This paper attributes to Nietzsche a theory of cultural development according to which pyramid societies—steeply hierarchical societies following a unified morality—systematically alternate with motley societies, which emerge when pyramid societies encounter other cultures or allow their strict mores to relax. Motley societies contain multiple value systems due to individual innovation or intercultural contact, and are less stringent in dictating individuals' roles. Consequently, many people are torn between incompatible values and lack direction, so they are drawn to a morality of mediocrity, (...) which offers the modest goals of comfort and conformity. However, the need to mediate between conflicting values also tends to yield exceptional individuals who create new values, and can reshape the society into a new pyramid society governed by those values. I argue that Nietzsche favors neither type of society at the expense of the other, but believes the alternation itself is valuable: a pyramid society develops a value system to its full potential; then, when it encounters alternative values, the extraordinary individuals in the resulting motley society synthesize the competing systems into a fuller vision of human flourishing. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 37-39.

While Hegel’s political philosophy has been attacked on the left by republican democrats and on the right by feudalist reactionaries, his apologists see him as a liberal reformer, a moderate who theorized about the development of a free-market society within the bounds of a stabilizing constitutional state. This centrist view has gained ascendancy since the end of the Second World War, enshrining Hegel within the liberal tradition. In this book, Renato Cristi argues that, like the Prussian liberal reformers of his (...) time, Hegel was committed to expand the scope of a free economy and concurrently to ensure that the social practice of subjective freedom did not endanger political stability and order. Aware that a system of mutual advantage failed to integrate the members of civil society and that profound social disharmonies were ineradicable, Hegel adopted the views of the French liberal _doctrinaires_, who sought to realize the principles of the French Revolution by supporting Louis XVIII’s sovereign assertion of the monarchical principle. Not surprisingly, Hegel hailed the French _Charte_ of June 1814 as a beacon of freedom. Endorsement of the monarchical principle was meant to prevent the atomized individuals of civil society from gaining control of the state through appeals to popular sovereignty. This challenges most conventional interpretations of Hegel’s theory of the state and draws it closer to the conservative-authoritarian end of the political spectrum than is usual. (shrink)

In the second of the UM, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life", Nietzsche delivers a rare and lengthy encomium to the traditional Platonic-Aristotelian virtue of justice. "In truth," he says, "no one has a greater claim to our veneration than he who possesses the drive to and strength for justice. For the highest and rarest virtues are united and concealed in justice as in an unfathomable ocean that receives streams and rivers from all sides and takes them (...) into itself".1 This claim seems to echo, or at least allude to, the thesis of Plato's Republic that justice is the virtue in which the other virtues are united, each in its proper place in the... (shrink)

Nietzsche’s attitude toward science is ambivalent: he remarks approvingly on its rigorous methodology and adventurous spirit, but also points out its limitations and rebukes scientists for encroaching onto philosophers’ territory. What does Nietzsche think is science’s proper role and relationship with philosophy? I argue that, according to Nietzsche, philosophy should set goals for science. Philosophers’ distinctive task is to ‘create values’, which involves two steps: (1) envisaging ideals for human life, and (2) turning those ideals into prescriptions for behaviour and (...) societal organization. To accomplish step (2), philosophers should delegate scientists to investigate what moral rules and social arrangements have best advanced this ideal in the past or might in the future. (shrink)

Bodily pain and distress come in many forms. They can well up from within at times of serious illness, but the body can also be subjected to harsh treatment from outside. The medical system is often cold and depersonalized, and much worse are conditions experienced by prisoners in our age of mass incarceration, and by animals trapped in our factory farms. In this pioneering book, Drew Leder offers bold new ways to rethink how we create and treat distress, clearing (...) the way for more humane social practices. Leder draws on literary examples, clinical and philosophical sources, his medical training, and his own struggle with chronic pain. He levies a challenge to the capitalist and Cartesian models that rule modern medicine. Similarly, he looks at the root paradigms of our penitentiary and factory farm systems and the way these produce distressed bodies, asking how such institutions can be reformed. Writing with coauthors ranging from a prominent cardiologist to long-term inmates, he explores alternative environments that can better humanize—even spiritualize—the way we treat one another, offering a very different vision of medical, criminal justice, and food systems. Ultimately Leder proposes not just new answers to important bioethical questions but new ways of questioning accepted concepts and practices. (shrink)

