En este trabajo se analiza el intento de Hume de compatibilizar el reconocimiento de la diversidad en los juicios estéticos con la existencia de principios del gusto universales. La exégesis de su propuesta de una norma del gusto se desarrollará analizando su relación con las aportaciones anteriores de Locke, Shaftesbury, Addison y Hutcheson, fundamentalmente. Asimismo, se valorará su impacto en la estética posterior, sobre todo en la Crítica del juicio de Kant.

Severity of Test (SoT) is an alternative to Popper's logical falsification that solves a number of problems of the logical view. It was presented by Popper himself in 1963. SoT is a less sophisticated probabilistic model of hypothesis testing than Oaksford & Chater's (O&C's) information gain model, but it has a number of striking similarities. Moreover, it captures the intuition of everyday hypothesis testing.

ExcerptIn her superb book Looking Away, Rei Terada offers a sophisticated and highly complex analysis of “phenomenality and dissatisfaction” from Kant to Adorno, persuasively drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literary theory. Taking her cue from Nietzsche's suspiciously overstated rejection of metaphysics in favor of an affirmation of the world as appearance, the premise of Terada's book is that artists and thinkers have always had difficulties dealing with “the given.” Is the phenomenal world the only world? If so, does one have (...) a right not to be satisfied with it? Is there not an objective obligation to acknowledge that facts have…. (shrink)

O objetivo desse artigo é fazer uma discussão acerca da concepção de verdade presente no método A Razão dos Efeitos do filósofo francês Blaise Pascal. No opúsculo Do Espírito Geométrico, Pascal constata a presença de limites no âmbito da racionalidade que impedem a apreensão dos princípios da geometria de modo absoluto. Segundo pensamos, o método A Razão dos Efeitos, utilizado na obra Pensamentos, também estaria estruturado a partir desse pressuposto. Nos Pensamentos Pascal, na medida em que se depara com a (...) impossibilidade de apreender o homem de modo absoluto, é levado a assumir uma concepção bipolar de verdade no âmbito do método A Razão dos Efeitos, na qual os dois pólos que constituem a natureza humana, a miséria e a grandeza, são valorizados dentro da óptica do pecado original. Desse modo, tanto no Opúsculo, quanto nos Pensamentos, constatamos a presença de limites, os quais impedem que possamos obter uma concepção absoluta de verdade, seja em sentido teórico ou prático. (shrink)

Por que a experiência visionária perturba a filosofia (crítica)? Experimentando uma anarqueologia como procedimento de leitura, argumento que a relação entre filosofia e magia no curso da história ocidental pode ser encenada como uma peça paradoxal. Da mesma maneira que a filosofia racionalista conjura a magia, simultaneamente, tais saberes estiveram presentes de modo polifônico nos bastidores da encenação ilustrada. Para conjurar o demônio é necessário antes evocá-lo. Evoco, assim, o itinerário das viagens aos infernos ao qual certa visão xamanística de (...) alma grega fecunda possibilidades para ensaiarmos um tipo de filosofia pré e pós crítica, onde a experiência visionária aparece posteriormente como pedra no sapato ao pensamento ilustrado, científico e humano. Exemplifico tal questão recorrendo à visão paradoxal de Immanuel Kant quando analisa as experiências visionárias de Emmanuel Swedenborg. Ao reconhecer contemporaneamente a nossa herança legítima como filhos da razão, será preciso reencarnar o lugar bastardo dos sonhos e da mediunidade exorcizada. (shrink)

