I argue that Wittgenstein's rejection of scepticism in On Certainty rests on the view that epistemic concepts such as‘doubt,‘knowledge’,‘justification’and so on, cannot be intelligibly applied to the common sense propositions that traditional sceptical arguments appear to undermine. I detect two strands in On Certainty in support of this view. I attempt to show that neither of these strands adequately establishes the thesis, and that they point to a tension in Wittgenstein's treatment of scepticism. I argue that the first strand is (...) dogmatic, but accords with the constraints of Wittgenstein's method, while the second strand avoids the dogmatism of the first at the cost of violating these constraints. (shrink)

In the face of pluralism, moral constructivists attempt to salvage cognitivism by separating moral and ethical issues. Divergence over ethical issues, which concern the good life, would not threaten moral cognitivism, which is based on identifying generalizable interests as worthy of defending, using reason. Yet this approach falters given the inability of the constructivist to provide us a sure path by which to discern generalizable interests in difficult cases. Still, even if this approach to constructivism fails, cognitivist aspirations may not (...) be defeated if we can continue discursively in a project of identifying and appreciating the interests of others. Grasping the interests of others may require a transformation of moral sensibility such that agents recognize values they have not acknowledged before. This view calls for external moral discourse—that is, moral discourse that makes no appeal to an agent's present interests or desires but rather engages in description of the moral situation in hopes of bringing about a change in moral sensibility. (shrink)

This paper compares and contrasts three views on the issue of 'solipsism' that were much discussed in the first half of the 20th century, namely those of Wittgenstein, Carnap and Reichenbach. While the paper deals mainly with early Wittgenstein, the so-called 'later Wittgenstein ' is seen as arguing that Carnap's Aufbau, and any similar 'solipsist' reinterpretation of the language must start with a notion of experience utterly different from the one we actually have. And this criticism actually coheres with Wittgenstein (...) 's views in the Tractatus. (shrink)

According to contextualist accounts, the truth value of a given knowledge ascription may vary with features of the ascriber's context. As a result, the following may be true: "X doesn't know that P but Y says something true in asserting 'X knows that P'". The contextualist must defend his theory in the light of this unpleasant but inevitable consequence. The best way of doing this is to construe the context sensitivity of knowledge ascriptions not as deriving from an alleged indexicality (...) of the word "know" nor from its vagueness or ambiguity, but rather from a distinct semantic feature of the word "know", namely its unspecificity. (shrink)

‘Particularism’ is a meta-ethical theory resulting from a holistic doctrine in the theory of reasons. According to Jonathan Dancy, the foremost contemporary proponent of particularism, ‘a feature that is a reason in favour of an action in one case may be no reason at all in another, or even a reason against’ (2004: 190). From this, Dancy claims, it follows that the ‘possibility of moral thought and judgement does not depend on the provision of a suitable supply of moral principles’ (...) (2004: 7). This doctrine is of significant interest and import in its own right, and accordingly is the subject of considerable critical attention. The concern of this paper, however, is not meta-ethics but semantics. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider certain remarks raised by Wittgenstein in his Lecture on Ethics in connection with the effability of absolute value. My focus is on the expressions we use to talk about the experience of wonderment at the existence of the world, which he dismisses as nonsensical owing to the way they deviate from the conditions of ordinary usage (specifically, to wonder at something, one must be able to imagine its contrary). I suggest that the concept of imagination (...) that Wittgenstein invokes cannot carry great weight as a ground for judging utterances of wonderment to be nonsense. Yet this does not seem to give one a wholly adequate defence of their sense, and I explore whether or not an invocation of the religious form of life can provide a solution, considering some of the special difficulties that this range of utterances presents within the context of questions about how the identity of separate language‐games (especially the religious) affects the sense of words. (shrink)

In some recent discussions the implications of postmodernism for education have been wrongly conceived. An alternative approach is offered and this is used as a means for challenging any grand design in the provision of schooling and in the conception of education. Through this, ideas of the whole person implicit in much educational theory and practice (including personal and social education) are questioned. With some reference to the work of Stanley Cavell an attempt is made to show the sort of (...) thinking which might inform education, avoiding both the relativistic and complacent excesses of postmodernism and the explicit systematic planning of the grand design. (shrink)

