Despite Kant’s lasting influence on philosophical accounts of moral motivation, many details of his own position remain elusive. In the Critique of Practical Reason, for example, Kant argues that our recognition of the moral law’s authority must elicit both painful and pleasurable feelings in us. On reflection, however, it is unclear how these effects could motivate us to act from duty. As a result, Kant’s theory of moral sensibility comes under a skeptical threat: the possibility of a morally motivating feeling (...) seems incoherent. My aim in this paper is to reconstruct Kant’s theory in a way that overcomes this threat. By way of conclusion, I show how my reconstruction brings a new perspective to a long-standing dispute over intellectualist and affectivist views of moral motivation. (shrink)

There is no question that Fichte's theory of conscience is central to his system of ethics. Yet his descriptions of its role in practical deliberation appear inconsistent, if not contradictory. Many scholars have claimed that for Fichte conscience plays a material role by providing the content of our moral obligations—the Material Function View. Some have denied this, however, claiming that conscience only plays a formal role by testing our moral convictions in any given case—the Formal Function View. My aim in (...) this paper is to offer a new contribution to this debate. I begin by supplying further evidence in support of the view that conscience only plays a formal function in Fichte's ethics. Then I call attention to a deeper problem this view faces, namely, that it invites an infinite regress by making one's conviction a matter of higher-order reflection. The key to overcoming this threat, I argue, lies in Fichte's doctrine of feeling, whereby the criterion of one's conviction lies, not in a cognitive state, but in an affective state. In closing, I discuss the relevance of Fichte's theory for current debates over the nature of moral error and moral deference. (shrink)

Kant is well known for claiming that we can never really know our true moral disposition. He is less well known for claiming that the injunction "Know Yourself" is the basis of all self-regarding duties. Taken together, these two claims seem contradictory. My aim in this paper is to show how they can be reconciled. I first address the question of whether the duty of self-knowledge is logically coherent (§1). I then examine some of the practical problems surrounding the duty, (...) notably, self-deception (§2). Finding none of Kant's solutions to the problem of self-deception satisfactory, I conclude by defending a Kantian account of self-knowledge based on his theory of conscience (§3). (shrink)

_Kant’s Reason_ (2023) is an excellent study that develops an original set of interpretive claims and shows their relevance for contemporary theories of rationality. At the core of Karl Schafer’s project is the following thesis: that Kant’s account of reason is unified as a power of comprehension in both its theoretical and practical activities. The aim of my paper is to examine this thesis against Kant’s doctrine of the Highest Good. In §1, I question some claims Schafer makes about the (...) Highest Good. Then, in §2 and §3, I consider how we might develop a more detailed reading of this doctrine along the lines of Schafer’s project. §4 concludes. (shrink)

It is commonly held that since non-human animals are not persons, they are not objects of due regard and care in the same way that humans are. But how might we begin to think about recognizing animals as persons? This chapter attempts to reconstruct an answer by drawing on the resources of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, 200-400 CE). Animals are persons from the perspective of this tradition, and so animals are proper objects of due regard and care. (...) According to classical Yoga philosophy, however, this form of recognition is not easy to attain. The discerning insight that allows one to “see” the personhood of other living beings requires a discipline of attention, one that constitutes the practice of yoga itself. (shrink)

Schiller was one of many early post-Kantians who wrestled with Kant’s doctrine of radical evil, a doctrine that continues to puzzle commentators today. Schiller’s own explanation of why we are prone to pursue happiness without restriction is, I argue, subtle and multilayered: it offers us a new genealogy of reflective agency, linking our tendency to egoism to the first emergence of reason within human beings. On the reading I defend, our drive for the absolute does not lead us directly to (...) moral autonomy; rather, it misleads us to seek the absolute in the field of our own impulses and inclinations. However, since this detour is the result of cognitive error, it involves no willful subordination of the moral law to self-love, and so nothing that bears the guilt of evil. (shrink)

While Kant’s claim that the moral law discloses our freedom to us has been extensively discussed in recent decades, the reactions to this claim among Kant’s immediate successors have gone largely overlooked by scholars. Reinhold, Creuzer, and Maimon were among three prominent thinkers of the era unwilling to follow Kant in making the moral law the condition for knowing our freedom. Maimon went so far as to reject Kant’s method of appealing to our everyday awareness of duty on the grounds (...) that common human understanding is susceptible to error and illusion. In this paper I shall examine how these skeptical reactions to Kant’s position shaped the background for Fichte’s method of moral justification, leading up to his own deduction of the moral law in the System of Ethics. By way of conclusion, I shall propose a new interpretation of how consciousness of the moral law serves as an entry-point to Fichte’s form of idealism. (shrink)

Owen Ware here develops and defends a novel interpretation of Fichte’s moral philosophy as an ethics of wholeness. While virtually forgotten for most of the twentieth century, Fichte’s System of Ethics is now recognized by scholars as a masterpiece in the history of post-Kantian thought and a key text for understanding the work of later German idealist thinkers. This book provides a careful examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte’s moral philosophy evolved and of the specific arguments he offers (...) in response to Kant and his immediate successors. A distinctive feature of this study is a focus on the foundational concepts of Fichte’s ethics—freedom, morality, feeling, conscience, community—and their connection to his innovative but largely misunderstood theory of drives. By way of conclusion, the book shows that what appears to be two conflicting commitments in Fichte’s ethics—a commitment to the feelings of one's conscience and a commitment to engage in open dialogue with others—are two aspects of his theory of moral perfection. The result is a sharp understanding of Fichte's System of Ethics as offering a compelling resolution to the personal and interpersonal dimensions of moral life. (shrink)

This chapter examines the place of India in eighteenth-century debates over the chronology of human history. It begins with Voltaire, who strategically praised ancient Brahmanic religion for upholding a pure form of monotheism and an equally pure form of morality. Voltaire’s aim was to upset the primacy assigned to the Mosaic tradition foundational to the Catholic church. The chapter then turns to Herder and his effort to improve upon the historical methods of Voltaire. While Herder is often considered to have (...) developed positive views toward ancient Indian culture, the chapter shows that his commitment to a biblical chronology was consistent throughout his career. (shrink)

