues against the view that sees presuppositions as an indirect counterpart of the direct speech act of assertion and proposes instead that they are much more similar to the direct speech act of assumption. More concretely, it suggests that the norm that governs presuppositions is not an epistemic or doxastic attitude such as knowledge, justified belief, or mere belief; it's a practical attitude, most plausibly (...) the attitude of rational acceptance. This view has important ramifications well beyond debates in philosophy of language and linguistics. It affects not only our view of which speech act sequences are fine and which are off; it bears on whether presuppositions can function as testimony, whether they can be lies, and whether they are ontologically committal, thus addressing central topics in epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Consequentialism is the view that the rightness or wrongness of actions depend solely on their consequences. It is one of the most influential, and controversial, of all ethical theories. In this book, Julia Driver introduces and critically assesses consequentialism in all its forms. After a brief historical introduction to the problem, Driver examines utilitarianism, and the arguments of its most famous exponents, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, and explains the fundamental questions underlying utilitarian theory: what value is to (...) be specified and how it is to be maximized. Driver also discusses indirect forms of consequentialism, the important theories of motive consequentialism and virtue consequentialism, and explains why the distinction between subjective and objective consequentialism is so important. Including helpful features such as a glossary, chapter summaries, and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Consequentialism is ideal for students seeking an authoritative and clearly explained survey of this important problem. (shrink)

Ist die Einwirkung eines freien Willens räumlich möglich ohne Widerspruch gegen die Arbeitserhaltung? ist ein unveränderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1898. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernährung, Medizin und weiteren Genres.Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur.Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitäten erhältlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bücher neu und trägt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und (...) historischem Wissen auch für die Zukunft bei. (shrink)

This paper argues that the vitalist monisms of Anne Conway and Margaret Cavendish. Even though Conway is often cited as a proponent of a thoroughgoing ‘spiritualist’ ontology and Cavendish as the advocate of a similarly thoroughgoing materialism, their views turn out to be much closer than they may initially seem. Apart from highlighting the more radical nature of Conway’s position, such a reframing also has the added advantage of bringing the similarities between her own ‘spiritual’ monism and the vitalist ‘materialisms’ (...) of her time into sharper relief. As F. Wunderlich emphasizes, the notion of subtle matter pervaded the natural sciences of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. The chapter provides a brief sketch of Cavendish’s ‘materialism’ and compares it to Conway’s view of created substance, drawing out a number of relevant similarities. It asks what may have motivated Conway and Cavendish to move beyond the materialism-immaterialism divide by ‘spiritualizing’ matter in this way. (shrink)

Looks at the psychological nature of depression and discusses its portrayal in literature and art.

This entry provides an overview of the current state of the debate between epistemic permissivists and impermissivists. Three important choice points for the permissivist are identified, and implications are discussed for plausibility of the resulting versions of permissivism.

Discussions about the morality of slavery are a central part of the history of early modern philosophy. This book explores the philosophical ideas, theories, and arguments that occur in eighteenth-century debates about slavery, with a particular focus on the role that race plays in these debates. This exploration reveals how closely Blackness and slavery had come to be associated and how common it was to believe that Black people are natural slaves, or naturally destined for slavery. The book examines not (...) just well-known authors like David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but also less widely studied philosophers like Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Lemuel Haynes, and Olympe de Gouges. By presenting philosophically important aspects of debates about slavery in eighteenth-century North America and Europe, the book aims to be a valuable resource for scholars, instructors, and students who are curious about a topic that historians of philosophy have so far neglected. (shrink)

The plan for this volume emerged during the international Leipzig conference commemorating the centenary of the death of Gustav Fechner.

The format of this volume in the Library of Living Philosophers series provides for a detailed interaction between those who interpret and critique Julia Kristeva's work and Kristeva herself, giving broad coverage, from diverse viewpoints, of all the major topics establishing her reputation. This work begins with her autobiography, which provides an excellent introduction to her work, situating it in relation to major political, intellectual, and cultural movements of the time. The major part of the book is comprised of (...) thirty-six essays by Kristeva's foremost interpreters and critics, together with her replies to the essays. These encounters cover an exceptionally wide range of theoretical and literary writing. The strong international and multidisciplinary focus includes authors from over ten countries, and spans the fields of philosophy, semiotics, literature, psychoanalysis, feminist thought, political theory, art, and religion. A comprehensive bibliography of works by Kristeva is included. (shrink)

Ausgehend von Lucian Freuds Bild »Painter Working, Reflection« (1993) entwirft Julia Regina Meer eine korporale Philosophie der Bilder. Das Bild avanciert dabei zum Ausgangspunkt des Denkens, was eine methodische Abgrenzung zu den Bildwissenschaften wie auch zur Bildtheorie ermöglicht. In Anlehnung an die Philosophie von Jean-Luc Nancy schlägt sie ein affirmatives Konzept von Körperlichkeit vor, das auf dem Grenzbegriff der Expeausition - der körperlichen Ausgesetztheit entlang der Haut - beruht. Wie der Selbstakt von Freud zeigt, potenzieren Bilder dieses Ausgesetztsein, da (...) sie nicht nur einen Bildinhalt ausstellen, sondern immer auch den Bildkörper mitaussetzen. (shrink)

