The wrongdoing that feminists critique often occurs at the level of social practice where social acceptance of oppressive practices and the absence of widespread moral critique impede the wrongdoer’s awareness of wrongdoing. This chapter argues that under these circumstances individuals are not blameworthy for participating in conventionalized wrongdoing. However, because social vulnerability to reproach is necessary to publicizing moral standards and conveying the obligatory force of moral requirements, it is sometimes reasonable to reproach moral failings even when individuals (...) are excused. (shrink)

J. E. J. Altham; XV*—Reproach, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 263–272, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/74.

J. E. J. Altham; XV*—Reproach, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 263–272, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/74.

In the study reported in their rich article, Brandenburg and Strijbos investigate the attitudes of clinicians, in a facility for adults with autism, to norm transgressions by service users. In doing so they interrogate Hanna Pickard’s responsibility without blame approach to therapy and ask whether it applies across different clinical settings.Pickard draws a distinction between responsibility for an action in the sense of being the agent of the action and so, by definition, having some control over it, and moral responsibility (...) for an action which includes being blameworthy for it. For Pickard, you can be responsible for a harmful action without being morally responsible and therefore blameworthy. You might... (shrink)

In her commentary, Kennett helpfully reiterates Pickard’s criticism of Strawsonian theories of blame. Angry forms of blame like resentment are, according to Pickard, characterized by a sense of entitlement and are counterproductive to therapy. Some disagree that entitlement is a necessary condition for emotional blame, but also more permissive understandings of Strawsonian emotional blame have been considered inappropriate and counterproductive in a therapeutic relationship and on a psychiatric ward.We proposed to bracket definitional issues about the meaning of emotional blame and (...) instead looked at the possible therapeutic role of negative affect in clinical settings. Our paper conceptualizes... (shrink)

What types of unity and disunity belong to a group of people sharing a culture? Husserl illuminates these communities by helping us trace their origin to two types of interpersonal act—cooperation and influence—though cultural communities are distinguished from both cooperative groups and mere communities of related influences. This analysis has consequences for contemporary concerns about multi- or mono-culturalism and the relationship between culture and politics. It also leads us to critique Husserl’s desire for a new humanity, one that is rational, (...) cooperatively united, and animated by a universal philosophical culture. Reflecting on culture, a spiritually shaped and shared domain of the world, draws us to reflect also on ourselves as social and rational animals, and to ask, what should we reasonably hope for—and aim for—in a human culture that expresses and supports our shared lives of reason? Aristotle is used for occasional comparisons and contrasts. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas’s doubts about the ethical value of artistic beauty have been widely acknowledged by the vast majority of Levinas’s commentators. However, though it is true that in “Reality and Its Shadow” Levinas persistently rebukes artistic beauty for its nonethicality, it is undeniable that he at least upholds the value of artistic criticism and modern literature. In this article I intend to relate Levinas’s exploration of the possibility of spiritual–ethical teaching in literature to Immanuel Kant’s reflections on the relation between (...) the feeling of beauty, that of sublimity, and sensible feeling in his third Critique. This up-close comparative examination fosters understanding of Levinas’s religious and philosophical approach to the sublime elements in some literary works, especially those of Fyodor Dostoevsky. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the growing literature in social epistemology of diagnosing the epistemically problematic features of fake news. I identify two novel problems: the problem of relevant alternatives; and the problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment. The former arises among individual epistemic transactions. By making salient, and thereby relevant, alternatives to knowledge claims, fake news stories threaten knowledge. The problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment arises at the level of entire epistemic communities. I introduce the (...) notion of an epistemic environment, roughly the totality of resources and circumstances relevant to assessing the epistemically interesting statuses, such as knowledge. Fake news degrades our epistemic environment by undermining confidence in epistemic institutions and altering epistemic habits, thereby making the environment less conducive to achieving positive epistemic statuses. This is problematic even if the decrease in confidence and the altering of habits are rational. I end by considering solutions to these problems, stressing the importance of reproaching each other for proliferating fake news. I argue that we should reproach even faultless purveyors of fake news. This is because fake news typically arises in abnormal epistemic contexts, where there is widespread ignorance of, and noncompliance with, correct epistemic norms. (shrink)

