P. KOnig: Einleitung - P. ZIche: Idiographik und allgemeine Wissenschaftlichkeit - Windelband und die Wissenschaftsreflexion um 1900 - G. HArtung: Ein Philosoph korrigiert sich selbst - Wilhelm Windelbands Abkehr vom Relativismus - O. SChlaudt: Philosophie am Leitfaden der Empirie. WIndelbands relativistisches Programm - S. KUft: Windelbands Konzeption von Transzendentalphilosophie und ihr Bezug zur Kulturphilosophie - R. BOnito Oliva: Windelband. KUlturphilosophie und Kulturkrise - P. KOnig: Teleologie und Geschichte bei Wilhelm Windelband - J. BOhr: Im Fortschreiben der Probleme: Windelbands 19. JAhrhundert (...) - T.-H. CHang: Der Wertbegriff beiWilhelm Windelband und sein Konzept der Problemgeschichte - T. KUbalica: Die Geschichte der Philosophie als Problemgeschichte - J. MEhlich: Windelbands Praludien und das Silberne Zeitalter in Russland - G. SChluter: Windelbands italienische Kontakte und Bezugnahmen - D. STefanelli: Notizen uber Karl Vossler und die "Sudwestdeutsche Schule" - C. ZAnfi: Geschichte, Natur und Leben: Windelband und Bergson in der Historismus-Debatte - J.-I. LIndén: Der beseelte Geist: Dilthey als Kritiker der badischen Schule - H. GUndlach: Windelbands Ringen mit der Psychologie - Anhang: Wilhelm Windelband: Blaue Hefte zur Psychologie. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of concerned men and women to the shocking abuse of animals everywhere--inspiring a worldwide movement to eliminate much of the cruel and unnecessary laboratory animal experimentation of years past. In this newly revised and expanded edition, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures--offering sound, humane solutions to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An (...) important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency and justice, Animal Liberation is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.--From publisher description. (shrink)

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next (...) twenty or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

Hans-Jørgen Schanz (1948-2022) har i mere end 50 år været en af de mest tænksomme og væsentlige danske intellektuelle, og han var samtidig som professor den bærende og ikke mindst samlende kraft på Idéhistorie ved Aarhus Universitet. Forskningsmæssigt spændte han meget vidt over områder som metafysik, modernitet, politisk filosofi, kunstfilosofi, religionsfilosofi og teologi. Han har begået omkring 40 bøger og et utal af artikler, og han havde en uforlignelig beundringsværdig evne til at tænke selv og insisterede gennem hele sit årelange (...) virke på, at tænkningen skulle være båret af ånd. Han var derudover en meget skattet foredragsholder på højskoler, sognegårde, Folkeuni-versitetet, teologiske konventer og efter- og videreuddannelsesregi. (shrink)

Acting Now to End World Poverty Peter Singer. were our own, and we cannot deny that the suffering and death are bad. The second premise is also very difficult to reject, because it leaves us some wiggle room when it comes to situations in.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume collects a wealth of articles covering a range of topics of practical concern in the field of ethics, including active and passive euthanasia, abortion, organ transplants, capital punishment, the consequences of human actions, slavery, overpopulation, the separate spheres of men and women, animal rights, and game theory and the nuclear arms race. The contributors are Thomas Nagel, David Hume, James Rachels, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Michael Tooley, John Harris, John Stuart Mill, Louis Pascal, Jonathan Glover, Derek Parfit, R.M. Hare, (...) Janet Radcliffe Richards, Peter Singer, and Nicholas Measor. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Germany, applied ethics is under attack from a diverse coalition of left‐wing organisations, disability groups, and some conservative defenders of a strict doctrine of the sanctity of human life. The attack has been pressed to the point of forcing the cancellation of conferences and disrupting lectures or classes so that they cannot take place. This essay describes the extent and nature of the attack, and makes a preliminary assessment of its significance.

