Arthur W. H. Adkins's writings have sparked debates among a wide range of scholars over the nature of ancient Greek ethics and its relevance to modern times. Demonstrating the breadth of his influence, the essays in this volume reveal how leading classicists, philosophers, legal theorists, and scholars of religion have incorporated Adkins's thought into their own diverse research. The timely subjects addressed by the contributors include the relation between literature and moral understanding, moral and nonmoral values, and the contemporary meaning (...) of ancient Greek ethics. The volume also includes an essay from the late Adkins himself illustrating his methodology in an analysis of the "Speech of Lysias" in Plato's _Phaedrus_. _The Greeks and Us_ will interest all those concerned with how ancient moral values do or do not differ from our own. Contributors include Arthur W. H. Adkins, Stephanie Nelson, Martha C. Nussbaum, Paul Schollmeier, James Boyd White, Bernard Williams, and Lee Yearley. Commentaries by Wendy Doniger, Charles M. Gray, David Grene, Robert B. Louden, Richard Posner, and Candace Vogler. (shrink)

Brock Macdonald1, Evi Vakiani2, Rhonda K Yantiss3, Jun Lee4, Robert S Brown Jr5, Samuel H Sigal61Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, 2Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, 3Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, New York Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, 4Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, 5Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New (...) York, NY, 6Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, New York University, New York, NY, USA: The use of sirolimus as an alternative to calcineurin inhibitors for posttransplant immunosuppression is associated with a variety of inflammatory conditions. In this report, we describe the case of a 34-year-old man who developed abnormal liver tests 6 years after live-donor kidney transplantation and 5 years after initiation of sirolimus-based immunosuppression. Elevated aminotransferase levels persisted after withdrawal of potentially hepatotoxic medications, and serologic evaluation for viral hepatitis, autoimmune disease, and genetic disorders was unrevealing. Liver biopsy revealed prominent hepatocellular injury associated with a mixed inflammatory infiltrate and liver tests normalized within 2 weeks of discontinuation of sirolimus. In this report, we review previous reports of sirolimus hepatotoxicity and propose a unifying hypothesis for the various inflammatory conditions that have been attributed to sirolimus.Keywords: sirolimus, immunosuppression, transplant, inflammatory conditions, hepatotoxicity. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of contemporary discourses that reconsider the relationship of democracy as a political ideology and American ideal and education as the foundation of preparing democratic citizens in America.