Contemporary persons are daily confronted with enormous quantities of information, some of which reveal causal connections between their actions and harm that is visited upon distant others. Given their limited cognitive and information processing capacities, persons cannot reasonably be expected to respond to every cry for help or call to action, but neither can they defensibly refuse to hear and reflect upon any of them. Persons have a limited obligation to know, I argue, which requires that they inform themselves and (...) others about their role in harmful social practices, with a view toward challenging the norms that sustain such practices. In this paper, I explore this obligation to know, and the related idea of excusable ignorance, offering accounts of the epistemic burden that it entails for persons in their capacities as citizens and in the context of global climate change and of reproach as a potentially effective tool for rectifying rather than excusing ignorance. (shrink)

Why does someone, S, deserve blame or reproach for an action or event? One part of a standard answer since Aristotle: the event was caused, at least in part, by S’s bad will. But recently there’s been some insightful discussion of cases where the event’s causes do not include any bad will from S and yet it seems that S is not off the hook for the event. Cheshire Calhoun, Miranda Fricker, Elinor Mason, David Enoch, Randolph Clarke, and others (...) include in this category some cases of glitches, forgetfulness, inattentiveness, the actions of one’s children or one’s country, and certain instances of explicit bias and implicit bias. Enoch and Mason argue that in these cases S should extend the realm of S’s responsibility. Drawing on Aristotle’s emphases on retrospective attitudes and the non-voluntary, this paper attempts to clarify the relation between quality of will and blameworthiness. I analyze cases where (1) S is clearly not morally responsible for an action or event, E, yet (2) S deserves reproach for E unless S has the appropriate retrospective attitudes (such as regret) or the absence of inappropriate attitudes toward E. (shrink)

In many ways, Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza appears to be a contradictory figure in the history of philosophy. From the beginning, he has been notorious as an "atheist" who seeks to substitute Nature for a personal deity; yet he was also, in Novalis's famous description, "the God-intoxicated man." He was an uncompromising necessitarian and causal determinist; yet his ethical ideal was to become a "free man." He maintained that the human mind and the human body are identical; yet he also (...) insisted that the human mind can achieve a kind of eternality that transcends the death of the body. He has been adopted by Marxists as a precursor of historical materialism, and by Hegelians as a precursor of absolute idealism. He was a psychological egoist, proclaiming that all individuals necessarily seek their own advantage and implying that other individuals were of value to him only insofar as they were useful to him; yet his writings aimed to promote human community based on love and friendship, he had many devoted friends, and even his critics were obliged to acknowledge that his personal conduct was above reproach. He held that the state has the right to do whatever it has the power to do, while at the same time he defended democracy and freedom of speech. He denied supernatural revelation and criticized popular religion as a grave danger to the peace and stability of the state; yet he devoted himself to the careful interpretation of scripture and argued for toleration and freedom of religion. Rarely employing figures of speech or rhetorical flourishes of any kind, his works are nevertheless among the most magisterial and uplifting of all philosophical writings, and they have inspired more poets and novelists than those of any other philosopher of the early modern period. (shrink)

A reproach has been done many times to post-modernism: its picking up mathematical notions or results, mostly by misrepresenting their real content, in order to strike the readers and obtaining their assent only by impressing them . In this paper I intend to point out that although Alain Badiou’s approach to philosophy starts with taking distance both from analytic philosophy and from French post-modernism, the categories that he uses for labelling logicism, formalism and intuitionism do not reflect the real (...) content of the foundational schools. Hence, a re-thinking from him would be required about them, otherwise he would risk the same reproaches as post-modernists. (shrink)