Formal logic provides us with a powerful set of techniques for criticizing some arguments and showing others to be valid. These techniques are relevant to all of us with an interest in being skilful and accurate reasoners. In this highly accessible book, Peter Smith presents a guide to the fundamental aims and basic elements of formal logic. He introduces the reader to the languages of propositional and predicate logic, and then develops formal systems for evaluating arguments translated into these (...) languages, concentrating on the easily comprehensible 'tree' method. His discussion is richly illustrated with worked examples and exercises. A distinctive feature is that, alongside the formal work, there is illuminating philosophical commentary. This book will make an ideal text for a first logic course, and will provide a firm basis for further work in formal and philosophical logic. (shrink)

Peter Szondi´s pathbreaking work is a succinct and elegant argument for distinguishing between a philosophy of the tragic and the poetics of tragedy espoused by Aristotle. The first of the book´s two parts consists of a series of commentaries on philosophical and aesthetic texts from twelve thinkers and poets between 1795 and 1915: Schelling, Hölderlin, Hegel, Solger, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Vischer, Kierkegaard, Hebbel, Nietzsche, Simmel, and Scheler. The various definitions of tragedy are read not so much in terms of their (...) specific philosophies, but rather in the way their views assist in analyzing tragedies with an aim to establish a general concept of the tragic. The second part presents exemplary analyses of eight tragedies: Sophocles’Oedipus Rex, Calderon´s Life Is a Dream, Shakespeare´s Othello, Gryphius´ Leo Armenius, Racine´s Phaedra, Schiller´s Demetrius, Kleist’s The Schroffenstein Family and Büchner’s Danton's Death. The readings neither presuppose a concept of the tragic determined by context (as in Hegel's idea of the conflict between two orders of right), nor do they focus exclusively on the texts´ explicit contents. Instead, they elaborate the dialectical or aporetic structures at the heart of the tragic. The works analyzed represent the four great epochs of tragic poetry: the age of Greek tragedy; the Baroque era in Spain, England, and Germany; French Classicism; and the age of Goethe. (shrink)

The question of toleration matters more than ever. The politics of the twenty-first century is replete with both the successes and, all too often, the failures of toleration. Yet a growing number of thinkers and practitioners have argued against toleration. Some believe that liberal democracies are better served by different principles, such as respect of, or recognition for, people's ways of life. Others argue that because the liberal state should be entirely neutral or indifferent towards people's ways of life, it (...) can no longer be tolerant - it has no grounds on which it can object, and so there is nothing left to tolerate.Respecting Toleration provides a new, original, and provocative take on the question of toleration and its application to the politics of contemporary diversity. The volume demonstrates how toleration - despite its critics - is essential to any liberal political order. Peter Balint argues that from a conceptual viewpoint, toleration is entirely compatible with liberal politics; and from a normative viewpoint, it is utterly essential. The volume argues that if one cares about people living divergent lives, then it is liberal toleration that should be respected by legislators and policy makers, and not people's differences. It is a book that will shape the debate and demand a response from all who are interested in which political structures most fairly accommodate the competing ways of life that characterise contemporary diversity.Key Features:Develops a new framework of political tolerationProvides a clear demonstration and analysis of complex concepts and argumentsProvides extensive practical and theoretical examples. (shrink)

While ancient civilizations worshipped strong, active emotions, modern societies have favored more peaceful attitudes, especially within the democratic process. We have largely forgotten the struggle to make use of _thymos_, the part of the soul that, following Plato, contains spirit, pride, and indignation. Rather, Christianity and psychoanalysis have promoted mutual understanding to overcome conflict. Through unique examples, Peter Sloterdijk, the preeminent posthumanist, argues exactly the opposite, showing how the history of Western civilization can be read as a suppression and (...) return of rage. By way of reinterpreting the _Iliad_, Alexandre Dumas's _Count of Monte Cristo_, and recent Islamic political riots in Paris, Sloterdijk proves the fallacy that rage is an emotion capable of control. Global terrorism and economic frustrations have rendered strong emotions visibly resurgent, and the consequences of violent outbursts will determine international relations for decades to come. To better respond to rage and its complexity, Sloterdijk daringly breaks with entrenched dogma and contructs a new theory for confronting conflict. His approach acknowledges and respects the proper place of rage and channels it into productive political struggle. (shrink)

Peter Spader has written a magisterial study on Max Scheler, one of phenomenology’s earliest and greatest figures, whose theory of ethical personalism has become a major voice in the formulation of phenomenological ethics today. Spader follows Scheler’s use of the classic phenomenological approach, by means of which he presented a fresh view of values, feelings, and the person, and thereby staked out a new approach in ethics. Spader recreates the logic of Scheler’s quest, revealing the basis of his thought (...) and the reasons for his dramatic changes of direction. This remarkable study provides a framework that allows us to understand Scheler’s insights in the context of their dynamic evolution of his thought. It corrects imbalances in the presentation of his ideas and defends Scheler against key misunderstandings and criticisms. In short, Spader’s work continues the process of developing Scheler’s pioneering theory of ethical personalism. (shrink)

