The present research examined how nostalgia influences temporal self-appraisals and whether those appraisals relate to current mood. Across two studies, participants recalled either an ordinary or nostalgic memory and provided appraisals of their present and past selves. Participants who recalled nostalgic memories evaluated their past selves more positively than their present selves, whereas the reverse occurred for those who recalled ordinary memories. Those who recalled a positive future event also evaluated their future selves more positively than their present selves. Nostalgia (...) simultaneously enhanced positive mood by heightening favorable evaluations of past selves and diminished positive mood by heightening unfavorable evaluations of present selves. The current work supports a temporal-selves framework that allows for a more nuanced portrait of the nostalgic experience. (shrink)

Public education is not just a way to organise and fund education. It is also the expression of a particular ideal about education and of a particular way to conceive of the relationship between education and society. The ideal of public education sees education as an important dimension of the common good and as an important institution in securing the common good. The common good is never what individuals or particular groups want or desire, but always reaches beyond such particular (...) desires towards that which societies as a whole should consider as desirable. This does, of course, put the common good in tension with the desires of individuals and groups. Neo-liberal modes of governance have, over the past decades, put this particular educational set up under pressure and have, according to some, eroded the very idea of the common good. This set of contributions reflects on this state of affairs, partly through an exploration of the idea of publicness itself – how it can be rearticulated and regained – and partly through reflections on the current state of education in the ‘north’ and the ‘south.’. (shrink)

By way of a selective comparison of the work of Georges Canguilhem and Henri Bergson on their respective conceptions of ‘problematology’, this article argues that the centrality of the notion of the ‘problem’ in each can be found in their differing conceptions of the philosophy of life and the living being. Canguilhem’s model, however, ultimately moves beyond or away from (legislative) philosophy and epistemology towards the question of ethics in so far as his vitalism is a means of signalling the (...) refusal of the supposition that all of the dimensions of life are or might be in our possession. Michel Foucault’s project, though directed for the most part to very different subject-matter, worked out a similar logic in the historical problematology of the sciences of ‘man’ and mentalities of government and power; and the results were equally ethical in so far as Foucault’s nominalist historical problematology entailed the refusal of any idea that all of the dimensions of our anthropological ‘essence’ are, or could be, likewise, in our possession. (shrink)

This article argues that the notion of the archive is of some value for those interested in the history of the human sciences. Above all, the archive is a means of generating ethical and epistemological credibility. The article goes on to suggest that there are three aspects to modern archival reason: a principle of publicity whereby archival information is made available to some or other kind of public; a principle of singularity according to which archival reason focuses upon questions of (...) detail; and a principle of mundanity, whereby the privileged focus of archival reason is said to be the commonplace dimension of everyday life. (shrink)

Background and methods: Psychiatric research can occasionally present particular ethical dilemmas, but it is not clear what kind of problems local research ethics committees actually experience in this field. We aimed to assess the type of problems that committees encounter with psychiatric research, using a postal survey of 211 LRECs.Results: One hundred and seven of those written to replied within the time limit. Twenty eight experienced few problems with psychiatric applications. Twenty six emphasised the value of a psychiatric expert on (...) the committee. The most common issues raised were informed consent and confidentiality . The use of placebos , the validity of psychiatric questionnaires and overuse of psychiatric “jargon” in psychiatric applications also raised concern.Conclusions: Our results suggest that LRECs have specific concerns regarding methodology, consent, and confidentiality in psychiatric research, and that they find psychiatric input invaluable. (shrink)

I defend the normativity of meaning against recent objections by arguing for a new interpretation of the ‘ought’ relevant to meaning. Both critics and defenders of the normativity thesis have understood statements about how an expression ought to be used as either prescriptive or semantic. I propose an alternative view of the ‘ought’ as conveying the primitively normative attitudes speakers must adopt towards their uses if they are to use the expression with understanding.

