This article examines individuals’ lay understandings of moral responsibilities between adult kin members. Moral sentiments and practical judgments are important in shaping kinship responsibilities. The article discusses how judgments on requests of support can be reflexive and critical, taking into account many factors, including merit, social proximity, a history of personal encounters, overlapping commitments, and moral identity in the family. In so doing, we argue that moral responsibilities are contextual and relational. We also analyze how class, gender, and capabilities affect (...) how individuals imagine, expect and discuss care responsibilities. We also offer a critique of social capital theory of families, suggesting that their versions of morality are instrumental, alienated, and restrictive. Although Bourdieu’s concept of habitus overlaps with our proposed moral sentiments approach, the former does not adequately address moral concerns, commitments, and evaluations. The article aims to contribute to a better understanding of everyday morality by drawing upon different literatures in sociology, moral philosophy, postcommunism, and development studies. (shrink)

En este artículo, se muestra la importancia de los relatos en general y los relatos de vida en particular para la construcción del conocimiento moral. Siguiendo algunas de las tesis de Paul Ricoeur, se destaca la relación entre vida y relato y la naturaleza ética de las narraciones, para luego mostrar la relevancia que ellas tienen para la creación, transmisión y conservación del conocimiento moral. Por lo mismo, se afirma la necesidad de ser receptivos frente los relatos del pasado y (...) del presente y dar la oportunidad para que las personas puedan contar sus historias de vida de modo que puedan articular exitosamente sus identidades morales. (shrink)

Most clinicians and mental health practitioners are reluctant to work with people with dangerous and severe personality disorders because they believe there is nothing that mental health services can offer. Dangerous and severe personality disorder also signals a diagnosis which is problematic morally. Moral philosophy has not found an adequate way of dealing with personality disorders. This paper explores the question: What makes a person morally responsible for his actions and what is a legitimate mitigating factor? How do psychiatric nurses (...) working with this client group understand the awful things some clients do? What concepts do they need, if they are to know how to explain and how to react? It is suggested that dangerous and severe personality disorder is best regarded as a moral category, framed in terms of goodness, badness, obligation and other ethical concepts. It seems plausible that in important ways the dangerous and severe personality disordered client does not understand morality or understands it differently. The peculiar position of the dangerous and severe personality disordered individual in our system of moral responsibility stems from his apparent inability to see the importance of the interests of others. It might be more helpful to regard personality disordered clients as we do children: partially but not fully reasonable for their actions. We might regard the dangerous and severe personality disordered client responsible for those actions which he most clearly understands, such as causing others physical pain, but not for those with which he is only superficially engaged, such as causing emotional pain. The paper concludes by suggesting that the dangerous and severe personality disordered individual does not fit easily into any conventional moral category, be it criminal, patient, animal or child, and thus an assessment of his moral accountability must take into consideration his special circumstances. (shrink)

In this essay I begin with Aristotle’s perplexing observation that a tragic drama is a “whole,” one identified by a clear beginning, middle and ending. I pause to wonder how Aristotle imagines such ends, given his contention that a play concludes in such a way that “nothing can follow from it.” On the face of it, it is very difficult to imagine what Aristotle has in mind here. I suggest that one clue may be found in his title, Poetics, with (...) its clear suggestion that a dramatic event is in fact a making, a poiesis. I develop this idea to suggest that the end of a story, any story, tends to be something the reader imposes, often in the interest of generating a specific moral. I then display these readerly dynamics by providing a close reading of the famous story from Genesis, concerning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. I explore a number of different ways in which this story may be thought to “end,” as well as the implications of each such ending. (shrink)

In theories which contribute to the understanding of uncertainty in entrepreneurial action, scholars have traditionally attributed a negative connotation to uncertainty. This paper seeks to posit an understanding of uncertainty derived from Greek and Indian philosophy, where action of the human agent is not deterred by uncertainty, and rather, occurs despite uncertainty. This idea may be beneficial in making future entrepreneurs less apprehensive about uncertainty, by helping them locate the lessons from philosophy. I look at existing ideas that explore uncertainty (...) in entrepreneurial motivation, and present a multidisciplinary approach which sees uncertainty as a force that increases intent of action, rather than deterring it by drawing on the understanding of consequence and action in Aristotelean thought and Hindu philosophy, and extend the concepts of tuche and karma to posit a theoretical position which sees uncertainty as a factor that encourages entrepreneurial action and motivation. The understanding of uncertainty in management literature has been approached primarily from two disciplinary positions - economics and organisational theory. In economics, the classical understanding of uncertainty which commenced with Frank Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), was largely abandoned in later years for a more quantifiable approach of calculating risk. Uncertainty, characteristically nebulous and difficult to grapple with, is unquantifiable. It is defined, in fact, by Knight, as something which cannot be predicted and quantified. Thus, in academics, where almost all disciplines try to make sense of the way the world works, uncertainty has always been a problematic concept. (shrink)

