El artículo empieza con un recorrido por las ideas republicanas del 1848 francés en torno a la fraternidad como idea fundamental para combatir el individualismo e instaurar un nuevo orden social. No obstante, el ideal de fraternidad es rápidamente ignorado por el pensamiento político contemporáneo, contrariamente a o que ocurre con los dos otros dos términos de la divisa revolucionaria: la libertad y la igualdad. La autora se plantea si conviene recuperar el concepto de fraternidad y en qué sentido. ¿Es (...) una virtud en el sentido aristotélico? Pese a que hay filósofos contrarios a esa idea, se defiende la tesis de que es difícil que sin fraternidad pueda hacerse justicia y que, en consecuencia, la fraternidad no puede ser vista sino como una virtud o una obligación moral imprescindible como base de la cooperación social. (shrink)

Antonio Argandoña, Norbert Bilbeny, Victòria Camps, Miquel Calsina, Àngel Castiñeira, Cristian Palazzi, Ferran Requejo, Raimon Ribera, Begoña Román, Ferran Sàez, Miquel Seguró, Francesc Torralba, Josep Maria Vallès, Rosamund Thomas Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics 2012 3(3):9-16.

Reno v. ACLU , the 1997 landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court providing sweeping protection to speech on the Internet, is usually discussed in terms of familiar First Amendment issues. Little noticed in the decision is the significance of the ontological assumptions of the justices in their first visit to cyberspace. I analyze the apparent awareness of the Supreme Court of ontological issues and problems with their approaches. I also argue that their current ontological assumptions have left open (...) the door to future suppression of free speech as the technology progresses. Ontology is significant because zoning in the physical world has long been recognized as a way to segregate "adult" entertainment from minors. So far, at least, the justices seem to agree that such zoning is not possible in cyberspace, and therefore that adult zones for certain forms of expression are not possible. But this conclusion is far from settled. The degree of free speech on the Internet in the future will depend on whether or not our ontological understanding of cyberspace supports such zoning or renders it incoherent or impossible. (shrink)

Some recent commentators have acquiesced in the efforts of some religious groups to co-opt concepts of morality, thus leading many—inappropriately, I believe—to think we must keep all morality out of our civic life and especially out of the reasoning in our legal system. I review examples of the confusion in characterizing the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision as a conflict between constitutional rights and religious moral precepts. I argue that this approach capitulates to particular views of morality as religious morality. (...) I consider the appeals to morality in the dissent and the ensuing confusion among commentators about the significance ofthis opinion. I review alternate readings of the Lawrence majority opinion, including proposals that it be considered from the perspectives of the ethicalframeworks of Locke, Mill, or Kant. (shrink)

I identify issues of philosophical concern in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on copyright extension, and encourage the participation of philosophers in these public policy debates. Philosophers have contributions to make to the dialogue not captured exclusively by the technical and often narrow legal debate in the courts.

I identify issues of philosophical concern in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on copyright extension, and encourage the participation of philosophers in these public policy debates. Philosophers have contributions to make to the dialogue not captured exclusively by the technical and often narrow legal debate in the courts.

Reno v. ACLU, the 1997 landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court providing sweeping protection to speech on the Internet, is usually discussed in terms of familiar First Amendment issues. Little noticed in the decision is the significance of the ontological assumptions of the justices in their first visit to cyberspace. I analyze the apparent awareness of the Supreme Court of ontological issues and problems with their approaches. I also argue that their current ontological assumptions have left open the (...) door to future suppression of free speech as the technology progresses. Ontology is significant because zoning in the physical world has long been recognized as a way to segregate "adult" entertainment from minors. So far, at least, the justices seem to agree that such zoning is not possible in cyberspace, and therefore that adult zones for certain forms of expression are not possible. But this conclusion is far from settled. The degree of free speech on the Internet in the future will depend on whether or not our ontological understanding of cyberspace supports such zoning or renders it incoherent or impossible. (shrink)

Some recent commentators have acquiesced in the efforts of some religious groups to co-opt concepts of morality, thus leading many—inappropriately, I believe—to think we must keep all morality out of our civic life and especially out of the reasoning in our legal system. I review examples of the confusion in characterizing the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision as a conflict between constitutional rights and religious moral precepts. I argue that this approach capitulates to particular views of morality as religious morality. (...) I consider the appeals to morality in the dissent and the ensuing confusion among commentators about the significance ofthis opinion. I review alternate readings of the Lawrence majority opinion, including proposals that it be considered from the perspectives of the ethicalframeworks of Locke, Mill, or Kant. (shrink)

