Rabbi Solomon ibn Gabirol (Avicebrón) was perhaps the greatest Neo-Platonist in the medieval Arabic philosophic tradition, and the greatest medieval Hebrew poet. In the following discussion, the author studies a short poem (Ahabtikha: "I Have Loved You") from Ibn Gabirol's classic philosophy work Fons Vitae, and he tries to clarify some of the poem's enigmas. The poem does relate to the teachings of the Fons Vitae, but does so in a nonphilosophic manner, making no use of philosophic terminology or argument.

Unlike old soldiers, the rhetoric of the great neither dies nor fades away. And so Hume's celebrated ‘is-ought’ passage still provokes debate.Hume was worried about the relation between ought statements and those supporting them: between ‘tolerence brings peace’ or ‘is God's will’, and ‘so one ought to be tolerant’. He denies the deducibility of the latter from the former, as the ‘ought’ expresses ‘a new relation or affirmation’, ‘entirely different from the others’. And this is commonly taken as saying that (...) the ought statement is ‘different’ and non-deducible, because it is no longer a ‘purely factual statement’, to wit one that makes another ordinarily testable truth claim.However, recent criticism, by W. D. Hudson and others, points out that Hume says other things seemingly inconsistent with this. In the passage, he mentions ‘ought’ and ‘virtue’ interchangeably, and ‘tolerance is virtuous’ as in the same boat as ‘one ought to be tolerant’. But, also, he treats the virtue of an action as sensibly discernible by the approbation which it evokes, and takes us to mean by a virtuous action that we will approve of it on contemplation. (shrink)

One would hardly be a human being if the good of others, or of society at large, could not weigh with one as a cogent reason for doing what will promote goodness. So one has not fully learned about living like a rational and moral being unless one has learned to appreciate that one ought to do things out of regard for others, and not only out of regard for oneself. In the first place, not everything done for oneself is (...) done for reasons of prudence. That one ought to insure one's house, save for one's old age, not put all one's money into one venture, are precepts of prudence. But it is not a precept of prudence, though it may be a good precept that someone ought to undergo a dangerous operation as a long shot to restoring his health rather than linger under a disability forever after. (shrink)

You have invited me to speak about Morals without Faith . Briefly, I take it, this question means: is there any moral law for agnostics? But it might be more interesting to put it rather differently: to ask, not simply whether there is a moral law for those who do not believe in God, but whether there is any such law even for those who do independent of their belief? We are then asking: Does being under a moral law mean (...) nothing more than being commanded by God? Is the only incentive for obeying it in our love or fear of Him, the only criterion by which to judge the morality of actions in their conformity to a revealed standard? Or would it be more true to say that the law which God wishes us to obey is that law to which we ought to conform because it corresponds to our nature and conditions in this world, a law which, apart from being God's will, we can understand as being indispensable to the kind of beings we are? (shrink)

Butler observes in the Preface to the Sermons that the subject of morals can be approached in two different ways: “One begins from enquiring into the abstract relations of things: the other from a matter of fact, namely what the particular nature of man is, its several parts, their economy or constitution; from whence it proceeds to determine what course of life it is, which is correspondent to his whole nature. In the former method the conclusion is expressed thus, that (...) vice is contrary to the nature and reason of things: in the latter, that it is a violation or breaking in upon our own nature. Thus they both lead us to the same thing, our obligations to the practice of virtue; and thus they exceedingly strengthen and enforce each other.” In making this observation Butler raises the problem of the nature of moral obligation, and of the criteria by which the existence of a moral obligation can be known. He does so by calling attention to the divisions of opinion which existed on this issue in his own days. Samuel Clarke, the fashionable moralist of the period, sought the roots of moral obligation in the “nature and reason of things”: for an agent to know that an act is his duty is to know that it is fitting or suitable to the circumstances in which it occurs . Shaftesbury, on the other hand, and many of the adherents to the doctrine of Natural Law, like Grotius and Pufendorf, sought the roots of moral obligation in the nature of agents: for an agent, to know that an act is his duty is for him to experience a special motive to do it . Butler recognized the fundamental difference between these two approaches. (shrink)

Offers a reading of philosopher David Hume regarding his views on practical reason. Arguments of Hume for his conception of practical reason; View of Hume on the influencing motives of the will; Approach of Hume on the standards of practical reasoning.