With respect to the reproach by habermas and ricoeur that freud will fall prey to a "scientistic self-misunderstanding" i submit that it was not freud, but these hermeneuticians themselves, who forced the clinical theory of psychoanalysis onto the procrustean bed of a philosophical ideology demonstrably alien to it. as against the generic "disavowal" of causal attributions advocated by some hermeneuticians, i maintain that it is a nihilistic, if not frivolous, trivialization of freud's entire clinical theory. far from serving as (...) a new citadel for psychoanalytic apologetics, the embrace of such hermeneuticians is, i submit, the kiss of death for the legacy that was to be saved. (edited). (shrink)

Ancient critics reproached Xenocrates for beginning his work on the dialectic with a discussion of voice, and until now the question why he did so has never been systematically explored. Neither do we know why Xenocrates counted syllables, as Plutarch reports, and how he arrived at such an implausibly high number. In the first part of this paper, I show that Xenocrates’ interest in voice was suggested by Plato’s discussion of letters in his later dialogues, such as the Theatetus, the (...) Sophist, the Statesman, and the Philebus. Second, a fragment from Sextus attributed to Xenocrates confirms that Xenocrates allowed for various ‘levels’ of elements, and that explains why Theuth’s method, recommended in the Philebus, is applied to syllables. Finally, I address the very possibility of knowing the actual number of syllables and words, and address some of the problems connected to the reconstruction of the mathematical argument. (shrink)

One can be reproached for not remembering. Remembering and forgetting shows who and what one values. Indeed, memory is constitutively normative. Theoretical approaches to memory should be sensitive to this normative character. We will argue that traditional views that consider memory as the storing and retrieval of mental content, fail to consider the practices we need for telling the truth about our past. We introduce the Radically Enactive view of Cognition, or REC, as well-placed to recognize the central role of (...) norms in remembering. Crucially, REC construes all remembering as “something we do”, and the most sophisticated forms of remembering as things we collectively do, answerable to socioculturally established practices. On this view our mnemonic performances cannot avoid re-shaping our collective ways of doing and seeing going forward. By REC’s lights therefore, the “is” of memory is “oughty” through and through. (shrink)

Levinas has sometimes been reproached for a certain laxness toward the history of philosophy. By dint of denouncing, as the central thread of this long history, the persistence or recurrence of an ambition to totalization, he would have failed to recognize the diversity of steps articulated along its course, thus ceding to the very thing he placed in question — the prestige of the same — to the detriment of the alterity of the other. I propose to submit this alleged (...) failure to some examination. (shrink)

The law sometimes permits what ordinary morality, or widely-shared notions of right and wrong, reproaches. Rights to Do Grave Wrong explores the relationship between law and common morality to clarify law's reliance on society's broad presumption that people will exercise their rights responsibly. More concretely, he argues that certain legal rights rest on tacit sociological assumptions as to who will exercise them, under what circumstances, and how frequently. Further, he argues that we depend on stigma and shame to reduce and (...) circumscribe the law's use. Some examples: though reneging on a debt is considered wrong, the law allows you to declare personal bankruptcy; international law allows museums to retain some masterworks looted from their rightful owners; in many countries abortion is permitted as a means of birth control. Using these examples and more, Osiel presents a "social scientific" analysis of law's interaction with social mores and the extent to which they limit our exercising rights to do wrong. The paradox he intends to elucidate is when and why it is appropriate for societies to champion de jure entitlements even as they successfully limit their de facto usage. (shrink)

In Sophocles' Ichneutai Silenos reproaches the Satyrs for their cowardice. Among other things that he says to them, he contrasts their current attitude to his own bravery in youth; in lines 154-155 he speaks of many monuments of bravery, which he has left in the homes of the nymphs. After illustrating the syntax of these lines and offering a new translation, the author goes on to investigate the possible reference of these "monuments of bravery" and hence of the (alleged) exploits (...) of Silenos. (shrink)