Some recent commentators have acquiesced in the efforts of some religious groups to co-opt concepts of morality, thus leading many—inappropriately, I believe—to think we must keep all morality out of our civic life and especially out of the reasoning in our legal system. I review examples of the confusion in characterizing the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision as a conflict between constitutional rights and religious moral precepts. I argue that this approach capitulates to particular views of morality as religious morality. (...) I consider the appeals to morality in the dissent and the ensuing confusion among commentators about the significance ofthis opinion. I review alternate readings of the Lawrence majority opinion, including proposals that it be considered from the perspectives of the ethicalframeworks of Locke, Mill, or Kant. (shrink)

It is a strange fact that people's opinions of psychoanalysis are only rarely tentative or unemphatic. It seems that one must either love it or hate it. Professor Cioffi, in a recent paper, has shown that he is no lover of psychoanalysis, and he makes what appears to be a devastating attack on Freud's theories and methods and on the credibility of the whole psychoanalytic discipline. Without wanting to ally myself wholeheartedly with the opposite camp, I want to show that (...) many of the main contentions of his paper are wrong. I shall argue that the objections he makes which, if valid, would be the most serious for Freudian theory, are unfounded. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of whethercomputer source code is speech protected by the First Amendmentto the United States Constitution or whether it is merelyfunctional, a ``machine'', designed to fulfill a set task andtherefore bereft of protection. The answer to this question is acomplex one. Unlike all other forms of ``speech'' computer sourcecode holds a unique place in the law: it can be copyrighted, likea book and it can be patented like a machine or process.Case (...) law, intellectual property law and encryption exportregulations all reflect this contradictory dichotomy. (shrink)

This highly speculative paper seeks to discern where the discipline of Bioethics may be heading in the next decade or two. It is clear that the rapid pace of scientific discovery and technological innovation will not slacken, and, as a result, fresh moral issues, for which there are no precedents in currently accepted moral wisdom, will rapidly emerge. This mushrooming of ethical problems will be taking place at a time of increasing moral pluralism, when common moral values become harder to (...) establish, and powerful subgroups embrace moral dogmatism, whether religious or secular in character.Faced with such complexity and confusion, governments and industrial groups will increasingly seek guidance from bioethics "experts", through paid consultancies, advisory panels and commissioned reports on specific topics. But Bioethics itself is currently in a stage of flux: 1. Certain research areas in Bioethics have 'bolted' (in the horticultural sense), because of a rich injection of funds - notably genetics and stem cell research - while other areas are relatively under-researched. 2. Inter-disciplinarity has become de rigueur, largely under funder pressure, and, allied to this, an insistence on empirical work has created conceptual confusions. 3. There is a continuing ferment in bioethical theory, with little sign of productive co-operation between rival camps. Indeed theoretical enrichment seems to lag far behind the constant demand for relevance and 'applied ethics'.So what of the future? I detect certain trends, some to be deplored and discouraged, others to be applauded and nurtured. On my 'black list' are: the commercialisation of Bioethics; and the dumbing down of several critical disciplines in the name of relevance. On my 'white list' are: further adventures in theory; inter-disciplinarity come of age; and the future envisioned in today's young minds. (shrink)

