To the extent we are curious about the virtue of justice as a virtue of character, we may start with Aristotle’s conception, but a fresh look at justice can, potentially, open avenues of thought in more than one direction. The fruits of interaction between Aristotelian and Kantian thought have been manifest in a wide variety of ways in recent years, and this essay aspires to rethink the virtue of justice in this light. It aims to offer a first cut at (...) a conception of a virtue of justice that draws on both traditions. Its Aristotelian provenance provides the general understanding of virtue employed, and accepts Aristotle’s general picture of virtue and its centrality to the good life and to happiness. The Kantian (and contractualist) part of the union provides content for justice as a distinctive virtue of character. (shrink)

It seems that in interpreting others we sometimes simulate, sometimes apply theory. Josef Perner has suggested that a fruitful line of inquiry in folk psychology would seek "criteria for problems where we have to use simulation from those where we do without or where it is even impossible to use." In this paper I follow Perner with a suggestion that our understanding of our interpretive processes may benefit from considering their physiological bases. In particular, I claim that it may be (...) useful to consider the role emotion plays in the respective interpretive processes. I give reasons for believing that affective processes are more heavily involved in simulation (especially in situations of practical judgment and practical reasoning) than in theory-application. But affective processes have distinctive neurological and metabolic properties. These distinctive features of emotion may not only enrich our understanding of the simulation process, but also afford us a step towards responding to Perner's challenge. (shrink)

Kant’s moral theory is sometimes thought to mandate public welfare provision on grounds of beneficence or Kant’s commitment to freedom. However, at no point does Kant argue for welfare in these ways. Instead, the rationale he offers is that public welfare provision is instrumentally necessary for the security and the stability of the state. I argue that this is no oversight on Kant’s part. I consider plausible alternative arguments for public welfare provision, and show why Kant does not espouse them. (...) I conclude that the only viable Kantian justification for welfare is just the one Kant gives. (shrink)

Frederick Bastiat’s last work was the Economic Harmonies, published in 1851. He died while completing it, and — though it had some uptake in the 19th century — in recent times scholarly interest has focused on his other work. In the Harmonies, he makes a remarkable claim: when properly understood, in a free market society all people’s economic interests are in harmony. If we consider that Karl Marx was arguing at the same time that those same societies are afflicted by (...) an endemic class struggle that can end only with the com-munist revolution, the contrast is sharp. In this paper, I explore Bastiat’s rationale for his claim, as a rejoinder to one of the influential arguments mounted by Marx against economic liberty. (shrink)

This paper addresses a complaint, by Prichard, against Plato and other ancients. The charge is that they commit a mistake is in thinking that we are capable of giving reasons for the requirements of duty, rather than directly and immediately apprehending those requirements. I respond in two ways. First, Plato does not make the egregious mistake of substituting interest for duty, and thus giving the wrong kind of reason for duty’s requirements, as Prichard alleges. Second, we should see that the (...) ancient ethical enterprise as being comprehensive in a sense Prichard simply ignores. The ancients sought what we now call wide reflective equilibrium in judgments about both duty and interest, and to see this I focus on a puzzle in how to understand much of ancient moral philosophizing. This puzzle is to make sense of the work that formal constraints on happiness do to support their preferred views of happiness (or interest). This way of engaging not only our thoughts about duty and interest, but about what it is to be human and to lead a human life, make the ancient model far more satisfying than Prichard’s recommendation that we give it all up as a mistake. (shrink)

Rationalist opponents of Instrumentalism believe that reason can and should play some further role in determining our ends. Instrumentalists deny this: reason can generate only reasons for taking the necessary means to ends established antecedently by conative states. I argue that Instrumentalism cannot make adequate sense of the notion of ends. Instrumentalism requires a non-rational way of identifying ends and ascribing rational force to them, and there appears to be none consistent with Instrumentalism’s commitments. As an alternative I outline what (...) I refer to as an Aristotelian conception of practical reason as a promising way of understanding practical rationality. (shrink)

