Lippenbekenntnisse und Zitatenversatzstücke zur antiken Philosophie gibt es in der rechts- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Literatur zur Genüge. So wird aber oft der wesentliche Gehalt und die andauernde wirkungsgeschichtliche Bedeutung dieses Denkens verstellt. Eine elementare Einsicht ist die, dass jeweils unsere Herkunft mitbestimmt, zu welcher Gegenwart und Zukunft wir fähig sind. Dabei ist die antike Philosophie die Plattform einer gemeinsamen intellektuellen Herkunft von seither sich kontinuierlich wiederholenden Frage- und Problemstellungen.

Diese fünfbändige Aristoteles-Ausgabe in griechischer Sprache ist ein fotomechanischer Nachdruck der maßgeblichen Aristoteles-Ausgabe von 1831-1870. Band I und II enthält die Werke Aristoteles. In Band III wird die durch O. Gigon besorgte Bearbeitung und Ergänzung der Fragmente des Aristoteles wiedergegeben. Band IV bietet eine Auswahl der bedeutendsten Stücke aus den antiken Kommentaren zu Aristoteles, sowie eine Konkordanz mit den Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. In Band V ist der Index Aristotelicus von H. Bonitz nachgedruckt.

Kvist seeks to ascertain, in terms of Kant’s own linguistic usage, his views on the topics mentioned. Though primarily historical, this procedure does not keep Kvist from raising objections. The resulting study resembles most Paton’s Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience—apparently Kvist’s model —both methodologically and in its massive scholarship. The text, containing countless references, is augmented by 629 footnotes, covering seventy pages of small print, and a bibliography of some thirty pages. The latter is fairly complete though omitting the highly pertinent (...) work of Kant’s immediate successors. Only Hegel’s Faith and Knowledge is mentioned, and set quickly aside on the curious ground that it is philosophically an original work. (shrink)

Constitutivist approaches to the normativity of rationality have recently come into vogue. Unlike their moral counterparts, however, they have not been confronted with the shmagency objection. In this paper, I challenge them with two versions of the objection based on recent developments in the debate surrounding the normativity of morality. These are shmagency as modal escapability, which is based on taking sophisticated shmagents to be able to modally escape various norms, and shmagency as underdetermination, which is based on taking constitutive (...) norms that allegedly have independent value to be underdetermined by that value. I consider three different kinds of constitutivist theories of the normativity of rationality: first-person-authority views, single-mental-state views, and systems-of-mental-states views. None of the three are able to deal with either of these shmagency objections. There are sophisticated shmagents who escape all these types of constitutivist principles of rationality, so they are modally escapable, and the value of rationality underdetermines all the views. Upshot: constitutivists about structural rationality ought to worry about shmagency. (shrink)

This paper treats the problem of which type of units, individuals or whole societies, should be used when explaining societal phenomena. It is argued that factors operating at the individual level in principle form societies, and that societal phenomena therefore should ideally be explained at this level. However, it is also argued that many societal phenomena cannot in practice be analyzed at the individual level in a clear and strict way, but rather must be analyzed holistically, because it is not (...) known how they are related to individual factors due to the complexity of societies. For societies to be described and analyzed in a clear and strict way, they must as a rule be much simplified, and such simplification is often made easier by abandoning the individualistic perspective. If researchers still wish to describe a connection between individual factors and a societal phenomenon, they often must do so in vague terms. There are also other problems with the individualistic perspective that make it difficult to use. However, using the holistic perspective may be risky, as shown by two hypothetical examples. (shrink)

Student behavioural disengagement is a problem in many schools. This paper aims to explain why students’ behavioural disengagement occurs and reoccurs in Swedish classrooms in terms of two mechanisms. Mechanisms that explain student disengagement are tested quantitatively and illustrated qualitatively with primary data consisting of 74 video-recorded classroom lessons from three compulsory schools in Sweden. The regressions suggest that peer encouragement and the school subject curriculum are central for explaining student behavioural disengagement. Qualitative analysis decomposes how the mechanisms of peer (...) encouragement and school subject curriculum increase the risk of behavioural disengagement in real time using transcripts and images. In conclusion, this study shows how both mechanisms provide complementary explanations for students’ behavioural disengagement. (shrink)

