To conceptualise moral education as ‘living and learning to bear suffering’ offers a humanistic vision for choices people make in the face of drastic threats to their existence. This essay proposes that bearing and transcending suffering—part of the human narrative—helps human beings to realise their ethical potential. Grounded in Eastern and Western metaphysics and ethics, I assess the human condition brought about by the 2008 earthquake disaster in China—in an attempt to come to terms with fundamental philosophical questions of existence (...) and human values. While raising questions about how human beings are intrinsically interrelated to Nature and the world, this account is linked by a thread of humanism encompassing three important values (caring, responsibility and free spirit). I conclude by suggesting that educating young people for the wisdom of suffering is to cultivate a humanistic morality. Ethical implications for ecology and moral education are considered. (shrink)

This article evaluates the phenomenon of sexual reorientation therapy from the standpoint of Orthodox Christian theology. It is argued that homosexual desire is the product of the fall of mankind and cannot be considered “normal.” At the same time, however, reorientation therapies, whether secular or Christian, are inherently reductionistic and fail to address the underlying spiritual pathologies involved in homosexual desire. The purpose of therapeia in the Orthodox Church is the psycho-somatic transfiguration of the whole person into the image of (...) Christ, not merely the cessation of homosexual activity or the “reidentification” of one’s “lifestyle.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Michael Rescorla has argued that it makes sense to compute directly with numbers, and he faulted Turing for not giving an analysis of number-theoretic computability. However, in line with a later paper of his, it only makes sense to compute directly with syntactic entities, such as strings on a given alphabet. Computing with numbers goes via notation. This raises broader issues involving de re propositional attitudes towards numbers and other non-syntactic abstract entities.

RésuméEn expliquant la relation entre hypothèses et images dans l'analogie de la ligne du livre Vl de laRépubliquede Platon, je m'attarde d'abordsur l'élucidation platonicienne de la nature des mathématiques telle que la conçoit le mathématicien lui-même. Je poursuis avec une critique des interprétations traditionnelles de cette relation, qui partent de l'assomption douteuse que les mathématiques s'occupent des Formes platoniciennes. Pour formuler mon point de vue sur cette relation, j'exploite la notion de «structure». Je montre comment les «hypothèses» comme principes de (...) preuve peuvent déterminer les structures des «images» par lesquelles les structures intelligibles correspondantes des objets mathématiques en viennent à être connues. (shrink)

I argue for a soft compatibilist theory of free will, i.e., such that free will is compatible with both determinism and indeterminism, directly opposite hard incompatibilism, which holds free will incompatible both with determinism and indeterminism. My intuitions in this book are primarily based on an analysis of meditation, but my arguments are highly syncretic, deriving from many fields, including behaviorism, psychology, conditioning and deconditioning theory, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, simulation theory, etc. I offer a causal/functional analysis of (...) meta-mental control, or 'metacausality', cashed out in counterfactual terms, to solve what I call the easy problem of free will. (shrink)

AtRepublic9, 583b1–587a2, Socrates argues that the pleasure of the philosophical life is the truest pleasure. I will call this the ‘true pleasure argument’. The true pleasure argument is divisible into two parts: 583b1–585a7 and 585a8–587a2. Each part contains a sub-argument, which I will call ‘the misperception argument’ and ‘the true filling argument’ respectively. In the misperception argument Socrates argues that it is characteristic of irrational men to misperceive as pleasant what in fact is a condition of neither having pleasure nor (...) being pained. In the true filling argument Socrates argues that in so far as pleasure entails somatic or psychic filling and there are more and less true fillings, there are more and less true pleasures. Philosophical filling is the truest filling and thus the truest pleasure. The misperception argument critically contributes to the true pleasure argument by clarifying what pleasure is not: merely an appearance or merely the absence of pain. The misperception argument thereby clears the ground for the constructive contribution of the true filling argument. (shrink)

