Our essay will be focused in the epistolary relation that Elise Reimarus (1735-1805) maintained with Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) and F.H. Jacobi (1743-1819) because of the discussion begun by Jacobi after claiming G.E. Lessing (1729-1783) to be a “spinozist”. The analysis of Reimarus’ intervention will be divided in two parts: in the first one, we will shortly contextualize de discussion by giving the tenets of Lessing’s thought that justify Jacobi’s claim; secondly, we will offer an sketch of (...) class='Hi'>Elise’s biography in order to proceed afterwards to judge her role within the debate. (i) By showing the way Elise took part in such intellectual affairs and (ii) by noting the relevance of her contributions, (iii) we will close the essay with a reflection on what tools and strategies are to be considered in order to include women when writing history of philosophy and thought. (shrink)

En este artículo analizo el contenido del libro _Freiheti_, publicado anónimo en 1791 y recientemente atribuido a la escritora Elise Reimarus (1735-1803). Se trata de una obra fundamental del periodo de la ilustración que, sin embargo, no ha recibido todavía suficiente atención por parte de los especialistas. Además de ofrecer una presentación del texto, examinar el estado de la cuestión y ofrecer un análisis del contenido del libro, incluyo la primera traducción al español del texto. Mi objetivo es (...) mostrar que al cumplir con su objetivo de definir qué es la libertad, Reimarus transmite un doble mensaje. Por un lado, la filósofa elogia la constitución de Hamburgo y llama a sus conciudadanos a obedecer las leyes que hacen posible la auténtica libertad. Por otro lado, se dirige a los príncipes de Europa para exhortarlos a introducir reformas en sus estructuras políticas que garanticen los derechos humanos, la igualdad y la justicia, además de defender la legitimidad de la revolución política, la necesidad de adoptar una forma democrática de gobierno y la libertad de pensamiento y expresión. Por todo ello, y teniendo en cuenta la manera en que los especialistas la definen, sostengo que Elise Reimarus puede ser considerada como una exponente de lo que se conoce como la Ilustración radical. (shrink)

One of the greatest woman intellectuals of eighteenth‐century Germany is Elise Reimarus, whose contribution to Enlightenment political theory is rarely acknowledged today. Unlike other social contract theorists, Reimarus rejects a people's right to violent resistance or revolution in her philosophical dialogue Freedom. Exploring the arguments in Freedom, this paper observes a number of similarities in the political thought of Elise Reimarus and Immanuel Kant. Both, I suggest, reject violence as an illegitimate response to perceived political (...) injustice in a way that opposes Locke's strong voluntarism and the absolutism of Hobbes. First, they emphasize the need to maintain the legal state as a precondition for the possibility of external right. Second, they share an optimistic view of the inherently “just” nature of the tripartite republican state. And finally, Reimarus and Kant both outline an alternative, nonviolent response to political injustice that consists in the freedom of public expression and a discourse on the moral enlightenment of man. (shrink)

Elise Reimarus was among the leading women intellectuals of eighteenth-century Hamburg. Rarely acknowledged today, her surviving writings contribute to central literary and philosophical debates in Europe at the time. This paper traces Reimarus’s intervention in controversy surrounding Joseph Addison’s tragedy Cato (1713) and its dramatization of republican liberty and virtue. Long erased from the literary canon, Reimarus’s German translation and adaptation (ca. 1776) radicalizes Addison’s critique of Cato’s Stoic leadership style. By rewriting the love-plots and foregrounding (...) the women characters’ private lives, her Cato engenders an alternative “art of politics”—one that steers a consequentialist path toward the common good. (shrink)