Directed cell migration is a fundamental component of numerous biological systems and is critical to the pathology of many diseases. Although the importance of secreted chemoattractant factors in providing navigational cues to migrating cells bearing specific chemoattractant receptors is now well‐established, how the function of these factors is regulated is not so well understood and may be of key importance to the design of new therapeutics for numerous human diseases. While regulation of migration clearly takes place on a number of (...) different levels, it is becoming clear that so‐called ‘atypical’ receptors play a role in scavenging, or altering the localisation of, chemoattractant molecules such as chemokines and complement components. These receptors do this through binding and/or internalising their chemoattractant ligands without activating signal transduction cascades leading to cell migration. The atypical chemokine receptor family currently comprises the receptors D6, DARC and CCX‐CKR. In this review, we discuss the evidence from in vitro and in vivo studies that these receptors play a role in regulating cell migration, and speculate that other orphan receptors may also belong to this family. Furthermore, with the advent of gene therapy on the horizon, the therapeutic potential of these receptors in human disease is also considered. BioEssays 29: 237–247, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Direct Nuclear Reprogramming: Response to Condic, Lee, and GeorgeGerard Magill, Ph.D. and William B. NeavesWe read with great interest the response of Maureen Condic, Patrick Lee, and Robert George (2009) to our essay, “Ontological and Ethical Implications of Direct Nuclear Reprogramming” in the March 2009 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (Magill and Neaves 2009). Much of their response addressed issues that are not in dispute: (...) somatic cells are not zygotes, neurons and hepatocytes are different, growth-factor signals from the trophoblast influence development of the inner cell mass, membranes derived from the trophectoderm are critically required for embryonic survival, and stem cells cannot produce a fetus “on their own.”The crucial point of disagreement deals with the fact that iPS cells are not totipotent but zygotes are. Zygotes can generate their own placental structures while iPS cells must be given them through tetraploid complementation. Condic, Lee, and George consider totipotency to be crucial to natural potentiality. We present an alternative view in our essay (Magill and Neaves 2009, pp. 28–29). Placental structures make no lasting contribution to the postnatal organism, and the equivalency of iPS cells with the inner cell mass of the blastocyst is apparent from tetraploid complementation experiments.The respondents acknowledge the following:... somatic cells can be “converted” into zygotes by the process of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) or direct reprogramming in combination with tetraploid complementation—just as sperm and egg cells can be “converted” into a zygote by the process of natural fertilization—....(Condic, Lee, and George 2009, p. 35)As the respondents recognize, different ways of manipulating cells can lead to embryogenesis: sperm and egg cells in the process of natural fertilization, the enucleated egg and an ordinary body cell in the process of somatic cell nuclear transfer, and reprogrammed skin cells and a tetraploid blastocyst in the case of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In each case, different cells are manipulated—or “converted” in the respondents’ terminology—in a process that alters their biological fate within a supportive environment facilitating embryogenesis.The developmental potential that resides in the human genome does not unfold in isolation, not even in a zygote. In all cases, whether involving a zygote or an iPS cell, interaction with a supportive environment is required to express the developmental program residing in the genome. [End Page 201]This biological reality supports what we have described as “early cellular development along the continuum of natural potentiality that can result in the formation of a fetus” (Magill and Neaves 2009, p. 30), and it presents a significant challenge to the natural potentiality argument.Gerard MagillVernon F. Gallagher Chair for the Integration of Science, Theology, Philosophy, and Law, and Professor, Center for Healthcare Ethics Duquesne University Pittsburgh, PA.William B. NeavesPresident and CEO Stowers Institute for Medical Research and Professor of Basic Medical Science University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Medicine Kansas City, MOReferencesCondic, Maureen L.; Lee, Patrick; and George, Robert P. 2008. Ontological and Ethical Implications of Direct Nuclear Reprogramming: Response to Magill and Neaves. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 19: 33–40. Google ScholarMagill, Gerard, and Neaves William B. 2009. Ontological and Ethical Implications of Direct Nuclear Reprogramming. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 19: 23–32. Google ScholarCopyright © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Are counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents trivially true? The principle of Conjunction Conditionalization →) is highly controversial. Many philosophers view it as an attractive feature of Lewis’s semantics for counterfactuals that it can easily be modified to avoid this principle. However, Walters and Williams beg to differ. They argue that Conjunction Conditionalization is an indispensable ingredient of any Lewisian semantics, since CC is entailed by standard Lewisian theorems and a plausible semantic claim about irrelevant semifactuals. If this is true, (...) the entire tradition of revisionist counterfactual semantics is misguided, and so are many philosophical theories in which counterfactuals play a role. We argue, in defense of the revisionist tradition, that Walters and Williams’ ‘plausible semantic claim’ is in fact anything but plausible. It turns out to entail semantic principles far more controversial than Conjunction Conditionalization. (shrink)

Democracy is not only a form of government. It is also the moral aspiration for a society of self-governing political equals who disagree about politics. Citizens are called on to be active democratic participants, but they must also acknowledge one another's political equality. Democracy thus involves an ethic of civility among opposed citizens. Upholding this ethic is more difficult than it may look. When the political stakes are high, the opposition seems to us tobe advocating injustice. Sustaining Democracy poses the (...) question: why should we uphold democratic relations with those whose politics we despise? (shrink)

Kant's anthropological works represent a very different side of his philosophy, one that stands in sharp contrast to the critical philosophy of the three Critiques. For the most part, Kantian anthropology is an empirical, popular, and, above all, pragmatic enterprise. After tracing its origins both within his own writings and within Enlightenment culture, the Element turns next to an analysis of the structure and several key themes of Kantian anthropology, followed by a discussion of two longstanding contested features - viz., (...) moral anthropology and transcendental anthropology. The Element concludes with a defense of the value and importance of Kantian anthropology, along with replies to a variety of criticisms that have been levelled at it over the years. Kantian anthropology, the author argues, is 'the eye of true philosophy'. (shrink)

In Kant's Human Being, Robert B. Louden continues and deepens avenues of research first initiated in his highly acclaimed book, Kant's Impure Ethics.

" In Democratic Hope, Robert B. Westbrook examines the varieties of classical pragmatist thought in the work of John Dewey, William James, and Charles Peirce, ...

