Individualism: The Cultural Logic of Modernity is an edited collection of sixteen essays on the idea of the modern sovereign individual in the western cultural tradition. Reconsidering the eighteenth-century realist novel, twentieth-century modernism, and underappreciated topics on individualism and literature, this volume provocatively revises and enriches our understanding of individualism as the generative premise of modernity itself.

n his Lectures on the Histmy 0f Philosophy Hegel credits Rousseau with an cpoch-making innovation in the realm 0f practical philosophy, an innovation said to consist in thc fact that Rousseau is thc first thinker t0 recognize "the free will" as thc fundamental principle 0f political philosophy} Since Hcgcl’s 0wn practical philosophy is explicitly grounded in an account 0f thc will and its freedom, Hcgcl’s assertion is clearly intended as an acknowledgment 0f his deep indebtedness t0 R0usscau’s social and political (...) thought. What is not s0 clear, however, is how this indebtedness is t0 bc understood: What precisely docs it mean t0 say that the political theories 0f Hegel and Rousseau share the same first principlc? In this paper I intend t0 follow up 0n this interpretive suggestion 0f Hcgcl’s by claborating, much more explicitly than he himself docs, thc sense in which R0usscau’s political thought is founded 011 thc principle 0f the "frcc wiil." While accomplishing this task will put us in a better position t0 clarify thc obscurc philosophical strategy behind Hcgcl’s 0wn social theory, my primary interest here is t0 illuminate thc foundations 0f R0usscau’s political thought, especially its account 0f the connection between freedom and the general will. I argue that it is necessary t0 distinguish two ways in which Rousseau takes the general will t0 secure, or realize, thc freedom of individual citizens, namely, by functioning as an embodiment as well as a precondition of such freedom. Understanding both 0f these points will lead us t0 scc: that R0usscau’s thought rests 0n two distinct, though not incompatible, accounts 0f how citizens whose actions are constrained by thc general will are in fact subject 0nly to their 0wn wills and therefore free in their 0bcdience to thc general will. As we shall scc, these two accounts arc implicitly based upon distinct conceptions 0f political freedom. (shrink)

Michael Psellos (1018-1081) read texts of the Neoplatonist Proclus (412-485) throughout his life. His interest may have started as early as 1034, but the first direct references can be dated to ca 1041 and the last occur towards the end of his life, notably the Omnifaria Doctrina. Psellos’ interest in Proclus evolved over time: 1. 1034-1043 hermeneutical problems, 2. 1043-1059 theurgy and interest in relation between body and soul, 3. 1059-1081 physiology and interest in Proclus’ philosophical principles. Psellos’ wide range (...) of interests means that each phase represents a particular focus, but not exclusive one. (shrink)

Contains Part I of a First Book of Jurisprudence (1929)and essays from Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics (1882) and Essays in the Law (1922).

A journey usually has a starting point and a destination. In this brief essay only a portion of this journey can be discussed: that which begins with Mill’s search for a new conception of liberty which he first developed in Principles of Political Economy (1848) and then considered in another context in On Liberty (1859). Here, we shall confine our attention to the concepts that enabled Mill to make this journey. We shall conclude by considering the question of whether or (...) not Mill should be considered a believer in a socialist ideology. There is no simple answer to this question. It will be argued that part of the problem lies less with the kind of socialism that might appeal to Mill and more with Mill’s conception of his role in public life as a logician and philosopher rather than as a public moralist advancing ideological views. (shrink)

Meinong's theory of defective objects in On Emotional Presentation is ambiguous in ways which give rise to a dilemma. It is not clear whether or not defective objects are supposed to be a special kind of intentional object. If they are intentional objects, then a strengthened version of Mally's paradox about self-referential thought can be given which contradicts the intentionality thesis. But if they are not intentional objects, then thoughts with defective objects themselves constitute immediate counter-examples to the intentionality thesis. (...) In either case, the theory of defective objects cannot be made logically consistent with both the possibility of self-referential thought and the intentionality thesis in its full generality. (shrink)

