Following the Introduction, the second section of this essay lays out Tom Cavanaugh’s helpful and convincing account of the enduring significance of the Hippocratic Oath in terms of how it responds to the problem of iatrogenic harm. The third section discusses something underemphasized in Cavanaugh’s account, namely, the key role of the virtue of piety within the Oath and the profession it establishes, and argues that this virtue should be regarded as integral to an authentic Hippocratic ethic. The fourth and (...) final section briefly examines the connection between medicine and philosophy, focusing on how both should be seen as wisdom-seeking ways of life, and shows the relevance of this for regarding the virtue of piety as the key virtue of medical practice. (shrink)

This article examines the recent work of the sociologist Arpad Szakolczai as he attempts to conceptualize the programme of ‘reflexive historical sociology’ in the ‘life-works’ of Max Weber, Eric Voegelin and Michel Foucault as well as Norbert Elias, Lewis Mumford and Franz Borkenau. Particular attention is paid to the innovative manner in which the work of the anthropologist Victor Turner is used to explore the biographies of these social theorists as in effect performative life-works in which crucial liminal periods and (...) experiences are seen as facilitating new understandings. It is suggested that the life-work approach to social theory adds an important reflexive dimension to the analysis of social thought. (shrink)

If you do not wish to construe philosophical discourse as simply a discourse of cognition, a theoretical discourse; if you think it is also a practical, ethical discourse: how should you write? How should you frame the ethos, the authority of your discourse? This article re‐presents an extended preface I wrote and rewrote obsessively over a period of nearly two years in an effort to forge a voice and mode of address adequate to my sense of philosophical discourse as a (...) practical discourse, whilst also being accountable to the generic requirements of a PhD. As the textual record of this struggle, the value of this text must remain primarily in its capacity to evoke or provoke similar generic memories or ambitions in the reader. (shrink)

If you do not wish to construe philosophical discourse as simply a discourse of cognition, a theoretical discourse; if you think it is also a practical, ethical discourse: how should you write? How should you frame the ethos, the authority of your discourse? This article re-presents an extended preface I wrote and rewrote obsessively over a period of nearly two years in an effort to forge a voice and mode of address adequate to my sense of philosophical discourse as a (...) practical discourse, whilst also being accountable to the generic requirements of a PhD. As the textual record of this struggle, the value of this text must remain primarily in its capacity to evoke or provoke similar generic memories or ambitions in the reader. (shrink)

At once historical and philosophical, Michel Foucault used his genealogical method to expose the contingent conditions constituting the institutions, sciences and practices of the present. His analyses of the asylum, clinic, prison and sexuality revealed the historical, political and epistemological forces that make up certain types of subjects, sciences and sites of control. Although noting the originality of his work, a number of early critics questioned the normative framework of Foucault's method. Nancy Fraser argued that Foucault's genealogical method was ‘normatively (...) confused’ as it implied political critique yet claimed to be value-neutral. Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor also questioned the normative basis of Foucault's appeals to critique, arguing it was self-refuting as Foucault left no room for the subject to escape power. Although a debate among these scholars was planned for the mid-1980s, Foucault's death in 1984 meant this could not occur. A number of edited volumes sought to fabricate a debate, with defenders of Foucault excavating his published monographs to construct responses to his critics. While the monographs remain the central texts of Foucault's oeuvre, over the past decade his Collège de France lectures have been published and translated into English. This article offers a schematic survey of the influence of the Collège de France lectures in recasting different points in the debates over normativity, critique and resistance. (shrink)

