Spinoza uses the interpretation of Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden to mount a biblical defense of the life devoted to intellectual pursuits. In his philosophic rereading of the biblical story, Spinoza follows the lead of Maimonides in the Guide to the Perplexed Part I, chapter 2. Both philosophers invoked the biblical text to lend authority to the view that moral consciousness, in contrast with the intellectual, marks a decline in the human condition. This paper explores Spinoza’s (...) dependence on the Maimonidean interpretation and also shows where Spinoza parts company with it, giving his own philosophical twist to the tale. (shrink)

Spinoza uses the interpretation of Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden to mount a biblical defense of the life devoted to intellectual pursuits. In his philosophic rereading of the biblical story, Spinoza follows the lead of Maimonides in the Guide to the Perplexed Part I, chapter 2. Both philosophers invoked the biblical text to lend authority to the view that moral consciousness, in contrast with the intellectual, marks a decline in the human condition. This paper explores Spinoza’s (...) dependence on the Maimonidean interpretation and also shows where Spinoza parts company with it, giving his own philosophical twist to the tale. (shrink)

This article studies the rewriting of the second creation narrative in the Bible in Jubilees 3:1-31. It shows that the author of Jubilees 3 is not only putting his own views into the biblical text. He is in the first place a careful reader of Genesis 2-3 and other biblical texts. The biblical text posed some difficulties to him and he tries to solve many of these with his rewriting. Characteristic of this rewriting is especially harmonisation. Sometimes he supplies details (...) for explaining the text. The point of departure is most often the biblical text itself, although, at the same time, he seemed to be influenced by current interpretations of certain aspects of the text. (shrink)

An account of the transition from the Edenic to the state of nature discourse in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries has yet to be written. The contention of this paper is that Hobbes's work is a useful place to begin an investigation of this process of change. Though not the initiator of this transformation, Hobbes must take much of the credit for the eventual eclipse of one discourse by the other. An exposition of the Edenic discourse, kept alive (...) in the theological tracts of English divines, sets the proper context for an appreciation of Hobbes's state-of-nature scheme. As is made evident in a number of his Latin publications, Hobbes came to realize that the viability of his own narrative of political creation required the subversion of traditional glosses on Genesis. By attending to two particular features of the Edenic discourse that Hobbes sought to negate -- the language Adam spoke and the knowledge he possessed and transmitted to his posterity -- important connections are made with Hobbes's general theory of signs and his absolutist theory of sovereignty. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 1174-1184, October 2022.

It should surprise no one familiar with the problems in rural healthcare that 87% of a randomly selected sample of Nebraskans recently called for either fundamental or complete change of the healthcare system. Rural communities in the United, States have been hard hit by the rising cost of healthcare at a time of economic and demographic decline. Unable to sustain operating costs and personnel needs, rural hospitals and medical, practices have been forced to close their doors at an, alarming rate.Furthermore, (...) rural patients are decreasingly able to afford what services are available to them. Most must purchase insurance privately because they are unlikely to be insured through employment. Therefore, they pay dearly because they are not eligible for corporate rates and because insurance companies use experience instead of community rating to assess risk. (shrink)

The impetus to revisit the issues involved in readings of Genesis 2-3 came from Deborah Rooke’s article in Feminist Theology published in 2007, and in particular follows a presentation at an ‘Afternoon of Theology’ at a girls’ secondary school, where the author provided a response to the challenge set by the history of interpretation and the subsequent cultural assumptions of the meaning of the Garden of Eden narrative. The discussion proceeds partly through narrative retelling, partly through a critical (...) commentary and partly through an Eve/snake dialogue. (shrink)

[The following notes, from a MS. of Headlam's, now published by permission of the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, give the substance of a lecture which Headlam delivered in Cambridge but did not publish, though some account of it is given in the memoir by Mr. Cecil Headlam . A few verbal alterations have been made for the sake of clearness and some references added.—GEORGE THOMSON].

