This article aims to demonstrate the existence of a parataxic mentality both in Homeric works and in the Old Testament, establishing a parallel to show that the body, as a living organic unit, which is shown through its parts that express not only the whole but also the individual. Therefore, there is a possible relationship between what Giovanni Reale understood as the “parataxic mentality” of Homeric poems, and what Hans Walter Wolff indicates as the “stereometric-synthetic thinking” of the Old Testament. (...) By attesting this relation and similarity between the mentalities of the Old Testament and the Homeric works, it’s shown not only the importance of a comparative study but also a renewal of both the anthropological grammar of these texts and the history of the anthropological concepts in Ancient Greece and even in the Judeo-Christian tradition. (shrink)

Any workable ideal of deliberative democracy that includes elections will need modern democracy's ever-present ally, parties. Since the primary function of parties is to win office rather than to reflect on public questions, parties are potential problems for the deliberative enterprise. They are more at home in aggregative models of democracy than in deliberative models. While deliberative democracy will need its moments of aggregation—and therefore, must have parties—partisans as they actually arise in the political world possess traits that undermine the (...) deliberative ideal. If partisans of partisanship are to be unembarrassed by (or are to correct) these defects, even workable ideals of deliberative democracy need to stand at some distance from the partisan imperative. (shrink)

This paper discusses the findings of qualitative research that examined the accounts of five “mostly recovered” ex-patients who had experienced transition between two or more eating disorder diagnoses. This study found that, in the minds of participants, the different diagnostic labels were associated with various good or bad character traits. This contributed to the belief in a diagnostic hierarchy, whereby individuals diagnosed with anorexia nervosa were viewed as morally better than those diagnosed with bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder. Consequently, (...) diagnostic crossover from a “better” to a “worse” eating disorder was often experienced as shameful moral failing, and a new diagnosis impacted the individual’s sense of self-identity. These findings are of significance for both ethicists and clinicians; the paper concludes by outlining the relevance and possible clinical implications of shame in diagnostic crossover and suggesting avenues for future research. (shrink)

In Torture, Terror and Trade-Offs: Philosophy for the White House Jeremy Waldron asks how moral philosophy can illuminate real life political problems. He argues that moral philosophers should remind politicians of the importance of adhering to moral principle, and he also argues that some moral principles are absolute and exceptionless. Thus, he is very critical of those philosophers who, post 9/11, were willing to condone the use of torture. In this article I discuss and criticize Waldron’s absolutism. In particular, I (...) claim that the arguments he offers in support of it are either dependent on religious conviction or support only rule utilitarianism, not absolutism. Additionally, I argue that the character of politics is such that it is both undesirable and morally irresponsible for politicians to adopt the absolutist approach favoured by Waldron. We have reason to be glad that Professor Waldron does not go to Washington. (shrink)

As this passage from a recent book on the psychology of decision-making indicates, deciding seems to be part of our daily lives. But what is it to decide to do something? It may be true, as some philosophers have claimed, that to decide to A is to perform a mental action of a certain kind – specifically, an action of forming an intention to A. (Henceforth, the verb ‘form’ in this context is to be understood as an action verb.) Even (...) if this is so, we are faced with pressing questions. Do we form all of our intentions? If not, how does forming an intention differ from other ways of acquiring one? Do we ever, in fact, form intentions, or do we rather merely acquire them in something like the way we acquire beliefs or desires? These are some of the questions that will occupy me here. My aim is to clarify the nature of deciding to act and to make a case for the occurrence of genuine acts of intention formation. (shrink)

In the last three decades, considerable theoretical and empirical research has been undertaken on the topic of moral distress among health professionals. Understood as a psychological and emotional response to the experience of moral wrongdoing, there is evidence to suggest that—if unaddressed—it contributes to staff demoralization, desensitization and burnout and, ultimately, to lower standards of patient safety and quality of care. However, more recently, the concept of moral distress has been subjected to important criticisms. Specifically, some authors argue that the (...) standard account of moral distress elucidated by Jameton :542–551, 1984) does not refer to a discrete phenomenon and/or that it is not sufficiently broad and that this makes measuring its prevalence among health professionals, and other groups of workers, difficult if not impossible. In this paper, we defend the standard account of moral distress. We understand it as a concept that draws attention to the social, political and contextual determinants of moral agency and brings the emotional landscape of the moral realm to the fore. Given the increasing pressure on health professionals worldwide to meet efficiency, financial and corporate targets and reported adverse effects of these for the quality and safety of patient care, we believe that further empirical research that deploys the standard account moral distress is timely and important. (shrink)

