Hodgkin and Huxley’s model of the action potential is an apparent dream case of covering‐law explanation in biology. The model includes laws of physics and chemistry that, coupled with details about antecedent and background conditions, can be used to derive features of the action potential. Hodgkin and Huxley insist that their model is not an explanation. This suggests either that subsuming a phenomenon under physical laws is insufficient to explain it or that Hodgkin and Huxley were wrong. I defend Hodgkin (...) and Huxley against Weber’s heteronomy thesis and argue that explanations are descriptions of mechanisms. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Philosophy‐Neuroscience‐Psychology Program, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, Wilson Hall, St. Louis, MO 63130; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

One of the most significant political philosophers of the twentieth century, Carl Schmitt is a deeply controversial figure who has been labeled both Nazi sympathizer and modern-day Thomas Hobbes. First published in 1938, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes used the Enlightenment philosopher’s enduring symbol of the protective Leviathan to address the nature of modern statehood. A work that predicted the demise of the Third Reich and that still holds relevance in today’s security-obsessed society, this volume (...) will be essential reading for students and scholars of political science. “Carl Schmitt is surely the most controversial German political and legal philosopher of this century. . . . We deal with Schmitt, against all odds, because history stubbornly persists in proving many of his tenets right.”— Perspectives on Political Science “[A] significant contribution. . . . The relation between Hobbes and Schmitt is one of the most important questions surrounding Schmitt: it includes a distinct, though occasionally vacillating, personal identification as well as an association of ideas.”— Telos. (shrink)

A translation of Carl Schmitt's classic explanation of the nature and historical/sociological significance of political Catholicism.

Book reviewed in this article: Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. By Mary Ann Glendon.

Carl Schmitt kept diaries throughout his life, several of which he specifically selected for academic publication. These are the recordings made in the early years after World War II, when Schmitt lost all his positions. After his release from the prison he returned to his home in small town of Plettenberg, where he remained until his death. Schmitt ordered these diaries to be published only after his death, because, even several decades after the war, they remained ideologically dangerous. In (...) this issue we continue to publish fragments of translation of the “Glossarium”. In the fragments prepared for present publication, Schmitt argues on several important topics. First, he writes about utopia — paradise located in a remote, but achievable future. The ability to think future located at long distance decreases in modern times. Therefore, in the 19th century they have to move from utopia to positive science. Those who write on future must say that heaven can come tomorrow. Schmitt goes further to compare the utopian ideas of Thomas More with the utopias of the 19th century. More was not a cleric; he was just a clerk, an intellectual, a writer, not a priest. Schmitt questioned the rightfulness of the canonization of More and compared him with another Catholic thinker of that time, Fr. Vitoria. Another important topic — the problem of legality and legitimacy. Schmitt once again handles it in connection with the events in Czechoslovakia in 1948. These events he contrasts with the situation in Germany in 1929-1932. (shrink)

In this introductory essay, we outline the relationship between political dissensus and radical democracy, focusing especially on how such a politics might inform the study of business ethics. This politics is located historically in the failure of liberal democracy to live up to its promise, as well as the deleterious response to that from reactionary populism, strong-man authoritarianism, and exploitative capitalism. In the context of these political vicissitudes, we turn to radical democracy as a form of contestation that offers hope (...) in an affirmative, inclusive and sustainable alternative. On this basis we introduce the papers in the special issue as a collective exploration of the ethics and politics of radical democracy as manifesting in dissensus and the subversion of corporate and elite power by alternative democratic practices and realities. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss some conditions forunderstanding teaching as an act ofresponsibility towards an other, rather than asan instrumental act identified throughepistemology. I first put the latter intocontext through a critical reading of teachingas it is inscribed in humanistic discourses oneducation. Within these discourses, I explorehow students are treated as objects ofknowledge that reinforce the teacher's ego. Icontend that the taking up of this positionmakes not only an ethical relation to thestudent impossible, but also disqualifies anytype of meaningful social (...) relation. Therefore Iargue that teachers have to give up theirposition on the safe side of knowledge andparticipate in the time of risk when meetingthe other means to take responsibility for thatother from a position of vulnerability.Moreover, it is precisely because of this riskthat teaching as an ethical relation becomespossible and where it begins to resound withpoetry. (shrink)

We address Turkheimer’s argument that genome-wide association studies of behaviors and psychiatric traits will fail to produce coherent explanations. We distinguish two major sources of potential i...

