I argue that the tragedies envisioned by the Symposium are two, both of which are introduced in the dialogue: (i) within months of Agathon's victory, half the characters who celebrated with him suffer death or exile on charges of impiety; (ii) Socrates is executed weeks after the dramatic date of the frame. Thus the most defensible notion of tragedy across Plato's dialogues is a fundamentally epistemological one: if we do not know the good, we increase our risk of making (...) mistakes and of suffering what are sometimes their catastrophic consequences. (shrink)

In the paper it is argued that bridging the digital divide may cause a new ethical and social dilemma. Using Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, we show that an improper opening and enlargement of the digital environment (Infosphere) is likely to produce a Tragedy of the Digital Commons (TDC). In the course of the analysis, we explain why Adar and Huberman's previous use of Hardin's Tragedy to interpret certain recent phenomena in the Infosphere (especially peer-to-peer communication) may (...) not be entirely satisfactory. We then seek to provide an improved version of the TDC that avoids the possible shortcomings of their model. Next, we analyse some problems encountered by the application of classical ethics in the resolution of the TDC. In the conclusion, we outline the kind of work that will be required to develop an ethical approach that may bridge the digital divide but avoid the TDC. (shrink)

Tragedies, as real-world phenomena, are independent of their literary genre and are suitable for philosophical analysis. My analysis focuses on a type of tragedy that emerges in the practical lives of individuals in a broad sense. Tragedies often manifest in mundane, everyday situations. However, the fact that a situation is tragic does not mean that any unfortunate event that happens to an individual qualifies as a tragedy, nor does it imply that any practical pursuit is a tragic candidate. (...) Instead, these practical tragedies occur when the world obstructs pursuits that are fundamentally valuable. Tragedies are frequently dramatized in specific contexts such as moral dilemmas and historical calamities. Yet, these are merely instances of how the world can oppose what matters more universally. (shrink)

This essay seeks to understand what it means for the human collective when AI technologies have become a predominant force in each of our lives through identifying three moral dilemmas (i.e., tragedy of the commons, tragedy of commonsense morality, tragedy of apathy) that shape human choices. In the first part, we articulate AI-driven versions of the three moral dilemmas. Then, in the second part, drawing from evolutionary psychology, existentialism, and East Asian philosophies, we argue that a deep (...) appreciation of three shades of human finitude can help us mitigate harmful effects of the AI-driven versions of the three tragedies and even transcend them. (shrink)

The paper criticizes John Caputo's formulation of "radical hermeneutics" and its understanding of both religion and tragedy, arguing that a "tragic theology" would be a truly radical hermeneutic.

Two assumptions are common in discussions of the paradox of tragedy: (1) that tragic pleasure requires that the work be fictional or, if non-fiction, then non-transparently represented; and (2) that tragic pleasure may be provoked by a wide variety of art forms. In opposition to (1) I argue that certain documentaries could produce tragic pleasure. This is not to say that any sad or painful documentary could do so. In considering which documentaries might be plausible candidates, I further argue, (...) against (2), that the scope of tragic pleasure is limited to works that possess certain thematic and narrative features. (shrink)

Those who are risk averse with respect to money, and thus turn down some gambles with positive monetary expectations, are nevertheless often willing to accept bundles involving multiple such gambles. Therefore, it might seem that such people should become more willing to accept a risky but favourable gamble if they put it in context with the collection of gambles that they predict they will be faced with in the future. However, it turns out that when a risk averse person adopts (...) the long-term perspective, she faces a decision-problem that can be analysed as a noncooperative game between different “time-slices” of herself, where it is in the interest of each time-slice (given its prediction about other slices) to turn down the gamble with which it is faced. Hence, even if a risk averse but rational person manages to take the long-term perspective, she will, in the absence of what Hardin called “mutual coercion”, end up in a situation analogous to the “tragedy of the commons”. (shrink)

The classical tragedies relate conflicts, choices and dilemmas that have meaningful parallels in our own experience. Many of the normative dimensions of tragedy, however, rely critically on the causal and motivational efficacy of divine forces. In particular, these narratives present supernatural interventions invading their characters’ practical deliberations and undermining their claims to autonomous agency. Does this dynamic find any analogy in a contemporary, secular conception of moral agency? It does, but it is an analogy that challenges certain standard philosophical (...) accounts of agentive self-governance. (shrink)