Legal theory for the purposes of this essay is the theory of mundane law—that is, our law. The legal system of a modern Western democracy is the phenomenon legal theory is trying to represent perspicuously. Such a legal system may be characterized prephilosophically as an institutionalized normative system. The associated institutions include legislatures, courts, police forces, civil services, royal families, and the like. The associated norms are of three kinds—norms directly enjoining, permitting or proscribing behaviour on the part of the (...) norm-subjectss; norms for facilitating the creation of social arrangements between norm-subjects; norms for the creation, variation, administration, application and enforcement of norms of the first two kinds. (shrink)

Legal theory for the purposes of this essay is the theory of mundane law—that is, our law. The legal system of a modern Western democracy is the phenomenon legal theory is trying to represent perspicuously. Such a legal system may be characterized prephilosophically as an institutionalized normative system. The associated institutions include legislatures, courts, police forces, civil services, royal families, and the like. The associated norms are of three kinds—norms directly enjoining, permitting or proscribing behaviour on the part of the (...) norm-subjectss; norms for facilitating the creation of social arrangements between norm-subjects; norms for the creation, variation, administration, application and enforcement of norms of the first two kinds. (shrink)

Dans la dernière partie des Aveux de la chair, Michel Foucault offre une analyse minutieuse de la théorie de la libido en tant que « stigmate de l’involontaire dans l’acte sexuel d’après la faute » selon saint Augustin ; le thème est intimement lié à l’exégèse patristique et augustinienne du livre de la Genèse 1:28 (« Croissez et multipliez »), plus spécialement à la question de l’existence possible des rapports sexuels au paradis. Le présent article se propose d’étudier à la (...) fois les textes concernés de saint Augustin, l’analyse qu’en offre Foucault et les interprétations philosophiques et théologiques ultérieures de la pensée de l’évêque d’Hippone et du philosophe français. Augustin (et Foucault lecteur de saint Augustin) a-t-il déclaré que nos aïeux faisaient l’amour au paradis? La théologie augustinienne du mariage et de la sexualité est-elle, comme le dit le dernier Foucault, le fondement de « la morale de l’Occident chrétien »? Au demeurant, peut-on parler de la théologie augustinienne ou encore du christianisme comme « fondement », tout en respectant la méthode « généalogique », telle que Foucault l’a développée? (shrink)

Prophecies concerning an incredible End of Days for the city of Jerusalem usually make use of stories that deal with beginnings in order to build from their bits and pieces a new one, a new an better beginning. This is not the case in our prophecy, that found in Zechariah 8:4-6, which does not rearrange the order of the creation but instead promises the city days of routine and peace, days in which the weaker elements of society, the elderly and (...) the very young, will enjoy complete security and will have no need for the protection of the powerful. The prophecy yet makes subtle allusion to recent hardships, to the destruction of Jerusalem as that event is shown to us in the book of Lamentations. Unlike the fantastical prophecies, it is precisely the promise of quiet routine that threatens to awaken doubt in the dark and difficult days in which Zechariah lives, and so God announces with insistence that the promise will indeed be fulfilled. (shrink)

"In this exquisitely written book, Denery draws on centuries of rumination on the moral issues surrounding lying to address the question of how we should live in a fallen world. The serpent in the Garden of Eden led humankind astray with lies. The Devil is the father of lies. Premodern sources agonized constantly over the act of lying. Denery not only superbly narrates the long history of this obsession, but also locates the conditions that reveal an Enlightenment shift (...) toward a not entirely comfortable modernity."--William Chester Jordan, Princeton University "Can God lie? Are women 'born liars'? These are just two of the questions Denery asks--and answers--in his wide-ranging, erudite study. Written in an engaging and accessible style, The Devil Wins sheds a new and fascinating light on a mendacious world stretching from the Book of Genesis to the dawn of the Enlightenment."--Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, author of Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378-1417 "This is a wonderful and beautifully written book. The fruit of extensive research, The Devil Wins traces the history of lying and deception through the medieval and early modern periods. Denery offers compelling and immensely significant arguments."--Ian P. Wei, author of Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris "This is a marvelous book. Denery uses a fundamental question--when, if ever, is it acceptable to lie?--to explore a vast intellectual and historical terrain. In doing so, he gives us one of the most subtle and penetrating briefs I have read for the importance of medieval thought for modern efforts to understand ethics, politics, and conscience. I read this book with enormous delight."--Jonathan Sheehan, author of The Enlightenment Bible. (shrink)

