Showing papers in "Review of Metaphysics in 2001"

Is the Common Good of Political Society Limited and Instrumental

Abstract: ARISTOTLE SEEMS TO BE CORRECT when he asserts (1) that every association is to be accounted for by reference to some good which the members of that association hope to attain, precisely through their cooperation: or, in words close to Lincoln's, people form an association to accomplish together some good that each cannot attain, or cannot easily attain, through his own efforts. Even if this good--or, we might say, the "purpose" or "point"--of their association is not entirely clear to them, presumably there is some reason for their coordinated behavior, which can in principle be made evident. The coming together of persons in political society seems to be a form of association even more than most, because of its durability and coherence, and because of the authority of its rules. What, then, is the aim of political society--its common good? Is there a single correct answer here, or could political society correctly be arranged to attain any one of a variety of goals? What view of the common good is implicit in liberal democracies, and how does this differ from the more classical understanding as articulated in the political theory of Aristotle and perhaps also Aquinas? John Finnis argues, in an extremely interesting and even provocative paper, (2) that the common good of political society does not itself instantiate a basic human good; that it is not, in particular, the object of a natural inclination, as to something intrinsically good; but that it is only a necessary means for the instantiation of such basic intrinsic goods, primarily within families. This view he expresses by calling the common good of political society "instrumental." (3) What is sought by members who associate in political society is something that assists and promotes family life; it is instrumental to other goods, goods which are sought for their own sake. Finnis is not entirely clear about the details, but presumably his view is that the members of political society should work together to attain such things as: a military and police for protection against the aggressor, both external or internal; practices and infrastructure which serve to facilitate trade and commerce; and various means for advancing culture, such as schools, museums, and libraries. These together provide a framework within which families can flourish--a framework which Finnis refers to as "peace." Since laws should be restricted to the promotion of the common good, they are legitimately framed only if they advance peace or prohibit actions that would interfere with citizens' enjoyment of goods meant to be attained through civic peace. Laws are not competent, in particular, to direct citizens to any further end, such as the development of their own virtue in its own right, or the achievement of their own happiness. Presumably they are also incompetent to regulate life within households, except insofar as this has some real bearing upon justice and peace. Let us say that an action or forbearance that is required for the establishment or preservation of peace is an act of "justice." Then laws, in the first instance, can command only acts of justice. Yet virtue is not something entirely unrelated to law. Laws may also promote virtue in citizens, Finnis allows, to the extent that such virtue is required if citizens are to succeed in doing acts of general justice. Finnis describes three respects in which this may be the case, which I here paraphrase: (1) Laws may aim to promote citizens' habitually choosing just actions, since peace will obviously be more stable if it is chosen by citizens as a consequence of an established character: and so, for example, national holidays can presumably (4) be established by law, since such celebrations have the effect of encouraging civic spirit. (2) Laws may promote virtues other than that of justice, to the extent that these are in some real sense needed by citizens in order for them to succeed in acting justly: for example, it may command (presumably) that a soldier not drink alcohol when on duty--an action characteristic of temperance but in the circumstances needed if the soldier is to fulfill his duty reliably. …

Moral Knowledge and the Acquisition of Virtue in Aristotle's Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics

Abstract: IN BOTH THE EUDEMIAN ETHICS AND THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, Aristotle says that the aim of ethical inquiry is a practical one; (1) we want to know what virtue is so that we may become good ourselves and thereby do well and be happy. By classifying ethical inquiry as a practical endeavor, Aristotle is rejecting a view that he attributes to Socrates according to which ethics is a kind of theoretical science. In theoretical sciences, such as geometry or astronomy, the knowledge of a particular subject matter is sought as an end in itself, and the possession of such knowledge is sufficient to make one a geometer or an astronomer. In rejecting this model Aristotle argues that the knowledge of virtue is sought not solely for itself but in order to inform praxis and in order that we become virtuous and good, not by knowing what the virtues are but by cultivating them in practice. Merely accepting the idea that ethics is a practical enterprise in the sense outlined above, however, does not commit one to a more specific conception of the relationship between attaining a general knowledge of virtue and being able to perform the activities that are essential to cultivating virtuous states of character. The extent to which one can acquire a general knowledge of ethical matters before one has engaged in the practical affairs of life, for instance, remains an open question. In the discussion that follows, I will argue that Aristotle's views in the Eudemian Ethics (EE) leave open the possibility of a "theory first" approach to ethical development. According to this approach, it is possible to acquire general moral knowledge independently from one's experience with the practical affairs of life and to benefit from using this knowledge to shape one's subsequent activities. I will also argue, however, that Aristotle explicitly rejects this conception of ethics in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) where he embraces instead what might be called an "experience first" approach to ethical development. In the NE, Aristotle places constant emphasis on the importance of gaining a knowledge of particulars that comes from practical experience not only in order to act well, but to be able to acquire and to benefit from a general knowledge of ethical matters. I will also suggest that this emphasis on experience results from a clarification that Aristotle makes in the NE of the relationship between actions, emotions, and states of character in order to avoid a puzzle or aporia to which the account of the acquisition of virtue in the EE is left open. Finally, I will suggest that the underlying reasons motivating this difference in emphasis support the view that the NE is later than the EE and that, as such, we should take the view expressed in the NE to represent Aristotle's considered view on this matter. The differences between the EE and the NE that I will discuss are subtle and for this reason they have been largely overlooked. So I want to emphasize that important questions about the role of philosophical inquiry in the development of virtue and the practical role of general moral knowledge ride on these differences. In taking a clear and unambiguous stance on these issues in the NE, Aristotle is explicitly ruling out answers to these questions which were perfectly consistent with the account of these issues in the EE. I argue below that this marks an important shift in Aristotle's thinking. Finally, a word of clarification is in order. In referring to the NE and the EE in what follows I mean to refer only to the books that are unique to each work. Because there is some controversy over the place of the common books (NE 5-7 and EE 4-6) my analysis of the two treatises will rely almost exclusively on material from these non-common books. I will explain my reasons for doing so near the end of the following discussion. I The Practical Science of Virtue. In the EE Aristotle tells us that Socrates did not ask how and from what virtue is produced because he took all of the virtues to be forms of knowledge and he therefore thought that one could become virtuous by attaining a knowledge of virtue just as one could become a geometer by acquiring the knowledge of geometry. …