We have previously argued that historical cases must be rendered canonical before they can plausibly serve as evidence for philosophical claims, where canonicity is established through a process of negotiation among historians and philosophers of science (Bolinska and Martin, 2020). Here, we extend this proposal by exploring how that negotiation might take place in practice. The working stock of historical examples that philosophers tend to employ has long been established informally, and, as a result, somewhat haphazardly. The composition of the (...) historical canon of philosophy of science is therefore path dependent, and cases often become stock examples for reasons tangential to their appropriateness for the purposes at hand. We show how the lack of rigor around the canonization of case studies has muddied the waters in selected philosophical debates. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for proposing ways in which they can be improved. (shrink)

The lifting of lockdown is a typical case of the tragedy of the commons, and as such should be regulated by public authority, instead of being left to the ethics and responsibility of single individuals. I would therefore argue that we should think about an intermediate phase between the lockdown and the opening of shops (which in the Italian case is the transition from the red zone to the orange zone): diversified access to commercial activities, on an hourly basis, (...) for different population groups. This can be achieved either by creating different opening hours for different commercial activities and offices, or by opening them all at the same time but introducing free entrance hours based on age groups of clients. Both solutions would imply an extension of business and office hours, contrary to what has happened in most countries, where an attempt has been made to shorten the days and in some cases, such as in Italy, a curfew has even been introduced at a certain time of the day (in Italy, at 10 pm). (shrink)

The trajectory of Paul Ricoeur’s thought from the fallible to the capable human person offers a hopeful vision of human nature constitutive of our shared political life. Yet, by necessity, hope arises in response to the tragic, which also features in Ricoeur’s work at the existential and ethical levels. At the same time hope and tragedy represent concepts at the limit of philosophical reasoning, introducing meeting points with religious discourse. Exploring those meeting points reveals the contribution of religious thinking (...) to the understanding of hope and tragedy and establishes Ricoeur’s political thinking as ultimately shaped by their interplay. (shrink)

In his early and unpublished essay on Schiller’s trilogy Wallenstein, Hegel criticizes the plays’ denouement as “horrific” and “appalling” and for depicting the triumph of death over life. Why was the young Hegel’s response to Wallenstein so negative? To answer this question, I first offer an analysis of Wallenstein in terms of Hegel’s mature theory of modern tragedy. I argue that Schiller’s portrayal of Wallenstein’s character and death indeed render the play a particularly dark and unredemptive example of modern (...) tragedy as Hegel understands it. I suggest, however, that Hegel’s early objections are primarily motivated by his philosophy of history rather than by his theory of tragedy. Hegel accurately sensed the loss of faith in historical progress that Schiller experienced in the wake of the French Revolution; in essays written shortly before Wallenstein appeared, Schiller associates the tragic sublime with humans’ ability to act in the face of the meaninglessness of history. In his essay “The German Constitution,” composed during the same period as his Wallenstein review, Hegel instead formulates his familiar exhortation that we see history as meaningful. Hegel’s objection to Wallenstein’s darkness, then, is primarily an objection to the vision of history it portrays. Against the background of Peter Stein’s 2007 Berlin production of Wallenstein, I suggest that Wallenstein’s lasting appeal lies in its ability to allow audiences to experience the sublime as Schiller intended: as an assertion of our agency despite the cycles of history we so little control. (shrink)

Conditional pacifism is the view that war is morally justified if and only if it satisfies the condition of not causing serious harm or death to innocent persons. Modern war cannot satisfy this condition, and is thus always unjustified. The main response to this position is that the moral presumption against harming or killing innocents is overridden in certain cases by the moral presumption against allowing innocents to be harmed or killed. That is, as harmful as modern war is, it (...) can be morally justified as a lesser evil when it alone can prevent great harm to innocents. This paper proposes that extreme cases in which only war can prevent great harm to innocents may be morally tragic. In some cases it may be both wrong to wage war to prevent great harm and wrong to fail to prevent that great harm. (shrink)

