Jeff McMahan rejects the relevance of desert to the morality of self-defense. In Killing in War he restates his rejection and adds to his reasons. We argue that the reasons are not decisive and that the rejection calls for further attention, which we provide. Although we end up agreeing with McMahan that the limits of morally acceptable self-defense are not determined by anyone’s deserts, we try to show that deserts may have some subsidiary roles in the morality of self-defense. We (...) suggest that recognizing this might help McMahan to answer some unanswered questions to which his own position gives rise. (shrink)

Le cosmos a-t-il un sens? Cette question ne peut être abandonnée aux seuls scientifiques, même s’il importe d’enregistrer leurs avancées dans la formulation de propositions. La vision scientifique de l’univers a mis à mal le modèle hiérarchique traditionnel porté par les religions, en imposant l’idée d’une continuité entre les êtres. Il en résulte un «pessimisme cosmique» où la vie est expliquée à partir de l’inerte et le tout est dénué de finalité. Contre ce réductionnisme, le présent article avance des considérations (...) susceptibles de réenchanter le monde post-darwinien. (shrink)

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

This paper critically investigates the implementation of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights (UNGPs) into the corporate setting through the concept of ‘translation’. In the decade since the creation of the UNGPs, little academic research has focussed specifically on the corporate implementation of human rights. Drawing on qualitative case studies of two multinational corporations—an oil and gas company and a bank—this paper unpacks how human rights are translated into the corporate context. In doing so, the paper focuses (...) on the “resonance dilemma” translators encounter, the strategies used to make human rights understandable and palatable, and the difficulties that emerge from this process. We contend that the process of making human rights understandable and manageable can change their form and content, which may act as an obstacle to human rights realisation and corporate accountability for human rights. (shrink)

Main Response Topics ? Introduction ? Open display and public evaluation ? Publicity versus patient privacy ? Facial tissue donation ? Validity of Louisville Instrument for Risk Acceptance ? Patients' understanding of risk ? Face versus hand transplantation ? Rejection rates/risks ? Patient compliance ? Exit strategy ? Functional recovery ? Societietal implications ? Psychological implications ? Conclusion: Uncertainty likely to persist.

Should we consider irony as a good thing for democratic life? As it is portrayed in the classical texts through which we know Socrates, eirōneia appears as a humble manifestation of self-consciousn...

This is a review essay of Gardner, John. 2007, Offences and Defences: Selected Essays in the Philosophy of Criminal Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 288 pp.

The principle of "organism"—of intrinsic and dynamic unity—and the existence of "organized bodies"—of living things—in the physical world represented crucial preoccupations for philosophers of nature and experimental naturalists across the eighteenth century. How to make sense of these in a manner consistent with a unified scientific understanding of the physical world became the inevitable challenge that accompanied these recognitions. In just this theoretical enterprise, Leibniz emerges to historical scrutiny as an indispensable and pervasive influence. Thus, we are very fortunate to (...) have the body of scholarship that François Duchesneau has devoted to this topic over the course of his illustrious career. In this... (shrink)

For eighteen centuries the Christian church believed that the fourth gospel was drawn up by the son of Zebedee, John, when the latter lived in Ephesus in his old age. As Clement of Alexandria suggests (II-III century) the beloved disciple wanted to emphasize the divine nature of the Son of which the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke had marked the historical insertion and the human nature.

This paper examines the analysis of property regimes in the thought of the French philosopher, Francois Huet, as presented especially in his one major work on that subject, Le Regne Social du Christianisme . There, Huet developed his concern with social issues which began in the mid-1840s, when he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ghent. From 1846, he formed a study group of students now known as the ‘Huet Society’, which discussed social questions such as property rights (...) and inheritance, and considered various reform proposals in the works of Fourier, Proudhon, Saint-Simon and others. In the aftermath of the 1848 Revolutions, Huet resigned his Chair following an official campaign against his allegedly subversive views. From 1850 until his death in 1869, Huet lived in Paris where he concentrated on his studies, producing a large number of published works. Apart from Le Regne, those works were concerned principally with Catholic theology, at least until 1864 when Huet renounced his faith and sought to develop a version of pantheism. However, in La Science de l'esprit , which immediately preceded that renunciation, Huet restated at length and in virtually identical form the core argument of Le Regne. Even in one of his last works, La Revolution Religieuse , moreover, Huet expressed his continuing endorsement of its ‘fundamental idea’ of ‘a guarantee of property to all’, and argued that after fifteen years it was still in advance of current liberal critiques of property regimes. (shrink)