In the first part of the article, an account of moral judgment in terms of emotional dispositions is given. This account provides an expressivist explanation of three important features of moral demands: inescapability, authority independence and meriting. In the second part of the article, some ideas initially put forward by Christopher Boehm are developed and modified in order to provide a hypothesis about the evolution of the ability to token moral judgments. This hypothesis makes evolutionary sense of inescapability, authority independence (...) and meriting. It does so by referring to the selection pressures generated in the Late Pleistocene by large-game hunting. If the hypothesis is correct, we can say that, in a sense, meat made us moral. (shrink)

Recent works have recovered the ethical and political value of shame, suggesting that if shame is felt for the right reasons, toxic forms of shame may be alleviated. Rereading Hannah Arendt's biography of the “conscious pariah,” Rahel Varnhagen, Locke concludes that a politics of shame does not have the radical potential its proponents seek. Access to a public world, not shaming those who shame us, catapults the shamed pariah into the practices of democratic citizenship.

What is it for something to be a disability? Elizabeth Barnes, focusing on physical disabilities, argues that disability is a social category. It depends on the rules undergirding the judgements of the disability rights movement. Barnes’ account may strike many as implausible. I articulate the unease, in the form of three worries about Barnes’ account. It does not fully explain why the disability rights movement is constituted in such a way that it only picks out paradigmatic disability traits, nor why (...) only the traits identified by the movement as constituting experiences of social and political constraint count as disability. It also leaves out the contribution of people other than disability activists, to the definition of disability. I develop Barnes’ account. On my account, a person is disabled if she is in some state which is constitutive of some constraint on her legitimate interests. This state must be the subject of legitimate medical interest and be picked out by the disability rights movement as among the traits for which they are seeking to promote progress and change. My account addresses the worries about Barnes’ account. It is also able to include all disabilities, rather than only physical ones. (shrink)

Recent research on “psychotherapy” in Greek philosophy has not been fully integrated into thinking about philosophy as a way of life molded by personal relationships. This article focuses on how the enigma of Socratic eros sustains a network of thought experiments in the fourth century BCE about interpersonal dynamics and psychical transformation. It supplements existing work on Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus with comparative material from Aeschines of Sphettus, Xenophon, and the dubiously Platonic Alcibiades I and Theages. In order to select (...) and illuminate commonalities among all of these, it also draws critically upon Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic technique and his numerous comparisons between Socrates and psychoanalysts. What emerges is a more complex and qualified but no less sincere appreciation for the ideal of reflective, cooperative aspiration toward Beauty portrayed in Plato's dialogues. (shrink)

Does shame have a place in a mature moral agent's psychology? Does it play a useful and positive role in morality? One skepticism that disputes shame's compatibility with mature moral agency or its being a useful moral emotion is that shame appears heteronomous in nature: We experience shame not because we have behaved badly by our own moral standards, but because we have been reproved by other people and suffered an injury to our social image. To mitigate this skepticism, this (...) paper will propose a way in which we can reconcile shame with moral autonomy. Specifically, I will argue that a mature moral agent is vulnerable to shame because she cares a great deal about morality, and possesses certain character traits that dispose her to take others’ moral criticisms seriously. Occurrences of shame therefore are not always a threat to a moral agent's autonomous moral judgment. (shrink)

Bernard Williams thought that philosophy should address real human concerns felt beyond academic philosophy. But what wider concerns are addressed by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, a book he introduces as being ‘principally about how things are in moral philosophy’? In this article, we argue that Williams responded to the concerns of his day indirectly, refraining from explicitly claiming wider cultural relevance, but hinting at it in the pair of epigraphs that opens the main text. This was Williams’s solution (...) to what he perceived as the stylistic problem of how to pursue philosophy as cultural critique. Taking the epigraphs as interpretative keys to the wider resonances of the book, we show how they reveal Williams’s philosophical concerns – with the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life in a disillusioned world – to be recognisably rooted in the cultural concerns of post-war Britain. In the light of its epigraphs, the book emerges as the critique of a philosophical tradition’s inadequacies to the special difficulties of its cultural moment. (shrink)