Plato extends a bold, confident, and surprising empirical challenge. It is implicitly a claim about the psychological — more specifically motivational — economies of human beings, asserting that within each such economy there is a desire to live well. Call this claim ‘psychological eudaimonism’ (‘PE’). Further, the context makes clear that Plato thinks that this desire dominates in those who have it. In other words, the desire to live well can reliably be counted on (when accompanied with correct beliefs about (...) the role of morality or virtue in living well) to move people be virtuous. As we will argue, this general claim appears in not only Plato but Aristotle and the Stoics as well. But it is one we might wonder about, in three ways. First, we might wonder about its warrant. After all, the claim is universal in scope; yet it is about a highly contingent fact about the motivational propensities of individual human organisms, and there is abundant variability in the individual forms human nature takes. What grounds could the ancients have for their confidence that there are no outliers (assuming, as we do, that they do not merely misspeak in framing general claims as universal ones)? Second, we might wonder about its truth. For were it true, it would entail something remarkable about the nature of rationality that we (post-)moderns would be wise to heed. And third, we might wonder about its relationship with normative eudaimonism. By ‘normative eudaimonism’ (‘NE’) we mean the claim that we have conclusive reason to act in ways that conduce to our own eudaimonia. As we will show, the key to these three questions is the first. If we consider what justification the ancients have for their claim, we can see why that claim must be true. Moreover, as we will also show, it must be true because of the nature of practical rationality as the ancients understood it — that is, in terms of normative eudaimonism. We will show this by marshalling unexpected resources: Donald Davidson’s work in understanding how we interpret others and in so doing make sense of them as rational beings. If we couple Davidson’s account of interpretation with the eudaimonist structure of practical rationality essential to these ancient ethical theories, psychological eudaimonism is a consequence. The paper proceeds as follows. In Section I, we lay out the textual basis for ascribing PE to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In Section II, we introduce Davidson’s account of interpretation. This allows us to appropriate that account in Section III to the particular purposes of normative eudaimonism, to support the claim that we must ascribe the desire to live well to those whom we would see as rational. Finally, in Section IV we consider challenges to this strategy. (shrink)

Kant claims that autonomy is possible only if the law that determines the will disregards any incentive grounded in the natural world. Here I develop and defend an alternative notion of autonomy, drawn from the ancient eudaimonists, on which practical reason is grounded in our interest in living well. This allows eudaimonism a conception of the autonomy of the will in which (like Kant’s) the will is the source of its own laws, but in which (unlike Kant’s) it has an (...) object that is thoroughly situated in the empirical world. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the relationship between the personal and the common good within an Aristotelian conception of the virtuous and happy life. Thinking about that relationship requires that we face up to a central tension in the Aristotelian ethical outlook. That approach is rooted in the value of eudaimonia — of living well, of happiness. That is something like the personal good. At the same time, on the Aristotelian picture no form of human life can be good if it is (...) not one we can live with others of our kind; that requires something like a common good. It is difficult to spell out both those ideas fully in such a way that they fit together well. Nonetheless, I believe that Aristotle’s framework (although not the specifics of his own theory) offers us the best prospects of doing so, and sketch a way of connecting the personal and common goods within that framework. (shrink)

Daniel Haybron’s recent book, The Pursuit of Unhappiness, includes a defense of a normative notion of well-being. Haybron’s main contribution is to argue that a central component of well-being is the fulfillment of one’s “emotional nature,” that is, fulfillment as a unique individual who is such as to find happiness in some things rather than others. We argue that the contrast he draws between his view and “Aristotelian” views of well-being is problematic in two ways. First, Haybron says that unlike (...) the self-fulfillment theory, Aristotelian theories of well-being are “perfectionist” theories; we argue that Haybron’s concerns about “perfectionism” should be distinguished from Aristotelian eudaimonist theory. Second, Haybron’s self-fulfillment theory makes an individual’s well-being wholly dependent on that individual’s make-up, and we argue that that is a bad fit with our considered convictions about well-being. (shrink)

Various theorists have offered accounts of how a virtue ethical theory might inform a political theory — here meaning a theory of political legitimacy and authority. These theories claim to support a liberal regimen of authority, and they do, but only to a limited extent. -/- What they cannot support is a justificatory liberal authority structure. Each of the accounts given would authorize coercive force to impose on holders of other theories decisions counter to the values endorsed by those other (...) theories. -/- This is, or should be, a problem for those theories, especially the neo-Aristotelian theories which give pride of place to the exercise of practical rationality and self-direction. They would seem to run afoul of Hursthouse’s Constraint, which requires that a political theory not require vicious action of agents. In authorizing or requiring coercive intervention to advance one’s own conception of the good, at the expense of the authority of those subject to the coercion to advance their own conception of the good, these theories authorize or require vicious action. -/- Defenders of these accounts might meet this challenge in various ways. They might deny that virtue requires justifying coercive action as justificatory liberalism requires. But their focus on self-direction, and the plausibility of the requirement of mutual recognition make this response unattractive. -/- A better way is to augment the theories with a virtue which consists in standing in a relationship of mutual recognition and treating others accordingly. Such a virtue ethic is congruent with the requirements of justificatory liberalism. (shrink)