In this article, a brief survey of some of the ways in which biblical scholars try to make sense of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is offered. The views of the following scholars are discussed: Walter Brueggemann, Ying Zhang, John Goldingay and Kathleen Scott Goldingay, N.T. Wright, Philemon M. Chamburuka and Ishanesu S. Gusha, and Peter Lampe. This is followed by the reflections of a biblical scholar and a systematic theologian. From the perspective of a biblical scholar, the (...) following issues are raised: the richness of biblical traditions, the influence of social location on the interpretation of the pandemic in the light of the Bible, the importance of the emphasis on lament, the reluctance to interpret the pandemic as a punishment from God, the importance of the interpreter’s view of God and the emphasis on the way in which the ‘new normal’ should be approached. From the perspective of a systematic theologian the following issues are discussed: The nature of doing theology, the role of the symbol of the Divine, performativity of sense-making, the Trinitarian confession, an emerging new self and the importance of an ethic of responsibility. Contribution: The article is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasises the critical importance of engaging the Christian scripture. The role accorded to hermeneutics and to an explicit interdisciplinary conversation makes a particular contribution to the emerging crisis discourse. (shrink)

To students and practitioners of anamorphic art, the name of Jean-François Niceron is more than preeminent; it has become iconic. La Perspective Curieuse was first published in 1638. An augmented version was then translated into Latin by Mersenne in 1646. A newly amended and augmented version was retranslated into French by Roberval in 1652. This book is an English translation of the 1652 text, with reference to the 1638 and 1646 versions. Considering the continued high reputation of the book, (...) the mathematics have been checked for correctness and consistency, and the authors have provided a full commentary, pointing out the most difficult turns of the 17th-century French, the respective contributions of Niceron, Mersenne and Roberval, and explaining Niceron's greatest insights and weaknesses. (shrink)

In this paper I try to underline both the positive and negative circumstances in which I began translating Heidegger's "Sein und Zeit" in Greek. In 1971 I started, as a young student of philosophy, to study and translate this book, although I misunderstood it and considered it as a paradigm of "existentiell", not existential philosophy. I benefited essentially from both the English and the French translations and I've also received great help from my Greek mentor, E. N. Platis. I published (...) my translation in two volumes, one in 1978 and the other in 1985 and the critics have been very positive. At the beginning, I gave extended explanations about the translation problems and my solutions in a paper published in 1974. In the following years, I wrote articles about the Heideggerian concepts, in order to facilitate a better understanding of his philosophy.. (shrink)

This paper sketches a right-maker account of normative practical reasons along functionalist lines. The approach is contrasted with other similar accounts, in particular John Broome's analysis of reasons as explanations of oughts.

Can we solve the problem of the essential indexical, and account for de se belief, by appealing to 'relativized propositions' (functions from rich indices to truth-values)? According to John Perry, we cannot. This paper offers a detailed examination and a critique of Perry's argument.

This edited collection of essays brings together the leading experts in the field of cultural and philosophical studies to tackle many of the questions still being asked about Jean Francois Lyotard. Contributors include Barry Smart, John O'Neill and Victor J. Seidler with subjects ranging from Lyotard's writings on justice and politics of difference, on feminism, youth, judaism as well as a chapter devoted to his early writings.