We sometimes blame persons, and we sometimes give them credit for the emotions they feel. We could, for example, speak of feeling hatred, resentment or envy as “reprehensible” in suitable circumstances, or say “He's to blame for feeling that way.” We could speak of feeling sympathy, affection or indignation as “commendable” in suitable circumstances, or say “He deserves credit for feeling that way.” And it is not just that we are assessing such emotion as somehow good or bad — in (...) addition we may reproach or censure a person for the emotions he feels, or we may regard it as a credit to him that he feels as he does. In short, we apportion or impute responsibility to persons sometimes for the emotions they feel, and one important indication of this fact is in the sorts of judgments we can make about emotions. (shrink)

War of Ideas: On Feyerabend’s Epistemic Pluralism and the Polarising Effect of Alternative Truths Paul Feyerabend is generally known as one of science’s greatest advocates of (epistemic) pluralism. Throughout his work, Feyerabend rejects the notion of a monistic epistemology and defends various forms of pluralism. Consequently, he is sometimes reproached for being responsible for the emergence of alternative truths – a radical form of pluralism – in the current post-truth era. This paper discusses the negative effects of alternative truths and (...) the extent to which a solution for these effects is provided by Feyerabend’s theory of science. After narrowly defining alternative truths, it is concluded that alternative truths can have a polarising effect that may impede the progress of knowledge. At first glance, Feyerabend’s pluralistic theory does not acknowledge this downside of alternative truths. However, this paper argues that Feyerabend’s exclusion of cranks, as well as his (critical) view on reason, can be seen as possible limitations of his (epistemic) pluralism. The problem of alternative truths, therefore, is not necessarily an argument against Feyerabend’s theory of science. (shrink)

The paper is aimed at providing general outlines of the more than two-century history of the theory of moral sanctions. It rests on a thesis about unity of all disciplines studying morality. The aim of the paper has been achieved trough an analysis of how some basic concepts were borrowed and basic ideas were transformed. The first tradition links moral sanctions with public condemnation. Some of its adherents simply identified public condemnation with moral sanction. This opinion prevailed until the middle (...) of the XXth century. Later it was suggested that a sanction becomes genuinely moral only when a transgressor herself is sensitive to condemnation because she recognizes that she deserves it and feels shame, guilt or remorse. It means that an external side of the sanction has to be complemented by an internal one. The first tradition presupposes a deep and thorough analysis of an external side of the moral sanction, i.e. various forms of sanctioning behavior (avoidance, censure, denunciation, reproach, scolding etc.) The second tradition was initiated by J.S. Mill and H. Sidgwick, it includes among moral sanctions the very negative emotions of self-appraisal. For adherents of this tradition, model and most important moral sanctions are internal: guilt and remorse. Characteristics of internal (autonomous) and external (heteronomous) sanctions were established in the XXth century anthropology. Later this distinction became current in the contemporary ethics. (shrink)

"I have often been reproached with being the father of Anarchism. This is doing me too great an honour. The father of Anarchism is the immortal Proudhon, who expounded it for the first time in 1848.".

Both continental and analytic traditions have tended to associate Hegel’s idealism with metaphysics and therefore as divorced from and even pernicious to reality. Hence, contemporary Hegel studies have tended to concentrate on discrete elements of his philosophy while attempting to avoid its metaphysical dimensions and their systematic pretensions. I seek to show that rather than dwelling in abstraction, Hegel’s metaphysics, as presented in his Logics, recount the thought determinations through which being comes to be grounded and thus, scientifically knowable as (...) nature. Such categorical determining is essentially linguistic, taking place through the grammatical forms of judgment (Urteil) and their outcome in the syllogism. The centrality of these grammatical forms reveals the anthropological goal of Hegel’s metaphysics, where the fully determined copula of judgment presents itself as the object of natural science, for us. (shrink)