O objetivo fundamental desse artigo consiste em demostrar que a ética de Kant contém elementos teóricos essenciais que possibilitam uma discussão sobre a dignidade da pessoa humana. O referencial teórico norteador da nossa abordagem será a Fundamentação da metafísica dos costumes. Um aspecto relevante dessa reflexão encontra-se relacionado à segunda formulação do imperativo categórico da qual é possível extrair implicações éticas fundamentais para uma reflexão sobre o ser humano e sua dignidade. O artigo encontra-se estruturado em torno de dois momentos. (...) Em primeiro lugar, uma abordagem sobre as faculdades que estruturam a concepção de subjetividade em Kant. Em seguida, uma exposição sobre os aspectos mais relevantes da ética kantiana. Será nesse momento que a segunda fórmula do dever e a noção de reino dos fins se constituirão numa interessante chave de leitura para uma reflexão sobre a dignidade da pessoa humana. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como tema o problema filosófico da fundamentação da moral com o objetivo de apresentar o sentido e a validade de uma ética feminista. Parte-se da hipótese de que uma ética feminista se distinguiria das éticas antigas e apresentaria uma alternativa adequada ao problema da fundamentação da moral, bem como dos conflitos morais atuais, em especial, pelo tipo de solução que propõe, a qual segue uma lógica construída mediante uma práxis humana determinada. Em outros termos, o objetivo deste (...) artigo é ajudar a compreender como um conteúdo da moralidade surgido de elementos históricos, temporais, culturais pode ser construído; nesse caso, ligado às condições das mulheres surgidas no meio social. Para tanto, será apresentada uma nova concepção de ética e o exemplo de uma ética capaz de orientar uma solução para conflitos morais atuais, a ética feminista do cuidado de Carol Gilligan. (shrink)

With the consideration of some issues in contemporary philosophy, this thesis attempts to analyze being, thinking and language as philosophical subjects, and clear up the multiple meanings for each of them. It will also inquire the traditional methods in both Chinese and Western philosophy, and those in contemporary thinking. Finally, it puts forward a theory of "the critique without principles". The thesis aims to explore a new way to solve the problems of contemporary philosophy by changing its subjects and methods.

Could an ethical theory ever play a substantial evidential role in a scientific argument for an empirical hypothesis? InThe Descent of Man, Darwin includes an extended discussion of the nature of human morality, and the ethical theory which he sketches is not simply developed as an interesting ramification of his theory of evolution, but is used as a key part of his evidence for human descent from animal ancestors. Darwin must rebut the argument that, because of our moral nature, humans (...) are essentially different in kind from other animals and so had to have had a different origin. I trace his causal story of how the moral sense could develop out of social instincts by evolutionary mechanisms of group selection, and show that the form of Utilitarianism he proposes involves a radical reduction of the standard of value to the concept of biological fitness. I argue that this causal analysis, although a weakness from a normative standpoint, is a strength when judged for its intended purpose as part of an evidential argument to confirm the hypothesis of human descent. (shrink)

"The revolutionary desire to realize the Kingdom of God is the beginning of modern history." "Friedrich Schlegel" "The world has to be purified, recreated." "Anatolij Lunačarskij" "Ubi Lenin, ibi Israel." "Ernst Bloch" "Socialism is the religion that will kill off Christianity." "Antonio Gramsci"I. The Millennial Vision of History The millennialism that penetrated the heart of western civilization was one of the most incisive and enduring results of the spiritual victory of Christianity over the Greco-Roman culture. This is a vision of (...) history, formulated by the prophets of Israel from the eighth century…. (shrink)

This study deals with responsibility as part of innovation. By nature, innovation gives birth to development for the organization and can only be at the core of any strategy within an ever-increasingly global economic context. However it also raises new questions stemming mostly from the impossibility to forecast the success of the innovations. More precisely, the questions raised by innovation also concern its consequences on society as a whole. Today, the innovator should understand his responsibility, the consequence of each innovation. (...) Moreover, common acceptance of the word ‘responsibility’ raises some questions about its use and how it should be understood. What does ‘responsibility’ mean? Who is responsible and for what? Through the notion of ‘care’, we aim at providing an evolution of responsible-innovation. The concept of ‘innovation-care’ is centered on people and more precisely focuses on taking care of them. The purpose of innovation-care is indeed to innovate and keep up with the level of productivity necessary to any organization while taking into account the essential interdependence between the status of the innovator and that of the citizen. (shrink)