The paper starts with reflections on Plato’s critique of the poets and the preference many express for Aristotle’s view of poetry. The second part of the paper takes a case study of analytic treatments of ancient philosophy, including the ancient philosopher poets, to examine the poetics of analytic philosophy, diagnosing a preference in Analytic philosophy for a clean non-poetic style of presentation, and then develops this in considering how well historians of philosophy in the Analytic tradition can accommodate the contributions (...) of philosophers who wrote in verse. The final part of the paper reviews the current enthusiasm for decoding Empedocles’ vague and poetic descriptions of the cosmic cycle into a precise scientific periodicity on the basis of the recently discovered Byzantine scholia on Aristotle. I argue that this enthusiasm speaks to a desire for definite and clear numerical values in place of poetic motifs of give and take, and that this mathematical and scientific poetic is comparable to the preferred poetic of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Weaving and unweaving the fabric of sacrifice -- A description of Greek sacrificial ritual -- Sacrificing Socrates: the mise-en-scène of the death scene of the Phaedo -- The search for the most fitting cause -- The so-called genuine philosophers and the work of soul -- Athens at twilight.

_Discusses philosophers Mencius and Aristotle as socio-ecological thinkers._ Mencius (385–303/302 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) were contemporaries, but are often understood to represent opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. Mencius is associated with the ecological, emergent, flowing, and connected; Artistotle with the rational, static, abstract, and binary. Douglas Robinson argues that in their conceptions of rhetoric, at least, Mencius and Aristotle are much more similar than different: both are powerfully socio-ecological, espousing and exploring collectivist thinking about the circulation of energy (...) and social value through groups. The agent performing the actions of _pistis_, “persuading-and-being-persuaded,” in Aristotle and _zhi_, “governing-and-being-governed,” in Mencius is, Robinson demonstrates, not so much the rhetor as an individual as it is the whole group. Robinson tracks this collectivistic thinking through a series of comparative considerations using a theory that draws impetus from Arne Naess’s “ecosophical” deep ecology and from work on rhetoric powered by affective ecologies, but with details of the theory drawn equally from Mencius and Aristotle. (shrink)

The gap between economic rationality, as embedded in utility maximization, and ethical rationality, identified with a set of rules that prescribe the right course of action, has been a challenging issue for economists, philosophers, and business ethicists. Despite the difference and the noncompetition between a scientific economic approach of economics and business ethics, and a behavioral and philosophical one, we highlight the importance of the Aristotelian concept of prudence or phronesis applied to business activity. Phronesis allows for a conceptualization of (...) rationality that can be simultaneously applied to economics and ethics. It also allows conceiving the intrinsically ethical nature of economic rationality. This relationship requires an appropriate education and the intervention of the state. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss in some detail my experience teaching women philosophers in the context of a survey course in ancient Greek philosophy at a small liberal arts college. My aim is to share the peculiar difficulties one may encounter when teaching this topic in a lower-level undergraduate course, difficulties stemming from a multiplicity of methodological hurdles that do not arise when teaching women philosophers in other periods, such as the modern era. In the first section, I briefly review (...) some of what we know about ancient Greek women philosophers, which is not only very little but frustratingly uncertain and highly debated. I devote the second section to some of the scholarly debates surrounding these philosophers’ doctrines, the details of their biographies, and their very existence. The third section is about the corresponding pedagogical challenges, and the fourth and final section describes the strategies I implemented to face those challenges. (shrink)

The argument of this paper is that texts in the history of political thought are rather more loquacious on the question of women than has often been supposed. The argument is developed using examples from Plato's Republic, notably the sections on injustice and tyranny. The paper concludes by suggesting the general implications of its approach for the concerns and style of political theory, particularly as to the importance of understanding symbolic and mythic elements in works of political thought.