The Swedish Jewish historian Hugo Valentin (1888–1963) founded the field of Swedish Jewish history in the 1920s. Valentin was also a prominent and public figure in Swedish Jewish affairs, as a writer, Zionist and refugee activist. This article focuses on Valentin’s analysis of antisemitism, from the 1920s to the early 1950s. It pays equal attention to the continuity and change of his writings on the topic, analysed in relation to such political contexts as the ‘Jewish question’, Zionism and anti-Nazi responses, (...) and advances within scholarly research on antisemitism. It shows that Valen­tin staked out a new approach to the topic of antisemitism, in which Jewish characteristics and the so-called Jewish question, while not completely absent, were placed within parentheses. Instead, he presented antisemitism and individual antisemites as problems in their own right, which, given Nazi German expansionism and the outbreak of the Second World War, seemed to be a greater and more urgent issue than whatever questions might have pertained to Jews and their place in modern society. (shrink)

Together with the Sophist, Plato’s Statesman is often taken to introduce and develop a new scientific form of theoretical inquiry, represented by the Eleatic visitor. This paper draws on recent scholarship on the Sophist and evaluates the reliability of this scientific approach when applied to political matters in the Statesman. It analyzes how the Eleatic visitor identifies and tries to mend two central mistakes in his own initial definition of the statesman and argues that the visitor’s treatment of three related (...) topics – eugenics, tyranny and law – makes his line of reasoning inconsistent. Relying on Plato’s dramatic use of similar forms of argumentation elsewhere, it suggests that the Statesman is not designed to defend the political significance of the visitor’s new form of scientific philosophy, but that its purpose instead is to test and to critically examine the consequences of this line of inquiry. (shrink)

The World Health Organization has published a global priority list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to guide research and development of new antibiotics. Every pathogen on this list requires R&D activity, but some are more attractive for private sector investments, as evidenced by the current antibacterial pipeline. A “pipeline coordinator” is a governmental/non-profit organization that closely tracks the antibacterial pipeline and actively supports R&D across all priority pathogens employing new financing tools.

Constitutivism explains norms in terms of their being constitutive of agency, actions, or certain propositional attitudes. However, the shmagency objection says that if we can be shmagents – like agents, minus the norm-explaining features of agency – we can avoid the norms, so the explanation fails. This paper extends this objection, arguing that constitutivists about practical norms suffer from it despite their recent attempts to solve it. The standard response to the objection is that it is self-defeating for agents to (...) become shmagents. I agree, but the response ignores the possibility of shmagents who consider whether to be agents while already standing outside agency. Another response says that we ought to be agents because agency is, in some sense, normatively valuable, and if so, we can explain norms in terms of this valuable form of agency. But then the norms that our constitutions are supposed to explain are underdetermined because it is unclear how much we ought to care about this value. I conclude that the shmagency objection has yet to be answered. (shrink)

In recent discussions of the Humean Theory of Motivation (HTM), several authors – not to mention other philosophers around the proverbial water cooler – have appealed to the simplicity of the theory to defend it. But the argument from simplicity has rarely been explicated or received much critical attention – until now. I begin by reconstructing the argument and then argue that it suffers from a number of problems. Most importantly, first, I argue that HTM is unlikely to be simpler (...) than even close competing theories, and second, it is unlikely that a plausible version of the theory will be very simple. Moreover, I argue that a convincing case for HTM is likely to have to show that it is more virtuous than defenders have done so far. (shrink)

Realists about group agency, according to whom corporate agents may have mental states and perform actions over and above those of their individual members, think that individual agents may switch between participating in individual and corporate agency. My aim is, however, to argue that the inescapability of individual agency spells out a difficulty for this kind of switching – and, therefore, for realism about corporate agency. To do so, I develop Korsgaard's notion of plight inescapability. On my take, it suggests (...) that individual agents are continuously faced with fully exercising their own individual agency (absent external limits at the time of its exercise). But then individual agents may not switch to acting as members of corporate agents, in the sense of taking on irreducible mental states that differ from their own. As it nevertheless is possible to participate fully in the action of a corporate entity, this incompatibility between individual and corporate mental states suggests a challenge for group agent realism. (shrink)