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

Any attempt to construct a philosophy of Value must presuppose some general understanding of what Value is. And so it might seem natural to begin with a precise definition of the concept we are about to investigate. What, we might ask ourselves, is the characteristic peculiar to all those situations in the description of which we are accustomed to use the word “value” or its cognate terms, and distinguishing them as a class from all those situations to which we do (...) not apply the word? Proceeding empirically in this way, from an inspection of the “field of application” of the word “value” we might reasonably hope to discover a “highest common factor” of all the data, which would be the required definition of the concept “Value.” But we should be met at the outset by radical differences of opinion about the scope of the relevant data. (shrink)

Numerous authors have interpreted the history of anthropological and medical conceptions of race in nineteenth century France as following a path mapped out by phrenology, anthropometry, and Paul Broca's version of physical anthropology. On balance, this has resulted in an historical narrative centered on Parisian intellectual life and one leaving the impression that by the 1890s anthropological theories had moved away from ethnological and cultural explanations toward more biological views of race. This article, by contrast, examines the world beyond Paris (...) and the literatures of naval and army medicine from about 1830 to 1920. It describes the contours of a medical and anthropological pluralism in matters of race and ethnicity and argues that cultural and ethnological perspectives remained important to theorists of race through World War I. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 63-82 [Access article in PDF] Faith, Philosophy, and the Nominalist Background to Luther's Defense of the Real Presence Thomas Osborne Recent scholarship has brought into question the traditional interpretation of Luther as being hostile towards philosophy. 1 Graham White claims that Luther holds a place in the history of logic as a member of the Nominalist tradition. 2 Bruce D. Marshall (...) argues that Luther and Thomas Aquinas fundamentally agree on the relationship between faith and reason. 3 Both scholars recognize that Luther himself stressed the importance of logic and used late medieval philosophical techniques. Although I agree with this scholarship that Luther's thought must not be understood in isolation from late medieval thought, I will argue that Luther uses philosophical ideas in a way which conflicts with that of the scholastic tradition. The focus here is on Luther's understanding of the relationship between faith and reason in the context of Luther's controversy over the Eucharist with the Swiss sacramentarians, among whom Zwingli and Oecolampadius were the most prominent. 4 Although Luther uses philosophical [End Page 63] distinctions to argue against what he thinks are misinterpretations of the Bible, he does not in any explicit and systematic way use philosophy to arrive at a theological understanding of the Eucharist. Luther differs from his scholastic predecessors in that he uses philosophy not to develop theological conclusions but only to attack errors about the Bible, and so the concern here is with Luther's use of Nominalist doctrines about presence in his attack on the sacra-mentarians' belief that Christ cannot be present both at the right hand of God and in the Eucharist at the same time.In his discussion of the Eucharistic doctrine which is presented in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Luther not only argues against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice but also against transubstantiation. 5 Luther explicitly states that he was influenced on this issue by Peter D'Ailly, a Nominalist follower of William of Ockham. D'Ailly and other Nominalists thought that transubstantiation was not the only possible way that Christ could be present in the Eucharist, since if God wished he could also make Christ present along with the substance of the bread and wine. 6 From a Nominalist [End Page 64] perspective transubstantiation requires two actions of God, namely, the annihilation of the substance of the bread and the placement of Christ's body under the species. Therefore, consubstantiation would be a simpler account of Christ's Eucharistic presence. If Christ's body were present along with the substance of the bread annihilation would not have to occur. But D'Ailly and the Nominalists argue that we know from Church authority that the real presence occurs through transubstantiation. On this issue the Nominalists differ from Thomas Aquinas, who gives philosophically-based arguments against consubstantiation. 7 When Luther attacks Thomas, he attacks not so much the use of philosophy in theology as Thomas's philosophy: "But this opinion of Thomas hangs so completely in the air without support of Scripture or reason that it seems to me he knows neither his philosophy nor his dialectic." 8Since the Nominalist belief in transubstantiation rather than consubstantiation rests on an acceptance of Church authority, the rejection of such authority would seem to lead to a rejection of transubstantiation. If Luther had assented to traditional Nominalist theology with the sole exception of its reliance on Church authority, one would expect him to argue for the necessity of consubstantiation. However, Luther sees himself as rejecting an unnecessarily philosophical theology in a return to a more biblical faith. 9 Luther claims that he argues for a particular understanding of the Eucharistic presence but rather "that every one may feel at liberty to ponder, hold, and believe either one view or the other without endangering his salvation." 10 Although Luther's training in Nominalist theology leads him to think that consubstantiation is possible, he at no point argues that a belief... (shrink)