Throughout the history of the Western world, science has possessed an extraordinary amount of authority and prestige. And while its pedestal has been jostled by numerous evolutions and revolutions, science has always managed to maintain its stronghold as the knowing enterprise that explains how the natural world works: we treat such legendary scientists as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein with admiration and reverence because they offer profound and sustaining insight into the meaning of the universe. In The Intelligibility of Nature (...) , Peter Dear considers how science as such has evolved and how it has marshaled itself to make sense of the world. His intellectual journey begins with a crucial observation: that the enterprise of science is, and has been, directed toward two distinct but frequently conflated ends—doing and knowing. The ancient Greeks developed this distinction of value between craft on the one hand and understanding on the other, and according to Dear, that distinction has survived to shape attitudes toward science ever since. Teasing out this tension between doing and knowing during key episodes in the history of science—mechanical philosophy and Newtonian gravitation, elective affinities and the chemical revolution, enlightened natural history and taxonomy, evolutionary biology, the dynamical theory of electromagnetism, and quantum theory—Dear reveals how the two principles became formalized into a single enterprise, science, that would be carried out by a new kind of person, the scientist. Finely nuanced and elegantly conceived, The Intelligibility of Nature will be essential reading for aficionados and historians of science alike. (shrink)

"Divination and Human Nature" casts a new perspective on the rich tradition of ancient divination--the reading of divine signs in oracles, omens, and dreams. Popular attitudes during classical antiquity saw these readings as signs from the gods while modern scholars have treated such beliefs as primitive superstitions. In this book, Peter Struck reveals instead that such phenomena provoked an entirely different accounting from the ancient philosophers. These philosophers produced subtle studies into what was an odd but observable fact--that humans (...) could sometimes have uncanny insights--and their work signifies an early chapter in the cognitive history of intuition. Examining the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists, Struck demonstrates that they all observed how, setting aside the charlatans and swindlers, some people had premonitions defying the typical bounds of rationality. Given the wide differences among these ancient thinkers, Struck notes that they converged on seeing this surplus insight as an artifact of human nature, projections produced under specific conditions by our physiology. For the philosophers, such unexplained insights invited a speculative search for an alternative and more naturalistic system of cognition. Recovering a lost piece of an ancient tradition, "Divination and Human Nature" illustrates how philosophers of the classical era interpreted the phenomena of divination as a practice closer to intuition and instinct than magic. (shrink)

This paper follows up a debate as to whether classical electrodynamics is inconsistent. Mathias Frisch makes the claim in Inconsistency, Asymmetry and Non-Locality ([2005]), but this has been quickly countered by F. A. Muller ([2007]) and Gordon Belot ([2007]). Here I argue that both Muller and Belot fail to connect with the background assumptions that support Frisch's claim. Responding to Belot I explicate Frisch's position in more detail, before providing my own criticisms. Correcting Frisch's position, I find that I can (...) present the theory in a way both authors can agree upon. Differences then manifest themselves purely within the reasoning methods employed. Introduction Features of the Theory Frisch's Inconsistency Claim Defending Frisch 4.1 Muller 4.2 Belot Difficulties for Frisch and a Compromise Conclusion CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Abstract A growing number of theorists have argued that toleration, at least in its traditional sense, is no longer applicable to liberal democratic political arrangements—especially if these political arrangements are conceived of as neutral. Peter Jones has tried make sense of political toleration while staying true to its more traditional (disapproval yet non-prevention) meaning. In this article, while I am sympathetic to his motivation, I argue that Jones’ attempt to make sense of political toleration is not successful. Content Type (...) Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11158-012-9177-3 Authors Peter Balint, The University of New South Wales, Canberra, ACT 2602, Australia Journal Res Publica Online ISSN 1572-8692 Print ISSN 1356-4765. (shrink)

Peter Singer identifies the central vision that unifies Marx's thought, enabling us to grasp Marx's views as a whole. He sees him as a philosopher primarily concerned with human freedom, rather than as an economist or a social scientist. In plain English, he explains alienation, historical materialism, the economic theory of Capital, and Marx's ideas of communism, and concludes with an assessment of Marx's legacy.