This paper defends my claim in earlier work that certain non-causal conditions are sufficient for the truth of some reasons explanations of actions, against the critique of this claim given by Randolph Clarke in his book, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will.

Intentionality and the Problem of Transcendental Friction -- The Epistemic Given and the Semantic Given in C. I. Lewis -- Discursive Intentionality and 'Nonconceptual Content' in Sellars -- The Retreat from Nonconceptualism: Discourse and Experience in Brandom and McDowell -- Somatic Intentionality and Habitual Normativity in Merleau-Ponty's Account of Lived Embodiment -- The Possibilities and Problems of Bifurcated Intentionality.

Ordinal Computability discusses models of computation obtained by generalizing classical models, such as Turing machines or register machines, to transfinite working time and space. In particular, recognizability, randomness, and applications to other areas of mathematics, including set theory and model theory, are covered.

If moral responsibility requires uncaused action, as I believe, and if a reasons explanation of an action must be a causal explanation, as many philosophers of action suppose, then it follows that our responsible actions are ones we do for no reason, which is preposterous. In previous work I have argued against the second premise of this deduction, claiming that the statement that a person did A in order to satisfy their desire D will be true if the person, while (...) doing A, intended of that action that it contribute to satisfying their desire D, a condition that does not entail any causal connection between the explaining desire and the explained action. This claim has received trenchant criticism from Randolph Clarke. The main part of the present paper responds to Clarke’s latest objections. The rest of the paper addresses another worry about my account : does my non-causal sufficient condition hold as widely as it needs to if responsible, uncaused actions are as widespread as we would like to think? (shrink)

The paper explicates a version of dispositionalism and defends it against Kripke's objections (in his "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language") that 1) it leaves out the normative aspect of a rule, 2) it cannot account for the directness of the knowledge one has of what one meant, and 3) regarding rules for computable functions of numbers, a) there are numbers beyond one's capacity to consider and b) there are people who are disposed to make systematic mistakes in computing values (...) of functions they understand perfectly well. (shrink)

Any interpretation of Nietzsche’s criticisms of morality must show whether or not Nietzsche is entitled both to deny free will and to be concerned with furtheringhuman freedom. Here I will show that Nietzsche is entitled to both claims if his theory of freedom is set in the context of a naturalistic drive-psychology. The drive-psychology allows Nietzsche to develop a modified but recognizable account of freedom as autonomy. I situate this development in Nietzsche’s thought through a close reading of Daybreak (Morgenröte). (...) In conclusion I contrast Nietzsche’s naturalistic account of autonomy with the transcendental account developed by Kant. (shrink)

Under the Common Rule, federally-supported activities involving human participants are presumptively required to undergo prospective ethics review if they are “designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” However, the “generalizable knowledge” standard is inherently ambiguous; moreover, it is both over- and under-inclusive of the type of activities that warrant prospective ethical oversight. Rather than conditioning prospective ethics review on an ethically irrelevant criterion like the generalizable knowledge standard, this article proposes that prior ethics review should be required when some (...) individuals are exposed to greater-than-minimal risks for the potential benefit of others, at least when the activity in question is conducted or supported by federal agencies. Under such an approach, the fact that an activity constitutes research would be neither necessary nor sufficient to trigger prospective ethical oversight. (shrink)