Published in 1809, the Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Matters Connected Therewith represents a defining turning point within Schelling's philosophy. One of Schelling's fundamental premises is that any theory that concerns human freedom must first deal with the territory in which the very event of freedom takes place. This chapter examines the nature of the relationship between freedom and necessity by discussing the so‐called Pantheism Controversy and setting out the coordinates of the main thesis established by (...) this controversy, namely that any philosophy that aims towards systematic unity ends up with the denial of freedom. The critique by Schelling and Spinoza contains the reproach that this account offers a kind of ‘floating’ freedom, one that implies the moment of indeterminacy. The chapter explains that, according to Schelling, the error should be located not in the idea of pantheism but, rather, in the traditional notion of freedom, that is, its libertarian account. (shrink)

For some years now, there has been a dispute in Berlin Pankow about renaming the “Robert-Rössle-Straße.” The pathologist is accused of an opportunistic attitude regarding his behaviour and his scientific work under National Socialism. In his research, especially that on a “pathology of the family,” Robert Rössle is said to have followed the racial-hygienic paradigm of the Nazi era. He is to have used questionable methods and is subject to the reproach of having profited from his adaptation to the (...) system scientifically and as a private citizen. The dispute over the naming of the street can be described as “dissonant memory,” impeding a harmonious culture of remembrance. It is suggested that this dispute – regardless of whether the street is renamed or not – be used productively in the sense of a reflexive historical consciousness to get on Rössle's track and illuminate the factual and personal entanglements of his network from different perspectives. (shrink)

The foundation of ethics, created in the image of God -- A lifestyle of honesty and integrity -- A lifestyle of loyalty -- The sacredness of trust and confidence -- Ethics in horizontal relationships -- Ethics in vertical relationships, leaders in authority -- Ethics between men and women -- Avoiding the trap of criticism -- Living as a spiritual leader -- Ethics of influence -- Ethics in the workplace -- Ethics of stewardship, time, finances, and talents -- Maintaining one's mental, (...) physical, and spiritual well-being in Christ -- Ethics in ministry -- A final word, a lifestyle that honors Jesus Christ and avoids reproach. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is the exploration of Heidegger's interpretation of the phenomenon of technology against the background of his new vision of reality. It can be said that in this context sin which was formerly moral and religious became in our age, as it were, technological. Because man has distanced himself from the Nature, he finds himself at the same time alienated and guilty, contemplating, like a child brazen in the brainlessness of what he has done and waiting (...) in anguish the imminent punishment of a mother who does not forgive. Cum multis aliis, it is not only ugliness with which Heidegger reproaches technoscience but aggressiveness as well. (shrink)

THE immense popularity which Bergson's philosophy enjoys is sometimes cast up against him, by those who do not agree with him, as a reproach. It has been suggested that Berg-son's writings are welcomed simply because they offer a theoretical justification for a tendency which is natural in all of us but against which philosophy has always fought, the tendency to throw reason overboard and just let ourselves go. Bergson is regarded by rationalists almost as a traitor to philosophy, or (...) as a Bolshevik inciting the public to overthrow what it has taken years of painful effort to build up. (shrink)

The article discusses a fundamental problem that has to be faced if the general capability approach is to be developed in the direction of a theory of justice: the selection and justification of a list of capabilities. The democratic solution to this problem (defended by Amartya Sen) is to leave the selection of capabilities to a process of democratic deliberation, while the philosophical solution (defended by Martha Nussbaum) is to establish this list of capabilities as a matter of philosophical theory. (...) The article investigates the debate between these two different positions and argues in favour of the philosophical solution. First, it distinguishes political from epistemological reasons for (not) making capability lists. Second, it shows that the democratic position must incorporate at least some philosophical theorising in general and a theory of democracy in particular. Third, the article argues that the democratic position presupposes that the philosophical position will bypass the democratic process while actually it does not. The philosophical position is actually more respectful of democracy than the democratic position. Fourth, while philosophers may exercise caution and connect their capability lists to actual democratic debates and other empirical sources, this kind of epistemological virtue ironically may heighten the chance of receiving reproaches on the political level. (shrink)