On the standard view, pessimism is a philosophically intractable topic. Against the standard view, I hold that pessimism is a stance, or compound of attitudes, commitments and intentions. This stance is marked by certain beliefs—first and foremost, that the bad prevails over the good—which are subject to an important qualifying condition: they are always about outcomes and states of affairs in which one is personally invested. This serves to distinguish pessimism from other views with which it is routinely conflated— including (...) skepticism and nihilism—and to allow for the extent to which pessimism necessarily involves more than the intellectual endorsement of a doctrine. (shrink)

In Aristotle's biological treatise, On the Parts of Animals, one finds a rare and unexpected burst of rhetorical eloquence. While justifying the study of “less valued animals,” he erupts into praise for the study of all natural phenomena and condemns the small-mindedness of those who trivialize its worth. Without equal in Aristotle's remaining works for its rhetorical quality, it reveals the otherwise coolheaded researcher as a passionate seeker of truth and an unabashed lover of natural beauty. For Aristotle, rhetoric not (...) only discloses the truth of appearances by refuting counterarguments and defending one's claims within agonistic forums; rhetoric also defends and advances whole fields of study on the promise on wonder. By examining Aristotle's example in practice, this article seeks to elucidate a notion of the rhetoric for inquiry that calls lovers of wisdom to the empirical study of nature. (shrink)

For more than three decades, business ethics has suggested and evaluated strategies for multinationals to address abject deprivations and weak regulatory institutions in developing countries. Critical appraisals, internal and external, have observed these concerns being severely constrained by the overwhelming prioritization of economic values, i.e., economism. Recent contributions to business ethics stress a re-imagination of the field wherein economic goals are downgraded and more attention given to redistribution of wealth and well-being of the weaker individuals and groups. Development ethics, a (...) lesser known field of normative enquiry, already offers nuanced justifications against economism which business ethicists can use in their current attempts to wean the field from old habits. (shrink)

There are roughly two meanings attached to the concept of dignity: humanitas and dignitas. Humanitas refers to ethical and juridical notions of equality, autonomy and freedom. Much less understood is the meaning of dignitas, which this paper develops as peoples’ engagement with aesthetic values and genres, and hence with differences between people. Departing from a critical reading of Georgio Agamben’s notion of ‘bare life’, I will analyze a case where aesthetics are quite literally at stake: women who lost their hair (...) due to cancer treatment. The analysis shows a complicated interplay between varying evaluations of female baldness by the self and others, mediated by (often strongly negative) cultural imaginaries, and aesthetic genres depicting conventional ways of ‘looking good’. The paper concludes by arguing for a reconnection of the two notions of dignity, and for a rehabilitation of aesthetics in daily life and care as fundamental values for organizing our societies. (shrink)

The author sets a goal to show the specificity of the formulation of universal prescriptive judgments about a virtuous act in the framework of Aristotelian ethical doctrine. To achieve this goal, Aristotle’s philosophy concept of practical wisdom is analyzed. It shows a necessity to distinguish the use of practical wisdom in a personal experience of the act and for forming the inter-subjective practical knowledge about making of a virtuous act. The specificity of ethics as practical knowledge and its difference from (...) individual moral experience are defined by means of the distinction of the use of practical wisdom. It also shows the limitations of practical syllogism as the main rational mechanism for the formation of inter-subjective practical knowledge. Additionally, the universal prescriptive judgments are divided into informative and functional: the former reveals the content of the action, the latter – its structure, that is, the former defines what a person must do, the latter defines what an action should be to comply with the right purpose, consequently, the right content. At the same time, the right content is recognized only in individual experience and can not be expressed universally, without losing its practical value. The author concludes that the formulation of informative universal prescriptive judgments is impossible within the framework of Aristotelian ethical doctrine. It is impeded by the unsolvable problem of the correlation between the general and the particular, the transition from descriptive judgments to prescriptive judgments. However, it is possible to formulate functional universal prescriptive judgments. They also constitute the methodological basis for criticism of the accepted in society moral norms, which are based on the past positive experience of actions. (shrink)

Wandering Beyond Tragedy Content Type Journal Article Pages - Authors Franklin Thomas Perkins, Department of Philosophy, DePaul University Journal Comparative and Continental Philosophy Online ISSN 1757-0646 Print ISSN 1757-0638 Journal Volume Volume 3 Journal Issue Volume 3, Number 1 / 2011.