Climate change mitigation has become a paradigm case both for externalities in general and for the game-theoretic model of the Tragedy of the Commons (ToC) in particular. This situation is worrying, as we have reasons to suspect that some models in the social sciences are apt to be performative to the extent that they can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Framing climate change mitigation as a hardly solvable coordination problem may force us into a worse situation, by changing real-world behaviour to (...) fit our model, rather than the other way around. But while this problem of the performativity of the ToC has been noted in a recent paper in this journal by Matthew Kopec, his proposed strategies for dealing with their self-fulfilling nature fall short of providing an adequate solution. Instead of relying on the idea that modelling assumptions are always strictly speaking false, this paper shows that the problem may be better framed as a problem of underdetermination between competing explanations. Our goal here is to provide a framework for choosing between this set of competing models that allows us to avoid a ‘Russian Roulette’-like situation in which we gamble with existential risk. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium. Though Plato deliberately draws attention to the significance of Aristophanes’ speech in relation to Diotima’s (205d-206a, 211d), it has received relatively little philosophical attention. Critics who discuss it typically treat it as a comic fable, of little philosophical merit (e.g. Guthrie 1975, Rowe 1998), or uncover in it an appealing and even romantic treatment of love that emphasizes the significance of human individuals as love-objects to be (...) valued for their own sakes (e.g. Dover 1966, Nussbaum 1986). Against the first set of interpreters, I maintain that Aristophanes’ speech is of the utmost philosophical significance to the dialogue; in it, he sets forth a view of eros as a state of lack and a corresponding desire for completion, which is the starting-point for Diotima’s subsequent analysis. Against the second, I argue that Aristophanes’ speech contains a profoundly pessimistic account of eros. Far from being an appreciative response to the individuality of the beloved, eros, for Aristophanes, is an irrational urge, incapable of satisfaction. It is this irrationality that precludes Aristophanes’ lovers from achieving the partial satisfaction of erotic desire that is open to their Socratic counterparts through their relationship to the forms. (shrink)

Game theorists tend to model climate negotiations as a so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’. This is rather worrisome, since the conditions under which such commons problems have historically been solved are almost entirely absent in the case of international greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, I will argue that the predictive accuracy of the tragedy model might not stem from the model’s inherent match with reality but rather from the model’s ability to make self-fulfilling predictions. I then sketch (...) some possible ways to dispel the tragedy, including (1) recognizing some ways the assumptions of the model fail, (2) taking seriously recent work suggesting that increasing greenhouse gas emissions is not in most nations’ own self-interest, and (3) preferring alternative models like collective risk dilemmas, bargaining games, or cooperative models. (shrink)

We regularly intentionally expose ourselves to fictions we take to be likely to elicit in us emotions we generally find unpleasant when prompted by actual states of affairs. This is the so-called “paradox of tragedy”. We contribute to solving the paradox of tragedy by denying that, when fiction-directed, most of these emotions are in themselves unpleasant. We first provide strong evidence that these emotions, such as fear, sadness, or pity, are often enjoyed when fiction-directed. We then advance an (...) explanation of what makes these fiction-directed emotions often not unpleasant, while their reality-directed counterparts are generally so. In the last section, we advance an explanation of what makes fiction-directed emotions often enjoyable, and argue that a complete solution to the paradox of tragedy should be pluralist. (shrink)

In this paper the author analyses the materials that were published in the American satirical magazine The Onion in the period from 2006 till 2011 and mentioned September 11 terrorist attacks. The focus of the research is the persistence of 9/11 jokes five years after the tragedy occurred and later on. The jokes are classified basing on their subject-matter and rhetorical patterns. The author concludes that most of these jokes promote respect towards collective memory about the attacks and their (...) victims. (shrink)

