Owen Ware here develops and defends a novel interpretation of Fichte’s moral philosophy as an ethics of wholeness. While virtually forgotten for most of the twentieth century, Fichte’s System of Ethics is now recognized by scholars as a masterpiece in the history of post-Kantian thought and a key text for understanding the work of later German idealist thinkers. This book provides a careful examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte’s moral philosophy evolved and of the specific arguments he offers (...) in response to Kant and his immediate successors. A distinctive feature of this study is a focus on the foundational concepts of Fichte’s ethics—freedom, morality, feeling, conscience, community—and their connection to his innovative but largely misunderstood theory of drives. By way of conclusion, the book shows that what appears to be two conflicting commitments in Fichte’s ethics—a commitment to the feelings of one's conscience and a commitment to engage in open dialogue with others—are two aspects of his theory of moral perfection. The result is a sharp understanding of Fichte's System of Ethics as offering a compelling resolution to the personal and interpersonal dimensions of moral life. (shrink)

Kant’s effort to defend the co-existence of transcendental freedom and natural necessity is one of the crowning achievements of the first Critique. Yet by identifying the will with practical reason in his moral philosophy, he lent support to the view that the moral law is the causal law of a free will – the result of which, as Reinhold argued, left immoral action impossible. However, Reinhold’s attempt to separate the will from practical reason generated difficulties of its own, which Maimon (...) was quick to point out. By identifying freedom with indifferent choice, Maimon argued, Reinhold had no resources to explain why a free will acts at all. My aim in this article is to show how Fichte’s theory of freedom seeks to reconcile these two commitments: the key lies in what I call Fichte’s Genetic Model, according to which indifferent choice is the original condition of the will, but a condition we must actively overcome. (shrink)

Kant’s arguments for the reality of human freedom and the normativity of the moral law continue to inspire work in contemporary moral philosophy. Many prominent ethicists invoke Kant, directly or indirectly, in their efforts to derive the authority of moral requirements from a more basic conception of action, agency, or rationality. But many commentators have detected a deep rift between the _Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals_ and the _Critique of Practical Reason_, leaving Kant’s project of justification exposed to conflicting (...) assessments and interpretations. In this major re-reading of Kant, Owen Ware defends the controversial view that Kant’s mature writings on ethics share a unified commitment to the moral law’s primacy. Using both close analysis and historical contextualization, Owen Ware overturns a paradigmatic way of reading Kant’s arguments for morality and freedom, situating them within Kant’s critical methodology at large. The result is a novel understanding of Kant that challenges much of what goes under the banner of Kantian arguments for moral normativity today. (shrink)

Kant’s doctrine of the Fact of Reason is one of the most perplexing aspects of his moral philosophy. The aim of this paper is to defend Kant’s doctrine from the common charge of dogmatism. My defense turns on a previously unexplored analogy to the notion of ‘matters of fact’ popularized by members of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century. In their work, ‘facts’ were beyond doubt, often referring to experimental effects one could witness first hand. While Kant uses the (...) German equivalent in different contexts, I argue that the scientific analogy opens up a new framework for interpreting his strategy of justification in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the final section, I address a few possible objections to my reading, one of which I anticipate coming from Dieter Henrich and Ian Proops, who have argued that Kant’s Fact of Reason is best understood under a legal analogy. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) remains one of the most enigmatic works of twentieth century thought. In this bold and original new study, Ben Ware argues that Wittgenstein's early masterpiece is neither an analytic treatise on language and logic, nor a quasi-mystical work seeking to communicate 'ineffable' truths. Instead, we come to understand the Tractatus by grasping it in a twofold sense: first, as a dialectical work which invites the reader to overcome certain 'illusions of thought'; and second as a (...) modernist work whose anti-philosophical ambition is intimately tied to its radical aesthetic character. By placing the Tractatus in the force field of modernism, Dialectic of the Ladder clears the ground for a new and challenging exploration of the work's ethical dimension. It also casts new light upon the cultural, aesthetic and political significances of Wittgenstein's writing, revealing hitherto unacknowledged affinities with a host of philosophical and literary authors, including Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Adorno, Benjamin, and Kafka. (shrink)