In ‘Problematising Critique in Pedagogy’ Jörg Ruhloff develops a concept of critique that is motivated by a deep concern for the state of humanity. This is a thought-provoking development of critique, but I find myself disagreeing over, or rather simply unconvinced by, his understanding of the human condition, and, connected to this, of criticism. Referring to Nietzsche, I start by illustrating one way in which a concept of critique such as Ruhloff's may in some sense be implied in educational praxis, (...) focusing mainly on his concern that critique is not domesticated by political, economic, or other forces. In the second section I draw on Stanley Cavell to discuss some contentious aspects of Ruhloff's construal of criticism. Here I focus on Ruhloff's claim to universality, as contained in his appeal to what he calls the condition of human rationality and to a procedure of critical-transcendental-sceptical deliberation over the presuppositions of different standpoints. Ruhloff's understanding of criticism exemplifies an attitude that presents itself as a hostility to the ordinary. Connected to this, I sketch a conception of scepticism that is different—viz. more dynamic—than his understanding of it as a kind of methodological tool in the service of exposing presuppositions. Scepticism needs to be acknowledged in existential terms, as inherent to the human condition: a condition of life with language. With further reference to Cavell, the importance of expression, of revealing oneself as an exemplar, can then be emphasised. I conclude, in the third section, by indicating in what sense I find that a commitment to substantial judgements is lacking in Ruhloff's conception of critique and criticality. (shrink)

In much educational theory there is concern about claims that the concept of truth has no place anymore in educational thinking. These claims are generally identified as ‘postmodernist’ or ‘poststructuralist’. The fear is that when abandoning the quest for truth we enter the domain of mere belief, and in this way leave education without firm grounds. In this article I examine some examples of what is often crudely lumped together as ‘postmodernist’ educational research. What is at stake here, I argue, (...) is not so much a rejection of the quest for truth as rather a shift of focus to a different set of questions and interests: for example, existential questions. Against the contemporary, dominant focus on evidence-based practice, which conceals the person behind the method (textbook, rules, techniques), here the embodied person with her individual investment in education is brought into the light again. (shrink)

This paper responds to Stroud's important The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. The author defends a view in which statements in a natural language have truth-evaluable content only in concrete contexts. It is argued that just what counts as a concrete possibility that must be defeated before one can say that one knows something is a highly context-sensitive matter, and that Stroud's alternative to this context-sensitive account of the way the verb "know" functions seems to be either a semantics in which (...) knowledge claims (about the "external world") are trivially logically false or no intelligible semantics at all. (shrink)

This paper is a critical examination of Wittgenstein's view of the limits of intelligibility. In it I criticize standard analytic readings of Wittgenstein as an advocate of transcendental or behaviourist theses in epistemology; and I propose an alternative interpretation of Wittgenstein's view as a social contextualism that transcends the false dichotomy between Kantianism and psychologism. I argue that this social contextualism is strikingly similar to the social account of epistemic practices developed by Pierre Bourdieu. Through a comparison between Wittgenstein's and (...) Bourdieu's view and an analysis of the notion of habitus , I try to show how social contextualism can account for the distinction between sense and nonsense without falling into transcendental constructivism or social behaviourism. (shrink)

Participants on both sides of the contemporary debate between reductionism and anti-reductionism about testimony commonly describe testimonial knowledge as knowledge acquired at second hand. I argue that fully appreciating the distinctive sense in which testimonial knowledge is secondhand supports anti-reductionism over reductionism but also that it supports a particular kind of anti-reductionism very different from that typically offered in the literature. Testimonial knowledge is secondhand in the demanding sense of being justified by the authority of a speaker where this requires (...) that epistemic responsibility for meeting challenges to the audience's testimonial knowledge is shared between speaker and audience. The epistemic credentials of testimonial knowledge are in this sense importantly interpersonal. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the contemporary educational discourse on critical thinking as one of the primary aims of education, its modernist defence and its postmodernist criticism, so as to explore a new way of conceptualizing critical thinking for moral education. What is at stake in this task is finding a plausible answer to the question of how the teaching of critical thinking in moral education can contribute to leading young people to avoid moral relativism while at the same time to (...) develop a coherent way of responding to cultural pluralism. The paper takes Bernard Williams's concept of ‘ethical reflection’ as a possible candidate and explores this concept as a means of accommodating these concerns. (shrink)

This is a paper about the way language meshes with life. It focuses on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work, and compares it with Leo Tolstoy and Saint Augustine’s confessions. My aim is to better understand in this way what it means to have meaning in language, as well as meaning in life.

