This essay critically considers the differences and complementarities between Emmanuel Levinas’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s respective accounts of ontology and ethics. A comparative reading reveals that while both insist upon a relational conceptualization of subjectivity, they base relationality on differing notions of alterity. The simultaneous proximity and distance between these two thinkers’ respective transphenomological quests yield critical force that enables a mutual critique, while opening up productive avenues for overcoming some of the problems inherent to their views.

In this paper I aim to clarify Hegel's objection to the use of ideals in ethical thinking by examining his opposition to Kant's ideal of perpetual peace. I explain why Hegel believes that the ideal of peace amounts to nothing more than a moral condemnation that ignores the significance for international relations of appreciating the modern nation-state as an ethical achievement. I argue, however, that Kant's proposed federation can be grounded in the concrete ethical realities Hegel accepts as compelling and (...) uses this basis to sketch a defensible understanding of the obligating force of ethical ideals against Hegel's objections. (shrink)

TWO FACETS OF HEGEL’S ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY become clear on close inspection. On the one hand, Hegel attempts to take advantage of the Kantian focus on autonomy as the ground for ethical obligation and build an account of Right in terms of free self-determining agency. On the other hand, once the account is in, it looks and feels quite different from Kant’s, emphasizing social institutions and history in ways that are distinctive to Hegel. How far do these Hegelian emphases pull us (...) from Kant? Are they simply an essential corrective of the Kantian project, as some Hegelians would like to claim? Or does Hegel end up with a view that is significantly antithetical to a Kantian position? In this paper I do not intend to address such questions comprehensively. Rather, I would like to touch on such questions by exploring a particular issue that seems to me of central importance to answering them. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that only a subset of the reason statementsWilliams defines as external must be rejected as false. `A has areason to '' is necessarily false when the ends and aimsconstitutive of A''s good close off the deliberative route from her S to the conclusion she has reason to . But when less important ends are at stake, it seems that a person''s needs generally provide reasons for action, contrary to Williams''s internalist account. I suspect, however, that (...) there may remain inexorable disagreementover these claims because people value things in two distinct ways. Tosupport my suspicion, I explain how people''s valuation can take either an agency-prioritizing or an end-prioritizing form. I then argue thatresolving the disagreement over Williams''s internalist account ofreasons depends on whether it can be established that the agency-prioritizingform is the rationally superior form of valuation. (shrink)

Plutarch’s epistolary essay, That a Philosopher ought to Converse especially swith Men in Power, has been neglected because not recognized for what it is: an attempt to persuade an addressee attached to Epicurean principles that his attraction to political friendship should be honoured rather than eradicated. Rather than attack Epicureanism, Plutarch attempts to expand the horizons of a hedonic and utilitarian ethics so as to include noble benefaction on a political scale. This requires him to undermine the Epicurean insistence on (...) restricting friendship to private like-minded circles, and to expand its hedonism into a political utilitarianism. Unlike Cicero’s De Finibus, Plutarch’s letter offers an indirect critique, and preserves elements of Epicurean ethics suitable to the moderating influence a friend and advisor can exert on the statesman’s eros. (shrink)

Mark Textor presents a critical study of the work of Franz Brentano, one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth century. His work has influenced analytic philosophers like Russell as well as phenomenologists like Husserl and Sartre, and continues to shape debates in the philosophy of mind. Brentano made intentionality a central topic in the philosophy of mind by proposing that 'directedness' is the distinctive feature of the mental. The first part of the book investigates Brentano's intentionalism as (...) well as attempts to improve or develop it. Textor argues that there is no plausible version of this doctrine, and rejects it in favour of a mark of the mental proposed by Brentano's student Husserl: mental phenomena have no appearances. The second part of the book develops and defends Brentano's view about the structure of perceptual awareness. Awareness of a mental activity and this mental activity are not distinct mental acts, the first representing the second. They are one and the same activity that has several objects. Textor shows that Brentano held that intentionality is plural - directedness is directedness on some objects - and shows how the plural conception solves thorny problems. The third part of the book is devoted to Brentano's view of pleasure and pain. Textor draws out parallels between enjoying an activity and awareness of it and argues that enjoying an activity and the activity enjoyed are not distinct. The final part of the book extends the plural view to the conscious mental life of a thinker at a time (the unity of synchronic consciousness): it is one mental act with many objects. (shrink)

A study of the philosophy and theology of the spiritual life that takes religious sensibility or the practice of religious life, rather simply creedal commitment, as a starting point.