The Healing Virtues explores the intersection of psychotherapy and virtue ethics - with an emphasis on the patient's role within a healing process. It considers how the common ground between the therapeutic process and the cultivation of virtues can inform the efforts of both therapist and patient. Within this book, the Duff R. Waring argues that there is a case for patient virtues that are crucially relevant to working through the problems in living that arise in psychotherapy, e.g., honesty, courage, (...) humility, perseverance. The central idea is that treatment may need to build virtues while it ameliorates problems. Hence, the patient's work in psychotherapy can both challenge character strengths and result in their further development. (shrink)

In this article I offer a critical commentary on Jeanine Grenberg’s claim that, by the time of the second Critique, Kant was committed to the view that we only access the moral law’s validity through the feeling of respect. The issue turns on how we understand Kant’s assertion that our consciousness of the moral law is a ‘fact of reason’. Grenberg argues that all facts must be forced, and anything forced must be felt. I defend an alternative interpretation, according to (...) which the fact of reason refers to the actuality of our moral consciousness. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking new study, Ben Ware carries out a bold reassessment of the relationship between modernism and ethics, arguing that modernist literature and philosophy offer more than simply a snapshot of the moral conflicts of the past: they provide a crucial point of reference for today’s emancipatory struggles. Modernism in this assessment is characterized not only by a concern with language and aesthetic creativity, but also by a preoccupation with the question of how to live. Investigating ethical ideas in (...) Wittgenstein, Beckett, Kierkegaard, Kant, Cavell, Marx, Henry James and Lacan, Ware demonstrates how these thinkers can bring us to a new understanding of a constellation of issues which contemporary radical thought must re-visit: utopia, repetition, perfectionism, subtraction, negativity, critique, absence, duty, revolution and political love. The result is a timely and provocative intervention, which re-draws the boundaries for future debates on the ethics and politics of modernism. (shrink)

There is no question that Fichte's theory of conscience is central to his system of ethics. Yet his descriptions of its role in practical deliberation appear inconsistent, if not contradictory. Many scholars have claimed that for Fichte conscience plays a material role by providing the content of our moral obligations—the Material Function View. Some have denied this, however, claiming that conscience only plays a formal role by testing our moral convictions in any given case—the Formal Function View. My aim in (...) this paper is to offer a new contribution to this debate. I begin by supplying further evidence in support of the view that conscience only plays a formal function in Fichte's ethics. Then I call attention to a deeper problem this view faces, namely, that it invites an infinite regress by making one's conviction a matter of higher-order reflection. The key to overcoming this threat, I argue, lies in Fichte's doctrine of feeling, whereby the criterion of one's conviction lies, not in a cognitive state, but in an affective state. In closing, I discuss the relevance of Fichte's theory for current debates over the nature of moral error and moral deference. (shrink)

This famous Persian mystic was born in Hamadhān in ah 490 or 492 (ad/) and was executed in the same town in 525/ on the charge of heresy. ...

Ayn al-Qu t al-Hamadh n (d. 1131) is a defining mystic of medieval Iran whose teachings influenced many Iranian and Indian scholars after him. A major focus in his work is his approach to death as a state of consciousness. Drawing on medieval manuscripts and primary sources, this book offers insight on this mystic and his perception of death.

This study was undertaken to investigate the outcome of using the activity based learning method on the development of writing skills of students of grade 6. The study used pretest post-test equivalent group design. 50 students were randomly selected from a government school as sample for this study. They were divided into experimental and control groups based on the scores they achieved in pre-test. Students in the experimentalgroup received instruction through activity based method of learning. In contrast, the traditional method (...) of teaching writing was used for teaching the control group. A comparison of pre- and post-test scores on writing measure evidenced that the experimental group performed better that the control group on writing post-test. It was concluded that activities helped enhance the writing skills of the experimental group. This finding suggests that students of elementary level should be engaged in activity based learning to enhance their writing skills. (shrink)