Within Germany, Carl Schmitt's status as a political thinker is on a par with Machiavelli and Hobbes. With the rise in neo-conservatism and authoritarian liberalism in less developed countries such as Chile and Singapore, Renato Christi believes Schmitt's theories will become of considerable importance. Nazi Third Reich. His political theories provide an insight into the nature of Conservatism. well as extrapolate possibilities for the future.

This paper explores an analogy between two approaches to teleology in nature and two theories of authorship. I argue that Spinoza’s attempt (as Kant criticizes it in the Third Critique) to explain all natural unity, and explain away apparent teleological unity, in terms of inhering in the same subject (God) or proceeding causally from God’s essence mirrors the view Proust lays out in the essay “Gustave Moreau” that the features of a work of art are unified in virtue of occurring (...) together in, and proceeding from the laws of, the artist’s inner soul. Meanwhile, the strategy Kant favors for understanding interdependent natural systems like organisms—provisionally considering them as purposively designed—resembles the one Alexander Nehamas recommends in “The Postulated Author” (1981) for interpreting a work of art: imagining the agent who could have intended all its features. I propose that this analogy sheds light on the unity of the two parts of the Third Critique by pointing to the similarity between interpreting beautiful objects and interpreting nature. (shrink)

This is the first volume to systematically explore the range of contemporary thought concerning the body and draw out its crucial implications for medicine.

We are even less aware of our internal organs and the physiological processes that keep us alive. In this fascinating work, Drew Leder examines all the ways in which the body is absent—forgotten, alien, uncontrollable, obscured.

Uterine transplantation could give women who suffer from uterine factor infertility the possibility of experiencing gestation. Much of the ethical discussion about uterine transplantation has focused on whether research on it should even be pursued, but researchers are nevertheless moving forward with several uterine transplant research protocols. Scholars should therefore already be identifying and engaging in an intimate examination of the ethical realities of offering uterine transplantation in a clinical setting. Given the potential for the procedure to expand reproductive options (...) for women, reproductive autonomy has been a primary principle underlying much of the ethical discourse about the hypothetical impact of uterine transplantation. Yet the factors that will affect whether uterine transplants promote or undermine a patients’ reproductive autonomy if the procedure is integrated into clinical practice have yet to be rigorously explored. Focusing on the clinical realities of patient autonomy, I argue that empirical data exploring prospective recipients’ motivations and their perceptions of the benefits of the procedure in the context of their lived experiences are critical to a robust analysis of the ethical dimensions of uterine transplantation. (shrink)

My dissertation brings into conversation two thinkers who are seldom considered together and highlights previously unnoticed similarities in their critical responses to scientism, which was just as prevalent in the late nineteenth century as it is today. I analyze this attitude as consisting of two linked propositions. The first, which Nietzsche calls “the unconditional will to truth,” is that the aims of science, discovering truth and avoiding error, are the most important human aims; and the second is that no practice (...) other than science can achieve them. Both Nietzsche and James criticize the unconditional will to truth for privileging a transcendent ideal over the demands of human life. This unconditional will regards truth as valuable in itself and demands that we pursue it under all circumstances—even if that demand comes into conflict with other values. I lay out the ways in which Nietzsche and James view the value of truth and the imperative to pursue it as conditional on its promotion of human flourishing. In response to the second proposition of scientism, both philosophers argue that science can neither tell us what we should value, nor fully account for the value we in fact find in certain objects, activities, and experiences. And crucially, science cannot tell us whether or why its own goal of attaining truth is valuable. Nietzsche and James reach different conclusions about what is ultimately valuable, and whether traditional religious belief is defensible in light of the discoveries of science. Nonetheless, the hitherto unappreciated similarities I have uncovered in their arguments show that principled opposition to scientism need not be associated with any particular moral or religious viewpoint. This analysis is not only of historical interest: those who consider scientism to be ill-founded and intellectually confining can take some cues from our nineteenth-century predecessors’ strategies for combating it. (shrink)

A critical examination of Kymlicka's conception of republicanism as a mediation between liberalism and communitarianism. The difficulties encountered by Kymlicka's view are traced to the holistic ontology republicanism shares with communitarianism. Mediation with liberalism is better attained by expanding the range of participation beyond the political sphere and a recognition of the value of representation.

