In this paper, I discuss whether in a society where the use of artificial agents is pervasive, these agents should be recognized as having rights like those we accord to group agents. This kind of recognition I understand to be at once social and legal, and I argue that in order for an artificial agent to be so recognized, it will need to meet the same basic conditions in light of which group agents are granted such recognition. I then explore (...) the implications of granting recognition in this manner. The thesis I will be defending is that artificial agents that do meet the conditions of agency in light of which we ascribe rights to group agents should thereby be recognized as having similar rights. The reason for bringing group agents into the picture is that, like artificial agents, they are not self-evidently agents of the sort to which we would naturally ascribe rights, or at least that is what the historical record suggests if we look, for example, at what it took for corporations to gain legal status in the law as group agents entitled to rights and, consequently, as entities subject to responsibilities. This is an example of agency ascribed to a nonhuman agent, and just as a group agent can be described as nonhuman, so can an artificial agent. Therefore, if these two kinds of nonhuman agents can be shown to be sufficiently similar in relevant ways, the agency ascribed to one can also be ascribed to the other—this despite the fact that neither is human, a major impediment when it comes to recognizing an entity as an agent proper, and hence as a bearer of rights. (shrink)

The Neo-Confucian notion of wan wu yi ti 万物一体 and Stoic oikeiôsis both come up with a motivational basis for the expansion of concern, but one of the toughest problems in them is how to elaborate on selfhood and self–other relation in moral development. This paper takes a comparative view of Hierocles’ fragments and a few other relevant Stoic texts and Wang Yang-ming’s Inquiry on the Great Learning, and argues that doing so helps eliminate some confusions concerning selfhood and self–other (...) relation. My claim is that the concept of the Stoic oikeiôsis and the concept of Wang’s ‘wan wu yi ti’ have different ideas on selfhood and the self–other relation while showing similarities in basing the ideal of self-development on the original unity between self and world. (shrink)

Behalve onze volledige erkenning dat in het Stoïcisme een duidelijke herinnering ligt aan Gods overmachtige openbaring van zijn scheppingsorde, is ook met waardering te melden dat de Stoa een sterk besef heeft gehad van een onder de oppervlakte van het actieve leven gelegen diepere dimensie van de zogenaamde zedelijke deugden. Zelf spreek ik liever van ‘disposities’, de eerste onderlaag in de structuur van de concrete menselijke activiteiten.De genoemde stoïsche gedachte is van belang in het licht van de latere ontwikkelingen van (...) de praxeologie, met name in de zogenaamde goederenethiek, plichtenethiek of verantwoordingsethiek. ‘Gezindheidsethiek’ in diverse wijsgerige stromingen kon daarbij aanknopen. Dit was inderdaad een bij de Stoa positief te waarderen voortzetting van een reeds bestaande Sokratische, Platonische en Aristotelische traditie. Het is een goede weerstand tegenover elke tot de oppervlakte van het handelen beperkte visie, die dit oppervlakte-niveau, deze boven- of buitenkant, abstraheert, verzelfstandigt en overschat. Een denken in deze trant van wetticisme en activisme, van formalisme, legalisme en verjuridisering van de moraal, is met de reformatorische wijsbegeerte te weerstaan vanuit haar analyse van de dieptedimensies in de actstructuur: acten, disposities, ethos en centraal-religieuze worteldimensie in het menselijk hart. (shrink)

This article attempts to provide an overview and discussion of Plutarch’s views in his Moralia about emotions and their relation to moral virtue and reason. By tracking different clusters of imagery – artisanal, zoological and botanic – that Plutarch uses in his essays to articulate the relationship between emotions and reason, it explores three philosophical perspectives on emotions: emotions of a virtuous person are likened to a well-shaped piece of material; to animals that need to be guided or reined in (...) by their master; and to wholesome plants in a garden. Each of these imageries is used to support a different account of moral virtue: virtue as the emotional disposition to feel moderately; virtue as the obedience of emotions to the commands of reason; and virtue as the absence of bad emotions and flourishing of the good ones. This analysis enables us to weigh the influences of major philosophers on Plutarch’s account, and to elucidate his commitment on both metriopatheia and apatheia. (shrink)

This article aims to show that Sophocles anticipates questions about the autonomous subject and “ownership” of the self that are central to contemporary discourse. It suggests that Sophoclean self-killing, often considered quintessentially individualistic, in fact reflects a preoccupation with the autocheir, a less definite figure than our “suicide,” since s/he may also be a kin-killer. Also, that where Sophocles attempts to distinguish self-killing from kin-killing, it is to isolate and explore the nature and implications of autocheiria. Close readings of scenes (...) from Antigone, Ajax, and Trachiniae demonstrate that this is achieved through the elision or obscuring of the moment of self-destruction, and the posthumous analysis of self-killing in the “verbal post-mortem.” A strand of metacriticism suggests that editors committed to a model of suicide as unequivocal act intentionally performed by a single agent have sometimes oversimplified the complexity evidenced by the transmitted text. (shrink)

The plays of Menander have been largely absent from the recent critical attention given the metatheatrical aspects of ancient comedy because they avoid direct reference to performance and maintain dramatic illusion. But as readings of tragic self-reflexivity have shown, even consistently illusionistic drama can make reference to itself as drama so that the audience is encouraged to view the play in double focus, as both a pretense of reality and as an evident dramatic artifice. Metatheatricality in Menander has its basis (...) in the recurring view of the characters that life is like a tragedy. A number of characters state that the events at hand resemble a tragic situation, comment on events by quoting from a tragedy, or ask other characters to view the current situation through the lens of a particular tragic drama. In other instances, reference is made to aspects of dramatic staging or to the constitutive parts of plays. Such comments are realistic, or probable, because it is likely that Greeks of the fourth century regularly interpreted their own lives through the paradigm of myth, best known in dramatized form, and used theatrical metaphors to refer to everyday events. At the same time, however, audience members may experience a character's comparison of the dramatic situation to tragedy as humorously ironic because they know that the plot is destined to fulfill itself in a comic mode. Tragedy is in fact a mask worn by Menander's comedy, and the audience has a metadramatic experience whenever it focuses on the fact of masking. Analysis of passages from the Dyscolos, Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, and Samia, as well as fuller discussion of the Aspis, demonstrates that Menader's plays invite metadramatic readings in which the plot develops through the struggles of characters to impose on themselves and others tragic readings of their comic situation. (shrink)

In a post Cold-War world riven with ‘minor’ conflicts, and a West anxious about the intermittent threat of terrorist attack, human equality and sodality require urgent review. Among interesting proposals for a theoretical foundation to human equality is Martha Nussbaum’s call for a revived, modern version of Stoicism to teach indifference to race and a neighbourly goodwill. Yet in her concern to avoid ‘teleologies’ Nussbaum denatures Stoicism by disconnecting it from its transcendent foundations. A problem for the modern world is (...) to maintain the authority of states, with their capacity to produce relief for the poor and oppressed along with their capacity to dominate, while having them absorb the ideals of cosmopolitanism into their own policyformation. It is incumbent on the democratic state, the progenitor of the cosmopolitanism of both Cynicism and Stoicism, to promote the ideals of human dignity and equality. Nussbaum’s Stoicism scarcely helps, but there are globalizing organizations, such as the United Nations and its agencies, and globalized religious organizations, as advanced by Hans Küng, which may supply the institutional foundation. (shrink)