Cancer viewed as a programmed, evolutionarily conserved life‐form, rather than just a random series of disease‐causing mutations, answers the rarely asked question of what the cancer cell is for, provides meaning for its otherwise mysterious suite of attributes, and encourages a different type of thinking about treatment. The broad but consistent spectrum of traits, well‐recognized in all aggressive cancers, group naturally into three categories: taxonomy (“phylogenation”), atavism (“re‐primitivization”) and robustness (“adaptive resilience”). The parsimonious explanation is not convergent evolution, but the (...) release of an highly conserved survival program, honed by the exigencies of the Pre‐Cambrian, to which the cancer cell seems better adapted; and which is recreated within, and at great cost to, its host. Central to this program is the Warburg Effect, whose malign influence permeates well beyond aerobic glycolysis to include biomass interconversion and genomic heuristics. Warburg‐type metabolism and genomic instability are targets whose therapeutic disablement is a major priority. (shrink)

It is argued that the primary aim of institutional management is to protect the moral integrity of health professionals without significantly compromising other important values and interests. Institutional policies are recommended as a means to promote fair, consistent, and transparent management of conscience-based refusals. It is further recommended that those policies include the following four requirements: (1) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s/surrogate’s timely access to information, counseling, and referral. (2) Conscience-based (...) refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s timely access to health care services offered within the institution. (3) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if the accommodation will not impose excessive burdens on colleagues, supervisors, department heads, other administrators, or the institution. (4) Whenever feasible, health professionals should provide advance notification to department heads or supervisors. Formal review may not be required in all cases, but when it is appropriate, several recommendations are offered about standards and the review process. A key recommendation is that when reviewing an objector’s reasons, contrary to what some have proposed, it is not appropriate to adopt an adversarial approach modelled on military review boards’ assessments of requests for conscientious objector status. According to the approach recommended, the primary function of reviews of objectors’ reasons is to engage them in a process of reflecting on the nature and depth of their objections, with the objective of facilitating moral clarity on the part of objectors rather than enabling department heads, supervisors, or ethics committees to determine whether conscientious objections are sufficiently genuine. (shrink)

Explanations in physics commonly appeal to data drawn from different length or time scales, as when a “top-down” macroscopic constraint such as rigidity is used to evade the complexities one would confront in attempting to model the situation in a purely “bottom-up” fashion. Such techniques commonly embody rather complex shifts in explanatory strategy.

This is a clear and critical account of Foucault's political thought: what he said, how it's been used and its influence today. Michel Foucault, French philosopher, social theorist, historian of ideas and literary critic, is primarily known as a radical thinker who disturbs our understanding of society, yet little attention has been paid to his politics. Now, Mark Kelly details and criticises all of Foucault's major political ideas: the historical relativity of knowledge; exclusion and abnormality; his radical reconception of (...) power; his historical analysis of biopolitics in terms of discipline and biopower; his concept of governmentality; and his late work around ethics and subjectivity. Kelly shows how Foucault's positions changed over time, how his thought has been used in the political sphere and examines the importance of his work for politics today. It engages with Foucault's entire corpus, from his first works right up to his posthumously published College de France lectures and the unabridged version of the History of Madness. It looks at the theoretical reception of Foucault's thought and how it has been applied to real-world problems. (shrink)

A step-by-step guide to Foucault's History of Sexuality Volume I, The Will to KnowledgeIn the first volume of his History of Sexuality, The Will to Knowledge, Foucault weaves together the most influential theoretical account of sexuality since Freud. Mark Kelly systematically unpacks the intricacies of Foucault's dense and sometimes confusing exposition, in a straightforward way, putting it in its historical and theoretical context.This is both a guide for the reader new to the text and one that offers new insights (...) to those already familiar with Foucault's work. (shrink)

This essay analyses discussions of national versus international or transnational science, with an emphasis on the journal Osiris from 1986 to 2009, including the concepts of national science, national styles and characters in science, scientific internationalism, transfer of science and scientists from one nation to another, and comparison of different national examples. The author argues that perceiving science as a ‘national’ activity has not only been persistent, it is also perhaps inevitable. This special issue on transnational histories of science raises (...) the question of what is gained and lost by such an approach. First of all, what is the distinction between ‘transnational’ and ‘international’? The dictionary defines the latter as something existing, occurring, or carried on between two nations, while the former extends or operates across national boundaries. Thus ‘international’ implies some sort of commerce. In contrast, transnational is a loosely defined term. (shrink)

It has been some years since Locke Studies published an update on the Clarendon Edition. The current state of the Edition is given here. Two volumes will appear within the next eighteen months: J. R. Milton’s edition of the Abridgements of the Essay and Mark Goldie’s edition of The Correspondence of John Locke, vol. 9, Supplement.