This essay attempts to retrieve the notion of ‘common sense’ within the writings of Descartes and Montaigne. I suggest that both writers represent distinct traditions in which the notion is employed. Descartes represents a modernist tradition in which common sense is understood to be a cognitive faculty, while Montaigne represents a humanist tradition in which common sense is understood as a political virtue. I also suggest that both writers work with the notion as a way of responding to diversity in (...) the world. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the notion of common sense employed by Descartes and Montaigne emerges out of the scholastic tradition and the assertion that both writers are responding to the educational consequences of scholasticism. I also discuss how the reconstruction of Descartes in this paper can provide some ground for raising new questions about the Cartesian project and educational philosophy. Finally, I gesture toward the idea that the humanist tradition with its understanding of common sense as political virtue can provide benefit for contemporary responses to diversity. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 1 - 39 Through a novel set of texts drawn from Plato, Porphyry, Plotinus, Ps. Julian, Proclus, Hermeias, Synesius and Damascius, I explore how anagogic _erōs_ in master-disciple relationships in Neoplatonism contributed to the attainment of self-knowledge and to the transmission of knowledge, authority and inspired insights within and outside the _diadochia_. I view anagogic _erōs_ as one of the most important channels of non-discursive pedagogy and argue for the mediating power of anagogic (...) _erōs_ in the attainment of the main goal of the Platonist: reorienting desire from sensible to intelligible beauty and changing one’s ontological status to become like god and attain union with the divine. After considering the problematic nature of Socratic _erōs_, its skeptics and detractors, I discuss the dynamics of philosopher-disciple relationships and the experience of anagogic _erōs_ in the following: the attack on Porphyry and defense by Plotinus following Porphyry’s recital of an ecstatic poem on _Hieros Gamos_, the concealment of anagogic _erōs_ behind the authoritative façade of an oracle, the intensely devotional private letters of Ps. Julian to the aged Iamblichus and of Synesius to his female master Hypatia; the identification of anagogic _erōs_ with theurgic ascent in Syrianus’s school according to Proclus and Hermeias and the experiences of anagogic _erōs_ outside the _diadochia_ in Damascius’ _Philosophical History_. I conclude that the true and correct practice of philosophy had much, if not everything to do with the anagogic _erōs_ between the true philosopher, the bacchant and the philosopher in training, aspiring to become transformed from thyrsus-bearer into bacchant. The privileged and exalted status given to the divine lover ensured the transmission of the philosophical tradition in all its richness, preserving both its discursive and non-discursive aspects as a system of thought, as a way of life and as a way of being and loving. (shrink)

Although Henry David Thoreau stands outside the Christian canon, his outlook on the relations among spirituality, ecology, and economy highlights how Christian theologians can develop a theological work ethic in our era of economic and ecological precarity. He can furthermore help theologians counter the pro-work bias in much Christian thought. In Walden, Thoreau shows that the best work is an ascetic practice that reveals and reaps the abundance of nature and connects the person to the immanent divine and thereby glimpsing (...) eternity. Thoreau thus offers the outline of a transformed theology of work even as he challenges Protestant vocationalism in the early industrial era. He is therefore a fitting if challenging guide for formulating a theology of the self as agent and product of work, at a moment when the postindustrial ideal of work that is both meaningful and remunerative seems ever more unattainable while the negative impact of our work on nonhuman nature is ever more apparent. (shrink)

This essay takes a rhetorical pragmatist perspective on current questions concerning educational goals and pedagogical practices. It begins by considering some challenges to rhetorical approaches to education, placing those challenges in the theoretical context of their posing. The essay then describes one current rhetorical approach—based on Kenneth Burke’s dramatism and logology—and uses it to understand and redescribe another rhetorical approach—Jesuit teaching of eloquentia perfecta. Proceeding in this way, the essay presents both a general theoretical framework for discussing educational aims and (...) a specific practical example of how such aims might be achieved. (shrink)

This paper presents a critical appraisal of the recent turn in comparative religious ethics to virtue theory; it argues that the specific aspirations of virtue ethicists to make ethics more contextual, interdisciplinary, and practice-centered has in large measure failed to match the rhetoric. I suggest that the focus on the category of the human and practices associated with self-formation along with a methodology grounded in “analogical imagination” has actually poeticized the subject matter into highly abstract textual studies on normative voices (...) within traditions, largely in isolation from considerations of socio-historical context, political and institutional pressures, and the lived ethics of non-elite moral actors. I conclude with some programmatic suggestions for how the field of comparative religious ethics can move forward. (shrink)

A concern central to virtually all full-blooded instances of religious ethics is how persuasively to represent a world central to our fulfillment that far exceeds our normal understanding. The treatment of three kinds of language in an early Daoist text, the Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), contains an especially profound discussion and expression of such persuasive presentations in religious ethics. This study examines it and concludes by viewing Dante's Commedia through the perspectives Zhuangzi's ideas and practices present.