This article argues that the Phaedo is written as a new sort of story of how a hero faces death; this story provides an alternative to existing tragedy, as understood by Plato. The opening of the Phaedo makes clear that two features that Plato closely associates with tragedy, pity and lamentation, are inappropriate responses to Socrates’ impending death, and that tuchē (chance) did not affect his happiness. This is the first step in the dialogue’s sustained engagement with (...) class='Hi'>tragedy. Tragedy for Plato falls under the category of stories about heroes and gods. Plato wrote the Phaedo so that we would see Socrates as a philosophical hero, a replacement for traditional heroes such as Theseus or Heracles. I argue that in fact the Phaedo meets every requirement in Republic Books 2–3 for how to tell stories about heroes and gods and so belongs to the same broad category as tragedy. Within this framework, it tells its new story of how the true hero faces death. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of Leon Chwistek’s “Tragedia werbalnej metafizyki,” Kwartalnik Filozoficzny, Vol. X, 1932, 46–76. Chwistek offers a scathing critique of Roman Ingarden’s Das literarische Kunstwerk and of the entire Phenomenology movement. The text also contains many hints at Chwistek’s own philosophical and formal ideas. The book that Chwistek reviews attracted wide attention and was instrumental in winning Ingarden a position as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lwów in 1933. Chwistek’s alienation from his fellow logicians (...) of the Lvov-Warsaw school is clear from his ridicule of Leśniewski’s project. (shrink)

The Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) exhibits a tragedy in this sense: if the players are fully informed and rational, they are condemned to a jointly dispreferred outcome. In this essay I address the following question: What feature of the PD's payoff structure is necessary and sufficient to produce the tragedy? In answering it I use the notion of a trembling-hand equilibrium. In the final section I discuss an implication of my argument, an implication which bears on the persistence of (...) the problem posed by the PD. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the Idealistic aesthetics of tragedy from an unconventional point of view. It investigates the relationship between theory and dramatic canon by focusing on those works and authors that are excluded from the canon by the theoretical discourse. My aim is to show that Idealist philosophers and Romantic critics concur in constructing a unitary model of the tragic conflict that is partly defined through its contraposition to the ‘Senecan’ conception of tragedy as a representation of suffering (...) and as a dialectic of passions. Seneca here stands for an entire line of European dramaturgy, which involves Shakespeare and culminates in French Classicism. This contrast does not merely concern a literary model, but also, more generally, the conception of subjectivity underlying the dramaturgy of passions. This paper thus helps to shed light on the controversial relationship between the idealistic philosophy of the tragic with modern tragedy at large. -/- Keywords: Theory of Tragedy, Idealism, Seneca, Hegel, Pathos . (shrink)

The paper explores the way in which we can make sense of the seemingly contradictory presentations of God and the gods in tragic literature by looking to the thought of Martin Heidegger. The duplicity of the gods in tragedy is found to be a function of the uncertainty and questionworthiness of being.

In 1976, Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) made an important statement in his work titled "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind''. As modern humans, we are conscious beings and can think about our thoughts. However, in ancient texts it is observed that human self-awareness and self-awareness have not yet been formed in humans. Jaynes calls this way of thinking, which emerged in the 2000 BC and evolved over time, bicameral thinking. Citing exceptional examples taken from Homer and (...) the Old Testament, he argued that historical heroes could not attain consciousness and therefore could not yet become real subjects. Ancient heroes attributed the voices in their minds to supernatural powers. Janes argues that the characters in the Iliad do not sit and think about what to do like we do, nor do they have alert and introspective minds like us. According to Jaynes, the concepts of thumos, phrenes and kradie found in Homer's works can be considered primitive consciousness. Jaynes argues that the bicameral mind lacks the capacity for metacognition (reflective thinking). The bicameral mind, where episodic and semantic memory, introspection and mastery of consciousness have not yet been formed; It evolves with language use over time. In the 2000s BC, marginal social and environmental changes began to collapse due to societal needs. The stress created by new conditions requires neurological adaptation, leading to the development of consciousness and self-awareness. The heroes of tragedy have experienced traumatic events and have changed and transformed as a result; He gains consciousness as introspection and inner monologue, and provides an important example of spiritual transformation as an immortal psycho-mythological figure. During a period that can be described as a transition from myth to logos, the spirit underwent a rupture. The great social transformations and disasters experienced over time have led to the renewal of the human spirit. In fact, there have been attempts such as divination and communication with supernatural forces to reach voices that can no longer be heard. When all this state of conflict is interpreted through the inner conversations and mental transformation of the person, the dynamic structure of the mind will emerge, where the thinking patterns of the person change depending on environmental conditions. (shrink)