Despite worries about the fairness of lotteries or the sources of the human psyche’s strong attraction to them, Americans have made lotteries a part of their civic lives. The popularity of gaming does not, however, gainsay the unease many Americans feel about state sponsorship of lotteries. The debates that surrounded the introduction of lotteries remain to this day, but the arguments are tired and the camps deadlocked. One camp argues that a lottery is simply a properly randomized drawing that (...) determines who among a freely chosen group of participants shall be awarded all or some of the monetary contributions of the group. These proponents suggest that the randomness of the drawing and the autonomy of the participants render the lottery fair and sponsorship by the state unobjectionable. Opponents of state-supported gambling argue, by contrast, that states market lotteries by making inappropriate emotional appeals and by supplying information of dubious veracity. Consequently, so this group argues, lotteries must be judged as unfair gaming devices and state support viewed as improper. I shall show that both camps have fundamentally misunderstood the problem. Evaluating whether state lotteries are sales or swindles relies neither on an analysis of subjective attitudes nor on an examination of purely procedural aspects of play. Correct analysis depends on a determination of what lotteries are. That is, there is a difference between claiming what a lottery does and what it claims to be, between how it works and what it is. If a lottery is claimed to be something that it is not, then regardless of what one gets for one’s money, one has been swindled. I will show that performing an ontological examination of the state-supported lottery reveals it to be a swindle. I conclude by suggesting that some of the confusion regarding the legitimacy of the state-sponsored lottery stems from misunderstandings of several tenets of liberalism. It is these misunderstandings that at times are employed to justify lotteries. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new framework for the general internalism/externalism debate about reasons. My aim is to defend a novel account of internalism that at least allows for the possibility of a more "realist" conception of reasons- thus avoiding simply begging the question (as Williams himself seems to do) against many recent externalist thinkers like Hampton, Scanlon, McDowell, and Parfit - while still somehow retaining a deep connection between reasons to act and an agent's motivations. What is crucial (...) to observe here is that Williams' intemalism relies upon two logically independent premises: on the one hand, a negative "skeptical" thesis denying we have any reason to believe that values - and the reasons associated with them - exist in any realist way independent of individual agents; and on the other hand, a positive "subjectivist" thesis controversially maintaining that all reasons for action are instead in some sense necessarily related to each particular agent's subjective motivations. I think we should reject Williams' widely-disputed "subjectivist" thesis. Rather, by endorsing only Williams' former premise, we are able to formulate a more modest "skeptical" version of intemalism – or what I call ‘skeptical internalism’ – which, unlike Williams' explicitly "subjectivist intemalism", at least allows for the externalist view that values exist in a realist way totally independent of us. We suspend judgment, however, about whether any such values do exist - where significantly, an individual agent's motivations somehow play a constitutive role in terms of assessing what values she even has reason to affirm. Such so-called "skeptical internalism" has several advantages over Williams' own view. As we will see, it not only helps usto bypass the current terminological deadlock, but also allows us to better focus upon what may be the most crucial difference between internalism and extemalism, which rests not so much in how each camp chooses to define what a reason is, but rather in how they understand the nature of rational disagreement itself. This specific worry constitutes perhaps the main crux of the entire intemalist/extemalist debate, and I argue that, in the end, skeptical internalism provides a much more satisfying analysis of the underlying ethical import of such rational disagreement than either of its two main rivals, extemalism or Williams' own subjectivist accountof internalism. (shrink)

In this narrative analysis oftwo Soviet dissertations in philosophy Idiscuss the role of Solov'ëv as one of themajor characters in the Soviet academicnarration of Russian philosophy: I show how theauthors (Turenko and Spirov) cope with thenecessity of criticizing Solov'ëv from theMarxist position and protect him from Westernscholars as the latter attempted to reviseRussian philosophy. I also discuss the way inwhich this requirement both to criticize andprotect is represented in the dissertations inwhich the strong Marxist posture and loyalty tocommunist doctrine corresponded (...) to the authors'belief that Solov'ëv was a greatphilosopher who made mistakes, although hisphilosophy remains a part of Russia's culturalheritage. The main conclusion is that in spiteof their vision of the world as split into thecommunist and bourgeois camps, both authors tryto avoid straightforward Manichean assessmentsand, in 60s and 70s, were keen to find as manypositive elements in Solov'ëv's philosophyas possible. (shrink)

This article examines how the key Orthodox actors in Moldova have reacted to challenging equal opportunities legislation. The author suggests, on the basis of an economic approach to religion, that under the conditions of a deregulated religious market they use various strategies to promote their agendas. The Moldovan Orthodox Church, autonomous within the Russian Orthodox Church, previously relied on making private bargains with the government; but this policy ended with the adoption of the 2013 Law on Ensuring Equality in the (...) Republic of Moldova. Now the Metropolitanate tries to assimilate the strategies of direct action, but without success. The so-called ‘non-mentioning’ radicals, technically being part of the Metropolitanate of Moldova, but not praying for its bishop, are involved in direct political activism – from setting up protest camps to street fighting – to confront de-stigmatization of homosexuality. The Bessarabian Metropolitanate of the Romanian Orthodox Church utilizes the strategies of European ‘public’ churches and gains influence through performing some useful social functions. This article concludes that all actors have their own advantages and weaknesses; nevertheless, so far the Metropolitanate of Moldova remains the strongest; while the other competitors are serving specific religious niches, it is this body which still possesses the potential to influence society more broadly. (shrink)

