Moral perception has made something of a comeback in recent work on moral epistemology. Many traditional objections to the view have been argued to fail upon closer inspection. But it remains an open question just how far moral perception might extend. In this paper, I provide the beginnings of an answer to this question by assessing the relationship between the metaphysical structure of different normative properties and a plausible constraint on which properties are eligible for perceptual awareness which I call (...) the Counterfactual Strengthening Test. Along the way I consider and reject a few other possible constraints on perceptual awareness. I defend the view that moral perception is restricted to the perception of evaluative and pro tanto deontic properties. I conclude with a few gestures toward what this limitation on moral perception may mean for broader moral epistemology. (shrink)

In the Phaedo the character Socrates argues that suicide is morally wrong. This is in fact one of only two places in the entire Platonic corpus where suicide is discussed. It is a brief passage, and a notoriously perplexing one. In this article, I distinguish between two arguments that Socrates gives in support of his claim. I argue that one of them is not to be taken literally, while the other represents the deeper reason for the prohibition of suicide. I (...) further relate the question of suicide to the overarching concerns of the Phaedo as a whole: the nature of our incarnate “imprisonment”, the nature and purpose of philosophy, the philosophical “purification” of the soul, the human pursuit of knowledge, and the nature of the divine. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that there is a connection between love and death. But what can be said philosophically about the nature of that connection (if indeed it exists)? Plato's Symposium suggests at least three possible ways in which love and death might be connected: first, that love entails (or ought to entail) a willingness to die for one’s beloved; second, that love is a desire for (or perhaps itself is) a kind of death; and third, that love is linked (...) to human mortality and the desire for immortality. I argue that each of these three suggestions is problematic, and should not be accepted at face value. I am ultimately skeptical as to whether any one, overriding connection—be it moral or causal or metaphysical—between love and death exists. At the very least, the matter deserves more nuanced and multi-faceted reflection than what we find in the Symposium. (shrink)

Concerning the need for a new conception of legal theory one question arises, above all, especially when external and internal observation as well as the critical reflexion on the premises and presuppositions of all dealings with the law permit a degree of distance, the question, namely, whether it is not an increasing application of scientific methods that is needed, in the sense that the development of a theory from the beginning involves the integration of a norm‐descriptive point of view and (...) intellectual standpoint with the norm‐ prescriptive theory of law, by way of complementing each other, as it were (multilevel approach to law). This, at least, appears to be the only way of also clarifying the relationship between legal theory and philosophy and the theory and sociology of law. The inevitable consequences of the development of a theory of norms and action also have to be drawn from this. (shrink)

Two revolutionary concepts of the twentieth century—continental drift and the existence of superdense stars and black holes—had extended histories which ran in curious parallel for five decades. Between the wars each encountered a fierce and emotionally charged resistance which may have had a common psychological root. Each threatened man's instinctive faith in the permanence of matter.

Der Band enthält die religionsphilosophischen Vorlesungen, die Feuerbach während der Revolutionszeit vom 1. Dezember 1848 bis zum 2. März 1849 im Heidelberger Rathaussaal vor Studenten, Angehörigen des Heidelberger Arbeiter-Bildungsvereins und fortschrittlichen Kreisen des Bürgertums gehalten hat. Die Vorlesungen, denen Feuerbach eine Stellungnahme zur Revolution und eine Skizze seiner weltanschaulichen Entwicklung vorangestellt hat, geben eine das gesamte erreichbare völkerkundliche, mythologische und religionsgeschichtliche Material verarbeitende Analyse der Naturreligionen, des Theismus und Monotheismus. Feuerbach bekämpft die theologische und idealistisch-philosophische Naturauffassung und stellt ihr Ergebnisse (...) der der Naturforschung und Prinzipien einer materialistische-sensualistischen Erkenntnistheorie und Naturphilosophie entgegen: Mittelpunkt allen Denkens, Strebens und Handelns müsse der Mensch in seinen realen Beziehungen sein, der in sich selbst und in seinen Wesenskräften tatsächlich findet, was er in der Religion nur illusorisch "verwirklicht"; an die Stelle religiösen Glaubens die auf menschenwürdige Gestaltung der Lebensverhältnisse gerichtete kollektive Selbsttätigkeit treten. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis, Gèottingen.