In recent years much has been written about the contemporary revolutionary democracy of Afro-Asian countries, particularly in connection with the new experience of noncapitalist development or socialist orientation. Serious study of the revolutionary process in former colonial and semicolonial countries would be inconceivable without the formulation of this problem. Under the conditions of the general crisis of capitalism and the growing influence of scientific socialism, conceptions of the departure from capitalism, of the adoption of a non-capitalist path of development and (...) of a socialist orientation in domestic and foreign policy, are developing and maturing in various Eastern countries as a result of the evolution of the ideas of national liberation and social justice and the fact that the leading champions of independence and progress are beginning to embrace scientific socialism. Study of the experience of the movement of Asian and African countries along the noncapitalist path shows that they have made major socioeconomic progress, but also reveals significant objective and subjective difficulties in the policies of the revolutionary democratic forces. (shrink)

While major religions espouse moral values encouraging prosocial behavior, the empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of religious influence on such behavior, as proposed by the religious pro-sociality hypothesis, remains inconclusive. To explore this further, we conducted two studies to test this hypothesis in Pakistan, a Muslim-majority Asian nation, focusing on whistleblowing as a prosocial behavior. The first study gathered cross-sectional data from 323 undergraduate business students in Karachi, Pakistan, utilizing hypothetical scenarios of academic cheating and bank embezzlement. Participants completed a (...) scenario-based questionnaire assessing intrinsic religiosity, personality traits, and whistleblowing intentions. Measures were adapted for the Muslim context, with intrinsic religiosity assessed using the Age Universal Intrinsic-Extrinsic (AUIE) scale and personality traits measured using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) scale. Regression analysis of these data revealed that while intrinsic religiosity significantly predicted whistleblowing intentions in the academic cheating scenario, it did not do so in the bank embezzlement scenario. Furthermore, multiple regression modeling to test moderating effects of personality traits did not yield significant results for either scenario. The second study employed an experimental design to observe actual whistleblowing behavior among 85 undergraduate business students in Karachi, Pakistan. Participants were randomly assigned to either a religious or a neutral condition, aiming to assess the impact of intrinsic religiosity on whistleblowing behavior. The experiment used a cover story which involved a confederate cheating during an intelligence quotient (IQ) test. The purpose of this design was to examine whether the participant, acting as the sole witness to wrongdoing, would intervene and blow the whistle. Data analysis using logistic regression indicated that intrinsic religiosity did not significantly predict whistleblowing behavior across both the experimental and control conditions. These contrasting results highlight the complexity of whistleblowing, emphasizing its subjective nature and the influence of social dynamics on behavior. (shrink)

It is commonly held that Kant ventured to derive morality from freedom in Groundwork III. It is also believed that he reversed this strategy in the second Critique, attempting to derive freedom from morality instead. In this paper, I set out to challenge these familiar assumptions: Kant’s argument in Groundwork III rests on a moral conception of the intelligible world, one that plays a similar role as the ‘fact of reason’ in the second Critique. Accordingly, I argue, there is no (...) reversal in the proof-structure of Kant’s two works. (shrink)

While Kant’s claim that the moral law discloses our freedom to us has been extensively discussed in recent decades, the reactions to this claim among Kant’s immediate successors have gone largely overlooked by scholars. Reinhold, Creuzer, and Maimon were among three prominent thinkers of the era unwilling to follow Kant in making the moral law the condition for knowing our freedom. Maimon went so far as to reject Kant’s method of appealing to our everyday awareness of duty on the grounds (...) that common human understanding is susceptible to error and illusion. In this paper I shall examine how these skeptical reactions to Kant’s position shaped the background for Fichte’s method of moral justification, leading up to his own deduction of the moral law in the System of Ethics. By way of conclusion, I shall propose a new interpretation of how consciousness of the moral law serves as an entry-point to Fichte’s form of idealism. (shrink)