The article presents the main provisions of S.D. Bodrunov’s theory of noonomics and synthesizes them with the leading theories of the leaders of the Frankfurt school: Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth. Noonomics refers to a new stage in the development of society as a whole, in which people will be forced out of material production, which will allow everyone to freely develop their creative powers. However, on the way to noonomics, humanity must avoid falling into a state of “digital concentration (...) camp,” which is possible only by transforming human nature itself, moving “from zoo- to noo-state.” This implies a synthesis of science and culture and the highest value of moral self-improvement for each person. Therefore, it is the development of the human mind that will allow the transition to noonomics. It is the study of the content and possibilities of the mind that will allow us to creatively develop the theory of noonomics by using J. Habermas’s concept of communicative rationality and A. Honneth’s new theory of socialism. Communicative rationality is a special capability which makes possible to achieve mutual understanding between representatives of con-flicting social classes and develop universal norms of activity that allow for the sustainable development of society as a whole. This capability can be developed within a special institutional environment based on solidarity activities. Thus, each person will consider the successful implementation of the plans of others as a condition for the possibility of implementing their plans. This network of social institutions based on solidarity activity will be the realization of freedom in its social form. Within the framework of solidarity activities, new universal meanings of social development arise, which the communicative community will be able to formulate. Further, these meanings will replace the existing ones, which are focused on profit and unlimited economic growth, and thus transform the existing institutional system. (shrink)

In 1942 California corporate agribusiness seized upon racist hysteria and pseudo "national security" issues to manipulate social ideology so that it could unlawfully seize tens of thousands of acres of productive farm land from law-abiding American citizens. It was such seizures that then allowed already existing large-scale capital to further consolidate California's agricultural resources while at the same time restructuring and increasing its concentration of the state's agricultural production and food manufacturing capabilities. Meanwhile, in "the most striking mass interference since (...) slavery with the right of physical freedom," over 120,000 Japanese Americans were placed in concentration camps and illegally deprived of their property and human rights. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Shimmering Maya and Other EssaysPatrick HenryThe Shimmering Maya and Other Essays, by Catharine Savage Brosman; 149 pp. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994, $24.94.When the author was fifteen, she held the rank of “prospector” at Girl Scout Camp. Now, over forty years later, she is “digging down through the layers, sifting through the running stream of memory” (p. 14). Her art of prospecting affords the reader (...) a linear impression of a journey that begins with “The Shimmering Maya,” a recountal of a family move in August 1944 from Colorado to South Texas. “Desert Silvery Blue” describes life in Alpine, Texas, while “Leaving for Good” narrates her experience of displacement as she departs Alpine in 1951 to attend Rice Institute, known then as “the atheist school” (p. 37). From Alpine to Houston, she experiences the greening of America and the shock of Gulf Coast humidity, “a sensation of being hit in the face and smothered” (p. 42). At Rice, she finishes her degrees, travels to France, her intellectual home, and returns, in “Cherry Time”—“Yes, Virginia, there is a Virginia” (p. 52)—to describe her life in full bloom during this relatively short but intense period, spent in and around the state of Virginia, before her permanent move to New Orleans. Two essays conclude the volume even as they bend back toward its beginning. “Winter Light” narrates the life of her grandfather, Edward Hill, newspaperman, teacher, doctor, writer, and formidable learner whom she knew only in the winter of his life but whose light illuminated her being and “whose heir I feel, or wish, myself to be” (p. 130). “Turn My Face Out to the West” recounts a recent camping trip in New Mexico but, more profoundly, a return to the Western land of her youth. Like the Anasazi and Pueblo Indians, she too was born there and, reclaiming their heritage as partly hers, extols their solar-based science, courage, sense of community, independent spirit, and love and respect for the land.Brosman paints being, however, as well as becoming. Essays six through eleven focus more centrally than the others on her habitual self: her self-portrait as teacher, scholar, poet, traveler, and traditional woman. As a teacher of language, she offers “at once an end and a means” (p. 86) and, as literature teacher, not “entertainment chiefly but the pursuit of truth” (p. 88), undogmatically attempting to elicit self-awareness without imposing a single view. [End Page 136] A traditional woman who has never felt uncomfortable around men and doesn’t consider them her enemies, Brosman thinks Women’s Studies are “regressive” (p. 84), deplores language “barbarisms” such as “chairperson” and “herstory” (p. 75), and holds for a “nongendered intellectual patrimony of arts, letters, and science” (p. 84). While she admits that it’s a miracle that all marriages don’t simply fall apart, the differences between the sexes, she argues, constitute “the whole basis for attraction” (p. 70), and she prefers her cigar-smoking husband “to men who boast about their Hollandaise sauce” (p. 70). Not interested “in valorizing only the male principle” (p. 70), she seeks “vigor of mind” in all persons and considers herself a “feminist in the cupboard,” one who operates within the family but travels freely and enjoys a rich professional life. She links herself to her Aunt Margaret and other “closet feminists” (p. 100) in her family’s history who demonstrated self-reliance and a sense of their own value, and argues, against de Beauvoir’s thesis in The Second Sex, that female work for American women of the nineteenth century did indeed, like male work, go beyond biology “to remake the world through invention (production)” (p. 102).Brosman demands a metaphysical self-consciousness that recognizes unhappiness, anguish, and disorder but concomitantly posits the good life as the synthetic unity of the mind, body, and heart. This metaphysical consciousness is deeply rooted in the physical world—we are not only in the world but of it—and in a shared sense of place and a commitment to communal enterprises. Her thought is perhaps above all characterized throughout by a sense of “grace” and the “intimation of... (shrink)

