Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

With Hegel’s metaphysics attracting renewed attention, it is time to address a long-standing criticism: Scholars from Marx to Popper and Habermas have worried that Hegel’s metaphysics has anti-individualist and authoritarian implications, which are particularly pronounced in his Philosophy of History, since Hegel identifies historical progress with reason imposing itself on individuals. Rather than proposing an alternative non-metaphysical conception of reason, as Pippin or Brandom have done, this article argues that critics are broadly right in their metaphysical reading of Hegel’s central (...) concepts. However, they are mistaken about what Hegel’s approach entails, when one examines the specific types of states discussed by the philosopher in his Philosophy of History. Even on a traditional metaphysical reading, Hegel is not only non-authoritarian; he also makes a powerful argument concerning freedom, whereupon the freest society involves collective oversight and the shaping of social structures so as to ensure that they benefit everybody. (shrink)

Picking up on Marx’s and Hegel’s analyses of human beings as social and individual, the article shows that what is at stake is not merely the possibility of individuality, but also the correct conception of the universal good. Both Marx and Hegel suppose that individuals must be social or political as individuals, which means, at least in Hegel’s case, that particular interests must form part of the universal good. The good and the rational is not something that requires sacrificing one’s (...) interests for the community or denying one’s particular character so as to become an equal rational agent. Very much to the contrary, the rational or the common good is nothing but the harmonious structuring of particular interests. While Section I introduces Marx’s and Hegel’s conceptions of individual and social beings, Sections II and III discuss their respective views of individuality, and Sections IV and V discuss the notion of a universal good containing individual interests. (shrink)

While Hegel's metaphysics was long reviled, it has garnered more interest in recent years, with even the so-called non-metaphysical Hegelians starting to explicitly discuss Hegel’s metaphysical commitments. This brings up the old question: what are the social-philosophical implications of Hegel’s metaphysics? This chapter provides a unique answer to this question by contrasting the former non-metaphysical reading (as developed by Robert Pippin) with a traditional way of interpreting Hegel’s metaphysics and social philosophy, whose lineage includes not Wittgenstein, Sellars, or Brandom, but (...) rather Schelling, Marx, and Adorno. After discussing the two varieties of metaphysics (Sections 1–3), I will argue that a traditional metaphysical Hegel is more realist when it comes to assessing the power of social structures (Section 4), focused on structural freedom rather than agency (Sections 5 and 6), and more empowering for and lenient towards individuals who can make their interests count and are free to be irrational and egoist (Section 7). (shrink)

This article discusses anglophone readings of G. W. F. Hegel against the backdrop of German-language scholarship. The article starts by differentiating types of metaphysics (I). Following a taxonomy introduced by Paul Redding, I then discuss Charles Taylor’s Christian-mystical (II), the so-called »non-metaphysical« (III) and the »revised metaphysical« reading (IV). Terry Pinkard’s work serves as an example of (III) and Stephen Houlgate’s as an example of (IV). I highlight problematic aspects of each reading that concern: the meaning of »reason in the (...) world« (II), the anti-relativist clout of Hegel’s philosophy (III) and the difference between the development of logical concepts and the empirical origin of the world and human thinking (IV). The text ends (V) by pointing to the social implications of each type of reading. (shrink)

In recent years, documentary formats have entered prominently into the realm of the culture industry, especially since Hollywood and Netflix started to invest in costly productions addressed to the mainstream. Many of these documentaries claim to show reality in its immediacy (“as it really is”), to reveal that which is obscured, or to critically assess societal evils. They use aesthetic strategies that reinforce the appearance of authenticity, while concealing the mediation of what they represent, and the authoritarian stances they presuppose. (...) This turns them into powerful instruments for diffusing authoritarian and populist ideologies. Their political impact on society, their performative power of opinion-shaping, and their subliminal influence on how we perceive and understand reality call urgently for critical assessment. Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of the culture industry, along with their philosophical, sociological, and aesthetic writings, provide a constructive starting point. This essay aims to mobilize their critical theory of society for the problematization of documentary films in terms of their dialectical relation to society. (shrink)