This chapter contains sections titled: How should philosophers be read? The dangers of philosophy Poverty in the apocalyptic march of history The extolling of liberty An economic thought Conclusion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:François H. Lapointe PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC SURVEY ThL· survey is limited to articles written in English that have appeared in journals published between 1 January 1974 and 31 December 1976. Abbott, Don. "Marxist Influences on the Rhetorical Theory of Kenneth Burke." Philosophy and Rhetoric 7 (1974): 217-33. Abel, Lionel. "Jacques Derrida: His 'Difference' With Metaphysics." Salmagundi no. 25 (1974): 3-21. Adamowski, T. H. "Character and Consciousness: (...) D. H. Lawrence, Wilhelm Reich, and Jean-Paul Sartre." University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 31 1-34. Adams, D. J. "Style and Social Ideas in Jacques le fataliste." Studies in Voltaire & the Eighteenth Century 124 (1974): 231-48. Adams, Hazard. "Contemporary Ideas of Literature: Terrible Beauty or Rough Beast?" Contemporary Literature 17 (1976): 349-77. Adorno, Theodor W. "Lyric Poetry and Society." Telos no. 20 (1974): 56-71. Ages, Arnold. "Bonald and the Jews." Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa 44 (1974): 32-43. Allen, Diogenes. "The Experience of Existence: Jean-Paul Sartre and Iris Murdoch." International Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1974): 181-87. Allen, Marcus. "Character Development in the Oreste of Voltaire and Les Mouches of Jean-Paul Sartre." CLA Journal 18 (1974): 1-21. Alter, Jean. "A (Terrorist) System of the Novel." Diacritics 6 (1976): 10-15. Altieri, Charles. "Wittgenstein on Consciousness and Language: A Challenge to Derridean Literary Theory." MLN 91 (1976): 1397-1423. Altieri,Charles. "Wordsworth's 'Preface' as Literary Theory." Criticism 18 (1976): 122-146. [On Wordworth and Wittgenstein.] Ames, Van Meter. "Art for Art's Sake Again?" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1975): 303-307. Appleman, Philip. "The Dread Factor: Eliot, Tennyson, and the Shaping of Science." Columbia Forum, N. S. 3 (1974): 32-38. Armstrong, Paul B. " E. M. Forster's Howard's End: The Existential Crisis of the Liberal Imagination." Mosaic 8 (1974): 183-99. Arnold, A. James. "La Condition humaine as Nietzschean Tragedy." Mélanges Malraux Miscellany 6 (1974): 15-24. 366 François H. Lapointe367 Aronson, Ronald. "L'Idiot de la famille: The Ultimate Sartre?" Telos no. 20 (1974): 90-107. Arthos, John. "Du Bartas, Petrarch and the Poetry of Deism." Rice University Studies 60 (1974): 1-17. Artz, Johannes. "Newman as Philosopher." International Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1976): 263-88. Ausmus, Harry J. "Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Language." The Midwest Quarterly 18 (1977): 169-86. Ayala, Francisco. "Ortega y Gasset, Literary Critic." Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 395-414. Bakalar, H. Nicholas. "The Cartesian Legacy to the Eighteenth-century Grammarians." MLN 91 (1976): 698-721. Barnes, Hazel. "Apotheosis and Deification in Plato, Nietzsche and Huxley." Philosophy and Literature 1 (1976): 3-24. Baron, Dennis E. "Role Structure and the Language of Literature." Journal of Literary Semantics 4 (1975): 43-52. Barooskian, Vahan D. "The Aesthetics of the Russian Revolutionary Theatre 1917-1921." British Journal of Aesthetics 15 (1975): 99-117. Bart, B. F. "Hypercreativity in Stendhal and Balzac." Nineteenth Century French Studies 3 (1974-75): 18-39. Barthes, Roland. "An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative." New Literary History 6 (1975): 237-72. Bashford, Bruce. "The Rhetorical Method in Literary Criticism." Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (1976): 133-46. Bass, Alan. "Time and the Witch: Femininity, Metapsychology and the Temporality of the Unconscious." MLN 91 (1976): 871-912. Bassett, Sharon. "Towards a Critique of Romanticism: Wordsworth, Pater and the 'Anima Mundi'." Criticism 17 (1975): 262-75. Batchelor, R. "Literature, Society and the Concept of Revolt." European Studies Review 5 (1975): 395-427. Battin, M. Pabst. "Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy in the Poetics, Part 1." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1974): 155-70, and Part II in Ibid. 33 (1975): 293-302. Bauer, George. "Sartre and the 'Sugars' of History." L'Esprit Créateur 15 (1975): 377-86. Baumgarten, Murray. "The Historical Novel: Some Postulates." Clio 4 (1975): 173-82. Beauchamp, Gorman. "Gulliver's Return to the Cave: Plato's Republic and Book IV of Gulliver's Travels." The Michigan Academician 7 (1974): 201-10. Bennett, Jonathan. "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn." Philosophy 48 (1974): 123-34. Benzon, William. "Cognitive Networks and Literary Semantics." MLN 91 (1976): 952-82. Bergonzi, Bernard. "A Grid of Codes: Views of Structuralism." Encounter 45 (1975): 52-58. Berry, Wanda Warren. "The... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Renaissance Crisis of ExemplarityFrançois Rigolot“Every example is lame” (Tout exemple cloche), acknowledged Montaigne in the last chapter of his Essais. 1 Was this the moaning of a lone, disillusioned skeptic or the idiosyncratic formulation of a widely shared attitude of mistrust at the end of the sixteenth century? To answer this question one must first examine the epistemological status of examples at the end of the period we (...) still conventionally call the “Renaissance”; and this is the purpose of this group of papers. 2In his work on the notion of exemplum in early modern France and Italy John D. Lyons helped restore the concept of exemplarity to its central place in the history of rhetoric. 3 From Aristotle’s paradeigmata—simple case stories at the orator’s disposal (Rhetoric 1.2. 1356b)—to Montaigne’s “lame” exemples—contingent instances unfit for demonstrative purposes (Essais III, 13, 1070)—the rhetorical impulse has followed strangely circuitous ways. Part of the confusion is probably due to the transformation of technical language under the pressure of common usage. Throughout the early modern period, while the Latin word exemplum continued to refer to rhetorical practice (an illustrative anecdote with a moral point), its vernacular derivatives (esempio, ejemplo, exemple, etc.) generally had a broader, looser, and less didactic meaning, as the emphasis was displaced to the “narrative” aspect of instances, regardless of their intentionality. In other words, although examples were often used to illustrate a didactic point, they differed from exempla inasmuch as they were not always meant to serve a demonstrative purpose.Of course, to the extent that choosing an example necessarily involves some form of selective process from a larger quantity of material, every instance is [End Page 557] bound to entertain a metonymic relation with a greater whole. But, etymologically, an example (essample, in Old French spelling) is a sample, one thing merely alleged to resemble another one, not a demonstrative tool. Yet in his Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London, 1611), Randle Cotgrave gave polysemous English equivalents for exemple and exemplaire:Exemple: 1) An example, sample, patterne, or president [sic] to follow; 2) a copie, or counterpane of a writing; 3) one thing alledged to prove, or inforce another that resembles it.Exemplaire: 1) A patterne, sample, or sampler; 2) an example, president [sic] or precedent, for others to follow, or to take heed by; 3) also, the copie, or counterpane of a writing. 4There is an odd mixture of demonstrative and non-demonstrative connotations. The two seemingly interchangeable words receive tripartite definitions, with the three meanings of exemple corresponding to the three of exemplaire.In Renaissance humanistic oratory the evocation of examples was often a simple matter of style. For better elocutory purposes public speakers were encouraged to use graphic case stories to make their speeches more appealing and enjoyable, but orators also used what they called exemplars (Latin exemplaria) to provide their audience with models of conduct to imitate. Worthiness was the ultimate criterion for exemplarity. Cato and Socrates were living symbols of moral determination and courage. They became powerful exemplars of ancient “virtue,” or moral fortitude (Latin virtus; Italian virtù). In the selective process of arguments (inventio), they were chosen because they exemplified a specific attitude or line of conduct: they were, by definition, exemplary examples. 5In the Renaissance the uplifting reading of ancient exemplars was closely related to the doctrine of imitatio, the sacrosanct recourse to inherited cultural models. At the same time the appeal of mimesis, characterized by the actual experience of the real world in reaction to scholastic insularity, greatly problematized the reception of ancient models. Whereas a long-held reverence for the imitative power of traditional exempla offered compelling patterns of moral conduct, the new attractiveness of a more “natural” mimetic discourse [End Page 558] tended to turn the study of models away from duplication. 6 In the face of the inexhaustible diversity and unpredictability of human actions, how can we choose a proper model after which to pattern our own behavior? This is one of the many questions raised by the humanist’s disenchantment with imitative symbols of moral conduct.In recent years the concept... (shrink)