À primeira vista, o que parece razoavelmente defensável na posição kantiana, com base na Fundamentação da Metafísica dos Costumes, é que as ações imorais são insondáveis, mas não o são como as ações morais. Estas são sempre insondáveis, aquelas quando vestem a conformidade ao dever, pois quando são contrárias ao dever são sondáveis. Mas na Crítica da Razão Pura (1980b, p.279, n.; B 579, n.80) Kant afirma que “a moralidade própria das ações (mérito e culpa), mesmo a de nosso próprio (...) comportamento, permanece-nos totalmente oculta”, pois não sabemos o quanto devemos imputar ao efeito puro da liberdade ou à simples natureza. Assim, ao que parece Kant defende duas posições. Uma, apregoando a insondabilidade parcial das ações imorais, outra uma opacidade total da qualidade moral das ações. Julgo, contudo, que, no fundo, Kant pode sustentar, sem cair em contradição, tanto a posição de que (a) as ações contrárias ao dever sinalizam a maldade de uma máxima como a tese de que (b) o mérito ou demérito moral jamais pode ser observado. A primeira alternativa é a que verificamos, por exemplo, na Fundamentação da Metafísica dos Costumes e que também na Religião desempenha um importante papel, uma vez que Kant tem de assumir, de algum modo, a experiência de ações más. Já a segunda tese parece ter um fundo eminentemente especulativo. Ela visa a mostrar a indecidibilidade metafísica acerca da qualidade moral de uma máxima. (shrink)

With this monograph on Kant and the problem of language, Raphaël Ehrsam develops a well-argued reconstruction of the architectonic place of language in Kant’s philosophy. The author terms his argument “genetic thesis”. On Ehrsam’s genetic thesis, in Kant’s philosophy the mastery of linguistic competences is indispensable to the acquisition of a priori theoretical and practical cognitions. The material of the book can be divided into three parts. In the first part (Introduction and Chapter One), Ehrsam frames the subject by outlining (...) his thesis and foregrounding Kant’s notions of acquisition and epigenesis. In the second part (Chapters Two - Five), he then articulates his thesis by reconstructing the functions played by specific linguistic instances in Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy. The third part (Chapter Six) is devoted to sketching Kant’s thoughts on how the human being, both as an individual and a species, acquires linguistic competences. (shrink)

A noção de opinião pública como processo, não pode circunscrever-se unicamente sobre as bases empíricas de uma teoria, deve também enfocar a posição que essa noção ocupa no que tange à interpretação da sociedade. A abordagem de Jürgen Habermas sobre a opinião pública surge a partir de sua obra clássica sobre a Publicidade Burguesa. Como desdobramento das análises acerca da opinião pública, Habermas constrói a Teoria Normativa de Democracia, a qual se baseia nas condições comunicativas em que pode ocorrer uma (...) Formação Discursiva da Opinião e da Vontade de um público formado pelos cidadãos de um Estado. Nessa esteira argumentativa, Habermas retoma o projeto histórico-filosófico da modernidade atribuindo à opinião pública a função de legitimar o domínio político por meio de um processo crítico de comunicação sustentado nos princípios de um consenso racionalmente motivado. O escopo do presente artigo é explicitar os elementos constitutivos das reflexões habermasianas acerca da Formação Racional da Opinião e da Vontade, uma vez que é a partir deste primordial conceito que podemos compreender a legitimação do Estado de direito. Rastrear-se-á o que levou a reflexão habermasiana a buscar as condições de uma autêntica participação dos indivíduos em um espaço público, onde há responsabilidade e solidariedade na execução das soluções dos problemas de uma comunidade, e seu consequente desdobramento que desemboca na teoria do poder político. (shrink)

En el debate científico-ético contemporáneo en torno a la mejora humana biotecnológica, las nociones de identidad y dignidad humanas son utilizadas de forma habitual por parte del sector de pensamiento más conservador, para rechazar la aplicación de las nuevas tecnologías biomédicas sobre el ser humano con el objetivo de llevar a cabo una mejora de carácter no-terapéutico. Sin embargo, ¿sirven éstas como argumento para rechazar una mejora humana de carácter perfeccionador? En este artículo se analizará el significado de ambas nociones (...) en el debate bioético contemporáneo, así como la validez de su uso como argumento para rechazarla. (shrink)