According to Thomas Nagel we have a natural impulse to transcend our personal point of view. However, it appears to be difficult to give this notion of transcendence any real content while maintaining a connection with everyday speech and behaviour. In this essay I show that the description of what happens in a discussion when a speaker convinces a listener suggests an interesting interpretation of transcendence. The notion of 'truth' linked to the listener who is being convinced introduces a normative (...) dimension in argumentation. This inescapable normative stance of the listener saddles her with the obligation to answer all credible objections against all arguments she has accepted. The evaluation of the arguments is not reserved for the participants of a discussion. Nothing more is required. For instance, the notion of a universal consensus has no place in the analysis of argumentation. If there is a universal dimension in argumentation and discussion, it is because there is no way of telling where convincing objections may come from. (shrink)

The problem of the source of necessity is the problem of explaining what makes necessary truths necessarily true. Simon Blackburn has presented a dilemma intended to show that any reductive, realist account of the source of necessity is bound to fail. Although Blackburn's dilemma faces serious problems, reflection on the form of explanations of necessities reveals that a revised dilemma succeeds in defeating any reductive account of the source of necessity. The lesson is that necessity is metaphysically primitive and irreducible.

In Cavell (1994), the ability to follow and produce Austinian examples of ordinary language use is compared with the faculty of perfect pitch. Exploring this comparison, I clarify a number of central and interrelated aspects of Cavell's philosophy: (1) his way of understanding Wittgenstein's vision of language, and in particular his claim that this vision is "terrifying," (2) the import of Wittgenstein's vision for Cavell's conception of the method of ordinary language philosophy, (3) Cavell's dissatisfaction with Austin, and in particular (...) his claim that Austin is not clear about the nature and possible achievements of his own philosophical procedures, and (4) Cavell's notion that the temptation of skepticism is perennial and incurable. Cavell's reading of Wittgenstein is related to that of John McDowell. Like McDowell, Cavell takes Wittgenstein to be saying that the traditional attempt to justify our practices from an external standpoint is misguided, since such detachment involves losing sight of those conceptual and perceptual capacities in terms of which a practice is understood by its engaged participants. Unlike McDowell, however, Cavell consistently rejects the idea that philosophical clearsightedness can or should free us from that fear of groundlessness which motivates the traditional search for external justification. (shrink)

Simon Glendinning explains the mysteries of phenomenology.

I examine one theme within Tom Morawetz's complex jurisprudential work (stemming from Wittgenstein): the concept of a practice. After considering this theme in some detail, I then sketch a different jurisprudential approach that still proceeds within the inspiration of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Here, I summarise Stanley Cavell's elaborate recounting of Wittgenstein's twin concepts, “criteria” and “grammar.” In a third and final section, I employ this alternative method to provide a brief example of how a Wittgensteinian approach might be made towards (...) explicating and understanding Holmes’ classic claim regarding the need in jurisprudence to separate legal and moral concepts. (shrink)

: In 1842, British astronomer Sir John Herschel wrote a letter to Carl Friedrich Gauss seeking his advice about how to make data collection more efficient on the Magnetic Crusade, a large-scale initiative to study the earth's magnetic field. Surprisingly, even though Gauss had managed a similar initiative, he refused to give Herschel the advice he wanted, claiming that he needed to see Herschel's results before he could reply. Taking this miscommunication as a point of departure, this article traces the (...) cause of this miscommunication to differences in how each scientist viewed scientific training and the communicability of different kinds of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

We often speak about religious experience, and sometimes we speak about metaphysical experience. Yet we seldom hear about philosophical experience. Is philosophy purely a matter of theories and theses, or does it have an experiential aspect? In this article, I argue for the following three claims. First, there is something we might call philosophical experience, and there is nothing mystical about it. Second, philosophical experiences are expressed in something quite similar to what Kant called "aesthetic judgements." Third, philosophical experiences are (...) expressed by using words in what Wittgenstein called "secondary sense." Finally, I try to show the educational significance of pursing philosophical experiences. Through articulating them one might find one's ground, and through articulating them in a less private and more universal form one might raise oneself to universality. Thus, in expressing philosophical experiences one aspires to speak in a universal voice. (shrink)

