Essays exploring to what extent Nietzsche's thought can aid us in understanding politicized identities.

Despite governmental and private antismoking initiatives, tobacco smoking remains a significant public health and economic challenge. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that for each year between 1997 and 2001, cigarette smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke caused approximately 438,000 U.S. residents to die prematurely, resulting in 5.5 million years of potential life lost, and in $92 billion dollars of lost productivity. Also, despite convincing scientific data that laws against indoor smoking protect people from the negative health effects (...) of cigarette smoke, not all states have afforded their residents this protection. As of July 2007, 16 states neither restricted nor banned indoor smoking in restaurants, private worksites, or government worksites, and many state statutes only required separate rooms for smokers rather than eliminating all smoking inside buildings. In several states, local governments have attempted to fill this gap by adopting their own antismoking measures. (shrink)

Students in 80 kindergarten to grade six classrooms photographed and captioned experiences in class which they identified as examples of democratic citizenship education. With the assistance of a teacher candidate placed in their classroom for a semester, students chose and captioned five of the photographs they considered to best represent demonstrate citizenship education. Four main categories of citizenship events emerged describing key elements associated with democratic citizenship education; shared decision making, participating in a learner-oriented classroom context in which students have (...) some individual choice of daily activities, equality of opportunity, and activities extending into the community and integrating community and classroom. Early grades students (K-3) identified activities they associated with democratic citizenship education while upper grades (4-6) students additionally presented rationales and gave evidence to support their representations. Empowerment, problem solving, and contributing to the common good were additional elements associated with democratic citizenship education in the classes sampled, although these were not strongly represented as were the four key elements. This study provides an initial portrait indicating a need for deeper investigation of K-6 students' own representations of the democratic citizenship education they experience. (shrink)

Prior studies have shown a general preference among citizens for juries over judges. Researchers, however, have not considered whether race and ethnicity modify this preference. We hypothesized that minorities (African-Americans, Hispanics), who generally express less trust in the legal system, may also express less trust in juries than non-Hispanic whites. We asked a representative sample of 1,465 residents of Texas to state whether they would prefer a jury or a judge to be the decision maker in four hypothetical circumstances. Consistent (...) with expectations, non-Hispanic whites favored juries over judges, particularly if they imagined themselves as a defendant in a criminal trial. By comparison, although African-Americans and some Hispanics generally favored juries, they showed a much weaker set of jury preferences. African Americans had markedly lower support for the civil jury, but support was higher among minorities with prior jury service. Among Hispanics, respondents who took the survey in Spanish typically preferred a judge to make legal decisions. We consider the implications of our findings for trust in the jury system and trust in community members as decision makers. (shrink)

In this book, William H. F. Altman argues that it is not order of composition but reading order that makes Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo “late dialogues,” and shows why Plato’s decision to interpolate the notoriously “late” Sophist and Statesman between Euthyphro and Apology deserves more respect from interpreters.

In his new book the eminent Kant scholar Henry Allison provides an innovative and comprehensive interpretation of Kant's concept of freedom. The author analyzes the concept and discusses the role it plays in Kant's moral philosophy and psychology. He also considers in full detail the critical literature on the subject from Kant's own time to the present day. In the first part Professor Allison argues that at the centre of the Critique of Pure Reason there is the foundation (...) for a coherent general theory of rational agency. The second part employs this account of rational agency as a key to understanding Kant's concept of moral agency and associated moral psychology. The third part focuses on Kant's attempt to ground both moral law and freedom in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. This is a major contribution to the interpretation of Kant which will be of special interest to scholars and graduate students of Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

Pornography is everywhere, and it raises a host of difficult questions. What counts as pornography, first of all? When does material cross the line from being erotic to being objectionable? Where does a person's entitlement to sexual freedom end and another person's right not to feel objectified begin? How should rights be weighed against consequences in deciding what laws and policies ought to be adopted? Philosophers Andrew Altman and Lori Watson explore these and other issues in this succinct and (...) readable for-and-against volume. (shrink)