In Simple Minds, Dan Lloyd presents a reductive account of naturally representing machines. The theory entails that a system represents an event by virtue of potentially misrepresenting it whenever the machine satisfies a multiple information channel, convergence, and uptake condition. I argue that Lloyd's conditions are insufficient for systems intrinsically naturally to misrepresent, and hence insufficient for them intrinsically naturally to represent. The appearance of potential misrepresentation in such machines is achieved only by reference to the extrinsic design or extrinsic (...) interpretation or attribution of an intrinsically nonexistent or underdetermined purpose, end, or goal to such devices in identifying an intended object of representation in the system's salient behavior under the uptake condition. The implication is that Lloyd-representation is not intrinsic natural representation in a cognitively relevant sense, and Lloyd's simple ‘minds’ are not minds but mere machines. (shrink)

To qualify the truth of a proposition probabilistically is to place it within the scope of a special type of alethic modality. We expect that, as in other modal contexts, the merely probabilistic truth of an assumption in a valid inference must carry over to whatever conclusions are derived from the assumption. That expectation, however, is not always fulfilled in ordinary reasoning about conditional probabilities. There are simpler ways of illustrating what I shall call the paradoxes of conditional probabilistic reasoning (...) in ordinary language, but the following argument is a colorful example. Consider an apparently deductively valid inference, by an imaginary inmate of a penal institution supervised by a bitterly hated warden who is surrounded by dangerous criminals, including the argument’s author. (shrink)

An elementary exercise in symbolizing an existential to universal relation reveals expressive limitations in standard first-order predicate-quantificational logic. Alternative translations of a sample some-every sentence are considered and rejected after criticism, leaving as the best choice a particular structure that demonstrably does not serve for all predicates available to the ordinary language to which the sample sentence belongs. We explain the difficulties encountered in trying to arrive at an adequate translation of the sentence in classical logic, as background to examining (...) five alternative nonclassical logics to resolve the problem. We settle finally if only provisionally in the process on a version of intensional logic that permits reference and true predication of constitutive properties to nonexistent as well as existent objects. (shrink)

Imprint covered by label which reads: Published in U.S.A. by Barnes & Noble Books, Totowa, N.J. Includes bibliographical references and index.

When the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT late in 1972, environmentalists hailed the decision. Indeed, the DDT ban became a symbol of the power of environmental activism in America. Since the ban, several species that were decimated by the effects of DDT have significantly recovered, including bald eagles, peregrines, ospreys, and brown pelicans. Yet a careful reading of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring reveals DDT to be but one of hundreds of chemicals in thousands of formulations. Carson called for a reduction (...) in the use of all chemical insecticides. Carson’s recommendations notwithstanding, policymakers focused on DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons, culminating in the DDT ban, passage of the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act of 1972, and subsequent bans on aldrin and dieldrin. Similarly, the history of pesticides has focused inordinately on DDT, providing a myopic image of the ongoing challenges of pesticides in agricultural practice and ongoing environmental protection efforts in the modern world. “Pesticides and the perils of synecdoche” argues that focusing on DDT oversimplified the environmental risks of chemical insecticides and narrowed the parameters of the debate, and in the process both policy and subsequent histories neglected the highly toxic organophosphate insecticides, which dominated agriculture in the United States and the world after the DDT ban, with unintended consequences for farmworkers and wildlife. (shrink)

The way of shaping present “riffraff” into community in our wilderness is not identical to that of Moses at Sinai, but the need to establish law and to offer it as gospel is very much the same.

Is intentionally doing A linked to the intention to do A? Knobe and Burra believe that the link between the English words ‘intention’ and ‘intentional’ may mislead philosophers and cognitive scientists to falsely believe that intentionally doing an action A requires one to have the intention to do A. Knobe and Burra believe that data from other languages..