This paper investigates a particular philosophical puzzle via an examination of its status in the writings of Wittgenstein. The puzzle concerns negation and can take on three interrelated guises. The first puzzle is how not-p can so much as negate p at all – for if p is not the case, then nothing corresponds to p. The second puzzle is how not-p can so much as negate p at all when not-p rejects p not as false but as unintelligible – (...) for if p is unintelligible, then p is nothing but scratches and sounds and does not seem apt for negation. And the third puzzle is how “not” could be anything but hopelessly equivocal if it sometimes (per the first puzzle) requires, and sometimes (per the second puzzle) precludes the intelligibility of p. The paper investigates these three puzzles, their respective structures, and their relations to each other. The second puzzle is expounded as the centre of gravity, and in countering two objections to the threefold puzzle, a special predicament is expounded with regard to the second puzzle’s concern with unipolar propositions – propositions that do not admit of an intelligible negation. The text concludes by indicating the first steps that could potentially lead us out of the threefold puzzle. (shrink)

Two essential Kantian insights are the significance for rationality of the capacity for criticism and the limits of cognition, discovered when criticism is pursued methodically, that are due to the perspectival character of the human standpoint. After a period of disparagement, these Kantian insights have been sympathetically construed and are now discussed within contemporary analytic philosophy. However, if Kant’s assumption of a single, immutable, human framework is jettisoned, then the rationality of historical succession is called into question. Moreover, if the (...) revolutionary character of framework transitions is acknowledged, then reason is historicized and even its character as reason is threatened. I argue that Menachem Fisch’s approach to criticism and rationality offers an escape from this post-Kantian predicament that acknowledges revolutionary framework transitions and that draws upon the dialogical traditions of Jewish thought, and I also argue that Fisch’s approach should be seen as thematizing, to use the terms of Kant’s aesthetics and of Fichte’s account of natural right, the reflecting rather than determining status of critical judgement, which involves second-personal address. (shrink)

The article presents the conceptual groundwork for an understanding of the essentially improvisational dimension of human rationality. It aims to clarify how we should think about important concepts pertinent to central aspects of human practices, namely, the concepts of improvisation, normativity, habit, and freedom. In order to understand the sense in which human practices are essentially improvisational, it is first necessary to criticize misconceptions about improvisation as lack of preparation and creatio ex nihilo. Second, it is necessary to solve the (...) theoretical problems that derive from misunderstandings concerning the notions of normativity, habit, and freedom – misunderstandings that revolve around the idea that rationality is a form that is developed out of itself and thus works in a way similar to algorithms. One can only make sense of normativity, habit, and freedom if one understands that they all involve conflictual relationships with the world and with others, which in turn enables one to adequately take into account their constitutive connection to improvisation, properly understood. In outlining these conceptual connections, we want to prepare the foundations for an explanation of rational practices as improvisational practices. The article concludes by stating that human rational life is improvisatory because the conditions of human practice arise out of practice itself. (shrink)

Pain, pain talk and pain ascriptions seem to be universal features of human experience and to have little to do with politics. It is often assumed that pain is always bad, a sign of a malfunctioning machine, that pain talk describes this malfunction and that the humane thing to do is to seek to ameliorate or excise pain. I argue that this viewpoint is one-sided at best and imperialistic at worst. In section I, I outline what I term the ‘prima (...) facie model of pain’ and adumbrate later Wittgenstein’s criticism of it. In section II, I marshal ethnographic evidence that deepens Wittgenstein’s reimagining of pain and acknowledgment. In section III, I link this to ‘progressive’ politics and its normative understanding of the self. Finally, in section IV, I turn to Martin Luther King’s writing and discuss a use of pain that undermines this normative conception of the self and aligns with Wittgenstein’s account. (shrink)

There is a widespread assumption that ordinary language philosophy was killed off sometime in the 1960s or 70s by a combination of Gricean pragmatics and the rapid development of systematic semantic theory. Contrary to that widespread assumption, however, contemporary versions of ordinary language philosophy are alive and flourishing, but going by various aliases—in particular (some versions of) "contextualism" and (some versions of) "experimental philosophy". And a growing group of contemporary philosophers are explicitly embracing the methods as well as the title (...) of ordinary language philosophy and arguing that it has been unfairly maligned and was never decisively refuted. In this overview, I will outline the main projects and arguments employed by contemporary ordinary language philosophers, and make the case that updated versions of the arguments made by ordinary language philosophers in the middle of the twentieth century are attracting renewed attention. (shrink)

