The prestigious French publisher Presses Universitaires de France has recently brought out (November 1995) a new French edition of Elie Halévy's well known book "The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism", first published in France in three volumes as "La formation du radicalisme philosophique" (1901-1904) and translated into English in 1926. The prevailing opinion on this book is that it gives an excellent account of English utilitarianism. Thus, in the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, Talcott Parsons speaks of it as the ‘virtually (...) definitive analysis of utilitarianism’. More recently Donald Winch, in his introduction to the Penguin edition of John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy, describes Halévy's book as: ‘Still the best study of the ideas and activities of the school taken as a whole’. In this short essay I express a very different opinion. I show that Halévy, who qualifies utilitarianism (with obvious disgust) as ‘a plebeian or rather bourgeois morality’, as ‘much too simple’, completely misunderstood the writings of the English and Scottish utilitarian philosophers. (shrink)

This book describes the philosophical principles underlying the doctrine (the political project) often called “classical liberalism”. By this expression we mean, in this book, the project for society proposed, during the second half of the eighteenth century, by David Hume and Adam Smith in Great Britain, Turgot and Condorcet in France, Thomas Jefferson in the United States and Kant and Humboldt in Germany. The differences between the principles of “classical liberalism” and those of the extreme doctrines of Milton Friedman and (...) Friedrich Hayek (often confused with 'classical liberalism') are clearly explained. -/- This book has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Vietnamese, Rumanian and Turkish. -/- Several scholars have done me the honor of posting a .pdf version of this work (which is no longer available in paper form). Here are three excellent versions that are easily found : -/- "Les fondements philosophiques du libéralisme jugurtha noblogs" (224 pages), "Les fondements philosophiques du libéralisme" (224 pages), in ZLibrary. -/- "Les fondements philosophiques du libéralisme abdelmagidzarrouki" (224 pages), -/- . (shrink)

Resumen Hermenéutica y toma de decisiones en ética clínica La moderna hermenéutica se interesa por las condiciones de posibilidad de la comprensión humana. Sus aportaciones son de indudable interés para el campo de la ética biomédica, donde médico y paciente tratan de comprenderse mutuamente con el fin de concretar determinado proyecto de cuidados. Sin embargo, esta aproximación está lejos de ser aprovechable para formar una pauta concreta de cara a la toma de decisiones en este campo. La hermenéutica acierta al (...) poner el centro de gravedad en el diálogo, en lugar de en el método, pero olvida que, en Gadamer, el diálogo está dirigido a la verdad. Esto es lo que se tratará de poner de manifiesto en este trabajo, intentado establecer la conexión de dicha noción con las de bien, historia y comunidad. -/- Abstract Modern hermeneutics deals with the conditions of the possibilities of human understanding. Its contributions are particularly pertinent to clinical ethics, where patient and doctor seek to mutually understand one another in order to establish a determined care plan. Nevertheless, this approach is far from useful for the formulation of a concrete standard for decision making in this area. Hermeneutics is effective in putting the focus on dialogue, rather than method. But it overlooks the fact that dialogue, according to Gadamer, is directed towards truth. The present article aims to highlight this point, and seeks to establish the connection between this notion of truth and ideas of good, history and community. -/- Resumo Hermenêutica e a tomada de decisões em ética clínica A hermenêutica moderna interessa-se pelas condições de possibilidade da compreensão humana. Indubitavelmente, os seus contributos são de interesse para a ética biomédica, na qual o médico e o paciente tratam de compreender-se mutuamente a fim de concretizar um determinado projeto de cuidados. No entanto, esta perspectiva está longe de poder ser utilizada como padrão concreto para a tomada de decisões neste campo. A hermenêutica tem razão ao colocar o centro de gravidade no diálogo e não no método, entretanto, esquece-se de que, em Gadamer, o diálogo está orientado para a verdade. É precisamente isso que se pretende evidenciar neste trabalho, procurando estabelecer-se a conexão entre a referida noção de verdade com as noções de bem, história e comunidade. (shrink)