Both Immanuel Kant and Moses Maimonides wrote lengthy treatments of the biblical garden of Eden. For both philosophers the biblical story served as an opportunity to address the genealogy of morals. I argue here that the two treatments offer deep insights into their respective philosophical anthropologies, that is to say, into their assessments of the human person and of moral psychology. Contrary to much that has been written about Maimonides as a proto-Kantian, I expose the profoundly different and (...) even opposed conceptions of human nature and of reason at the heart of the respective philosophies. For Kant, the first exercise of reason in the garden is an act of rebellion that jettisons the human person from the womb of nature into a post-natural freedom. The repudiation of the natural is the beginning of an ethical life, according to Kant—a life to be dominated by respect for a human dignity beyond the natural. For Maimonides, in contrast, reason is a philosophical torah li-shma . Rational understanding is an understanding of the laws of a nature fecund with the presence of the divine. Exposing the reason inherent in nature is the only path to knowledge of God and whatever communion with the divine is available to human beings. Such knowledge transforms the heart as well as fills the mind, embedding the human person as moral actor in a God-filled universe. (shrink)

The idea of creating a society guaranteeing equality between the sexes has never been considered by most political theorists. They have either endorsed, or simply accepted, the assumption that there is a natural inequality of the sexes which ought to be preserved in civil society. This same presupposition has excluded the family from the theorists’ framework of what are thought to be distinctively political institutions. Despite the centrality of the family to human life, it has been consigned to the domain (...) of purely natural phenomena. The related belief that women and children must be relegated for theoretical purposes to the family, to be safely ignored in a realm of brute nature, suffices to allow such theorists to exclude women from the ontology of politics.In looking at major theorists from this perspective, the task is not simply to show that they display sexist attitudes. The main purpose is to demonstrate that their theories rest on these assumptions and that they would be vastly different theories if these assumptions were not made. (shrink)

What is the relationship between prophetic vision and vision in terms for a hoped-for future? How might vision for a church or person best be defined today?

In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were simply presented to us without causal mediation, and properties were revealed to us in their true intrinsic glory.

Visionary quests to return to the Garden of Eden have shaped Western culture from Columbus' voyages to today's tropical island retreats. Few narratives are so powerful - and, as Carolyn Merchant shows, so misguided and destructive - as the dream of recapturing a lost paradise. A sweeping account of these quixotic endeavors by one of America's leading environmentalists, Reinventing Eden traces the idea of rebuilding the primeval garden from its origins to its latest incarnations in shopping (...) malls, theme parks and gated communities. With eloquence and insight, Merchant shows how the drive to conquer nature and to explore and settle the globe, springs from this utopian pastoral impulse throughout Western history. Time and again, human manipulation of the environment is our downfall: Eden is achieved by fencing off pristine beauty in national parks and wildlife preserves, while leaving the majority of the earth in ruins. Challenging both narratives, Merchant argues that the green veneer of city-park conservation has become a cover for the corruption of the earth and the neglect of its environment. Reinventing Eden is a bold new way to think about the earth that includes green political parties, sustainable development and a partnership between humans and earth that is nothing short of an ecological revolution. (shrink)

In the Garden of Eden, we had unmediated contact with the world. We were directly acquainted with objects in the world and with their properties. Objects were simply presented to us without causal mediation, and properties were revealed to us in their true intrinsic glory.

I argue that the distinction between monism and pluralism about well-being should be understood in terms of explanation: the monist affirms (but the pluralist denies) that whenever two particular things are basically good for you, the explanation of their basic goodness for you is the same. I then consider a number of arguments for monism and a number of arguments for pluralism.

Sensations can occur in the absence of perception and yet be experienced ‘as if’ seen, heard, tasted, or otherwise perceived. Two concepts used to investigate types of these sensory-like mental phenomena (SLMP) are mental imagery and hallucinations. Mental imagery is used as a concept for investigating those SLMP that merely resemble perception in some way. Meanwhile, the concept of hallucinations is used to investigate those SLMP that are, in some sense, compellingly like perception. This may be a difference of degree. (...) Attempts to reliably differentiate between instances of each type of SLMP remain unresolved. Despite this, the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each routinely used independently of the other. These uses are especially interesting in those published accounts of experiments where equivalent findings about the neuroanatomical correlates of SLMP are reported in support of diverging knowledge-claims about the role of SLMP in neurocognitive processes. This practice presents a puzzle. To examine one aspect of this puzzle, I compare the uses of these two scientific concepts in three ways: examining their roles in differentiating between types of SLMP; exploring how their respective historical developments intersect; and analysing their contributions in neuroimaging experiments. In presenting this series of comparative analyses, I will draw on three themes from historical, philosophical, and social studies of scientific practices: interest in material contributions to knowledge; accounts of how concepts are used in experiments; and explorations of the historical conditions within which current practices emerge. Building on this literature, my comparative analyses supports five related claims. My first claim is that the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each used as independent tools in neuroimaging experiments. My second claim is that, as experimental tools, the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each used for investigating discrete epistemic goals. My third claim is that there are implicit interdependent associations that structure the uses of these two concepts as tools for independently investigating these discrete epistemic goals in neuroimaging experiments. This third claim rests on my analyses of both past and present uses of each concept. Firstly, as seen in their intersecting histories, there are disciplined performances of using the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations that carry-along shared associations about the mediating role of SLMP in thought. Secondly, these interdependent ‘mediator-view’ associations continue to structure the independent uses of each concept as a tool for investigating SLMP in pursuit of specific goals. Taking this further, my fourth claim is that recognising the structured uses of the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations can help to account for how equivalent SLMP-neuro-correlates are generated in support of diverging knowledge-claims. Finally, my fifth claim is that the structured uses of these concepts as tools can contribute to experiments in ways analogous to, yet not equivalent with, the active contributions of material instruments. Bringing these claims together, I argue that the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations operate as structured tools that can actively contribute to the knowledge generated by neuroimaging experiments. In presenting this argument I seek to demonstrate that examining the structured uses of concepts as tools can complement existing approaches to studying how the heterogeneous dynamics of experimental practices can come to contribute to scientific knowledge in unintended ways. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 2, February 2022.