This is one of those cases to which Dr. 8 oodhouse's remark applies with all its force, that a method which leads to true results must have its logic — H.S Smith (" On Some of the Methods at Present in Use in Pure Geometry," p. 6) A goodly amount of modern metaphysics has concerned itself, in one form or another, with the question: what attitude should we take in regard to a language whose semantic underpinnings seem less than certain? (...) Since much of standard English is surely of this type, many philosophers have felt driven to extreme and unpalatable resolutions — wholesale rejection of attractive logical rules, radical "antirealism", "minimalism" about truth, and so forth, Scientists, however, have long dealt with analogous foundational insecurities and, under the duress of practicality, have framed a set of shifting attitudes towards language and reasoning that seem far more commonsensical than the extreme positions to which pure philosophy has often been led. Following this lead, this essay will recommend a more nuanced approach to linguistic insecurity that is neither naively optimistic nor mired in the gloomy sloughs of antirealism. (shrink)

Physicists often allow the "laws" of a discipline, formulated as partial differential equations, to be disobeyed along various surfaces, arrayed along the boundary and inside the medium under study. What kinds of considerations permit these lapses in the applicability of the equations? This paper surveys a variety of answers found in the physical literature.

Physics, History, and the German Atomic Bomb. This paper examines the German concept of a nuclear weapon during National Socialism and the Second World War. Zusammenfassung: Physik, Geschichte und die deutsche Atombombe. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die deutsche Vorstellung einer nuklearen Waffe während des Nationalsozialismus und des Zweiten Weltkrieges.

This book provides a critical account of the main controversies involving Norman Geras, one of the key modern political thinkers. It moves from his youthful Trotskyism on to his book on Rosa Luxemburg, then his classic account of Marx and human nature, and his highly regarded discussion of Marx and justice. Following this, Geras tried to elaborate a Marxist theory of justice, which involved taking on-board aspects of liberalism. Next he attacked the post modernism of Laclau and Mouffe and criticised (...) Rorty’s pragmatism, and then elaborated a contract of mutual indifference from a detailed study of the Holocaust. Lastly he wrote a book on human rights and humanitarian intervention, defending the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Cowling varies from exposition and admiration, to ideas about how Geras’s work should be interpreted, to criticism of his Trotskyism and of his support for the invasion of Iraq. The book will appeal to readers interested in Norman Geras and Marxism in particular, and social and political theory in general. (shrink)

This survey article describes Frege's celebrated foundational work against the context of other late nineteenth century approaches to introducing mathematically novel "extension elements" within both algebra and geometry.