Agent-regret seems to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. If we grant that we are not morally responsible for consequences outside our control (the ‘Standard View’), then agent-regret—which involves self-reproach and a desire to make amends for consequences outside one’s control—appears rationally indefensible. But despite its apparent indefensibility, agent-regret still seems like a reasonable response to bad moral luck. I argue here that the puzzle can be resolved if we appreciate the role that agent-regret plays in a larger social (...) practice that helps us deal with bad moral luck. That agent-regret is a component in a social practice limits the questions that we can reasonably ask about it. While we can ask whether an experience of agent-regret is rational given the norms of this practice, we cannot ask the question that motivates the puzzle of agent-regret, viz. whether agent-regret is rationally defensible according to the Standard View. (shrink)

If there is one value that seems beyond reproach in modernity, it is that of the self and the terms that cluster around it, such as self-esteem, self-confidence and self-respect. It is not clear, however, that all those who invoke the self really know what they are talking about, or that they are all talking about the same thing. What is this thing called 'self', then, and what is its psychological, philosophical and educational salience? More specifically, what role do (...) emotions play in the creation and constitution of the self? This book proposes a realist, emotion-grounded conception of selfhood. In arguing for a closer link between selfhood and emotion than has been previously suggested, the author critically explores and integrates self research from diverse academic fields. This is a provocative book that should excite anyone interested in cutting-edge research on self-issues and emotions that lies at the intersection of psychology, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy and moral education. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that there is a way to make sense of blameworthiness for morally problematic actions even when there is no bad will behind such actions. I am particularly interested in cases where an agent acts in a biased way, and the explanation is socialization and false belief rather than bad will on the part of the agent. In such cases, I submit, we are pulled in two directions: on the one hand non-culpable ignorance is usually an (...) excuse, but in the case of acting in a biased way we feel some pull to find the agent blameworthy. I argue that agents are sometimes blameworthy, (where I really mean that they are blameworthy, and not just that it is permissible to reproach them), even if they do not have any bad will. I argue that although the paradigmatic account of blameworthiness is based on quality of will, we can and should be willing to allow that there are non-paradigmatic cases. I argue that the zone of responsibility can be extended to include acts that we are not fully in control of, and acts whose moral status we are non-culpably ignorant about at the time of acting. This extension of responsibility happens through a voluntary taking of responsibility. I argue that there are certain conditions under which we should take responsibility, and that when we do so, we genuinely are responsible. (shrink)

This paper takes as a starting point a recent development in privacy-debates: the emphasis on social and institutional environments in the definition and the defence of privacy. Recognizing the merits of this approach I supplement it in two respects. First, an analysis of the relation between privacy and autonomy teaches that in the digital age more than ever individual autonomy is threatened. The striking contrast between on the one hand offline vocabulary, where autonomy and individual decision making prevail, and on (...) the other online practices is a challenge that cannot be met in a social approach. Secondly, I elucidate the background of the social approach. Its importance is not exclusively related to the digital age. In public life we regularly face privacy-moments, when in a small distinguished social domain few people are commonly involved in common experiences. In the digital age the contextual integrity model of Helen Nissenbaum has become very influential. However this model has some problems. Nissenbaum refers to a variety of sources and uses several terms to explain the normativity in her model. The notion ‘context’ is not specific and faces the reproach of conservatism. We elaborate on the most promising suggestion: an elaboration on the notion ‘goods’ as it can be found in the works of Michael Walzer and Alisdair Macintyre. Developing criteria for defining a normative framework requires making explicit the substantive goods that are at stake in a context, and take them as the starting point for decisions about the flow of information. Doing so delivers stronger and more specific orientations that are indispensible in discussions about digital privacy. (shrink)