It is twelve years since the article you are about to read was published. During that time, the philosophy in schools movement has expanded and diversified in response to curriculum developments, teaching guides, web-based resources, dissertations, empirical research and theoretical scholarship. Philosophy and philosophy of education journals regularly publish articles and special issues on pre-college philosophy. There are more opportunities for undergraduate and graduate philosophy students to practice and research philosophy for/with children in schools. The Ontario Philosophy Teachers Association reports (...) that in English-speaking Canada there are over 28,000 senior high school students studying philosophy in over 440 schools, and philosophy is now a Teachable Qualification. In the USA, the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization was founded in 2009 to create a network of pre-college philosophy teachers. With the loss of its founders—Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp and Gareth Matthews —the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children is developing a digital archive in P4C. My original article was inspired by the design and pilot of a new philosophy elective for the Victorian Certificate of Education. This initiative garnered considerable interest from the P4C community because many believed that the decision to offer a VCE philosophy elective reflected the effectiveness and popularity of P4C in elementary schools, and the new philosophy elective would establish P4C as an essential prerequisite for the study of philosophy in senior secondary school and at university. In my view, enthusiasts overlooked an important difference in the conception of philosophy informing the new philosophy elective: it introduced students to the theoretical or academic discipline of philosophy, whereas P4C conceived of philosophy as a wisdom tradition—otherwise known as the art of living. (shrink)

Based on anthropological fieldwork on the revival of hallucinogen research as well as on the epistemic culture of neurophilosophy, this Common Knowledge guest column examines two very different philosophical engagements with psychedelic drugs. In Thomas Metzinger's evidence-based philosophy of mind, hallucinogens help to operationalize questions about the nature of consciousness. While this project contributes to the great divide between empirically enlightened moderns and tradition-oriented premoderns, Metzinger's neurophilosophical reanimation of the ancient conception of philosophy as cultura animi can build a bridge (...) to Aldous Huxley's perennial philosophy, which has informed the psychedelic intelligentsia like no other body of thought. In the sixteenth century, the philosophia perennis grew out of a decidedly nonmodern philosophy of religion that sought to suture the historical and cultural cracks that would come to define modernity. This essay argues that neurophilosophy and ethnographic studies of consciousness cultures could function as critical correctives in a contemporary rearticulation of perennial philosophy. (shrink)

Recent research on “psychotherapy” in Greek philosophy has not been fully integrated into thinking about philosophy as a way of life molded by personal relationships. This article focuses on how the enigma of Socratic eros sustains a network of thought experiments in the fourth century BCE about interpersonal dynamics and psychical transformation. It supplements existing work on Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus with comparative material from Aeschines of Sphettus, Xenophon, and the dubiously Platonic Alcibiades I and Theages. In order to select (...) and illuminate commonalities among all of these, it also draws critically upon Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic technique and his numerous comparisons between Socrates and psychoanalysts. What emerges is a more complex and qualified but no less sincere appreciation for the ideal of reflective, cooperative aspiration toward Beauty portrayed in Plato's dialogues. (shrink)

Richard Shusterman's Philosophy and the Art of Writing suggests something vital about the tension between philosophical discourses that cannot capture or be the full meaning of living a life in relation to wisdom, and lived philosophies that cannot do away with discourses to deepen a lived experience beyond them: that philosophy as “an embodied way of life” is a sub-creation that emerges from the tension between them. This paper uses several different moments and ideas from Philosophy and the Art of (...) Writing as points of departure for further inquiry. Some “memories,” repurposed, reorganized, and manipulated, take up these starting points to further the investigation. The present work was a spiritual exercise for the author and, one hopes, will be for the reader in what it means to practice philosophy as a way of life. By doing so, we may find more forgiveness and appreciation for our philosophical vocation that creates something more than what we say or are now. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDaoism, especially classical Daoism, is often constructed as a ‘philosophy,’ ‘set of ideas,’ or ‘system of thought.’ This is particularly the case in studies of Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy. The present article draws attention to the central importance of clarity and stillness as a Daoist form of meditative practice, contemplative experience, and way of being. Examining historical precedents in classical Daoism, the article gives particular attention to the Tang dynasty ‘Clarity-and-Stillness Literature,’ specifically the eighth-century Qingjing jing 清靜經. In the (...) process, one finds that qingjing is one of the major connective strands throughout the Daoist tradition, a connective strand that reveals the central importance of embodied, experiential, and applied dimensions of human being from a Daoist perspective. (shrink)