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) debate is gaining ground in contemporary evolutionary biology. In parallel, a number of philosophical standpoints have emerged in an attempt to clarify what exactly is represented by the EES. For Massimo Pigliucci, we are in the wake of the newest instantiation of a persisting Kuhnian paradigm; in contrast, Telmo Pievani has contended that the transition to an EES could be best represented as a progressive reformation of a prior Lakatosian scientific research program, with the extension (...) of its Neo-Darwinian core and the addition of a brand-new protective belt of assumptions and auxiliary hypotheses. Here, we argue that those philosophical vantage points are not the only ways to interpret what current proposals to ‘extend’ the Modern Synthesis-derived ‘standard evolutionary theory’ (SET) entail in terms of theoretical change in evolutionary biology. We specifically propose the image of the emergent EES as a vast network of models and interweaved representations that, instantiated in diverse practices, are connected and related in multiple ways. Under that assumption, the EES could be articulated around a paraconsistent network of evolutionary theories (including some elements of the SET), as well as models, practices and representation systems of contemporary evolutionary biology, with edges and nodes that change their position and centrality as a consequence of the co-construction and stabilization of facts and historical discussions revolving around the epistemic goals of this area of the life sciences. We then critically examine the purported structure of the EES—published by Laland and collaborators in 2015—in light of our own network-based proposal. Finally, we consider which epistemic units of Evo-Devo are present or still missing from the EES, in preparation for further analyses of the topic of explanatory integration in this conceptual framework. (shrink)

Contemporary evolutionary biology comprises a plural landscape of multiple co-existent conceptual frameworks and strenuous voices that disagree on the nature and scope of evolutionary theory. Since the mid-eighties, some of these conceptual frameworks have denounced the ontologies of the Modern Synthesis and of the updated Standard Theory of Evolution as unfinished or even flawed. In this paper, we analyze and compare two of those conceptual frameworks, namely Niles Eldredge’s Hierarchy Theory of Evolution (with its extended ontology of evolutionary entities) and (...) the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (with its proposal of an extended ontology of evolutionary processes), in an attempt to map some epistemic bridges (e.g. compatible views of causation; niche construction) and some conceptual rifts (e.g. extra-genetic inheritance; different perspectives on macroevolution; contrasting standpoints held in the “externalism–internalism” debate) that exist between them. This paper seeks to encourage theoretical, philosophical and historiographical discussions about pluralism or the possible unification of contemporary evolutionary biology. (shrink)

PDF with introduction and front and back materials. Abstract: A provocative examination of the consequences of Levinas’s and Adorno’s thought for contemporary ethics and political philosophy. This book unfolds a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the “non-identity thinking” of Adorno and the “ethics of the Other” of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and “inhuman” material (...) others such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life. -/- “This is an extremely impressive, original, and thorough treatment of two key twentieth-century thinkers and their applicability to the most pressing social and political issues of our time.” — Jeffrey A. Bernstein, author of Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History -/- “This book is an excellent and timely contribution to political and environmental philosophy, located around a nuanced historical and philosophical approach to Levinas and Adorno. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with these figures or with the current moment.” — Martin Shuster, author of Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham are often said to have held opposed views concerning the way “the value” of different pleasures should be estimated. Mill is accused of being an inconsistent utilitarian because he thought that, when comparing the value of two pleasures, we should not forget to take their “quality” into account. Bentham, on the other hand, is said to have believed that we should take “only quantity” into consideration. By verifying what they actually wrote, and reflecting on (...) what they meant by words like “value”, “quantity”, and “quality”, we find that these allegations are largely imaginary and that the difference between Mill and Bentham on this question has (at least) been exaggerated. Bentham, for example, did not write that "quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry", as is so often reported. In his Principles of Morals and Legislation he clearly tells us why he rejects the inaccurate word “quantity”, when speaking of “the value of (a lot of) pain or pleasure”, and he explicitly introduces “quality” – both the word and the concept – in his analysis of rewards and punishments. These clarifications allow us to sort-out a few other confusions concerning utilitarianism. We explain, for example, why authors like Amartya Sen and Michael Sandel are mistaken in believing that rights and freedoms have “no intrinsic value” (only instrumental value) in utilitarian ethics. (shrink)