Although film for Adorno is first and foremost the principal agent of culture industry, he takes on an equivocal stance towards the medium and its aesthetic potentials for reasons inherent to the medium itself. Indeed, its disinterested recording of the empirical world leads to both, a semblance of immediacy easy to instrumentalize for propaganda or advertising purposes, and a non-subjective access to the world of objects, which disclose their societal imprint. Despite (or because of) its technological basis, film is inherently (...) concerned with the society it both mediates and addresses, and has to be understood as a collective medium in either of its formats: commercial productions, because they address the masses (which they manipulate and distract from reality’s inherent antagonisms by reproducing pseudo-realistic, stereotypical representations in a totalitarian manner), independent films, because they unearth something non-identical nestled in the folds of the ideological totality, through a montage “which does not interfere with things but rather arranges them in a constellation akin to that of writing”. This article aims to deploy the complex constellation through which Adorno approaches film, its embedding in the capitalist world, its inherent aesthetic force and its complicated relation with the reality it mediates. (shrink)

When Werner Herzog states, in his famous Minnesota Declaration, “[fa]cts create norms, and truth illumination”, he not only opposes his own idea of truth as spiritual experience to the notion of factual truth based on a seemingly unmediated representation of reality and purely rational principles. He also points to a societal problem inherent to such hegemonic attributions of veracity as advocated by the representatives of what he calls “Cinema Vérité”: their “truth of accountants” generates a normative perception and understanding of (...) reality. Instead of producing peculiar images that trigger the imagination, they (re)produce benchmarks, fixed values and stereotypes. Thus, they are perfectly in line with the ideology of the “administered society” (Horkheimer and Adorno, e.g. in Dialectic of Enlightenment). Based on the identity principle, this society produces standardized, consumer-friendly forms precluding the individuals from making their own, singular experiences. Films that rely purely on facts instead of seeking for “deeper strata of truth” are thus, for Herzog, not only boring, but also instruments of domination in the service of the status quo. However, Herzog neither avoids the administered society in order to search for an archaic truth beyond or underneath it, nor does he address political issues frontally in the films analyzed in this article. Critique of society rather transpires through particular configurations, notably in moments of confrontation between the “normal” society and the marginalized, “useless”, or otherwise rejected characters (as Kaspar Hauser’s encounter with representatives of the “good society, Strozeck’s misfortune, Woyzeck’s condition as the guinea pig for the sake of scientific progress, or the extravagant setting depicted in Even Dwarfs Started Small). Rather than focusing on the problematic situation of exclusion as such, Herzog emphasizes the very singularity of his protagonists in a dialectical tension with their environment, thus providing an access to the poetic truth which springs out of their individual ways of experiencing as opposed to the normative reality-principle. This is also true for many of Herzog’s documentaries: for example, Walter Steiner’s deep pleasure in ski-flying and the strange beauty of the slow-motion pictures showing him in the air highly contrast with the public pushing him to take dangerous risks and the bloody images presented in the media (The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner). By juxtaposing Steiner’s sensory experience and its singularized image with the societal logic of competition and its stereotyped representation, Herzog discloses the heterogeneous layers of a material truth that escapes factual accuracy. This article aims to approach Herzog’s notion of ecstatic truth by unfolding the dialectical tension between sensory, perceptual and spiritual experiences on the one hand, and the administrated society on the other. -/- . (shrink)

Most recent accounts of personal autonomy acknowledge that the social environment a person lives in, and the personal relationships she entertains, have some impact on her autonomy. Two kinds of conceptualizing social conditions are traditionally distinguished in this regard: Causally relational accounts hold that certain relationships and social environments play a causal role for the development and on-going exercise of autonomy. Constitutively relational accounts, by contrast, claim that autonomy is at least partly constituted by a person’s social environment or standing. (...) The central aim of this paper is to raise the question how causally and constitutively relational approaches relate to the fact that we exercise our autonomy over time. I argue that once the temporal scope of autonomy is opened up, we need not only to think differently about the social dimension of autonomy. We also need to reconsider the very distinction between causally and constitutively relational accounts, because it is itself a synchronic (and not a diachronic) distinction. (shrink)