Kant, in various parts of his treatment of causality, refers to determinism or the principle of sufficient reason as an inescapable principle. In fact, in the Second Analogy we find the elements to reconstruct a purely phenomenal determinism as a logical and tautological truth. I endeavour in this article to gather these elements into an organic theory of phenomenal causality and then show, in the third section, with a specific argument which I call the “paradox of phenomenal observation”, that this (...) phenomenal determinism is the only rational approach to causality because any logico-reductivistic approach, such as the Humean one, would destroy the temporal order and so the very possibility to talk of a causal relation. I also believe that, all things said, Kant did not achieve a much greater comprehension of the problem than Hume did, in his theory of causality, for he did not free a phenomenal approach from the impasse of reductivism as his reflections on “simultaneous causation” and “vanishing quantities” indeed show, and this I will argue in Sect. 4 of this article. (shrink)

An orthodox view in marketing ethics is that it is morally impermissible to market goods to specially vulnerable populations in ways that take advantage of their vulnerabilities. In his signature article “Marketing and the Vulnerable,” Brenkert (Bus Ethics Q Ruffin Ser 1:7–20, 1998) provided the first substantive defense of this position, one which has become a well-established view in marketing ethics. In what follows, we throw new light on marketing to the vulnerable by critically evaluating key components of Brenkert’s general (...) arguments. Specifically, we contend that Brenkert has failed to offer us any persuasive reasons to think that it is immoral to market to the vulnerable in ways that take advantage of their vulnerability. Although Brenkert does highlight the fact that the specially vulnerable are at greater risk of being harmed by already immoral marketing practices (e.g., deception, manipulation), he fails to establish that the specially vulnerable are a unique moral category of market clients or that there are special moral standards that apply to them. Moreover, even if Brenkert’s position were theoretically defensible, the practical implications of his position are far less tenable than he suggests. If our criticisms are sound, then Brenkert and others who endorse his position are seriously mistaken regarding how one can permissibly market products to vulnerable populations, and, in addition, they have improperly categorized certain morally permissible marketing practices as being immoral. (shrink)

I begin with a few general suggestions about what it means to be a Christian. I then summarize the new interpretation of Kant as proposing a ‘System of Perspectives,’ which I have set out in greater detail elsewhere. After discussing the important notions of ‘criticism,’ ‘perspective’ and ‘system’ as they operate in Kant’s thought, the bulk of the essay is devoted to an assessment of the theological implications of Kant’s System, I conclude that, contrary to popular opinion, particularly among some (...) Christian theologians, Kant’s intentions were theologically constructive, and moreover, that his System is thoroughly consistent with the Christian perspective. (shrink)

Este trabajo se centra en la relación entre la tolerancia y su subyacente concepción de la subjetividad. Se intentará mostrar cómo cabe hablar de dos concepciones de la tolerancia, “pasiva” y “activa”, derivadas de dos concepciones de la subjetividad en las que el encuentro con el otro se integra de maneras antitéticas. La obra de Lessing servirá para ilustrar una concepción del sujeto y, con éste, de la tolerancia, alternativa a la hegemónica concepción ilustrada de otros autores.