Among moral attributes true virtue alone is sublime. … [I]t is only by means of this idea [of virtue] that any judgment as to moral worth or its opposite is possible. … Everything good that is not based on a morally good disposition … is nothing but pretence and glittering misery. 1.

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most elusive thinkers in the philosophical tradition. His highly unusual style and insistence on what remains hidden or unsaid in his writing make pinning him to a particular position tricky. Nonetheless, certain readings of his work have become standard and influential. In this major new interpretation of Nietzsche’s work, Robert B. Pippin challenges various traditional views of Nietzsche, taking him at his word when he says that his writing can best be understood as (...) a kind of psychology. Pippin traces this idea of Nietzsche as a psychologist to his admiration for the French moralists: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Stendhal, and especially Montaigne. In distinction from philosophers, Pippin shows, these writers avoided grand metaphysical theories in favor of reflections on life as lived and experienced. Aligning himself with this project, Nietzsche sought to make psychology “the queen of the sciences” and the “path to the fundamental problems.” Pippin contends that Nietzsche’s singular prose was an essential part of this goal, and so he organizes the book around four of Nietzsche’s most important images and metaphors: that truth could be a woman, that a science could be gay, that God could have died, and that an agent is as much one with his act as lightning is with its flash. Expanded from a series of lectures Pippin delivered at the Collège de France, _Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy_ offers a brilliant, novel, and accessible reading of this seminal thinker. (shrink)

During the last decade of his life, Rorty emphasized the anti-authoritarian credentials of his pragmatism. He came to see pragmatism as the fighting faith of a second phase of the Enlightenment. The first stage, as Rorty construed it, concerns our emancipation from nonhuman authority in practical matters: issues of what we ought to do and how things ought to be. The envisaged second stage addresses rather our emancipation from nonhuman authority in theoretical matters. Pragmatism moves beyond the traditional model of (...) reality as authoritative over our cognitive representations of it in language and thought to a new conception of how discursive practices help us cope with the vicissitudes of life. Hegel anticipates the challenge to the very idea of objective reality as providing norms for thought that Rorty thought required us to enact a second phase of the Enlightenment. Unlike Rorty, Hegel presents a detailed, constructive, anti-authoritarian, nonfetishistic, social pragmatist account of the representational dimension of conceptual content. At its heart is an account of the social dimension of discursive normativity in terms of reciprocal recognition, and an account of the historical dimension of discursive normativity in terms of a distinctive new conception of reason: the recollective rationality that turns a past into a tradition. His idealism thereby offers a concrete pragmatist alternative to Rorty’s global semantic and epistemological anti-representationalism. (shrink)

In Overdoing Democracy, Robert B. Talisse turns the popular adage "the cure for democracy's ills is more democracy" on its head. Indeed, he argues, the widely recognized, crisis-level polarization within contemporary democracy stems from the tendency among citizens to overdo democracy. When we make everything--even where we shop, the teams we cheer for, and the coffee we drink--about our politics, we weaken our bonds to one another, and work against the fundamental goals of democracy. Talisse advocates civic friendship built (...) around shared endeavors that we must undertake with fellow citizens who do not necessarily share our political affinities as the best way we can obtain a healthier, more sustainable democracy. (shrink)

The relationship between philosophy and aesthetic criticism has occupied Robert Pippin throughout his illustrious career. Whether discussing film, literature, or modern and contemporary art, Pippin's claim is that we cannot understand aesthetic objects unless we reckon with the fact that some distinct philosophical issue is integral to their meaning. In his latest offering, Philosophy by Other Means, we are treated to a collection of essays that builds on this larger project, offering profound ruminations on philosophical issues in aesthetics along (...) with revelatory readings of Henry James, Marcel Proust, and J. M. Coetzee. (shrink)

Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy-altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but (...) is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness--a measure of perceived self-other overlap--was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy-altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 103, Issue 3, Page 728-733, November 2021.