Editors have a responsibility to retract seriously flawed articles from their journals. However, there appears to be little consistency in journals’ policies or procedures for this. In a qualitative study, we therefore interviewed editors of science journals using semi-structured interviews to investigate their experience of retracting articles. We identified potential barriers to retraction, difficulties in the process and also sources of support and encouragement. Our findings have been used as the basis for guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics.

One can rightly say of Peter Sloterdijk that each of his essays and lectures is also an unwritten book. That is why the texts presented here, which sketch a philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger, should also be characterized as a collected renunciation of exhaustiveness. In order to situate Heidegger's thought in the history of ideas and problems, Peter Sloterdijk approaches Heidegger's work with questions such as: If Western philosophy emerged from the spirit of the polis, what are we (...) to make of the philosophical suitability of a man who never made a secret of his stubborn attachment to rural life? Is there a provincial truth of which the cosmopolitan city knows nothing? Is there a truth in country roads and cabins that would be able to undermine the universities with their standardized languages and globally influential discourses? From where does this odd professor speak, when from his professorial chair in Freiburg he claims to inquire into what lies beyond the history of Western metaphysics? Sloterdijk also considers several other crucial twentieth-century thinkers who provide some needed contrast for the philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger. A consideration of Niklas Luhmann as a kind of contemporary version of the Devil's Advocate, a provocative critical interpretation of Theodor Adorno's philosophy that focuses on its theological underpinnings and which also includes reflections on the philosophical significance of hyperbole, and a short sketch of the pessimistic thought of Emil Cioran all round out and deepen Sloterdijk's attempts to think with, against, and beyond Heidegger. Finally, in essays such as "Domestication of Being" and the "Rules for the Human Park," which incited an international controversy around the time of its publication and has been translated afresh for this volume, Sloterdijk develops some of his most intriguing and important ideas on anthropogenesis, humanism, technology, and genetic engineering. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify what is both meant and entailed when the notion of respect is invoked in relation to the issues of diversity. A distinction is introduced between two types of respecting agents: the state and the citizen. The paper then distinguishes respect in relation to a commonality – in this case citizenship – from respect in relation to specific difference. The importance of respect in relation to a commonality is stressed, whilst the distinction between the state and (...) the citizen as the respecting agent is used to raise questions about respect of difference. The latter part of the paper looks at Peter Jones’ compromise position of ‘mediated recognition,’ and suggests the possibility of ‘mediated accommodation.’. (shrink)

In this book, Peter Achinstein proposes and defends several objective concepts of evidence. He then explores the question of whether a scientific method, such as that represented in the four "Rules for the Study of Natural Philosophy" that Isaac Newton invoked in proving his law of gravity, can be employed in demonstrating how the proposed definitions of evidence are to be applied to real scientific cases.

Among the works on ethics in the Aristotelian corpus, there is no serious dispute among scholars that the "Eudemian Ethics "is authentic. The "Eudemian Ethics "is" "increasingly read and used by scholars as a useful support and confirmation and sometimes contrast to the "Nicomachean Ethics." Yet, it remains a largely neglected work in the study of Aristotle's ethics, both among scholars and moral philosophers. Peter L. P. Simpson provides an analytical outline of the entire work together with summaries of (...) each individual section, making the overall structure and detailed argument clear. His translation and explanatory notes include the common books that the "Eudemian" "Ethics" shares with the "Nicomachean." This translation contains renderings of words and phrases, and proposals for emending the text that differ from what other translators and scholars have adopted. This translation is literal, without expansion or paraphrase, and yet also readable. A readable but literal translation is necessary because in the "Eudemian Ethics," more than usual in Aristotle's writings, the logic of the argumentation can turn on the peculiar wording or order. Simpson explains the argumentation where necessary in notes and separate explanatory comments. This book is a fresh, twenty-first-century rendition of the work of one of the most eminent philosophers of all time. (shrink)

Dieser Band versammelt die wichtigsten Arbeiten, in denen Peter Stemmer die kontraktualistische Moralkonzeption aus Handeln zugunsten anderer weiterentwickelt. Im Zentrum steht die Frage, anhand welcher Kriterien eine Moral, wie sie sein sollte, von falschen oder schlechten Moralen unterschieden werden kann. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit gilt der Rechtfertigung und ihrer Beziehung zum Unterdrückungsverbot. Behandelt wird auch der Zusammenhang von Wollen, praktischen Gründen und Normativität.