Observation of Reality and Theory Creation in Panagiotis Kondylis’ Thought In the first part of the paper the authors present an outline of the Polish perception of thoughts and ideas of Panagiotis Kondylis which has started to develop only recently. This is followed by demonstrating major issues present in the output of this Greek philosopher who was strongly linked both with Greece and with Germany. The paper closes with a discussion of Kondylis’ concept of theory creation demonstrated in his work (...) entitled Theorie des Krieges. Clausewitz – Marx – Engels – Lenin which was published in Stuttgart in 1998. Although the very foundation of his ideas is the theory of war by Carl von Clausewitz whom Kondylis perceived as a conceptual soul mate, the discussion per se is of a more universal nature and may pertain to the essence of developing any theory. The paper is to help the Polish reader to understand the ideas and thoughts of Kondylis, and thus to facilitate the perception of translations of his texts that were published in Studies in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This article uses Public Use Microsample data drawn from the 1990 census to explore the relationship between military presence, defined as the percentage of the local labor force in the active-duty armed forces, and women's employment and earnings across local labor market areas in the United States. Comparisons of local rates of unemployment and mean women's earnings are made between those LMAs in which the military plays a disproportionate role in the local labor market and those in which military presence (...) is low. Results suggest that women who live in labor market areas with a substantial military presence have, on average, lower annual earnings and higher rates of unemployment than their counterparts who live in nonmilitary LMAs. The argument is made that through the interaction of several socially situated conditions—including gender, family, labor markets, human capital, and place—the military emerges as a source of inequality in labor market outcomes for women working on or around military installations. (shrink)

Falk Wagner was the leading Hegelian in late 20th century German Protestant theology. Wagner who had studied philosophy with Theodor W. Adorno and Wolfgang Cramer in Frankfurt am Main and Systematic Theology with Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Mainz taught Systematic Theology at the Universities of Munich and, since 1988, Vienna. He published several influential books. In his lectures and seminars he frequently handed out short theory papers to his students which should serve as the basis for debate. (...) The five texts presented here for the first time deal with the problems of individual in society and of the modern history of theology, with the doctrine of God, with the significance of the Bible for the systematic theology and finally with the concept of „Subjektivität“ in G. W. F. Hegel’s philosophy. These texts are an essential source for the development of Wagner’s thought when teaching at the university of Munich until 1988. (shrink)

