Bioethics conjures images of dramatic healthcare challenges, yet everyday clinical ethics issues unfold regularly. Without sufficient ethical awareness and a relevant working skillset, clinicians can feel ill-equipped to respond to the ethical dimensions of everyday care. Bioethicists were interviewed to identify the essential skills associated with everyday clinical ethics and to identify educational case scenarios to illustrate everyday clinical ethics. Individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of bioethicists. Bioethicists were asked: (1) What are the essential skills required (...) for everyday clinical ethics? And (2) What are potential educational case scenarios to illustrate and teach everyday clinical ethics? Participant interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Twenty-five (25) bioethicists completed interviews (64% female; mean 14.76 years bioethics experience; 80% white). Five categories of general skills and three categories of ethics-specific skills essential for everyday clinical ethics were identified. General skills included: (1) Awareness of Core Values and Self-Reflective Capacity; (2) Perspective-Taking and Empathic Presence; (3) Communication and Relational Skills; (4) Cultural Humility and Respect; and (5) Organizational Understanding and Know-How. Ethics-specific skills included: (1) Ethical Awareness; (2) Ethical Knowledge and Literacy; and (3) Ethical Analysis and Interaction. Collectively, these skills comprise a Toolbox of Everyday Clinical Ethics Skills. Educational case scenarios were identified to promote everyday ethics. Bioethicists identified skills essential to everyday clinical ethics. Educational case scenarios were identified for the purpose of promoting proficiency in this domain. Future research could explore the impact of integrating educational case scenarios on clinicians’ ethical competencies. (shrink)

A major question for the relevant logics has been, “Under what conditions is Ackermann's ruleγ from -A ∨B andA to inferB, admissible for one of these logics?” For a large number of logics and theories, the question has led to an affirmative answer to theγ problem itself, so that such an answer has almost come to be expected for relevant logics worth taking seriously. We exhibit here, however, another large and interesting class of logics-roughly, the Boolean extensions of theW — (...) free relevant logics (and, precisely, the well-behaved subsystems of the 4-valued logicBN4) — for which γ fails. (shrink)

Modus ponens provides the central theme. There are laws, of the form A→C. A logic L collects such laws. Any datum A provides input to the laws of L. The central ternary relation R relates theories L,T and U, where U consists of all of the outputs C got by applying modus ponens to major premises from L and minor premises from T. Underlying this relation is a modus ponens product operation on theories L and T, whence RLTU iff LTU. (...) These ideas have been expressed, especially with Routley, as worlds semantics for relevant and other substructural logics.Worlds are best demythologized as theories, subject to truth-functional and other constraints. The chief constraint is that theories are taken as closed under logical entailment, which clearly begs the question if we are using the semantics to determine which theory L is Logic itself. Instead we draw the modal logicians’ conclusion—there are many substructural logics, each with its appropriate ternary relational postulates.Each logic L gives rise to a Calculus of L-theories, on which particular candidate logical axioms have the combinatorial properties expected from the well-known Curry–Howard isomorphism . We apply their bubbling lemma, updating the Fools Model of Combinatory Logic at the pure → level for the system BT. We make fusion an explicit connective, proving a combinator correspondence theorem. Having taken relevant → as a left residual for , we explore its right residual mate →r. Finally we concentrate on and prove a finite model property for the classical minimal relevant logic CB, a conservative extension of the minimal positive relevant logic B+. (shrink)

C I Lewis showed up Down Under in 2005, in e-mails initiated by Allen Hazen of Melbourne. Their topic was the system Hazen called FL (a Funny Logic), axiomatized in passing in Lewis 1921. I show that FL is the system MEN of material equivalence with negation. But negation plays no special role in MEN. Symbolizing equivalence with → and defining ∼A inferentially as A→f, the theorems of MEN are just those of the underlying theory ME of pure material equivalence. (...) This accords with the treatment of negation in the Abelian l-group logic A of Meyer and Slaney (Abelian logic. Abstract, Journal of Symbolic Logic 46, 425–426, 1981), which also defines ∼A inferentially with no special conditions on f. The paper then concentrates on the pure implicational part AI of A, the simple logic of Abelian groups. The integers Z were known to be characteristic for AI, with every non-theorem B refutable mod some Zn for finite n. Noted here is that AI is pre-tabular, having the Scroggs property that every proper extension SI of AI, closed under substitution and detachment, has some finite Zn as its characteristic matrix. In particular FL is the extension for which n = 2 (Lewis, The structure of logic and its relation to other systems. The Journal of Philosophy 18, 505–516, 1921; Meyer and Slaney, Abelian logic. Abstract. Journal of Symbolic Logic 46, 425–426, 1981; This is an abstract of the much longer paper finally published in 1989 in G. G. Priest, R. Routley and J. Norman, eds., Paraconsistent logic: essays on the inconsistent, Philosophica Verlag, Munich, pp. 245–288, 1989). (shrink)