Abstract:This article contributes to the re-evaluation of narratives in the history of ideas that have failed to consider women's writings. The laudatory assessment of Kant as a philosophical innovator promoted by Germaine de Staël is questioned and his moral epistemology examined in relation to that of Elise Reimarus, Catharine Cockburn, Catharine Macaulay, and Isabelle de Charrière. The moral and political philosophies of the first three, grounded in natural law, are used to undermine Staël's claim that Kant's moral philosophy (...) offers a significant advance over Locke's, a conclusion reinforced through a reading Charrière's critique of Kant. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore, in some cases for the first time, the significance of the ethical, liberatory dimension of Spinoza’s thought among a number of women philosophers across the long nineteenth century’s German tradition. I begin with brief discussions of Elise Reimarus and Charlotte von Stein. I then proceed to more in-depth treatments of Caroline Michaelis- Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling and Karoline von Günderrode, stressing not only that we may learn about both in drawing out a link to Spinoza or (...) Spinozism, but likewise that we can deepen our understanding of Spinoza in bringing him into dialogue with each (in particular regarding, respectively, the importance of others for self-expression, as well as the metaphysical and ethical status of death, especially suicide). I conclude with a discussion of the turn-of-the-century thinkers Lou Salomé as well as Resa von Schirnhofer, Anna Tumarkin, and especially Elisabeth Schmitt—some of the first academic women philosophers in the German-language context, all closely engaged with Spinoza’s writings—before presenting final remarks concerning the status of Spinoza’s thought in the present context. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore, in some cases for the first time, the significance of the ethical, liberatory dimension of Spinoza’s thought among a number of women philosophers across the long nineteenth century’s German tradition. I begin with brief discussions of Elise Reimarus and Charlotte von Stein. I then proceed to more in-depth treatments of Caroline Michaelis- Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling and Karoline von Günderrode, stressing not only that we may learn about both in drawing out a link to Spinoza or (...) Spinozism, but likewise that we can deepen our understanding of Spinoza in bringing him into dialogue with each (in particular regarding, respectively, the importance of others for self-expression, as well as the metaphysical and ethical status of death, especially suicide). I conclude with a discussion of the turn-of-the-century thinkers Lou Salomé as well as Resa von Schirnhofer, Anna Tumarkin, and especially Elisabeth Schmitt—some of the first academic women philosophers in the German-language context, all closely engaged with Spinoza’s writings—before presenting final remarks concerning the status of Spinoza’s thought in the present context. (shrink)

Célestin Freinet a été arrêté le 20 mars 1940 comme militant communiste, sur ordre du Préfet des Alpes-Maritimes, et interné dans divers camps du sud de la France jusqu'au mois d'octobre 1941. C'est à " former en l'enfant l'homme de demain ", un enfant plus instruit, plus responsable, plus heureux, que s'est attaché cet infatigable promoteur d'une pédagogie nouvelle coopérative. On retrouvera dans ces lettres l'essentiel de la réflexion éducative contenant en germe ses deux ouvrages majeurs, " l'éducation du travail (...) " et " Essai de psychologie sensible ", écrits lorsque Freinet est assigné à résidence en 1941. Mais le témoignage de cet esprit pénétrant et engagé est également remarquable pour sa valeur historique : son regard éclaire sous un jour encore assez peu connu, la misère morale et matérielle des internés, leurs souffrances et leur détresse, leur puissance à résister aussi. Ce volume épistolaire intéressera à la fois tous les curieux de l'œuvre de Freinet, tous ceux que l'éducation nouvelle et la rénovation de l'enseignement préoccupent, et ceux que ne laisse pas indifférents cette période dramatique de notre Histoire racontée au jour le jour, et à laquelle Elise Freinet apporte un écho attentif et émouvant. (shrink)

Kermani traces the history of mankind from the origins of society and language to the present, and un-mutes the silence that resulted from the moment man began to write his history instead of listening to history's story.