A subjective list theory of well-being is one that accepts both pluralism (the view that there is more than one basic good) and subjectivism (the view, roughly, that every basic good involves our favourable attitudes). Such theories have been neglected in discussions of welfare. I argue that this is a mistake. I introduce a subjective list theory called disjunctive desire satisfactionism, and I argue that it is superior to two prominent monistic subjectivist views: desire satisfactionism and subjective desire satisfactionism. In (...) the course of making this argument, I introduce a problem for desire satisfactionism: it cannot accommodate the fact that whenever someone experiences an attitudinal pleasure, his welfare is (other things equal) higher during the pleasure. Finally, I argue that any subjectivist about welfare should find disjunctive desire satisfactionism highly attractive. (shrink)

Examining the historical development of scientific concepts is important for understanding the structured routines within which these concepts are currently used as goal-directed tools in experiments. To illustrate this claim, I will outline how the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations each draw on an older interdependent set of associations that, although nominally-discarded, continues to structure their current independent uses for pursuing discrete experimental goals. In doing so, I will highlight how three strands of literature offer mutually instructive insights for (...) understanding how the uses of our current scientific concepts contribute to experimental practices. The first strand of literature includes recent scholarship examining how the uses of scientific concepts can enable scientific practices (e.g., Boon 2012; Brigandt 2012; Feest 2010; Steinle 2012). In this context, scientific concepts have been described as tools that function in ways that contribute to empirical knowledge; contributions that extend beyond their traditionally recognized roles in mental and linguistic representation. The second strand of literature can be glimpsed within the technoscientific studies focus on non-human agency; a focus that supports an account of the disciplined routines within which concepts are used as acting in analogous ways to the routinized participation of machines in experiments (Pickering 1995). The third strand of the literature draws attention to how the functions of concepts are grounded by the set of historically-contingent experimental practices (e.g., Canguilhem 2008; Tiles 1984). Although maintaining valuable differences, the focus of these three strands of literature are mutually instructive. Together, they offer a view of the uses of concepts as taken-for-granted tools that function within networks of subterranean associations; associations that are grounded by historically contingent experimental practices that structure how they act (in concert with human and material participants) within the temporally dynamic processes of scientific practice. Through examples drawn from a comparison of the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations, I aim to demonstrate the value that the converging insights of these three strands of literature offer for studying the role of scientific concepts in experimental practices. (shrink)

According to the experience requirement on well-being, differences in subjects’ levels of welfare or well-being require differences in the phenomenology of their experiences. I explain why the two existing arguments for this requirement are not successful. Then, I introduce a more promising argument for it: that unless we accept the requirement, we cannot plausibly explain why only sentient beings are welfare subjects. I argue, however, that because the right kind of theory of well-being can plausibly account for that apparent fact (...) about welfare subjects even if the requirement is false, this argument does not succeed. I tentatively conclude that no compelling case can be made for the requirement. (shrink)