Foundations of Illocutionary Logic de John Searle et Daniel Vanderveken constitue, à ma connaissance, la première suggestion sérieuse d'un cadre formel destiné à l'élaboration d'une logique de l'illocutoire. Les phénomènes illocutoires sont en effet d'une telle com-plexité que, souvent, les schèmes explicatifs proposés n'ont qu'une valeur très locale et ne constituent une explication que pour quelques exemples bien précis, ceux qui justement ont servi de base empirique sur laquelle ces schèmes se sont élaborés. La prévention de FIL est tout (...) autre. On ne saurait en aucun cas faire un reproche de provincialisme aux auteurs dont le but explicite est d'élaborer un véritable cadre théorique général à l'intérieur duquel tous les phénomènes illocutoires pourront trouver une explication. (shrink)

The debate between literalism and contextualism bears on the (in-)existence of ‘free' pragmatic processes, i.e. pragmatic processes of interpretation which contribute to shaping intuitive truth-conditional content without being mandated by anything in the sentence itself. In his new book John Collins defends the contextualist position. He focusses on so-called ‘unarticulated constituents' (e.g. the unmentioned location of rain in a statement like ‘It is raining’) and argues against the idea that the existence of certain bound readings for the implicit component (...) entails the presence of a covert variable in the syntax to which the alleged unarticulated constituent is assigned as semantic value. In the absence of properly syntactic evidence, Collins says, 'judgments about semantic readings are invariably amenable to a pragmatic explanation'. In a recent paper, however, Paul Elbourne offers the sort of evidence which Collins says would be needed to support the literalist position. On Collins' behalf, I discuss, and rebut, the evidence offered by Elbourne. In the last section, I argue against Collins that optionality is a better criterion than unarticulatedness for establishing that a given meaning component results from a free pragmatic process. (shrink)

Following Panaccio, 'John believes that p' is analysed as 'For some x such that x is true if and only if p, John believes x'. On this view the complement clause 'that p' acts as a restricted existential quantifier and it contributes a higher-order property.