This note examines the decision of the Court of Appeal in Tabernacle v Secretary of State for Defence (2009). The court held that byelaws prohibiting camping on Ministry of Defence land adjacent to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire violated the human rights of women peace protestors under Articles 10 and 11 European Convention on Human Rights. The note argues that this decision calls into question arguments recently made, that the association of women with peace should be abandoned. It (...) also reveals the potential of law to facilitate the performative and transformative production of subject positions, as ‘woman’, which do not depend on or connect with debilitating patriarchal constructions of women as weak or vulnerable. (shrink)

From what has already been said it will be clear that Alcaeus of Messene, like the anonymous author of Anth. Pal. xvi. 6, was a supporter of Philip V at least until 201 B.C., that is, until the Second Macedonian War. The view that his breach with Philip followed the Messenian events of 215–214 has, however, been so frequently upheld that it deserves consideration. It appears to be based on one or more of the following assumptions. Philip's activities in Messene (...) resulted in driving that state into the Aetolo-Spartan camp: Alcaeus, as a loyal Messenian, will have followed the official Messenian policy. Further, Alcaeus wrote a poem accusing Philip of poisoning his guests: this is to be connected with the death of Aratus, in which the Achaean himself professed to see the hand of Philip. Finally, it is assumed that Alcaeus had already started his literary career at the time of the Messenian events of 215–214, since he has left an epigram celebrating the threefold victory at the Isthmus of the famous Cleitomachus of Thebes, whose floruit, it is claimed, was 216–212 . None of these arguments is really cogent: a very good case can be, and has been, made out for dating Cleitomachus’ success towards the end of the third century; the poisoning referred to is undoubtedly that of Callias and Epicrates which, being itself undated, cannot be used as a chronological index; and politically Alcaeus, as we shall see, was far from being an orthodox Messenian. (shrink)

This work presents the two surviving letters preserved from the extensive correspondence of V.E. Sesemann, a professor of philosophy at Vilnius University at the time (1961), and B.D. Dandaron, a Buddhist teacher who was a researcher at the Buryat Integrated Research Institute at that time. The letters discuss the authors’ current work and creative plans, as well as everyday life and resettling after release from prison in 1956. In his letter, B.D. Dandaron devotes significant attention to a list of literature (...) that he was using in writing a study on aesthetics and/or that was mentioned in the records of the lectures of V.E. Sesemann in the prison camp. The letters give some idea of the nature of the relations between the correspondents and the areas of their research interests. The publication is preceded by a preface, which offers reflections on the context of the appearance of lectures on aesthetics that formed the basis of B.D. Dandaron’s research interest in this issue. The preface also provides context on the prison camp “seminar” on philosophy, in which the correspondents were active participants. V.E. Sesemann lectured on a wide range of areas in Western philosophy, including aesthetics, the history of philosophy, and philosophical anthropology. B.D. Dandaron lectured on the philosophy and practice of Buddhism. B.D. Dandaron’s particular interest in aesthetic issues was due to the fact that in the system of Buddhist teachings he developed, he paid great attention to the development of emotional intuition (associated with aesthetic perception) as an intermediate link between the rational intuition inherent in every person and the emotional-mystical intuition developed during yogic practice. (shrink)