This essay develops an account of Martin Luther King Jr.’s justification for and use of what I will call “democratic propaganda”—truthful propaganda that is aimed at promoting and fostering democratic political action by stirring readers’ emotions. I interpret King’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in the broader context of his work and argue that it is a piece of democratic propaganda. I give an account of what led King to support the use of democratic propaganda and why he hoped it (...) would help to overcome a central problem in the civil rights movement: the political inaction of the white moderates. King emphasizes shame in the Letter, and I argue that this concept offers us a new way of thinking about the efficacy of democratic propaganda. I close by considering the relevance of King’s approach for today’s Black Lives Matter movement. Despite the innovativeness of King’s use of shame, I suggest it may be time for a new approach to Black politics and activism. (shrink)

This paper offers a sustained philosophical meditation on contrasting interpretations of the emotion of shame within four academic discourses—social psychology, psychological anthropology, educational psychology and Aristotelian scholarship—in order to elicit their implications for moral education. It turns out that within each of these discourses there is a mainstream interpretation which emphasises shame’s expendability or moral ugliness (and where shame is typically described as guilt’s ugly sister), but also a heterodox interpretation which seeks to retrieve and defend shame. As the heterodox (...) interpretation seems to offer a more realistic picture of shame’s role in moral education, the provenance of the mainstream interpretation merits scrutiny. I argue that social scientific studies of the concept of shame, based on its supposed phenomenology, incorporate biases in favour of excessive, rather than medial, forms of the emotion. I suggest ways forward for more balanced analyses of the nature, moral justification and educative role of shame. (shrink)

I argue that recent virtue theories (including those of Hursthouse, Slote, and Swanton) face important initial difficulties in accommodating the supererogatory. In particular, I consider several potential characterizations of the supererogatory modeled upon these familiar virtue theories (and their accounts of rightness) and argue that they fail to provide an adequate account of supererogation. In the second half of the paper I sketch an alternative virtue-based characterization of supererogation, one that is grounded in the attitudes of virtuous ideal observers, and (...) that avoids the concerns raised in the first part of the paper. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs Hegel’s account of shame as a fundamental affect. Qua spiritual, the human individual strives for self-determination; hence she is ashamed of the fact that, q...

Using a framework from recent metaphysics and philosophy of science, according to which we have two concepts of cause, producer and necessary condition, we investigate causal notions in Antiphon’s Second Tetralogy, which concerns the unintentional homicide of a boy by a javelin-throwing youth. The prosecution maintains that the youth, having produced the boy’s death, is legally responsible; the defense argues, first, that the youth is patient, not agent, of a missing-the-target, and second, that the boy’s death depends on his running (...) into the javelin’s path, so that identifying the cause requires evaluating the contrasts implicit in any causal claim. (shrink)

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

ZusammenfassungIn this article, I defend a version of moral constitutivism that is based on a theory of goods. It is inspired by ancient philosophy both in claiming that action theory should be formulated in teleological terms and in the idea that a sound theory of goods should be a eudaemonist one. Additionally I argue that morality can be understood on the basis of such an approach.

In this article, I analyze the role of Heracles' famous body in the representation of madness and its aftermath in Euripides' Heracles. Unlike studies of Trachiniae, interpretations of Heracles have neglected the hero's body in Euripides. This reading examines the eruption of that body midway through the tragedy as a part of Heracles that is daemonic and strange, but also integral to his identity. Central to my reading is the figure of the symptom, through which madness materializes onstage. Symptoms were (...) contested sites of interpretation in the late fifth century, supporting both conventional narratives about human suffering and new stories advanced by contemporary medicine and ethics. In exploring the imaginative possibilities of these new stories, I do not privilege a “secular” over a “divine” reading. Rather I aim to offer a model of interaction between medicine and tragedy that sees the cross-breeding of worldviews as productive of innovative drama. (shrink)

Sentimental cosmopolitans argue that cultivating empathy for distant others is necessary in order to motivate action to address global injustices. This paper accepts the basic premises of the senti...