The present narrative describes and problematizes one year of Educational and philosophical work with illiterate adults in contexts of urban poverty in the Public School Joaquim da Silva Peçanha, city of Duque de Caxias, suburbs of the State of Rio de Janeiro during 2008. The project, “Em Caxias a Filosofia En-caixa?!”, consists of a teacher education program in which public school teachers study and practice the art of composing philosophical experiences with their students, and the realization of actual experiences of (...) philosophy in classrooms with children and students in an adult literacy class. This narrative is concerned with the latter aspect of the project, more specifically experiences working with adult students practicing philosophy. The thirty students and three teachers involved in the course do not study the history of philosophy, nor do they create philosophical systems or theories. Rather they participate in a philosophical experience that might best be able to understand by examining Pierre Hadot’s concept of philosophy “as a way of living”. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the relationship of virtue, argumentation, and philosophical conduct by considering the role of the specific virtue of intellectual humility in the practice of philosophical argumentation. I have three aims: first, to sketch an account of this virtue; second, to argue that it can be cultivated by engaging in argumentation with others; and third, to problematize this claim by drawing upon recent data from social psychology. My claim is that philosophical argumentation can be conducive to the (...) cultivation of virtues, including humility, but only if it is conceived and practiced in appropriately ‘edifying’ ways. (shrink)

Many people report that reading first-person narratives of the experience of illness can be morally instructive or educative. But although they are ubiquitous and typically sincere, the precise nature of such educative experiences is puzzling—for those narratives typically lack the features that modern philosophers regard as constitutive of moral reason. I argue that such puzzlement should disappear, and the morally educative power of illness narratives explained, if one distinguishes two different styles of moral reason: an inferentialist style that generates the (...) puzzlement and an alternative exemplarist style that offers a compelling explanation of the morally educative power of pathographic literature. (shrink)

Abstract Havi Carel has recently argued that one can be ill and happy. An ill person can ?positively respond? to illness by cultivating ?adaptability? and ?creativity?. I propose that Carel's claim can be augmented by connecting it with virtue ethics. The positive responses which Carel describes are best understood as the cultivation of virtues, and this adds a significant moral aspect to coping with illness. I then defend this claim against two sets of objections and conclude that interpreting Carel's phenomenology (...) of illness within a virtue-ethical framework enriches our understanding of how illness can be edifying. (shrink)

On the basis of two thought experiments, I argue that self-building technologies are possible given our current level of technological progress. We could already use technology to make us instantiate selfhood in a more perfect, complete manner. I then examine possible extensions of this thesis, regarding more radical self-building technologies which might become available in a distant future. I also discuss objections and reservations one might have about this view.

Postcolonial studies and decolonial theory make visible the nature and extent of Eurocentrism through a critique of constructed categories as basic as “history” and “culture.” Walter Mignolo asserts a strong claim that the concept of “culture” is itself a colonial construction, and hence all cultural difference bears the mark of coloniality. This thesis presents a challenge to the field of comparative philosophy: What does “cross-cultural” philosophy even mean if all so-called cultural difference is indeed colonial difference? Could comparativists, in the (...) wake of this critique, preserve the possibility of cross-cultural philosophical inquiry even when basic terms of discourse are suspended? This essay is a thought experiment in accepting Mignolo's general premise that all cultural difference is colonial difference, through which I offer three strategies for philosophizing comparatively under this constraint: historical contextualization, subversive categorization, and decen.. (shrink)

In this article I consider whether and how Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological method can initiate a phenomenological way of life. The impetus for this investigation originates in a set of manuscripts written in 1926 (published in Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion) where Husserl suggests that the consistent commitment to and performance of phenomenological reflection can change one’s life to the point where a simple return to the life lived before this reflection is no longer possible. Husserl identifies this point of no return with (...) becoming a transcendental idealist. I propose a way of understanding Husserl’s claim that transcendental idealism makes a simple return to life before phenomenological reflection impossible. I then suggest that a phenomenological way of life is characterized by an epistemic modesty that follows from Husserl’s transcendental idealism and consider whether and how such a phenomenological way of life is a life worth living. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss the historical adequacy of Charles Taylor's philosophical history of secularization, as presented in his A Secular Age . I do so by situating it in relation to the contextual historiography of secularization in early modern Europe, with a particular focus on developments in the German Empire. Considering how profoundly conceptions of secularization have been bound to competing religious and political programmes, we must begin our discussion by entertaining the possibility that modern philosophical and historiographic conceptions (...) of secularization might themselves be outcrops of this unfinished competition. Peter Gordon has rightly observed that Taylor's philosophical history of secularization is a Catholic one, and that this is bound up with a specific view of secularization as a theological and ecclesiological “disembedding” of rational subjectivity from its prior embodiment in a sacral body, community , and cosmos. Taylor delivers this history in his “reform master narrative”: that certain fundamental religious and cultural reforms or changes in early modern Europe wrought the secularization responsible for a modern epoch of “unbelief”. (shrink)