Everyone has heard of "the invisible hand," the famous metaphor used by Adam Smith (1723-1790) in The Wealth of Nations. Although he uses the expression only once in the book, it has given rise to controversy that has lasted for over two centuries. -/- The famous expression has been understood, in (at least) two very different ways. In one way by most of academia, and in a very different way by Keynes, Noah Chomsky and more lately by Mark Blaug (in (...) the second edition of The New Palgrave, 2008). -/- In the standard textbook interpretation, it is considered a poetical name for "the price mechanism" and presented as an argument in favor of laisser-faire and free trade. In this paper we recall the less well-known interpretation (of Keynes, Blaug and Chomsky), showing that Smith was more reserved towards laisser-faire than is commonly believed and that by "invisible hand" he did not mean the price mechanism. (shrink)

This paper excavates the practice-oriented background and therapeutic significance of emptiness in the Madhyamaka philosophy attributed to Nāgārjuna and Sengzhao. Buddhist emptiness unravels experiential and linguistic reification through meditation and argumentation. The historical contexts and uses of the word indicate that it is primarily a practical diagnostic and therapeutic concept. Emptiness does not lead to further views or truths but, akin to yet distinct from Ajñāna and Pyrrhonian skepticism, the suspension of assertion. This sense of emptiness as a practice can (...) be traced in the intercultural transmission of Madhyamaka from Nāgārjuna, its paradigmatic philosopher, to Sengzhao 僧肇, its first pivotal indigenous Chinese representative. (shrink)

Psychiatry has witnessed a new wave of approaches to clinical phenotyping and the study of psychopathology, including the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria, clinical staging, network approaches, the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology, and the general psychopathology factor, as well as a revival of interest in phenomenological psychopathology. The question naturally emerges as to what the relationship between these new approaches is – are they mutually exclusive, competing approaches, or can they be integrated in some way and used (...) to enrich each other? In this opinion piece, we propose a possible integration between clinical staging and phenomenological psychopathology. Domains identified in phenomenological psychopathology, such as selfhood, embodiment, affectivity, etc., can be overlaid on clinical stages in order to enrich and deepen the phenotypes captured in clinical staging (‘high resolution’ clinical phenotypes). This approach may be useful both ideographically and nomothetically, in that it could complement diagnosis, enrich clinical formulation, and inform treatment of individual patients, as well as help guide aetiological, prediction, and treatment research. The overlaying of phenomenological domains on clinical stages may require that these domains are reformulated in dimensional rather than categorial terms. This integrative project requires assessment tools, some of which are already available, that are sensitive and thorough enough to pick up on the range of relevant psychopathology. The proposed approach offers opportunities for mutual enrichment: clinical staging may be enriched by introducing greater depth to phenotypes; phenomenological psychopathology may be enriched by introducing stages of severity and disorder progression to phenomenological analysis. (shrink)

One of the most disputed questions among economists is that of "the role" and "size" that the public sector should have in a rich and developed country like France. -/- The importance of this question is understandable, because the history of nations is filled with examples of a sector (or a branch) of the economy becoming too large, or remaining too small, hampering growth or making the economy more vulnerable. A recent case is that of the "Financial Corporations Sector", which (...) doubled in size in several countries during the two decades leading up to the 2008 economic collapse [1]. -/- It is therefore legitimate to ask whether this is not also the case, in France, with "General Government" or "the Public Sector". -/- We explain why the argument most often used by those who hold this opinion (that the ratio "public expenditure/GDP" is a good measure of the size of the public sector and that in France it is too high) is not a serious one. -/- . (shrink)

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental crisis. This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the myriad things, (...) and being responsively attuned in encountering and responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and progressive political ecology. This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is prudentially wise to defer to groups about how they are essentially constituted and defined. After a few words situating the paper in my greater research project (§1), I articulate the kind of deference I have in mind (§2). Then I offer two conditional arguments on why it is epistemically desirable to let other people tell you how they ought to be identified (§3). The first argument is that people are owed lexical sovereignty because denying (...) it is absurd; the second is that modest skeptics ought to agree with it on the basis of some relatively anodyne and plausible epistemic considerations. (shrink)

