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This reply to Giles Scofield's critique of the authors' article in the June 2008 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal highlights two main topics. First, contrary to what Scofield suggests, using the terms "ethics" and "morality" interchangeably constitutes an oversimplification that blurs important distinctions. Second, in a representative democracy, ethical expertise and consultation need not generate a "tragic choice" of the kind Scofield has in mind.

Die Erforschung Kants ist langst zu einem weltumspannenden Unternehmen geworden. Welch reiche Frucht der Wissenschaft dadurch zufallt, zeigen die Beitrage dieser Festschrift, die dem Nestor der deutschen Kantforschung, Norbert Hinske, gewidmet ist. Bekannte Vertreter der italienischen, japanischen, russischen und deutschen Kantforschung kommen zu Wort. Von besonderer Bedeutung fur die - in diesem Punkt ganzlich neu zu schreibende - Lebens- und Entwicklungsgeschichte Kants ist ein neu entdeckter, erstmals im Faksimile abgedruckter Brief von J. E. Biester an J. N. Tetens, der (...) belegt, dass der preussische Kultusminister v. Zedlitz zunachst nicht etwa Kant, sondern Tetens nach Halle berufen hat. Hinskes vollstandige Bibliographie rundet den Band ab - und zeigt eindrucksvoll, wie viel die Kantforschung weltweit gerade ihm zu verdanken hat. The study of Kant has long been a global undertaking. The articles in this Festschrift for the leading German expert on Kant, Norbert Hinske, show how richly productive this has been for scholars. Leading Italian, Japanese, Russian and German representatives of research on Kant have provided contributions to it. What is particular significant for the history of Kant's life and development, which has to be completely rewritten in this regard, is a newly discovered letter, reprinted in facsimile for the first time, from J. E. Biester to J. N. Tetens, which proves that Prussian Minister of Culture v. Zedlitz initially did not appoint Kant but rather Tetens to the position in Halle. Hinske's complete bibliography is included in the volume and is impressive evidence of how much Kant research worldwide owes to him. (shrink)

La loi, dans la pensée politique de Rousseau, engage nécessairement une détermination du citoyen et de la démocratie. Cette caractéristique ne repose pas seulement sur l'affirmation de la souveraineté du peuple, mais bien plutôt sur une double définition paradoxale de la citoyenneté. En effet, Rousseau fonde la loi sur la nécessité de citoyens silencieux. Sous cet aspect, l'État rousseauiste se présente sous le trait d'une communauté de promeneurs solitaires, où la vie et l'opinion publiques semblent être absentes. Mais Rousseau dégage, (...) notamment dans les Lettres écrites de la montagne , une autre caractéristique du citoyen fondée sur la nécessité d'une communication des citoyens, devant former, comme l'affirme Rousseau « la voix du public ». A partir de cette détermination d'un citoyen à la fois silencieux et loquace, notre problème est : pourquoi Rousseau sollicite-t-il ces deux déterminations de la citoyenneté pour caractériser la loi ?The law, in Rousseau's political thought necessarily involves a definition of the citizen and of democracy. This isn't only founded on the assertion of the sovereignty of the people, but also on the double paradoxical definition of citizenship. Indeed, Rousseau founds the law on the necessity of silent citizens. In this regard, Rousseau's State takes the shape of a community of solitary walkers who seem to be devoid of any public life and opinion. But Rousseau draws, notably in the Lettres écrites de la montagne another characteristic of the citizen, founded on the necessity for citizen to communicate. And this communication is for Rousseau “the voice of the public”. From this definition of the citizen as both silent and loquacious, our problem is now why Rousseau solicits these two determinations of citizenship to found the law? (shrink)

It is well known that Hegel’s earliest explicit mention of Adam Smith is to be found in the first set of the Jenaer Systementwurfe, a text previously known under J. Hoffmeister’s title Jenenser Realphilosophie I. In this text, Hegel sums up the example by which Smith illustrates the division of labor: the manufacturing of pins. In a marginal note to this exposition, the name “Smith” appears with a page reference. It is quite significant that his first reference to Smith is (...) not to some marginal or merely historical point of Smith’s analysis, but to the crucial treatment of the division of labor, upon which, as a modern commentator put it, “the discipline of economics was nurtured.” Other indications of the importance which Hegel ascribed to Smith’s treatment are. (shrink)

The theory of human moral evolution elaborated in the later work of Jürgen Habermas represents one of the most challenging and provocative of recent, linguistically inspired attempts to reinterpret our understanding of Western history. In critically examining this theory, the present article identifies some major problems with Habermas's reinterpretation of the history of the formation of Western civilization as the universal pragmatic process of the evolution of human moral communicative competences. Drawing on the works of Norbert Elias and Michel (...) Foucault, the article seeks to show how the formal grounding of Habermas's evolutionary theory in the categories of his universal pragmatic conception of communicative action ultimately prevents him from grasping the radically embodied nature of human discursive practice and its implications for the historical process of the formation of human moral will. (shrink)

In this paper I show why Norbert Hoerster's plea for atheism is rather unconvincing.

Founded or unfounded, these objections have not as yet received an adequate answer, i.e., an explanation of the possibility of a philosophy of subjectivity as constituting a reasonable addition to the philosophia perennis, a certain broadening of its perspective, without amounting instead to a simple jettisoning of the thought and gains of centuries. The writings of a Marcel, for example, do not provide such an explanation. Composed wholly within the perspective that is in question, and a little too cavalier in (...) their dismissal of scholastic thought, they cannot really come to grips with that thought, or thereby allay its reasonable suspicions. Even the work of P. de Finance is not wholly satisfactory on this point. As a reviewer of his latest book points out, P. de Finance makes constant and brilliant use of insights gained from the perspective of subjectivity, but he skirts around, without ever really meeting head on, the problems it raises. (shrink)

The difficulty with this point of view and the reason why I characterize it as false do not spring from the mere fact that thought is abstract while experience is concrete. For, on the one hand, the abstract character of thought need not be interpreted negatively, as leaving out the rich variety and profusion of the concrete world in favor of some bare common denominator. Concreteness itself can be seen as a limitation which thought overcomes.ion then becomes an enriching process, (...) a process by which the mind, out of its own superior abundance, illumines and completes the data presented to it, so that from the welter and confusion of particular instances it is able to grasp the universal and valid-for-all, and from the fugitive contingency of the concrete to redeem the abidingly true. In this light, abstractiveness is not a vice but a virtue of thought and, far from weakening the intellectualist position, serves rather to reinforce it. (shrink)

The elaboration of a complete and original system of philosophy in any age demands an intellect of great scope and power. In an age like our own, which has become increasingly hostile to systematic thought, it demands a good deal of courage as well. The Modes of Being of Mr. Weiss proves that he possesses both to a high degree.