It has been suggested that a rational being stands in what is called a “second-personal relation” to herself. According to philosophers like S. Darwall and Ch. Korsgaard, being a rational agent is to interact with oneself, to make demands on oneself. The thesis of the paper is that this view rests on a logical confusion. Transitive verbs like “asking”, “making a demand” or “obligating” can occur with the reflexive pronoun, but it is a mistake to assume that the reflexive and (...) the non-reflexive use exhibit the same logical grammar. The thesis that they do is in part motivated by the assumption that to show that my relation to you bears the same form as my practical self-relation is to show that, fundamentally, you are not an object for me to think about and act on, but a subject with whom to think and act together. I argue, to the contrary, that if my addressing you exhibited the same form as a relation I could literally be said to stand in to myself, then the nexus between us would be such that I am irretr.. (shrink)

The literature on agentive or practical knowledge tends to be focused on knowing what one is doing or what one is going to do. Knowing what one has done and has achieved thereby seems to be another matter. In fact, achievements are often taken to be beyond the ken of practical knowledge. I argue that this is a mistake. The intelligibility of the very idea of practical knowledge depends on the possibility of knowing one's achievements in the same manner. For (...) if it is to be intelligible as knowledge of the actuality of one's action in the material world, knowing what one is doing has to include knowledge of what one has done so far. (shrink)

Volume 22, Issue 2, June 2019, Page 95-97.

Neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism suggests that the sense of normative terms like “ought” and “good” as they appear in ethical discourse is to be elucidated in terms of the relation in which a living individual stands to the life-form or “species” of which it is an exemplar—in our case: the human life-form. A theory of this form has to provide a story about questions such as: What enables us to distinguish the different kinds of life within the theory? What makes them, (...) despite those differences, all sorts of natural goodness? And where, in relation to those continuities and discontinuities, is the account of practical reason to be situated? In this paper, I investigate how a developed ethical naturalism has to conceive of the relation between the genus concept life and the concept of the specific kind of life characteristic of us: rational or practically self-conscious life. I argue that there is a deep ambiguity with respect to this question in the account Philippa Foot presents in Natural Goodness. An ambiguity that covers a dilemma. A properly developed ethical naturalism would have to develop the concept of reason out of the reflection on life. (shrink)

This paper provides examples of how a teacher and a principal construct their ‘ethical selves’. In doing so we demonstrate how Foucault's four-part ethical framework can be a scaffold with which to actively connect emotions to a personal ethical position. We argue that ethical work is and should be an ongoing and dynamic life long process rather than a more rigid adherence to a ‘code of ethics’ that may not meaningfully engage its adherents. We use Foucault's four-part framework of ethical (...) practice as a framework through which an ‘ethical self’ can be purposely constructed. This is important work, as those who have authority over others must know how to monitor themselves against the misuse of the power of their positions. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to a certain way of thinking of the action of another. The posture of mind is characteristically expressed by a specific use of what G. E. M. Anscombe calls stopping modals. On this use, the sentence, “You can’t do that; it is mine,” registers the necessity of justice. My question is: what is the relation between the status of a person, a bearer of rights, the recognition of others as persons, and the practice of addressing the (...) demands of justice to one another? According to a certain strand in the tradition, the answer is: in the sphere of justice, a special union arises among language, mind, and world such that there is a sense in which addressing, recognizing, and being a person are one reality. The paper articulates the relevant sense of ‘one reality’ and offers an argument in support of the formula. In the course of the argument I suggest that this issue is central to understanding the philosophical significance of the second person and appreciating that it marks an irreducible and fundamental form of thought. (shrink)

The concept of Galilean Idealization is based on a pragmatically grounded relation between universes of so-called real and idealized entities. The concept was developed in the course of a critical discussion of different explications of the concept of idealization (e.g. by W. F. Barr, C. G. Hempel and L. Nowak), these being attempts to specify sufficient syntactic and semantic criterions for idealization. But this line of argument shall not be followed here. Instead, first the concept of Pragmatic Idealization, and as (...) its special case the Galilean one, is presented (1.) and certain aspects of the application of an idealized theory are discussed (2.). Then, working within the Strucuralist View of theories, definitions of the idealized variants of the diachronic theory-element and theory-net are presented (3.). (shrink)

John Hyman’s Action, Knowledge, and Will achieves what is increasingly rare in academic philosophy. It is both ambitious and controlled, wide-ranging and pointe.