Dramatisation d'un dialogue souhaite par Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz mais refuse par John Locke, les Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain mettent en scene Theophile et Philalethe: et Leibniz pouvait ainsi donner la replique a l'Essay concerning Human Understanding de Locke. Longtemps consideres comme la simple synthese de la philosophie leibnizienne, les Nouveaux Essais ne nous presentent-ils pas plutot le philosophe de Hanovre empruntant des pistes originales d'analyse et offrant des orientations epistemologiques plus marquees que dans toute autre de ses oeuvres? (...) S'interessant a l'Essay, Leibniz avait declare:...] j'ai fort medite moi-meme sur ce qui regarde les fondements de nos connaissances....] De toutes les recherches il n'y a point de plus importante, puisque c'est la clef de toutes les autres. Ce sont les tenants et les aboutissants de ce jugement de Leibniz, qui fixait ainsi - par anticipation - le propos des Nouveaux Essais, auxquels les auteurs ont ici consacre leurs analyses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 33.2 (2005) 42-70 [Access article in PDF] "O Happy Living Things" Frankenfoods and the Bounds of Wordsworthian Natural Piety Anne-Lise François With all the flowers Fancy e'er could feignWho breeding flowers will never breed the same. —John Keats, "Ode to Psyche" And I could wish my days to beBound each to each in natural piety. —William Wordsworth, "My heart leaps up" O happy living things! no (...) tongue Their beauty might declare:A spring of love gusht from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware!Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I bless'd them unaware. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" "O happy living things!"—vitamin-enriched grains; potatoes equipped to kill their predators; silk-producing goats; fast-growing salmon that hardly require feeding. Is it possible to predicate the breathless exclamation that escapes Coleridge's mariner, unaware not of water snakes but of the fantastic array of genetically modified creatures—animals and plants—currently under design or production by biotech industries? Already in May 2000 a New York Times article was announcing the imminent arrival of "fast-growing trout and catfish, oysters that can withstand viruses, and an 'Enviropig,' whose feces are less harmful to the environment because they contain less phosphorus." An article inset describes the emergent production of "pharm-animals":These domesticated beasts—cows, pigs, goats, sheep, and chickens—have been given the ability to produce pharmaceuticals and other valuable substances in their milk, eggs or semen. Endowed by scientists with foreign genes, often taken from humans, these animals, or bioreactors, as they are also known, earn their keep as living chemical factories. Two companies, the Genzyme Corporation of Cambridge, Mass., and PPL Therapeutics, a Scottish company, already have products from pharm animals being tested in clinical trials supervised by the Food and Drug Administration. Many other animals are [End Page 42] still in the development stage. For example, Nexia Biotechnologies in Canada is working on a goat that carries a gene from spiders allowing it to produce spider silk in its milk. When the spider silk, which consists of extremely strong, light proteins, is extracted from the goat's milk, the substance, potentially, can be used in applications like bulletproof vests. [Yoon] This last sentence is intriguing. The genetic revolution often bills itself as a second green revolution that will prevent starvation and alleviate disease, promising to feed the world's growing population in terms that tend to essentialize poverty and hunger as inevitable symptoms of a human condition, rather than understand them through the lens of specific colonial and postcolonial histories. But bulletproof vests? The indignant leftist response here would be to deride the collusion between biotechnology and the military-industrial complex—bulletproof vests leaving little doubt as to whose desires count as universal, timeless needs. Yet such a response is perhaps too quick to attribute reason to these genetic experiments in cross-species breeding, and too quick to accept the terms in which biotechnicians present themselves—as the instruments of reason, whether of global capitalism or universal human progress. Part of what this essay wishes to suggest is that to dream up such things and to think of wanting to do them—make a goat produce spider silk in its milk—involve particular fantasies, fantasies not simply about recreating the world in one's image, but about learning to desire the world again, to be excited by it or "surprised" by its existence, to borrow a phrase from Stanley Cavell. The journalist's parenthetical "potentially" indicates that no use has yet been determined, no burning need fuels such experiments, and hints at the boredom behind them—what William Wordsworth might have called the "state of almost savage torpor" in which desire itself has to be invented.As the New York Times writer's double metaphor of animal as laborer- and factory-in-one suggests—"these animals, or bioreactors, as they are also known, earn their keep as living chemical factories"—the binaries animal-human, machine-animal... (shrink)

"François Laruelle is one of the most important French philosophers of the last 20 years, and as his texts have become available in English there has been a rising tide of interest in his work, particularly on the concept of 'Non-Philosophy'. Non-philosophy radically rethinks many of the most cutting-edge concepts such as immanence, pluralism, resistance, science, democracy, decisionism, Marxism, theology and materialism. It also expands our view of what counts as philosophical thought, through art, science and politics, and beyond (...) to fields as varied as film, animality and material objects. Key features: Provides an overview of Laruelle's thought and an understanding of his contemporary relevance to contextualise his work for new readers ; Contains an exclusive interview with Laruelle and a new essay written by Laruelle himself ; Includes a bibliography of Laruelle's work and secondary literature."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Putnam is known for having demonstated the existence of a new form of context-dependence, namely that which characterizes natural kind terms. Terms like ‘tiger' and ‘water' are indexical, Putnam says, since their conditions of application varies with the context of use — in a suitably broad sense of ‘context'. In this talk I focus on the relation between Putnam's semantics and a body of views I call ‘contextualism'. Contextualism generalizes context-sensitivity : it claims that sentences carry contents only in the (...) context of a speech act. This view was put forward by ordinary language philosophers in the mid-twentieth century, and it has re-surfaced in recent times in the works of philosophers like John Searle, Charles Travis, and myself. In the talk I argue that Putnam's semantics has strong affinities with contextualism. (shrink)