The Stoics on Bodies and Incorporeals

Abstract: IT WAS A WIDESPREAD VIEW IN LATE ANTIQUITY that the Stoics maintained theses contrary to common conceptions--absurd, incomprehensible, or simply false In other words, the Stoics were generally accused of having been guilty of incongruity, self-contradiction, and absurdity (1) Indeed some specific Stoic claims (2) must have been particularly baffling for authors coming from the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition, mostly because these sorts of tenets were in disagreement with some basic assumptions of such a tradition Alexander of Aphrodisias, for example, correctly suggests that the tensional movement, attributed by the Stoics to [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], does not fall into the Aristotelian classification of [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (3) No doubt Alexander is right in noting this point because, according to Aristotle's view, [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] movement would be neither substantial (generation/destruction), quantitative (increase/diminution), qualitative (alteration), nor locative (locomotion) Nonetheless Alexander's attempt to reject the Stoic thesis of tensional movement on this ground is misleading The fact that the tensional movement is not included in Aristotle's scheme does not show that such a type of movement does not exist or that it is not possible to explain phenomena making use of an explanatory mechanism in which the tensional movement is crucial It only indicates the impossibility of trying to grasp [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and its properties with criteria which turn out to be useless for the assessment of such an entity that is for the most part described in our sources as moving "simultaneously inwards and outwards" ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) (4) I have cited and briefly commented on Alexander's remark against the Stoics because I think that this type of criticism is representative of what we can find in the testimonies for early Stoicism, particularly in those sources hostile to the Stoics, such as Plotinus, Plutarch, Galen, and of course Alexander himself Plotinus, for example, seems to be attacking the Stoic doctrine of principles when he says that if something is active and involves in some sense the characteristics of a form (or of an energeia), this something cannot be bodily or material In other words, Plotinus cannot accept the Stoic thesis of the material principles (5) for, as he puts it, god for them [namely for the Stoics] is posterior to matter as well, for it is a body composed of matter and form And where did it get its form from? But if he does not have matter, because of having the nature of a principle, that is to say, because of being reason ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), then god would have to be incorporeal, and the active would have to be incorporeal ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) then, how could matter be a principle if it is a body? (6) In fact, for Plotinus [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], that which involves greater value (7) does not pertain to the sphere of the corporeal, since this is directly related to the material things that, as material, imply passivity and lack of form Plutarch is in the same line of thought when arguing that if the Stoic god is neither something pure nor something simple but something composed, he must be dependent on something else (for the Stoics, matter, in being simple, involves the features of a principle) (8) By contrast, the Stoics held that only corporeal things have a real causal power with respect to other things It seems to me that this thesis contains an implicit and serious attack on the Platonic and Aristotelian view according to which forms and ends are not only the real causal factors but also the items that especially deserve to be called causes, at least if they are compared to the material things whose causal agency is primarily restricted to the domain of necessary conditions …

'Rights' in Aristotle's Politics and Nicomachean Ethics?

Abstract: Recent debates have examined again whether the concept of individual natural "fights" is significant for Aristotle's political philosophy and ethics. Fred D. Miller's Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics is the most sustained recent attempt to argue that Aristotle's Politics is centrally concerned with the issue of individual fights based on nature and that no anachronism is involved in arguing this. (1) Aristotle's Politics, it is argued, should thus be seen as the precursor of later theories of individual rights, although it would be a mistake to infer ...

Avicenna and Essentialism

Abstract: I THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE has been taken to be central to Avicenna's metaphysics and ontology of being. Due to the influence that this distinction had on Thomism, and to a lesser extent on Maimonides's work, some Medievalists and Orientalists took Avicenna's distinction between essence and existence to be characterized by essentialism. A.-M. Goichon's books Lexique de la Langue Philosophique d'Ibn Sina, Vocabulaires Compares d'Aristote et d'Ibn Sina, and La Philosophie d'Avicenne et son Influence en Europe (1) (along with her interpretation of the Avicennian essence/existence distinction) all offer a great contribution to the translation and understanding of Avicenna's works. However the interpretive reception of Goichon's works has had a strong influence on subsequent Medievalists as well as Orientalist scholars. This impact on scholars, along with the stress on Avicenna's influence on Thomism, has led in some instances to an exaggerated stress on the centrality of the essence/existence distinction in Avicenna's metaphysics. This state of affairs has eventually overshadowed other important aspects of Avicenna's ontology of being and of his metaphysical and logical analysis of being in terms of the modalities of necessity, contingency, and impossibility. The examination of Avicenna's metaphysics under the spell of all of these factors leads to an intellectually discomforting position that construes his ontology as essentialism. Consequently this leads to the interpretation of his work as being that of a metaphysician who subordinates existence to essence. Such interpretation has been even adopted by experts on Avicenna's work within the Western scholarship as well as among some Arabists. For instance, some scholars stress that Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Mulla Sadra are the metaphysicians of existence, while taking Avicenna to be the metaphysician of essence. John Caputo, a leading interpreter of Heidegger's thought, makes extensive references to the work of the Thomist scholar Etienne Gilson in the context of examining Aquinas's adoption of the Avicennian distinction between essence and existence. Caputo's discussion of the essence/existence distinction adopts the standpoint that Gilson reflects in the reading of Avicenna's metaphysics as being the starting point of a longstanding essentialist tradition that culminates with Hegel's Science of Logic. This line of argumentation already supplies Caputo with sufficient arguments that enable him readily to stamp Avicenna's metaphysics with Heidegger's critique of the metaphysical tradition. Caputo based himself on what the Thomist scholar Gilson offers in this regard, particularly in taking Aquinas's metaphysics to be the metaphysics of esse. Gilson's position may itself be questioned on the ground that its interpretation of Avicenna has been pervaded by Thomist inclinations; this is the case, given that Gilson and other scholars construe Avicenna's metaphysics as being essentially the metaphysics of essence. Based on this, Caputo accepts the claim that Avicenna's ontology is essentialist. (2) Such readings lead to the conclusion that Avicenna subordinates existence to essence and consequently that his ontology is characterized by what Heidegger takes to be a mark of the oblivion of being. The question that ought to be raised in this regard is whether the position of secondary scholarly sources is accurate. This is the case, given that some of the scholars, who propagate the claim that Avicenna is an essentialist, are after all scholars who have not consulted or studied the primary sources. Rather, they primarily rely on secondary sources that mediate Avicenna's metaphysics through the Thomist scholarship and Latin translations. This is clearly the case with Gilson's consideration of Avicenna's corpus, which is addressed from the standpoint of Latin renderings of Avicenna's texts rather than consulting the original Arabic or Persian texts. Having said that, the issue becomes more complicated in the light of considering Arabist or Medievalist scholars who do consult the primary Arabic sources, yet still hold that Avicenna is an essentialist. …

