Para Nietzsche, Sócrates é o principal responsável pela inversão dos valores do mundo helênico. Na obra O Nascimento da tragédia, o “projeto socrático” é uma destruição da tragédia clássica, na qual os impulsos apolíneo e dionisíaco estavam unidos: esse projeto representa a afirmação da racionalidade em detrimento da arte enquanto expressão dos impulsos trágicos. Por sua vez, no Crepúsculo dos ídolos, Nietzsche critica a ascensão da dialética socrática entre os gregos, considerando o seu caráter degenerativo contra a vida e contra (...) os instintos. Caráter expresso nas últimas palavras de Sócrates: “Viver- significa estar há muito doente: eu devo um galo a Asclépio Salvador”. Assim, justifica-se este trabalho como uma apresentação das imagens de Sócrates nas obras acima referidas, para demonstrar os elementos principais que compõem a crítica nietzschiana à doença socrática. (shrink)

The sexological research questionnaire, which became a central research tool in twentieth-century sexology, has a methodological-developmental history stretching back into mid-nineteenth century Germany. It was the product of a prolonged, disruptive encounter between sexual scientists constructing sexual case studies along with newly assertive homosexual men supplying self-penned sexual autobiographies. Homosexual autobiographies were intensely interesting to these men of science but lacked the brevity, structure, and discipline of a formal clinical case study. In the closing decades of the century, efforts to (...) harness and regularize this self-penned material resulted in a series of methodological adaptations. By the turn of the century this process had resulted in the first use of a formal sexual research questionnaire. (shrink)

This incisive study concerns the ways in which theological claims about creation's original and final perfection shape social ethics. Schuurman argues that prominent 20th century theologians Emil Brunner and Jurgen Moltmann wrongly envision the eschaton as radically discontinuous with creation, and that this discontinuity coheres with serious inadequacies in their social ethics. His thesis is that continuity between creation and eschaton is necessary if Christian social ethics is to avoid dualistic understandings of love and justice, personal and impersonal values, church (...) and world, revolutionism and conservatism. Schuurman establishes theological groundwork for a social ethic that calls for continuous transformation of social institutions and structures.". (shrink)

Select papers from Oneonta’s Undergraduate Philosophy Conference.

_Offers a new perspective on the political significance of the Hegelian dialectical legacy._.

THE CENTRALITY OF "SYMPATHY" to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments points to the centrality of love in the book. While Smith delineates a somewhat unusual, technical sense of "sympathy", his actual use of the term frequently slips into its more ordinary sense of "compassion" or affectionate fellow feeling. This no doubt intentional equivocation on Smith's part helps suffuse the book with these themes, to the point that, without much exaggeration, one could say that the Theory of Moral Sentiments is (...) generally about love: our need for love and sympathy, love as friendship, self-love, the love of praise and praiseworthiness, the love of beauty. Even in the Wealth of Nations, our loves are thought to be very important in explaining our behavior. Smith is unusual among modern moral philosophers in according so central a place to love in this broad sense, although of course Christianity made love a central theme in reflection on ethical life, and philosophers such as Hutcheson made benevolence a key virtue in their ethical systems. However, it is not our purpose to examine Smith's critique of Hutcheson or indeed of any of his predecessors. Rather we aim in this paper to reflect on his treatment of this topic. We shall do so in part by means of comparisons with Aristotle and Plato, first with respect to friendship and then with respect to love generally. Smith's writing is replete with classical references, raising the issue of the degree to which his thought is "ancient" or "modern." Friendship is arguably the pinnacle of social relations for the ancients, and thus it provides us with a useful device for determining the degree to which Smith's thought embodies classical moral and philosophical principles. The subtlety of Smith's interweaving of traditions will become visible as we reflect not just on the ways Smith's thought exhibits classical conceptions of friendship and love, but also on the ways he departs from them. For in at least one important respect, love is a closed book from Smith's standpoint, and thus, as it turns out, also at odds with classical friendship. (shrink)

Portraits of patients served many clinical functions in eighteenth-century medic John Hunter's medical practice. As incarnations of medical skills and medical knowledge, they helped Hunter understand his patients’ problems. They could also bridge the physical absence of his patients, and so help him discuss cases at a distance with other members of the medical faculty. Moreover, portraits complemented text in his day-to-day practice; portraits were in no way an ancillary medium for Hunter, but rather a fundamental way of working. Meanwhile, (...) the role of Hunter's assistants as medically trained artists complicates typical historical models of patient–practitioner interactions, and affects how patients were objectified by modes of looking and by art. (shrink)

This essay considers and rejects the hypothesis of Fackenheim, Wiesel and others that the Jewish Holocaust contains some qualitatively or quantitatively distinct moral evil. The Holocaust was not qualitatively distinct because the intentions and vices of the mass murderer are qualitatively indistinguishable from the intentions and vices of the common murderer. The Holocaust was not quantitatively distinct either because the sum of the evils of the Holocaust is quantitatively indistinguishable from six million randomly selected individual murders or because the notion (...) of a ‘sum’ of moral evils is conceptually incoherent. (shrink)