There are two senses of the word “people”, first as an ethnic group and second as the collection of citizens of a state. How do they relate to one another and to the state? I show that in his political philosophy Kant insists that “people” in this second sense is constituted only in terms of being subject to a single state, while in his social philosophy he allows for an ethnic conception of peoples that share a language and culture and (...) have distinct characters. In his philosophy of history he insists that the general historical correspondence between ethnic peoples and states is both natural and positive for development toward peace, both because linguistic and religious differences deter the formation of a single world-encompassing state and because their competition through war eventually leads to perpetual peace. Nevertheless I argue that Kant’s insistence on the a priori basis of right combined with the mature development of state and international institutions give reasons that states should not correspond to ethnic peoples. (shrink)

Derek Parfit est célèbre pour avoir soutenu que l'identité personnelle ne comptait pas pour déterminer la survie d'une personne. Sa phrase « personal identity is not what matters » est inspirée d'une approche réductionniste de l'identité personnelle qui consiste à dire que la personne humaine se réduit à un corps, un cerveau et une série d'événements mentaux causalement liés. Dans cette optique, ce qui compte, c'est la continuité psychologique. Cet article vise à montrer que dans des dynamiques de reconnaissances, l'identité (...) personnelle peut compter dans la définition de l'identité personnelle à travers le temps ; en deux mots, que l'identité personnelle compte. Partant des conceptions narrativistes défendues par Paul Ricoeur et Charles Taylor, j'en viens à défendre une théorie constructiviste-institutionnaliste de l'identité personnelle qui prend en considération le caractère institué et construit de l'identité personnelle. Le but de cet article est donc de défendre la thèse selon laquelle l'identité personnelle compte pour dans les réflexions éthiques et politiques. (shrink)

(343) There have appeared in opposition to The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner the three following great treatises: A critique by Szeliga in the March issue of the Norddeutschen Blatter . "On The Essence of Christianity in Relation to The Ego and Its Own in the last issue of Wigand's Vierteljahrsschrift . A brochure: The Last Philosophers by Moses Hess.

Gross goes against the stereotype of New York photographer Diane Arbus as 'Sylvia Plath with a camera' in this examination of Arbus's work within the cultural, literary, and artistic milieu of the 1960s. The author discusses Arbus's portraits, street scenes, images of madness and disability, and her magazine work, including a spread of portraits of children in the magazine Harper's Bazaar, entitled "Auguries of Innocence." Other photographers, artists, and authors under discussion include Robert Frank, Truman Capote, Richard Avedon, Andy Warhol, (...) Roland Barthes, and William Burroughs. The book is for art and photography historians, social and cultural theorists, and lovers of 1960s visual culture. Unfortunately, it contains no photos. (shrink)

Fred Beiser, renowned as one of the world's leading historians of German philosophy, presents a brilliant new study of Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), rehabilitating him as a philosopher worthy of serious attention. Beiser shows, in particular, that Schiller's engagement with Kant is far more subtle and rewarding than is often portrayed. Promising to be a landmark in the study of German thought, Schiller as Philosopher will be compulsory reading for any philosopher, historian, or literary scholar engaged with the key developments (...) of this fertile period. (shrink)

Introduction The central aim of this book is to focus attention upon and illuminate the character of a certain phase of philosophical reflection: namely, ...

This book offers an introduction to the thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who is one of the most significant Christian writers of the Middle Ages. It pays particular attention to the Aquinas's context as a Dominican friar, devoted to the task of preaching the Christian gospel.

In a series of articles specifically commossioned for this volume, some of today's most distinguished business ethicists survey the main areas of interest and ...

Voltaire, the pen name of François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), was one of the most influential leaders of the French Enlightenment. His defense of individual freedom of conscience and his criticisms of religious fanaticism and oppressive orthodoxy had a telling effect on Western history, inspiring several leading founders of America's new laws. This is the first English translation of many of his key texts from his famous pamphlet war for tolerance, written from 1750 to 1768, originally published under pseudonyms to avoid imprisonment (...) and to educate the average citizen. Included are "The Sermon of Rabbi Akib" (a searing attack on anti-Semitism), "Prayer to God" (from the famous Treatise on Tolerance), the hugely popular "Catechism of the Honest Man," "The Dinner at Count Boulainvillier's," and other witty, sometimes acerbic pieces that point out the errors in the Bible, the corruption of the clergy, and the religiously-inspired persecutions, both of his day and across the ages. Many of these pamphlets were burned in a losing battle by the authorities. With a lengthy introduction and copious notes by the editor and translator, plus an appendix including first-hand accounts of the battle by noted mathematician and French revolutionary Condorcet, Frederick the Great, Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith, and others, this excellent compilation will be a welcome addition to the libraries of anyone with an interest in human rights and freedom of thought. (shrink)