Contemporary moral philosophy is split between an inherently a-historical moral philosophy/theory on the one hand and a growing interest in moral history and the historicity of morality on the other. In between these, the very moments of moral change are often left insufficiently attended to and under-theorized. Yet moral change is, arguably, one of the defining features of present day moral frameworks, and thus one of the main things we need to make sense of in moral philosophy. In this paper, (...) I present an account of moral change through the use of three metaphors: the tipping point, the bargaining table and the strong rope. I suggest these as coordinates for the development of a full-blown, historically sensitive conception of morality. (shrink)

In Archaic Athenian vase-painting, silens are often sexually aroused, but only sporadically satisfy their desires in a manner acceptable to most Athenian men. François Lissarrague persuasively argued that the sexuality of silens in vase-painting was probably laughable rather than awe-inspiring. What sort of laughter did the vase-paintings elicit? Was it the scornful laughter of a person who felt nothing in common with silens, or the laughter of one made to see something of himself in their behavior? For three reasons, I (...) argue for the latter interpretation. First, some vase-paintings are constructed so as to invite the viewer to adopt imaginatively the persona of a silen. Second, parallels for the less-than-triumphant sexuality of silens occur in Archaic iambic poetry. Like the vase-paintings, the poetry was often constructed so that performers of the poems are incorporated into the narratives as all-too-human protagonists. Third, certain formal features of classical satyr-play encouraged the audience to identify with the point of view of the satyr-chorus, while others reminded it that there were better role models than silens. In all three media, a negative characterization of male characters or silens is combined with a manner of presentation that invites the viewer or performer to see himself among those characters despite their negative traits. That form of humor may have been common in Archaic symposia, but its presence in satyr-play suggests that it may also be a fundamental characteristic of silens. (shrink)

The sociopolitical significance Aristotle and Confucius attribute to possessing a sense of shame serves to emphasize the importance of its development. Aristotle maintains that social class and wealth are prerequisites for its acquisition, while Confucius is optimistic that it can be developed regardless of socioeconomic considerations. The difference between their positions is largely due to competing views of praiseworthy dispositions. While Aristotle conceives of praiseworthy dispositions as “consistent” traits of character, traits that calcifiy as one reaches adulthood, Confucius offers us (...) an alternative picture, one that affords a greater plasticity to praiseworthy dispositions by treating them as situational character traits. I argue that the Confucian conception of praiseworthy dispositions, combined with several strategies for developing a sense of shame discussed in the Analects, renders Confucius’s optimism defensible. (shrink)

In Remnants of Auschwitz , Giorgio Agamben argues that the hidden structure of subjectivity is shame. In shame, I am consigned to something that cannot be assumed, such that the very thing that makes me a subject also forces me to witness my own desubjectification. Agamben’s ontological account of shame is problematic insofar as it forecloses collective responsibility and collapses the distinction between shame and humiliation. By recontextualizing three of Agamben’s sources – Primo Levi, Robert Antelme and Maurice Blanchot – (...) I develop an alternative account of shame as the structure of intersubjectivity , and of a collective responsibility that is more fundamental than the subject itself. On this basis, I sketch the preliminary outline of a biopolitics of resistance rooted in the ethics of alterity. The intuition driving this approach is that life is never bare ; even in situations of extreme affliction there remains a relation to alterity which provides a starting point for resistance. (shrink)

A problem arises, both for philosophy and for argumentation theory, in a pluralist world where people hold widely different beliefs about what to do. Some responses to this problem, including relativism, might settle but do not provide any criteria for resolving such differences. Alternative responses seek a means of resolution in universalist, culture-neutral criteria which must be invoked in assessing all human action. A philosophically adequate account of universalism would contribute to an ideal of critical rationality, as well as to (...) the ideas of field-invariance and of convincing, as opposed to persuasive, argumentation. The account's adequacy would require universality both in form and in content. Universality in form is secured by seeking universal preconditions for practical reasoning in general, rather than specifically for morality. Universality in content is harder, and candidates such as freedom, autonomy and health are problematic. An alternative content is provided by the proposition that the satisfaction of material preconditions is necessary for the performance of any action whatever. Neglect of these preconditions may constitute a fallacy in the extended sense found in argumentation theory, and assumptions about them should form part of the point of departure for any practical deliberation. (shrink)