Henry E. Allison presents an analytical and historical commentary on Kant`s transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason. He argues that, rather than providing a new solution to an old problem, it addresses a new problem, and he traces the line of thought that led Kant to the recognition of the significance of this problem in his 'pre-critical' period. In addition to the developmental nature of the account of Kant`s views presented (...) here, two distinctive features of Allison's reading of the deduction are a defense of Kant`s oft criticized claim that the conformity of appearances to the categories must be unconditionally rather than merely conditionally necessary and an insistence that the argument cannot be separated from Kant`s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Henry Allison is one of the foremost interpreters of the philosophy of Kant. This new volume collects all his recent essays on Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. All the essays postdate Allison's two major books on Kant, and together they constitute an attempt to respond to critics and to clarify, develop and apply some of the central theses of those books. Two are published here for the first time. Special features of the collection are: a detailed defence of (...) the author's interpretation of transcendental idealism; a consideration of the Transcendental Deduction and some other recent interpretations thereof; further elaborations of the tensions between various aspects of Kant's conception of freedom and of the complex role of this conception within Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

This book constitutes one of the most important contributions to recent Kant scholarship. In it, one of the pre-eminent interpreters of Kant, Henry Allison, offers a comprehensive, systematic, and philosophically astute account of all aspects of Kant's views on aesthetics. The first part of the book analyses Kant's conception of reflective judgment and its connections with both empirical knowledge and judgments of taste. The second and third parts treat two questions that Allison insists must be kept distinct: the (...) normativity of pure judgments of taste, and the moral and systematic significance of taste. The fourth part considers two important topics often neglected in the study of Kant's aesthetics: his conceptions of fine art, and the sublime. (shrink)

The year Leo Strauss published "Persecution and the Art of Writing" (1941), he prepared a lecture ("German Nihilism") that he never published. An analysis of this lecture shows that Strauss hadn't fully mastered the art of writing he'd discovered in others: his secrets are too exposed. In the context of "German Nihilism," it becomes clear that "Persecution and the Art of Writing" is about liberal persecution of authoritarianism, no the reverse, as liberals would assume. In response to recent apologias presenting (...) Strauss as a liberal who didn't "write between the lines," a Strauss-style reading of "German Nihilism" disproves both claims. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that a reconstruction of “the reading order of Plato’s dialogues” can be used as the basis for a new kind of argument for the authenticity of dubia like Theages and Cleitophon.

Across languages, children map words to meaning with great efficiency, despite a seemingly unconstrained space of potential mappings. The literature on how children do this is primarily limited to spoken language. This leaves a gap in our understanding of sign language acquisition, because several of the hypothesized mechanisms that children use are visual (e.g., visual attention to the referent), and sign languages are perceived in the visual modality. Here, we used the Human Simulation Paradigm in American Sign Language (ASL) to (...) determine potential cues to word learning. Sign‐naïve adult participants viewed video clips of parent–child interactions in ASL, and at a designated point, had to guess what ASL sign the parent produced. Across two studies, we demonstrate that referential clarity in ASL interactions is characterized by access to information about word class and referent presence (for verbs), similarly to spoken language. Unlike spoken language, iconicity is a cue to word meaning in ASL, although this is not always a fruitful cue. We also present evidence that verbs are highlighted well in the input, relative to spoken English. The results shed light on both similarities and differences in the information that learners may have access to in acquiring signed versus spoken languages. (shrink)

The importance of Hegel to the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir, both to her early philosophical texts and to The Second Sex, is usually discussed in terms of the master-slave dialectic and a Kojève-influenced reading, which some see her as sharing with Sartre, others persuasively describe as divergent from and corrective to Sartre's. Altman shows that Hegel's influence on Beauvoir's work is also wider, both in terms of what she takes on board and what she works through and rejects, (...) and that her reading of Hegel is crucially inflected by two additional circumstances that Sartre did not entirely share: the experience of her first serious study of Hegel as a noncombatant in Paris during the German occupation and her earlier direct exposure to an eccentric, idealist reading of Hegel as developed by the group Philosophies in connection with surrealism and the artistic avant-garde. Altman also explores the afterlife of Hegel's influence on Beauvoir on second-wave feminism in the United States and Europe, and suggests continuing relevance to feminist theory today. (shrink)