There is an aporia to finitude: if I am limited as a finite being, I cannot know what the limits of my finitude are, because if I knew what those limits are, then I would have transcended them. I refer to this aporia as the "hard problem of finitude," interpreted through Graham Priest's work on inclosure paradoxes. Here I offer an interpretation of François Laruelle's theory of the Philosophical Decision in terms of his attempt to resolve this aporia through (...) his suspension of standard philosophy's form of ontological dualism. Next, I apply non-standard philosophy to the problem of religious pluralism, presenting a novel theory of "standard religion" and the "Hierophanic Decision" through a non-standard reading of Mircea Eliade's philosophy of religion, and end by pointing towards what a consistently performative and finite form of religious pluralism might look like from within the "democracy-of-thought," here rendered as the "parliament of religions.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Political Philosophy of Fénelon by Ryan Patrick HanleyJohn J. Conley SJRyan Patrick Hanley. The Political Philosophy of Fénelon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xvi + 306. Hardback, $41.95.In his monograph, Ryan Patrick Hanley offers a revisionist interpretation of the political philosophy of François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai. A series of Enlightenment commentators (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hume, Jefferson) and their progeny have hailed (...) Fénelon as a political subversive who boldly attacked the injustices of the reign of Louis XIV and who prepared the arrival of an egalitarian society with socialist and pacifist traits. Hanley, however, argues that Fénelon actually defended a more moderate and realistic model of political society than his Enlightenment exegetes have suggested. Like earlier commentators, Hanley attempts to prove his argument primarily through an analysis of Telemachus, the pedagogical novel Fénelon had composed for Louis, duc de Bourgogne, the "petit Dauphin" and grandson of Louis XIV, when Fénelon served as his tutor.Three strong chapters demonstrate Hanley's thesis concerning Fénelon's moderate politics and philosophy. Hanley argues that Fénelon's philosophy of education rests on a distinction between true and false glory. True glory resides in virtue and a humble recognition of divine glory, while false glory is the self-centered glorification of the human agent, which easily deteriorates into vanity. Rather than simply condemn self-interest, in his treatment of the education of the prince Fénelon argues that self-interest must be gradually transformed into a broader interest for the good of one's subjects and a deeper recognition of the glory of God. Earning the praise of his Enlightenment acolytes and later feminist commentators, Fénelon defends a solid education for women, but he clearly wants this education to prepare women for their domestic role as wives and mothers; his celebrated treatise and letters on the education of women are not an exercise in gender equality.The economic theory of Fénelon has often been interpreted as a type of utopian socialism. This is largely based on the central place taken by Bétique in the Telemachus. In this mythical land, the happy citizens practice a communist economics; private property is foreign to them. All their basic needs are provided for through communal cooperation. Luxury is also foreign to them; precious metals like gold and silver are used in practical construction as if they were pieces of iron. But Hanley argues that the prosocialist exegetes ignore the varied economies presented in the passages concerning Egypt, Crete, and Tyre. Bétique does not stand alone as an economic ideal. When Fénelon details how the economy of contemporary France should be reformed, it is far from simple socialism. The state has a strong initial role in the state's economic reform, but it works in tandem with private initiatives that will gradually become the stronger partner. "Fénelon differs from later socialists in insisting that the use of state power is not an end in itself, but necessary only to establish the conditions whereby a free economic system can emerge and flourish—at which point direct intervention of the state into economic affairs will diminish, and a free (though hardly unbridled) pursuit of self-interest will be encouraged" (81).Hanley also attacks the common argument that Fénelon is a pacifist who excoriates all recourse to war. Fénelon does indeed condemn war in the most graphic terms. As Archbishop of Cambrai in northern France, he had witnessed the brutal carnage and attendant famines that had decimated the population in repeated wars in this border area. But his nuanced critique of war rests on a distinction between false and true courage. False courage is found in the warrior who initiates war for the sake of his own false glory. True courage lies in those who defend the innocent out of a proper sense of duty; this courage contrasts with cowardice disguised as pacificism. Hanley argues that the confederation of nations that Fénelon envisions as a mechanism to mediate conflict and reduce the recourse to war is less a species of international government than... (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the self-referential component which Searle rightly detects in the truth-conditions of perceptual judgments comes from the perceptual ‘mode' and is not an aspect of the ‘content' of the judgment, contrary to Searle's claim.