Contemporary philosophers have grown increasingly skeptical toward both morality and moral theory. Some argue that moral theory is a radically misguided enterprise that does not illuminate moral practice, while others simply deny the value of morality in human life. In this important new book, Louden responds to the arguments of both "anti-morality" and "anti-theory" skeptics. In Part One, he develops and defends an alternative conception of morality, which, he argues, captures more of the central features of both Aristotelian and Kantian (...) ethics than do other contemporary models, and enables the central importance of morality to be convincingly reaffirmed. In Louden's model, morality is primarily a matter of what one does to oneself, rather than what one does or does not do to others. This model eliminates the gulf that many anti-morality critics say exists between morality's demands and the personal point of view. Louden further argues that morality's primary focus should be on agents and their lives, rather than on right actions, and that it is always better to be morally better--i.e. it is impossible to be "too moral." Part Two presents Louden's alternative conception of moral theory. Here again he draws on the work of Aristotle and Kant, showing that their moral theories have far more in common than is usually thought, and that those features that they share can be the basis for a viable moral theory that is immune to the standard anti-theory objections. Louden reaffirms the necessity and importance of moral theory in human life, and shows that moral theories fulfill a variety of genuine and indispensable human needs. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study in any language to examine in detail and critically assess the second part of Kant's ethics- -an empirical, impure part, which determines how best to apply pure principles to the human situation. Drawing attention to Kant's under-explored impure ethics, this revealing investigation refutes the common and long-standing misperception that Kants ethics advocates empty formalism. Making detailed use of a variety of Kantian texts never before translated into English, author Robert B. Louden reassesses the (...) strengths and weaknesses of Kantian ethics as a whole, once the second part is re-admitted to its rightful place within Kant's practical philosophy. (shrink)

The following is a chapter of a book and I should say something at the outset about the content of the book. The topic is Hegel’s “social theory of agency,” and that topic, given how the problem of agency is usually understood, raises the immediate question of why anyone would think that “sociality” would have anything at all to do with the “problem of agency.” That problem is understood in a number of ways; most generally – what distinguishes naturally occurring (...) events from actions (if anything)? (Sometimes the question is: what, if anything, distinguishes responsible human doings from what animals do?) The most prominent approach has it that actions are things done intentionally by individuals, purposely, for a purpose. This is sometimes said to mean: acting from or on or because of an intention, although as we shall see this nominalization can be quite misleading. Or, of the many possible descriptions of some occurrence, it is an action is there is a true description which is intentional. This is often taken to mean simply that if you ask a person why he is doing something he can express this intention to explain himself, most often in the form of a reason. He does not (except in extraordinary circumstances) describe why he is acting in the way he might describe what caused his.. (shrink)

In this conversation, American philosopher Robert Brandom talks about the historical background of his inferentialism, reconstructing the influence of his teachers Wilfrid Sellars and Richard Rorty.

In this essay I argue that Kant remained committed to the necessity and fundamental importance of education throughout his career. Like Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–90), Kant holds that a ‘total transformation’ of schools is necessary, and he holds this view not only in the 1770s but in his later years as well. In building my case I try to refute two recent opposing interpretations – Reinhard Brandt’s position that Kant’s early ‘education enthusiasm’ was later replaced by a politics enthusiasm, and (...) Manfred Kuehn’s view that the increasing importance of autonomy in Kant’s mature ethics leads him to de-emphasize education. (shrink)

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View essentially reflects the last lectures Kant gave for his annual course in anthropology, which he taught from 1772 until his retirement in 1796. The lectures were published in 1798, with the largest first printing of any of Kant's works. Intended for a broad audience, they reveal not only Kant's unique contribution to the newly emerging discipline of anthropology, but also his desire to offer students a practical view of the world and of humanity's (...) place in it. With its focus on what the human being 'as a free-acting being makes of himself or can and should make of himself,' the Anthropology also offers readers an application of some central elements of Kant's philosophy. This volume offers an annotated translation of the text by Robert B. Louden, together with an introduction by Manfred Kuehn that explores the context and themes of the lectures. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay covers two criticisms of Brennan’s Against Democracy. The first charges that the public political ignorance findings upon which Brennan relies are not epistemically nuanced to th...