In _The Moral of the Story,_ Peter and Renata Singer draw on some of the best works of fiction, playwriting, and poetry in order to shed light on the perennial questions of ethics. A vivid montage of literature that touches on a broad range of ethical subjects and themes Offers a unique contribution to the study of moral philosophy and literature Demonstrates how literary sources can add richness to discussions of real-life moral questions and dilemmas Brings together selections and (...) excerpts from the world’s most celebrated short stories, novels, plays, and poetry Features substantive section introductions by Peter and Renata Singer Peter Singer is a leading moral philosopher, widely credited with triggering the modern animal-rights movement. His collection of essays, _Unsanctifying Human Life,_ edited by Helga Kuhse, was published by Blackwell Publishing in 2001. (shrink)

In this quite modestly ambitious essay, I'll generally just assume that, for the most part, our "scientifically informed" commonsense view of the world is true. Just as it is with such unthinking things as planets, plates and, I suppose, plants, too, so it also is with all earthly thinking beings, from people to pigs and pigeons; each occupies a region of space, however large or small, in which all are spatially related to each other. Or, at least, so it is (...) with the bodies of these beings. And, even as each of these ordinary entities extends through some space, so, also, each endures through some time. In line with that, each ordinary entity is at least very largely, and is perhaps entirely, an enduring physical entity (which allows that many might have certain properties that aren't purely physical properties.) Further, each ordinary enduring entity is a physically complex entity: Not only is each composed of parts, but many of these parts, whether or not absolutely all of them, are themselves enduring physical entities, and many of them also are such physically complex continuing entities. When an ordinary entity undergoes a significant change, then, at least generally, this change will involve changes concerning that entity's constituting physical parts, whether it be a rearrangement of (some of) these parts, or a loss of parts, or a gain of parts, or whatever. Often, the entity will still exist even after the change occurs. As we may well suppose, this happens when, from two strokes of an ax, an ordinary log loses just a chip of wood. As we may then say, such a change conforms with the log's "persistence conditions." Somewhat less often, such an ordinary entity undergoes a change that means an end to it: When a bomb's explosion makes our log become just so many widely scattered motes of dust, the log will no longer exist. Such a momentous change doesn't conform with the log's persistence conditions. (shrink)

Filled with real-work examples, ethical dilemmas, and rich cases, Understanding Business Ethics Third Edition by Peter Stanwick and Sarah Stanwick examines business ethics using a managerial approach. The authors explain the fundamental importance of ethical leadership, decision making, and strategic planning while examining emerging trends in business ethics such as the developing world, human rights, environmental sustainability, and technology. The text's 25 cases profile a variety of industries, countries, and ethical issue in an applied way that are relevant and (...) meaningful to students' lives. (shrink)

The first volume in Peter Sloterdijk's monumental Spheres trilogy: an investigation of humanity's engagement with intimate spaces. An epic project in both size and purview, Peter Sloterdijk's three-volume, 2,500-page Spheres is the late-twentieth-century bookend to Heidegger's Being and Time. Rejecting the century's predominant philosophical focus on temporality, Sloterdijk, a self-described “student of the air,” reinterprets the history of Western metaphysics as an inherently spatial and immunological project, from the discovery of self to the exploration of world to the (...) poetics of plurality. Exploring macro- and micro-space from the Greek agora to the contemporary urban apartment, Sloterdijk is able to synthesize, with immense erudition, the spatial theories of Aristotle, René Descartes, Gaston Bachelard, Walter Benjamin, and Georges Bataille into a morphology of shared, or multipolar, dwelling—identifying the question of being as one bound up with the aerial technology of architectonics and anthropogenesis. Sloterdijk describes Bubbles, the first volume of Spheres, as a general theory of the structures that allow couplings—or as the book's original intended subtitle put it, an “archeology of the intimate.” Bubbles includes a wide array of images, not to illustrate Sloterdijk's discourse, but to offer a spatial and visual “parallel narrative” to his exploration of bubbles. Written over the course of a decade, the Spheres trilogy has waited another decade for its much-anticipated English translation from Semiotext. Volumes II, Globes, and III, Foam, will be published in the coming seasons. (shrink)