Kant’s doctrine of the Fact of Reason is one of the most perplexing aspects of his moral philosophy. The aim of this paper is to defend Kant’s doctrine from the common charge of dogmatism. My defense turns on a previously unexplored analogy to the notion of ‘matters of fact’ popularized by members of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century. In their work, ‘facts’ were beyond doubt, often referring to experimental effects one could witness first hand. While Kant uses the (...) German equivalent in different contexts, I argue that the scientific analogy opens up a new framework for interpreting his strategy of justification in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the final section, I address a few possible objections to my reading, one of which I anticipate coming from Dieter Henrich and Ian Proops, who have argued that Kant’s Fact of Reason is best understood under a legal analogy. (shrink)

It is commonly held that Kant ventured to derive morality from freedom in Groundwork III. It is also believed that he reversed this strategy in the second Critique, attempting to derive freedom from morality instead. In this paper, I set out to challenge these familiar assumptions: Kant’s argument in Groundwork III rests on a moral conception of the intelligible world, one that plays a similar role as the ‘fact of reason’ in the second Critique. Accordingly, I argue, there is no (...) reversal in the proof-structure of Kant’s two works. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Kant's relationship with skepticism in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. My position differs from commonly held views in the literature in two ways. On the one hand, I argue that Kant's relationship with skepticism is active and systematic (contrary to Hill, Wood, Rawls, Timmermann, and Allison). On the other hand, I argue that the kind of skepticism Kant is interested in does not speak to the philosophical tradition in any straightforward sense (...) (contrary to Forster and Guyer). On my reading, Kant takes up a skeptical method in the Groundwork as a way of exposing certain obstacles in our ordinary and philosophical thinking about morality. The central obstacle he is interested in is practical in character, arising from a natural tendency we have to rationalize against the moral law. In attempting to resolve this tendency, I argue, the Groundwork turns out to have a profoundly educative task. (shrink)

Why was mythology of vital importance for the romantics? What role did mythology play in their philosophical and literary work? And what common sources of influence inspired these writers across Britain and Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century? In this wide-ranging study, Owen Ware argues that the romantics turned to mythology for its potential to transform how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Engaging with authors such as William Blake, Friedrich Schlegel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Friedrich von Hardenberg (...) (Novalis), and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ware shows why they believed that neither perception nor reason alone can sustain a vision of the unity of all things. A new mode of cognition is necessary, they claimed, one that revives the poetic origin of mythology and reveals our own mythmaking powers. _Return of the Gods_ investigates the rise of mythology in the British and German traditions and the romantics’ practices of reinterpreting old myths and inventing new ones. Their shared aim was nothing less than to elevate the human imagination to higher stages of self-development in which philosophy and poetry, as well as intellect and imagination, form an integrated whole. Far from calling us to return to the past, the romantics’ work on mythology points us to a future where we can live in harmony with the personal, social, and natural worlds we inhabit. Owen Ware combines intellectual history with philosophical analysis and literary criticism to offer a bold reflection on why mythology mattered for the romantics—and why it still matters today. (shrink)

Kant’s arguments for the reality of human freedom and the normativity of the moral law continue to inspire work in contemporary moral philosophy. Many prominent ethicists invoke Kant, directly or indirectly, in their efforts to derive the authority of moral requirements from a more basic conception of action, agency, or rationality. But many commentators have detected a deep rift between the _Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals_ and the _Critique of Practical Reason_, leaving Kant’s project of justification exposed to conflicting (...) assessments and interpretations. In this major re-reading of Kant, Owen Ware defends the controversial view that Kant’s mature writings on ethics share a unified commitment to the moral law’s primacy. Using both close analysis and historical contextualization, Owen Ware overturns a paradigmatic way of reading Kant’s arguments for morality and freedom, situating them within Kant’s critical methodology at large. The result is a novel understanding of Kant that challenges much of what goes under the banner of Kantian arguments for moral normativity today. (shrink)

The concept of respect for persons is often rejected as a basis for understanding forgiveness. As many have argued, to hold your offender responsible for her actions is to respect her as a person; but this kind of respect is more likely to sustain, rather than dissolve, your resentment toward her (Garrard & McNaughton 2003; 2011; Allais 2008). I seek to defend an alternative view in this paper. To forgive, on my account, involves ceasing to identify your offender with her (...) wrongdoing, and this requires a corresponding affective change on your behalf. While there are different ways this may happen, I argue that respect for your offender as a person can play a significant role in the process. (shrink)

In this article I offer a critical commentary on Jeanine Grenberg’s claim that, by the time of the second Critique, Kant was committed to the view that we only access the moral law’s validity through the feeling of respect. The issue turns on how we understand Kant’s assertion that our consciousness of the moral law is a ‘fact of reason’. Grenberg argues that all facts must be forced, and anything forced must be felt. I defend an alternative interpretation, according to (...) which the fact of reason refers to the actuality of our moral consciousness. (shrink)

Abstract: In recent work Stephen Darwall has attacked what he calls J. G. Fichte's ‘voluntarist’ thesis, the idea—on Darwall's reading—that I am bound by obligations of respect to another person by virtue of my choice to interact with him. Darwall argues that voluntary choice is incompatible with the normative force behind the concept of a person, which demands my respect non-voluntarily. He in turn defends a ‘presuppositional’ thesis which claims that I am bound by obligations of respect simply by recognizing (...) the other as a person. In this paper I argue Darwall has misidentified the voluntary element in Fichte's account (sections 4–5). This requires me first to explain what Fichte's voluntarism really consists in (sections 1–3), and I suggest an apparent ambiguity in Fichte's position is responsible for Darwall's misreading. Clarifying this ambiguity, however, exposes some limitations to Darwall's thesis, and I end by discussing what those limitations are and what we can learn from them (sections 6–8). (shrink)