"The decisive event in the history of modern aesthetics was Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminal concepts of this work include the theory of the creative imagination, the 'purposiveness without purpose' of works of art, and the disinterestedness and subjective universality of judgements of taste. These concepts have remained basic in the aesthetic tradition from Kant's day to the present. The Quest for Imagination presents essays on several of the most important twentieth-century representatives of that tradition: George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, (...) Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritian, Jean-Paul Sartre, Northrop Frye, Edmund Husserl, Stephane Mallarme, Georges Poulet, and Gaston Bachelard. The essays introduce some of the finest thought on literature that this century has produced. Coming at a time when literature is frequently debased to propaganda and political cliche, they affirm the vitality of the aesthetic approach and the importance of the profession of letters in modern life." -- Dust jacket. (shrink)

"The decisive event in the history of modern aesthetics was Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminal concepts of this work include the theory of the creative imagination, the 'purposiveness without purpose' of works of art, and the disinterestedness and subjective universality of judgements of taste. These concepts have remained basic in the aesthetic tradition from Kant's day to the present. The Quest for Imagination presents essays on several of the most important twentieth-century representatives of that tradition: George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, (...) Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritian, Jean-Paul Sartre, Northrop Frye, Edmund Husserl, Stephane Mallarme, Georges Poulet, and Gaston Bachelard. The essays introduce some of the finest thought on literature that this century has produced. Coming at a time when literature is frequently debased to propaganda and political cliche, they affirm the vitality of the aesthetic approach and the importance of the profession of letters in modern life." -- Dust jacket. (shrink)

This new translation is an extremely welcome addition to the continuing Cambridge Edition of Kant’s works. English-speaking readers of the third Critique have long been hampered by the lack of an adequate translation of this important and difficult work. James Creed Meredith’s much-reprinted translation has charm and elegance, but it is often too loose to be useful for scholarly purposes. Moreover it does not include the first version of Kant’s introduction, the so-called “First Introduction,” which is now recognized as indispensable (...) for an understanding of the work. Werner Pluhar’s more recent translation, which does include the First Introduction, is highly accurate when it confines itself to rendering Kant’s German. However, it is often more of a reconstruction than a translation, containing so many interpretative interpolations that it is often difficult to separate out Kant’s original text from the translator’s contributions. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews have provided a translation that compares to or exceeds Pluhar’s in its literal approach to the German, but that confines all interpretative material to footnotes and endnotes, so that the text itself, with all its unclarities and ambiguities, lies open to view. In addition, Guyer, as editor of the volume, has provided a great deal of valuable supplementary material. This includes an introduction with an outline of the work and details of the history of its composition and publication, and a wealth of endnotes offering clarifications of the text, background information, and, most strikingly, many references to related passages in Kant’s voluminous writings, particularly in connection with Kant’s earlier writings related to aesthetics. The edition also records differences among the first three editions of the work, and—of particular interest—erasures from and additions to Kant’s manuscript of the First Introduction. Although the introduction and endnotes reflect interpretative views that are sometimes disputable, this supplementary material makes the present edition into a valuable resource even for those able to read the text in German. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 119-121 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Ethics and Political Philosophy The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought Arthur Stephen McGrade, John Kilcullen, and Matthew Kempshall, editors. Ethics and Political Philosophy. Vol. 2 of The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 664. Cloth, $85.00. Paper, $29.95. M. S. Kempshall. The Common (...) Good in Late Medieval Political Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 401. Cloth, $95.00. With the exception of the thought of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, late medieval political and ethical philosophy has been neglected. Two recent books attempt to rectify this neglect. One is the second volume of The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts. A translator of this volume, Matthew Kempshall, has also recently written a thorough analysis of the common good as it is discussed in late thirteenth-century scholasticism. Many of the texts discussed in this second book are translated by Kempshall in the first book.The new volume of translations now makes it possible for the reader unfamiliar with Latin to have some exposure to the medieval reception of Aristotle's ethical and political thought. The selections are deliberately taken from lesser-known figures who are not often translated, such as Albert the Great, Godfrey of Fontaines, and Augustine of Ancona. The selections are carefully chosen to represent a wide variety of literary genres. For example, the selection from Albert is part of his commentary of Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, [End Page 119] whereas the selection from Godfrey is a Quodlibetal Question, and that from Augustine of Ancona is part of a treatise. Moreover, there are some selections that show developments within a particular genre. For example, a translation from Buridan's commentary on Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics contrasts nicely with that of Albert. The selection from Albert focuses mostly on pleasure, the relationship between the active and the contemplative lives, and the connection between ethics and politics. His discussion of pleasure is philosophically important in light of twentieth-century discussions about reasons for actions. Moreover, these issues are all discussed in at least one of the other selections. Interestingly, Buridan's commentary on the same Book focuses instead on human freedom. Buridan makes fine distinctions that are relevant to contemporary debates about free will. Selections from Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, and James of Viterbo all address the topic of the relationship between self-love and the virtuous life. These passages are relevant to the question of whether there is egoism in ancient and medieval ethical thought.The volume is a companion to The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy and suffers from one of its weaknesses, which is that the selections can seem arbitrary. For example, the passage from Albert takes up nearly one quarter of the volume. Furthermore, sometimes the representation of an author by only one genre is misleading. For example, although Giles of Rome wrote a Quodlibetal Question (Quod 2, q. 20) that is directly attacked in a translation from James of Viterbo, Giles is represented only by a passage from his treatise De regimine principum. Moreover, the moral psychology of the late thirteenth century is not well-covered, which is odd considering the importance of Bonnie Kent's work in this area.One additional problem is that there are few notes to aid the reader. Sometimes the translations can be confusing. For example, in one passage "the Commentator" should be identified, since the name can apply to at least three individuals (262-3). More seriously, readers with little background in medieval thought might confuse the medieval referents signified in the translation by the words "state" or "love" with contemporary referents. The translations themselves are clear and the different translators follow a consistent set of guidelines. Anyone who tries to translate some of these passages for herself will understand that some... (shrink)