Kantian virtue can be construed as a condition of an agent which secures adherence to the requirements of morality in the face of the ever-present possibility of inner conflict with counter-ethical considerations. This paper claims that this conception of virtue does not fit in well with one essential characteristic of the virtuous agent; that he or she is attentive to the well-being of others. After some preliminary remarks about virtue-related evaluations, the paper criticises the Kantian conception of virtue in the (...) light of certain characteristics of ethical attentiveness. The paper concludes by developing a notion of ethical habituation which includes the training of attention. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, humans are the rational animal. The borderline between rationality and irrationality is fundamental to many aspects of human life including the law, mental health, and language interpretation. But what is it to be rational? One answer, deeply embedded in the Western intellectual tradition since ancient Greece, is that rationality concerns reasoning according to the rules of logic – the formal theory that specifies the inferential connections that hold with certainty between propositions. Piaget viewed logical reasoning as defining (...) the end-point of cognitive development; and contemporary psychology of reasoning has focussed on comparing human reasoning against logical standards. (shrink)

How to uphold a politics of universalism, egalitarianism and abstraction without being tarnished by the accusation of fanaticism? In order to open the space in which the question can be asked, Alberto Toscano’s Fanaticism explores various instantiations of the trope of ‘fanaticism’ and other associated concepts. Challenging the reliance on simplification, decontextualisation and analogical thinking behind uses of those terms, the book shows how fanaticism as Other conversely engenders a mystified idea of the modern West as the negative of the (...) political and theoretical interdictions associated with them. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este artículo trata de la marginación de la mujer de los espacios públicos y políticos en Europa y en el mundo indígena de Ecuador. Esta situación de exclusión y marginación se origina en pensadores como Locke, Rousseau, Kant y Hegel, quienes se encargaron de justificar epistemológicamente la exclusión de la mujer de los asuntos públicos en todos los ámbitos; es decir, redujeron el actuar de la mujer al espacio de lo privado, a lo doméstico, a los asuntos de la (...) familia. Sin embargo, es interesante constatar que algunos filósofos fueron sensibles al tema de lo femenino, es el caso de Condorcet y Stuart Mill, aunque su gran aporte no logró cambiar la mentalidad de la época. ABSTRACT This article deals with the marginalization of women from public and political spaces in Europe and in the indigenous world of Ecuador. This situation of exclusion and marginalization originates in thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, who were responsible for epistemologically justifying the exclusion of women from public affairs in all areas; that is to say, they reduced the act of women to the space of the private, to the domestic, to the affairs of the family. However, it is interesting to note that some philosophers were sensitive to the issue of the feminine, in the case of Condorcet and Stuart Mill, although their great contribution did not change the mentality of the time. (shrink)

This article compares the differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of the “transcendental.” It argues that, for Kant, the term “transcendental” stands for what is otherwise called “metaphysical,” i.e. non-empirical knowledge. As opposed to his predecessors, who had believed that such non-empirical knowledge was possible for meta-physical, i.e. transcendent objects, Kant’s contribution was to show how there can be non-empirical (a priori) knowledge not about transcendent objects, but about the necessary conditions for the experience of natural, non-transcendent objects. Hence the (...) transcendental for Kant ends up connoting a philosophy that claims to show how subjective forms of intuition and thinking have objective validity for all objects as appearances. By contrast, Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy takes a different set of problems for its starting point. His quest is to avoid the uncertainty of empirical knowledge about all kinds of objects that present themselves to us as something other than, something transcendent to, consciousness. Transcendental or reliable knowledge is made possible through the phenomenological reduction that focuses strictly on consciousness as immediately self-given to itself—reflection upon “pure” consciousness. The contents of such consciousness are not the same for everyone and at every time, so they are not necessary and invariant in the way that Kant’s pure forms of subjectivity are. Since Husserl however also claims that the all objects, as intentional objects, are constituted in and for consciousness, an investigation into the structures of pure subjectivity can also be called “transcendental” in a further sense of showing the genesis of our knowledge of objects that are transcendent to consciousness. Moreover, since Husserl’s philosophical interest is precisely upon the structures of that consciousness, he also concentrates on necessary conditions for the constitution of these objects in his philosophical work. Hence, there ends up being a great deal of overlap between his own transcendental project and Kant’s in spite of the differences in what each of them means by the term “transcendental.”. (shrink)