There is growing concern that a global economic system fueled predominately by financial incentives may not maximize human flourishing and social welfare externalities. If so, this presents a challenge of how to get economic actors to adopt a more virtuous motivational mindset. Relying on historical, psychological, and philosophical research, we show how such a mindset can be instilled. First, we demonstrate that historically, financial self-interest has never in fact been the only guiding motive behind free markets, but that markets themselves (...) are representations of our individual and collective moral identities. Building on this understanding, we review the research on how economic incentives crowd out virtue-oriented concerns. We then introduce the concept of moral self-awareness (MSA), an evolving mindset informed by reflection on moral identity, namely what one’s actions say about oneself given the impacts on others or society that one’s action may effect. MSA comprises three fundamental aspects of virtue-oriented reasoning: pride, shame, and guilt. Finally, we offer a four-stage model anchored in systems theory, yielding ever more refined motivating strategies for maximizing human flourishing and social welfare externalities. (shrink)

This is a critical notice of Alfred Mele’s, Manipulated Agents: A Window to Moral Responsibility. I agree with Mele that moral responsibility is a historical phenomenon, but give some considerations in favor of a positive, rather than negative, historical condition for moral responsibility. I focus on Mele’s Zygote Argument, which is intended to present a challenge for compatibilism. I contend that the challenge can be met, and I offer an error theory of the appeal of the Zygote Argument.

Much effort has been invested by scholars in defining the specific character of the Homeric values as against those that obtained at later periods of Greek history. The distinction between the ‘shame-culture’ and the ‘guilt-culture’ introduced by E. R. Dodds, and that between the ‘competitive’ and the ‘cooperative’ values advocated by A. W. H. Adkins, are among the more influential ones. Although Adkins's taxonomy encountered some acute criticism, notably from A. A. Long, it has become generally adopted both in the (...) scholarly literature and in general philosophical discussions of Greek ethics. Objections to Adkins's approach have mainly concentrated on demonstrating that his denial of the cooperative values to Homer is untenable on general grounds and is not supported by Homeric evidence. Characteristically, Adkins's thesis concerning the centrality to Homer's ethics of the so-called ‘competitive values‘ has never received similar attention, probably owing to the fact that this is the point at which his picture of the Homeric society concurs with the influential reconstructions by W Jaeger and M. I. Finley. The present study oftimēandaretē, generally held to be the two competitive values central to the Homeric poems, purports to address this issue. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Max Weber, Edward Shils, Charles Camic and Thomas Spence Smith, among others, this article analyzes the effect of the breakdown of charismatic groups on tragic protagonists. Because criticism has usually focused on the isolation of tragic figures, little attention has been paid to group formation and group dissolution as significant components of tragedy. Yet group function makes a manifest contribution to tragic denouement: the vicissitudes of charismatic authority not only reflect but often bring about the (...) catastrophes in tragic drama. The article demonstrates this thesis in a concluding discussion of Shakespeare's Othello. (shrink)

A prominent trend in moral philosophy today is the interest in the rich textures of actual human practices and lives. This has prompted engagements with other disciplines, such as anthropology, history, literature, law and empirical science, which have produced various forms of contextual ethics. These engagements motivate reflections on why and how context is important ethically, and such metaethical reflection is what this article undertakes. Inspired by the work of the later Wittgenstein and the Danish theologian K.E. Løgstrup, I first (...) describe one of the ways in which context plays a central role with regard to ethical meaning and normativity. I then examine how ‘context’ is to be defined, and finally I discuss some of the questions which arise when giving context prominence in ethics – namely, how to delimit the scope of relevant context, the relevant traits of a particular context and what ‘the ethical’ is. (shrink)

This article examines the phenomenology of body shame in the context of the clinical encounter, using the television program ‘Embarrassing Bodies’ as illustrative. I will expand on the insights of Aaron Lazare’s 1987 article ‘Shame and Humiliation in the Medical Encounter’ where it is argued that patients often see their diseases and ailments as defects, inadequacies or personal shortcomings and that visits to doctors and medical professionals involve potentially humiliating physical and psychological exposure. I will start by outlining a phenomenology (...) of shame in order to understand more clearly the effect shame about the body can have in terms of one’s personal experience and, furthermore, one’s interpersonal dynamics. I will then examine shame in the clinical encounter, linking body shame to the cultural stigma attached to illness, dysfunction and bodily frailty. I will furthermore explore how shame can be exacerbated or even incited by physicians through judgment and as a result of the power imbalance inherent to the physician-patient dynamic, compounded by the contemporary tendency to moralise about ‘lifestyle’ illnesses. Lastly, I will provide some reflections for how health care workers might approach patient shame in clinical practice. (shrink)