Algorithmic predictions are promising for insurance companies to develop personalized risk models for determining premiums. In this context, issues of fairness, discrimination, and social injustice might arise: Algorithms for estimating the risk based on personal data may be biased towards specific social groups, leading to systematic disadvantages for those groups. Personalized premiums may thus lead to discrimination and social injustice. It is well known from many application fields that such biases occur frequently and naturally when prediction models are applied to (...) people unless special efforts are made to avoid them. Insurance is no exception. In this paper, we provide a thorough analysis of algorithmic fairness in the case of insurance premiums. We ask what “fairness” might mean in this context and how the fairness of a premium system can be measured. For this, we apply the established fairness frameworks of the fair machine learning literature to the case of insurance premiums and show which of the existing fairness criteria can be applied to assess the fairness of insurance premiums. We argue that two of the often-discussed group fairness criteria, independence (also called statistical parity or demographic parity) and separation (also known as equalized odds), are not normatively appropriate for insurance premiums. Instead, we propose the sufficiency criterion (also known as well-calibration) as a morally defensible alternative that allows us to test for systematic biases in premiums towards certain groups based on the risk they bring to the pool. In addition, we clarify the connection between group fairness and different degrees of personalization. Our findings enable insurers to assess the fairness properties of their risk models, helping them avoid reputation damage resulting from potentially unfair and discriminatory premium systems. (shrink)

Abstract One of the most popular objections against epistemic contextualism is the so-called ?warranted assertability? objection. The objection is based on the possibility of a ?warranted assertability manoeuvre?, also known as a WAM. I argue here that WAMs are of very limited scope and importance. An important class of cases cannot be dealt with by WAMs. No analogue of WAMs is available for these cases. One should thus not take WAMs too seriously in the debate about epistemic contextualism.

Ricœur lectured and wrote for over twenty years on negation (‘Do I understand something better if I know what it is not, and what is not-ness?') and never published his extensive writings on this subject. Ricœur concluded that there are multiple forms of negation; it can, for example, be the other person (Plato), the not knowable nature of our world (Kant), the included opposite (Hegel), apophatic spirituality (Plotinus on not being able to know God) and existential nothingness (Sartre). Ricœur, working (...) on Kant, Hegel and Sartre, decided that all these forms of negation are incompatible and also fatally flawed because they fail to resolve false binaries of negative: positive. Alison Scott-Baumann demonstrates how Ricœur subsequently incorporated negation into his linguistic turn, using dialectics, metaphor, narrative, parable and translation in order to show how negation is in us, not outside us: language both creates and clarifies false binaries. He bestows upon negation a strong and central role in the human condition, and its inevitability is reflected in his writings, if we look carefully. Ricœur and the Negation of Happiness draws on Ricœur's published works, previously unavailable archival material and many other sources. Alison Scott-Baumann argues that thinking positively is necessary but not sufficient for aspiring to happiness - what is also required is affirmation of negative impulses: we know we are split by contradictions and still try to overcome them. She also demonstrates the urgency of analysing current socio-cultural debates about wellbeing, education and equality, which rest insecurely upon our loose use of the negative as a category mistake. (shrink)

This paper discusses two versions of reliabilism: modal and probabilistic reliabilism. Modal reliabilism faces the problem of the missing closeness metric for possible worlds while probalistic reliabilism faces the problem of the relevant reference class. Despite the severity of these problems, reliabilism is still very plausible (also for independent reasons). I propose to stick with reliabilism, propose a contextualist (or, alternatively, harmlessly relativist) solution to the above problems and suggest that probabilistic reliabilism has the advantage over modal reliabilism.

Seit über zehn Jahren moderieren die Autor*innen mit hohem Zuspruch das Ethik-Café in Einrichtungen des Sozial- und Gesundheitswesens. Menschen aus unterschiedlichen Berufen, Patient*innen, An- und Zugehörige sowie ethisch Interessierte haben im Ethik-Café die Möglichkeit, aus ihrer persönlichen und beruflichen Perspektive ethische Fragestellungen zu diskutieren, die für ihren Alltag relevant sind. Ethik-Cafés sind niederschwellig, multiprofessionell, interdisziplinär. Die Teilnehmer*innen profitieren von dieser Perspektivenvielfalt. Das Buch stellt die Konzeption sowie deren Evaluation, die theoretischen und methodischen Voraussetzungen und in vielen Beispielen die praktische Umsetzung (...) von Ethik-Cafés dar. Das entwickelte Vier-Phasen-Modell des ethischen Prozesses wird exemplarisch in 25 Ethik-Cafés zu Themen aus dem Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen angewendet und umgesetzt. Das Buch richtet sich an Mitarbeiter*innen und Führungskräfte im Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen, Lehrer*innen, Lernbegleiter*innen und Auszubildende in der generalistischen Pflegeausbildung, an Fort- und Weiterbildungsreferent*innen, Studierende, Ehrenamtliche sowie alle ethisch Interessierten. (shrink)