The primary aim of this volume is to contribute to the growing body of scholarship on Kant’s relation to his German contemporaries. Each of the essays explores one or two of Kant’s views in relation to one or two of his German contemporaries. With three exceptions, every essay contends that we can gain a deeper understanding of Kant’s views by considering their relation to the contemporaries in question.The book is quite successful at accomplishing this aim. In almost every contribution, the (...) case is convincingly made that one’s understanding of Kant on some issue would at the least be greatly enhanced, if not simply impossible without, a significant engagement... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany ed. by Corey W. DyckJulia BorcherdingCorey W. Dyck, editor. Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 272. Hardback, $85.00.In more ways than one, this volume constitutes an important contribution to ongoing efforts to reconfigure and enrich our existing philosophical canon and to question the narratives that have led to its current shape. To start, while there is (...) a growing amount of research dedicated to recovering the contributions of women to early modern philosophy, much of this work focuses on the seventeenth century, and geographically centers on England, France, and Italy. By turning the spotlight on eighteenth-century Germany, this volume broadens the scope of these efforts in an important way. Further, with the historiography of this period still shaped by a long-standing dismissive treatment of post-Leibnizian German philosophy and by the long shadow cast by the success of Kant's Critical philosophy, which eclipsed many of the thinkers opposed to it, challenges to its traditional narratives seem especially important. The editor's earlier collection (coedited with Falk Wunderlich) on Kant and his German contemporaries already succeeded in mounting such a challenge by showing that German philosophy throughout the eighteenth century in fact presents us with an extraordinarily rich tableau of intellectual life (Kant and His German Contemporaries. Vol. 1: Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018]).The present volume stands as a further valuable contribution to relativizing the still dominant narrative of German philosophy as the story of a select few brilliant minds. It successfully dispenses not only with the idea that those minds were few, but also with the equally persistent one that they were exclusively male. Already in the nineteenth century, we find historians such as Karl Joël explicitly casting the new age of German philosophy inaugurated by Kant as its "masculine epoch"—an image undoubtedly furthered by its main protagonist, who cast philosophical acumen in decidedly male terms when he observed that "[a] woman who has a head full of Greek, like Madame Dacier, or one who engages in debate about the intricacies of mechanics, like the Marquise du Châtelet, might just as well have a beard; for that expresses in a more recognizable form the profundity for which she strives" (Karl Joël, Die Frauen in der Philosophie [Hamburg, 1896], 48; Immanuel Kant, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen [Königsberg, 1764], translation in Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989], 146; both cited in Eileen O'Neill, "Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History," in Philosophy in a Feminist [End Page 154] Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions, ed. Janet A. Kourany [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997], 17–62). Yet as the contributions to this volume forcefully illustrate, women in the period did—in spite of the numerous severe social, religious, and political obstacles they faced—in fact manage to gain access to its intellectual sphere, and actively shaped its philosophical landscape.While the papers collected here are of high quality throughout, they do vary in their approach. Many chapters, especially in the earlier parts of the volume, investigate female figures as philosophers in their own right, and carve out their self-standing contributions to prominent philosophical movements and debates. Focusing on Sophie of Hanover's correspondence with Leibniz, Christian Leduc's chapter begins by examining her metaphysical views and argues, against standing interpretations, that her main aim is to defend a version of the doctrine of physical influence as an account of mind-body interaction while rejecting metaphysical commitments regarding the nature of the soul in favor of a more agnostic, Lockean empiricist approach. In chapter 3, Stefanie Buchenau shows how women engaging with Wolffian Schulphilosophie began to view themselves as more than teachers and translators and started to claim the title of philosophers. Using the example of Johanna Charlotte Unzer, Buchenau convincingly argues that despite the "feminine," aesthetic garb of her thought, Unzer in fact offers a serious critique and revision of the Wolffian model of... (shrink)

If it is true that an agent who has a moral reason for acting has a reason for acting independently of whether or not she has a desire to so act , then it cannot also be true both that moral reasons are necessarily motivating and that an agent who is motivated to act is motivated in virtue of a desire to so act . This dissertation argues that the arguments given against Motivational Internalism about Moral Reasons are stronger than (...) the arguments given against either Moral Reasons Authoritativeness or Desire Motivationalism. ;Chapter 1 outlines two types of motivational internalism: Motivational Internalism about Moral Judgments , and Motivational Internalism about Moral Reasons . It also outlines six other sub-positions on the nature of moral reasons, moral judgments and moral obligations, and on the nature of the connection between desires and motivation. Two of these sub-positions are Moral Reasons Authoritativeness and Desire Motivationalism . ;Chapter 2 argues that deontological intuitionists, such as H. A. Prichard, rejected MIMR in order to defend both MRA and DM. Here I defend Prichard's motivational externalist account of moral motivation, in terms of a desire to do one's duty, from a selection of criticisms. ;Chapter 3 argues that W. D. Falk, who coined the terms "internalism" and "externalism", rejected DM in order to defend both MIMR and MRA. Here I argue that Falk's motivational internalist account of moral motivation, in terms of an impulse to act that is not a desire and that has a sui generis sense of necessity attached to it, fails. Since Falk has not refuted DM, he cannot successfully defend MRA. ;Chapter 4 argues that moral noncognitivists, such as A. J. Ayer, rejected MRA in order to defend both MIMR and DM. Here I argue that Ayer's account of moral reasons, according to which some fact about a situation is moral reason for acting if and only if awareness of this fact evokes a moral feeling in an agent, fails. Since Ayer has not refuted MRA, he cannot successfully defend MIMR. (shrink)

In continuity with the first volume of the series, edited by Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich, whose focus was on "Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics," this collection of essays carries on an impressive project in the history of thought and ideas that, due to its breadth and depth of analysis, can be compared to Dieter Henrich's monumental Konstellationen. Probleme und Debatten am Ursprung der idealistischen Philosophie. Yet, while the latter's program aimed at tracing the personal and intellectual (...) relations between the various figures of German idealism, here the goal is to bring out of the shadows the German panorama of the second half of the eighteenth... (shrink)