This paper discusses the relation between the minimal positive relevant logic B and intersection and union type theories. There is a marvelous coincidence between these very differently motivated research areas. First, we show a perfect fit between the Intersection Type Discipline ITD and the tweaking BT of B, which saves implication and conjunction but drops disjunction . The filter models of the -calculus (and its intimate partner Combinatory Logic CL) of the first author and her coauthors then become theory models (...) of these calculi. (The logician's "theory" is the algebraist's "filter".) The coincidence extends to a dual interpretation of key particles—the subtype translates to provable , type intersection to conjunction , function space to implication, and whole domain to the (trivially added but trivial) truth T. This satisfying ointment contains a fly. For it is right, proper, and to be expected that type union should correspond to the logical disjunction of B. But the simulation of functional application by a fusion (or modus ponens product) operation on theories leaves the key Bubbling lemma of work on ITD unprovable for the -prime theories now appropriate for the modeling. The focus of the present paper lies in an appeal to Harrop theories which are (a) prime and (b) closed under fusion. A version of the Bubbling lemma is then proved for Harrop theories, which accordingly furnish a model of and CL. (shrink)

The Logic R4 is obtained by adding the axiom □(A v B) → (◇A v □B) to the modal relevant logic NR. We produce a model theory for this logic and show completeness. We also show that there is a natural embedding of a Kripke model for S4 in each R4 model structure.

THIS PAPER ARGUES, AGAINST A. O. LOVEJOY AND WITH R. B.\nPERRY, THAT JAMES' THEORY OF MEANING DOES NOT CONFUSE\nCONSEQUENCES OF BELIEVING AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE\nSTATEMENTS BELIEVED. RATHER, I ARGUE THAT JAMES HOLDS THAT\nTHE MEANING OF A SYNTHETIC STATEMENT IS TO BE FOUND IN ITS\nPERCEPTUAL CONSEQUENCES WHILE CONSEQUENCES OF BELIEVING ARE\nRELEVANT TO 'JUSTIFYING' OVERBELIEFS; THAT IS, TO\nJUSTIFYING MEANINGFUL STATEMENTS FOR WHICH THE EVIDENCE IS\nINSUFFICIENT TO PROVIDE A RATIONAL, NON-PASSIONAL\nJUSTIFICATION. ALTHOUGH THIS THEORY OF MEANING APPEARS\nANTI-METAPHYSICAL, JAMES DOES NOT USE IT TO RULE (...) OUT\nMETAPHYSICS BECAUSE HE BELIEVES, ALONG WITH COMMON SENSE,\nTHAT METAPHYSICAL DOCTRINES ARE MEANINGFUL; THUS, THE\nQUESTION IS WHAT METAPHYSICAL DOCTRINES MEAN AND NOT\nWHETHER THEY ARE MEANINGFUL. ALTHOUGH JAMES IS OFTEN\nMISLEADING IN TALKING ABOUT MEANING, I ARGUE THAT THIS\nINTERPRETATION IS SUPPORTED BY HIS NUMEROUS DISCUSSIONS OF\nMETAPHYSICS. PAUL HENLE'S ATTEMPT TO PROVIDE A FAVORABLE\nINTERPRETATION OF JAMES WITHIN LOVEJOY'S FRAMEWORK, IS ALSO\nSHOWN TO BE INCOHERENT. (shrink)