Friedrich Schiller, German poet, dramatist, philosopher and publisher, was a prominent contributor to the educational neo‐humanistic concept of Bildung at the threshold to Romanticism. Schiller assigns a pivotal role to the aesthetic education arguing that aesthetic activity reconciles sensuousness and reason and thereby creates the precondition of knowledge and morality. The article examines elitist and sexist traits in Schiller's work and whether they are constitutive to his theory of aesthetics and education. By identifying problems in the philosophical foundations of the (...) concept of Bildung the authors wish to contribute to its ongoing reconstruction in the Nordic Countries. (shrink)

Epicurean contractarianism is an attempt to reconcile individualistic hedonism with a robust account of justice. The pursuit of pleasure and the requirements of justice, however, have seemed to be incompatible to many commentators, both ancient and modern. It is not clear how it is possible to reconcile hedonism with the demands of justice. Furthermore, it is not clear why, even if Epicurean contractarianism is possible, it would be necessary for Epicureans to endorse a social contract. I argue here that Epicurean (...) contractarianism is both possible and necessary once we understand Epicurean practical rationality in a new way. We are left with an appealing version of teleological, individualistic contractarianism that is significantly different from Hobbesian contractarianism. (shrink)

I argue that musical education in Plato’sRepublicis not aimed at developing a moral discriminatory faculty in the spirited part, but rather that its benefits are predominantly intellectual, and become fully apparent only at the philosophical stage of the guardians’ education. In order to prove this point, I discuss the intellectual state which the guardians’ philosophical education is meant to bring about, and then show why it is dependent on the earlier cognitive effects of musical education. Ultimately, I show that musical (...) education allows guardians to provide a unified analysis of both culture and nature. (shrink)

Is there a significant difference between Plato's texts and what is known as 'Platonism', that is, the philosophical tradition that claims Plato as its progenitor? Focusing on the Symposium, an attempt is made here to show that, far from merely fitting neatly into the categories of Platonism—with its neat distinction between the super-sensible and the sensible—Plato's own text is a complex, tension-filled terrain of countervailing forces. In the Symposium this tension obtains between the perceptive insights, on the one hand, into (...) the nature of love and beauty, as well as the bond between them, and the metaphysical leap, on the other hand, from the experiential world to a supposedly accessible, but by definition super-sensible, experience-transcending realm. It is argued that, instead of being content with the philosophical illumination of the ambivalent human condition—something consummately achieved by mytho-poetic and quasi-phenomenohgical means—Plato turns to a putatively attainable, transcendent source of metaphysical reassurance which, moreover, displays all the trappings of an ideological construct. This is demonstrated by mapping Plato's lover's vision of 'absolute beauty' on to what Jacques Lacan has characterized as the unconscious structural quasi-condition of all religious and ideological illusion. (shrink)

Greek literature prior to Plato featured two conceptions of education. Learning takes place when people encounter “teacher-guides”—educators, mentors, and advisors. But education also occurs outside of a pedagogical relationship between learner and teacher-guide: people learn through painful experience. In composing his dramatic dialogues, Plato appropriated these two conceptions of education, refashioning and fusing them to present a new philosophical conception of learning: Plato’s Socrates is a teacher-guide who causes his interlocutors to learn through suffering. Socrates, however, is not presented straightforwardly (...) as a pedagogical success story. Socrates’ failures are, paradoxically, part of what makes him an ideal literary model for a philosophical teacher-guide. Plato requires his readers to question why Socrates’ interlocutors are not converted to philosophers. (shrink)

In a letter written to Gadamer after receiving a copy of Truth and Method, Leo Strauss offered many criticisms with which Gadamer took issue. However, he acknowledged the important hint cited in the title. Perhaps strangely, Gadamer never took up this hint and showed very little interest in comedy throughout his Gesammelte Schriften. In this essay, I show that there are ample resources within Gadamerian hermeneutics to answer Strauss positively, also for a rich philosophy of comedy along Gadamerian lines. Toward (...) that end, I use Gadamer’s Aristotelian view of tragedy as a clue; interpretations of play, excess and delight (Ergötzen) also weave into the analyses. (shrink)