Its critics call it ‘feminism-as-crime-control’, or ‘Governance Feminism’, diagnosing it as a pernicious form of identity politics. Its advocates call it taking sexual violence seriously – by which they mean wielding the power of the state to ‘punish perpetrators’ and ‘protect vulnerable women’. Both sides agree that this approach follows from the radical feminist analysis of sexual violence most strikingly formulated by Catharine MacKinnon. The aim of this paper is to rethink the Governance Feminism debate by questioning this common presupposition. (...) I ask whether taking MacKinnon’s analysis of sexual violence seriously might, in fact, itself give us reason to be critical of political strategies that embrace the punitive state. By raising this question, I hope to persuade radical feminists to listen to critics of carceral politics rather than dismissing them as rape apologists, and critics of carceral politics to listen to radical feminists rather than dismissing them as state apologists. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant seeks to discredit rational psychology on the grounds that we cannot access the nature of the soul by reflecting upon the ‘I think’ of self-consciousness. What is far less understood, however, is why Kant still believes the theorems of rational psychology are analytically true insofar as they represent the ‘I’ through the categories of substance, reality, unity, and existence. Early post-Kantian thinkers like Fichte would abandon this restriction and approach the concept of the ‘I’ (...) instead through the category of community or reciprocal interaction. The result was nothing less than a radical shift in thinking about persons after Kant, yet in a way that would bear a striking affinity to the substance monism of Spinoza. The aim of this chapter is to trace the origin of this shift and its aftermath in Fichte’s effort to defend a new conception of the ‘I’. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of consciousness and personal identity in eighteenth-century philosophy. Locke introduces the concept of persons as subjects of consciousness who also simultaneously recognize themselves as such subjects. Hume, however, argues that minds are nothing but bundles of perceptions, lacking intrinsic unity at a time or across time. Yet Hume thinks our emotional responses to one another mean that persons in everyday life are defined by their virtues, vices, bodily qualities, property, riches, and the like. Rousseau also (...) takes persons to be fundamentally determined by our socially-mediated emotional responses to one another, though unlike Hume or Locke, he has little interest in placing this account of persons alongside a larger discussion of the human mind and its operations. Developing this idea further, Kant argues that our moral commitments require that we must take ourselves to be free. The fundamental equality that Rousseau sought in the political order is, for Kant, a requirement that reason puts on all of us. (shrink)

This paper examines the distinction between self-love and self-conceit in Kant's moral psychology. It motivates an alternative account of the origin of self-conceit by drawing a parallel to what Kant calls transcendental illusion.

One of the most controversial issues to emerge in recent studies of Fichte concerns the status of his normative ethics, i.e., his theory of what makes actions morally good or bad. Scholars are divided over Fichte’s view regarding the ‘final end’ of moral striving, since it appears this end can be either a specific goal permitting maximizing calculations (the consequentialist reading defended by Kosch 2015), or an indeterminate goal permitting only duty-based decisions (the deontological reading defended by Wood 2016). While (...) I think each interpretive position contains an element of truth, my aim in this paper is to defend a third alternative, according to which Fichte’s normative ethics presents us with a unique form of social perfectionism. (shrink)

The role of emotions in mental life is the subject of longstanding controversy, spanning the history of ethics, moral psychology, and educational theory. This paper defends an account of love’s cognitive power. My starting point is Plato’s dialogue, the Symposium, in which we find the surprising claim that love aims at engendering moral virtue. I argue that this understanding affords love a crucial place in educational curricula, as engaging the emotions can motivate both cognitive achievement and moral development. I first (...) outline the state of the challenge between dominant rival theories regarding emotions in learning. Next, I demonstrate how Platonic virtue ethics offers the most tenable prospect for an education of reason and emotion. Third, I sketch three practical ways educators might constructively engage emotions in the classroom. I conclude that love’s virtue is its peerless power to motivate the creative and lateral thinking which leads to moral development. (shrink)

Kant’s early critics maintained that his theory of freedom faces a dilemma: either it reduces the will’s activity to strict necessity by making it subject to the causality of the moral law, or it reduces the will’s activity to blind chance by liberating it from rules of any kind. This Element offers a new interpretation of Kant’s theory against the backdrop of this controversy. It argues that Kant was a consistent proponent of the claim that the moral law is the (...) causal law of a free will, and that the supposed ability of free will to choose indifferently between options is an empty concept. Freedom, for Kant, is a power to initiate action from oneself, and the only way to exercise this power is through the law of one’s own will, the moral law. Immoral action is not thereby rendered impossible, but it also does not express a genuine ability. (shrink)

It is often assumed that Fichte's aim in Part I of the System of Ethics is to provide a deduction of the moral law, the very thing that Kant – after years of unsuccessful attempts – deemed impossible. On this familiar reading, what Kant eventually viewed as an underivable 'fact' (Factum), the authority of the moral law, is what Fichte traces to its highest ground in what he calls the principle of the 'I'. However, scholars have largely overlooked a passage (...) in the System of Ethics where Fichte explicitly invokes Kant's doctrine of the fact of reason with approval, claiming that consciousness of the moral law grounds our belief in freedom (GA I/5:65). On the reading I defend, Fichte's invocation of the Factum is consistent with the structure of Part I when we distinguish (a) the feeling of moral compulsion from (b) the moral law itself. (shrink)

One of the central questions of Jacques Derrida's later writings concerns the sources of religion. At times he gives explicit priority to the universal dimension of religion. In other places, however, he considers the primacy of faith in its concrete, historical context. This paper will clarify Derrida's relationship to universality and historicity by first comparing his notion of "messianicity without messianism" to that of Walter Benjamin's "weak Messianism." After drawing out these differences, I will focus on Derrida's later writings. I (...) will show that much of the ambiguity of Derrida's thinking on religion can be resolved by turning to his work on khōra, the Greek word for "space" or "matter." The rhetoric of khōra can allow us to think through a twofold logic, one that includes the universal/historical distinction and exceeds its alternatives. (shrink)

Kant’s early readers were troubled by the appearance of a dilemma facing his theory of freedom. On the one hand, if we explain human actions according to laws or rules, then we risk reducing the activity of the will to necessity (the horn of determinism). But, on the other hand, if we explain human actions without laws or rules, then we face an equally undesirable outcome: that of reducing the will’s activity to mere chance (the horn of indeterminism). After providing (...) an overview of this dilemma, this chapter explores how Fichte and Schelling attempted to resolve it, in ways that ultimately shaped the course of post-Kantian idealism in the late 1790s and early 1800s. (shrink)