The system B+ is the minimal positive relevant logic. B+ is trivially extended to B+T on adding a greatest truth (Church constant) T. If we leave ∨ out of the formation apparatus, we get the fragment B∧T. It is known that the set of ALL B∧T theories provides a good model for the combinators CL at Level-I, which is the theory level. Restoring ∨ to get back B+T was not previously fruitful at Level-I, because the set of all B+T theories (...) is NOT a model of CL. It was to be expected from semantic completeness arguments for relevant logics that basic combinator laws would hold when restricted to PRIME B+T theories. Overcoming some previous difficulties, we show that this is the case, at Level I. But this does not form a model for CL. This paper also looks for corresponding results at Level-II, where we deal with sets of theories that we call propositions. We adapt work by Ghilezan to note that at Level-II also there is a model of CL in B∧T propositions. However, the corresponding result for B+T propositions extends smoothly to Level-II only in part. Specifically, only some of the basic combinator laws are proved here. We accordingly leave some work for the reader. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic WorldElizabeth A. MeyerKent J. Rigsby. Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic World. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996. xvii 1 672 pp., 9 pls. (Hellenistic Culture and Society, 22)What was asylia, and what did the numerous grants of it signify? Kent Rigsby has tackled this 300-year-old question by compiling the first-ever collection of asylia decrees and coin legends, (...) thereby performing an immense service for those interested in Hellenistic diplomacy and religion, and putting the study of asylia on an entirely new footing.Asylia is “the declared inviolability of places” (19), not persons, granted by “Panhellenic recognition” (21), and embodying “first and foremost a religious gesture, increasing the honor of the god” (14). The body of material about asylia begins in the 260s B.C. and ends in A.D. 22–23, when the Romans reviewed claims to asylia (Tac. 3.60–63, 4.14); references to asylia thereafter are not to new grants, but to grants made before A.D. 23 (3, 29, 35). This declared inviolability of places includes both temples and cities, for “the inscriptions... by their language, geography, and chronology imply that asylia of temple and [End Page 460] city was the same” (20). As preface to the corpus there is a brief introduction (1–29), which surveys existing explanations of asylia, and an even briefer chapter called “The Documents” (30–40), which discusses terminology and the restrictions on the corpus itself. Finally, there is another brief chapter that looks at the mythical or quasi-historical examples of asylia at Elis, Delphi, Plataea, and Delos (41–53).In the corpus of 230 epigraphic entries that follows, the phenomenon of asylia in each area or city is discussed in its own chapter or section, parallel or supporting material thoughtfully examined, and the coin evidence scrutinized. This is not a book for beginners, as its policy of selective translation (40) and its lack of maps demonstrate. (All who know where Rhaucus and Baetocaece are situated, raise your hands!) The erudition is enormous, the scholarship meticulous. Even the fearsome editors of the Bulletin Epigraphique quailed at reporting all of Rigsby’s corrections and plausible conjectures and meekly recorded only five footnote-sized adjustments of their own. (Two of these, it should be noted, were based on information published too late to have come to Rigsby’s attention anyway; see REG 110 [1997] 484–85.) His grasp of detail and relentless good judgment must and will disarm all but the most aggressively knowledgeable critic with strong opinions on small matters. Louis Robert I am not.The question that seems to me worth asking, however, is: What can be made of this material? Rigsby, although he decided that “a corpus of the evidence would be of more use to scholars than another essay of historical interpretation” (xiii), does not neglect the necessary act of evaluating the significance of asylia. I do, however, question some of his conclusions, while emphasizing strongly that only his meticulous collection and study of the inscriptions make possible my qualified skepticism and the further questions I would like to see asked of this material.The introduction (1–29) critiques previous explanations of asylia from Spanheim (1706) to Pritchett (1991) and offers Rigsby’s own (13–19, 22–29). As he says, declarations of inviolability can hardly have been attempts to enact the proper (and traditional) immunity of “sacred or neutral places” when popular religious scruple was no longer upholding it: there seems little likelihood that what was not instinctively felt would be voluntarily observed in obedience to a mere declaration (15). Nor were grants of asylia promises of collective defense (against, e.g., pirates), for no such collective defense was ever mounted, those granting asylia were often in no position to offer useful assistance, and no oath—“the sine qua non of a serious military intent” (22–23)—secured compliance (16).So far, so good. But what function, then, did grants of asylia serve? Rigsby suggests (22) that a declaration of asylia “never brought a recipient anything but honor, and that for most of its history no more than honor... (shrink)

Previous attempts to find meaning in emotional responses to music often begin with analysis of dynamic tonal patterns, with observation of the emotional behavior of listeners or with self-reports of emotional feelings. In this study, we begin with a somewhat detailed description of physical processes in the human auditory system that lead to the activation of processes in the autonomic nervous system, which produce embodied emotional responses to environmental challenges. We then propose an answer to the question: Why were some (...) of the same embodied responses that were originally adapted to meet the challenges of self-preservation and self-perpetuation in the course of human evolution coopted to serve as responses to perceived dynamic patterns in music? We find that a likely answer to this question involves uncertainties in the possible outcomes of antecedent or consequent musical events. (shrink)