This article develops the argument that non-cosmopolitan considerations of justice justify relief of sovereign debt for highly indebted poor states. In particular, the article claims that considerations of national determination warrant some debt-forgiveness in the backdrop of unfair terms of global interaction. In a context of inequality, poor countries cannot generally afford to disregard the costs of ignoring the interests of the wealthiest states. Patterns of unbalanced interaction undermine national self-determination by limiting the poor countries' effective capacity to choose between (...) different policies to achieve development and other worthy goals. In concrete, this article suggests that unequal terms of interaction constrain national self-determination by making of sovereign debt an 'escape mechanism' in the absence of rival alternatives to palliate the effects of underdevelopment and related afflictions, despite the causes of sovereign debt being partly domestic, possibly. Thus, this paper views national self-determination as dependent on the availability of acceptable (non-unbearably burdensome) policy options on the part of states. (shrink)

On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice presents a view of morality that is inspired by the later Wittgenstein. Hermann explores the ethical implications of Wittgenstein's remarks on doubt, justification, rule-following, certainty and training, offering an alternative to interpretations of Wittgenstein's work that view it as being intrinsically ethical. The book scrutinises cases in which doubt and justification do not make sense, and contrasts certain justificatory demands made by philosophers with the role of moral justification in concrete situations. It offers an (...) account of moral certainty, which is linked to a view of moral competence. Contrary to the views propounded by philosophers who emphasise the importance of moral principles, it is argued that moral agency is first and foremost a matter of having certain capacities. The book takes an anti-intellectualist stance and remains close to concrete practices. The practice-based view of morality it endorses has implications for moral education, intercultural moral dialogue and the prospects for moral agreement, change and progress. (shrink)

Epistemic permissivism is the view that it is possible for two people to rationally hold incompatible attitudes toward some proposition on the basis of one body of evidence. In this paper, I defend a particular version of permissivism – unacknowledged permissivism (UP) – which says that permissivism is true, but that no one can ever rationally believe that she is in a permissive case. I show that counter to what virtually all authors who have discussed UP claim, UP is an (...) attractive view: it is compatible with the intuitive motivations for permissivism and avoids a significant challenge to permissivism: the arbitrariness objection. (shrink)

We undergo a traumatic experience, such as a life-threatening accident or a brutal attack. We survive a period of relentless stress, perhaps because we are in a war zone and witness or commit atrocities. Raised by parents who are alcoholic or mentally ill, we endure traumatic experiences on a daily basis. Or, we are ignored, neglected, or treated as playthings by narcissistic parents, who themselves were ignored and neglected, and on and on through generations. To survive these experiences, perhaps we (...) dissociate. This can take various forms. In the extreme form, we remove ourselves, psychically speaking, from the situation, perhaps by adopting the role... (shrink)

DieBeratungklinische EthikberatungArzt-Patienten-BeziehungArztArzt-Patientenbeziehung ist durch ein asymmetrisches Verhältnis geprägt, welches sich bereits aus den Umständen seines Zustandekommens ergibt. Der Patient begegnet dem Arzt in einer Situation existentieller NotNot als jemand, der unter Schmerzen und/oder Angst leidet und Hilfe sucht. Er ist dabei angewiesen auf ein vertrauensvolles Verhältnis zu seinem Arzt, der seine Sorgen und Ängste ernstnimmt und durch seine Fachkompetenz die vorliegende KrankheitKrankheit feststellen und heilen oder zumindest lindern kann.

Julia Markovits develops a desire-based, internalist account of what normative reasons are--an account which is compatible with the idea that moral reasons can apply to all of us, regardless of our desires. She builds on Kant's formula of humanity to defend universal moral reasons, and addresses the age-old question of why we should be moral.

This essay examines the thought that our right actions have moral worth only if we perform them for the right reasons. It argues against the view, often ascribed to Kant, that morally worthy actions must be performed because they are right and argues that Kantians and others ought instead to accept the view that morally worthy actions are those performed for the reasons why they are right. In other words, morally worthy actions are those for which the reasons why they (...) were performed (the reasons motivating them) and the reasons why they morally ought to have been performed (the reasons morally justifying them) coincide. The essay calls this the Coincident Reasons Thesis and argues that it provides plausible necessary and sufficient conditions for morally worthy action, defending the claim against proposed counterexamples. It ends by showing that the plausibility of the thesis, which it argues is largely independent of any particular ethical standpoint, gives us some reason to doubt a class of ethical theories that includes utilitarianism. (shrink)