Kant’s early readers were troubled by the appearance of a dilemma facing his theory of freedom. On the one hand, if we explain human actions according to laws or rules, then we risk reducing the activity of the will to necessity (the horn of determinism). But, on the other hand, if we explain human actions without laws or rules, then we face an equally undesirable outcome: that of reducing the will’s activity to mere chance (the horn of indeterminism). After providing (...) an overview of this dilemma, this chapter explores how Fichte and Schelling attempted to resolve it, in ways that ultimately shaped the course of post-Kantian idealism in the late 1790s and early 1800s. (shrink)

Kant’s early critics maintained that his theory of freedom faces a dilemma: either it reduces the will’s activity to strict necessity by making it subject to the causality of the moral law, or it reduces the will’s activity to blind chance by liberating it from rules of any kind. This Element offers a new interpretation of Kant’s theory against the backdrop of this controversy. It argues that Kant was a consistent proponent of the claim that the moral law is the (...) causal law of a free will, and that the supposed ability of free will to choose indifferently between options is an empty concept. Freedom, for Kant, is a power to initiate action from oneself, and the only way to exercise this power is through the law of one’s own will, the moral law. Immoral action is not thereby rendered impossible, but it also does not express a genuine ability. (shrink)

A signal challenge of twenty-first century psychiatry is the effective treatment of existential/spiritual suffering in palliative care. This chapter will concentrate on research to assess the therapeutic potential of psilocybin to assuage that suffering. If a “psychedelic experience” can facilitate an acceptance of impending death, and reduce the existential suffering of those who endure it, it could prove to be a valuable intervention where one is sorely needed. The therapeutic use of psilocybin with dying patients (hereinafter patients) raises numerous questions (...) about research trial design, the model of psychiatry that might accommodate it, and the kind of experience it induces. Are these the sorts of experience that psychiatric treatment should effect on troubled patients? Is spiritual care within the ambit of psychiatry? There are epistemological questions as to the veridicality of the psychedelic experience. How much credence should we give it? I will argue in cautious support of ongoing research to evaluate the therapeutic use of psilocybin in palliative care. This argument can be extended to research on its therapeutic use in psychotherapy. The chapter will focus on four questions: (1) what is the ethical justification for this research on patients? (2) What types of research trial design are best used to assess the purported benefits of a psychedelic drug experience? (3) What is the epistemic warrant of the “mystical” and “noetic” facets of this experience? (4) What models of (a) psychiatry and (b) drug action could accommodate the therapeutic use of psilocybin in palliative care? (shrink)

This essay resists steering an unhappy third-way between avowedly “critical” approaches to happiness (Freud, Žižek) and more “positive” perspectives (Benjamin, Badiou), and instead turns the tables. In the first half, focusing upon Thomas Mann’s short story “The Will to Happiness,” it examines neurotic hedonism—a more sophisticated variant of the hysteric’s old game of deriving satisfaction from unsatisfied desire itself—and some of the “necessary fictions” which undergird it. In the second half, it explores what it might mean, at least in theory, (...) to move beyond neurotic hedonism by embracing a different perspective: dialectical pessimism. This pessimistic outlook is allied to the activity of critique, but it also requires a specific conception of the self; namely, the self as the “manure” (Gramsci) of history. How can the very idea of happiness be rethought from this “excremental” perspective? (shrink)

The latest book in a series that seeks to illuminate Francis Bacon's art and motivations and open up fresh and stimulating ways of understanding his paintings.

In an essay entitled ‘The Nobility of Sight’, Hans Jonas argues that ‘[s] ince the days of Greek philosophy sight has been recognized as the most excellent of senses’ (Jonas, 1954, p.507). Seeking to account for the historical elevation of vision over other forms of sensory engagement with the world, Jonas contends that ‘[t]he unique distinction of sight consists in what we may call the image performance, where “image” implies three characteristics: (1) simultaneity in the presentation of a manifold; (2) (...) neutralization of the causality of sense-affection; (3) distance in the spatial and mental senses’ (ibid.). In the case of (1), what distinguishes sight from other senses is the fact that it can give us both dynamic and static reality: our eyes can survey a whole field of possible percepts as well as focus directly upon a fixed object (ibid., pp.508–9). In the case of (2), what further marks out vision is that it does not require the perceiver and the object of perception to be directly engaged — the ‘dynamic’ relation between the two is, in Jonas’ words, ‘neutralized’ (ibid., p.514). And in the case of (3), seeing’s inimitability is also guaranteed by its being ‘the only sense in which the advantage lies not in proximity but in distance: the best view is by no means the closest view’ (ibid., pp.517–8). (shrink)