The meaning of enlightenment -- Enlightenment in a European setting -- Religious enlightenment and enlightenment in Russia -- Enlightenment in Russian Orthodoxy -- Christian enlightenment and enlightenment learning -- Spiritual and sensual wisdom -- Enlightenment and the oneness of God's creation -- Divine providence and human history -- The spiritual feat of everyday life: celebration of tsarevich Dimitrii -- Absolute monarchy as Christian rulership -- Enlightenment and historical consciousness -- Free will and the human person -- Free will as moral (...) choice -- Free will and religious toleration -- From toleration to equality -- Toward a definition of the Russian enlightenment -- From state building to government by moral means -- Unity and reconciliation in the Russian enlightenment -- Limits to (the) enlightenment in Russia. (shrink)

Can agents rationally inquire into things that they know? On my view, the answer is yes. Call this view the Compatibility Thesis. One challenge to this thesis is to explain why assertions like “I know that p, but I’m wondering whether p” sound odd, if not Moore-Paradoxical. In response to this challenge, I argue that we can reject one or both premises that give rise to it. First, we can deny that inquiry requires interrogative attitudes. Second, we can deny the (...) ignorance norm, on which agents are not permitted to both know and have interrogative attitudes, such as wondering. I argue that there are compelling reasons to deny the former and reasons to question the latter. Both options pave the way for further work on further inquiry. (shrink)

Can you rationally double-check what you already know? In this paper, I argue that you can. Agents can know that something is true and rationally double-check it at the very same time. I defend my position by considering a wide variety of cases where agents double-check their beliefs to gain epistemic improvements beyond knowledge. These include certainty, epistemic resilience, and sensitivity to error. Although this phenomenon is widespread, my proposal faces two types of challenges. First, some have defended ignorance norms, (...) on which agents are only allowed to inquire about things they don't already know. Second – motivated by strong conceptions of belief or pragmatic encroachment – some have argued that double-checking destroys knowledge. I argue that these competing views fail to capture both the epistemic value of double-checking and the many reasons why agents might double-check. Moreover, they rely on overly strong assumptions about what inquiry, knowledge, or belief requires. Finally, I marshal linguistic data in favor of the compatibility of knowledge and double-checking. (shrink)

While there has been significant discussion in the health sciences and ethics literatures about problems associated with publication practices (e.g., ghost- and gift-authorship, conflicts of interest), there has been relatively little practical guidance developed to help researchers determine how they should fairly allocate credit for multi-authored publications. Fair allocation of credit requires that participating authors be acknowledged for their contribution and responsibilities, but it is not obvious what contributions should warrant authorship, nor who should be responsible for the quality and (...) content of the scientific research findings presented in a publication. In this paper, we review arguments presented in the ethics and health science literatures, and the policies or guidelines proposed by learned societies and journals, in order to explore the link between author contribution and responsibility in multi-author multidisciplinary health science publications. We then critically examine the various procedures used in the field to help researchers fairly allocate authorship. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that consent is a normative power. For instance, consent can make an impermissible act permissible. In the words of Heidi Hurd, it “turns a trespass into a dinner party... an invasion of privacy into an intimate moment.” In this chapter, I argue against the assumption that consent has such robust powers for moral transformation. In particular, I argue that there is a wide range of sex that harms or wrongs victims despite being consensual. Moreover, these cases (...) are not limited to those where con- sent is vitiated by background conditions. I start by calling this category of consensual sex Bad Sex. I then distinguish subspecies of this category, including psychological pressure, social coercion, and epistemically unsafe sex. I end by responding to an objection on which we should treat at least some subspecies of Bad Sex as rape. Though this alternative proposal is often motivated by ameliorative and strategic considerations, I argue that such considerations actually count against collapsing the categories of Bad Sex and rape. (shrink)

Advocates of scientic realism typically respond to the challenge of the pessimistic meta-induction by turning to the history of science. The episode most frequently discussed is the shift from Fresnel's wave theory of light to Maxwell's electromagnetism. This particular history is taken to represent one of the hardest problems for the realist, for while it exhibits continuity on the empirical level, it simultaneously represents a dramatic shift in ontology. Thus, various authors have proposed methods for defeating the pessimistic meta-induction based (...) solely on consideration of the Fresnel-Maxwell case. In this paper, I present another case study from physics--Fermi's 1934 theory of beta-decay and the ensuing search for a universal description of weak interactions. I argue that the degree of success of two recent proposals for scientic realism--that of John Worrall (1989, 1994, 2007) and Juha Saatsi (2005)--changes importantly in light of this new case study. (shrink)