Through positing that our capacity for physical vulnerability is at the core of original shame, Sartre’s account in Being and Nothingness reveals shame as an essential structure of human existence. Reading Sartre’s ontological account of ‘pure shame’ alongside recent writing about shame in early child development, particularly Martha Nussbaum’s account of ‘primitive shame,’ this article will explore the inherent links between shame, the body and vulnerability, ultimately positing that our human need for belonging is the fundamental driving force behind shame, (...) and what gives it its ontological status. In short, this article will argue that shame is not merely about a painful awareness of one’s flaws or transgressions with reference to norms and others, but about a deeper layer of relationality through our bodily vulnerability. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a notion of tragic-remorse. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a moral stain and (...) a particular emotional response. (shrink)

David Shoemaker has claimed that a binary approach to moral responsibility leaves out something important, namely instances of marginal agency, cases where agents seem to be eligible for some responsibility responses but not others. In this paper we endorse and extend Shoemaker’s approach by presenting and discussing one more case of marginal agency not yet covered by Shoemaker or in the other literature on moral responsibility. Our case is that of Kenneth Parks, a Canadian man who drove a long way (...) to his mother-in-law’s and killed her in a state of somnambulism. We support our claim about Parks’ marginal responsibility in three steps: we first deny that Parks acts involuntarily as traditionally claimed in the legal literature; we then propose to extend Shoemaker’s analysis of marginal responsibility based on quality of will so as to include two other dimensions: the moral status of the agent and the actual causal effects of their actions; finally, we distinguish Parks’ marginal responsibility from four other existing concepts: “tracing”, diminished responsibility, causal responsibility, and moral disapproval without responsibility. (shrink)

The topic of my thesis is individual and collective responsibility for collectively caused systemic harms, with climate change as the case study. Can an individual be responsible for these harms, and if so, how? Furthermore, what does it mean to say that a collective is responsible? A related question, and the second main theme, is how ignorance and knowledge affect our responsibility. -/- My aim is to show that despite the various complexities involved, an individual can have responsibility to address (...) climate change. I argue that climate change is not a problem just for states and international bodies, but also for individuals. There are three possible sources of moral responsibility for individuals in relation to climate change harms: direct responsibility (individuals qua individuals), shared responsibility as members (individuals qua members of collective agents), and shared responsibility as constituents (individuals qua constituents of unorganised collectives). -/- Accounts that deny individual responsibility fail to either take our interdependent reality seriously or fail to understand marginal participation (or in the case direct responsibility, fail to appreciate the nature of the climate change phenomenon). Individuals can be complicit in climate change harms, either as members of collective agents (e.g. as citizens of states or employees of a corporation) or as constituents of unorganised collectives (e.g. as consumers or polluters). -/- Although I focus on individual complicity, I do not deny the obligations of collective agents. However, nation-states, governments, and international bodies are not the only relevant collective agents in climate ethics: other collective agents, such as corporations, matter also and can have obligations concerning making sure that their activities are as carbon-neutral as possible. In addition, those corporations that have engaged in lobbying against climate regulation through creating and disseminating misleading information have acquired themselves additional obligations to mitigate climate change and compensate for the harm they have caused. Even so, the ethical claims can only be understood by individual members of these collective agents because only they can feel the pull of moral claims. I suggest that we could distinguish between what one must possess in order to be capable of making moral claims (i.e. moral agency conditions), and what it means to have the ability to exhibit such claims through one’s conduct. -/- Individual direct responsibility is to not to increase the probable risk of serious harm to other people, at least as long as we can do so at a less than significant cost to ourselves. It is limited to relatively wealthy individuals. Offsetting is not a reliable way to meet this duty; we need to look at the emissions from our lifestyle choices (within the available infrastructure). Shared responsibility qua members of collective agents is the key individual responsibility, and it presses especially on those occupying key positions within key collective agents. Saying that, our shared responsibility qua constituents of unorganised collectives has the potential to be decisive in whether some action is taken or not, either through a set of actions that can signal certain acceptance or support, or as a form of political support from the grass roots. (shrink)