Resumen: Todo hecho debe ser narrado para ser objeto de examen valorativo. Pero este examen depende, en parte, de cómo aquél sea narrado. Algunos autores han señalado el valor democrático que posee el enfoque narrativo, en la medida en que permite que una narración sea construida a partir de diferentes puntos de vista. El problema es que estos puntos de vista pueden conducir a soluciones alternativas o incluso antagónicas, fenómeno no infrecuente en una sociedad multicultural como la nuestra. Desde un (...) punto de vista estrictamente narrativo, el mejor relato es el más persuasivo. Pero esto nos aboca al relativismo, puesto que la eficacia de un relato está en función del auditorio ante el que se argumenta. En este trabajo se ha intentado poner de manifiesto que sólo se alcanza a comprender la verdadera contribución de la narrativa si nos situamos, no tanto en el plano de los hechos, como en el plano de la normatividad. La tesis que aquí se sostiene es que la utilidad del enfoque narrativo está en función del valor arquetípico del modelo o estándar de conducta que eventualmente contenga una determinada narración. Entronca así directamente con la noción de razón práctica, más allá de sus específicos puntos de conexión con algunas de las metodologías bioéticas más importantes. Abstract: Every fact must be narrated in order to be subject of value judgement. But this value judgement depends partly on how that fact is narrated. Some authors have highlighted the democratic value of the narrative approach, because of its admission of different points of view to construct a story. The problem is that these points of view can easily lead to alternative solutions o even opposing ones. This phenomenon is not rare in our multicultural society. From an strictly narrative point of view, the best story is the most persuasive. But this lead us to relativism, because the efficacy of an story relies on the audience towards the argumentation is developed. In this work we have tried to bring to light that the genuine contribution of the narrative approach is not achieved if we stay on the level of facts and we do not pass to the level of normativity. We suggest the thesis that the utility of narrative approach is a function of the archetypical standard of behavior that a story may content. So this approach, beyond its specific connections with some of the most prominent bioethical methodologies, become directly connected with the notion of practical reason. (shrink)

Many philosophers have wrongly assumed that there is an asymmetry between the problem of induction and the logocentric predicament (the justification of deductive inferences). This paper will show that the demand for justification, for the very inferences that are required for justification, is deeply problematic. Using a Wittgensteinian approach, I will argue that justification has an internal relation with deductive and inductive inferences. For Wittgenstein, two concepts are internally related if my understanding of one is predicated on my understanding of (...) the other. Separating the two concepts so that one can be applied to the other is then a misunderstanding of role that these concepts play. (shrink)

In paradigmatic Confucian (Ruist) discourses, emotion (qing) has been depicted as co-arising with human nature (xing) and an irreducible constitutive source of human practices and their interpretation. The affects are concurrently naturally arising and alterable through how individuals react and respond to them and how they are or are not cultivated. That is, emotions are relationally mediated realities given in and transformed through how they are felt, understood, interpreted, and acted upon. Confucian discourses have elucidated the ethical character of the (...) emotions and sought to understand and cultivate emotional life as a hermeneutical and ethical task in establishing expectable patterns of human flourishing that orient virtues, roles, and relations. In this chapter, I explore the extent to which classical Ruist and Neo-Confucian discourses offer hermeneutical models for interpreting the complex interconnections between moral psychology and their mediations in the ethical life world. By examining a range of Confucian sources, the author argues that Confucian “moral psychologies” clarify affective dimensions of human existence within the interpersonal nexus of ethical life and indicate ways of cultivating affective awareness for relationally understanding and interpreting others, one’s world, and oneself. (shrink)

I argue that a Kantian inspired investigation into animal morality is both a plausible and coherent research program. To show that such an investigation is possible, I argue that philosophers, such as Korsgaard, who argue that reason demarcates nonhuman animals from the domain of moral beings are equivocating in their use of the term ‘rationality’. Kant certainly regards rationality as necessary for moral responsibility from a practical standpoint, but his distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal means that he can only (...) establish it as a marker for morality from a theoretical standpoint. This means that when it comes to evaluating the moral capabilities of others, rationality can be neither necessary nor sufficient for morality, leaving open the possibility of other empirical markers for moral responsibility. I argue that the higher faculties, character, implicit knowledge of universality, and antecedent practical pleasures (which provide a way to distinguish between morally motivated behaviour and other types of socially motivated behaviour) can all serve as empirical markers for morality. There is empirical evidence that at least some animals have conceptual capabilities and therefore the empirical marker of the higher faculties. In addition, there is suggestive evidence that merits further investigation for the other three markers. While this will not provide a definitive answer on whether animals are capable of acting morally, it will provide a Kantian outlook that can be used to evaluate empirical and philosophical work on animal morality. (shrink)