When examined critically, Kant's views on sex and marriage give us the tools to defend same-sex marriage on moral grounds. The sexual objectification of one's partner can only be overcome when two people take responsibility for one another's overall well-being, and this commitment is enforced through legal coercion. Kant's views on the unnaturalness of homosexuality do not stand up to scrutiny, and he cannot (as he often tries to) restrict the purpose of sex to procreation. Kant himself rules out marriage (...) only when the partners cannot give themselves to one another equally – that is, if there is inequality of exchange. Because same-sex marriage would be between equals and would allow homosexuals to express their desire in a morally appropriate way, it ought to be legalized. (shrink)

This essay is a critical review of two recent collections, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, edited by Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby and Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender, edited by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. While the collections differ in their manner of addressing the critical sources that have inspired them-the former relying upon a single theorist, the latter attempting to move through some of the philosophical history that constitutes our present theoretical terrain-both attempt to (...) think through and thus revisualize some of the categories of difference which we have inherited. Though the best essays from these collections are celebrated for demonstrating how "feminism as critique" can work to move us toward a clearer and more inclusive feminist theory, questions are raised about what the inattention to race in these volumes suggests about our own role in the construction of power and knowledge, and the erasures that help to secure them both. (shrink)

_Kant and Applied Ethics_ makes an important contribution to Kant scholarship, illuminating the vital moral parameters of key ethical debates. Offers a critical analysis of Kant’s ethics, interrogating the theoretical bases of his theory and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses Examines the controversies surrounding the most important ethical discussions taking place today, including abortion, the death penalty, and same-sex marriage Joins innovative thinkers in contemporary Kantian scholarship, including Christine Korsgaard, Allen Wood, and Barbara Herman, in taking Kant’s philosophy in new (...) and interesting directions Clarifies Kant’s legacy for applied ethics, helping us to understand how these debates have been structured historically and providing us with the philosophical tools to address them. (shrink)

German Idealism was without doubt one of the most fruitful, influential, and exciting periods in the history of philosophy. The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism covers this revolutionary philosophical movement in remarkable detail and includes contributions from 36 of the leading scholars in the field, including Paul Guyer, Terry Pinkard, Violetta Waibel, Jason Wirth, and Günter Zöller. In his introduction, Matthew Altman investigates the meaning of idealism and sets the historical context. Ensuing chapters then consider the philosophical importance of (...) the movement’s four most important thinkers (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel) and explore the areas of philosophy on which they had their greatest impact. A concluding chapter examines the legacy of German Idealism from the nineteenth century to the present day. (shrink)

Kant is gaining popularity in business ethics because the categorical imperative rules out actions such as deceptive advertising and exploitative working conditions, both of which treat people merely as means to an end. However, those who apply Kant in this way often hold businesses themselves morally accountable, and this conception of collective responsibility contradicts the kind of moral agency that underlies Kant's ethics. A business has neither inclinations nor the capacity to reason, so it lacks the conditions necessary for constraint (...) by the moral law. Instead, corporate policies ought to be understood as analogous to legal constraints. They may encourage or discourage certain actions, but they cannot determine a person's maxim - which for Kant is the focus of moral judgment. Because there is no collective intention apart from any intentions of the individual agents who act as members of the corporation, an organization itself has no moral obligations. This poses a dilemma: either apply the categorical imperative to the actions of particular businesspeople and surrender the notion of collective responsibility, or apply a different moral theory to the actions of businesses themselves. Given the diffusion of responsibility in a bureaucracy, the explanatory usefulness of collective responsibility may force business ethicists to abandon Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

Publisher's description: The realistic spirit, a nonmetaphysical approach to philosophical thought concerned with the character of philosophy itself, informs all of the discussions in these essays by philosopher Cora Diamond. Diamond explains Wittgenstein's notoriously elusive later writings, explores the background to his thought in the work of Frege, and discusses ethics in a way that reflects his influence. Diamond's new reading of Wittgenstein challenges currently accepted interpretations and shows what it means to look without mythology at the (...) coherence, commitments, and connections that are distinctive of the mind. (shrink)