In this paper I evaluate the soundness of the prototype paradigm, in particular its basic assumption that there are pan-human psychological essences or core meanings that refer to basic-level natural kinds, explaining why, on the whole, human communication and learning are successful. Instead I argue that there are no particular pan-human basic elements for thought, meaning and cognition, neither prototypes, nor otherwise. To illuminate my view I draw on examples from anthropology. More generally I argue that the prototype paradigm exemplifies (...) two assumptions that dominate cognitive science: (1) If human beings use words they mean something particular and what they mean can be discovered by scientific methods. (2) There is a fixed number of domains of categorization, each made up of a fixed number of basic categories. I suggest that these two assumptions lead to Brave New World. (shrink)

Sceptics of an Africanisation of education have often lambasted its proponents for re-inventing something that has very little, if any, role to play in contemporary African society. The contributors to this issue hold a different view and, through the papers included in this issue, arguments are proffered in defence of an Africanisation of education on the African continent, particularly through the notion of ubuntu.Since the 1960s, Africana philosophy as an instance of Africanisation has emerged as a ‘gathering’ notion for philosophical (...) endeavours practised by professional philosophers and intellectuals, either of African descent, including those living in the diaspora, or those of non-African descent but who are devoted to matters pertaining to African and African-descended individuals and communities (Outlaw, 2004, p. 90). These philosophical endeavours mostly relate to a ‘critical analysis and reflective evaluation of the evidence and reasoning’ that constitute the beliefs, customs, values, traditions, oral literature (parables, proverbs, poetry, songs and myth), languages and histories of African and African-descended peoples (Hallen, 2004, p. 105). The articles presented at this symposium analytically explore ideas and practices central to Africana philosophy, their underlying rationales, and how these forms of philosophical inquiry can potentially engender defensible educative relationships. (shrink)

Those of us who are captivated by new television, often find ourselves rewatching episodes or whole series. Why? What is the philosophical significance of the phenomenon of rewatching? In what follows, I engage with the ontology of television series in order to think about these questions around rewatching. I conclude by reflecting on what the entire discussion might suggest about the medium of new television, about ourselves, and also about our world and the possibilities of art in it.

Discusses the conditions of possibility for intercultural and comparative philosophy, and for crosscultural communication at large. This innovative book explores the preconditions necessary for intercultural and comparative philosophy. Philosophical practices that involve at least two different traditions with no common heritage and whose languages have very different grammatical structure, such as Indo-Germanic languages and classical Chinese, are a particular focus. Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel look at the necessary and not-so-necessary conditions of possibility of interpretation, comparison, and other forms (...) of interaction and how we can speak of similarities and differences in this context. The authors posit that it is necessary to dissolve the question of universalism versus relativism by replacing the ideal language paradigm with a paradigm of family resemblances and that it is not necessary to share a common language to engage in comparison. Numerous case studies are presented, including many comparisons of Western and Chinese concepts. (shrink)

In this article, I introduce a semiosic translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The theoretical framework is Semiosic Translation, a theory that combines Peirce’s interpretive semiotics and Wittgenstein’s notions of rule-following and complex-fact. I seek to show that this approach is particularly adroit at the task of making the sometimes cryptic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein accessible to readers. To support this assertion, I compare and analyze several canonical translations of the Tractatus with possible semiosic translations. The results show that Wittgenstein’s work (...) throughout its different phases displays a continuity that reaches a genuine abductive peak in the Philosophical Investigations. This abductive, usage-based turn is, nonetheless, announced in the Tractatus in terms of a quest for semiotic accuracy. (shrink)

In the First Meditation, the Cartesian meditator temporarily concludes that he cannot know anything, because he cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while he is dreaming. To resist the meditator’s conclusion, one could deploy an asymmetry argument. Following Bernard Williams, one could argue that even if the meditator cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while dreaming, it does not follow that he cannot do it while awake. In general, asymmetry arguments seek to identify an asymmetry between a bad case that is entertained (...) as a ground for doubt and a good case in which one takes oneself to know something. My aim in this paper is to consider how effective asymmetry arguments are as an anti-skeptical strategy. I conclude that although asymmetry arguments provide an effective response to dreaming skepticism, they fail as a response to brains-in-a-vat skepticism. (shrink)

