John Sheridan talks with Clare L E Foster, sharing some wider observations about the challenges of the digital transformation of The National Archives..

This essay examines Catharine Cockburn's moral philosophy as it is developed in her Defence of Mr. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. In this work, Cockburn argues that Locke's epistemological principles provide a foundation for the knowledge of natural law. Sheridan suggests that Cockburn's objective in defending Locke's moral epistemology was conditioned by her own prior commitment to a significantly un-Lockean theory of morality. In exploring Cockbum's views on morality in terms of their divergence from Locke's, the author hopes to (...) underscore the extent of Cockburn's intellectual independence and her philosophical creativity. (shrink)

Love and romance from Plato toDesperate Housewives.

This paper explores the intellectual relationship between three eighteenth century women thinkers: Catharine Trotter Cockburn, and the Bluestockings Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Talbot. All three share a virtue-ethical approach according to which human happiness depends on the harmonization of our essentially rational and sociable natures. The affinity between the Bluestockings and Cockburn, I show, illuminates important new avenues for thinking about the Bluestockings as philosophers in their own right and for thinking about the feminist dimensions of Cockburn's morality. Further, their (...) shared moral outlook sheds interesting light on the burgeoning feminism of the eighteenth century and the contributions of Cockburn and the Bluestockings to a new and growing discourse about women and their social and political role. (shrink)

This article argues that, rather than thinking that our ethics has to fall back on Kantian and proto-Christian claims, Sellars should have appealed to the framework of Buddhist ethics.

In his essay 'Unpacking My Library... Again,' Homi Bhabha suggests that the liberal ideal of toleration has been challenged by colonial and postcolonial interactions and exchanges. Bhabha suggests that just as the ideal of equality has been problematized by the operation of gender and class difference, so too cultural and racial difference has exposed the contradictions inherent within the concept and the practice of toleration. This paper elaborates the critiques of toleration and recognition. It suggests that toleration is not a (...) benevolent gesture of generosity which unfortunately reaches a limit of applicability but a mechanism of Foucauldian pastoral care which enacts a 'civilizing mission' through the capture of paternalistic benevolence. (shrink)

This essay contrasts Damaris Masham and Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s respective moral philosophies. It argues that their views are both remarkably innovative, yet strikingly similar. By focusing on Masham and Cockburn’s accounts of agency and virtue, it is demonstrated that both thinkers take human nature as a sort of guide to moral behavior – i.e., it shows that the moral agent operates under the perception of moral principles as arising from human nature. While both thinkers are known to have been directly (...) influenced by John Locke, it is also argued that both of their moral philosophies bear significant dissimilarities to Lockean morality. (shrink)

Locke's moral theory consists of two explicit and distinct elements — a broadly rationalist theory of natural law and a hedonistic conception of moral good. The rationalist account, which we find most prominently in his early Essays on the Law of Nature, is generally taken to consist in three things. First, Locke holds that our moral rules are founded on universal, divine natural laws. Second, such moral laws are taken to be discoverable by reason. Third, by dint of their divine (...) authorship, moral laws are obligatory and rationally discernible as such. Locke's hedonism, which is developed most fully in his later Essay Concerning Human Understanding, consists in the view that all good amounts to pleasure, with specifically moral good taken to consist in the pleasurable consequences of discharging one's moral duties. (shrink)

Hutcheson’s theory of morality shares far more common ground with Clarke’s morality than is generally acknowledged. In fact, Hutcheson’s own view of his innovations in moral theory suggest that he understood moral sense theory more as an elaboration and partial correction to Clarkean fitness theory than as an outright rejection of it. My aim in this paper will be to illuminate what I take to be Hutcheson’s grounds for adopting this attitude toward Clarkean fitness theory. In so doing, I hope (...) to bring to light an otherwise unexpected continuity between moral sense theory and the moral rationalism to which it is usually opposed, and, in so doing, draw attention to the anti-sceptical realism that lies at the heart of both accounts. (shrink)

Ever since Heidegger lectured on Nietzsche, philosophers have stressed the active side of the Übermensch, the self who aggressively consumes and exploits value. Sheridan Hough, however, argues that there is a distinctly receptive and passive side to the Nietzschean self, and thus a pervasive doubleness in Nietzsche's thought that hasn't been explored before. This doubleness is the focus of Hough's attention here. Hough argues that Nietzsche's favorite way to describe the self is to use opposed pairs of metaphors. The (...) sea and the land, the pursuit of archaeology and the "granite stratum" of the self, the child and pregnancy are tropes he uses to show the self as both an active critic of culture and a creation of that culture. Noon and shadow exemplify this dual thinking. The free spirit, according to Nietzsche, is dogged by a shadow, a shadow cast by the free spirit's efforts to overcome himself. Perfect noon—emblematic of the Übermensch—is the moment of ecstatic release for the free spirit. Thus the Übermensch is not a separate "superhuman" being but rather an ecstatic moment in the experience of free spirits. Hough succeeds in showing that the doubleness motif strikes deeper into the heart of Nietzsche's thinking than has been realized. Favorite Nietzschean images, such as that of pregnancy, suddenly take on new meaning when considered in this light. Careful to avoid a reductionist view, Hough adds significantly to our understanding of Nietzsche's contribution to modern thought. (shrink)