In this text I discuss two events in which I learned something important about life and about education in order to formulate in a precise manner two propositions for my pedagogical creed. In focus for both are the interrelatedness of theory and life. The stories are told through the lenses of Emmanuel Levinas’s and Jacques Rancière’s thinking, but the stories also are shown to be essential in my understanding of their thinking. The first story is about learning ethics as a (...) consequence of meeting an old man on a remote island and the second story is about teaching, when a young girl in a situation of war taught me something important about political life. In a final section I discuss briefly what those theoretical/practical experiences and memories bring to my understanding of education. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt unterhielt zeitlebens eine beeindruckend umfangreiche Korrespondenz. Seine Briefpartner waren höchst unterschiedlich. Es zählten dazu sowohl Künstler, wie Gelehrte aller Art, insbesondere juristische Kollegen als auch sonstige Persönlichkeiten.Ein Teil seiner Korrespondenz, nämlich die mit Ernst Jünger und mit Armin Mohler wurde in den letzten Jahren bei Klett-Cotta bzw. dem Akademie-Verlag veröffentlicht. In unserem Hause erschienen 1989 Briefe an Carl Schmitt, die der langjährige frühere Leipziger Studentenpfarrer Werner Becker in den Jahren 1923-1978 an Schmitt gerichtet hatte. Die Schreiben (...) Schmitts, die sich leider nicht mehr erhalten haben, erschließen sich insoweit, als Becker darin auf vorangehende Schreiben Schmitts inhaltlich eingeht. Im Dezember 2003 erschien in der Festschrift für Werner Krawietz unter dem Titel »Legalität, Legitimität und das Politische - Ein Briefwechsel« eine von Florian Simon aus unserem Verlagsarchiv zusammengestellte Korrespondenz Schmitts, die dieser in den Jahren 1931-1933 mit Ludwig Feuchtwanger, in den Jahren 1913-1936 wissenschaftlicher Leiter unseres Hauses, geführt hat.In Spanien war einer von Schmitts intensiven Briefpartnern, der 1915 geborene Römischrechtler Prof. Dr. Álvaro d'Ors. Er kannte Schmitt anfangs nur mittelbar und zwar über seinen Vater, den Philosophen und Essayisten Eugenio d'Ors. Dieser war mit Schmitt seit 1929 befreundet und hatte ihm in seiner Schrift Glosario mit der Darstellung seines Rangs und Originalität seiner Denkweise ein Denkmal gesetzt. 1944 lernten Álvaro d'Ors und Schmitt sich auch persönlich kennen, bei Gelegenheit eines Vortrags von Carl Schmitt »Vitoria und sein Ruhm«, den dieser an der Universität von Granada hielt. An diese war Álvaro d'Ors kurz zuvor zum Ordinarius für Römisches Recht berufen worden.Der Briefwechsel zwischen Schmitt und d'Ors setzt 1948 ein und endet 1983, zwei Jahre vor dem Ableben Schmitts. Der Briefwechsel war begleitet von einer Reihe von Begegnungen in Deutschland, aber mehr noch in Spanien, und zwar insbesondere in Santiago, wohin d'Ors später berufen worden war. Dort lebte seit 1959 auch Schmitts einzige Tochter Anima, nach Ihrer Eheschließung mit Alfonso Otero, Ordinarius für Rechtsgeschichte an der dortigen Universität.Der hier nun vorgelegte Briefwechsel zeigt, wie sehr die theoretischen und praktischen Interessen beider Juristen miteinander verwoben, aber dennoch ihre Denkansätze und Ergebnisse sehr verschieden waren. Der Briefwechsel führt uns durch einen für beide Partner überaus fruchtbaren Dialog zu grundlegenden Aspekten des Denkens beider Autoren: der Nomos der Erde, die Einheit der Welt, Ausnahme und Norm, Legalität und Legitimität und politische Theologie.In sorgfältigen und umfangreichen Anmerkungen der Herausgeberin werden dem Leser Zusammenhänge und Hintergründe erschlossen sowie die in den Briefen erwähnten Persönlichkeiten vorgestellt, die dem deutschen Leser weitestgehend unbekannt sind. Die Briefe mit den Anmerkungen geben einen aufschlußreichen Einblick in das Denken der Briefpartner und insbesondere Carl Schmitts. Sie sind zugleich ein spannendes Zeitdokument und ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte Deutschlands und Spaniens. (shrink)

Written in the early stages of the Cold War by one of the most controversial political and legal thinkers of the twentieth century, Carl Schmitts two short dialogues on power and space bring together several dimensions of his work in new ways. The dialogues renew Schmitts engagement with the questions of political power and geo-politics that had been a persistent concern throughout his intellectual life. As a basis on which to think through the historical role of human agency in (...) relation to power and its new geographies, the dialogues condense and rework key concepts in Schmitts political theory during a transitional period between his Weimar and fascist years to the post-war writings. In this book, Schmitt develops a new dialectics of modern power and an original understanding of the global spatial transformations of the Cold War period. Equally important, the dialogues anticipate the debates on the new geo-political possibilities and threats related to cosmic spaces, overpowering technological advances, and the existential predicament of the human in an increasingly multipolar world. (shrink)