Research ethics regulation in parts of the Global North has sometimes been initiated in the face of biomedical scandal. More recently, developing and recently developed countries have had additional reasons to regulate, doing so to attract international clinical trials and American research funding, publish in international journals, or to respond to broader social changes. In Taiwan, biomedical research ethics policy based on ‘principlism’ and committee- based review were imported from the United States. Professionalisation of research ethics displaced other longer-standing ways (...) of conceiving ethics connected with Taiwanese cultural traditions. Subsequently, the model and its discursive practices were extended to other disciplines. Regulation was also shaped by decolonizing dis- courses associated with asserting Indigenous peoples’ rights. Locating research ethics regulation within the language and practices of public policy formation and transfer as well as decolonization, allows analysis to move be- yond the self-referential and attend to the social, economic and political context within which regulation operates. 研究倫理規範甚至法制化的濫觴,過去在有些北美國家是為了回應其國內發生的醫學研究倫 理醜聞。但近年來,無論是發展中或已開發國家,往往是為了爭取國際醫學臨床試驗計畫能在 其國內執行、爭取美國相關研究經費、能在英語的國際期刊發表文章、或是因應國內相關社會變化。 以台灣來說,基於「原則主義」的醫學領域之研究倫理政策及規範,以及在研究機構內成立 委員會專責倫理審查的運作模式,可說完全移植自美國。這種運作模式及研究倫理的專業化, 不但逐漸取代過去已融合台灣文化的研究倫理觀쳀,且在這種運作模式下的倫理論述及實作, 更從醫學領域擴展至其他研究領域。在此同時,台灣的研究倫理規範之發展,也受到台灣原住 民族的去殖民化及群體權主張等影響。. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 259-288 [Access article in PDF] Substitutes for Wisdom:Kant's Practical Thought and the Tradition of the Temperaments Mark Larrimore [Appendix]For much of Western history, the theory of the four temperaments played a vital part in medicine, anthropology, and moral reflection. The Hippocratic foursome of sanguine, choleric, melancholy, and phlegmatic survives on the margins of modernity, but its role in moral theory (...) and practice has been largely forgotten. Premodern understandings of human diversity based in climate, temperament, and politics collapsed with the Galenic medical tradition with which they harmonized. Yet temperament continued to be a feature of moral philosophies and philosophical anthropologies even into the twentieth century, and arguably has had a symbiotic relationship with the egalitarian aspirations of modern moral and political thought. This essay surveys the development and practical consequences of the theory of the temperaments developed by one of the greatest prophets of modern values, Immanuel Kant.Temperament was a feature in Kant's course in anthropology from the 1760s until the end of his life. Kant's teachings on temperament are by turns creative and conservative, and bespeak a deep understanding of the logic and rationale of humoral characterology in ethics. But as Kant moves from an ethics based in feeling to an ethics based on the possibility of autonomy, his theory of temperament also changes. In 1764's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, Kant eloquently celebrates the melancholy as the temperament capable of "genuine virtue" (Obs2:217-18/60); by the time of Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), he is commending instead "phlegma as strength" (a variant of a temperament he had earlier dismissed), which can serve as a "substitute for wisdom" (Ant7:290/155). 1 Both of these [End Page 259] positions are distinctive, especially for an eighteenth-century thinker. As we will see, however, they are not without precedent in the tradition of temperament theory. Whether Kant knew he was developing countertraditions of temperament or not, his arguments in each case creatively exploit tensions in the humoral system which go back to its origins in ancient Greece.The mature Kant defended the classic foursome at a time when it had come under fire from many quarters. The early nineteenth century historian of temperament theories Harro Wilhelm Dircksen thought Kant played a decisive role in saving the classical theory from oblivion. 2 Why did Kant think it worth retrieving? One would expect him to reject a category which eighteenth-century German Popularphilosophie understood as a proto-psychological category bridging the gap between body and mind, nature and freedom. Yet, as I shall argue, the very things which might seem to render a theory of temperament incompatible with his mature ethics of autonomy make it important to [End Page 260] Kant. An understanding of human embodiment and diversity like that of the tradition of the temperaments forms part of the background to Kant's practical thought, and ethical formalism makes more rather than less sense if difference is taken seriously. For the same reason, it is important to have the right account of diversity. The complicated view of temperament in the Anthropology furnishes a microcosm of Kant's understanding of the fraught role of empirical considerations in recognizing and promoting freedom in rational agents embodied in human form(s).In this essay I will (1) provide a brief survey of the tradition of temperament theorizing before Kant, and expound Kant's (2) early and (3) mature views of temperament in the context of this tradition, as well as in the context of his emerging practical philosophy. 3 Some well-known parts of Kant's ethics make a new kind of sense when read in the light of the fact that their author thought humanity subdivided into temperaments. 1. The Tradition of the Temperaments 1.1. The history of moralizing about and through the temperaments is complex and—once one moves beyond the melancholy—largely uncharted. Here I will... (shrink)

Suppose that two nations A and B each possess a nuclear arsenal and are rational utility-maximizers. Suppose further that B has some interest in provoking A, possibly by attacking her with nuclear weapons. In the hope of preventing this from happening, A informs B of à conditional intention on her part to retaliate against B with nuclear weapons should B in fact attack A. By doing so A attempts to lower the probability of B's attacking A by increasing B's estimate (...) of the conditional probability of A's retaliating once provoked. Problematic deterrent situations are those in which B prefers to attack A without retaliation, A prefers most of all that she not be attacked, and A prefers an attack-with-no-retaliation scenario to an attack-with-retaliation scenario. Feature is à result of the fact that A prefers to minimize nuclear devastation, i.e., A would herself be worse off retaliating than not retaliating to an attack. Now, if B knows all of this to be the case then A's expression of a conditional intention to retaliate will not in fact deter B from attacking, since A is rational and will not act contrary to her own best interests. B has no reason to fear A's retaliation and therefore B has no reason not to attack. Deterrence, it seems, is an irrational policy among fully rational actors. This is one version of the so-called paradox of deter-rence. If expressing a conditional retaliatory intention is the best way for A to ward off an attack, then the paradox can be strengthened as follows: It is rational for A to intend to act irrationally. (shrink)