This book is an analysis of Kierkegaard's account of the self from a unique perspective, that of a character introduced by one of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authors, Johannes de silentio. This character is seen once in a brief vignette in Fear and Trembling, but Hough argues that this character is a necessary lens for looking across Kierkegaard's vast authorship, both the pseudonymous works as well as the works that Kierkegaard himself signed. This character sketch, often overlooked in Kierkegaard scholarship, is crucial (...) to understanding what Kierkegaard calls the life of faith, and, therefore, the nature of a fully realized human self. (shrink)

In ‘Force of law’ Derrida appears to suggest that emancipatory ideals and human rights have a continuing relevance. This may seem a surprising proposition from a theorist often interpreted as critical of humanist and Enlightenment principles. This paper argues, however, that Derrida does not reject, outright, humanist, Enlightenment and emancipatory strategies but instead deconstructs these in order to propose alternate ‘ethical’ and ‘political’ possibilities. Focusing on ‘The ends of man’, ‘Force of law’ and ‘Autoimmunity’ this paper argues that Derrida does (...) not advocate an anti-humanism but instead gestures toward an alternate unconditional hospitality, responsibility, friendship, justice and democracy-to-come, displacing the anthropomorphism of humanism and advocating instead an openness to a heterogeneous otherness. (shrink)

Transition to man -- Transition from man -- And beyond.

Unity, commonality, and agreement are generally understood to be the basis, or the aim, of community. This paper argues instead that disagreement and fracture are inherent to, and provide the expression of difference within, community. Drawing on the experience of race relations in Australia, this paper proposes that ongoing resistance and disagreement by Aboriginal groups against non-Aboriginal law and culture has enabled an unworking of homogenizing and totalizing forces which destroy alterity within community.

Three experiments introduced a recognition memory paradigm designed to investigate reported subjective awareness during retrieval. At study, in Experiments 1A and 2, words were either generated or read , while modality of presentation was manipulated in Experiment 1B. Word pairs were presented during test trials, and participants indicated if they contained an old word by responding “remember”, “know” or “new” in Experiments 1A and 1B, and by responding “strong no”, “weak no”, “weak yes”, or “strong yes” in Experiment 2. Participants (...) were then required to decide which of the 2 words was old. We demonstrated that the proportion measures used in the Remember Know paradigm substantially underestimated the influence of generation on familiarity resulting in an artificial dissociation between indices of knowing and remembering . We also found a qualitatively different pattern of forced-choice recognition performance as a function of claimed awareness. (shrink)

At the end of ‘The Age of the World Picture,’ Heidegger offers a brief sentence, ‘Keiner stirbt für blosse Werte’ (No one dies for mere values.). This sentence underscores one of the central themes of Heidegger’s later essays, the nihilism that results from living in an economy of value. This way of life is lived by a certain kind of human being, one who treats a culture’s embedded habits and practices as value systems to be exploited and exhausted. A more (...) difficult problem presents itself: what is it like to be a person who has mastered this economy of value? This paper sets out to examine this question, and to propose another perspective: no one dies for mere values, but how does Heidegger’s rendition of the Übermensch manage to live? How does one live for mere values? I argue that Heidegger’s technological examples (e.g., the hydroelectric plant) have two salient features: each is ‘infectious’ and ‘exhaustible,’ features that are not consonant with the appropriative use of our habits and practices. I will focus on the condition Heidegger describes, and the person who makes this condition manifest, and conclude with a proposal for a ‘Nietzschean corrective.’. (shrink)

The blurb describes this book as a ‘shocker’, but its shocks are both salutary and timely. It is certainly a blistering piece of work, but the fever of some post-Conciliar progressives is running a little high in these years, and blistering has a certain therapeutic value.

The degree to which Hobbes's citizenry retains its right to resist sovereign power has been the source of a significant debate. It has been argued by a number of scholars that there is a clear avenue for legitimate rebellion in Hobbes's state, as described in the Leviathan - in this work, Hobbes asserts that subjects can retain their natural right to self-preservation in civil society, and that this represents an inalienable right that cannot, under any circumstances, be transferred to the (...) sovereign. The conclusion frequently drawn from this feature of Hobbes's account is that it places a considerable limit on sovereign authority. The right to self-preservation has been taken as proof that Hobbes sought to ensure that the sovereign's power relies upon the continual consent of the individuals that make up his or her constituency. I want to examine Hobbes's account of this civil right in Leviathan in order to show that this line of interpretation is ultimately unfounded. While self-preservation results from the individual's own judgment of threats to her personal safety, it is justified in only the most strictly delineated contexts. Judgments regarding the overall peace and security of the state do not, and cannot, fall to individual experiences and judgments. Hobbes is quite adamant that individuals are not appropriate judges of right and wrong action in matters the sovereign legislates. (shrink)