In his early writings, Kant says that the solution to the puzzle of how morality can serve as a motivating force in human life is nothing less than the “philosophers’ stone.” In this dissertation I show that for years Kant searched for the philosophers’ stone in the concept of “respect” (Achtung), which he understood as the complex effect practical reason has on feeling. -/- I sketch the history of that search in Chapters 1-2. In Chapter 3 I show that Kant’s (...) analysis in Groundwork I is incomplete because it does not explain how respect functions as a feeling in motivating choice. In Chapter 4 I argue that Kant’s subsequent attempt to sidestep this explanation in Groundwork III is unsuccessful, and that his position remains open to a skeptical threat. The argument in the second Critique, which I reconstruct in Chapters 5-6, overcomes this threat, and in doing so explains how the feeling of respect is both painful and pleasurable. -/- In the course of defending these claims, I provide an alternative reading of the shift in Kant’s ethical project from the Groundwork of 1785 to the second Critique of 1788 Against a common view in the literature, I argue that the shift does not concern the direction of Kant’s deduction (from freedom to morality, or morality to freedom); rather, it concerns his view of human sensibility and the resources he thinks we have to make our practical self-understanding intelligible. In the second Critique, I argue, Kant develops a novel approach to moral feeling from the perspective of the human agent; and this in turn clears room in his ethics for a new kind of a priori knowledge—namely, knowledge of what the activity of practical reason must feel like. By way of conclusion, I offer a few reasons for why the form of Kant’s argument in the second Critique is still relevant today, as it shows why we can only address moral skepticism from a first-personal perspective. (shrink)

This book sheds new light on the fascinating - at times dark and at times hopeful - reception of classical Yoga philosophies in Germany during the nineteenth century. Written for non-specialists, Indian Philosophy and Yoga in Germany will be of interest to students and scholars working on 19th-century philosophy, Indian philosophy, comparative philosophy, Hindu studies, intellectual history, and religious history.

Levinas never engaged closely with Fichte’s work, but there are two places in the chapter “Substitution,” in Otherwise than Being (1974), where he mentions Fichte by name. The point that Levinas underscores in both of these passages is that the other’s encounter with the subject is not the outcome of the subject’s freedom; it is not posited by the subject, as Fichte has it, but is prior to any free activity. The aim of this paper is to deepen the comparison (...) between Levinas and Fichte, giving special attention to Fichte's own novel theory of intersubjectivity and the summons. One result that emerges from this treatment is that both Levinas and Fichte view the second person in a way that has no equivalent in the current philosophical landscape. On this reading, each thinker views responsibility to the other, not only as an immediate and particular obligation, but also as an asymmetrical relation that gives the other moral priority. (shrink)

Moti Mizrahi argues that Gettier cases are unsuccessful counterexamples to the traditional analysis of knowledge (TAK) because such cases inadequately reveal epistemic failures of justified true belief (JTB); and because Gettier cases merely demonstrate semantic inadequacy, the apparent epistemic force of Gettier cases is misleading. Although Mizrahi claims to have deflated the epistemic force of Gettier cases, I will argue that the presence of semantic deficiency in Gettier cases neither requires nor indicates the denial of the epistemic force of those (...) cases. I will provide an extracted version of Mizrahi’s argument, which I believe to be most charitable to his motivation. Then I will offer a counterexample to a pivotal premise in Mizrahi’s argument, ultimately rendering the argument unsound. Finally, upon the examination of a plausible objection, I conclude that Gettier cases are epistemically sustained. (shrink)

Many aestheticians and ethicists are interested in the similarities and connections between aesthetics and ethics (Nussbaum 1990; Foot 2002; Gaut 2007). One way in which some have suggested the two domains are different is that in ethics there exist obligations while in aesthetics there do not (Hampshire 1954). However, Marcia Muelder Eaton has argued that there is good reason to think that aesthetic obligations do exist (Eaton 2008). We will explore the nature of these obligations by asking whether acts of (...) aesthetic supererogation (acts that go beyond the call of our aesthetic obligations) are possible. In this paper, we defend the thesis that there is good reason to think such acts exist. (shrink)

We describe on-going work on IAO-Intel, an information artifact ontology developed as part of a suite of ontologies designed to support the needs of the US Army intelligence community within the framework of the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS-A). IAO-Intel provides a controlled, structured vocabulary for the consistent formulation of metadata about documents, images, emails and other carriers of information. It will provide a resource for uniform explication of the terms used in multiple existing military dictionaries, thesauri and metadata registries, (...) thereby enhancing the degree to which the content formulated with their aid will be available to computational reasoning. (shrink)

Jeanine Grenberg argues that in Kant's moral philosophy, we access the moral law through feeling, specifically the feeling of respect. She claims the fact of reason refers to our conscious experience of categorical imperative and moral necessity is revealed through this feeling. Owen Ware critiques this "affect of reason" interpretation, arguing it relies on the flawed premise that all facts forced upon us are accessible only through sensibility. He uses Kant's example of the concept of substance, which we comprehend through (...) attention to its necessity, not sensation. Ware offers an alternative view, that we access the moral law by attending to its necessity, not through feeling. However, this view does not explain how we become aware of the content of the moral law. Though Grenberg's affect of reason interpretation coheres with the role of feeling in Kant's project, it struggles to preserve traditional understandings of the analytic. Ware rejects Grenberg’s feeling thesis but fails to provide a substantive alternative for grounding morality. His critique of Grenberg raises important questions about the fact of reason but an improved synthesis is needed to reconcile feeling’s epistemic role with the analytic. More work is required to articulate how we access the content of the moral law and explain Kant’s notions of conflict and respect. (shrink)

La rivelazione della persona, dall’individuo alla comunione es un libro que, exponiendo la temática desde la fe cristiana con un acento en la teología ortodoxa griega, atrae la atención de quien quiere comprenderse mejor así mismo como persona, identificando lo nocivo que puede llegar a entenderse simplemente como individuo y, a su vez, profundizando en lo que significa la comunión en el ser persona. El lenguaje claro, conciso y ordenado del profesor Ware se combina con una holgura y flexibilidad en (...) la exposición de sus planteamientos, enriquecidos por el lenguaje teológico que incluye varios Padres de la Iglesia y teólogos contemporáneos junto con autores más propios de otros ámbitos, como el literario. De esta manera, el profesor Ware logra destacar los elementos claves para comprender lo que implica que Dios se haya revelado. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss a distinctively non-paradigmatic instance of punishment: the punishment of non-citizens. I shall argue that the punishment of non-citizens presents considerable difficulties for one currently popular account of criminal punishment: Antony Duff’s communicative expressive theory of punishment. Duff presents his theory explicitly as an account of the punishment of citizens - and as I shall argue, this is not merely an incidental feature of his account. However, it is plausible that a general account of (...) the criminal law of the kind of idealized state that Duff focusses on will need to say something about how that law deals with non-citizens. In particular, I claim, it will need to provide a justification for punishing them. Because Duff's account says nothing about the punishment of non-citizens, it cannot do so. Furthermore, although Duff's more recent suggestion that non-citizens should be thought of as being guests in the state on whose territory they are present may provide for an account of their criminalization, it cannot easily be extended into an account that provides a justification for their punishment. (shrink)

When Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the IMF, was arrested on charges of sexual assault arising from events that were alleged to have occurred during his stay in an up-market hotel in New York, a sizeable portion of French public opinion was outraged - not by the possibility that a well-connected and widely-admired politician had assaulted an immigrant hotel worker, but by the way in which the accused had been treated by the American authorities. I shall argue that in one (...) relatively minor respect, Strauss-Kahn’s defenders were correct. They were correct to argue that the parading of Strauss-Kahn before the press, in handcuffs - the so-called perp walk - constituted a form of punishment; and thus that it contravened the principle that criminal punishments should only be administered after a fair trial. So-called ‘expressive’ theorists of punishment hold that a form of harsh treatment can only constitute a form of punishment if it has an expressive role. Within the expressive family, we can distinguish between views on which the primary target of the communication to be the society of which either offender, or victim, or both are members—what I call ‘Denunciatory Views’, and views which take the principle target of penal communication to be the offender—such as Antony Duff’s Communicative View. I shall argue that on both a minimal account of punishment and on either kind of expressive view, ‘perp walks’ are a form of punishment. (shrink)

Antony Duff argues that the criminal law’s characteristic function is to hold people responsible. It only has the authority to do this when the person who is called to account, and those who call her to account, share some prior relationship. In systems of domestic criminal law, this relationship is co-citizenship. The polity is the relevant community. In international criminal law, the relevant community is simply the moral community of humanity. I am sympathetic to his community-based analysis, but argue (...) that the moral community must play a greater role in the domestic case and that the collection of individual political communities must play a greater role in the international case. (shrink)

Wie wäre es mit einer anderen Ausg. der Reichen und Berühmten? Zuerst das Offensichtliche – die Harry-Potter-Romane sind primitiver Aberglaube, der Kinder dazu ermutigt, an Fantasie zu glauben, anstatt Verantwortung für die Welt zu übernehmen – natürlich die Norm. JKR ist genauso ahnungslos über sich und die Welt wie die meisten Menschen,aber etwa 200 Mal so destruktiv wie der durchschnittliche Amerikaner und etwa 800 Mal mehr als der durchschnittliche Chinese. Sie war verantwortlich für die Zerstörung von vielleicht 30.000 Hektar Wald, (...) um diese Müllromane zu produzieren, und die ganze Erosion, die sich daraus ergibt (nicht trivial, da esmindestens 6 und vielleicht 12 Tonnen/Jahr Boden in den Ozean für alle auf der Erde oder vielleicht 100 Tonnen pro Amerikaner ist, und so etwa 5000 Tonnen/Jahr für Rowlings Bücher und Bewegungenundihre 3 Kinder). Die Erde verliert jedes Jahr mindestens 1% ihres Oberbodens, so dass der größte Teil ihrer Nahrungsmittelanbaukapazität weg sein wird, wenn sie sich dem Jahr 2100 nähert. Dann gibt es die riesige Menge an verbranntem Brennstoff und Abfall, die gemacht werden, um die Bücher und Filme, Plastikpuppen usw. herzustellen und zu vertreiben. Sie zeigt ihren Mangel an sozialer Verantwortung, indem sie Kinder hervorbringt, anstatt ihre Millionen zu verwenden, um familienplanerisch zu sein oder den Regenwald aufzukaufen, und indem sie die konventionelle liberale Dummheit der Vorherrschaft der Dritten Welt fördert, die Großbritannien, Amerika, die Welt und die Zukunft ihres Nachkommen zerstört. Natürlich unterscheidet sie sich nicht so sehr von den anderen 7. 8 Milliarden ahnungslos - nur noiser und zerstörerischer.. Es ist das keine kostenlose Mittagessen Problem schreiben groß. Der Mob kann einfach nicht sehen, dass es nichts gibt, wie einer Person zu helfen, ohne anderen zu schaden. Rechte oder Privilegien, die Neuankömmlingen in einer überfüllten Welt gewährt werden, können die Rechte anderer nurvereist enden. Trotz der massiven ökologischen Katastrophen, die sich jeden Tag überall vor ihnen abspielen, können sie sie nicht an die hemmungslose Mutterschaft der "Vielfalt" heften, die für den größten Teil des Bevölkerungszuwachses des letzten Jahrhunderts und all das in diesem jahr erklärt. Ihnen fehlt eine Kombination aus Intelligenz, Bildung, Erfahrung und Gesunden, die erforderlich sind, um die täglichen Angriffe auf die Ressourcen und das Funktionieren der Gesellschaft auf den letztendlichen Zusammenbruch der industriellen Zivilisation zu extrapolieren. Jede Mahlzeit, jede Fahrt mit dem Auto oder Bus, jedes Paar Schuhe ist ein weiterer Nagel im Sarg der Erde. Es ist ihr wahrscheinlich nie in den Sinn gekommen, dass ein Sitz in einem Flugzeug von London nach San Francisco etwa eine Tonne Kohlenstoff produziert, der etwa 3 Quadratmeter Meereis schmilzt, und als eine der Überprivilegierten hat sie wahrscheinlich Hunderte solcher Flüge geflogen. Nicht nur die Reichen und Berühmten, sondern fast jede öffentliche Persönlichkeit überhaupt, einschließlich praktisch aller Lehrer, werden unter Druck gesetzt, politisch korrekt zu sein, was in den westlichen Demokratien heute sozialdemokratisch(neomarxistisch – d.h. verwässerte Kommunisten) bedeutet, dass die Supremacisten der Dritten Welt für die Zerstörung ihrer eigenen Gesellschaften und ihrer eigenen Nachkommen arbeiten. Diejenigen also, deren Bildung,Erfahrung, Intelligenz (und der grundlegende gesunde Menschenverstand), die ihnen verbieten sollten, überhaupt öffentliche Erklärungen abzugeben, völlig alle Medien beherrschen und den Eindruck erwecken, dass die Intelligenten und Zivilisierten Demokratie, Vielfalt und Gleichheit begünstigen müssen, während die Wahrheit ist, dass dies die Probleme und nicht die Lösungen sind und dass sie selbst die Hauptfeinde der Zivilisation sind. Siehe my Suicide by Democracy 2nd ed (2019) und andere. (shrink)

An exploration of RA Duff's 'communicative theory of punishment' in contexts of deep legal and cultural pluralism.