ABSTRACT This article, invited for presentation to the North American Nietzsche Society at the 2020 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, is a commentary on Mark Alfano's 2019 monograph, Nietzsche's Moral Psychology. I commend Alfano's productive, innovative use of digital humanities methods as well as his more traditional textual interpretation. But I raise some doubts about Alfano's proposed criterion of “external integration” for a drive to qualify as a Nietzschean virtue: the claim that if a drive systematically and (...) reliably meets with condemnation from an agent's community, it cannot be a virtue. I suggest that the criterion be amended either so that it is disapproval from the agent's true community, which for a solitary moral innovator may be an imagined community of past and future peers, that disqualifies a drive from virtue status; or so that community disapproval is disqualifying only if the agent internalizes it. (shrink)

Within this paper, we discuss Moral Distress Reflective Debriefs as a promising approach to address and mitigate moral distress experienced by healthcare professionals. We briefly review the empirical and theoretical literature on critical incident stress debriefing and psychological debriefing to highlight the potential benefits of this modality. We then describe the approach that we take to facilitating reflective group discussions in response to morally distressing patient cases (“Moral Distress Reflective Debriefs”). We discuss how the debriefing literature and other clinical ethics (...) activities influenced the development of our approach. In particular, we focus on the role of the clinical ethicist as a facilitator with particular emphasis on encouraging perspective-taking and nurturing ethical attunement in a supportive manner. We suggest that this approach reduces the narrowing effects of frustration and anger that are often reported when individuals experience moral-constraint distress. Finally, we provide an example of Moral Distress Reflective Debriefs, elucidating how this supportive process complements ethics consultation and can mitigate the negative effects of moral distress. (shrink)

I argue that clinical medicine can best be understood not as a purified science but as a hermeneutical enterprise: that is, as involved with the interpretation of texts. The literary critic reading a novel, the judge asked to apply a law, must arrive at a coherent reading of their respective texts. Similarly, the physician interprets the text of the ill person: clinical signs and symptoms are read to ferret out their meaning, the underlying disease. However, I suggest that the hermeneutics (...) of medicine is rendered uniquely complex by its wide variety of textual forms. I discuss four in turn: the experiential text of illness as lived out by the patient; the narrative text constituted during history-taking; the physical text of the patient's body as objectively examined; the instrumental text constructed by diagnostic technologies. I further suggest that certain flaws in modern medicine arise from its refusal of a hermeneutic self-understanding. In seeking to escape all interpretive subjectivity, medicine has threatened to expunge its primary subject — the living, experiencing patient. (shrink)

My argument here is principally that the ubiquity of epistemics is evident in the ways in which knowledge claims and attributions of knowledge to self and other are embedded in turns and sequences, inform the design of turns at talk, are amended in the corrections that speakers sometimes make, to change from one epistemic stance to another, and are contested, in the occasional ‘struggles’ between participants, as to which of them has epistemic primacy. I show that these cannot be understood (...) in cognitive terms; furthermore, I show that epistemics – again the attribution of knowledge to self and other – is ‘real’ for participants. That is, in these four practices and aspects of interaction it is evident that participants orient to their states of knowledge relative to one another, on a moment-by-moment, turn-by-turn basis. (shrink)