Moral theories often take the guidance of individual conduct as their central task, and seek to provide grounds for confidence in deliberation. Yet they are inevitably also drawn into justifying our reactions to and interventions in one another's actions. This dissertation takes critical encounters to mark a central aspect of moral life. Yet standard deontological and consequentialist theories fall short of providing conceptual tools adequate for reflection on this aspect, and virtue theory is surprisingly undeveloped here. I develop a naturalistic (...) account of the capacities and virtues of critical engagement, and suggest some consequences in ethics and metaethics. ;Critical processes are often inarticulate, being experientially and historically prior to moral theory. For example, certain "thick" judgments , conceive a provocation immediately in terms of specific evaluative response-strategies whose fittingness is implicitly honored, but left opaque. Processes of critical response also function inarticulately on a much larger scale, sparking long-term projects, convictions, and identities of solidarity and resistance. A proper-function account of critical agency illuminates our intuitive attachments to critical response patterns, while suggesting some senses in which they can fail. ;Meanwhile, articulated moral judgments have a problematic role in critical engagement. They can be understood as signs with descriptive content, but such content cannot be interpreted without attention to how the thought or claim is historically poised to be put to use or "taken up" in subsequent attitudes and activity. I highlight the fragility of the historical, social, and psychological contexts in which moral verdicts engage effectively with their audiences. ;I argue against identifying the critical moral domain by way of its connection to any fixed set of reactive attitudes, such as resentment and guilt . Moral complexity and critical virtue emerge as critical agency acquires certain new formal dimensions. Subtleties of critical virtue include a capacity for engaged ambivalence, interest in the genealogy of our attitudes and norms, and an ability to apprehend and reconstruct strands of critical moral agency where we might otherwise have been tempted to diagnose brute moral error. (shrink)

Experimental work has shown that spatial experiences influence spatiotemporal metaphor use. In these studies, participants are asked a question that yields different responses depending on the metaphor participants use. It has been claimed that English speakers are equally likely to respond with either variant in the absence of priming. Related studies testing non-spatial experiences demonstrate varied results with a wide range of primes. Here, the effects of eye movement and stimuli presentation modality on comprehension of this question are investigated in (...) different formats. In addition, the results of prior reported controls are re-analyzed in a meta-analysis to verify reliable ambiguity of the test question. Results suggest that English speakers have a baseline preference for the Moving Ego metaphor variant, with a stronger preference in verbal rather than written presentation. The findings have implications both for interpretation of prior studies' results and future study designs. (shrink)

When we think about agents who change a long-standing belief, we sometimes have conflicting reactions. On the one hand, such agents often epistemically improve. For example, their new belief may be better supported by the evidence or closer to the truth. On the other hand, such agents are often subject to criticism. Examples include politicians who change their minds on whether climate change is occurring or whether vaccines cause autism. What explains this criticism, and is it ever justified? To answer (...) these questions, I introduce the notion of epistemic atonement. By epistemic atonement, I mean the process of making up for one’s previous epistemic failures, including believing badly. Central to my account is the idea that epistemic atonement requires restoring trust and indicating trustworthiness. I flesh out my proposal by drawing on philosophical and empirical literature on apologies, demonstrating that epistemic blame and atonement parallels the moral domain in various under-appreciated respects. (shrink)

In this paper, I motivate a puzzle about epistemic rationality. On the one hand, there seems to be something problematic about frequently changing your mind. On the other hand, changing your mind once is often permissible. Why do one-off changes of mind seem rationally permissible, even admirable, while constant changes seem quintessentially irrational? The puzzle of fickleness is to explain this asymmetry. To solve the puzzle, I propose and defend the Ratifiable Reasoning Account. According to this solution, as agents redeliberate, (...) they gain two types of evidence. First, they gain inductive evidence that they will not stably settle their belief. Second, this inductive evidence affords higher-order evidence that they are unreliable at assessing the matter at hand. The fact that fickle agents gain this higher-order evidence explains why fickleness can be epistemically—not just practically—irrational. In addition to solving the puzzle, my account captures a wide range of contextual factors that are relevant for our judgments. (shrink)