One could define a “tragic” viewpoint in many ways, but its core is the claim that things in this world do not always work out for the best. Probably the greatest tragic figure in the Zhuangzi is the defiant praying mantis, who waves her arms to fend off the oncoming chariot. This praying mantis is surely a symbol of Confucius, who was said in the Lun Yu to know that what he does is impossible but to do it anyway. In (...) the Zhuangzi, such characters are fools, not heroes. While the view of life in the Zhuangzi is certainly not an optimistic trust that virtue is rewarded, it is just as surely not a tragic text. It tends rather toward comedy or play. This paper will examine the Zhuangzi in relationship to the tragic. The underlying claim is that the Zhuangzi’s rejection of the optimism of an anthropocentric universe is more radical than tragedy and helps reveal how a tragic viewpoint remains under the sway of an anthropocentric European tradition. Ultimately, pessimism and optimism both assume the validity of human categories, but this is precisely what is attacked in the Zhuangzi. Ironically, it is precisely the unique flexibility of human beings that allows us not just to recognize the insignificance of our goals and values in the world (seeing our situation as tragic) but to accept and take up that insignificance (seeing it rather as comic). The paper concludes with some reflections on why Zhuangzi’s position is both attractive and disturbing. (shrink)

What have modern Buddhist ethicists to say about abortion and is there anything to be learned from it? A number of writers have suggested that Buddhism (particularly Japanese Buddhism) does indeed have something important to offer here: a response to the dilemma of abortion that is a 'middle way' between the pro-choice and pro-life extremes that have polarised the western debate. I discuss what this suggestion might amount to and present a defence of its plausibility.

This paper examines the relative strengths of two conceptions of teaching. The thinner conception, which underpins a report of the Ministerial Committee on Teacher Education in South Africa, takes the definitive purpose of teaching as the organization of systematic learning. The thicker conception draws on work by Martha Nussbaum and Bernard Williams and comes from my ongoing thinking about the conditions for trustworthy practice. I propose that educative teaching is a practice whose definitive purpose is to enable people’s flourishing by (...) developing their capabilities as these are connected to what Williams calls ‘the virtues of truth’—‘Accuracy’ and ‘Sincerity’. I consider the case for claiming that the purpose of educative teaching is to enable learners to develop the virtues of truth and that trustworthy practice depends on teachers having these virtues themselves. En route I challenge MacIntyre’s grounds for refusing to admit teaching as a practice. (shrink)

In her paper Pity and Mercy: Nietzsche’s Stoicism, Martha Nussbaum argues that Nietzsche’s philosophical project can be seen in part as an attempt to ‘bring about a revival of Stoic values of self-command and self-transformation’. She argues that, to his detriment, Nietzsche’s ‘Sovereign Individual’ epitomises a kind of stoic ideal of inner strength and self-sufficiency that ‘goes beyond Stoicism’ in its valorisation of radical self emancipation from the contingencies of life and from our own human vulnerability. Nussbaum thus urges us (...) to question whether the picture of strength in Nietzsche’s Sovereign Individual is really a picture of human strength at which we would be willing to, or at which we ought to, aim. In this paper I take up Nussbaum’s challenge, arguing that Nietzsche’s Sovereign Individual is both less stoical and provides us with a far more attractive picture of personhood than Nussbaum suggests. (shrink)

Focusing on the concept of “the moral self” this essay explores relationships between Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and John Dewey’s moral pragmatism and tries to evaluate the extent to which in his work on ethics Aristotle may be considered a pragmatist. Aristotle foreshadows pragmatism, for example, in preferring virtue-based to rule-based ethics, in contending that the moral status of a person’s actions and the nature of the person’s selfhood are interdependent, and in stressing the key role of habits in character formation. (...) Aristotle, however, may seem far from the status of pragmatist when he privileges the life of contemplation and posits a moral self that is more static than the one proposed by Dewey. This essay contends that if more attention is paid to Aristotle’s treatment of friendship and to his highlighting of the need for reciprocity then the moral self that emerges from Nicomachean Ethics becomes more dialectical and more at one with that proposed by the American pragmatist. Aristotle, then, may be regarded as setting Dewey on the path towards a model of moral self that is not only deeply concerned about the lives of others but that is also dependent on others for its own existence. (shrink)

Some theorists have argued recently that Berlinian value pluralism points not to liberalism, as Berlin supposed, but, in effect, to some form of communitarianism. To what extent is this true, and, to the extent that it is true, what kind of communitarianism fits best with the pluralist outlook? I argue that pluralists should acknowledge community as an important source of value and as a substantial value in itself, but they should also be prepared to question traditions and to respect values (...) other than community. In particular, pluralism points to personal autonomy as playing a special role when we must choose among incommensurable goods in conflict. Consequently, the pluralist outlook is at odds with conservative communitarianisms that tend to place existing traditions beyond question, and with radical variants of communitarianism, such as Marxism and classical anarchism, which look forward to future communities in which the need to cope with hard public choices has largely been eliminated. Rather, Berlinian pluralism fits best with a liberal or moderate kind of communitarianism that balances community with other goods, especially personal autonomy. (shrink)