On phenomenological theories of pleasure, what makes an experience a pleasure is the way it feels. On attitudinal theories, what makes an experience a pleasure is its relationship to the favorable attitudes of the subject who is having it. I advance the debate between these theories in two ways. First, I argue that the main objection to phenomenological theories, the heterogeneity problem, is not compelling. While others have argued for this before, I identify an especially serious version of this problem (...) that resists existing solutions, and I explain why even this version of the problem does not undermine phenomenological theories. Second, I argue that a grand reconciliation can be effected between the two types of theory: it can be true both that pleasures are pleasures in virtue of the way they feel and that they are pleasures in virtue of how they are related to their subjects’ favorable attitudes, so long as the attitudes that are constitutively related to pleasures are ones that feel a certain way. Hybrid views of this sort have significant advantages over pure attitudinal or phenomenological views. (shrink)

The experience machine was traditionally thought to refute hedonism about welfare. In recent years, however, the tide has turned: many philosophers have argued not merely that the experience machine doesn't rule out hedonism, but that it doesn't count against it at all. I argue for a moderate position between those two extremes: although the experience machine doesn't decisively rule out hedonism, it provides us with some reason to reject it. I also argue for a particular way of using the experience (...) machine to argue against hedonism – one that appeals directly to intuitions about the welfare values of experientially identical lives rather than to claims about what we value or claims about whether we would, or should, plug into the machine. The two issues are connected: the conviction that the experience machine leaves hedonism unscathed is partly due to neglect of the best way to use the experience machine. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.How to Use the Experience MachineVolume 28, Issue 3EDEN LIN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820815000424Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. How to Use the Experience MachineVolume 28, Issue 3EDEN LIN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820815000424Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. How to Use the Experience MachineVolume 28, Issue 3EDEN LIN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820815000424Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

What is the relevance of morality today? Eden Collinsworth enlists the famous, the infamous, and the heretofore unheard-of to unravel how we make moral choices in an increasingly complex and ethically flexible age. To call these unsettling times is an understatement: our political leaders are less and less respectable; in the realm of business, cheating, lying, and stealing are hazily defined; and in daily life, rapidly changing technology offers permission to act in ways inconceivable without it. Yet somehow, this (...) hasn t quite led to a complete free-for-all people still draw lines around what is acceptable and what is not. Collinsworth sets out to understand how and why. In her intrepid quest, she squares off witha prime minister, the editor of London s Financial Times, a holocaust survivor, a pop star, and a former commander of the U.S. Air Force to grapple with the impracticality of applying morals to foreign policy; precisely when morality gets lost in the making of money; what happens to morality without free will; whether immoral women are just those having a better time; why celebrities have become the new moral standard-bearers; and if testosterone is morality s enemy or its hero.". (shrink)

Subjectivism about welfare is the view that something is basically good for you if and only if, and to the extent that, you have the right kind of favorable attitude toward it under the right conditions. I make a presumptive case for the falsity of subjectivism by arguing against nearly every extant version of the view. My arguments share a common theme: theories of welfare should be tested for what they imply about newborn infants. Even if a theory is intended (...) to apply only to adults, the fact that it is false of newborns may give us sufficient reason to reject it. (shrink)

Invariabilism is the view that the same theory of welfare is true of every welfare subject. Variabilism is the view that invariabilism is false. In light of how many welfare subjects there are and how greatly they differ in their natures and capacities, it is natural to suppose that variabilism is true. I argue that these considerations do not support variabilism and, indeed, that we should accept invariabilism. This has important implications: it eliminates many of the going theories of welfare (...) while making some of the remaining ones more attractive. (shrink)

Humeans about normative reasons claim that there is a reason for you to perform a given action if and only if this would promote the satisfaction of one of your desires. Their view has traditionally been thought to have the revisionary implication that an agent can sometimes lack any reason to do what morality or prudence requires. Recently, however, Mark Schroeder has denied this. If he is right, then the Humean theory accords better with common sense than it has been (...) thought to. I argue that Schroeder is mistaken, even if welfare is understood in terms of the satisfaction of one’s desires: any Humean must concede that one can sometimes lack any reason to act morally or prudently. I also identify a novel variant on Humeanism that could perhaps avoid its revisionary implications about prudence if desire satisfactionism is the correct theory of welfare. (shrink)

It has become commonplace to distinguish enumerative theories of welfare, which tell us which things are good for us, from explanatory theories, which tell us why the things that are good for us have that status. It has also been claimed that while hedonism and objective list theories are enumerative but not explanatory, desire satisfactionism is explanatory but not enumerative. In this paper, I argue that this is mistaken. When properly understood, every major theory of welfare is both enumerative and (...) explanatory. (shrink)