This article introduces the neologism ‘odegeology’ to encompass theological discussion concerning divine guidance, a significant issue for spiritual formation and discipleship in the church. Jesus’ promise of power and his commission to be witnesses in Acts 1:8 establish the theme for the book called Praxeis in the Greek text. Acts is replete with examples of guidance for completing that mission, particularly in the ministries of Peter and Paul. Can Paul’s experiences with guidance, whether natural or supernatural, be considered a matter (...) of praxis for Christians today? In answering that question, this study will use Paul’s missionary journeys in Acts as a heuristic model for decision-making. The article will discuss the place of divine guidance in publications by Pentecostal/charismatic publishers and whether it is a subject addressed in the faculties of practical theology in their theological schools. The article closes with a discussion whether odegeology as practised in Acts should be normative for Christians today. (shrink)

Original explorers often see a puzzling conceptual landscape more vividly than jaded later travelers. This essay surveys several ways in which Descartes and Leibniz recognized descriptive problems within applied mathematics more clearly than later commentators have appreciated.

In this article it is argued that a complex model that includes Toulmin's functional account of argument, the pragma-dialectical stage analysis of argumentation offered by the Amsterdam School, and criteria developed in critical thinking theory, can be used to account for the normativity and field-dependence of argumentation in science. A pragma-dialectical interpretation of the four main elements of Toulmin's model, and a revised account of the double role of warrants, illuminates the domain specificity of scientific argumentation and the restrictions to (...) which the confrontation and opening stages of scientific critical discussions are subjected. In regard to the argumentation stage, examples are given to show that a general account of argumentation, as advocated by informal logicians, is not applicable to arguments in science. Furthermore, although patterns of inference differ in various scientific practices, deductive validity is argued to be a crucial notion in the assessment of scientific arguments. Finally, some remarks are made concerning the burden of proof and the concluding stage of scientific argumentation. (shrink)

This study offers a theoretical framework for stakeholder management in an international and multicultural environment. Through the use of an extensive qualitative case study analysis, a methodological approach was developed for analyzing stakeholder dialogue data for cultural differences. Based on the empirical data it was possible to show specific ways in which cultural dimensions affect the international diffusion of stakeholder related policies. These findings contribute to the fields knowledge on internal stakeholder management implementation, by addressing the complexity of embedding stakeholder (...) management principles and practices within various international subsidiaries of the same multinational organization. (shrink)

In this paper, I delineate one tradition of contemporary political thought that has emerged within the more general climate of difference and diversity. This is ‘agonistic pluralism’. The paper evaluates the recent work of three authors, who exemplify this strand of political thinking; William Connolly, Chantal Mouffe, and James Tully. Over the past decade, each of these three has developed the notion of agonistic pluralism. The task here is to examine points of comparison between them. I compare the three authors' (...) conceptions of politics and of the dimension of the political. I make the case that their work complements one another, they each endorse broad notions of the political; and they understand politics to be constitutive of social relations. Nevertheless, the forms of politics that they describe differ from one another. It is my contention that these forms of politics are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. However, I maintain that in order for their work to be understood in this way, the political practices described by Connolly and Tully — struggles for self-making and for recognition respectively — must be re-figured as forms of sub-constitutional politics. These forms of politics will make up necessary elements of a viable pluralist society, but they are played out within multiple public spheres made possible by — what we might call — the quasi-republican political constitution elaborated by Mouffe. (shrink)

In this paper I hope to demonstrate that, despite dramatic differences in approach, Analytic and Continental philosophers can be brought into a productive dialogue with one another on topics central to the philosophical agenda of both traditions. Their differences tend to obscure the fact that both traditions have as a fundamental project the critique of past accounts of language, intentionality, and mind. Moreover, writers within the two traditions are frequently in considerable agreement about the failings of past accounts. Where they (...) tend to differ is in the sorts of positive accounts they give. By exploring the important areas of disagreement against the background of agreement, however, it is possible to gain insights unavailable to those rooted in a single tradition. (shrink)