Artikkelen ønsker å gi et konstruktivt bidrag til forståelsen og anvendelsen av fair play i en kroppsøvingsfaglig kontekst. Dette er et tema som er blitt aktualisert i og med at fair play er kommet inn som et sentralt element i kroppsøvingsfagets nye reviderte læreplan. Fair play omhandler regler, normer og verdier som skal gjelde ved idrettsutøvelse, og det er et etablert verdikonsept innenfor organisert idrettsliv og idrettsetisk forskning. I skolen, derimot, er fair play mindre kjent. Kroppsøvingsplanen hevder fair play omfatter (...) aspekter ved idrettsspillet som å overholde regler, vise hverandre respekt og gjøre hverandre gode. Hva betyr så dette? Hva vil det si å gjøre hverandre gode? Rommer det bare en teknisk eller også en sosialetisk kvalitet? Dersom det siste er tilfelle, bør det diskuteres hvilke danningskvaliteter det så ligger i det å gjøre hverandre gode i faget, og om disse har noen tilknytningspunkt til Aristoteles' klassiske dyder om rettferdighet, måtehold, mot og klokskap. Dette er de sentrale spørsmålene artikkelen reiser og prøver å gi noen svar på. Artikkelen ser først på fair play i kroppsøvingsfagets planer, for deretter å gi begrepet en nærmere etymologisk og ideologisk-historisk avklaring, med utgangspunkt i begrepene «fair» og «play». Videre drøftes fair play i lys av de aristoteliske dydene, relatert til kroppsøvingsfaglig kontekst og diskurs.Nøkkelord: kroppsøving, fair play, idrett, lek og danningEnglish summary: Fair play in Physical Education in the light of Aristotelian virtue ethicsThe aim of this article is to give a constructive contribution to the understanding and the application of the concept of fair play in the Physical Education context. This is a topic that has come into focus since fair play has been introduced as a central element in the newest revision of the subject curriculum. Fair play concerns the rules, norms, and values that apply to sports activities, and constitutes an established value concept within organized sports and research related to sports ethics. In schools, however, fair play is less known. The Physical Education curriculum states that fair play concerns aspects of sports and games such as adhering to rules, showing each other respect, and helping each other achieve. What, then, does this mean? What does it mean to help each other achieve? Does it entail purely technical, or also socio-ethical qualities? If the latter is the case, a discussion is needed as to what ethical formation qualities are involved in helping each other achieve in the subject and whether these have any connection to Aristotle's classical virtues of justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom. These are the central issues the article raises and attempts to shed some light on. The article takes a closer look at fair play in the curricula of Physical Education, moving on to an etymological and ideological-historical clarification of the concept, taking the concepts of fair and play as starting points. Further, it discusses fair play in the light of Aristotelian virtues, related to a Physical Education context and discourse. (shrink)

Patient ambivalence is a little studied phenomenon. Therefore, the contribution of Moore et al. (2022) about patient ambivalence in medical decision-making is welcome. Also, the idea that ambivalen...

O Banquete de Platão serve-se de recursos dramáticos diversos, tais como a história-moldura, a organização dos discursos e o ensino de Diotima enquanto meios de orientação do leitor pela mensagem filosófica subjacente, a qual inclui um exame do sistema socrático de educação. Os discípulos de Sócrates demonstram notável entusiasmo pela filosofia, mas parecem incapazes de distinguir o amor por Sócrates do amor pela sabedoria. Agatão ocupa posição de destaque: devido a um trocadilho com o seu nome, a jornada do jantar (...) em sua casa se tornará na ascensão em direção ao Bem. Além disso, ele representa a educação sofística e poética, assim como cada um dos oradores representa algum tipo particular de conhecimento, o que implica que não se deveria simplesmente impingir pedantismo a Eurixímaco, ou tomar o discurso de Aristófanes enquanto um interlúdio cômico. Eles formam, antes, uma complexa rede intertextual. Alcibíades exibe as fraquezas de um homem inábil ou relutante em seguir a totalidade do ensino socrático. Sua solicitação de ser conduzido por Agatão simboliza a incapacidade de encontrar o próprio caminho do Bem, ao passo que a interrupção da ordem bem organizada do banquete pelos boêmios lembra a atitude dos tiranos e de outros homens hostis à filosofia. Apesar dessa crítica aos estudantes de Sócrates, o Banquete finaliza com uma nota positiva. As ações finais de Sócrates ocupam-se das outras pessoas – uma crítica implícita a quem sustenta que a filosofia subverte os laços sociais. (shrink)

