I argue that Descartes intended the so-called ontological "argument" as a self-validating intuition, rather than as a formal proof. The textual evidence for this view is highly compelling, but the strongest support comes from understanding Descartes's diagnosis for why God's existence is not 'immediately' self-evident to everyone and the method of analysis that he develops for making it self-evident. The larger aim of the paper is to use the ontological argument as a case study of Descartes's nonformalist theory of deduction (...) and his method of analysis, showing how he conceives the latter as a form of philosophical therapy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that despite undeniable fundamental differences between Descartes’ and Spinoza’s accounts of human action, there are some striking similarities between their views on right action, moral motivation, and virtue that are usually overlooked. I will argue, first, that both thinkers define virtue in terms of activity or freedom, mutatis mutandis, and thus in terms of actual power of acting. Second, I will claim that both Descartes and Spinoza hold a non-consequentialist approach to virtue, by which human (...) actions are evaluated as virtuous or good on the basis of their motivational forces rather than their consequences. I will show further that both philosophers identify virtue qua free action with the highest good (summum bonum), and thus with that which is to be sought for its own sake and not as a means to anything preferable to it. (shrink)

Humoralism, the view that the human body is composed of a limited number of elementary fluids, is one of the most characteristic aspects of ancient medicine. The psychological dimension of humoral theory in the ancient world has thus far received a relatively small amount of scholarly attention. Medical psychology in the ancient world can only be correctly understood by relating it to psychological thought in other fields, such as ethics and rhetoric. The concept that ties these various domains together is (...) character (êthos), which involves a view of human beings focused on clearly distinguishable psychological types that can be recognized on the basis of external signs. Psychological ideas based on humoral theory remained influential well into the early modern period. Yet, in 17th-century medicine and philosophy, humoral physiology and psychology started to lose ground to other theoretical perspectives on the mind and its relation to the body. This decline of humoralist medical psychology can be related to a broader reorientation of psychological thought in which the traditional concept of character lost its central position. Instead of the focus on types and stable character traits, a perspective emerged that was primarily concerned with individuality and transient passions. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Christ’s second love command implies not only that people’s volitions and actions be Christ-like, but also that their affective-motivational dispositions be Christ-like. More specifically, I argue that the command implies that people have aretaic obligations to strive to cultivate a merciful heart with the kind of affective depth described by St. Isaac of Syria in his 71st ascetical homily—i.e., one that is disposed to becoming inflamed, such that it is gripped by “strong and vehement (...) mercy.”. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that one of the things that matters most to Descartes' account of mind is that we use our minds actively. This is because for him only an active mind is able to re-organize its passionate experiences in such a way that a genuinely human, self-governed life of virtue and true contentment becomes possible. To bring out this connection, I will read the Meditations against the backdrop of Descartes' correspondence with Elisabeth. This will reveal that in (...) Descartes' writings there is a crucial connection between the conception of ourselves as dreamers and the idea that we fail to realize our true potential as self-determined, active agents. Dreams, as Descartes conceives them, are passively received mental states that inhibit our freedom to use reason at will. To awaken here takes the form of activating our thoughts, which holds the key to freeing ourselves from the stimulus-response patterns that Descartes takes to be at work in animal conduct. Applied to the Meditations, these insights suggest that this work engages in questions far beyond the epistemological agenda. By activating the mind, the Meditations teach us how to realize our true human potential as virtuous thinkers and passionate agents. (shrink)

I argue that Lisa Shapiro’s rational reconstruction of Descartes’s provisional moral code in terms of a broad conception of morality supplies us with an interpretative framework that make historiographical sense of the reception of Descartes’s moral philosophy in an Anglophone context on three occasions: the appeal to Descartes made by Henry More, Henry Sidgwick’s abrupt dismissal, and the ensuing reaction to Sidgwick found in Grace Neal Dolson. This case shows, I maintain, how reception history can be utilized to inform and (...) support rational reconstruction of philosophical texts. (shrink)

The advocates of Integrative Bioethics have insisted that this recently emerging project aspires to become a new stage of bioethical development, surpassing both biomedically oriented bioethics and global bioethics. We claim in this paper that if the project wants to successfully replace the two existing paradigms, it at least needs to properly address and surmount the lack of common moral vocabulary problem. This problem points to a semantic incommensurability due to cross-language communication in moral terms. This paper proceeds as follows. (...) In the first part, we provide an overview of Integrative Bioethics and its conceptual building blocks: mutlidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity. In the second part, we disclose the problem of semantic incommensurability. The third part gives an overview of various positions on the understanding of interdisciplinarity and integration in interdisciplinary communication, and corresponding attempts at solving the lack of common moral vocabulary problem. Here we lean mostly on Holbrook’s three theses regarding the character of interdisciplinary communication. Finally, in the fourth part, we discuss a particular bioethical case—that of euthanasia—to demonstrate the challenge semantic incommensurability poses to dialogues in Integrative Bioethics. We conclude that Integrative Bioethics does not offer a methodological toolset that would warrant optimism in its advocates’ predictions of surpassing current modes of doing bioethics. Since Integrative Bioethics leaves controversial methodological questions unresolved on almost all counts and shows no attempts at overcoming the critical stumbling points, we argue for its rejection. (shrink)

Despite Jung’s frequent claims that one’s moral and ethical stance play an important role both in the development and in the cure of neurosis, Jung’s ethical position had not been subjected to a critical assessment and the main sources of his ethical outlook had not been investigated. I take my point of departure in Jung’s definition of ethics as involving both consciousness and the unconscious. In the first chapter, Kant’s argument for the primacy of practical reason is shown to ground (...) Jung’s conviction of the decisive freedom of the ego. Jung’s insistence on the importance of the moral development of both patient and therapist is also related to Kant’s call for moral independence. Having elucidated Jung’s understanding of conflicts of duty – the existence of which was denied by Kant – I discuss Jung’s Nietzschean legacy. I argue that Jung derives the crucial distinction between ethics and morality from Nietzsche, as well as the idea that ethics must consider the irrational and unintentional side of the Self; I also consider how Jung’s application of the ‘health criterion’ to ethics differs from Nietzsche’s utilisation of the same device. In Chapter 3, I highlight the critical convergence between Aristotle’s approach to ethics and Jung’s psycho-ethical paradigm: while both stress the importance of acquiring a balance between reason and the passions and place wisdom at centre stage, Jung adds that psychotherapy can successfully integrate ‘unconscious vice’. In the fourth chapter, I examine the Christian side of Jung’s ethics. Here I assess the role played by the psychologically ‘heavy’ notion of evil in Jung’s model and analyse the often-misunderstood link between evil and the Shadow. In Jung’s psychology, the individuated subject is the ethical subject, so depth psychology and ethics converge towards the same goal and can be mutually supportive endeavours. (shrink)