Russian Marxism was fairly late to address building its own understandings of the Russian historical process. Moreover, the Bolsheviks did not have their own historiography of “Russian history” despite the fact that, beginning in 1918, they began more and more vehemently claiming not just total ideological control but also intellectual hegemony. A confrontation between “Marxist” and “non-Marxist” understandings arose. At the same time, the real disputes within the camp of Marxist historians came down to a confrontation between the versions of (...) the historical process proposed by Georgi V. Plekhanov and Mikhail N. Pokrovskii back in the 1910s. This article broadly analyzes the disputes in the Marxist camp, from pressing political implications such as attitudes toward the state to the definition of the place of “historical facts” in theory and interpretation. We also demonstrate that it was, in fact, the understandings of Plekhanov, Leon D. Trotsky, and Pokrovskii that continue, both explicitly and implicitly, the legacy of Vasily O. Klyuchevsky’s historical schema and his understanding of the “state school,” a legacy that has remained unstudied until now. (shrink)

The history of "displaced persons" is one of the major historical context of the postwar period. On the European continent, it lasts throughout the second half of the 1940s in the territory occupied by Germany, Austria and Italy. From our point of view, the study of the problem has a very strong historiographical focus, which is associated with a number of national studies. Therefore, this article is dedicated to one of the main problems, which are common to all national historiography: (...) the problem of publishing the "displaced persons". The study is based on analysis of visual journalism as a historical source on the history of ordinary life DPs. The main source is regarded magazine "DiPiniada", which V. Ellis and V. Odinokov, published in a DPs camp Pasing-Munich. On the pages of the satirical magazine in 1946-1947 addressed many current topics of ordinary life of displaced persons. In general, "DiPiniada" is an important visual historical source. On the basis of press of displaced persons, ex-DiPi memories, the author makes two main conclusions. Firstly, "Dipiniada" magazine tells the story of ordinary life in the camps DiPi both artistic "language", and contextual "language". Secondly, the satirical nature of the publication is the reason for its historical authenticity, because humor is possible only in conditions of a familiar image. It is noted that the investigation has prospects both in methodological and in the objective aspects. (shrink)

In many ways, Roe v. Wade marked a new chapter in American life. By assuring women of greater reproductive freedom., It gave women greater economic and social freedom, Inflamed a partisan battle between pro-life and pro-choice camps, and provoked a public debate regarding the proper sphere of judicial action. Hence, just as Roe has been critical to the changing politics of gender, it has been the focus of a political debate about the meaning of personhood and morality of abortion, (...) the scope of individual freedom, and the judiciary's role in effecting social change. (shrink)

Wedin considers the relation between the ontological commitment in the Categories and the semantical theory of underlying ontological configurations for standard categorical statements. According to Wedin, Aristotle's fourfold division of beings, which divides things according to whether they are, or are not, said of, and/or present in a subject, is a meta‐ontology that is concerned with beings per se, i.e. the fundamental things that are. Wedin explains that the primacy of c‐substance involves an asymmetry in the relation between c‐substance and (...) everything else, or between the substantial and the nonsubstantial. This is because there is an ontological dependence of non‐substances, and also of secondary substances, on substances: everything is either said of, or in, primary substance. The argument of this chapter, then, is that the world of the Categories is a world of individuals: all ontological relations needed for semantics can be accommodated by appeal to individuals only. (shrink)

Wedin argues that Aristotle makes form the substance of c‐substances because it is the essence of the c‐substance. Much of this chapter consists of a careful examination of a passage in Metaphysics Zeta 4, which Wedin calls the ‘New Primacy Passage’, that is crucial to Wedin's overall thesis, because here Aristotle appeals to a notion of definitional primacy, as opposed to the ontological primacy of the Categories. Z.4 focuses on this claim that form must be essence: Wedin argues that essence (...) is a certain kind of form, a form of a genus ; this does not mean ‘species’, as some commentators have thought. This is because the species is a combination of form and matter, whereas the genous eidos, Wedin argues, is the formal part only of the definition that applies to the thing. On Wedin's account, Aristotle introduces the notion of explanatory primacy of form in Z.4. (shrink)