Several commentators have argued that with his concept of anonymity Merleau-Ponty breaks away from classical Husserlian phenomenology that is methodologically tied to the first person perspective. Many contemporary commentators see Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on anonymity as a break away from Husserl’s framework that is seen as hopelessly subjectivistic and solipsistic. Some judge and reproach it as a disastrous misunderstanding that leads to a confusion of philosophical and empirical concerns. Both parties agree that Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of anonymity mark a divergence from (...) classical Husserlian phenomenology. I will question this view and demonstrate that Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on anonymity remains Husserlian in two important senses: it analyses senses in terms of constituting selves and communities of such selves, and it accounts for the formation of experience by the temporal sedimentation of intentional activity. The argument proceeds in four steps. The first section argues against the widely spread notion according to which Merleau-Ponty’s anonymous subject is collective. In the second section, I offer an alternative reading by demonstrating that Merleau-Ponty uses the term “anonymous” primarily to characterize the lived body of a personal subject. In section three, I introduce Merleau-Ponty’s idea of trace and show that for him both the perceived thing and the perceiving body are traces and as such refer to earlier constitutive acts of alien subjects. I then argue that Husserl’s concepts of sedimentation are crucial for the understanding of this idea. Finally, in section four, I show how Husserl’s theory of depresentation informs Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on anonymity. (shrink)

With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect to anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced. And everything has more than one definition. A cat is a mammal, a narcissist, a companion, a riddle.[T]here is nothing more tentative, nothing more empirical than the process of establishing an order among things.I am putting away my term. Yes, I am. A little late, but that’s the kind of term it was: things spill over, the boxes will not hold them. The course (...) files are not yet in their folders, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. The season has turned and the objects on my worktable now stare back reproachfully like jetsam on a beach: pens, pencils, piles of books .. (shrink)

Paul Konitzer was one of the outstanding and well-known physicians in the years after the World War II in East-Germany. The paper describes his professional way as hygienist, social medical, municipal physician and last but not least as health politician in the times of four different political regimes: the imperial era in Germany till 1918, the time of Weimarer Republic till 1933, the Nazi dictatorship till 1945 and the early years in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. The life of (...) Konitzer is a typical example of the fate of a German doctor in the first half of the 20th century. Konitzer was arrested in February 1947 by the Soviet Military Government in Berlin in connection with some political troubles and reproach with a typhus epidemic in a German camp for Russian Prisoners of War in the Nazi era. On April 22nd 1947 he died in prison of Dresden by suicide without condemnation. (shrink)

How our everyday interactions as neighbors shape—and sometimes undermine—democracy "Love thy neighbor" is an impossible exhortation. Good neighbors greet us on the street and do small favors, but neighbors also startle us with sounds at night and unleash their demons on us, they monitor and reproach us, and betray us to authorities. The moral principles prescribed for friendship, civil society, and democratic public life apply imperfectly to life around home, where we interact day to day without the formal institutions, (...) rules of conduct, and means of enforcement that guide us in other settings. In Good Neighbors, Nancy Rosenblum explores how encounters among neighbors create a democracy of everyday life, which has been with us since the beginning of American history and is expressed in settler, immigrant, and suburban narratives and in novels, poetry, and popular culture. During disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, the democracy of everyday life is a resource for neighbors who improvise rescue and care. Degraded, this framework can give way to betrayal by neighbors, as faced by the Japanese Americans interned during World War II, or to terrible violence such as the lynching of African Americans. Under extreme conditions the barest act of neighborliness is a bulwark against total ethical breakdown. The elements of the democracy of everyday life—reciprocity, speaking out, and "live and let live"—comprise a democratic ideal not reducible to public principles of justice or civic virtue, but it is no less important. The democracy of everyday life, Rosenblum argues, is the deep substrate of democracy in America and can be its saving remnant. (shrink)

It has become a standing reproach upon Plato's treatment of poetry in the Republic that he forgets or misrepresents in the tenth book what he said in the third.According to the earlier discussion, poetry is required to perform important services in the ideal state; its subject-matter will make the young familiar with true doctrines ; its style will reflect the qualities proper to the character of guardian, and therefore—by the principle of imitation—induce and confirm such qualities in the souls (...) of young and old. Poetry, like all other forms of art, must train the young to love and resemble the beauty of truth, so that when reason develops, they will recognize it as an old friend. (shrink)