Aquinas's Division of Being According to Modes of Existing

Abstract: ONE COULD SAY THAT THE SCIENCE OF METAPHYSICS was born of Parmenides' wondering how to divide being. His reasoning, namely that nothing belonging to being could divide it, and that nonbeing, since it in no way exists, cannot divide anything, set the terms of the problem within which the great Western traditions of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics developed. In reply to this Parmenidian challenge to divide being, Plato writes in the Sophist of the participation of being in "the other," and Aristotle in the Metaphysics of a pros hen equivocation of the name "being." In response to the same seminal challenge to divide being, Thomas Aquinas speaks in the Quaestiones de veritate of modes of being (modi entis) and of modes of existing (modi essendi). Yet this terminology is barely acknowledged by Thomistic commentators. (1) My purpose in this article is to show that there is a properly metaphysical sense of the term "mode" in Aquinas's existential metaphysics that presents a yet unreconnoitered field of discussion in the secondary literature. Further, I want to propose by way of hypothesis that for Aquinas the term's primacy sense is existential determination, and in particular the determination of an individual being's act of existing, and that by analogy he extends the term to essence and to any potential principle of entitative determination. Lastly, I suggest that his concept of modes of existing brings into relief his innovation over his classical sources. When Aquinas posits a sense of being more ultimate than form, namely existence, an account of existential diversity becomes necessary to complete the ancient division of being according to formal differences. The Thomistic concept of a mode of existing arises with an account of the multiplicity of being in terms of existence (esse). This article is but the propaedeutic to a comprehensive and systematic study of the term "mode" in Aquinas's metaphysics. (2) I Analogical Inflections of the Term "Mode." The importance of the term "mode" for Aquinas can be seen from the very beginning of his career. When the young Thomas set to writing his Quaestiones de veritate, he replied to the Parmenidian challenge to divide being as follows: [T]hat which the intellect first conceives of as most known and into which it resolves all its conceptions is "being" [ens].... [I]t is therefore necessary that all other conceptions of the intellect be understood by an addition to "being." However nothing can be added to "being" as though extraneous ... but some things are said to be added to "being" inasmuch as they express a mode of the being itself [modum ipsius entis] that is not expressed by the name "being," which happens in two ways. In one way, the mode expressed is a certain special mode of being [specialis modus entis]; for there are diverse degrees of being a being [diversi gradus entitatis], according to which are understood diverse modes of existing [diversi modi essendi], and according to these modes the diverse categories of things are understood: for "substance" does not add to "being" any difference designating a certain nature superadded to the being, but by the name of substance is expressed a certain special mode of existing [specialis quidam modus essendi], namely being through itself, and likewise in the other categories. In another way, the mode expressed is a general mode following upon every being [modus generalis consequens omne ens]. (3) Aquinas begins by granting Parmenides his premise: there is nothing extraneous to being that could be added to it so as to divide it. (4) He proceeds to argue, however, that there are nevertheless diverse modes of existing intrinsic to being itself. Beginning with a Neoplatonic construal of the diverse natures of things according to diverse degrees of being (diversi gradus entitatis), he contrasts the determination of a being that results from the superadding of a nature with a determination of it according to modes that express something about the being itself (modi ipsius entis). …