The objective of Working Group 4 of the COST Action NET4Age-Friendly is to examine existing policies, advocacy, and funding opportunities and to build up relations with policy makers and funding organisations. Also, to synthesize and improve existing knowledge and models to develop from effective business and evaluation models, as well as to guarantee quality and education, proper dissemination and ensure the future of the Action. The Working Group further aims to enable capacity building to improve interdisciplinary participation, to promote knowledge (...) exchange and to foster a cross-European interdisciplinary research capacity, to improve cooperation and co-creation with cross-sectors stakeholders and to introduce and educate students SHAFE implementation and sustainability. To enable the achievement of the objectives of Working Group 4, the Leader of the Working Group, the Chair and Vice-Chair, in close cooperation with the Science Communication Coordinator, developed a template to map the current state of SHAFE policies, funding opportunities and networking in the COST member countries of the Action. On invitation, the Working Group lead received contributions from 37 countries, in a total of 85 Action members. The contributions provide an overview of the diversity of SHAFE policies and opportunities in Europe and beyond. These were not edited or revised and are a result of the main areas of expertise and knowledge of the contributors; thus, gaps in areas or content are possible and these shall be further explored in the following works and reports of this WG. But this preliminary mapping is of huge importance to proceed with the WG activities. In the following chapters, an introduction on the need of SHAFE policies is presented, followed by a summary of the main approaches to be pursued for the next period of work. The deliverable finishes with the opportunities of capacity building, networking and funding that will be relevant to undertake within the frame of Working Group 4 and the total COST Action. The total of country contributions is presented in the annex of this deliverable. (shrink)

Rosalind Hursthouse wrote in 1999 (On Virtue Ethics, pp. 5-7) of a gap in virtue ethics in the shape of the virtue of justice. Many years on, that gap persists. Our aim is to make a beginning on that virtue, but here we find an obstacle in its treatment by Aristotle, whose thinking about the virtues we otherwise find so rich. Whereas Aristotle took the virtue of justice to be concerned exclusively with one’s treatment of others, we begin instead with (...) the idea that justice also concerns how one treats oneself. Like Hursthouse, we think virtues are corrective of human failings. We argue, first, that being unjust to oneself is a failing that is not only perilous but all too frequent in human experience. The idea that justice is strictly other-regarding gets going only on the assumption that the way humans are prone to fail in their dealings with others is in taking too much interest in their own welfare. Taking inspiration from the work of Jean Hampton, we argue that a pernicious type of self-abnegation—what Hampton called “the loss of self”—is also a common failing among humans, both in their relations with others and in their own practical reasoning about their lives. This failing—a failing of giving persons their due—is a failing for the virtue of justice to correct. We then examine Aristotle’s rejection of the possibility of being unjust to oneself, in Nicomachean Ethics V. Aristotle’s arguments rest on demonstrating the impossibility of committing injustice against oneself in any of the forms characteristic of strictly interpersonal injustice. Rather than arguing that Aristotle begs the question, though, we argue that his approach rests on its starting assumption that the failings for the virtue of justice to correct are failures to give others their due. But considering the human proneness also to self-abnegation, we heirs of Aristotle’s should hope for an understanding of the virtue of justice that is rich enough to include giving oneself one’s due as well. Lastly, we outline the virtue of justice understood as correcting the failure of not giving persons their due, including oneself. Our approach centers on the idea of advocacy, focusing on the duty that parents have to advocate for the fair treatment of their children and, as those children mature, the transference of this duty to those children to be advocates for themselves. We conclude by exploring the extent to which such an account would fit an otherwise broadly Aristotelian approach: the sense in which such a virtue is a “mean,” the emotions and desires with which it is concerned, and its status as a particular virtue as opposed to virtue as a whole. We hope to honor Rosalind Hursthouse by continuing in her philosophical spirit, confronting Aristotle where we are surprised to find ourselves disagreeing considerably with a philosopher we generally find insightful, on an issue we find deeply important. -/- . (shrink)

Teichmann’s book is a contemplative study of issues in ethics and language, in two senses. First, it is characteristic of the style of the book, which is as much ruminative as argumentative. Second, a consistent theme in the book is the significance of what Teichmann takes Aristotle to be after in advocating a life of contemplation as our highest end. Early on Teichmann reminds us of Wittgenstein’s references to ‘pictures’ or ‘ways of seeing’ things that frame the questions we ask (...) and determine what will count as adequate answers (§1.ix). Teichmann can be seen as exploring one such picture, in which questions about human nature, human lives, reasons, and language interact in ways that are mutually illuminating. This picture is not perhaps in the mainstream of contemporary moral philosophy, but Teichmann’s development of it is insightful and provocative. It emerges through broad discussions in five chapters. (shrink)