While there has been significant philosophical debate on whether nonlinguistic animals can possess conceptual capabilities, less time has been devoted to considering 'talking' animals, such as parrots. When they are discussed, their capabilities are often downplayed as mere mimicry. The most explicit philosophical example of this can be seen in Brandom's frequent comparisons of parrots and thermostats. Brandom argues that because parrots (like thermostats) cannot grasp the implicit inferential connections between concepts, their vocal articulations do not actually have any conceptual (...) content. In contrast, I argue that Pepperberg's work with Alex (and other African grey parrots) provides evidence that the vocal articulations of at least some parrots have conceptual content. Using Frege's insight that numbers assert something about a concept, I argue that Alex's ability to answer the question "How many?" depended upon a prior grasp of conceptual content. Developing this claim, I argue that Alex's arithmetical abilities show that he was capable of using numbers as both concepts and objects. Frege's theoretical insight and Pepperberg's empirical work provide reason to reconsider the capabilities of parrots, as well as what sorts of tasks provide evidence for conceptual content. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene por objeto analizar la noción de ciencia jurídica de los profesores Carlos E. Alchourrón y Eugenio Bulygin. Ésta parte del presupuesto de que la ciencia jurídica no está autorizada a crear nuevo Derecho, sino que sólo puede aspirar legítimamente a representarlo de alguna manera. Eso no significa que la suya sea una actividad meramente especulativa, en el sentido etimológico del término. Esto es, la ciencia jurídica no se limita a reflejar, como en un espejo, el Derecho tal (...) y como se nos presenta empíricamente, sino que confiere a éste un importante valor añadido a través de su sistematización. La primera parte de este trabajo está dedicada a exponer el modelo científico propuesto por los mencionados autores. En la segunda parte se presta especial atención a la cuestión de la separación entre descripción y prescripción en la actividad de la ciencia jurídica. Por último, en la tercera parte se cuestiona la utilidad del modelo propuesto sobre la base de los postulados teóricos de que se le hace partir, a lo que se suman ciertas dificultades metodológicas. (shrink)

This chapter examines: (1) the Black Notebooks in the context of Heidegger's political engagement on behalf of the National Socialist regime and his ambivalence toward some but not all of its political beliefs and tactics; (2) his limited "critique" of vulgar National Socialism and its biologically based racism for the sake of his own ethnocentric vision of the historical uniqueness of the German people and Germany's central role in Europe as a contested site situated between West and East, technological modernity (...) and the Asiatic. Heidegger did not break with radical right-wing Germanist thought, as some scholars have argued. He at most placed National Socialism within his narrative of the history of being, metaphysics, and technology, and thereby relativized it without addressing either its uniqueness or its totalitarian structures and practices. Heidegger formulated his own metaphysical and ontological version of Antisemitism during the National Socialist period. This vision was deeply connected with his understanding of the "history of being" and was intensified during and immediately after the Second World War. Heidegger could perceive no difference between the Shoah and the Allied bombing, defeat, and occupation of Germany. Heidegger's post-war philosophy (of home, history and technology) is deeply shaped by, and remained complicit with, his thinking during this period. (shrink)

Despite Heidegger’s critique of ethics, his use of ethically-inflected language intimates an interpretive ethics of encounter involving self-interpreting agents in their hermeneutical context and the formal indication of factical life as a situated dwelling open to possibilities enacted through practices of care, interpretation, and individuation. Existence is constituted practically in Dasein’s addressing, encountering, and responding to itself, others, and its world. Unlike rule-based or virtue ethics, this ethos of responsive encounter and individuating confrontation challenges any grounding in a determinate or (...) exemplary model of reason, human nature, the virtues, or tradition. (shrink)

Early Daoism, as articulated in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, indirectly addresses environmental issues by intimating a non-reductive naturalistic ethics calling on humans to be open and responsive to the specificities and interconnections of the world and environment to which they belong. "Dao" is not a substantial immanent or transcendent entity but the lived enactment of the intrinsic worth of the "myriad things" and the natural world occurring through how humans address and are addressed by them. Early Daoism potentially corrects (...) both anthropocentrism and biocentrism in environmental ethics by disclosing the things themselves in the context of the selfcultivation of life. Given increasing environmental devastation and the dominance of views, practices, and institutions reducing nature to a background and/or raw material for human activity, this "ethics of encounter" discloses the life of things as inexhaustibly more than human projects and constructs, extending ethical recognition and responsibility beyond social relations and the social self. (shrink)