While John B. Watson articulated the intellectual commitments of behaviorism with clarity and force, wove them into a coherent perspective, gave the perspective a name, and made it a cause, these commitments had adherents before him. To document the origins of behaviorism, this series collects the articles that set the terms of the behaviorist debate, includes the most important pre-Watsonian contributions to objectivism, and reprints the first full text of the new behaviorism. Contents: Functionalism, the Critque of Introspection, and the (...) Nature and Evolution of Consciousness: Theoretical Roots of Early Behaviourism: An Anthology [1842-1914] Robert H. Wozniak (Ed) 360 pp Studies of Animal and Infant Behaviour. the Experimental and Comparative Roots of Early Behaviourism: An Anthology [1840-1911] Robert H. Wozniak (Ed) 412 pp An Introuduction to Comparative Psychology [1894 edition] Conway Lloyd Morgan 628 pp Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology [1900] Jacques Loeb 342 pp Fundamental Laws of Human Behaviour. Lectures on the foundtions of Any Mental or Social Science [1911] Max F. Meyer 264 pp Behaviour. An Introduction to Comparative Psychology [1914 edition] John B. Watson 482 pp. (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)

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)

On the surface, The Philosophical Hitchcock: Vertigo and the Anxieties of Unknowingness, is a close reading of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece Vertigo. This, however, is a book by Robert B. Pippin, one of our most penetrating and creative philosophers, and so it is also much more. Even as he provides detailed readings of each scene in the film, and its story of obsession and fantasy, Pippin reflects more broadly on the modern world depicted in Hitchcock’s films. Hitchcock’s characters, Pippin (...) shows us, repeatedly face problems and dangers rooted in our general failure to understand others—or even ourselves—very well, or to make effective use of what little we do understand. Vertigo, with its impersonations, deceptions, and fantasies, embodies a general, common struggle for mutual understanding in the late modern social world of ever more complex dependencies. By treating this problem through a filmed fictional narrative, rather than discursively, Pippin argues, Hitchcock is able to help us see the systematic and deep mutual misunderstanding and self-deceit that we are subject to when we try to establish the knowledge necessary for love, trust, and commitment, and what it might be to live in such a state of unknowingness. A bold, brilliant exploration of one of the most admired works of cinema, The Philosophical Hitchcock will lead philosophers and cinephiles alike to a new appreciation of Vertigo and its meanings. (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.

The project of this book is to establish that Aristotle, contrary to what some have thought, did have a theory of distinctively "moral" responsibility, and one that is consistent with determinism. It is stipulated early on that having a theory of moral responsibility is a matter of first identifying the proper objects of peculiarly moral evaluation and thus specifying the range of responsible agents, and then identifying the actions for which those responsible agents are responsible. Aristotle’s account of moral character (...) is supposed to do the former. The latter is accomplished with his account of voluntariness. I will begin with that. (shrink)

" 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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

In this essay I offer a new interpretation of Kant’s discussion of “the old formula of the schools” in the Critique of Practical Reason – “nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni; nihil aversamur, n...

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)

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)

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.

We introduce two extreme methods to pairwisely compare ordered lists of the same length, viz. the comonotonic and the countermonotonic comparison method, and show that these methods are, respectively, related to the copula TM (the minimum operator) and the Ł ukasiewicz copula TL used to join marginal cumulative distribution functions into bivariate cumulative distribution functions. Given a collection of ordered lists of the same length, we generate by means of TM and TL two probabilistic relations QM and QL and identify (...) their type of transitivity. Finally, it is shown that any probabilistic relation with rational elements on a 3-dimensional space of alternatives which possesses one of these types of transitivity, can be generated by three ordered lists and at least one of the two extreme comparison methods. (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 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)

Robert Pippin presents here the first detailed interpretation of J.M. Coetzee's "Jesus" trilogy as a whole. Pippin treats the three fictions as a philosophical fable. Everyone in the mythical land explored by Coetzee is an exile, removed from their homeland and transported to a strange new place. While discussing the social and psychological dimensions of the fable, Pippin also treats the literary aspects of the fictions as philosophical explorations of theimplications of a deeper kind of homelessness--a version that characterizes (...) late modern life itself--and he treats the theme of forgetting as a figure for modern historical amnesia and indifference to reflection and self-knowledge. (shrink)

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)

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)