In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Roots of RomanticismJames SchmidtIsaiah Berlin. The Roots of Romanticism. The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Bollingen Series XXXV:45. Edited by Henry Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 171. Cloth. $19.95.Originally delivered in the spring of 1965 and subsequently broadcast several times over the BBC, Berlin's lectures on romanticism have long been esteemed by his (...) admirers. Berlin nevertheless resisted their publication, hoping one day to write a book on romanticism. His literary executor Henry Hardy reports, however, "not so much as a sentence of the intended work was ever written" (x). Thus Hardy's edition of these lectures constitutes Berlin's most extended reflection on a theme that loomed large in his understanding of the modern world: the romantic critique of the Enlightenment.Surprisingly few romantics actually appear in these pages. Those who do arrive late, linger briefly, and are usually German. Fichte enters on page 88, followed by Schelling (97) and the Schlegel brothers (104), with brief appearances by E. T. A. Hoffman and Johann Ludwig Tieck (114-6). Only in his closing ruminations on the impact of romanticism does Berlin cast a glance at Byron, Chateaubriand, and Sir Walter Scott. Most of the book explores what Berlin takes to be romanticism's "roots," which he locates in a few eighteenth-century German writers who, when romanticism finally burst upon the scene, were either disgusted by it (Jacobi, Schiller, and Goethe) or dead (Hamann). A few years later Berlin made these proto-romantics the charter members of the movement he dubbed "the Counter-Enlightenment"—a concept that would have a considerable career of its own. Berlin's concern is thus less with romanticism per se than "with the revolution of which romanticism, at any rate in some of its guises, is the strongest expression and symptom" (xiii).As Berlin saw it, this revolution involved a rejection of the idea that 1) "all [End Page 451] genuine questions can be answered," 2) "all these answers are knowable," and 3) "all these answers must be compatible with one another" (21-2). Upon these three principles, he insists, "the whole Western tradition rested" (21), and their rejection constitutes "the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West" (1). Berlin holds that the Enlightenment left these principles unshaken. It was the romantics who questioned the "ruinous" belief that "there is one single solution to all human ills" (which carries the insidious corollary that "you must impose this solution no matter what cost") and thus laid the foundations for "liberalism, toleration, decency and the appreciation of the imperfections of life" (146-7), causes which are usually associated (wrongly, according to Berlin) with the Enlightenment.These arguments will not be unfamiliar to those who know Berlin's works. Reading him is a bit like listening to Vivaldi: taken individually, his essays are clever, vigorously argued, and elegantly crafted; but reading them in sequence soon leads to a nagging sense of having heard it all before. Berlin's work was animated by an awareness of the diversity of plausible answers that could be given to the question of how life should be lived and by an impassioned defense of this plurality of possibilities against the illusion of an ultimate solution. One can admire the defense of liberalism that Berlin drew from these convictions and yet have reservations about the historical accuracy of his account of the relationship between romanticism and the Enlightenment. It is hard to see Hamann as a supporter of pluralism and harder still to see the philosophes—who rejected the dogmatic esprit de systèm in favor of an experimentalist esprit systématique—as oblivious to the multiplicity of ways in which good lives could be lived. Lessing's views on religious questions were a good deal more skeptical and open-ended than Jacobi's. Fichte and Schelling sought to bring a greater systematic coherence to Kant's philosophy, not to dismantle it. Once one moves from general claims about "romanticism" and "the Enlightenment" to assess specific thinkers, the picture becomes a good deal messier than Berlin lets on. Early romantics... (shrink)

Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature changes. We find that there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in the tropics. Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in (...) the tropical troposphere are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”.This emerging reconciliation of models and observations has two primary explanations. First, because of changes in the treatment of buoy and satellite information, new surface temperature datasets yield slightly reduced tropical warming relative to earlier versions. Second, recently developed satellite and radiosonde datasets now show larger warming of the tropical lower troposphere. In the case of a new satellite dataset from remote sensing systems, enhancedRSS warming is due to an improved procedure of adjusting for inter-satellite biases. When the RSS-derived tropospheric temperature trend is compared with four different observed estimates of surface temperature change, the surface warming is invariably amplified in the tropical troposphere, consistent with model results. Even if we use data from a second satellite dataset with smaller tropospheric warming than in remote sensing systems RSS, observed tropical lapse rates are not significantly different from those in all model simulations.Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”. (shrink)