Some philosophers (Duff, Hampton) conceive of punishment as a way of communicating a message to the punished and argue that this communicative function justifies the harm of punishment. I object to communicative theories because punishment seems intuitively justified in cases in which it fails as a method of communication. Punishment fails as communication when the punished ignores the intended message or fails to understand it. Among those most likely to ignore or fail to understand the message of punishment are (...) the most hardened criminals, whom we typically think are appropriate targets of punishment. I suggest that an alternative justificatory strategy, one that focuses not on the successful receipt of the message of punishment by the wrongdoer but on the expression of condemnation by the community, is not subject to the same worry. The norms of successful expression are more easily met than those of communication, so that expressing condemnation toward a criminal might be justified even if he is unreceptive in the face of the expression. (shrink)

Wie ist es wohl, eine Fledermaus zu sein? Wäre ein rein physikalisches Duplikat von mir nur ein empfindungsloser Zombie? Muss man sich seinem Schicksal ergeben, wenn man sich unfreiwillig als lebensnotwendige Blutwaschanlage eines weltberühmten Violinisten wieder findet? Kann man sich wünschen, der König von China zu sein? Bin ich vielleicht nur ein Gehirn in einem Tank mit Nährflüssigkeit, das die Welt von einer Computersimulation vorgegaukelt bekommt? Worauf beziehen sich die Menschen auf der Zwillingserde mit ihrem Wort 'Wasser', wenn es bei (...) ihnen gar kein H2O gibt? -/- Diese und weitere seltsame Fragen sind das tägliche Brot vieler professioneller Philosophen. Die abstrusen Umstände, die dabei geschildert werden, nennt man "Gedankenexperimente". -/- Was soll die Erörterung dieser Szenarien, die sich so weit von unserem alltäglichen Leben, z.T. außerhalb der Grenzen unserer Wirklichkeit abspielen? Welche Rolle spielen diese "Gedankenexperimente" in der philosophischen Methodologie? Ist diese Rolle überhaupt berechtigt? -/- Das vorliegende Buch gibt Antworten auf diese Fragen. Es stellt sich heraus, dass diese seltsamen Gedankenexperimente nicht nur berechtigte, sondern überaus wichtige Instrumente philosophischen Forschens darstellen. (shrink)

In a now classic paper published in 1991, Alberch introduced the concept of genotype–phenotype (G!P) mapping to provide a framework for a more sophisticated discussion of the integration between genetics and developmental biology that was then available. The advent of evo-devo first and of the genomic era later would seem to have superseded talk of transitions in phenotypic space and the like, central to Alberch’s approach. On the contrary, this paper shows that recent empirical and theoretical advances have only sharpened (...) the need for a different conceptual treat- ment of how phenotypes are produced. Old-fashioned metaphors like genetic blueprint and genetic programme are not only woefully inadequate but positively misleading about the nature of G!P, and are being replaced by an algorithmic approach emerging from the study of a variety of actual G!P maps. These include RNA folding, protein function and the study of evolvable soft- ware. Some generalities are emerging from these disparate fields of analysis, and I suggest that the concept of ‘developmental encoding’ (as opposed to the classical one of genetic encoding) provides a promising computational–theoretical underpinning to coherently integrate ideas on evolvability, modularity and robustness and foster a fruitful framing of the G!P mapping problem. (shrink)