In this book Genevieve Lloyd undertakes an expansive and ambitious survey of the notion of providence and related concepts, effectively throughout the recorded history of Western civilization. In any work of a scope this ambitious, there are bound to be both omissions and problematic elements of interpretation; the only question is whether or not these are sufficient to undermine the positive philosophical work that the survey accomplishes. The answer in this case is a resounding ‘no.’ Lloyd’s book provides much to (...) chew on not only for moral philosophers, but for philosophers of religion, metaphysicians and others interested in free will and determinism, and many others for whom the concepts of providence, fate, necessity, free will, responsibility and other related ideas are of interest. (shrink)

No Abs Richard Kraut’s What is Good and Why is a development and defense of devel-opmentalism. But Kraut’s approach renders problematic the relationship between good-for and reasons for action. One consequence is uncertainty as to how exactly anybody’s good becomes reason-giving for us, given that there is no immediate connection between anyone’s good and reasons for action. A further problem can be seen in trying to identify a basis for thinking we are beings entitled to respect. Finally, Kraut’s work leaves (...) unexplicated the “matching relation” he says holds between a living being and what is good for it.tract. (shrink)

Following the Aristotelian constructivism proposed by Mark LeBar, the paper outlines a possible metaethical framework of values, necessary elements within legal reasoning. This framework proposes a consideration of values that need to be virtuously constructed, namely through the virtue of _phronesis_. In this way, legal reasoning can take into account more elements concerning the specific legal case, not only legal provisions, but also abstract objects, such as pain. The central feature of _phronesis_ will lead to support a virtue-ethical approach (...) to law. More specifically, the paper will be structured as follows. The first section will introduce the topic and the structure of the paper. The second section will analyze Vittorio Villa’s post-positivist costructivism, which makes it possible to understand the role of value judgments in legal reasoning. The third section will therefore examine Mark LeBar’s metaethical constructivism, investigating, in particular, two different elements: experience (paragraph 3.1 ) and _phronesis_ (paragraph 3.2 ). In the fourth section, considering what has emerged from the research, the conclusion will highlight a possible connection between this metaethical framework and a virtue-ethical approach to law. (shrink)

In “Virtue Ethics and Deontic Constraints,” Mark LeBar claims to have discovered a two-level eudaimonist position that coheres with the claim that moral obligations are “real” and have “nonderivative normative authority.” In this article, I raise worries about how “real” second-personal reasons are on LeBar’s account, and then argue that second-personal reasons ramify up from the first to the second level in a way that LeBar denies. My argument is meant to encourage philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition (...) to question the existence of second-personal reasons of the sort Darwall elucidates. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 13, Issue 3, pp 363 - 375 In _The Value of Living Well,_ Mark LeBar develops a position that he calls “virtue eudaimonism”. VE is both a eudaimonistic theory of practical reasoning and a constructivist account of the metaphysics of value. In this essay, I will explain the core of LeBar’s view and focus on two issues, one concerning VE ’s eudaimonism and the other concerning VE ’s constructivism. I will argue that, as it stands, (...) VE does not adequately address the charge of egoism, once that charge has been formulated in the strongest way. I will also argue that a substantive constructivism like VE must have considerably less explanatory power than any constructivism that appeals to a _formal_ characterization of agency. Although my remarks are largely critical, I offer them in a spirit of sympathetic engagement with LeBar’s impressive book. (shrink)

Aristotle’s account of the virtue of justice has been regarded as one of the least successful aspects of his ethics. Among the most serious criticisms lodged against his views are (i) that he fails to identify the proper subject matter of justice (LeBar 2020), (ii) that he wrongly identifies the characteristic motives relevant for justice and injustice (Williams 1980), and (iii) that his account is parochial, i.e., that it fails to correctly recognize or characterize our obligations of justice to (...) those outside our community (Annas 1995; Curzer 2012). Indeed, Mark LeBar has recently argued that, although Aristotle’s eudaimonist framework remains the most promising metaethical strategy to ground justice as a virtue of individual human beings, the normative content of his theory is so flawed that neo-Aristotelians ought to adopt a Kantian theory of justice that centers on according respect to persons (LeBar 2020). My aim in this paper is to defend Aristotle’s views from these criticisms in order to show that it holds promise as an account of justice as a virtue. Notably, neo-Aristotelians have generally neglected the topic of justice, despite its centrality to Aristotle’s ethics and to our own social lives. I argue that they ought to take Aristotle’s account seriously as a starting point for their own theorizing, while recognizing that it needs modification on some points. (shrink)