This paper maintains that objectivism about practical reasons should be combined with pluralism both about the nature of practical reasons and about action explanations. We argue for an ‘expanding circle of practical reasons’, starting out from an open-minded monist objectivism. On this view, practical reasons are not limited to actual facts, but consist in states of affairs, possible facts that may or may not obtain. Going beyond such ‘that-ish’ reasons, we argue that goals are also bona fide practical reasons. This (...) makes for a genuine pluralism about practical reasons. Furthermore, the facts or states of affairs that function as practical reasons are not exclusively natural or descriptive, but include normative facts. That normative facts can be reasons justifies a pluralism about reason explanations, one which allows for what we call enkratic explanations in addition to teleological ones. (shrink)

This edited collection is the first volume solely dedicated to research on Johann Gottfried Herder's understanding of history, time, and temporalities. Forms of Temporality and Historical Time in the Work of Johann Gottfried Herder is ideal for scholars, graduates, and postgraduates interested in Herder's metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of history, as well as any scholar concerned with 18th-century concepts of time and the emergence of the modern world at the beginning of the 19th century.

John Rawls ist im 20. Jahrhundert sicherlich einer der bedeutendsten praktischen Philosophen. Seine Werke und die damit verbundene Begriffs- und Theoriebildung haben viele Traditionslinien philosophischer Klassiker der Moderne aufgegriffen, synthetisiert und neu ausgelegt. Mit seinem Nachdenken über Gerechtigkeit prägt er bis heute viele philosophische Debatten, sei es in positiver Bezugnahme oder negativer Abgrenzung.

Mit seiner Theorie der Gerechtigkeit löste John Rawls (1921-2002) eine Renaissance der normativen politischen Theorie aus, da sie Fragen nach der gerechten Verteilung von Gütern und Chancen wieder als eine zentrale philosophische Aufgabe ernst nahm. Es gilt als eines der einflussreichsten Werke der politischen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts und kann nach wie vor als konstruktiver Beitrag zu aktuellen Diskussionen um Verteilungsgerechtigkeit gesehen werden. Mit seinem zweiten Hauptwerk Politischer Liberalismus hat er die Debatte eröffnet, wie wir unter Bedingungen einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft (...) auf vernünftige Weise gemeinsam leben können. Das Werk von Rawls besitzt eine zentrale Bedeutung für die politische Philosophie der Gegenwart und für angrenzende Disziplinen wie Sozialwissenschaften, Rechtswissenschaften oder Theologie. Das Handbuch ist das erste deutschsprachige Nachschlagewerk, welches auf dem aktuellen internationalen Forschungsstand das Gesamtwerk von Rawls in seiner Entwicklung darstellt, zentrale Begriffe erläutert und zudem die wichtigsten Referenzen und Diskussionen vorstellt. (shrink)

This chapter explores whether a version of causalism about reasons for action can be saved by giving up Davidsonian psychologism and endorsing objectivism, so that the reasons for which we act are the normative reasons that cause our corresponding actions. We address two problems for ‘objecto-causalism’, actions for merely apparent normative reasons and actions performed in response to future normative reasons—in neither of these cases can the reason for which the agent acts cause her action. To resolve these problems, we (...) move from objecto-causalism to ‘objecto-capacitism’, which appeals to agential competences manifest-ed in acting for a reason. We briefly apply this view of reasons for action to historical action explanations. (shrink)