The advent of the intelligent robot has occupied a significant position in society over the past decades and has given rise to new issues in society. As we know, the primary aim of artificial intelligence or robotic research is not only to develop advanced programs to solve our problems but also to reproduce mental qualities in machines. The critical claim of artificial intelligence advocates is that there is no distinction between mind and machines and thus they argue that there are (...) possibilities for machine ethics, just as human ethics. Unlike computer ethics, which has traditionally focused on ethical issues surrounding human use of machines, AI or machine ethics is concerned with the behaviour of machines towards human users and perhaps other machines as well, and the ethicality of these interactions. The ultimate goal of machine ethics, according to the AI scientists, is to create a machine that itself follows an ideal ethical principle or a set of principles; that is to say, it is guided by this principle or these principles in decisions it makes about possible courses of action it could takea. Thus, machine ethics task of ensuring ethical behaviour of an artificial agent. Although, there are many philosophical issues related to artificial intelligence, but our attempt in this paper is to discuss, first, whether ethics is the sort of thing that can be computed. Second, if we are ascribing mind to machines, it gives rise to ethical issues regarding machines. And if we are not drawing the difference between mind and machines, we are not only redefining specifically human mind but also the society as a whole. Having a mind is, among other things, having the capacity to make voluntary decisions and actions. The notion of mind is central to our ethical thinking, and this is because the human mind is self-conscious, and this is a property that machines lack, as yet. (shrink)

As recent social research demonstrates, the life world is increasingly impacted by a corrosion of social bonds and aggressive habits expressed, for instance, in hate speech in the social media. Significantly, such phenomena have not been prevented from evolving within the framework of constitutional liberal states. In search of an appropriate mode of challenging the current social pathologies, we should examine Kant’s claim that, alongside the “juridico-civil (political) state”, an “ethico-civil state”, uniting human beings “under laws of virtue alone”, needs (...) to be established and cultivated. Kant’s claim is discussed in comparison with “postmetaphysical” conceptions of morality, as maintained by Rawls and Habermas. These prove deficient owing to their contract-based approach. Important in the examination of the key idea of the “state of virtue” is Kant’s thesis that such a state “cannot be realized (by human organization) except in the form of a church”. In view of the fact that, today, in many parts of the world significant segments of the population adhere to agnostic or atheistic convictions, the focus is placed on Kant’s specific conception of “church” that is clearly distinct from “historical” creeds and religious practices, and on the way in which he addresses non-believers, since he insists on the intrinsic relation between morality and the “purely moral religion”. Based on these reflections, the relevance of Kant’s argument that it is “a duty of the entire human race” to establish a community in which people mutually support one another in the cultivation of moral sensitivity is scrutinised. (shrink)

Trust relations in the health services have changed from asymmetrical paternalism to symmetrical autonomy-based participation, according to a common account. The promises of personalized medicine emphasizing empowerment of the individual through active participation in managing her health, disease and well-being, is characteristic of symmetrical trust. In the influential Kantian account of autonomy, active participation in management of own health is not only an opportunity, but an obligation. Personalized medicine is made possible by the digitalization of medicine with an ensuing increased (...) tailoring of diagnostics, treatment and prevention to the individual. The ideal is to increase wellness by minimizing the layer of interpretation and translation between relevant health information and the patient or user. Arguably, this opens for a new level of autonomy through increased participation in treatment and prevention, and by that, increased empowerment of the individual. However, the empirical realities reveal a more complicated landscape disturbed by information ‘noise’ and involving a number of complementary areas of expertise and technologies, hiding the source and logic of data interpretation. This has lead to calls for a return to a mild form of paternalism, allowing expertise coaching of patients and even withholding information, with patients escaping responsibility through blind or lazy trust. This is morally unacceptable, according to Kant’s ideal of enlightenment, as we have a duty to take responsibility by trusting others reflexively, even as patients. Realizing the promises of personalized medicine requires a system of institutional controls of information and diagnostics, accessible for non-specialists, supported by medical expertise that can function as the accountable gate-keeper taking moral responsibility required for an active, reflexive trust. (shrink)