Resumen: Tomado en serio, el empirismo parece abocar a la negación de los derechos humanos; al menos entendidos como expresión de la naturaleza humana. Bajo esta óptica, K. Olivecrona rechaza explícitamente todo Derecho natural, por considerarlo una noción metafísica. En cambio, cuando describe el Derecho positivo, se encuentra con que éste parece asegurar un determinado orden de valores. Olivecrona, además de describir este dato, en diversos escritos asume dichos valores e incluso los defiende. Esta última postura no es muy coherente (...) con una metodología que niega el conocimiento moral. Seguramente por ello, con el paso del tiempo, Olivecrona va abandonando la defensa de dichos valores e, incluso, marginando su interés por constatarlos empíricamente. El Derecho queda reducido a mera fuerza organizada y monopolizada por el Estado. Pero esta renuncia escamotea otro hecho empírico: la opción general y radical a partir de la segunda Guerra mundial de los modernos sistemas constitucionales por separar ley y derechos, constituyendo a los más básicos como fundamento del orden político y jurídico. A la vista de este fenómeno, pensamos que no sólo es posible explicarlo, sino que incluso se puede justificar, en la medida en que la institucionalización de estos derechos fundamentales no es sólo moralmente debida, sino, de un modo más específico, jurídicamente debida. -/- Abstract: Seriously taken, empiricism seems to lead to the denial of human rights; at least if they are understood as the expression of human nature. In this optic, K. Olivecrona explicitly rejects any natural law, for being a metaphysical notion. However, when he describes positive law, he finds that it apparently assures a specific set of values. Olivecrona, besides describing this datum, accepts and defends these values in various writings. This last choice is not very coherent with a methodology which denies moral understanding. Probably this is the reason why he gradually abandons the defence of those values and progressively drops his interest in validate them empirically. Law is reduced to a mere organized force monopolized by the State. But this renunciation overlooks another empirical fact: after the Second World War modern constitutional systems have generally and radically opted to separate Law and rights and moreover some of these have been set up as the basis of the political and legal order. In view of this phenomenon, we strongly believe that it is possible to explain it, but even to justify it, considering that the institutionalization of these fundamental rights is based on a specific demand of justice. (shrink)

This paper explores Dilthey’s radical transformation of epistemology and the human sciences through his projects of a critique of historically embodied reason and his hermeneutics of historically mediated life. Answering criticisms that Dilthey overly depends on epistemology, I show how for Dilthey neither philosophy nor the human sciences should be reduced to their theoretical, epistemological, or cognitive dimensions. Dilthey approaches both immediate knowing (Wissen) and theoretical knowledge (Erkenntnis) in the context of a hermeneutical phenomenology of historical life. Knowing is not (...) an isolated activity but an interpretive and self-interpretive practice oriented by situated reflexive awareness (Innewerden) and self-reflection (Selbstbesinnung). As embedded in an historical relational context, knowing does not only consist of epistemic validity claims about representational contents but is fundamentally practical, involving all of human existence. Empirically informed Besinnung, with its double reference to sense as meaning and bodily awareness, orients Dilthey’s inquiry rather than the “irrationalism” of immediate intuition or the “rationalism” of abstract epistemological reasoning. (shrink)

One critique of the early Daoist texts associated with Laozi and Zhuangzi is that they neglect the human and lack a proper sense of ethical personhood in maintaining the primacy of an impersonal dehumanizing “way.” This article offers a reconsideration of the appropriateness of such negative evaluations by exploring whether and to what extent the ethical sensibility unfolded in the Zhuangzi is aporetic, naturalistic, and/or religious. As an ethos of cultivating life and free and easy wandering by performatively enacting openness (...) and responsiveness to things in an immanent this-worldly context, the Zhuangzi is oriented toward the relational attunement of disposition and practice rather than toward metaphysics or religion in a transcendent sense. It consequently suggests an immanent anarchic ethics without principles while neither forgetting nor reifying the sacred and the mundane in its playful illumination of the biospiritual dynamics of cultivating life. (shrink)