Foucault’s vocabulary of arts of existence might be helpful to problematize the entwinement of humans and technology and to search for new types of hybrid selves. However, to be a serious new ethical vocabulary for technology, this art of existence should be supplemented with an ongoing critical discourse of technologies, including a critical analysis of the subjectivities imposed by technologies, and should be supplemented with new medical and philosophical regimens for an appropriate use of technologies.

Many philosopers and social theorists pursue the notion that recognition is a fruitful framework for engaging with a social analysis of moral and political life, and – more critically – that the failure of recognition is a feature of alienation. This article argues that the thrust of these arguments can be properly attuned by deploying a dual model of recognition that draws especially on Sartre’s work. Where there is struggle for recognition between subjects, the object of struggle is not the (...) recognition of identity, or even of difference, but the recognition of non-identity. The claim will be that this practical attitude of recognition designates inter-subjective attitudes that can institute normative practices whereby agents’ claims are motivated by the epistemic virtue of non-identity. (shrink)

This essay explains why there are good reasons to practice philosophy as a way of life. The argument begins with the assumption that we should live well but that our understanding of how to live well can be mistaken. Philosophical reason and reflection can help correct these mistakes. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that philosophical reasoning often fails to change our dispositions and behavior. Drawing on the work of Pierre Hadot, the essay claims that spiritual exercises and communal engagement mitigate the (...) factors that prevent us from living in accord- ance with our conceptions of the good life. So, many of us have reasons to engage in philosophical reasoning along with behavioral, cognitive, and social strategies to alter our behavior and attitudes so that they’re in line with our philosophical commitments. In these respects, many of us should practice philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

This paper is a tentative attempt to set out some of the basic points for articulating an alternative philosophical praxis derived from some Black women's lives and experiences. It begins with an explanation of delegitimating processes and the importance of not dividing theory from practice. The essay offers six practices that outline the unique critical attitude that constitutes philosophical practices rooted in Black women's lived experience and asks “How we sound” when doing academic philosophy.

The notion of epistemic injustice has become an important topic of inquiry in recent times. It refers to the injustice committed to a person when her claim to knowledge is not given due consideration. This article argues that there are two major sources of epistemic injustice: One is the dominating tendencies present in us, and the other is susceptibility to cognitive biases and distortions. When societies become more complex, injustice increases and one can see countless instances of epistemic injustice in (...) everyday life. To reduce epistemic injustice, one has to tackle both sources. Increasing cooperative behaviour is the key in this regard which, in turn, may require revisiting the way the self is automatically understood. (shrink)

This paper explores the integral relationship between philosophy and nursing practice. The discussion begins by suggesting that philosophy is more than a set of abstract ideas or an intellectual activity; that it is a way of living and being in practice. The author contends that philosophical inquiry can improve the adequacy and relevance of family and nursing theories by promoting the examination and expansion of those theories in light of the experiences and intuitions of nurses. Offering a personal example the (...) author exemplifies how philosophical activity can directly and experientially enhance everyday nursing practice. (shrink)

This article approaches Confucianism as a lost art of living and asks how we can make it relevant again for us. Central to this approach is the cultivation of heart-mind designed to help cure ourselves of self-oblivion and self-centeredness so prevalent in our culture today. It is based on the idea of Li, the same as Spinoza’s God, the absolute Being that has nothing to do with human aspirations at all. To seek this, Li is therefore to gain true freedom. (...) Two preeminent Neo-Confucians of Joseon Korea, Yi Hwang and Yi I, discuss the method of Jing, paying full attention and being watchful, for that end. (shrink)

This article questions a number of widely held views of the role of values in psychotherapy. It begins with a discussion of the now largely discredited view that psychotherapy can be value free. It also broadens this challenge to question the popular idea that values form an inescapable part of the therapeutic encounter. While this view is correct in outline, it is necessary to reject the underlying conception of values as largely arbitrary preferences that the client and the therapist bring (...) to the encounter, as this fails to do justice to the inherently ethical nature of psychotherapy. It argues that we should recover the Greek notion of therapy as essentially concerned with the character of a person. In other words, the goal of therapy is virtue. (shrink)