I begin by criticizing an elaboration of an argument in this journal due to Hawley , who argued that, where Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles faces counterexamples, invoking relations to save PII fails. I argue that insufficient attention has been paid to a particular distinction. I proceed by demonstrating that in most putative counterexamples to PII , the so-called Discerning Defence trumps the Summing Defence of PII. The general kind of objects that do the discerning in all cases (...) form a category that has received little if any attention in metaphysics. This category of objects lies between indiscernibles and individuals and is called relationals: objects that can be discerned by means of relations only and not by properties. Remarkably, relationals turn out to populate the universe. (shrink)

In adult education there is always a problem of prefabricated and in many respect fixed opinions and views of the world. In this sense, I will argue, that the starting point of radical education should be in the destruction of these walls of belief that people build around themselves in order to feel safe. In this connection I will talk about ‘gentle shattering of identities’ as a problem and a method of radical education. When we as adult educators are trying (...) to gently shatter these solidified identities and pre‐packed ways of being and acting in the world, we are moving in the field of questions that Sigmund Freud tackled with the concepts of ‘de‐personalization’ and ‘de‐realization’. These concepts raise the question about the possibility of at the same time believing that something is and at the same time having a fundamentally sceptical attitude towards this given. In my article I will ask, can we integrate the idea of learning in general with the idea of strangeness to oneself as a legitimate and sensible experiential point of departure for radical learning? (shrink)

Ernst Bloch’s recourse to speculative philosophy has guaranteed him the position of a perpetual outsider in the history of Western Marxism. When Jürgen Habermas described Bloch’s philosophy in 1960 as a ‘speculative materialism’, it was to denounce him for crossing the boundaries of critical thought set down as much by Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as by Marx’s critique of political economy. This article argues that Bloch’s speculative materialism deserves to be re-assessed. Contrary to Habermas’s assertion that speculation is divorced (...) from critique, I argue with Bloch that the speculative hypotheses we unavoidably use to interpret the world around us inform our political beliefs and actions, and to stifle speculative thinking as that creative and inquisitive enterprise which questions and transgresses the given is not only a ‘crime against reason’, as Hilary Putnam once claimed, but also a crime against freedom. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, if transcendental arguments are to proceed from premises that are acceptable to the skeptic, the Transcendental Premise, according to which “X is a metaphysically necessary condition for the possibility of Y,” must be grounded in considerations of conceivability and possibility. More explicitly, the Transcendental Premise is based on what Szabó Gendler and Hawthorne call the “conceivability-possibility move.” This “inconceivability-impossibility” move, however, is a problematic argumentative move when advancing transcendental arguments for the following reasons. First, (...) from “S cannot conceive of P” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is inconceivable. Second, from “P is inconceivable” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is metaphysically impossible. Third, rather than block skeptical doubts, the conceivability-possibility move introduces skeptical doubts. For these reasons, transcendental arguments fail to deliver on their promise to overcome skeptical doubts. (shrink)

This essay roughly sketches two major conceptions of autonomy in contemporary bioethics that promote the resourcification of human body parts: (1) a narrow conception of autonomy as self-determination; and (2) the conception of autonomy as dissociated from human dignity. In this paper I will argue that, on the one hand, these two conceptions are very different from that found in the modern European tradition of philosophical inquiry, because bioethics has concentrated on an external account of patient’s self-determination and on dissociating (...) dignity from internal human nature. However, on the other hand, they are consistent with more recent European philosophy. In this more recent tradition, human dignity has gradually been dissociated from contextual values, and human subjectivity has been dissociated from objectivity and absolutized as never to be objectified. In the concluding part, I will give a speculative sketch in which Kant’s internal inquiry of maxim of ends, causality and end, and dignity as irreplaceability is recombined with bioethics’ externalized one and used to support an extended human resourcification. (shrink)