Das Anliegen der vorliegenden Studie ist der Entwurf eines wirklichkeitstreuen Modells der Kommunikation. Ebenfalls hat uns interessiert, die konstitutiven Regeln der Kommunikation zu bestimmen und einige Wirksamkeitsnormen und moralische Normen, die mit wünschenswerten sozialen Kommunikationsformen assoziierbar sein könnten, zu identifizieren. Die Kommunikation ist ein facettenreiches und zugleich interpretationsoffenes Phänomen, welches zahlreiche unterschiedliche theoretische Modelle erlaubt. Sie kann von den Psychologen als selbstständigen Verhaltenstyp, von den Soziologen als entscheidenden Sozialisierungsfaktor, von den Anthropologen als kulturhervorbringendes und -verbreitendes Mittel, von den Semiologen als (...) Prozess der (Um-)Konfiguration der verschiedenen Bedeutungen von Bedeutungsträgern usw. gedeutet werden. Das vorliegende Interpretationsmodell der Kommunikation ist allgemein, zum Teil auch hermeneutisch, indem es a) den Kommunikationsprozess als solchen und nicht etwa als eine gesonderte Instanz desselben berücksichtigt, b) eine einzige, nämlich die interaktive Perspektive auf die Kommunikation hervorhebt und c) zweckgemäß die Kommunikation in einen normativen, intelligiblen Rahmen überträgt, wobei sich eine empirische Beschreibung der Kommunikationsfakten zwecks Feststellung allgemeingültiger Gesetze von selbst erübrigt. Diesem theoretischen Modell entsprechend ist die Kommunikation eine Interaktion oder eine wechselseitige semiotische Interaktion, innerhalb derer die involvierten Personen mithilfe von Zeichen komplementäre Verhalten manifestieren, die bestimmten (sozialen) Regeln unterworfen sind. Demzufolge ist die Kommunikation kein individuelles Spiel, sondern ein Team-Spiel. Ihre Protagonisten spielen alle genauso wichtige Rollen, und von ihrer Teilnahme hängt beides, Gelingen und Misslingen der Kommunikation, gleichermaßen ab. Nachdem wir den Begriff der Kommunikation im allgemeinen erklärt hatten, galt unser Interesse der Definition und der Klassifizierung der exklusiven Ausführungsmittel des oben beschriebenen Prozesses, das heißt, der Zeichen. Die semiotische Literatur behandelt die Zeichen sowohl als (stoffliche, mentale oder gemischte) Objekte als auch als Funktionen. Für unsere Demarche haben wir es vorgezogen, die Zeichen als in Wirklichkeit existierende Reize zu beschreiben, die auf Grund von sozialen Konventionen stets auf „etwas Anderes” als auf sich selbst hinweisen. Dieses gemeinte „Andere“, die Bedeutung des Zeichens, ist nichts anderes als die Gesamtheit seiner Anwendungen. Die Natur des Verhältnisses von Zeichen und (willkürlicher, notwendiger, durch Analogie oder Ähnlichkeit begründeter) Bedeutung hat uns dann erlaubt, vier Zeichenkategorien auszumachen und zu beschreiben: Wörter, Indizien, Bilder und Sinnbilder. Was die Erläuterung der konstitutiven Faktoren der Kommunikation anbetrifft, haben wir im Einklang mit den Forschungen angesehener Semiotiker mit sechs grundlegenden Parametern gerechnet: Sender, Empfänger, Mitteilung, Code, Kommunikationssituation und Kommunikationskanal. Doch war das wirklich die einzige treffliche Option? Hätte der Kommunikationsprozess nicht ausgehend von anderen – wenigeren oder mehreren – Faktoren analysiert werden können? Gewiss kann die Kommunikation auch mittels weiterer Variablen verstanden werden – und die Fachliteratur ist nicht müde geworden, die Vorzüge anderer Beschreibungsmuster zu zeigen –; von den sechs semiotischen, von Roman Jakobson eingeführten Parametern kann man indes nicht wegsehen. Sie erlauben allemal eine ziemlich genaue Bestimmung der durch die Protragonisten der Kommunikation durchgeführten Handlungen. In Übereinstimmung mit der allgemeinen Methode der Handlungstheorie haben wir jeden konstitutiven Faktor der Kommunikation mit je einem Handlungspaar korreliert, zum einen beim Sender, zum anderen beim Empfänger. Die Berücksichtigung der Sprache und implizite der Kommunikation im Kontext der Handlungstheorie ist keine bahnbrechende Unternehmung, da sie unter anderem schon John Austin, John Searle und Jürgen Habermas als Ausgangspunkt ihrer Analyse der Sprechakte gedient hat. Auch die Korrelation der Kommunikationsparameter mit einer Handlung ist kein Novum, indem sie auf analoge Weise bereits durch die Versuche einiger Semiotiker wie Roman Jakobson und Karl Bühler, die Funktionen der Sprache bzw. des linguistischen Zeichens zu systematisieren, unternommen wurde. Unser origineller Beitrag besteht aus der Korrelation jedes Faktors der Kommunikation mit einer Interaktion, das heißt mit einem Paar von komplementären Handlungen, so dass jeder Handlung des Senders eine Handlung des Empfängers entspricht. In diesem Sinne haben wir Sender, Empfänger, Mitteilung, Code, Kommunikationssituation und Kommunikationskanal in spezifischen Interaktionstypen (Sichentlarven – Nachvollziehen, Einflussnahme – Antwort, Sendung – Empfang, syntaktische Informierung – syntaktisches Verständnis, Bezeichnung – „Mitbezeich-nung“ bzw. Anknüpfung einer soziale Beziehung – Beibehaltung einer soziale Beziehung) inszeniert. Nachdem wir den Kommunikationsprozess als Totalität von sechs Interaktionstypen beschrieben hatten, haben wir auf drei mögliche Ordnungen der Kommunikationsformen verwiesen, wobei die Einteilungskriterien jeweils die verschiedenen gebrauchten Zeichentypen, die Art der Beziehung zwischen Sender und Empfänger bzw. der sich spontan manifestierende soziale Abstand zwischen den Kommunizierenden waren. Indem unsere Demarche darauf abzielte, die Eigentümlichkeiten verbaler vs. nonverbaler, formaler vs. informaler, der individuell, gruppenweise oder öffentlich stattfindenden Kommunikation auszumachen, haben wir die Akzente auf die Pragmatik der Kommunikation gesetzt und somit einige Hinweise auf den Erwerb spezifischer Kommunikationsfähigkeiten geben können. Das von uns vorgeschlagene theoretische Modell hat also nicht nur ein besseres Verständnis der Kommunikation beabsichtigt, sondern auch die Feststellung eines vollständigen Regelwerks der Kommunikation. Diese Regeln wurden als Formen des zu erwartenden sozialen Verhaltens behandelt – sowohl im normativen als auch im antizipativen Sinne – und wurden im Gefolge von John Searle in zwei Hauptklassen eingeteilt: konstitutive und normative Regeln. Die konstitutiven Regeln bestimmen die von ihnen logisch-abhängigen Verhaltensweisen und legen die Bedingungen der Kommunikationsakte fest, während die normativen Regeln die vorgegebenen, unabhängigen Verhaltensweisen berücksichtigen und die wünschenswerten Bedingungen für ihre Vollziehung festlegen. Um die konstitutiven Regeln ausmachen zu können, sind wir davon ausgegangen, dass der Prozess der menschlichen Kommunikation kein naturhafter, sondern ein institutioneller ist. Mit anderen Worten ist die Kommunikation das Ergebnis einer sozialen Vereinbarung und eben kein unabhängiges Phänomen, das nur von außen zu beschreiben wäre. Je nachdem, wie die notwendigen Regeln, welche die soziale Vereinbarung definieren, respektiert oder verletzt werden, haben wir fünf mögliche Situationen identifiziert: die vollkommene Kommunikation, die teilweise geglückte Kommunikation, die Nonkommunikation, die relative und die absolute Antikommunikation, wobei man hinzufügen muss, dass die erste und die letzte Situation Grenzerfahrungen ohne jegliche Referenz darstellen. Die konstitutiven Regeln der Kommunikation wurden mit allen sechs spezifischen Interaktionstypen korreliert (Sichentlarven – Nachvollziehen, Einflussnahme – Antwort, Sendung – Empfang, syntaktische Informierung – syntaktisches Verständnis, Bezeich-nung – „Mitbezeichnung“ bzw. Anknüpfung einer soziale Beziehung – Beibehaltung einer soziale Beziehung), so dass sie wenigstens aus einem bestimmten Gesichtspunkt ein konsistentes und vollständiges System bilden können. Im Unterschied zum System der konstitutiven Regeln sind hier die Kommunikationsnormen nicht erschöpfend behandelt worden. So wurden aus der Vielfalt der Vorschriften, die zu erwünschten Ergebnissen in der Kommunikation führen könnten, nur einige im Rahmen der vorliegenden Studie angegangen. Diese betreffen die Wirksamkeit und die moralischen Aspekte der Kommunikation und wurden ihrerseits mit den oben angeführten sechs Interaktionstypen korreliert. Dabei waren nicht so sehr die unausweichlichen Lücken im Inventarisieren der Normen, welche die Genauigkeit und die Ökonomie der Kommunikation gewähren, am problematischsten, sondern vielmehr der Grad an moralischer Relevanz, den die Kommunikationsakte beanspruchen können. Wir sind fest davon überzeugt, dass die Handlungen der Kommunizierenden eher davon abhängen, inwiefern sie moralische Verpflichtungen eingehen, und eben nicht davon, was für einen Gewinn sie dadurch erzielen, da keine der berücksichtigten Handlungen sich der Moral gänzlich entziehen können. Ob „neutrale Metaregeln“ für den Fall, dass einige moralische Eingrenzungen mit den Wirksamkeitsnormen kollidieren, vonnöten sind, sei dahin gestellt. Ein theoretisches Modell kann nur dann als nützlich bezeichnet werden, wenn es neue Forschungsansätze bringt und neue Forschungswege ermöglicht. Unter diesem Blickwinkel hat die vorliegende Studie zwei mögliche Fortsetzungen: die Ergänzung der Gesamtheit der normativen Regeln der Kommunikation (im allgemeinen), bzw. das Unterteilen des allgemeinen Modells der Kommunikation in stereotypen Mustern wie der politischen oder didaktischen Kommunikation usw. Schließlich hängen Gelingen und Anwendbarkeit der vorliegenden Studie in pragmatischer Sicht eben davon ab, inwiefern sie dem Leser / Benutzer als Wekzeug zur Verbesserung seiner Kommunikationsleistungen dienen kann. (shrink)