Wedin offers an interpretation of Metaphysics Zeta 13, a very important and difficult chapter, where Aristotle apparently denies that substance is a universal, having, on most accounts, already claimed that form is substance, and that form is a universal. This interpretation of the argument of Z.13, Wedin argues, threatens the possibility of attaining a definition of substance, and places in doubt what has gone before in the treatise. According to Wedin, what Aristotle is concerned with in Z.13 is not the (...) denial that substance is a universal but rather with the denial that anything predicated universally of a c‐substance is the substance‐of the c‐substance, which Wedin calls ‘Weak proscription’. In Wedin's account of Z.13, then, Aristotle is continuing to pursue issues first raised in Z.10–11 that have to do with the relations between form and definition, and form and the universal. Wedin also argues that the dilemma at the conclusion of Z.13, regarding the definability of substance, is resolved in Z.16, with the notion of ‘Dual Complexity’, according to which the parts of a form exist potentially in the form, just as the parts of the c‐substance exist potentially in the c‐substance. (shrink)

Wedin addresses the debate over whether nonsubstantial individuals, that inhere in a subject but are not said of a subject, i.e. accidents, such as the pallor of Socrates, are nonrecurring particulars or a kind of determinate universal. Wedin examines the secondary literature on this topic and divides it into two schools of thought, determined by the contributions of J.L. Ackrill and G.E.L. Owen. According to Ackrill, individuals in non‐substance categories are particular to the substance they are in; Owen critiques Ackrill's (...) view, and proposes that these items can recur in more than one subject and hence are a sort of universal. Wedin finds Owen's thesis unsatisfactory, even after supplementing it with an improved version due to Michael Frede; instead, Wedin argues for a revised version of Ackrill's interpretation of nonsubstantial individuals as nonrecurrent particulars. According to Wedin, Aristotle is committed to individuals only—e.g. to Socrates and to the particular bit of pallor in him: this conclusion has an important bearing on the ontological status of individuals and on the primacy of substance to nonsubstantial items. (shrink)

Wedin considers the problem of the compatibility of the Categories account of primary substance with the theory of substantial form of the Metaphysics. Wedin collects from the secondary literature the most important arguments for incompatibilism, and offers some proposals for restoring their harmony. While admitting the evident differences in the way Aristotle treats the question of substance in each treatise, Wedin is keen to argue that these differences are not sufficient to conclude that the treatises are incompatible. Wedin singles out (...) for particular attention, and criticism, Michael Frede and Gunther Patzig's account of Metaphysics Zeta, according to which the primary substance of the Metaphysics and the basic subject of predications is the form. Wedin considers two ‘philosophical’ arguments and one ‘Aristotelian’ argument for the subjecthood of forms, and argues that the textual evidence does not support the claim that form is the subject of accidents. (shrink)

Chapters 10 and 11 are critical to the argument of Metaphysics Zeta: these chapters are concerned with the purification of form. Z.10 introduces the apparatus of part and whole and consists of an argument to the end that form and its parts have priority over the other internal structural components of c‐substances, i.e. matter and the compound of form and matter; while in Z.11 Aristotle argues that form and its parts cannot involve any admixture of matter. Wedin argues that the (...) causal role of form presupposes its purity: if form is to explain why a certain portion of matter constitutes a c‐substance of a given kind, then matter—whether this latter is understood as functional, or remnant matter—cannot already be contained in the form. This is the ‘purity thesis’, as Wedin calls it: matter cannot be included in the definitions of natural organisms, Wedin points out, because that would make the explanandum a part of the principle that explains it. Wedin also argues that form must be sufficiently complex to provide definitions of the natures of particular compounds, which are complex, even though form itself is a kind of universal. (shrink)

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle often says that ‘form is substance’: in this chapter, Wedin argues that ‘substance’ in this context means the ‘substance‐of’ c‐substances. Wedin begins by examining Aristotle's use, and retention, of the framework of the Categories in Metaphysics Zeta, before turning to discuss Z.3, which is crucial to understanding the relation between the Categories and Metaphysics theories of substance, because it is usually thought that here Aristotle departs from the substance of the Categories. Wedin denies that Z.3 involves (...) a rejection of the Categories subjecthood criterion for primary substance: Aristotle rejects only the claim that one thing is the substance of another simply if it is the primary underlying subject of the other. Wedin argues that in Z.3 Aristotle introduces the idea of the ‘substance‐of’ a thing, and identifies as candidates for the substance of c‐substances the internal structural components form, matter, and the compound of form and matter. (shrink)