This volume offers a new interpretation of Hegel's thought, challenging traditional readings and reconsidering Hegel in terms of his understanding of his own philosophy. Ware connects Hegel to analytic philosophy through mathematical logic.

This book responds to the need for a retrieval and renewal of the work of Karl Marx through close philosophical analysis of his publications, manuscripts, and letters — especially those relevant to politics, morality, and the future. This philosophical study stands out because of its two principal features. First, it reviews and develops ideas about the future, though often only briefly discussed by Marx and his commentators, drawn from Marx's work. Second, it focuses on collective matters that are critical for (...) Marx's ideas but rarely investigated and still problematic. Part One introduces Marx with a discussion of emancipation and freedom in community. It then discusses the importance of retrieval and the methodology for promoting it. Part Two is about misunderstandings of Marx's ideas about productive development, division of labour, and organisations. Part Three discusses nations, morality, and democracy, all of which Marx supported. Part Four takes up Marx's significant, but misunderstood, ideas about the future and his relation to the anarchists. (shrink)

Prior to the emergence of the formalized commentarial traditions of the Early Imperial era (221 BCE–220 CE), the Odes seem typically to have been encountered “in motion” or “in use” as quoted speech in early historical and philosophical works. By studying the way the Odes are used in an understudied text—the Guoyu 國語 (Discourses of the states), probably compiled in the late Warring States era (ca. 475–221 BCE)—this article explores how historical speeches and anecdotes were used as an early form (...) of commentary, variously contextualizing, explaining, paraphrasing, glossing, and interpreting the Odes. Before the invention of comprehensive, systematic commentaries associating each poem with a particular historical context and meaning, texts like the Guoyu provided early readers with guides to understanding and using classical texts, and many of their exegetical forms and strategies anticipate the commentarial traditions of the early empires. This article shows that historical speeches were one way in which early Chinese elites were trained in how to read and use the Odes appositely and sensitively, and that we can think of such speeches as a form of commentary. (shrink)

Dinner times provide rich opportunities for overt and covert socialization. Drawing upon a larger corpus of 35 video-recorded family meals involving the three-year-old Zoe and her parents, this conversation analytic study describes how Zoe displays such agency through the practice of “voicing control” – momentarily sounding and acting like an adult by performing a range of controlling acts such as leading, instructing, advising, assessing, and mediating. I argue that by playing with such activities bound to the category of a higher (...) position than hers, the child manages to grow “a head taller” in the Vygotskyan sense. The findings contribute to the budding literature on documenting socialization in naturalistic settings with a specific focus on the child’s role in such socialization. (shrink)

Levinas never engaged closely with Fichte’s work, but there are two places in the chapter “Substitution,” in Otherwise than Being (1974), where he mentions Fichte by name. The point that Levinas underscores in both of these passages is that the other’s encounter with the subject is not the outcome of the subject’s freedom; it is not posited by the subject, as Fichte has it, but is prior to any free activity. The aim of this paper is to deepen the comparison (...) between Levinas and Fichte, giving special attention to Fichte's own novel theory of intersubjectivity and the summons. One result that emerges from this treatment is that both Levinas and Fichte view the second person in a way that has no equivalent in the current philosophical landscape. On this reading, each thinker views responsibility to the other, not only as an immediate and particular obligation, but also as an asymmetrical relation that gives the other moral priority. (shrink)