La volonté de construire une philosophie critique de l histoire est au c ur de la philosophie de Walter Benjamin. De sa dissertation doctorale aux thèses Sur le concept d histoire, Benjamin s est attelé à la tâche de comprendre et de construire les modes de réalisation d une histoire critique en rupture avec une tradition dédiée à la modernité. Cet ouvrage vise à reconstruire les différentes étapes épistémologiques de cette construction majeure et innovante face au modernisme toujours prévalant actuellement (...) dans ce domaine. Trois niveaux de critique sont identifiés qui concernent respectivement le contenu, la forme et la pratique de la critique. Il en ressort que la critique de la critique est le geste philosophique fondamental qui analyse et structure l activité critique en dissociant les différentes opérations à l uvre dans cette dernière. Ce geste philosophique premier ne concerne ni la dénonciation ni la rectification partielle d une situation d oppression mais constitue réellement son émancipation. Il vise la transformation du sujet lui-même dans et par son rôle d intervenant dans l'histoire. C'est en cherchant à trouver et mobiliser les ressources d apprentissage chez le sujet que le geste critique premier parvient à dépasser l'oppression et à engager la production d'une nouvelle forme de vivre ensemble. *** Der Wille, eine kritische Philosophie der Geschichte zu entwerfen, steht im Zentrum der Philosophie Walter Benjamins. Ausgehend von seiner Doktorarbeit bis hin zu seinen Thesen Über den Begriff der Geschichte, hat Benjamin es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, die verschiedenen Arten der Verwirklichung einer kritischen Geschichte, die mit der Tradition der Moderne bricht, zu verstehen und zu entwerfen. Das vorliegende Werk versucht, die verschiedenen erkenntnistheoretischen Etappen dieses bedeutenden und innovativen Entwurfs, angesichts des heute immer noch auf diesem Gebiet vorherrschenden Modernismus, nachzuzeichnen. Drei Ebenen der Kritik werden identifiziert, die jeweils den Inhalt, die Form und die Praxis der Kritik betreffen. Daraus ergibt sich, dass die Kritik der Kritik die fundamentale philosophische Geste ist, die die kritische Vorgehensweise analysiert und strukturiert, indem sie die verschiedenen Arbeitsschritte in dieser letzteren voneinander trennt. Diese grundlegende philosophische Geste bedeutet weder die Denunziation noch die partielle Rechtfertigung einer Situation der Unterdrückung, sondern stellt in Wirklichkeit ihre Emanzipation dar. Sie hat das Ziel, das Subjekt selbst in und durch seine Rolle zu verwandeln, die darin besteht, in die Geschichte einzugreifen. Indem sie die Quellen der Lernprozesse beim Subjekt sucht und mobilisiert, gelingt es der grundlegenden kritischen Geste, die Unterdrückung zu überwinden und sich für die Einrichtung einer neuen Form des Zusammenlebens einzusetzen. (shrink)

This essay bridges together social network and institutional perspectives to examine how women on boards, by breaking up directors’ homophilous networks, contribute to board effectiveness. It proposes that through real and symbolic representations, women enhance perceptions of the board’s instrumental, relational, and moral legitimacy, leading to increased perceptions of the board’s trustworthiness which in turn fosters shareholders’ trust in the firm. Envisioning the gender diversification of boards as an event of institutional change, this article considers the critical role of shareholder (...) activists and legislative support from the SEC in the deinstitutionalization of old boys’ networks and the reinstitutionalization of gender diverse boards. This work is substantiated with evidence obtained through 34 semi-structured interviews, archival and documentary evidence. (shrink)