(2013). An Empirical Study: To What Extent and In What Ways Does Social Foundations of Education Inform Four Teachers’ Educational Beliefs and Classroom Practices? Educational Studies: Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 540-563.

Despite the enormous influence of Michel Foucault in gender studies, social theory, and cultural studies, his work has been relatively neglected in the study of politics. Although he never published a book on the state, in the late 1970s Foucault examined the technologies of power used to regulate society and the ingenious recasting of power and agency that he saw as both consequence and condition of their operation. These twelve essays provide a critical introduction to Foucault's work on politics, exploring (...) its relevance to past and current thinking about liberal and neo-liberal forms of government. Moving away from the great texts of liberal political philosophy, this book looks closely at the technical means with which the ideals of liberal political rationalities have been put into practice in such areas as schools, welfare, and the insurance industry. This fresh approach to one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century is essential reading for anyone interested in social and cultural theory, sociology, and politics. (shrink)

Hannah Ginsborg presents fourteen essays which establish Kant's Critique of Judgment as a central contribution to the understanding of human cognition. The papers bring out the significance of Kant's philosophical notion of judgment, and use it to address interpretive issues in Kant's aesthetics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of biology.

Kripke’s thesis that meaning is normative is typically interpreted, following Boghossian, as the thesis that meaningful expressions allow of true or warranted use. I argue for an alternative interpretation centered on Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity involved in “knowing how to go on” in one’s use of an expression. Meaning is normative for Kripke because it justifies claims, not to be saying something true, but to be going on as one ought from prevous uses of the expression. I argue that (...) this represents a distortion of Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity of meaning, and that Wittgenstein’s conception is preferable. (shrink)

The clinical ethics propounded by Richard Zaner is unique. Partly because of his phenomenological orientation and partly because of his own daily practice as a clinical ethicist in a large university hospital, Zaner focuses on the particular concrete situations in which patients and their families confront illness and injury and struggle toward workable ways for dealing with them. He locates ethical reality in the clinical encounter. This encounter encompasses not only patient and physician but also the patients family and friends (...) and indeed the entire lifeworld in which the patient is still striving to live. In order to illuminate the central moral constituents of such human predicaments, Zaner discusses the often-overlooked features of disruption and crisis, the changed self, the patients dependence and the physicians power, the violation of personal boundaries and their necessary reconfiguring, and the art of listening. (shrink)

Foucault is often thought to have a great deal to say about the history of madness and sexuality, but little in terms of a general analysis of government and the state.; This volume draws on Foucault's own research to challenge this view, demonstrating the central importance of his work for the study of contemporary politics.; It focuses on liberalism and neo- liberalism, questioning the conceptual opposition of freedom/constraint, state/market and public/private that inform liberal thought.