Psychological time—as distinct from physical time—divides the past from the future by means of the experienced present and serves as a frame of reference for objects, events, actions, and persons. There are cases when our understanding of objects and events gains in depth with every additional time dimension, until we are able to arrange all the data in a meaningful sequence ranging from the past through the present to the future across time. A description of city traffic when confined to (...) the present is one step towards analysing special problems and understanding congestion in certain areas. The historical development of the city offers additional insight into the evolution of bottlenecks, while current changes, made by the municipal authorities, can only be understood in connection with a long-term development plan. A lecturer on town planning will, therefore, offer his audience a more profound understanding of the subject by combining a description of the visible present with a causal explanation of the past and a teleological account of future projects. (shrink)

Withholding or withdrawing life-saving ventilators can become necessary when resources are insufficient. In the USA, such rationing has unique social justice dimensions. Structural elements of dominant allocation frameworks simultaneously advantage white communities, and disadvantage Black communities—who already experience a disproportionate burden of COVID-19-related job losses, hospitalisations and mortality. Using the example of New Jersey’s Crisis Standard of Care policy, we describe how dominant rationing guidance compounds for many Black patients prior unfair structural disadvantage, chiefly due to the way creatinine and (...) life expectancy are typically considered.We outline six possible policy options towards a more just approach: improving diversity in decision processes, adjusting creatinine scores, replacing creatinine, dropping creatinine, finding alternative measures, adding equity weights and rejecting the dominant model altogether. We also contrast these options with making no changes, which is not a neutral default, but in separate need of justification, despite a prominent claim that it is simply based on ‘objective medical knowledge’. In the regrettable absence of fair federal guidance, hospital and state-level policymakers should reflect on which of these, or further options, seem feasible and justifiable.Irrespective of which approach is taken, all guidance should be supplemented with a monitoring and reporting requirement on possible disparate impacts. The hope that we will be able to continue to avoid rationing ventilators must not stand in the way of revising guidance in a way that better promotes health equity and racial justice, both to be prepared, and given the significant expressive value of ventilator guidance. (shrink)

The mechanistic approach in the cognitive and biological sciences emphasizes that scientific explanations succeed by analyzing the mechanisms underlying phenomena across multiple levels. In this paper, we propose a formal strategy to establish such multi-level mechanistic models, which are foundational to mechanistic explanations. Our objectives are twofold: First, we introduce the novel "mLCA" (multi-Level Coincidence Analysis) script, which transforms binary data tables from tests on mechanistic systems into mechanistic models consistent with those tables. Second, we provide several philosophical insights derived (...) from the outcomes generated by this script and its underlying algorithm. Using illustrative examples, we defend the following claims: 1. Inference methods for generating mechanistic models generally require information on how causal factors are assigned to different levels within data tables generated by multi-level structures. 2. The mLCA script successfully produces appropriate mechanistic models from binary data tables, demonstrating the practical application of the philosophical mechanistic approach in the sciences. 3. The number of solutions generated by mLCA increases significantly as the number of relevant factors grows, reflecting adaptations in causal inference methods to meet the demands of multi-level mechanistic modeling. 4. Any further reduction of solutions, if possible, involves pragmatic considerations, a point that carries profound implications for the broader ambitions of the mechanistic approach. By addressing these points, our paper contributes both to the development of practical algorithmic tools and to a deeper philosophical understanding of multi-level mechanistic modeling. (shrink)

John Rawls' Verwendung der Maximin-Regel zur Herleitung seiner Gerechtigkeitsprinzipien hat eine Fülle kritischer Beiträge nach sich gezogen. Auf der Grundlage dieser Arbeiten wird im vorliegenden Papier der Versuch unternommen, Rawls' Maximin-Argumentation einer möglichst umfassenden und geschlossenen Kritik zu unterziehen. Zur Kennzeichnung des spezifischen Entscheidungsproblems, mit dem sich die Individuen in der "original position" konfrontiert sehen, wird auf das allgemeine Modell der Theorie rationaler Entscheidung bei Ungewißheit zurückgegriffen. In diesem Zusammenhang wird insbesondere die Frage geklärt, was man sich unter einer abstrakten (...) (bzw. in Rawls' Diktion: "analogen") Anwendung des Maximin-Kriteriums vorzustellen hat. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden dann drei verschiedene Versionen des Rawls'schen Maximin-Arguments vorgestellt bzw. rekonstruiert und einer systematischen Kritik unterzogen. (shrink)

This volume is dedicated to the topic of the human evaluation and interpretation of animals in ancient and medieval cultures. From a transcultural perspective contributions from Assyriology, Byzantine Studies, Classical Archaeology, Egyptology, German Medieval Studies and Jewish History look into the processes and mechanisms behind the transfer by people of certain values to animals, and the functions these animal-signs have within written, pictorial and performative forms of expression.