Der Gegenstand des Interviews mit Robert Brandom ist die Entwicklung seiner Theorie begrifflichen Gehalts ausgehend von „Expressive Vernunft“ bis zu den kürzlich gehaltenen Locke-Lectures und dem sich in Arbeit befindenden Buch über Hegel. Im Zentrum stehen folgende Fragen: Kann eine Bedeutungstheorie, wie sie Brandom vorschlägt, ohne den Begriff der Wahrheit auskommen und sich auf modale und normative Begriffe beschränken? Wie erfolgreich ist Brandoms Versuch, mithilfe des Begriffs der pragmatischen Meta-Sprache die in „Expressive Vernunft“ bestehende Spannung zwischen der Artikulation logischer Begriffe (...) auf der einen Seite und der nicht-zirkulären Erklärung begrifflicher Normativität auf der anderen Seite aufzulösen? Welche Konsequenzen hat es für unseren Begriff der Bedeutung, wenn wir mit Brandom begriffliche Bestimmtheit als historischen Prozess fortwährender Bestimmung auffassen? (shrink)

Stanley Cavell vertritt die These, dass man nur verstehen kann, was eine Sprache ist, wenn man die Grammatik der Aussagen untersucht, mit der Muttersprachler ihre Sprache artikulieren: Es sind Aussagen in der Ersten Person Plural, die kein Beobachtungswissen, sondern eine Form von Selbstbewusstsein zum Ausdruck bringen. Während Cavells These, das Wesen von Sprache zeige sich in der Grammatik jener Aussagen, eine tiefe Einsicht darstellt, ist seine Analyse ihrer Form verfehlt. Cavell verwechselt verschiedene Formen der Ersten Person Plural und in der (...) Konsequenz verschiedene Begriffe des Sozialen. Für eine angemessene Metaphysik der Sprache gilt es, das generische Wir von dem distributiven und dem kollektiven Wir zu unterscheiden. (shrink)

The power to act intentionally is a power to change the world. It differs from other powers to affect change in that the change is of a particular kind. It is a change through thought. Paradigmatically, it begins with the negation of what is as not as it is to be and the setting of an action concept as to be realized. The pursuit of the end is the realizing of the concept. If all goes well, the process culminates in (...) my knowledge that my deed is done. The power to act is, in this sense, the power of reason to change the world according to its concept and to recognize this change as its works. The traditional name for this form of cognition is “practical knowledge”. In the contemporary literature this notion is mostly discussed under the question how the agent knows, what she will do or what she is doing. This goes together with the tendency to conceive of practical knowledge under the title of self-consciousness in the sense of the transparency of thought. The paper argues that this is a mistake. The notion of practical knowledge is not intelligible as long as one focuses only upon the prospective perspective of intentions for the future or intentions in action and leaves knowing what one has done aside. With my knowledge of my done work a kind of self-consciousness enters the scene whose object is not myself, but another in which I see the reality of my will. (shrink)

John Maurice Clark’s article “The Changing Basis of Economic Responsibility,“ published in the Journal of Political Economy, is the topical starting point for all scholars interested in economic responsibility and responsible economic action. John Maurice Clark, a leading institutional economist, reflected on the consequences of the social and economic change taking place at the turn of the last century for the responsibility of individuals, businesses, and corporations and called for the development of an economics of responsibility. This book contains in-depth (...) articles by scholars from within and beyond economics who continue on the Clark project or address actual problems calling for economic responsibility in the light of his approach. (shrink)

This paper focuses on "Textual version of the Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche," Nietzsche for the ninth series of the late manuscripts compiled, analyzed from Foster - Complete Works of Nietzsche's version, after Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari the Textual Edition , until the latest compilation in the late manuscript editing paradigm shift . Especially in the historical comparison of the visual field, introducing the principle of restoring the morphology of Nietzsche's manuscript editing methods, principles and advantages.

I give a short report on the origin of the International Working Group on Business Ethics Education (IWBEE) the group’s workshop sessions at the IABSconference. Building on the discussions throughout these workshop sessions, I outline how IWBEE’s perspective on business ethics education can be related to analytical perspectives from anthropology and economics.