Although short, Espen Dahl has written a book that truly delivers on its title: it clearly, concisely, and powerfully shows Cavell’s frequent and deep links to and engagements with religion and religious themes and with Continental philosophy. While both of these strands have been explored piecemeal by scholars, Dahl’s innovation consists in the detail with which he can engage these themes and the position he is able to carve out. That position is one that sees Cavell’s thought “as essentially open (...) to theology or religion more generally” . Dahl is the first—as far I know—to extensively pursue all of Cavell’s major themes in this context. This is quite an accomplishment, and something for which he ought to be commended. Dahl has also written a highly accessible book on Cavell, and yet one which in no way “waters down” or dilutes Cavell’s thinking. There ought to be more books of this kind on .. (shrink)

Ostensibly, Wittgenstein’s last remarks published in 1969 under the title On Certainty are about epistemology, more precisely about the problem of scepticism. This is the standard interpretation of On Certainty. But I contend, in this paper, that we will get closer to Wittgenstein’s intentions and perhaps find new and illuminating ways to interpret his late contribution if we keep in mind that his primary goal was not to provide an answer to scepticism. In fact, I think that the standard reading (...) leads to a distorted view of Wittgenstein’s contribution in On Certainty. In order to see that, scepticism will first be briefly characterised, and then I will attempt to circumscribe more precisely the standard reading of On Certainty. In section 4, three exegetical arguments against the standard reading are offered – the hope being that the weight of these three arguments, taken together, instils doubt in the reader’s mind about the correctness of the standard reading. The paper concludes with an attempt to gesture at the philosophical significance of On Certainty once we set aside the standard reading. (shrink)

One can attack a philosophical claim by identifying a misuse of the language used to state it. I distinguish between two varieties of this strategy: one belonging to Norman Malcolm and the other to Ludwig Wittgenstein. The former is flawed and easily dismissible as misled linguistic conservatism. It muddies the name of ordinary language philosophy. I argue that the latter avoids this flaw. To make perspicuous the kind of criticism of philosophical claims that the second variety makes available, I draw (...) a comparison between Wittgenstein’s recommendation that philosophers study ordinary language and Alfred Schütz’s recommendation that social scientists study the methods of the agents they study. Both do so in an attempt to sensitise philosophers and social scientists respectively to particular artefacts of method which can be easily mistaken for features of that which is studied. (shrink)

In their discussions and criticisms of the idea that language use is essentially a matter of following rules, Davidson and Cavell both invoke as counterexamples instances of intelligible linguistic innovation. Davidson’s favorite examples are malapropisms. Cavell focuses instead on what he calls projections. This paper clarifies some important differences between malapropisms and projections, conceived as paradigmatic forms of linguistic innovation. If malapropisms are treated as exemplary it will be natural to conclude, with Davidson, that a shared practice, be it rule-governed (...) or not, matters only instrumentally – as something that may enhance but is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful communication. By contrast, if Cavellian projections are seen as exemplary, a shared practice will be conceived not only as essential to the possibility of meaningful linguistic innovation, but as already permeated by the sort of creativity of which projections are only particularly striking examples. It is also argued that malapropisms are not particularly convincing as counterexamples to the sort of view Davidson wants to reject. Cavellian projections, on the other hand, are powerful as counterexamples, and reflecting on the nature of their inventiveness is crucial to understanding and seeing the plausibility of Cavell’s own conception of language. (shrink)

Prior to A Process Model, Gendlin’s theoretical and practical work focused on the interfacing of bodily-felt meaningfulness and symbolization. In A Process Model, Gendlin does something much wider and more philosophically primary. The hermeneutic and pragmatist distinction between the concept of experience, on the one hand, and actual experiential process, on the other, becomes for Gendlin the methodological basis for a radical reconceptualization of the body. Wittgenstein’s formulation of “meaning” as “language-use in situations” is spelled out by Gendlin in embodied (...) terms, yielding a profound new grasp of language, meaning, situation, language-use and culture as interactional body-process. Gendlin, in building his text, answers the pragmatist critique of a wrong progression of thinking where the results of an inquiry are read back to be its premises. With his central concept “eveving” Gendlin shows how the seeming determinacy of preceding structure is opened in the actual occurring. He thereby elaborates a new conception of continuity where the possibility for responsive novelty is emergent in the event itself. The conceptual development of the text itself instances this kind of emergent novelty. We will somewhat follow Gendlin’s own path in using language-in-situations as entry-point into his more fundamental process-thinking, thereby asking ourselves how to engage his new kind of model. In the last part, we introduce some of the philosophical roots of Gendlin’s A Process Model. (shrink)