In this ethnography of Full Contact, a San Francisco Bay Area boxing gym, I use Bourdieu’s theory of practice to illustrate how ‘rules of the game’ shape people’s perceptions, interactions and positions (capital). First, I show how the unwritten, unspoken rules of boxing as a field (its doxa) impact readings of bodies and bodily capital, readings that then have an impact on micro-level interactions and hierarchies at Full Contact. Second, I show the micro-level consequences of hysteresis – delays in the (...) realignment of habitus and field that result from change at the field level – on social interactions and hierarchies. Gender is at the core of my analysis, for it is both a fundamental part of my and others’ habitus, and a symbolic trait of significance in the hypermasculine doxa of boxing as a field. (shrink)

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick were named as the authors of the publication “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids; a Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” in the journal Nature. While historians have debated the relevance and importance of various discoveries in molecular science, there is little dispute as to the major significance of the discovery of the double-helix structure of deoxyribose nucleic acid. But what of Rosalind Franklin? There is little mention in science manuals of the contribution of the (...) biophysicist Rosalind Franklin to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Watson has admitted that he used Franklin’s... (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to broaden Feyerabend scholarship by asking whether and how Feyerabend's philosophy of science, in particular his commitments to realism and pluralism about scientific theories as well as anarchism about scientific methods, is borne out in multidisciplinary research concerning the Leggett–Garg inequalities. These inequalities were derived explicitly to be a temporal analogue to Bell's inequalities: the viability of macroscopic realism is tested against the predictions of quantum mechanics by performing a series measurements on a macroscopic variable (...) of one system at different time intervals, then evaluating correlations among resultant values. In the nearly forty years since Leggett and Garg's paper, questions continue to be raised whether common tests of these inequalities reveal genuine violations or merely experimental disturbances. There is also much debate about what genuine violations in fact signify, if (as most agree) they are not straight-forwardly analogous to Bell tests. Taking this fascinating and as yet largely unsettled episode from physics as a case study, I derive three Feyerabendian lessons that demonstrate the relevance of his views even today. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, the promotion of collaborative partnerships involving researchers from low and middle income countries with those from high income countries has been a major development in global health research. Ideally, these partnerships would lead to more equitable collaboration including the sharing of research responsibilities and rewards. While collaborative partnership initiatives have shown promise and attracted growing interest, there has been little scholarly debate regarding the fair distribution of authorship credit within these partnerships.

Grete Hermann was a pupil of mathematical physicist Emmy Noether, follower and co-worker of neo-Kantian philosopher Leonard Nelson, and an important intellectual figure in post-war German social democracy. She is best known for her work on the philosophy of modern physics in the 1930s, some of which emerged from intense discussions with Heisenberg and Weizsäcker in Leipzig. Hermann’s aim was to counter the threat to the Kantian notion of causality coming from quantum mechanics. She also discussed in depth the question (...) of ‘hidden variables’ and provided an extensive analysis of Bohr’s notion of complementarity. This volume includes translations of Hermann’s two most important essays on this topic: one hitherto unpublished and one translated here into English for the first time. It also brings together recent scholarly contributions by historians and philosophers of science, physicists, and philosophers and educators following in Hermann’s steps. Hermann's work places her in the first rank among philosophers who wrote about modern physics in the first half of the last century. Those interested in the many fields to which she contributed will find here a comprehensive discussion of her philosophy of physics that places it in the context of her wider work. (shrink)

In this work, we question the ability of existing ranking-based semantics to capture persuasion settings, emphasising in particular the phenomena of procatalepsis and of fading. Some widely accepted principles of ranking-based semantics are incompatible with a faithful treatment of these phenomena, which means that no existing ranking-based semantics can capture these two principles together. This motivates us to introduce a new parametrized ranking-based semantics based on the notion of propagation which extends the existing propagation semantics 139–150) by adding an additional (...) parameter allowing us to gradually decrease the impact of arguments when the length of the path between two arguments increases. We show that this parameter gives the possibility of choosing if one wants to satisfy the property Void Precedence or not and to control the scope of the impact of the arguments. We also propose an experiment to show that the new semantics remains stable when this parameter varies and an axiomatic evaluation to compare it with existing ranking-based semantics in the literature. (shrink)