In this important book, Drew Khlentzos explains the antirealist argument from a realist perspective. He defends naturalistic realism against the antirealist challenge, and he considers the consequences of his defense for our understanding of realism and truth. Khlentzos argues that the naturalistic realist view that the world exists independently of the mind must take into consideration what he calls the representation problem: if the naturalistic realist view is true, how can mental representation of the world be explained?He examines this (...) major antirealist challenge in detail and shows that many realists have dismissed it because they have not understood its nature. He sees it as a philosophical puzzle: the antirealist challenge, if sound, does not prove that there are no objects that exist independently of the mind, but that there is no rational basis for thinking that there are; we have good reason to believe in the naturalistic view, but we have no way of knowing how it could be true. Khlentzos surveys the antirealist arguments of Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, and Crispin Wright and suggests a realist answer. He argues for a radically nonepistemic conception of truth, and against pragmatist, intuitionist, verificationist, and pluralist alternatives. He examines and rejects some current versions of physicalism and functionalism, and offers an original version of the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s sustained reflection on Greek thought has been increasingly recognized as a decisive feature of his own philosophical development. At the same time, this important philosophical meeting has generated considerable controversy and disagreement concerning the radical originality of Heidegger’s view of the Greeks and their place in his groundbreaking thinking. In Heidegger and the Greeks, an international group of distinguished philosophers sheds light on the issues raised by Heidegger’s encounter and engagement with the Greeks. The careful and nuanced essays (...) brought together here shed light on how core philosophical concepts such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and ethics are understood today. For readers at all levels, this volume is an invitation to continue the important dialogue with Greek thinking that was started and stimulated by Heidegger. Contributors are Claudia Baracchi, Walter A. Brogan, Günter Figal, Gregory Fried, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Drew A. Hyland, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, William J. Richardson, John Sallis, Dennis J. Schmidt, and Peter Warnek. (shrink)

Dr. Drew A. Hyland traces the origins of philosophy from its earliest roots in Babylonian and Homeric-Hesiodic mythology to its flowering in the Pre-Socratic imagination. Using selections from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hesiod, Homer, Pythagoras, Zeno, Plato, and Socrates, to name but a few, Dr. Hyland argues against what he calls the "historical approach" to the origin of philosophy. In Hyland's view the differentiation of the human self from notions of God and nature may rightly be called the origin (...) of philosophy. The book's skilled intermingling of original source material, with commentaries by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, among others, and the author's own thought-provoking introduction, provides an invaluable study of this fascinating period in human intellectual development. (shrink)

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, ), we focus on measuring the temporal patterns of specific (...) communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog. (shrink)

Nedelsky and Kelsen criticize the notion of subjective rights. While Nedelsky does so on the basis of a relational theory of rights founded on the Hegelian intersubjective recognition, Kelsen rejects Hegel’s theory of rights because property, the paradigmatic subjective right, appears to be constituted prior to intersubjectve recognition. This paper probes into Hegel’s conception of property to elucidate the root of the divergence between Nedelsky and Kelsen. Pierson v. Post is examined as an illustration of that divergence.

The thesis of "token identity" or "token physicalism" advanced by fodor and others attempts to reconcile materialism with a non-Reductionist view of the special sciences. However, I argue that since the individual events or "tokens" of any science are only designated according to its general types, The former cannot be specified physicalistically while the latter are not. Though attempting to combat a positivistic view of the sciences, Fodor's thesis rests on a positivistic opposition of token and type.

Much previous work in artificial intelligence has neglected representing time in all its complexity. In particular, it has neglected continuous change and the indeterminacy of the future. To rectify this, I have developed a first‐order temporal logic, in which it is possible to name and prove things about facts, events, plans, and world histories. In particular, the logic provides analyses of causality, continuous change in quantities, the persistence of facts (the frame problem), and the relationship between tasks and actions. It (...) may be possible to implement a temporal‐inference machine based on this logic, which keeps track of several “maps” of a time line, one per possible history. (shrink)