In a famous passage from the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein describes a pupil who has been learning to write out various sequences of numbers in response to orders such as “+1” and “+2”. He has shown himself competent for numbers up to 1000, but when we have him continue the “+2” sequence beyond 1000, he writes the numerals 1004, 1008, 1012. As Wittgenstein describes the case: We say to him, “Look what you’re doing!” — He doesn’t understand us. We say “You (...) should have added two; look how you began the series!” — He answers: “Yes! Isn’t it right? I thought that’s how I should [sollen] do it. — Or suppose he were to say, pointing to the series, “But I went on in the same way!”1The passage continues:— It would now be no use to us to say “But don’t you see…?” — and repeat for him the old explanations and examples. — In such a case, we might perhaps say: this person naturally understands our order, once given our explanations, as we would understand the order “Add 2 up to 1000, 4 up to 2000, 6 up to 3000, and so on.”. (shrink)

The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers begins in 1926, when the twenty-year-old Arendt studied philosophy with Jaspers in Heidelberg. It is interrupted by Arendt's emigration and Jasper's 'inner emigration' and resumes in the fall of 1945. From then until Jaspers's death in 1969, the initial teacher-student relationship develops into a close friendship. Three countries figure prominently in the correspondence: Germany, Israel, and the United States. Among the topics are Fascism, the atom bomb and the threat of global (...) destruction, German guilt for the Holocaust, Jewishness, the State of Israel, American politics and American universities, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Arendt and Jaspers discuss people both famous and obscure. They gossip, joke complain, and argue. They commiserate with each other over the illnesses and infirmities of old age. And they converse about the world's great philosophers: Spinoza, Kant, Marx, Max Weber, Heidegger. Here is a fascinating dialogue between a woman and a man, a Jew and a German, a questioner and a visionary, both uncompromising in their examination of our troubled century. (shrink)

I criticize recent nonconceptualist readings of Kant’s account of perception on the grounds that the strategy of the Deduction requires that understanding be involved in the synthesis of imagination responsible for the intentionality of perceptual experience. I offer an interpretation of the role of understanding in perceptual experience as the consciousness of normativity in the association of one’s representations. This leads to a reading of Kant which is conceptualist, but in a way which accommodates considerations favoring nonconceptualism, in particular the (...) primitive character of perceptual experience relative to thought and judgment. (shrink)

In this book she describes the perplexing crises which modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice ...

Foucault is often thought to have a great deal to say about the history of madness and sexuality, but little in terms of a general analysis of government and the state.; This volume draws on Foucault's own research to challenge this view, demonstrating the central importance of his work for the study of contemporary politics.; It focuses on liberalism and neo- liberalism, questioning the conceptual opposition of freedom/constraint, state/market and public/private that inform liberal thought.

Discusses the nature of thought and volition, examines past philosophical theories, and clarifies the relation between will and freedom.

As Christian List (2021) has recently argued, the increasing arrival of powerful AI systems that operate autonomously in high-stakes contexts creates a need for “future-proofing” our regulatory frameworks, i.e., for reassessing them in the face of these developments. One core part of our regulatory frameworks that dominates our everyday moral interactions is blame. Therefore, “future-proofing” our extant regulatory frameworks in the face of the increasing arrival of powerful AI systems requires, among others things, that we ask whether it makes sense (...) to extend our blaming practices to these systems. In the paper, we argue for the admittedly surprising thesis that this question should be answered in the affirmative: contrary to what one might initially think, it can make a lot of sense to blame AI systems, since, as we furthermore argue, many of the important functions that are fulfilled by blaming humans can also be served by blaming AI systems. The paper concludes that this result gives us a good pro tanto reason to extend our blame practices to AI systems. (shrink)

Debates about empathy's role in morality are notoriously complex. On the one hand, proponents of empathy argue that it plays a crucial role in the process of making moral judgments, moral motivation, moral development, and the cultivation of meaningful personal relationships. On the other hand, critics of empathy warn that it is especially susceptible to a number of morally troubling biases and motivational shortcomings. Yet there is little consensus about what empathy is or what it might be good for from (...) a moral point of view. As a result, critics and proponents of empathy alike often wind up talking past each other and debates about empathy's role in morality reach an impasse. This paper proposes a typology of empathy's affective, cognitive, and motivational dimensions and the different forms that empathy can take depending on the nature and degree of prominence of these. It argues that different forms of empathy are well equipped to handle some moral tasks as well as ill‐equipped to handle others. Its aim in doing so is to clarify an otherwise conceptually thorny set of debates and to amplify future research on empathy and its role in the moral life. (shrink)