In this pathbreaking book one of America’s most distinguished philosophers brilliantly explores the status and authority of law and the nature of political allegiance through close readings of three classic Hollywood Westerns: Howard Hawks’ _Red River_ and John Ford’s _The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance_ and _The Searchers._ Robert Pippin treats these films as sophisticated mythic accounts of a key moment in American history: its “second founding,” or the western expansion. His central question concerns how these films explore classical (...) problems in political psychology, especially how the virtues of a commercial republic gained some hold on individuals at a time when the heroic and martial virtues were so important. Westerns, Pippin shows, raise central questions about the difference between private violence and revenge and the state’s claim to a legitimate monopoly on violence, and they show how these claims come to be experienced and accepted or rejected. Pippin’s account of the best Hollywood Westerns brings this genre into the center of the tradition of political thought, and his readings raise questions about political psychology and the political passions that have been neglected in contemporary political thought in favor of a limited concern with the question of legitimacy. (shrink)

Hegel frequently claimed that the heart of his entire system was a book widely regarded as among the most difficult in the history of philosophy, The Science of Logic. This is the book that presents his metaphysics, an enterprise that he insists can only be properly understood as a “logic,” or a “science of pure thinking.” Since he also wrote that the proper object of any such logic is pure thinking itself, it has always been unclear in just what sense (...) such a science could be a “metaphysics.” -/- Robert B. Pippin offers here a bold, original interpretation of Hegel’s claim that only now, after Kant’s critical breakthrough in philosophy, can we understand how logic can be a metaphysics. Pippin addresses Hegel’s deep, constant reliance on Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics, the difference between Hegel’s project and modern rationalist metaphysics, and the links between the “logic as metaphysics” claim and modern developments in the philosophy of logic. Pippin goes on to explore many other facets of Hegel’s thought, including the significance for a philosophical logic of the self-conscious character of thought, the dynamism of reason in Kant and Hegel, life as a logical category, and what Hegel might mean by the unity of the idea of the true and the idea of the good in the “Absolute Idea.” The culmination of Pippin’s work on Hegel and German idealism, no Hegel scholar or historian of philosophy will want to miss this book. (shrink)

Several distinct epistemic states may be properly characterized as states of ?ignorance.? It is not clear that the ?public ignorance? on which Jeffrey Friedman bases his critique of social democracy is objectionable, because it is not evident which of these epistemic states is at issue. Moreover, few extant theories of democracy defend it on the grounds that it produces good outcomes, rather than because its procedures are just. And even the subcategory of democratic theories that focus on epistemic issues take (...) the state of epistemic justification, not the condition of reaching the truth, to be the touchstone of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

In Two Faces of Liberalism, John Gray pursues the dual agenda of condemning familiar liberal theories for perpetuating the failed “Enlightenment project,” and promoting his own version of anti‐Enlightenment liberalism, which he calls “modus vivendi.” However, Gray's critical apparatus is insufficient to capture accurately the highly influential “political” liberalism of John Rawls. Moreover, Gray's modus vivendi faces serious challenges raised by Rawls concerning stability. In order to respond to the Rawlsian objections, Gray would have to reinstate the aspirations and principles (...) characteristic of Enlightenment theories of liberalism. (shrink)

Abstract:Can I (and you) talk sensibly about William Shakespeare's works? Some historicists see insuperable barriers in trying to understand utterances from different times and cultures, and some skeptics see such barriers in trying to read other minds. In Ludwig Wittgenstein's famous utterance about not understanding a talking lion, is the early modern Englishman Shakespeare one of those lions? Or can a magic key see past such barriers in one of the critical systems that we are offered? I argue that the (...) answer to both questions is no. (shrink)

Kant is widely admired – and sometimes also widely criticized – as the founding father of transcendental philosophy. But in much of my own writing, I have been concerned with a very different Kant: an impure rather than a pure Kant, an a posteriori rather than an a priori Kant, a naturalistic rather than a transcendental Kant. This other Kant has often been overlooked by professional philosophers, and when not overlooked, he is often regarded as shallow and unoriginal. My aim (...) in this paper is to demonstrate not only the existence but also the importance and originality of Kant, the naturalist. Without Kant’s naturalism, we lack what he called the empirically-informed “eye of true philosophy” that gives its possessors a necessary “broadened way of thinking” and provides philosophy with “dignity, i. e., an absolute worth.”. (shrink)

The revival of pragmatism has brought renewed enthusiasm for John Dewey's conception of democracy. Drawing upon Rawlsian concerns regarding the fact of reasonable pluralism, the author argues that Deweyan democracy is unworthy of resurrection. A modified version of Deweyan democracy recently proposed by Elizabeth Anderson is then taken up and also found to be lacking. Then the author proposes a model of democracy that draws upon Peirce's social epistemology. The result is a non-Deweyan but nonetheless pragmatist option in democratic theory.