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Many have pointed to Blade Runner's humanization of its 'replicants' as a compelling statement against exploitation and domination. I argue, however, that the film has another kind of agenda: a Rousseauvian concern about the dangers of representation, about confusing the imitation with the real and confusing the consumption of images with political action. Rather than humanizing the other, Blade Runner's central concern is to humanize our own social and political relationships, which are in danger of (...) falling into the same trap Rousseau outlined in his Letter to D'Alembert. To do so, we must learn to appreciate the difference between mutual surveillance and mutual regard. To live freely in any regime, we must understand the dangers of representation, even if, in a large state, we must continue to make use of it. (shrink)

Perhaps there has been no greater opportunity than in this “VOLUME FIFTEEN of our Death And Anti-Death set of anthologies” to write about how might think about life and how to avoid death. There are two reasons to discuss “life”, the first being enhancing our understanding of who we are and why we may be here in the Universe. The second is more practical: how humans meet the physical challenges brought about by the way they have interacted with their environment. (...) Many persons discussing “life” beg the question about what “life” is. Surely, when one discusses how to overcome its opposite, death, they are not referring to another “living” thing such as a plant. There seems to be a commonality, though, and it is this commonality is one needing elaboration. It ostensibly seems to be the boundary condition separating what is completely passive (inert) from what attempts to maintain its integrity, as well as fulfilling other conditions we think “life” has. In our present discussion, there will be a reminder that it by no means has been unequivocally established what life really is by placing quotes around the word, namely, “life”. Consider it a tag representing a bundle of philosophical ideas that will be unpacked in this paper. (shrink)

Stemming from the term aisthesis, Aesthetics is born. As Heidegger notes at the beginning of Being and Time aisthesis, for the pre-Socratic Greeks was related to the process of revealing and concealing. Physical sensory perception was trusted as knowledge. However, the history of Aesthetics has covered over this sense of the term. From Antiquity on, a history of philosophy and Aesthetic Theory alike begin a grand metaphysical project to separate sense perception from reason and logos. This project culminates in the (...) Age of Reason, with the final subordination of all aesthetics to the categories of representation. Post-Kantian philosophy and Aesthetic Theory has attempted to invert this hierarchy, forcing representation into a subset of aesthetics. These efforts take the form of re-partition, re-integration, and re-turn. In this article I will trace these two trajectories and then conclude by arguing that Deleuze’s aesthetic theory ultimately undermines both of these projects, rejecting the “re” as the re- investment in abstract thought. By overturning metaphysical binaries, Deleuze presents us with a practice of art and philosophy that is grounded in radical difference, not the re-production of the same. (shrink)

The paper argues that Plato’s dialogue form creates a Quinean “opaque context” that segregates the assertions by Plato’s characters in the dialogues from both Plato and the real world with the result that the dialogues require a hermeneutical interpretation. Sec. I argues that since the assertions in the dialogues are located inside an opaque context, the forms of life of the characters in the dialogues acquires primary philosophical importance for Plato. The second section argues that the thesis of Sec. I (...) coheres with the claim in Plato’s Seventh Letter that since philosophical truth is incommunicable by means of language it is of primary importance for philosophers to develop proper “schemes of living”. Sec. III argues since the forms of life of the characters portrayed in the dialogues is of primary philosophical importance for Plato, and since hermeneutical methods are required to interpret emerging forms of life, Plato’s dialogues are positively crafted to be read hermeneutically. Sec IV argues that Heidegger, who is famous for seeing Plato’s views as antithetical to his own hermeneutical approach, is mistaken, and that Plato’s real views are, in principle, more akin to Heidegger’s views than he thinks. (shrink)