Plato’s theory of virtue in the Laws could be striking for someone who is more familiar with Aristotle’s ethics for conceptual complementarity between the two positions (contrary emotions, the ordering element of reason, virtue as a mean which lies between two forms of vice, typically linked to excessive actions, etc.). Plato’s theory, however, still differs from that of Aristotle in two crutial points. First, the source of emotional dynamism is, according to Plato, supraindividual as far as the psyche is a (...) cosmological principle. Only if it comes to be formed and ordered, it separates from the universal cosmic context and make up the emotional nature of an individual soul. But the soul is not, and this is the second point of difference, ordered by some external element (training or education, organized by a rational agent). Plato counts on a pre-arranged order of emotions at a particular ontological topos of the individual soul into which reason eventually descends. Emotions, on their part, seem to include a nexus between formable and forming that is chronologically and methodocally prior to that between the biological substratum and its rational organization, as assumed by Aristotle. (shrink)

To be autonomous is to be a law to oneself; autonomous agents are self-governing agents. Most of us want to be autonomous because we want to be accountable for what we do, and because it seems that if we are not the ones calling the shots, then we cannot be accountable. More importantly, perhaps, the value of autonomy is tied to the value of self-integration. We don't want to be alien to, or at war with, ourselves; and it seems that (...) when our intentions are not under our own control, we suffer from self-alienation. What conditions must be satisfied in order to ensure that we govern ourselves when we act? Philosophers have offered a wide range of competing answers to this question. (shrink)

In popular culture psychopaths are inaccurately portrayed as serial killers or homicidal maniacs. Most real-world psychopaths are neither killers nor maniacs. Psychologists currently understand psychopathy as an affective disorder that leads to repeated criminal and antisocial behavior. Counter to this prevailing view, I claim that psychopathy is not necessarily linked with criminal behavior. Successful psychopaths, an intriguing new category of psychopathic agent, support this conception of psychopathy. I then consider reactive attitude theories of moral responsibility. Within this tradition, psychopaths are (...) thought to be blameless as a result of their pronounced affective deficits. Psychopaths are considered morally blind because they lack the moral emotions that make us sensitive to moral reasons. I argue that, even if they are morally blind, psychopaths remain open to forms of blame stemming from non-moral reactive attitudes. These reactive attitudes remain appropriate because psychopaths can express hateful, disgusting, or contemptible non-moral values in their judgments. (shrink)

This dissertation provides a thorough examination of the role of aeschynē (as distinct from aidōs) in Aristotle’s conception of human nature by illuminating the political and ethical implications of shame and shamelessness and the effect of these implications in his treatises. It is crucial, both to one’s own personhood and eudaimonia as well as to the existence of a just and balanced state, that aeschynē be understood and respected because of the self-evaluating ability that it maintains. The aim of this (...) work is to show that a recognition and appreciation of aeschynē as understood in Aristotle’s conception of human nature simultaneously leads to eudaimonia and away from the dangerous state of anaeschyntia (shamelessness). Aeschynē is required in order to create a better existence both on the personal level and on the larger level of social community. The function and responsibility of aeschynē in Aristotle’s work is recognized in its full potential as a civic virtue: specifically, metriopatheia. Metriopatheia, which is aeschynē properly energized through phronesis, acts as a tool allowing one to moderate her passions. It is essential to recognize Aristotle’s use of aeschynē as metriopatheia because it sheds new light on Aristotle’s conception of human nature. The rational human soul, according to Aristotle, is always striving for full actuality. The goal of human life, like all life for Aristotle, is proper function with excellence. Aeschynē as metriopatheia is responsible for the moderation of one’s passions thus promoting aretē. Aeschynē offers insight into the opinions of those who are ethical and thus produces right reason in actions. One who is anaeschyntia cannot reach her full potentiality nor can she be a contributing member of the political community, the koinōnia. (shrink)