This study examines two stock market anomalies and provides strong evidence of the day-of-the-week effect in the Chinese A-share market during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we examined the Quality minus Junk strategy return on Monday and FridayQuality stocks mean portfolio deciles that earn higher excess returns. As historical evidences suggest that less distressed/safe stocks earn higher excess returns.. The QMJ factor is similar to the division of speculative and non-speculative stocks described by Birru. Our findings provide evidence that the QMJ (...) strategy gains negative returns on Fridays for both anomalies because the junk side is sensitive to an elevated mood and, thus, performs better than the quality side of portfolios on Friday. Our findings are also consistent with the theory of investor sentiment which asserts that investors are more optimistic when their mood is elevated, and generally individual mood is better on Friday than on other days of the week. Therefore, the speculative stocks earned higher sustainable stock returns during higher volatility in Chinese market due to COVID-19. Intrinsically, new evidence emerges on an inclined strategy to invest in speculative stocks on Fridays during the COVID-19 pandemic to gain sustainable excess returns in the Chinese A-share market. (shrink)

One of the most controversial issues to emerge in recent studies of Fichte concerns the status of his normative ethics, i.e., his theory of what makes actions morally good or bad. Scholars are divided over Fichte’s view regarding the ‘final end’ of moral striving, since it appears this end can be either a specific goal permitting maximizing calculations (the consequentialist reading defended by Kosch 2015), or an indeterminate goal permitting only duty-based decisions (the deontological reading defended by Wood 2016). While (...) I think each interpretive position contains an element of truth, my aim in this paper is to defend a third alternative, according to which Fichte’s normative ethics presents us with a unique form of social perfectionism. (shrink)

In Focus: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy reproduces almost fifty of the artist's photographs, with commentaries on each by katherine Ware, an Assistant Curator in the Musuem's Department of Photographs. Included as well is an edited transcript of a colloquim on Moholy-Nagy's work, with comments by Thomas Barrow, Jeannine Fiedler, Charles Hagen, Hattula Moholy-Nagy, Weston Naef, Leland Rice, and Katherine Ware. A chronology of significant events in the artist's life is also provided.

Should we in the moral community accept the modern business corporation as one of us? French answers 'yes'. In this book, French investigates the metaphysical foundations of the application of our established moral principles to corporations as moral persons.

This paper examines the distinction between self-love and self-conceit in Kant's moral psychology. It motivates an alternative account of the origin of self-conceit by drawing a parallel to what Kant calls transcendental illusion.

This paper offers an overview of consciousness and personal identity in eighteenth-century philosophy. Locke introduces the concept of persons as subjects of consciousness who also simultaneously recognize themselves as such subjects. Hume, however, argues that minds are nothing but bundles of perceptions, lacking intrinsic unity at a time or across time. Yet Hume thinks our emotional responses to one another mean that persons in everyday life are defined by their virtues, vices, bodily qualities, property, riches, and the like. Rousseau also (...) takes persons to be fundamentally determined by our socially-mediated emotional responses to one another, though unlike Hume or Locke, he has little interest in placing this account of persons alongside a larger discussion of the human mind and its operations. Developing this idea further, Kant argues that our moral commitments require that we must take ourselves to be free. The fundamental equality that Rousseau sought in the political order is, for Kant, a requirement that reason puts on all of us. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking new study, Ben Ware carries out a bold reassessment of the relationship between modernism and ethics, arguing that modernist literature and philosophy offer more than simply a snapshot of the moral conflicts of the past: they provide a crucial point of reference for today's emancipatory struggles. Modernism in this assessment is characterized not only by a concern with language and aesthetic creativity, but also by a preoccupation with the question of how to live. Investigating ethical ideas in (...) Wittgenstein, Beckett, Kierkegaard, Kant, Cavell, Marx, Henry James and Lacan, Ware demonstrates how these thinkers can bring us to a new understanding of a constellation of issues which contemporary radical thought must re-visit: utopia, repetition, perfectionism, subtraction, negativity, critique, absence, duty, revolution and political love. The result is a timely and provocative intervention, which re-draws the boundaries for future debates on the ethics and politics of modernism. (shrink)

The Preface to my book, Kant's Justification of Ethics.