Irigaray's reading of Plato's Symposium in Ethique de la difference sexuelle illustrates both the advantages and the limits of her textual practise. Irigaray's attentive listening to the text allows Diotima's voice to emerge from an overlay of Platonic scholarship. But both the ahistorical nature of that listening and Irigaray's assumption of feminine marginality also make her a party to Plato's sabotage of Diotima's philosophy. Understood in historical context, Diotima is not an anomaly in Platonic discourse, but the hidden host of (...) Plato's banquet, speaking for a pre-Socratic world view against which classical Greek thought is asserted. Understood in historical context, Plato is not the authoritative founder of Western thought against whom only marginal skirmishes can be mounted, but a rebellious student who manages to transform Diotima's complex teaching on personal identity, immortality, and love into the sterile simplicities of logical form. (shrink)

Irigaray's reading of Plato's Symposium in Ethique de la difference sexuelle illustrates both the advantages and the limits of her textual practise. Irigaray's attentive listening to the text allows Diotima's voice to emerge from an overlay of Platonic scholarship. But both the ahistorical nature of that listening and Irigaray's assumption of feminine marginality also make her a party to Plato's sabotage of Diotima's philosophy. Understood in historical context, Diotima is not an anomaly in Platonic discourse, but the hidden host of (...) Plato's banquet, speaking for a pre-Socratic world view against which classical Greek thought is asserted. Understood in historical context, Plato is not the authoritative founder of Western thought against whom only marginal skirmishes can be mounted, but a rebellious student who manages to transform Diotima's complex teaching on personal identity, immortality, and love into the sterile simplicities of logical form. (shrink)

The Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (ABC)-analysis is a tool for analyzing behavior and stems from the field of psychology where it is used as a tool for the understanding of behavior in general and organizational behavior in particular. In this paper the ABC-analysis is implemented as a tool to understand why people behave ethically in organizations, through the identification of key environmental factors that cause such behavior. This analysis can be the first step to recognizing the complexity of circumstances determining ethical behavior, as (...) well as trigger for changing that behavior. This will be elaborated in the implementation process of an ethical code. The working of the ABC-analysis will be illustrated with an example derived from field research concerning the reorganization of a department of a chemical company. (shrink)

Plato targets the encomiastic genre in three separate dialogues: the Lysis, the Menexenus and the Symposium. Many studies have been devoted to Plato's handling of the funeral oration in the Menexenus. Plato's critique of the encomium in the Lysis and Symposium, however, has not been accorded the same kind of treatment. Yet both of these dialogues go beyond the Menexenus in exploring the opposition between encomiastic and philosophic discourse. In the Lysis, I will argue, Plato sets up encomiastic rhetoric as (...) a foil for Socrates' dialectical method; philosophic discourse is both defined and legitimated by way of its opposition to eulogy. In the Symposium, Plato offers a much more complex critique. First, he illustrates and comments on the vices that inhere in the encomiastic genre. Second, he juxtaposes Socrates' ironic ‘praises’ of his interlocutors with traditional encomiastic discourse, thus inviting the reader to explore the relation between Socratic irony and the rhetoric of eulogy . And, third, the Symposium exhibits two untraditional ‘encomia’ – Socrates' eulogy for Eros and Alcibiades' for Socrates – that illustrate and interrogate the false ontology underlying the rhetoric of praise. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the Special Issue and offers an overview of the corpus of work on the topic since the publication of Michael Walzer’s seminal article, ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’.