In this dissertation I examine the topics of ethics, religion, and their relationship in the work of Charles Taylor. I take Taylor's attempt to confront modern disenchantment by seeking a kind of re-enchantment as my guiding thread. Seeking re-enchantment means, first of all, defending an `engaged realist' account of strong evaluation, i.e., qualitative distinctions of value that are seen as normative for our desires. Secondly, it means overcoming self-enclosure and achieving self-transcendence, which I argue should be understood in terms of (...) transcending a `lower' mode of selfhood for a `higher' one in concern for `strong goods'. One of the main issues that Taylor raises is whether re-enchantment requires theism for its full adequacy. He advances - often as `hunches' - controversial claims regarding the significance of theism (1) for defending strong evaluative realism and (2) for motivating an ethic of universal human concern. I seek to fill out his hunches in terms of a theistic teleological perspective that is centered on the `telos of communion'. I argue that such a view is important for overcoming the problem of what Bernard Williams calls the `radical contingency' of ethical beliefs, which seems to undermine their normative authority. However, I argue that if a non-theistic view of cosmic purpose (e.g., Thomas Nagel's view) can be regarded as a viable option, then it could also help to address this problem and support a kind of re-enchantment. Taylor also advances the controversial view that (3) there is an ineradicable draw to `transcendence' in human life in connection to the quest for the meaning of life. Here he opposes certain mainstream theories of secularization that see it as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of the relevance of religion. I seek to fill out and defend Taylor's view in this matter. Besides providing a reading of Taylor's work as a whole and advancing further some of the issues he raises, I also examine his general evaluative framework based on his account of strong evaluation. In doing so I show how he provides a distinct and important perspective among contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use,” James Baldwin writes in The Fire Next Time, “it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.” This essay is a meditation on Baldwin’s claim. I begin by presenting Baldwin’s account of a grave danger that characterizes our social lives – a source of profound estrangement from ourselves and from one another. I (...) draw on the work of the theologian Howard Thurman in order to explain how faith in a loving God can enable us to cope with this danger in a manner that may render us, in some sense, larger, freer, and more loving. Finally, I sketch Baldwin’s account of how we might cope with this danger not by relying on God’s love, but rather by relying in certain ways on our love for one another. (shrink)

In Authority and Estrangement Richard Moran takes some rather illuminating steps towards getting rid of the Cartesian picture of self-knowledge. I argue, however, that Moran’s crucial distinction between deliberative and theoretical attitude is seriously contaminated by that traditional picture. More specifically, I will point out why some crucial aspects of the phenomena that Moran describes in terms of the interplay between the theoretical and the deliberative attitude, should rather be interpreted as a process that takes place within the deliberative attitude (...) itself. The theoretical attitude will, as a result, constitute a rather marginal attitude towards one’s own psychological dispositions and experiences, the adoption of which only makes sense in rather peculiar, often pathological, situations. (shrink)

Does a white philosopher have anything of value to offer to the philosophy of race and racism? If this philosophical subfield must embrace subjective experience, why should we value the perspective of white philosophers whose racial identity is often occluded by racial normativity and who lack substantive experiences of being on the receiving end of racism? Further, if we should be committed to experience, in what sense can the philosophy of race and racism be “objective”? What should that word mean?Tackling (...) this question first, “objective” should at least mean general, that the ideas of the literature can be coherently integrated. An objective take on racism brings together a plurality of perspectives. What’s wrong with just a plurality of satellite ideas? It implies a fragmented approach to ameliorating racism, where different specialists have different recommendations. How can racism, generally, be lessened? If major views of racism are unifiable, then we have a general method to ameliorate racism. This project might appear tone-deaf: a white philosopher unifying things by reducing ideas to some central notion. But this unity isn’t about reducing things but rather integrating them in a way that respects difference. Yet, there’s a reason we should be interested in the white perspective. Whites can speak about racism from a participatory perspective. If whites are knowledgeable, and believe themselves to have no implicit bias, they may suppose they’re “beyond” racism or no longer at risk for perpetuating it. I explore this idea in a psychologically realistic way via my notion of overlooking, where ameliorating racism from the white perspective is an ongoing project. I end by considering how racism is applicable to other philosophical ideas beyond its typical or circumscribed purview. Here, I re-frame responsibility, arguing that we needn’t be forced to choose between responsibility models divided into individual versus social camps. We ought to instead think of responsibility in terms of power, which provides a realistic lens by which persons and groups are held to account. In being more generally convincing, it might actually get folks to take responsibility where they might not otherwise—theory in service of praxis. (shrink)

A confluence of scholarly interest has resulted in a revival of Thomistic scholarship across the world. Several areas in the investigation of St. Thomas Aquinas, however, remain under-explored. This volume contributes to two of these neglected areas. First, the volume evaluates the contemporary relevance of St. Thomas's views for the philosophy and practice of education. The second area explored involves the intersections of the Angelic Doctor’s thought and the numerous cultures and intellectual traditions of the East. Contributors to this section (...) examine the reception, creative appropriation, and various points of convergence between St. Thomas and the East. (shrink)