A deferred prosecution agreement, or DPA, allows a corporation, instead of proceeding to trial on a criminal charge, to settle matters with the state by acknowledging the facts on which any charge would be based, pay a reduced fine, and agree to change the way they conduct business. Critics of DPAs have suggested that, because the defendant corporation must pay a fine and submit to structural reform without having been found guilty at trial, DPAs violate the Presumption of Innocence. This (...) paper argues that they do not. The paper appeals to the role of civic trust in a liberal political community. The obligations a corporation assumes in a DPA can be framed as a reasonable retributive response to a breach by that corporation of the community’s laws, and an appropriate reassurance by that corporation to the community that such breaches will not reoccur. This framing is sufficient to deny that DPAs violate the Presumption of Innocence. (shrink)

Traditional Christian descriptions of homosexuality as a “sin against nature” rely on a claim about the transparency of the sexed body to universal reason: homosexual acts are sins against nature because natural law renders them obviously unnatural. This moral description “unnatural” subverts itself for two reasons. First, neo-traditionalist descriptions conflate “natural” and “normal.” Dialogue with Didier Eribon's work on the “insult” shows how such moral descriptions self-subvert and render chastity impossible. Second, neo-traditionalists use the description to require celibacy, which the (...) tradition teaches is likely impossible without a special gift. This use of natural law thus fails to be self-consistent or true to reality and so undermines its ability to serve as a critical principle in the search for truth. A critical use of natural law allows for an alternative, non-insulting description of homosexual characters. This essay outlines the character description through immanent critique of two spheres of Catholic teachings about sex: Augustinian sexual ethics and nuptial theology. (shrink)

This book offers an original account of a distinctly republican theory of social and global justice. The book starts by exploring the nature and value of Hegelian recognition theory. It shows the importance of that theory for grounding a normative account of free and autonomous agency. It is this normative account of free agency which provides the groundwork for a republican conception of social and global justice, based on the core-ideas of freedom as non-domination and autonomy as non-alienation. As the (...) author argues, republicans should endorse a sufficientarian account of social justice, which focuses on the nature of social relationships and their effects on people's ability to act freely and realize their fundamental interests. On the global level, the book argues for the cosmopolitan extension of the republican principles of non-domination and non-alienation within a multi-level democratic system. In so doing, the book addresses a major gap in the existing literature, presenting an original theory of justice, which combines Hegelian recognition theory and republican ideas of freedom, and applying this hybrid theory to the global domain. Fabian Schuppert creates a grand synthesis uniting neo-republican insights on freedom with Hegelian recognition theory. The result is an account of agency that arises from the idea of non-domination whose aim it is to safeguard individual freedom. When combined with Hegelian recognition theory a social focus also emerges. This amalgam comments on many of the major disputes concerning global justice from a cosmopolitan perspective. Because of the broad scope and the many contemporary discussions engaged this book will be of keen interest to scholars as well as a welcome addition to the classroom. (shrink)

Abstract This paper sketches a Levinasian theory of action. It has often been pointed out that Levinas' ethics are incapable of providing principles of adjudication for guiding actions. However, a much more profound problem affects Levinas' metaphysical ethics and negates the possibility of adjudication and that is a patent lack of freedom from the yoke of the ethical. If ?ethics is primordial? indeed, then no act can be unethical in that there is no alternative possibility to the acceptance and performance (...) of the law. In this paper, I will argue that it is from the totalization of the acceptance and performance of law ?implicit in the subject's action? that alternative possibilities become visible. This is to say, it is through totalization that the subject demarcates the locus for the emergence of principles, which can permit adjudication among different acts without negating the radical primacy of ethics, which is probably Levinas? greatest contribution to the field. (shrink)

This paper considers the place of freedom in discussions of the aims of education. Bearing in mind remarks of R.S. Peters to the affect that the singling out of aims can ‘fall into the hands of rationalistically minded curriculum planners’, it begins by considering the views of Roland Reichenbach regarding Bildung and his account of this in ateleological terms. The particular place of freedom is examined in the light of the writings of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc Nancy. The meaning of (...) education in terms of ‘the leap of freedom’ is discussed. This opens the way to an account of education that is different from classical notion of educational aims. Finally, in the leap of freedom, educational practices are considered as a form of translation. (shrink)

Critical notice of Paul Faulkner, "Knowledge on Trust" (OUP 2011) and Benjamin McMyler, "Testimony, Trust, and Authority" (OUP 2011).

Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. I explicate this alternative moral "epistemology," identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.