PDF includes the introduction. Abstract: In this wide-ranging and authoritative volume, leading scholars engage with the philosophy and writings of Wilhelm Dilthey, a key figure in nineteenth-century thought. Their chapters cover his innovative philosophical strategies and explore how they can be understood in relation to their historical situation, as well as presenting incisive interpretations of Dilthey's arguments, including their development, their content, and their influence on later thought. A key focus is on how Dilthey's work remains relevant to current debates (...) around art and literature, the biographical and autobiographical self, knowledge, language, science, culture, history, society, and psychology and the embodied mind. The volume will be important for researchers in hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and the history of German philosophy, providing a valuable introduction to Dilthey's work as well as detailed critical analysis of its ongoing significance. (shrink)

I shall argue that you can substantially refute the most persuasive variety of solipsism by taking its most plausible version seriously, and then showing that it is not rational to hold, once one understands the nature of actualist metaphysical commitments.1 In the first section, I argue that the only viable form of solipsism involves de dicto self-reference. In the second, I argue that this position involves a claim of contingent identity, for which some actual worlds are those where solipsism is (...) not the case. The argument turns on a conception of metaphysics that involves the study of the universal features of actually possible worlds (i.e., realistic necessity). _*Draft. Acknowledgements welcome, but please do not cite.*_. (shrink)

What follows is an attempt to do some conceptual housekeeping around the notion of secret law as provided by Christopher Kutz (2013). First I consider low-salience (or merely obscure) law, suggesting that it fails to capture the legal and moral facts that are at stake in the case which Kutz used to motivate it. Then I outline a theoretical contrast between mere obscurity and secrecy, in contrast to the 'neutral' account of secrecy provided by Sissela Bok (1989). The upshot of (...) the two sections is that low-salience law is neither secret law nor necessarily problematic, though it closely resembles a kind of law that is both secret and problematic: namely, those legal obscurities that subvert manifest interests related to the informational needs of citizens. The ensuing argument undermines the fiction of constructive presence found in Austin and Blackstone. (shrink)

Absolutism—the idea that some kinds of acts are absolutely wrong and must never be done—plays an important role in medical ethics. Nicholas Denyer has defended it from some influential consequentialist critics who have alleged that absolutism is committed to “agent-relative constraints” and therefore intolerably complex and messy. Denyer ingeniously argues that, if there are problems with agent-relative constraints, then they are problems for consequentialism, since it contains agent-relative constraints, too. I show that, despite its ingenuity, Denyer’s argument does not succeed. (...) The defense of absolutism must move to other grounds. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline a theory of social kinds. A general theory of social kinds has to set out at least three conditions: existence conditions, persistence conditions, and identity conditions. For the sake of expediency, I focus on the existence and persistence conditions. The paper is organized just as life: first with existence, then persistence. I argue that anti-realism is more attractive than realism as an account of the existence conditions, despite the fact that realism has been under-appreciated. Then (...) I argue for a particular theory of the persistence conditions, which I call the basic overlapping traits theory (BOTT), based on an analogy to an approach to personal identity. The upshot of the argument is that from an anti-realist metaphysics we have the capacity to discuss a wider diversity of social phenomena. (shrink)

I consider the intertextuality between Chinese and Western thought by exploring how images, metaphors, and ideas from the texts associated with Zhuangzi and Laozi were appropriated in early twentieth-century German philosophy. This interest in “Lao-Zhuang Daoism” encompasses a diverse range of thinkers including Buber and Heidegger. I examine how the problematization of utility, usefulness, and “purposiveness” in Zhuangzi and Laozi becomes a key point for their German philosophical reception; how it is the poetic character of the Zhuangzi that hints at (...) an appropriate response to the crisis and loss of meaning that characterizes technological modernity and its instrumental technological rationality; that is, how the “poetic” and “spiritual” world perceived in Lao-Zhuang thought became part of Buber's and Heidegger's critical encounter and confrontation with technological modernity; and how their concern with Zhuangzi does not signify a return to a dogmatic religiosity or otherworldly mysticism; it anticipates a this-worldly spiritual or poetic way of dwelling immanently within the world. (shrink)