The problem of dirty hands is, roughly speaking, concerned with situations in which an agent is faced with a choice between two evils so that, no matter what they do, they will have to violate something of important moral value. Theorists have been primarily concerned with dirty hands choices arising in politics because they are thought to be particularly frequent and pressing in this sphere. Much of the subsequent discussion in the literature has focused on the impact that such choices (...) have on a well-functioning democracy and how, if at all, we can ensure that a politician dirtying their hands does not undermine core democratic values and processes. A particular concern has been whether dirty-handed politicians ought to publicly reveal their actions after the fact and whether they should be held accountable through some form of punishment. The first aim of this paper is to point out that the focus on what is required in the wake of a dirty-handed decision, based on the need to protect the democratic system ought to be balanced with a genuine concern for reparative justice and what is owed to the victims of dirty hands. In the second part of this paper, I then examine the suitability of one common way in which perpetrators partly repair the damage they have done to victims, namely apologizing, in the dirty hands context. (shrink)

Wisdom is almost always associated with doing the right thing in the right way under right circumstances in order to achieve the common good. In this paper, however, we propose that wisdom is more associated with deciding between better and worse wrongs; a winless situation we define as tragic. We suggest that addressing the tragic question is something that leaders and managers generally avoid when focusing on business decisions and choices. Yet, raising and confronting the tragic question is important for (...) three main reasons. Firstly, it emphasises that wisdom is about recognising that doing the ethically responsible thing can sometimes lead to acting in ways that violate different ethical norms and values. Secondly, it foregrounds the issue of emotional perception in ethical decision-making. We argue that emotions are salient in directing attention to the tragic question and recognising morally ambiguous situations. Thirdly, the tragic question has important consequences for moral learning, accepting moral culpability for wrongdoing and organisational commitment to righting the wrong. We illustrate our arguments by drawing on three mini-cases: Arjuna’s dilemma in the Mahabharata, Gioia’s deliberations about his role in the Ford Pinto fires and the production of the abortion pill by French company Roussel-Uclaf. (shrink)

Diotima’s speech claims that philosophy ranks among the erōtica. The standard reading of this holds that erōs manifests in philosophical activity. This is puzzling. Eros has a reputation for overpowering the psyche, making reasoning impossible. The major interpretive discussion of this puzzle suggests that Diotima must therefore accept either non-rationalist philosophizing or rationalist erōs. This paper argues for an alternative. The “ancillary activities view” posits that the erōtica do not manifest erōs but are activities undertaken to achieve its telos. On (...) this view, love’s relationship to philosophy is as un-mysterious as wanting something and doing what it takes to get it. (shrink)

The literary stock of Achilles Tatius has been increasing steadily in value since 1964, when an article about his romanceLeucippe and Cleitophonin an encyclopedia of world literature began, ‘Das Werk weist alle Mängel seines Genres samt einigen zusätzlichen eigenen auf.’ To be sure,Leucippe and Cleitophonremains among the last and probably least read of the Greek romances; yet in the last decades critics have begun to draw attention to original and effective aspects of its composition. As is usually the case, this (...) revaluation has been accompanied not so much by the discovery of new virtues which had previously been neglected, but rather by the redescription as virtues of what had always counted as vices. Thus Cleitophon's lack of heroism can now be welcomed as comic realism, the implausibly melodramatic twists of the plot praised as selfconsciously theatrical ironies, and the baroque frigidity of the style counted as loony metaphysical wit or as BrechtianEntfremdung seffekt. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of the conflict of constitutional rights with regard to basic rights. Two extreme accounts are outlined: the subsumptive approach and the particularistic approach, that embody two main conceptions of practical rationality. Between the two approaches there is room for a range of options, two of which are examined: the proportionalist approach, which conserves the scope of rights restricting their stringency, and the specificationist approach, which preserves the stringency of rights restricting their scope. I will (...) present arguments in defence of the latter. (shrink)

Platon n’est pas sérieux lorsqu’il conduit Socrate à déduire que la poésie doit être essentiellement narrative avec juste un peu de dialogue. Non seulement cette argumentation est-elle intentionnellement fautive, mais Platon crée aussi un Socrate qui obscurcit à dessein une distinction fondamentale. Le Socrate de Platon fait ensuite semblant d’être confus par son propre obscurcissement. En nous obligeant à nous frayer un passage à travers les broussailles de son argumentation erronée, Platon nous donne l’occasion d’avoir une participation plus profonde aux (...) véritables problèmes sous-jacents et de découvrir son thème : une bonne personne est stoïquement indifférente à la fois au malheur et au bonheur. (shrink)

The paper addresses the following question: why do human beings, on Aristotle’s view, have an innate tendency to badness, that is, to developing desires that go beyond, and often against, their natural needs? Given Aristotle’s teleological assumptions (including the thesis that nature does nothing in vain), such tendency should not be present. I argue that the culprit is to be found in the workings of rationality. In particular, it is the presence of theoretical reason that necessitates the limitless nature of (...) human non-rational desires. (shrink)