Sentences containing predicates of personal taste exhibit two striking features: whether they are true seems to lie in the eye of the beholder and whether they are true can be—and often is—subject to disagreement. In the last decade, there has been a lively debate about how to account for these two features. In this paper, I shall argue for two claims: first, I shall show that even the most promising approaches so far offered by proponents of so-called indexical contextualism fail (...) to account for the disagreement feature. They might be able to account for some disagreement data, but they have trouble accounting for two kinds of disagreement data that caused the estrangement from indexical contextualism and the migration to relativism in the first place: the denial and the retraction data. Second, I shall show that we still do not have to abandon indexical contextualism, because what I shall call the superiority approach—a new pragmatically extended version of indexical contextualism—can very well account for the data. (shrink)

Wie lassen sich Banalität, Trivialität und Kitsch voneinander unterscheiden und welche Rolle spielen sie für Kunst und Literatur? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen betrachtet Julia Genz Banalität, Trivialität und Kitsch als Bestandteile von Diskursen, in denen Zugänglichkeit bewertet wird. Zugänglichkeit ist dabei nicht von vornherein gegeben, sondern muss diskursiv erst hergestellt werden. Durch die Ausdifferenzierung in soziale, kognitive und emotionale Zugänglichkeit lassen sich die drei bislang nicht überzeugend getrennten Bereiche voneinander abgrenzen und mit ihren Gegenpolen Exklusivität, Komplexität und Kunst in (...) ein umfassendes Ästhetikmodell integrieren. (shrink)

Many people follow Grice in thinking that all conversational implicatures are cancellable. And often enough, they use this insight as a test for conversational implicatures. If you want to find out whether something is a conversational implicature, the test has it, you should ask yourself whether the thing in question is cancellable; if you find that it is not cancellable, you can infer that it is not a conversational implicature. If you find that it is cancellable, you can infer that (...) it might well be a conversational implicature and that you should now do further testing. Various philosophers and linguists have questioned the test however. Some have held that Grice's cancellability claim is subject to counterexamples and that the test is not reliable. Others have argued that even though Grice's claim can be defended against the examples in question, the test is not as informative as people have hoped. This article provides an overview of the recent discussion on the cancellability test and suggests a way forward. (shrink)

Elinor Mason has provided an account of blame and blameworthiness that is pluralistic. There are, broadly speaking, three ways in which we aptly blame -- and ordinary sense, directed at those with poor quality of the will, and then a detached sense and an extended sense, in which blame is aptly directed towards those without poor quality of the will as it is normally understood. In this essay I explore and critically discuss Mason's account. While I argue that she has (...) identified interesting aspects of the way in which we hold people morally responsible, I disagree with certain features of the account, in particular, that ordinary blame issues in demands and that there is any deep sense in which we can simply decide to take on responsibility. (shrink)

This commentary on Elinor Mason’s _Ways to be Blameworthy_ considers Mason’s proposed reflexivity constraint on ordinary blame- and praiseworthy action. I argue that the reflexivity constraint leaves too many intuitively apt targets of praise and blame out of the reach of those attitudes, and the availability of their detached counterparts does not make up for this. I also suggest that Mason’s case for the constraint is open to question. This gives us reasons to prefer a moral concern account of ordinary (...) or communicative praise- and blameworthiness, an account that does not include a reflexivity constraint. Finally, I argue that the moral concern view has more resources to explain some of the nuances and complexities of our practice of moral judgment than Mason allows—nuances Mason turned to pluralism to capture. (shrink)

The pejorative connotation often associated with the ordinary language meaning of “conspiracy theory” does not only stem from a conspiracy theory’s being about a conspiracy, but also from a conspiracy theory’s being regarded as a particular kind of theory. I propose to understand conspiracy theory-induced polarization in terms of disagreement about the correct epistemic evaluation of ‘theory’ in ‘conspiracy theory’. By framing the positions typical in conspiracy theory-induced polarization in this way, I aim to show that pejorative conceptions of ‘conspiracy (...) theory’ are problematic for research open to the possibility of finding depolarization strategies. That is, because they preclude constructive engagement with the epistemic norms governing (the rationales foundational of) belief in conspiracy theories. (shrink)

BereitsGleichheitUngleichheitinGerechtigkeitUngerechtigkeit der Antike wird Gerechtigkeit im engen Zusammenhang mit Ungleichheit und Ungerechtigkeit diskutiert. Im Dialog Georgias beispielsweise erläutert Platon, inwiefern StrafeStrafeRechtfertigung, Funktion, Wirksamkeit von Strafe eine vergangene Ungerechtigkeit ausgleicht und dadurch wieder eine harmonische Gleichheit herstellt (Georgias 466a–480e). Auch in seinem Hauptwerk Politeia verteidigt er, dass Gerechtigkeit die Tüchtigkeit der Seele sei und sich Ungerechtigkeit daher niemals lohnen könne.