Having acknowledged the recurrent theme of education in Stanley Cavell's work, the discussion addresses the topic of scepticism, especially as this emerges in the interpretation of Wittgenstein. Questions concerning rule‐following, language and society are then turned towards political philosophy, specifically with regard to John Rawls. The discussion examines the idea of the social contract, the nature of moral reasoning and the possibility of our lives' being above reproach, as well as Rawls's criticisms of Nietzschean perfectionism. This lays the way (...) for the broaching of questions of race and America. The theme of the ordinary, which emerges variously in Cavell's reflections on Emerson, Wittgenstein and Austin, is taken up and extended into a consideration of Thoreau's ‘experiment in living’. The conversation closes with brief remarks about happiness. (shrink)

Taber and Lodge offer a powerful case for the prevalence of directional reasoning that aims not at truth, but at the vindication of prior opinions. Taber and Lodge's results have far-reaching implications for empirical scholarship and normative theory; indeed, the very citizens often seen as performing “best” on tests of political knowledge, sophistication, and ideological constraint appear to be the ones who are the most susceptible to directional reasoning. However, Taber and Lodge's study, while internally beyond reproach, may substantially (...) overstate the presence of motivated reasoning in political settings. That said, focusing on the accuracy motivation has the potential to bring together two models of opinion formation that many treat as competitors, and to offer a basis for assessing citizen competence. (shrink)

Taber and Lodge offer a powerful case for the prevalence of directional reasoning that aims not at truth, but at the vindication of prior opinions. Taber and Lodge's results have far-reaching implications for empirical scholarship and normative theory; indeed, the very citizens often seen as performing “best” on tests of political knowledge, sophistication, and ideological constraint appear to be the ones who are the most susceptible to directional reasoning. However, Taber and Lodge's study, while internally beyond reproach, may substantially (...) overstate the presence of motivated reasoning in political settings. That said, focusing on the accuracy motivation has the potential to bring together two models of opinion formation that many treat as competitors, and to offer a basis for assessing citizen competence. (shrink)

This paper discusses the establishment of a governance framework to secure the development and deployment of “good AI”, and describes the quest for a morally objective compass to steer it. Asserting that human rights can provide such compass, this paper first examines what a human rights-based approach to AI governance entails, and sets out the promise it propagates. Subsequently, it examines the pitfalls associated with human rights, particularly focusing on the criticism that these rights may be too Western, too individualistic, (...) too narrow in scope and too abstract to form the basis of sound AI governance. After rebutting these reproaches, a plea is made to move beyond the calls for a human rights-based approach, and start taking the necessary steps to attain its realisation. It is argued that, without elucidating the applicability and enforceability of human rights in the context of AI; adopting legal rules that concretise those rights where appropriate; enhancing existing enforcement mechanisms and securing an underlying societal infrastructure that enables human rights in the first place, any human rights-based governance framework for AI risks falling short of its purpose. (shrink)

The question whether a constitutive linguistic norm can be prescriptive is central to the debate on the normativity of meaning. Recently, the author has attempted to defend an affirmative answer, pointing to how speakers sporadically invoke constitutive linguistic norms in the service of linguistic calibration. Such invocations are clearly prescriptive. However, they are only appropriate if the invoked norms are applicable to the addressed speaker. But that can only be the case if the speaker herself generally accepts them. This qualification (...) has led critics to argue that if an addressed speaker’s acceptance is a necessary condition for legitimate prescriptions (and reproach for failure to adhere to them), then the account becomes unable to underwrite actual normativity. Moreover, critics argue, a danger of vicious circularity arises from the calibration account. This paper shows that once a vantage point within the calibration practice is accepted, the criticisms lose their force. It then explores why a theorist might reject such a perspective and suggests, as a plausible candidate, implicit Humean assumptions about the proper explanation of (linguistic) action. The paper ends by sketching a way forward for the debate on the normativity of meaning in light of this diagnosis. (shrink)