This paper explores the integral relationship between philosophy and nursing practice. The discussion begins by suggesting that philosophy is more than a set of abstract ideas or an intellectual activity; that it is a way of living and being in practice. The author contends that philosophical inquiry can improve the adequacy and relevance of family and nursing theories by promoting the examination and expansion of those theories in light of the experiences and intuitions of nurses. Offering a personal example the (...) author exemplifies how philosophical activity can directly and experientially enhance everyday nursing practice. (shrink)

RESUMO Este texto propõe a trazer à tona alguns aspectos dos estudos do budismo e de sua filosofia no Brasil, que têm sido, de alguma forma, negligenciados ou tratados de modo pouco condizente com a proposta com que este filosofar foi inicialmente concebido. Não se trata de convencer ou "converter" acadêmicos brasileiros a pensarem de maneira similar aos eruditos budistas, mas simplesmente destacar pontos que parecem relevantes para dar continuidade a um debate que já vem sendo estabelecido, particularmente na última (...) década. Com este propósito, serão levantadas questões como as motivações e métodos do fazer filosófico, o dogmatismo, a ética e formas de transmissão de conhecimento. ABSTRACT This text aims to highlight some aspects of the study of Buddhism and its philosophy in Brazil, which have been either neglected or treated in a manner that is incongruous with the proposal upon which this philosophy was initially conceived. The motivation here is not to convince or "convert" Brazilian scholars to think in a similar way to the Buddhist scholars, but simply to bring out points that seem to be relevant to foster the debate that has already been established, particularly in the last decade. For this purpose, issues regarding motivation and method in philosophical work, dogmatism, ethics and modes of knowledge transmission will be raised. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ‘Facts remain robust only when … supported by a common culture,’ observes Bruno Latour. Current debates over the veracity of climate change are, in actuality, crises of facts. Questions of facticity have, moreover, precipitated a deeper issue – the prospects of unshared, ‘alternative’ worlds. Climate science believers have one world, climate change deniers another, creating what Latour calls ‘epistemological delirium.’ Following Latour, the paper turns to Pierre Hadot’s description of Stoic physics and understanding of philosophy as spiritual exercise. Finally, (...) taking up both Latour’s claims of ‘alternative worlds’ and Hadot’s notion of spiritual exercise, this paper explores the possibilities of shared practices in light of unshared realities. (shrink)

Of the many interrelated themes in Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, two strike me as having a particular centrality. First, there is the theme of attention to the present instant. Hadot describes this as the ‘key to spiritual exercises’, and he finds the idea encapsulated in a quotation from Goethe's Second Faust: ‘Only the present is our happiness’. The second theme is that of viewing the world from above: ‘philosophy signified the (...) attempt to raise up mankind from individuality and particularity to universality and objectivity’. Insofar as both attention to the present and raising oneself to an objective view imply the mastery of individual anxiety, passion and desire, they belong to a single conception, that conception being one of a ‘return to the self’: Thus, all spiritual exercises are, fundamentally, a return to the self, in which the self is liberated from the state of alienation into which it has been plunged by worries, passions, and desires. The ‘self’ liberated in this way is no longer merely our egoistic, passionate individuality: it is our moral person, open to universality and objectivity, and participating in universal nature or thought. (shrink)

The primary function of the Platonic dialogue is not the communication of philosophical doctrines but the transformation of the reader's character. This article takes up the question of how, or by what means, the Platonic dialogue accomplishes its transformative goal. An answer is developed as follows. First, the style of reading associated with analytical philosophy is not transformative, on account of its hermeneutical attachment and epistemic equality in the relationship between reader and author. Secondly, the style of reading associated with (...) the genre of commentary is transformative because it is governed by a principle of authority. When the commentary model is applied to the Platonic dialogue, it can be seen that the dialogue mimics the function of the authority principle in transforming the reader into a commentator, that is, someone who reads from a position of detachment and accepts responsibility for himself as moral and epistemic agent. (shrink)

