The essence of the argument of the beard (so-called by some logic textbooks) is the tactic used by a respondent to reply to a proponent, "The criterion you used to define a key term in your argument is vague, therefore your use of this term in your argument is illegitimate, and your argument is refuted." This familiar kind of argument tactic is similar to the much more famous heap (sorites) argument of Eubulides, closely associated with the slippery slope argument. This (...) article provides a system of classification for sorting out these three arguments, and related types of argument of interest in informal logic. (shrink)

Sherman presents a slightly revised definition of empathy, in which empathy is the cognitive ability to place oneself in the world of another, imagining all of the realities, feelings, and circumstances of that person in the context of their world.

Stephens and Feezell argue, in?The Ideal of the Stoic Sportsman?, that?one need not be a scholar of ancient Greek philosophy to refer to?stoic? conduct or a?stoic? approach to certain matters, because the vocabulary related to this apparently antiquarian view of life has seeped into our common language?. Nonetheless, Stephens and Feezell go on to give a scholarly account of Stoicism as it relates to athletic participation. Their account, in part, takes the form of a distinction between?simple Stoicism? and?sophisticated Stoicism?? the (...) former being a common, contemporary grasp of Stoic moral psychology; the latter being a more sophisticated and historically accurate grasp of Stoic moral psychology. In fleshing out their more sophisticated account, they disclose a paradox. Given the Stoic sufficiency thesis? i.e., that the sole good is virtue? the Stoic sportsman must be indifferent to failure or winning. Yet the Stoic sportsman must be sufficiently attached to the athletic experience to use it as a means of developing virtuous states of character. That they dub the paradox the?paradox of Stoic detachment?.?Curiosity? Paradox? Or psychological incoherence?? they ask. The aim of the present undertaking is a?soft? critique of Stephens and Feezell? soft, because the critique is not so much a critical rejection of the authors' view tout court. Instead, I aim to point out deficiencies with their account and expand on other points not fully elucidated in it. The most salient point I make is that what they deem paradoxical is not really paradoxical, once there is a more thorough account and clearer grasp of Stoic?detachment? (shrink)

Kant's moral theory has received trenchant criticism for its rigorism. Rigorism generally denotes an overemphasis on rules in moral theory, and a consequent neglect of the roles of emotional receptivity and perception in moral judgement. Critics of Kant's ethics have invoked the term rigorism with reference to any one of three overlapping features of Kant's moral theory. Usually rigorism designates the 'rigid and insensitive uniformities of conduct' that result from the mechanical application of rules. Occasionally it refers to the excessively (...) strict moral standard implied by Kant's conception of the good will. But some critics object to rigorism in just the sense in which Kant himself understood and embraced it: as referring to moral theories that admit only two types of moral character, namely good and evil ones. The complaint, which Kant was fully aware of, is that this bipolar view of character is woefully inadequate to our experience of the gradations of virtue and vice. (shrink)

It is well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’sÜbermenschderives from Lucian of Samosata’shyperanthropos. I argue that Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman acquires new resonances by reflecting on the context of that origination from Lucian’sKataplous– literally, “sailing into port” – referring to the soul’s journey (ferried by Charon, guided by Hermes) into the afterlife. TheKataplous he tyrannos, usually translatedDownward Journey or The Tyrant, is a Menippean satire of the “overman” who is imagined to be superior to others of “lesser” station in this-worldly (...) life and the same tyrant after his (comically unwilling) transport into the underworld. As a reflection on the life and the death of Zarathustra, this essay also explores the politics of kingship for Empedocles as reformer in terms of Hölderlin’s Death of Empedocles and Nietzsche’s unpublished drafts on the same topic. InThus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche points to a perspective beyond the here and now, including the “values” of our all-too-worldly and all-too-human concerns, no matter whether in terms of perceived political/economic advantage, or indeed in the pursuit of more trivial satisfactions. (shrink)