Why be moral? According to constitutivism, there are features constitutive of agency, actual or ideal, the properties of which explain why moral norms are normative for us. I aim to investigate whether this idea is plausible. I start off critically. After defining constitutivism and outlining its attractions and problems (chapter 1), I discuss the theories of various features of agency that are supposed to ground morality according to the leading constitutivists in the literature. I find these theories wanting. They are (...) based on implausible assumptions about agency (chapter 2), and they fail to make sense of moral (and other) norms because the so-called shmagency objection, according to which we can shirk from our normative commitments by being ‘shmagents’ rather than agents, appears in new ways for them (chapter 3). Then I get more constructive. I defend a two-tiered form of constitutivism. The first tier captures practical rationality, and the second tier captures reasons for action. Starting with the first tier, I defend a Humean theory of agency (chapter 4) and add a principle of instrumental rationality to it (chapter 5). Appendices A and B supplement these chapters with replies to criticisms of the Humean picture. In chapters 6 and 7, I put this conception of agency to work to reach the second tier of the view. I start by defending a form of reasons internalism which treats practical reasons as grounded in the desires of ideal agents (chapter 6). Then I extend this theory to moral reasons, arguing – unexpectedly for a Humean – that we have universally prescriptive reasons to cooperate with other cooperative agents to satisfy our other respective desires (chapter 7). Hence, the constitutive features of ideal agency ground a morality of cooperation. I conclude by summarizing the case for constitutivism (chapter 8). (shrink)

This dissertation is a study of appetite in Plato’s Timaeus, Republic and Phaedrus. In recent research is it often suggested that Plato considers appetite (i) to pertain to the essential needs of the body, (ii) to relate to a distinct set of objects, e.g. food or drink, and (iii) to cause behaviour aiming at sensory pleasure. Exploring how the notion of appetite, directly and indirectly, connects with Plato’s other purposes in these dialogues, this dissertation sets out to evaluate these ideas. (...) By asking, and answering, three philosophically and interpretatively crucial questions, individually linked to the arguments of the dialogues, this thesis aims to show (i) that the relationship between appetite and the body is not a matter of survival, and that appetite is better understood in terms of excess; (ii) that appetite is multiform and cannot be defined in terms of a distinct set of objects; and (iii) that appetite, in Plato, can also pertain to non-sensory objects, such as articulated discourse. -/- Chapter one asks what the universe can teach us about embodied life. It argues that Plato, in the Timaeus, works with an important link between the universe and the soul, and that the account of disorder, irrationality and multiformity identifying a pre-cosmic condition of the universe provides a key to understanding the excessive behaviour and condition of a soul dominated by appetite. -/- Chapter two asks why the philosophers of the Republic’s Kallipolis return to the cave, and suggests that Plato’s notion of the noble lie provides a reasonable account of this. By exploring the Republic’s ideas of education, poetry and tradition, it argues that appetite – a multiform and appearance oriented source of motivation – is an essential part of this account. -/- Chapter three asks why Socrates characterizes the speeches of the Phaedrus as deceptive games. It proposes that this question should be understood in the light of two distinctions: one between playful and serious discourse and one between simple and multiform. It argues that the speeches of the Phaedrus are multiform games, and suggests that appetite is the primary source of motivation of the soul addressed, personified by Phaedrus. -/- . (shrink)

How should we understand the relation between corporate agency, corporate moral agency and corporate moral patienthood? For some time, corporations have been treated as increasingly ontologically and morally sophisticated in the literature. To explore the limits of this treatment, I start off by redeveloping and defending a reductio that historically has been aimed at accounts of corporate agency which entail that corporations count as moral patients. More specifically, I argue that standard agents are due a certain type of moral concern, (...) but corporate agents are not due that type of concern, so they are not agents of, at least, the standard type. Diagnosis: because corporations plausibly lack qualia, they are ‘zombie agents’ that mimic real agents. This explains why they are neither standard agents nor standard moral patients: they are not standard agents because they lack mental states, and because they lack experiences, they are, at best, morally notable rather than morally respectable. However, I then argue that we nevertheless have instrumental reasons to include them in our moral responsibility practices, both because that is what notability involves and bluffingly, and both when it comes to treating them as moral agents and as moral patients. Hence, we may treat corporations as part of our moral responsibility practices to a limited extent anyway. (shrink)