Este ensayo analiza la conjunción libertad/autoridad defendida por el republicanismo clásico. Como pensador moderno, Maquiavelo recupera esta síntesis clásica y define la autoridad como la condición de posibilidad de la libertad. Pero, como muestra Eric Nelson, el republicanismo de Maquiavelo es más ateniense que romano. El republicanismo de Michael Sandel tiene una orientación similar. Basado en la ontología social desarrollada por Arendt y Taylor, Sandel postula el valor intrínseco de las nociones de participación y soberanía popular. De este modo, él (...) puede refutar la objeción de Rorty y su interpretación idiosincrática de Dewey. Según Sandel, Dewey critica el rechazo liberal de la autoridad y es capaz de articular orgánicamente la autoridad democrática y la libertad. This essay analyzes the conjunction freedom/authority defended by classical republicanism. As a modern thinker, Machiavelli retrieves this classical synthesis and defines the authority of law as the condition of possibility for freedom. But, as Eric Neson shows, Machiavelli's republicanism is more Athenian than Roman. Michael Sandel's democratic republicanism has a similar orientation. Besed on the social ontology developed by Arendt and Taylor, Sandel postulates the intrinsic value of the notions of participation and popular sovereignty. In this way he can refute Rorty's objections and his idiosyncratic interpretation of Dewey. According to Sandel, Dewey criticizes liberalism's rejection of authority and is able organically to articulate democratic authority and freedom. (shrink)

Kant claims in the third Critique that one can make about wine the merely subjective judgment that it is agreeable but never the universally valid judgment that it is beautiful. This follows from his views that judgments of beauty can be made only about the formal (spatiotemporal) features of a representation and that aromas and flavors consist of formless sensory matter. However, I argue that Kant's theory permits judgments of beauty about wine because the experience displays a temporal structure: the (...) aromas and flavors evolve over the course of a tasting from the bouquet through the palate to the finish. An analogy with music, which Kant describes as 'a play of sensations in time', illuminates how wine qualifies as an object of pure judgments of taste: the 'structure' of a wine can be compared to harmonic structure, and its development throughout the taste can be compared to the unfolding of melody and harmonic progression. (shrink)

The sociological models of functionalism and conflict are introduced and utilized to analyze professionalism in the accounting profession as it is manifest in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant's Code of Conduct. Rule 203 of the Code and provisions of the Code related to the public interest are examined using semiotic analysis to determine if they are most consistent with the functionalist or conflict models. While the analysis does not address intent of the Code, it is determined that the (...) Code contains semantic defects which result in different interpretations of the Code to different readers. The defects found are most consistent with the conflict model of professionalism. This has implications for the public and for individuals within the profession, making the Code less useful to both groups. The defects are seen as a potential battleground for the self-interest vs the public interest orientation of the accounting profession. (shrink)

Excerpt from Kants Naturphilosophie als Grundlage Seines Systems Die vorliegende Arbeit uber die kantische Naturphilosophie war ursprunglich in Aussicht genommen als erstes Kapitel einer Darstellung der deutschen Naturphilosophie seit Kam. Der Grund, warum sie zu einem selbstandigen Werke angeschwollen ist, liegt darin, weil ich bei genauerem Studium des Philosophen fand, man habe das naturphilosophische Element in den Schriften Kants bisher bei weitem unterschatzt und insbesondere seinen Bemuhungen um eine dynamische Theorie der Materie lange nicht diejenige Bedeutung zugeschrieben, die ihnen sowohl (...) in Hinsicht auf die Richtung, welche die kantische Gedankenentwickelung genommen hat, wie fur die eigentumliche Ausbildung dieser Gedanken im Einzelnen thatsachlich beizumessen ist. Man hat den Philosophen nach seiner theoretischen Seite fast lediglich als den Begrunder der modernen Erkenntnistheorie gewurdigt und dabei ubersehen, wie seine ganze Erkenntnistheorie aus naturphilosophischen Erwagungen hervorgegangen und oft in den wichtigsten Punkten von ihnen bestimmt worden ist. Die vorliegende Arbeit schopft nun bei der Hochflut der philosophischen Litteratur, die sich mit Kant beschaftigt, ihre Daseinsberechtigung vor allem daraus, dafs sie die gesamte theoretische Philosophie Kants unter dem Gesichtspunkte der Naturphilosophie betrachtet. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)