René Girard speaks of the return of the religious as a “return of the sacred… in the form of violence.” This violence was inherent in the original “sacrificial system,” which deflected communal violence onto the victim. In this article, I argue that there is a double return of the sacred. With the collapse of the original sacrificial system, the sacred first reappears in the legal order. When this loses its binding claim, it reappears in the political order. Here, my claim (...) will be that Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political is not simply structurally similar to Girard’s conception of the sacrificial system. It is actually a manifestation of this. In this political return of the religious, the religious and the political systems are conflated. What prevents us from seeing this is the self-concealment that is essential to the sacrificial act, a self-concealment that also characterizes its twofold return. (shrink)

In his last work, The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty explored the fact that we believe that perception occurs in our heads and, hence, assert that the perceptual world is in us, while also believing that we are in the world we perceive. In this article, I examine how this intertwining of self and world justifies the faith we have in perception. I shall do so by considering a number of examples. In each case, the object in itself will turn (...) out to be neither within us nor outside of us, but rather at the intersection set by the intertwining. I will then turn to what this disclosure of this object reveals about human temporality and, indeed, about human being as a place that permits disclosure. (shrink)

As Merleau-Ponty points out, our sense of time is that of passage. This demands that we think of time both as extended—that is, as including the past and the future—and as now, the latter being conceived as the point of expiration. The difficulty comes when try to think these separately. To consider time as extended is to think of it in terms of space—i.e., in terms of the “parts outside of parts” definitive of space. The simultaneous existence of such parts (...) seems to exclude expiration. When, however, we consider time in terms of expiration, we face the problem of when the now expires. It cannot cease to exist in itself, since then it existed. It also cannot cease in another now, since then it did not exist. Such difficulties indicate that something is missing—something presupposed by both, which would allow us to think of expiration and temporal extension together. In this article, I argue that what is missing is the body. Its self-presence is behind these two aspects of time. (shrink)

This essay traces a Marxist notion of cultural heritage drawing on the work of twentieth-century thinkers Daniel Bensaïd and Ernst Bloch. Both authors, indeed, address the act of inheriting as a way of rethinking Marxism beyond determinist and teleological concepts of history. In particular, Bensaïd’s 1995 Marx for Our Times and a 1972 essay on cultural heritage by Ernst Bloch reimagine the handing-on of cultural inheritance as the political reactivation of untimely and non-synchronous survivals of past social formations. For this (...) reason, the heritage of Marx conveyed by these authors does not result in a nostalgic preservation of the past but in reviving unrealised possibilities of social transformation. In a comparative reading of Bensaïd and Bloch, the act of ‘inheriting Marx’ analysed in this essay hence formulates a de-commodifying conception of cultural heritage set against the violence of capital. (shrink)

Since 2007, five scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program have been killed under mysterious circumstances. This is not the first time that nuclear scientists have come under direct attack. Scientists are legally civilians. Like the rest of us, they are protected by laws prohibiting murder and perfidious killing, and enjoy civilian immunity during wartime. Moreover, powerful moral arguments oppose assassination policies specifically. Nevertheless, contemporary theories of just war allow for the partial extension of combatant status to civilians who are either (...) threatening or responsible for unjust threats. Weapons manufacturers, their factories and employees, are accorded less than absolute protection within just war theory, and even under international law. Dramatic events compel us to think through these issues of political violence in a principled manner, whatever our particular views on the Iranian case may be. The various moral arguments against assassination on the one hand and the complex status of munitions workers on the other suggest that scientists involved in weapons manufacturing may in some cases be morally liable to direct harm, as well as being legally liable to proportionate collateral damage. (shrink)

Neosentimentalist accounts of value need an explanation of which of the sentiments they discuss are pro-attitudes, which attitudes are con-attitudes, and why. I argue that this project has long been neglected in the philosophical literature, even by those who make extensive use of the distinction between pro- and con-attitudes. Using the attitudes of awe and respect as exemplars, I argue that it is not at all clear what if anything makes these attitudes pro-attitudes. I conclude that neither our intuitive sense (...) of the distinction nor the vague accounts of it that exist in the philosophical literature are especially helpful in sorting out the hard cases. What is needed is a more explicit and thorough account of what the valence of our attitudes consists in. (shrink)