Wedin discusses Aristotle's claims in Metaphysics Zeta 6 that the essence of a thing is to be sought among its per se attributes, and that each thing that is primary and spoken of per se, e.g. primary substance, is the same as its essence. Wedin argues that the Zeta 6 Thesis, i.e. that the essence of a thing is the thing's immediate essence, is a crucial requirement of the explanatory role of essence as the substance of c‐substances. According to Wedin, (...) Aristotle introduces this requirement in order to establish that a thing's essence cannot depend on another essence. Form must be the essence; if form cannot explain the nature of the thing of which it is the form, there would be the threat of a regress of explanatory forms. At the end of the chapter, Wedin considers the problem that the identity of a thing and its essence is a requirement that can be met by non‐substance items, but he denies that this leads to a dilution of the conception of substance. (shrink)

This essay explores the aspects of the Aristotelian psuchē that accounts for its contemporary appeal. The poverty of the notion of the mind is discussed. The superiority of the psuchē over the mind is emphasized.

Avant la parution des Lettres philosophiques de Voltaire, chaque grande famille intellectuelle examine la production pascalienne selon une perspective traditionelle. Apr s la XXV Lettre, o s'affrontent deux morales, deux pist mologies, deux conceptions de Dieu, le regard sur Pascal perd de son unit. Certes, parmi les crivains des Lumi res, l'anthropologie pascalienne est condamn e: la valorisation de l'amour propre, la croyance en l'id e de nature, le souci, le souci de bienfaisance, l'esprit de tol rance, le concept d'utilit, (...) la foi dans le progr s et l' fficacit de l'action politique s'opposent au tragique pascalien. Mais certains auteurs, tel Vauvenargues, sont sensibles l'esth tique de Pascal, tandis que d'autres, comme d'Alembert, vantent ses m rites scientifiques. Le paradoxe de la fortune pascalienne est surtout entretenu, dans le parti des Lumi res, par l'orientation sceptique donn e aux fragments sur la coutume ou sur le d senchantement du monde. Cons quence du progr s de l'esprit 'philosophique', les apologistes, chez qui le sens du p ch s'est att nu, d fendent avec ti deur Pascal, en oubliant progressivement la dimension th ologique des Pens es et en orientant ce livre vers une interpr tation profane: les preuves historiques tendent passer au second plan. L'apologie traditionnelle reconna t un r le social au christianisme, parall lement au concept d'utilit et de progr s qui impr gnent les consciences religieuses. Dans ce contexte, peu favorable une bonne compr hension de la th ologie pascalienne, les j suites att nuent leurs critiques envers l'auteur des Provinciales, tandis que les jans nistes, l'exemple de Louis Racine, se r v lent des disciples infid les: les preuves m taphysiques, naturelles ou morales ne s'inscrivent pas dans la filiation pascalienne. Les d fenseurs de la religion chr tienne restent trangers au message pascalien. Condorcet, premier diteur des Pens es depuis Port-Royal, op re une fracture saisissante entre le moraliste et l'apologiste jusqu' enr ler Pascal dans le camps des ath es. La fin du XVIIIe si cle est marqu e par le renouveau d'une sensibilit religieuse, mais celle-ci reste loign e de la th matique pascalienne. Seule la litt rature, avec l' loge de la m lancolie, la fascination pour la subjectivit, la reconnaissance du fragment, offre l'amorce d'une transformation du regard sur Pascal. En conclusion, il semble que l'auteur du dix-septi me si cle ne soit compris ni par les philosophes ni par les apologistes, dont l'horizon intellectuelle est paradoxalement r uni par les crit res de raison ou d'utilit. Leur rapport l'oeuvre pascalienne ne se lit que sous la forme d'une strat gie des 'morceaux choisis'. Ce sujet a aussi soulign l'int r t d'un d bat toujours recommenc le XX r sonne encore de l'affrontement entre le doute et l'optimisme, entre une interrogation sur les valeurs et la foi dans le progr s, entre la d nonciation de la perte des sens et le pari sur l'histoire. Le dialogue entre l'humanisme et l'anti-humanisme est de tous les si cles. (shrink)