There is a very plausible principle of the transitivity of justifying reasons. It says that if "p" is better justified than "q" (all things considered) and "q" better than "r", then "p" is better justified than "r" (all things considered). There is a corresponding principle of rational theory choice. Call one theory "a better theory than" another theory if all criteria of theory choice considered (explanatory power, simplicity, empirical adequacy, etc.), the first theory meets the criteria better than the second (...) theory. The corresponding transitivity principle says that if theory A is a better theory than theory B and if theory B is a better theory than theory C, then A is a better theory than theory C. I argue against this principle. It turns out that whenever there are 2 or more relevant and independent criteria of theory evaluation, and whenever at least of one the criteria is "non-linear" in a certain sense, there may be violations of transitivity which do not violate any standards of rationality (of theory choice). This shows, again, that theory choice cannot be seen as merely the application of given rules of rational theory choice. (shrink)

Der Titel "deutscher Idealismus" wurde von Schelling mit dem Versagen Leibnizens und Kants vor dem Cartesischen Substanzen-Dualismus ("res cogitans", "res extensa") in Zusammenhang gebracht. Weder Spinozas Deus sive Natura noch der Leibnizschen Monadenlehre noch Kants transzendentalem Idealismus der Erscheinung und des Dinges an sich sei es gelungen, das ideengeschichtlich geforderte System des theogonischen Vernunft-Absoluten zu entwerfen. Die jetzt aktuelle Aufgabe lautet, den Weg von Kant bis Fichte und Hegel ideengeschichtlich aufzuzeichnen.

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Challenging the assumption that that the capitalist transformation includes a radical break with the past, this edited volume traces how historically older forms of social inequality are transformed but persist in the present to shape the social structure of contemporary societies in the global South. Each society comprises an interpretation of itself - including the meaning of life, the concept of a human being and the notion of a collective. This volume studies the interpretation that various societies have of themselves. (...) This interpretation is referred to as social ontology. All chapters of the edited volume focus on the relation between social ontology and structures of inequality. They argue that each society comprises several historical layers of social ontology that correspond to layers of inequality, which are referred to as sociocultures. Thereby, the volume explains why and how structures of inequality differ between contemporary collectives in the global South, even though all of them seem to have similar structures, institutions, and economies. The volume is aimed at academics, students and the interested public looking for a novel theorization of social inequality pertaining to collectives in the global South. (shrink)

Introduction to and overview over my book "Epistemic Contextualism. A Defense" (OUP 2016).

Review of Fodor, "Hume Variations".

Lexicalized theories of syntax often assume that verb-structure regularities are mediated by lemmas, which abstract over variation in verb tense and aspect. German syntax seems to challenge this assumption, because verb position depends on tense and aspect. To examine how German speakers link these elements, a structural priming study was performed which varied syntactic structure, verb position, and verb overlap.structural priming was found, both within and across verb position, but priming was larger when the verb position was the same between (...) prime and target. Priming was boosted by verb overlap, but there was no interaction with verb position. The results can be explained by a lemma model where tense and aspect are linked to structural choices in German. Since the architecture of this lemma model is not consistent with results from English, a connectionist model was developed which could explain the cross-linguistic variation in the production system. Together, these findings support the view that language learning plays an important role in determining the nature of structural priming in different languages. (shrink)

An implicit ambiguity in the field of prediction-based decision-making concerns the relation between the concepts of prediction and decision. Much of the literature in the field tends to blur the boundaries between the two concepts and often simply refers to ‘fair prediction’. In this paper, we point out that a differentiation of these concepts is helpful when trying to implement algorithmic fairness. Even if fairness properties are related to the features of the used prediction model, what is more properly called (...) ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ is a decision system, not a prediction model. This is because fairness is about the consequences on human lives, created by a decision, not by a prediction. In this paper, we clarify the distinction between the concepts of prediction and decision and show the different ways in which these two elements influence the final fairness properties of a prediction-based decision system. As well as discussing this relationship both from a conceptual and a practical point of view, we propose a framework that enables a better understanding and reasoning of the conceptual logic of creating fairness in prediction-based decision-making. In our framework, we specify different roles, namely the ‘prediction-modeler’ and the ‘decision-maker,’ and the information required from each of them for being able to implement fairness of the system. Our framework allows for deriving distinct responsibilities for both roles and discussing some insights related to ethical and legal requirements. Our contribution is twofold. First, we offer a new perspective shifting the focus from an abstract concept of algorithmic fairness to the concrete context-dependent nature of algorithmic decision-making, where different actors exist, can have different goals, and may act independently. In addition, we provide a conceptual framework that can help structure prediction-based decision problems with respect to fairness issues, identify responsibilities, and implement fairness governance mechanisms in real-world scenarios. (shrink)