Critics of Divine Command Theory (DCT) have advanced the counterpossible terrible commands objection. They argue that DCT implies the counterpossible ‘If a necessarily morally perfect God commanded us to perform a terrible act, then the terrible act would be morally obligatory.’ However, this counterpossible is false. Hence, DCT is false. Philipp Kremers has proposed that the intuition that the counterpossible above is false is due to conversational implicatures. By providing a pragmatic explanation for the intuition, he thinks that DCT proponents (...) can then maintain that the counterpossible is actually true. In this article, I argue that Kremers's conversational implicature response fails because (a) there is good reason to think that no conversational implicature arises given what critics of DCT have expressed, (b) a competent reader would not understand the critics' utterance that TCC is false as implicating that TCC* is false, and (c) the counterpossible terrible commands objection can be easily modified to be immune to the conversational implicature response by cancelling any potential implicature. Thus, an appeal to conversational implicatures cannot save DCT from the counterpossible terrible commands objection. (shrink)

The ethical principle of autonomy is among the most fundamental in ethics, and it is particularly salient for those in public health, who must constantly balance the desire to improve health outcomes by changing behavior with respect for individual freedom. Although there are some areas in which there is a genuine tension between public health and autonomy—childhood vaccine mandates, for example—there are many more areas where not only is there no tension, but public health and autonomy come down to the (...) same thing. These areas of overlap are often rendered invisible by a thin understanding of autonomy. Better integrating newer theoretical insights about autonomy into applied ethics can make discussions of public health ethics more rigorous, incisive, and effective. Even more importantly, bringing modern concepts of autonomy into public health ethics can showcase the many areas in which public health and autonomy have the same goals, face the same threats, and can be mutually advanced by the same kinds of solutions. This article provides a schema for relational autonomy in a public health context and gives concrete examples of how autonomy can be served through public-health interventions. It marshals insights from sociology, psychology, and philosophy to advance a theory of autonomy and coercion that recognizes three potential threats to autonomy: threats to choice sets, threats to knowledge, and threats to preferences. (shrink)

The UK School Curriculum and Assessment Authority proposes a set of values to which everyone can subscribe, which can provide schools with a secure basis for the provision of spiritual, moral, social and cultural education. The proposal is misguided. The code would be determined by political negotiation, which would bring the whole idea of moral education into disrepute, and it would be an impediment to moral advancement, which requires trial and error experimentation. Imposing a code on all state schools would (...) be political indoctrination; and in a pluralistic society any non-vacuous statement of values will meet with objections from some sections of society. Further, the proposed statement of values is open to objections on moral and other grounds. The aims of the proposal would be best met by privatising schools. Given vested-interest opposition to privatisation, the most realistic option is to alter the Local Management of Schools regime to allow schools to innovate in moral teaching and training, to strengthening parental choice, and to increase competition between schools. (shrink)

This paper suggests that quantified negative existentials about fiction—statements of the form “There are some / many / etc. Fs in work W who don't exist”—offer a serious challenge to the theorist of fiction: more serious, in a number of ways, that singular negative existentials. I argue that the temptation to think that only a realist semantics of such statements is plausible should be resisted. There are numerous quantified negative existentials found in other areas that seem equally “true” but where (...) a realist semantics imports ontological commitments that few would want to embrace. In the final part of the paper I sketch an alternative pretense account of one such quantified negative existential, and suggest that the account gives us some reason to believe that quantified negative existentials in general, including quantified negative existentials about fiction, can also be understood in pretense terms. (shrink)

I consider cases in which risk or ignorance create barriers to our discovery of what we ought to do. I argue that neither expected utility theory, nor the maximin principle, nor a timid gambling temperament, is relevant to discovering what we ought to do in one-off or infrequently recurring types of decisions involving risk, or to decisions involving ignorance. I argue, contra Kolodny and MacFarlane, that the miners case does not require us to give up any classical logical principle in (...) order to avoid contradiction. I reject Graham’s claim that the appearance of contradiction depends upon a confusion between acting rightly and not being blameworthy. In the cases of risk and ignorance discussed, we cannot know what we ought to do; and any way of deciding what we shall do is objectively arbitrary even if it reflects our gambling temperament. Subjective probability and the subjective ought should be repudiated. (shrink)