While both Isaiah Berlin and William James are widely seen as pluralists, this paper contends that neither is a pluralist tout court. Berlin certainly is a pluralist when it comes to morality and politics, but he is a monist when it comes to nature. And James is, paradoxically, both a pluralist and a monist as regards all of reality. These claims are advanced by showing how both thinkers’ approaches contrast with those of monists, not least Plato, Hegel, and Nietzsche. They (...) are also shown to be associated with different narrative genres: tragedy in Berlin’s case, and tragicomedy in James’. The paper then concludes with a brief discussion of an alternative approach, one that treads a path in between monism and pluralism and, because of this, favours a particular form of comedy. (shrink)

Philip Roth’s novel 'The Human Stain' recounts an instance of racial passing: its protagonist, Coleman Silk, is African-American but light-skinned enough to pass as white. Coleman’s decision to pass and his subsequent violent death, I argue, confront us with complex ethical questions regarding unjust social roles, loyalty, and moral luck. I also argue, building on Hegel’s definition of tragedy, that 'The Human Stain' is a particularly modern tragedy. The novel highlights conflicting role obligations, inadequate conceptions of freedom, and (...) the tensions of cultural paradigm shifts—all characteristics typical of modern tragedy. I claim that parsing 'The Human Stain' as a tragedy deepens our understanding of the novel as well as drawing our attention to its philosophical significance. (shrink)

The principle of self-determination, like Janus, has two faces: negative and positive. Often understood as enabling the fracture of states into national components, the principle is better seen as facilitating the creation of multinational frameworks that foster toleration and human rights.

Polemizując z poglądami niektórych filozofów moralności, autor broni tezy, iż jednoznacznie dobrzy ludzie mogą być pewni spokoju swej duszy.

Cet article part d’un constat retenu par un certain art « politique » : la nécessité de visibiliser les corps minorisés. On y interroge le mot d’ordre suivant, celui d’après lequel l’enjeu principal d’une esthétique de l’émancipation est la représentation. Plus largement, il s’agira de voir comment les discours de libération en art s’empèsent de contraintes rigoristes à l’opposé de l’agenda politique qu’ils annoncent. Méthodologiquement, il est fait recours à une symptomatologie nietzschéenne du langage : une étude des énoncés qui (...) cherche à faire remonter à la surface un système de morale grégaire dont ces énoncés sont solidaires. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the metaphysical foundations of Throne of Blood , Kurosawa's reworking of Shakespeare's Macbeth . Using Hegel's theory of tragedy, I develop the distinction between Greek and modern tragedy, with their differing bases in ethical and subjective freedom. I then show that Noh drama also includes a very different metaphysical account, stemming from its theoretical roots in Buddhism. I then use these three differing accounts (Greek, modern and Noh drama) to explore (...) the effect of Kurosawa's use Noh aesthetics in Throne of Blood on the metaphysical ground of the film itself. (shrink)

Shaped by Hegel, philosophy’s approach to Antigone has always been firmly rooted in all the assumptions of realism, with proper, true-to-life, consistent, and plausible characters. These characterological mimetic interpretations often feed off of each other within the context of what’s perceived as “realist” drama, with its focus on characters and their insoluble, hence tragic, conflict. Starting with the twentieth-century avant-garde, however, theatre became less and less interested in characterological mimicry as a foundation of drama and what follows, as the foundation (...) of the theatrical experience itself. Along with the shift in our approach to character, we have also experienced a shift in our understanding of other Aristotelian components of drama and dramatic genres. As our sense of character and Thought shifted from stable to unstable, so did our understanding of tragedy and its role at the junction of theatre and philosophy. Tragedy has shifted from dialectic to aporia, from binary to polynary. Antigone—with its multiple interpretations and critical lenses—illuminates this fundamental shift in our understanding of tragedy and, thus, the fundamental shift in the relationship between theatre and philosophy in postdramatic theatre. (shrink)

Kant admits that there are two kinds of human works that have something sublime about them, the work of the poet, e.g., tragedy, and the work of the politician, i.e., war. This paper will explore Kant's reasoning about the sublime element in these two human works.