Spirtes, Glymour and Scheines [Causation, Prediction, and Search Springer] described a pointwise consistent estimator of the Markov equivalence class of any causal structure that can be represented by a directed acyclic graph for any parametric family with a uniformly consistent test of conditional independence, under the Causal Markov and Causal Faithfulness assumptions. Robins et al. [Biometrika 90 491–515], however, proved that there are no uniformly consistent estimators of Markov equivalence classes of causal structures under those assumptions. Subsequently, Kalisch and B¨uhlmann (...) [J. Mach. Learn. Res. 8 613–636] described a uniformly consistent estimator of the Markov equivalence class of a linear Gaussian causal structure under the Causal Markov and Strong Causal Faithfulness assumptions. However, the Strong Faithfulness assumption may be false with high probability in many domains. We describe a uniformly consistent estimator of both the Markov equivalence class of a linear Gaussian causal structure and the identifiable structural coefficients in the Markov equivalence class under the Causal Markov assumption and the considerably weaker k-Triangle-Faithfulness assumption. (shrink)

Wo liegt der Anfang der Bewegung, die unser Leben ist? Was steuert die Menschen in ihrem Verhalten? Wie kommt es zu unseren Handlungen? Die Menschen konnen ihrem Handeln ein inneres geistiges Geschehen vorschalten: das Uberlegen, und dann aus der Uberlegung so handeln, wie sie es tun. Der Beginn beim Uberlegen fuhrt allerdings schnell auf etwas Elementareres, darauf, dass die Menschen Wesen sind, die etwas wollen. Das Uberlegen ist in allem auf ein vorgangiges, anderweitig bestimmtes Wollen bezogen und in seinen Ergebnissen (...) von diesem Wollen abhangig. Tatsachlich liegt, so Peter Stemmer in seinem neuen Buch, die Substanz des menschlichen Lebens nicht im Uberlegen, sondern im Wollen. Wenn aber das Wollen die Ergebnisse des Uberlegens und damit das Handeln bestimmt, was bestimmt dann die Ausrichtung des Wollens? Warum wollen wir, was wir wollen? (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this article, we explore the Corporate Social Performance (CSP) of Developing Country Multinationals (DMNCs). We argue that in competing internationally, DMNCs often face both reputation and legitimacy deficits, which they address by improving their CSP. We develop a series of hypotheses to explain the variation in CSP between DMNCs and domestic-only firms from developing countries and also examine variations in CSP between DMNCs depending on the extent of their multinationality and portfolio of host countries. Our findings support all our (...) hypotheses, which suggest that DMNCs display enhanced levels of CSP compared to their domestic-only counterparts. CSP is also found to be positively related to the DMNCs’ degree of multinationality, but with a declining incremental impact, whereas entry into developed markets leads to a greater improvement in DMNCs’ CSP than expansion into developing markets. We highlight the implications of our findings for managers and researchers. (shrink)

Modern political conflict characteristically reflects and represents deep-seated but also unacknowledged and un-analyzed disagreements about what it means to be 'objective'. In defending this proposition, Peter J. Steinberger seeks to reaffirm the idea of rationalism in politics by examining important problems of public life explicitly in the light of established philosophical doctrine. The Politics of Objectivity invokes, thereby, an age-old, though now widely ignored, tradition of western thought according to which all political thinking is inevitably embedded in and underwritten (...) by larger structures of metaphysical inquiry. Building on earlier studies of the idea of the state, and focusing on highly contested practices of objectivity in judgement, this book suggests that political conflict is an essentially discursive enterprise deeply implicated in the rational pursuit of theories about how things in the world really are. (shrink)

What is good political judgment? Is it a science subject to strict standards of logic and inference, or is it more like an art, the product of intuition, feeling, or even chance? Peter J. Steinberger shows how the seemingly contradictory claims of inference and intuition are reconciled in the concept of political judgment. Resting his argument on the larger notion of judgment itself, Steinberger develops an original model of how political judgments are made and how we justify calling some (...) of them "good." His systematic analysis of such thinkers as Machiavelli, Kant, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, and Oakeshott introduces an original notion of judgment as "intelligent performance," incorporating both intuition and rational reconstruction. Steinberger's conclusion—that a coherent political society must also be a judgmental one—flies in the face of much contemporary thinking. (shrink)