Rawls scholarship has not paid much attention to Rawls's early methodological writings so far, pretty much focusing on thereflective equilibrium(RE) which he is understood to have adopted inA Theory of Justice. Nelson Goodman's coherence-theoretical formulations concerning the justification of inductive logic inFact, Fiction and Forecasthave been suggested as the source of the RE. Following Rawls's methodological development in his early works, we shall challenge both these views. Our analysis reveals that the basic elements of RE can be located in his (...) ‘Two Concepts of Rules’ essay. We shall further show that the origins of RE go all the way back to Aristotle's methods of ethics, as RE accords with the methodology entitledsaving the appearances(SA) in recent Aristotle scholarship. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that although the Aristotelian ideal of leading a virtuous life for its own sake is admirable, conventional Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian accounts of how it might be realised are empirically inadequate: Habituation is unlikely to produce ‘a love of virtue’, practical experience cannot then produce practical judgement or phronesis, and Aristotle's conception of a virtuous life excludes all but an idealised elite. Instead, I argue that two conceptually distinct aspects of moral development can be identified: the (...) ‘Aristotelian’ and the ‘Humean’. In the former, the desire to lead a virtuous life for its own sake is produced through certain forms of challenging experience which, by disturbing and decentring the egoistic self, evoke a personal moral transformation. In the latter, the capacity to act well in specific social situations is the outcome of a process of socialisation, first in upbringing and later through initiation into the practices of adult life. Both aspects should be promoted in moral education for together they produce something akin to full virtue in the Aristotelian sense: Practical wisdom and practical judgement—or phronesis. Moreover, ‘the good life’ is best conceived as encompassing a variety of transcendent goods. To live a virtuous life for its own sake constitutes one good or form of human flourishing; but it is not the only one. (shrink)

With the systematic aim of clarifying the phenomenon sometimes described as “the intellectual apprehension of first principles,” Descartes’ first principle par excellence is interpreted before the historical backcloth of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. To begin with, three “faces” of the cogito are distinguished: (1) the proto-cogito (“I think”), (2) the cogito proper (“I think, therefore I am”), and (3) the cogito principle (“Whatever thinks, is”). There follows a detailed (though inevitably somewhat conjectural) reconstruction of the transition of the mind from (1) (...) via (3) to (2) and back again to (3). What emerges is, surprisingly, a non-circular, non-logical, and ultimately non-mysterious process by which first principles implicitly contained in a complex intuition are gradually rendered explicit (and, if abstract, grasped in their abstract universality). This process bears a striking family resemblance to that intuitive induction (“grasping the universal in the particular”) which Aristotle scholars have distinguished from empirical forms of induction. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn traditional Maori discourse, the division between metaphysical concepts and everyday life was non-existent. Because of that lack of delineation, the perception of objects was governed by certain beginning assumptions. Due to colonization, however, entities—and the conception of them—threaten to become unmoored from their primordiality. One example of this tendency lies in the current and common translation of the Maori term IRA as “gene.” This static casting of the erstwhile fluid nature of the phenomenon that IRA indicated has consequences not (...) only for how one perceives the world but, additionally, for both the self and the thing itself. In this article I propose a phenomenological approach to the term IRA, another definition for which is the interjectory “look!” I argue for an interpretation of IRA in light of a Maori metaphysics—one that governs the inherent fluidity of things and the concomitant tentative representation of those things. (shrink)

The ethical tension over whether countries have differentiated responsibilities for climate change mitigation evokes the tale of a master and a man. The one who thinks she is the master is analogous to the wealthier, industrialized nations and their market actors, and the human is the rest of humanity, particularly those citizens of less developed countries. Since 1992, there has been formal, stated agreement that there should be differentiated responsibilities for climate change mitigation between developed and developing nations, but differentiation (...) remained a sticking point in negotiations over implementation at Copenhagen in 2009. Putting the parties in the climate change differentiation debate in analogy with the characters of Tolstoy’s story, “Master and Man,” this paper seeks to advance the common appreciation for the moral foundations of differentiation. (shrink)

The article investigates the relevance of the concepts of truth and truthfulness in culturalistic, psychoanalytical and neuro-biological theories of trauma from a philosophical point of view. The background for this is the recent claim of some brain scientists to produce an overall view of the human situation. This claim is shown to be false. The article comes to the conclusion that the subjective perception of a traumatic event is indispensable in order to understand the phenomena of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). (...) History and other moral sciences are always concerned with the reconstruction of past internal perspectives. The example of trauma shows that this work is indispensable wherever brain research might lead us to. (shrink)