Greek tragedy, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, represents the performative realization of binary political difference, for example, “private versus public,” “man versus woman” or “nation versus state.” On the other hand, Roman comedy and French Revolutionary Terror, in Hegel, can be taken as radical expressions of political in-difference, defined as a state where all mediating structures of association and governance have collapsed into a world of “bread and circuses.” In examining the dialectical interplay between binary, tragic difference and comedic, (...) terrible in-difference, the paper arrives at hypothetical conclusions regarding how these political forms may be observed today. (shrink)

This study investigates Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe's claim in "The Caesura of the Speculative" that Hölderlin is a "modern" writer. Its aim is to establish what is at stake in this claim and to evaluate whether it can be substantiated. In Chapter One I discuss the relationship between tragedy and philosophy. I show that the uneasy relationship between philosophy and the arts is premised upon Plato's understanding and judgement of mimesis. I contrast Plato and Aristotle's treatment of poetry by examining how (...) they understand the mimetic process. In Chapter Two I focus on Hölderlin's understanding of the relationship between Ancient Greece and 18th Century Germany. After discussing the background to Hölderlin's work I provide detailed readings of two texts, The Perspective from which We Have to Look at Antiquity, (1799) and the first letter to Böhlendorff, dating from 1801. I argue that in these texts Hölderlin, through his acknowledgement of the divided nature of Greek culture, offers a unique understanding of the relationship between Greece and Germany which isolates him from his contemporaries. In Chapters Three and Four, I examine Hölderlin's understanding of tragedy. After establishing the centrality of the aesthetic presentation for Hölderlin's project I examine the "poetological" writings which date from 1798-1800. I give a close analysis of the implications of Hölderlin's statement that the tragic "is the metaphor of an intellectual intuition" which occurs in the text On the Difference of the Poetic Modes, (1800), showing why the tragic form is central to Hölderlin's poetological project. To illustrate the problems inherent in this project, in Chapter Four I examine Hölderlin's attempts to write a tragic drama which corresponds to his theoretical beliefs. I discuss the two theoretical texts - The Ground to Empedocles and Becoming in Dissolution - which accompany Hölderlin's drama Empedocles. In analysing these texts I argue that there is an inherent tension between the presuppositions of the theory and the way they can be realised in the drama. In Chapter Five, I turn to Hölderlin's final work, his project to translate Sophocles' tragedies. Through close analysis of the theoretical Remarks which accompany the translations, I show how Hölderlin's theoretical and poetological interests in Greece and Tragedy are brought together through this project. I argue that these texts give an insight into the problems which confront Hölderlin's poetological project. However, simultaneously, these texts provide an alternative way of understanding the function of the tragic form. In this discussion I show how the questions concerning the status of dramatic mimesis and the "mimetic" relation between Greece and Germany coincide in the analysis of Sophocles' dramas. In conclusion I return briefly to the questions that I raised in the introduction concerning the status of tragedy in the present time, and assess the accuracy of the claim that Hölderlin is a "modern" thinker. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that The Birth of Tragedy is not a pessimistic book. If it is a pessimistic book, my argument would not be valid because Nietzsche has later developed anti pessimistic teachings such as Amor Fati, eternal recurrence and the will to power. As I have argued in the earlier writings, (Nietzsche’s Response to Schopenhauer) BT can be understood as a template for Nietzsche’s later work, rather than just the early phase during which he, according (...) to Julian Young, completely succumbs to Schopenhauer’s pessimism. As he asserts: ‘The Birth incorporates without modification Schopenhauer’s metaphysics’ (1992, p. 26, emphasis mine). I will prove that the message of BT is very different from that of Schopenhauer’s. To do this, I will show how BT reflects Nietzsche’s position that life is worth living and opposes Schopenhauer’s pessimism and life denial. If I am right, this chapter will prove, contrary to the view propounded by Young that Nietzsche could not escape life-denying pessimism in BT, that BT is the beginning of Nietzsche’s development of the teaching of life affirmation and also the will to power. (shrink)

Although virtue ethics has repeatedly been proposed as a suitable framework for the development of artificial moral agents, it has been proven difficult to approach from a computational perspective. In this work, we present the first technical implementation of artificial virtuous agents in moral simulations. First, we review previous conceptual and technical work in artificial virtue ethics and describe a functionalistic path to AVAs based on dispositional virtues, bottom-up learning, and top-down eudaimonic reward. We then provide the details of a (...) technical implementation in a moral simulation based on a tragedy of the commons scenario. The experimental results show how the AVAs learn to tackle cooperation problems while exhibiting core features of their theoretical counterpart, including moral character, dispositional virtues, learning from experience, and the pursuit of eudaimonia. Ultimately, we argue that virtue ethics provides a compelling path toward morally excellent machines and that our work provides an important starting point for such endeavors. (shrink)