Das spezifische Ziel von Argumentationen ist nicht einfach, den Adressaten etwas glauben zu machen - dies wäre bloße Rhetorik ﷓, sondern: den Adressaten beim Erkennen der Akzeptabilität (insbesondere der Wahrheit) der These anzuleiten und ihn so zu begründetem Glauben, zu Erkenntnis zu führen. Argumentationen leiten das Erkennen an, indem sie in ihren Argumenten hinreichende Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen der These als erfüllt beurteilen und so den Adressaten implizit auffordern, diese Bedingungen zu überprüfen. Argumentationen sind gültig, wenn sie prinzipiell das Erkennen anleiten können; d. (...) h. wenn die genannten Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen hinreichend sind, wenn sie tatsächlich erfüllt (die Argumente also wahr) sind und wenn es irgendjemanden gibt, der zwar die Akzeptabilität der Argumente, nicht aber die der These erkannt hat. Eine gültige Argumentation ist adäquat, um einen bestimmten Adressaten rational zu überzeugen, wenn dieser u. a. die Akzeptabilität der Argumente, nicht aber die der These erkannt hat. Die in gültigen Argumentationen als erfüllt beurteilten Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen sind Konkretisierungen allgemeiner Erkenntnisprinzipien für die spezifische These, z. B. des deduktiven Erkenntnisprinzips: 'Eine Proposition ist wahr, wenn sie von wahren Propositionen logisch impliziert wird.' oder des erkenntnisgenetischen Erkenntnisprinzips: 'Eine Proposition ist wahr, wenn sie korrekt verifiziert worden ist.' Eine Konkretisierung des deduktiven Prinzips für eine These p wäre z. B.: 'p ist wahr, 1. wenn q und r wahr sind und 2. wenn q und r zusammen p logisch implizieren.' Sind beide Bedingungen erfüllt, so könnte 'q; r; also p.' eine gültige deduktive Argumentation sein. Die verschiedenen Argumentationstypen unterscheiden sich danach, auf welchem Erkenntnisprinzip sie basieren. Das argumentativ angeleitete Erkennen der Akzeptabilität der These funktioniert so: Der Adressat benutzt das von ihm (zumindest implizit) gewußte allgemeine Erkenntnisprinzip als Checkliste, auf der er nach dem Vorbringen der Argumente abhakt, welche Akzeptabilitätsbedingung des Erkenntnisprinzips durch das Zutreffen des Arguments jeweils erfüllt wird. Auf der Basis dieser Funktionsbestimmung werden in der "Praktischen Argumentationstheorie" (erstmalig) präzise Gültigkeitskriterien für Argumentationen allgemein und für mehrere spezielle Argumentationstypen entwickelt, erkenntnistheoretisch begründet und auf komplexe Argumentationsbeispiele aus Philosophie, Wissenschaft, Technik und Kultur angewendet. Die Analyse der erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlagen - der zugrundeliegenden Erkenntnisprinzipien - vor allem der interpretierenden und praktischen Argumentationen ist zudem von erheblicher Bedeutung weit über die Argumentationstheorie hinaus: für die Interpretationstheorie, die Handlungstheorie und die praktische Philosophie. (shrink)

Wenn Präsident Kennedy nicht erschossen worden wäre, hätte er dann Nordvietnam bombardiert? Das weiß Gott allein. Oder doch nicht? Weiß wenigstens Er, was Kennedy getan hätte? ... Die Jesuiten behaupteten unter anderem, daß viele menschliche Handlungen in dem Sinne frei seien, daß die Ausführenden nicht logisch oder kausal gezwungen seien, sie auszuführen. („Frei“ wird im vorliegenden Aufsatz stets in diesem Sinne verwendet werden.) Wie behält Gott dann die Kontrolle über die menschliche Geschichte? Nicht dadurch, daß Er menschliche Handlungen kausal determiniert, (...) wie die Dominikaner geglaubt zu haben scheinen , sondern indem Er Umstände herbeiführt, von denen Er weiß, daß wir in ihnen freiwillig Seinen Plänen entsprechend handeln werden. (shrink)