The paper draws on a conceptual analysis of justice in discussing the power of rational choice justifications of conceptions of justice. It is argued that the concept of justice can be reduced to two independent moral dimensions. From this conceptual thesis a simple conceptional criterion is derived which any powerful theory of justice must satisfy. An attempt is made to use this fundamental criterion in evaluating a wide variety of rational choice theories of justice. It is shown that there is (...) but one variant of the rational choice approach which in substantiating principles of justice does not violate this criterion. (shrink)

By studying how different societies understand categories such as time and causality, the Durkheimians decentered Western epistemology. With contributions from philosophy, sociology, anthropology, media studies, and sinology, this volume illustrates the interdisciplinarity and intellectual rigor of the "category project" which did not only stir controversies among contemporary scholars but paved the way for other theories exploring how the thoughts of individuals are prefigured by society and vice versa.

In diesem Beitrag sollen zentrale Spielarten und Familienverwandte des Liberalismus vorgestellt sowie auf zentrale Herausforderungen eingegangen werden, die sich dem Liberalismus als politischer Theorie gegenwärtig stellen. In diesem Beitrag sollen zum einen zentrale Spielarten und Familienverwandte von Rawls’ Liberalismus vorgestellt werden. Dabei handelt es sich um den Links- und Rechtslibertarismus, den Neoliberalismus sowie den Nationalliberalismus. Zum anderen sollen mit dem gesellschaftlichen Pluralismus, dem Verhältnis zur Demokratie und der Umweltzerstörung wichtige Herausforderungen thematisiert werden, mit denen sich der politische Liberalismus heutzutage konfrontiert (...) sieht. (shrink)

A sound philosophy of the human person is key to any application of modern clinical psychology. Psychological disorder and vice go hand in hand, indicating the need to embrace virtue theory in clinical psychology. Borrowed from the Catholic intellectual tradition, this approach to mental health encourages good habits of the soul as the antidote to psychological struggles. This article aims to demonstrate how the Catholic understanding of the human person aligns well with modern psychology.

_Schelling’s masterpiece investigating evil and freedom._.

We respond to recent comments on our proposal to improve justice in ventilator triage, in which we used as an example New Jersey’s publicly available and legally binding Directive Number 2020-03. We agree with Bernard Lo and Doug White that equity implications of triage frameworks should be continually reassessed, which is why we offered six concrete options for improvement, and called for monitoring the consequences of adopted triage models. We disagree with their assessment that we mis-characterised their Model Guidance, as (...) included in the NJ Directive, in ways that undermine our conclusions. They suggest we erroneously described their model as a two-criterion allocation framework; that recognising other operant criterion reveals it ‘likely mitigate[s] rather than exacerbate[s] racial disparities during triage’, and allege that concerns about inequitable outcomes are ‘without evidence’. We highlight two major studies robustly demonstrating why concerns about disparate outcomes are justified. We also show that White and Lo seek to retrospectively—and counterfactually—correct the version of the Model Guideline included in the NJ Directive. However, as our facsimile reproductions show, neither the alleged four-criteria form, nor other key changes, such as dropping the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score, are found in the Directive. These points matter because our conclusions hence stand, because the public version of the Model Guidance had not been updated to reduce the risk of inequitable outcomes until June 2021 and NJ’s Directive still does not reflect these revisions, and, hence, represents a less equitable version, as acknowledged by its authors. We comment on broader policy implications and call for ways of ensuring accurate, transparent and timely updates for users of high-stakes guidelines. (shrink)