This essay compares Rawls's and Nozick's theories of justice. Nozick thinks patterned principles of justice are false, and offers a historical alternative. Along the way, Nozick accepts Rawls's claim that the natural distribution of talent is morally arbitrary, but denies that there is any short step from this premise to any conclusion that the natural distribution is unjust. Nozick also agrees with Rawls on the core idea of natural rights liberalism: namely, that we are separate persons. However, Rawls and Nozick (...) interpret that idea in different ways-momentously different ways. The tension between their interpretations is among the forces shaping political philosophy to this day. Footnotesa For comments, I thank Alyssa Bernstein, Geoffrey Brennan, Jason Brennan, Tom Christiano, Andrew I. Cohen, Andrew Jason Cohen, Tyler Cowen, Teresa Donovan, David Estlund, Jerry Gaus, Allen Habib, Alex Kaufman, Mark LeBar, Loren Lomasky (especially Loren, for insight and inspiration over a period of many years), Cara Nine, Ellen Frankel Paul, Guido Pincione, Thomas Pogge, Dan Russell, Michael Smith, Horacio Spector, and Matt Zwolinski. I thank the Earhart Foundation for financial support in the fall of 2002 and Australian National University's Research School of Social Sciences for its wonderful hospitality during a ten week stay in 2002. The support of the folks at Liberty Fund in Indianapolis during the final stages of this project goes beyond anything I will ever be able properly to thank them for. (shrink)

Many contemporary eudaimonists emphasize the role of agency in the good life. Mark LeBar, for example, characterizes his own eudaimonist view this way: “It is agentist, not patientist, because it emphasizes that our lives go well in virtue of what we do, rather than what happens, to us or otherwise”. Nicholas Wolterstorff, however, has argued that this prioritizing of agency over patiency is a fatal flaw in eudaimonist accounts of well-being. Eudaimonism must be rejected, Wolterstorff argues, because many life-goods (...) are “passivities” that are out of a person’s hands, including how she is treated by others. In this paper, I defend eudaimonism against this passivities objection. I argue that eudaimonism can maintain its agentist character while also capturing the element of truth in the passivities objection—namely, that human well-being is vulnerable and social. I also argue that eudaimonists should avail themselves of the notion of receptivity to capture important aspects of the good life. (shrink)

Classical commentary on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, aphoristic work on Vedanta.

Criticism of Sairu s-Salikin, an old Indonesian manuscript on ethics in Islam.

A brief presentation of the major conclusions contained in the recently published monograph entitled "The Ascent to Law: Searches and Solutions," written over a period of many years. Chapter headings are: The law - an objective reality. The dogma of the law. The drama of scholarship. Searching. "The entire" substance of the law. Juridical constructs. The logic of laws. The secret of the law. Law - the highest purpose. Law in the life and fate of mankind.

Cet article propose une brève discussion de la représentation des arbres et des grottes dans l’art grec, en soulignant la tendance de ces deux motifs paysagers à se recouvrir ou à se confondre sur un plan formel.The article offers a brief discussion of tree and cave representations in Greek art, tracing a tendency of these two landscape motifs to overlap or appear in conflated form.

Материалы конференции предназначены для специалистов.

This review essay on R. Melvin Keiser's Roots of Relational Ethics: Responsibility in Origin and Maturity in H. Richard Niebuhr surveys selected works about Niebuhr, examines the strengths of Keiser's post-critical treatment of Niebuhr and raises questions about Keiser's views and about Niebuhr.

Hegel attempts both to give evil its metaphysical due and to give it intelligibility within a processive idealistic system. To accomplish these ends, he consistently employs the contrast between the natural and the free act of the subject and the contrast between the particular and the universal. He places these contrasts within the situation of an original and presupposed unity of spirit that itself is the ground of the mediation required for thinking freedom, for evil, and for ultimate reconciliation. He (...) argues for evil’s ultimate intelligibility in terms of its necessity as a consequent moment in the development of spirit from its ground; he resolves problems of evil’s penultimate irrationality in terms of its unstable contradictory elements in spirit’s history which is not yet fully concrete, a simultaneity of “ought to be” and “ought not to be” in the sense that the instability must be surpassed but not that it should never have been. The aims of this paper will be to summarize and evaluate Hegel’s efforts to give evil both significance and intelligibility within his system and to estimate if a system of progressive idealism contributes a philosophically new dimension to the problem of evil in a universe. (shrink)

Работа предназначена для ученых и специалистов, преподавателей, аспирантов, слушателей, студентов, а также всех интересующихся рассматриваемой темой.