Ricoeur has written about translation as an ethical paradigm. Translation from one language to another, and within one’s own language, provides both a metaphor and a real mechanism for explaining oneself to the other. Attempting and failing to achieve symmetry between two languages is a manifestation of the asymmetry inherent in human relationships. If actively pursued, translation can show us how to forgive other people for being different from us and thus serves as a paradigm for tolerance. In full acceptance (...) that this will be impossible, Ricoeur uses the model of translation as a way of understanding European integration, with three aspects: translation, shared narrative and shared forgiveness of Europe’s history. These models provide a strong statement about tolerance and become even more significant through their conversation with the negativity that suffuses them. He draws on his knowledge of psychoanalysis to explain that the translator suffers through remembering and through mourning the loss of perfection; there must be acknowledgement of deficiency. This acceptance of imperfection and of limits to success is a key element in Ricoeur’s philosophy and is explored from the 1950s onwards in his study of negativity; denied by phenomenology and explored by Hegel. Negation is vital for understanding the world, but it can preclude us from access to meaning when it becomes negativity. Translation can provide the bridge to span the tension between the pathology of denial and different interpretations, and projection of evil into others, which I believe is at the heart of the perceived incompatibilities between Islam and the West. There is a political urgency to this enterprise, given the ‘othering’ of the Muslim world that has replaced the Cold War dichotomies between Communist as ‘other’ and the capitalist world. References to the Muslim as the current ‘other’ will be part of my discussion. As well as seeking to understand Ricoeur’s model of translation, we will examine whether his model works in a world where many speak no Arabic, Urdu or Farsi, or indeed whether it has any relevance for people who do not translate from one language to another. (shrink)

Safety accounts of knowledge claim, roughly, that knowledge that p requires that one's belief that p could not have easily been false. Such accounts have been very popular in recent epistemology. However, one serious problem safety accounts have to confront is to explain why certain lottery‐related beliefs are not knowledge, without excluding obvious instances of inductive knowledge. We argue that the significance of this objection has hitherto been underappreciated by proponents of safety. We discuss Duncan Pritchard's recent solution to the (...) problem and argue that it fails. More importantly, the problem reaches deeper and poses a threat to any current safety accounts that require a belief's modal stability in close possibilities (as well as safety accounts that appeal to ‘normality’). We end by arguing that ways out of the problem require substantial reconstruction for a safety‐based account of knowledge. (shrink)

In this article, the authors examine the circumstances under which scholars can become effective figures of identification in medicine, after whom prizes or institutions are named – and under which circumstances scholars cannot or can no longer fulfill such a role. Trends and changes in professional cultural memory are examined, illustrated by the biographies and receptions of the human geneticist Hans Nachtsheim, the circulatory researcher Rudolf Thauer, the urologist Dora Teleky as well as the dentists Karl Häupl and Elsbeth von (...) Schnizer. This study shows that the evaluation criteria themselves are historically changeable and that gender is an important influencing factor. While formal criteria (e. g., membership in parties and organizations) have traditionally been important evaluation criteria, the authors advocate that actions in research and clinical practice be given even greater attention in the future. (shrink)

How is violence conventionally portrayed and where does violence lie in representation? How does photography mediate the relationships between different forms and ideas, moments and experiences of violence? These were some of the questions addressed in a conversation between artist Harri Pälviranta and philosopher Stefanie Baumann organized by Alexandra Athanasiadou, founder and director of the online platform Philosophy & Photography Lab (PHLSPH), during the international Photography Festival, Imago Lisboa, in Lisbon during October 2022. The discussion presented here is edited (...) from a transcript by Athanasiadou. It took place at Lusófona University in Lisbon on the occasion of Pälviranta’s exhibition at the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea (MNAC) (6 October 2021–8 January 2023) and focuses on two series of works in the exhibition, News Portraits and Choreography of Violence. (shrink)