Unlike certain commentary traditions of philosophy in which deference to an authoritative author was a central feature, there are within the analytical tradition no recognised authorities to whom the reader is required to defer. This paper takes up the question of whether this anti-authoritarian position in philosophy can be sustained. Three lines of argument are considered. According to the first, there are no credible authorities in philosophy, or, even if there were, these authorities could not be identified by the non-expert (...) reader. According to the second, since no philosopher is infallible, many readers have on many occasions epistemic grounds for non-deference to the author. According to the third, even if some readers have epistemic reason for deference to some authors, an anti-authoritarian stance can be justified in terms of distinctively philosophical values such as conceptual understanding or intellectual autonomy. Although each of these lines of argument contains an element of truth, a sufficient justification for philosophical anti-authoritarianism remains surprisingly elusive. (shrink)

Arthur Danto is one of the best Anglophone philosophers of art of the second half of the 20th century. His unique methodology of indiscernibility and provocative claim about the end of art have bee...

Characterizations of philosophy abound. It is ‘the queen of the sciences’, a grand and sweeping metaphysical endeavour; or, less regally, it is a sort of deep anthropology or ‘descriptive metaphysics’, uncovering the general presuppositions or conceptual schemes that lurk beneath our words and thoughts. A different set of images portray philosophy as a type of therapy, or as a spiritual exercise, a way of life to be followed, or even as a special branch of poetry or politics. Then there is (...) a group of characterizations that include philosophy as linguistic analysis, as phenomenological description, as conceptual geography, or as genealogy in the sense proposed by Nietzsche and later taken up by Foucault. (shrink)

This essay argues for a formative, and not simply abstract, aspect to the philosophy of religion by attending to the practices of writing employed in Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous work Repetition . By locating this text within an ethical tradition that focuses upon the practices that form subjects, rather than simply the formulation of a theory, its seemingly literary performances can be viewed as exercises. In particular, this text deploys and transforms the Stoic practices of self writing, in the form of (...) keeping notebooks and letter writing, so as to cultivate capabilities. This indirect ethical instruction does not, however, lead to the formation of autonomous ethical subjects, but to the cultivation of capabilities that are only possible in the relational space of vulnerability, service and dependence. (shrink)

Smartphone technology is ubiquitous and subject to frequent complaints, both by reformers and the recalcitrant. The ubiquity of smartphone technology has led to many negative consequences, some of which may not be fully addressed by empirically oriented literature. One such consequence is a threat to a certain kind of autonomy. I argue that this threat justifies a form of Cynicism about smartphone technology, styled after ancient Cynicism. Cynicism is importantly different from its colloquialized, contemporary namesake (“cynicism”). While ancient Cynicism shares (...) the theme of opting out, in some sense, with contemporary cynicism, it is not a philosophy of withdrawn futility; in fact, the Cynic emphasis on embodiment may have an import on our lives in a time of smartphone ubiquity. Accordingly, I offer one Cynic value, autarkeia (self-sufficiency), which can be recruited to address the way that smartphone technology threatens our autonomy. (shrink)

Plato’s Socrates is famous for claiming that “I know one thing: That I know nothing”. There is one subject that Socrates repeatedly claims to have expertise in, however: ta erôtika. Socrates also refers to this expertise as his erôtikê technê, which may be translated as “erotic expertise”. In this dissertation, I investigate Socrates’ erotic expertise: what kind of expertise is it, what is it constituted by, where is it put into practice, and how is it practiced? I argue that the (...) purposes this expertise serve are, to a significant extent, educational in nature. After first having clarified the dissertation’s topic and aim, as well as my methodological approach, I present an initial account of erôs and Socrates’ erotic expertise. While discussing what constitutes Socrates’ erotic expertise, I account for two erotic educational methods: midwifery and matchmaking. I further argue that these methods tend to be accompanied by two psychological techniques, namely charming and shaming. I argue that these methods and techniques are systematically applied by Socrates when he puts his erotic expertise into practice. In the dissertation, three dialogues where Socrates practices his erotic expertise are scrutinized: Lysis, Charmides, and Alcibiades I. I focus on Socrates’ encounters with the eponymous youths of the dialogues, and each dialogue is devoted a chapter of its own. I show how these dialogues are erotically charged, and also how Socrates in these dialogues demonstrates his erotic expertise. I argue that Socrates’ expertise on erôs plays an essential role in his attempts to engage the three youths in the processes of self-cultivation, learning, and the very practice of philosophy. In the final chapter of the dissertation I turn to some questions that arise in light of my readings, and summarize the results of my investigation. (shrink)