An evolutionary approach to ethics supports, to some extent, the sceptical meta-ethics found by some of the Greek sophists and Nietzsche. On the other hand, a modern naturalistic account on the origin and nature of morality, leads to somewhat different conclusions. This is demonstrated with an answer to three philosophical questions: does real freedom exist?, does the good, or real virtue, exist?, does life have a meaning?

The tragedy of the commons is a primary contributing factor in ensuring that humanity makes no serious inroads in averting climate change. As a recent Canadian politician pointed out, we could shut down the Canadian economy tomorrow, and it would make no measurable difference in global greenhouse gas emissions. When coordinated effort is required, it would seem that doing the “right thing” alone is irrational: it will harm oneself with no positive consequences as a result. Such is the (...) class='Hi'>tragedy. And that is the challenge that we take up here. Though Garrett Hardin suggests that the solution is a governmental process that rules over all contenders, since a world government seems unlikely before the planet hits the tippy point, we suggest an educational initiative instead: one that holds a mirror up to the behaviour of individuals, rather than to the behaviour of individuals in groups. Such an educational initiative would be focused on priming individuals to keep constant track of what they do as individuals as opposed to focusing on the behaviour of humanity in general. Such an educational initiative would focus on tackling the “problem solvers” rather than just “the problem”. (shrink)

Human rights have made mass murder and genocide more, rather than less, likely. -/- Posted 21 December 2022. A previous version of this paper appears as chapter 3 of my Patriotic Elaborations: Essays in Practical Philosophy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009).

This paper reviews debates related to the social cost of carbon (SCC) and the challenge of pricing uncertain damages that will occur only in the future. They often revolve around the pure time preference rate, which reflects how much one favors present over future well-being. The SCC measures the marginal cost of the impact on economic growth caused by the emission of a quantity of greenhouse gases equivalent to an additional ton of carbon dioxide (tCO2eq). There is significant variance among (...) estimates of the SCC; one of the reasons for it is a disagreement on how to bring future damages to present values, especially over the so-called "delta parameter" – the pure time preference rate – of the corresponding discount function. On the one hand, the descriptive approach, associated with William Nordhaus, proposes to use the time preference empirically observed among individuals, which would result in a significant limitation of the present value attributed to the distant future. On the other hand, the normative approach, associated with Nicholas Stern, proposes to treat everyone impartially, in every generation, and so implies transferring more resources to future generations. In the limit, assuming exponential population growth, it would lead to a philosophical stance akin to the so-called "longtermism" (as defended by William MacAskill in What we owe the future). In addition, the analysis points out obstacles to using the SCC to price carbon for climate policies. These include aspects related to economic methodology (such as ecological economics critiques of welfarist accounts of intergenerational allocations) as well as political philosophy. Thus, challenges related to uncertainty about socioeconomic development trajectories, intergenerational justice, and public reason become key. Finally, we present the target-consistent pricing approach, where one calculates a carbon price compatible with specific mitigation targets – an alternative to SCC methodologies. This approach is advocated as a way to avoid the uncertainty and the disagreements associated with the SCC, emphasizing the importance of meeting goals set by binding political decisions – such as the Paris Agreement. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the philosophical concept of the tragic and its affinity with ancient Greek tragedy. It investigates this notion from two different perspectives. First, it focusses on the revival of the idea of the tragic in the – mainly German – philosophy of the late modern era, namely those of Kant, Schelling, Hegel and their critics. Secondly this notion is used as a stepping stone towards a general cultural-historical perspective on the nature of Greek tragedy. (...) This trajectory leads to the conclusion that the traditional gap between abstract, philosophical reflection on the tragic and concrete, philological research on Greek tragedy is not as big as commonly supposed. (shrink)