"This book argues for a mixed view of punishment that balances consequentialism and retributivism. He has published extensively on philosophy and applied ethics. A central question in the philosophy of law is why the state's punishment of its own citizens is justified. Traditionally, two theories of punishment have dominated the field: consequentialism and retributivism. According to consequentialism, punishment is justified when it maximizes positive outcomes. According to retributivism, criminals should be punished because they deserve it. This book defends a mixed (...) view that recognizes the strength of both of these intuitions. By this account, the legislature should develop institutional policies and statutory penalties that maintain the social order, that is, consequentialism. It establishes punishment policies to deter criminal activity. By contrast, the criminal judiciary should give individual defendants what they deserve, that is, retributivism and thus expressing the community's appropriate sense of resentment at being wronged. The book justifies the two-tiered model by showing how it accords with our moral intuitions, our assumptions about how what we know affects our moral obligations, and a commonly held theory of freedom. This approach is developed by engaging classic and contemporary work in the philosophy of law, and shows its advantages over competing approaches from contemporary retributivists and other mixed theorists. The work also defends consequentialism against a longstanding objection that the social sciences give us little guidance regarding which policies to adopt. It draws on cutting-edge criminological research to show how punishment theory can help us to address some of our most pressing social issues, including the death penalty, drug laws, and mass incarceration. The book will also be of interest to legal philosophers, social scientists, especially criminologists, sociologists, economists, and political scientists"--. (shrink)

In this book, William H. F. Altman considers the pedagogical connections behind the post-Republic dialogues from Timaeus to Theaetetus in the context of their Reading Order.

Most ethics guidelines for distributing scarce medical resources during the coronavirus pandemic seek to save the most lives and the most life‐years. A patient’s prognosis is determined using a SOFA or MSOFA score to measure likelihood of survival to discharge, as well as a consideration of relevant comorbidities and their effects on likelihood of survival up to one or five years. Although some guidelines use age as a tiebreaker when two patients’ prognoses are identical, others refuse to consider age for (...) fear of discriminating against the elderly. In this paper, I argue that age is directly relevant for maximizing health benefits, so current ethics guidelines are wrongly excluding or deemphasizing life‐stage in their triage algorithms. Research on COVID‐19 has shown that age is a risk factor in adverse outcomes, independent of comorbidities. And limiting a consideration of life‐years to only one or five years past discharge does not maximize health benefits. Therefore, based on their own stated values, triage algorithms for coronavirus patients ought to include life‐stage as a primary consideration, along with the SOFA score and comorbidities, rather than excluding it or using it merely as a tiebreaker. This is not discriminatory because patients ought to have equal opportunity to experience life‐stages. The equitable enforcement of that right justifies unequal treatment based on age in cases when there is a scarcity of life‐saving resources. A consideration of life‐stage would thus allow healthcare workers to responsibly steward public resources in order to maximize lives and life‐years saved. (shrink)

In this chapter, Altman gives two separate arguments that, in conjunction, support a mixed theory of punishment. First, he shows that consequentialism is insufficient on its own because it cannot capture the condemnatory function of the law as an expression of the community’s resentment. Second, he shows that retributivism is insufficient on its own because any plausible legal arrangement must be committed to some non-retributivist values. He then argues that the institution of punishment is justified by its costs and (...) benefits, and the distribution of punishment—who is punished and how much—is justified by what offenders deserve. This two-tiered model of punishment makes more sense than an alternative scheme, according to which retributivist reasoning informs criminal lawmaking and consequentialist reasoning informs criminal judgments and sentencing. (shrink)

The pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially his ability to create living discourses that directly address the student, is the subject of Plato the Teacher. “The crisis of the Republic” refers to the decisive moment in his central dialogue when philosopher-readers realize that Plato’s is challenging them to choose justice by going back down into the dangerous Cave of political life for the sake of the greater Good, as both Socrates and Cicero did.

At a time when both scholars and the public demand explanations and answers to key economic problems that conventional approaches have failed to resolve, this groundbreaking handbook of original works by leading behavioral economists offers the first comprehensive articulation of behavioral economics theory. Borrowing from the findings of psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, legal scholars, and biologists, among others, behavioral economists find that intelligent individuals often tend not to behave as effectively or efficiently in their economic decisions as long held by (...) conventional wisdom. The manner in which individuals actually do behave critically depends on psychological, institutional, cultural, and even biological considerations. "Handbook of Contemporary Behavioral Economics" includes coverage of such critical areas as the Economic Agent, Context and Modeling, Decision Making, Experiments and Implications, Labor Issues, Household and Family Issues, Life and Death, Taxation, Ethical Investment and Tipping, and Behavioral Law and Macroeconomics. Each contribution includes an extensive bibliography. (shrink)