This article draws on Hegel's description of the tragedy of "Oedipus at Colonus" based on the text of "Phenomenology of spirit". Because Hegel considers art to be the product of the spirit of the times and believes it emerges from the culture and ethics of societies, he reflects on the spirit of Greek society through reading Greek tragedy. The most prominent feature of ancient Greek society has been the "unity of life" among most philosophers. But Hegel believes that (...) because this unity was unconsidered and immediate, the Greek ethical life (Sittlichkeit) collapses. Although Hegel in the phenomenology of spirit makes no direct reference to the play of Oedipus at Clonus, this article compares the text of phenomenology with the text of the tragedy of Oedipus at Colonus and reveals that Hegel's understanding of ancient Greek society is completely intertwined with the aforementioned tragedy. Hegel’s reading of this tragedy focuses on the confrontation between the roles of woman/man and family/state in ancient Greek society. These confrontations appear in the characters of Antigone and Ismene (daughters of Oedipus) against Eteocles and Polynices (sons of Oedipus). While describing the war between two brothers, Hegel goes on to describe the "war" phenomenon in the context of the establishment of unity in society, which is part of Hegel's political philosophy. (shrink)

The novel begins as follows:"Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absence."Murdoch's novel (...) The Bell is about Imber Court. It is a small Anglican religious community of lay people whose lives were transformed, not just by the arrival of a couple of dissimilar visitors, not just by the arrival of a new bell to be installed at Imber Abbey located beyond the lake, but more significantly by the discovery of a centuries-old bell the story of which is engulfed in a terrible legend. (shrink)

A survey of commentaries on Aristotle’s Poetics over the past century reflects a long-standing assumption that pleasure, rather than understanding, is to be seen as the real aim of tragedy, despite weak textual evidence to this end. This paper seeks to rehabilitatethe role of understanding in tragedy’s effect, as Aristotle sees it, to an equal status with that of its affective counterpart. Through an analysis of the essential inducement of wonder on the part of the viewer and its (...) connection with the organic unity of the plot—what Aristotle calls the “soul” of tragedy—I argue that the telos of tragedy in the Poetics is intended to accommodate both pleasure and incipient philosophical activity without necessarily privileging either. (shrink)

Experiencing tragedy may broaden our ability to understand the suffering of others, and further our ability to endure future suffering. In the work of stoic philosopher Epictetus, he proports one should practice premeditatio malorum, preparing for the tragedies to come so that when they do occur one will be less disturbed. Through the stories of those that have survived tragedy and great suffering though, we can grow to understand the choices people make that lead to suffering are often (...) the lesser of two evils. When man sees a reason to suffer, he will choose to suffer, it is possible to understand and explain what experiencing suffering causes. The writings of philosophical professor Michael Brady, Susan Feagin, and others explain that the virtues of suffering are enough so we should not avoid the experience of it. We study history so that we may avoid repeating it, and just the same we experience the suffering that comes naturally throughout life so that we may avoid repeating it. (shrink)

The paper originated as an examination of the philosophical and historical (dis-) continuities that ran from Buddhism, through Schopenhauer, to Freud and Lacan. Due to the excessive length of the paper, the editor advised to drop the part on Schopenhauer.

Hegel believed the Antigone tragedy not only revealed the national spirit of ancient Greece but was indeed the greatest artwork of all time. displaying the “Logic of History”, was the critical role Antigone tragedy played in the phenomenology of spirit from the standpoint of Hegel. This article will attempt to answer how Hegel reads Antigone's tragedy and how he observes the “Logic of History” in it. Ancient Greek society, In Hegel’s point of view, has constantly been the (...) symbol of “unity of life”. however, Hegel believes that at certain times in history, this unity of ethical life and its state of joy in Greece has been destroyed. Since Hegel believes literary works have historical-cultural implications and considers art and literature as the first medium by which the spirit becomes self-conscious, in the section “True Spirit, ethical Life” from the book Phenomenology of Spirit, he describes the fall of the ethical life of Greek society by reading of the Antigone tragedy. What Hegel understood from the Antigone tragedy was a series of painful conflicts that ensued as a consequence of a contradiction between ethical powers within Greek society. powers that had heretofore been in unreflected unity, but now that their contradictions revealed, the ethical life of society collapsed and the spirit moved to a more rational and liberated stage. These stages are in fact very much the irreversible final course of history toward achieving freedom. (shrink)