Toward an Integrated Approach to Aristotle as a Biological Philosopher

Abstract: I EVER SINCE BALME'S GROUNDBREAKING WORK on the subject, there has been substantial progress in our understanding of the importance of biology in Aristotle's philosophy. (1) Despite a certain reluctance to incorporate treatises on animals into the undergraduate curriculum, (2) it is now inadvisable to avoid any reference to Aristotle's biological work when discussing most aspects of his thought. (3) The new tendency of scholarship on Aristotle's biology employs various methodologies but, in the main, argues for the importance of Aristotle's biological treatises on the basis of the assistance they might provide for understanding some of the more intractable problems in Aristotle's thought. The philosophical issues examined in relation to biology, then, are already determined by reference to other nonbiological texts. After the problems arising in more canonical texts have been clarified, the reader is invited to turn to the biological treatises in the hope of finding some solutions. Thus, for example, the biological treatises are resorted to in seeking a solution to interpretative logjams or issues left unresolved and obscure in the Posterior Analytics. (4) Aristotle's systematic study of animals has also been used to throw light on "concepts at the centre of his metaphysical analysis of substance" and "[les] dilemmes bien connus des livre centraux de la Metaphysique." (5) The approach to Aristotle's biology that looks for comprehensive solutions to well-established problems usually brings with it a clear agenda. Often the biological texts are treated as evidence for established interpretations. (6) But although entrenched views can sometimes be supported by these less familiar texts, a more fundamental reappraisal is often the more appropriate response to the insights provided by the biology. One of the most prominent examples relates to syllogistic demonstration, which, although advocated in the Posterior Analytics as the only road to scientific truth, does not appear explicitly in any biological work. The biology, along with other Aristotelian scientific texts, were initially resorted to by modern commentators in order to discover whether Aristotle applied his syllogistic in the actual practice of scientific investigation. (7) Study of the biological works on this basis sometimes manifests itself as an attempt to find Analytics-type demonstrations, even if these appear in a more "relaxed" form. (8) More often, however, scholars are willing to see different methodologies operating in the biological and logical treatises. (9) After many years of close study, it is now generally agreed that Aristotle must have changed his mind, or at least modified his views, about scientific methodology, and this presents considerable difficulties for those who wish to use the biology to clarify the Posterior Analytics. Perhaps it is because many long-standing problems have not been successfully resolved by using the biological texts in the traditional way that a new approach, which gives the biology a more equal philosophical status, has recently started to take a more prominent position in the scholarship. (10) Instead of focusing on how the biological texts might help us to strengthen or refine our views of Aristotle's philosophy, some scholars have suggested that the biological texts themselves might be capable of changing our frame of reference. James Lennox, for example, in his "Material and Formal Natures in Aristotle's De Partibus Animalium," (11) bases his discussion on a philosophical issue internal to one biological text. In the Parts of Animals, Aristotle states that nature is both matter and form and that both must be studied by the natural scientist. Lennox sets out to clarify the meaning of this statement before speculating about what consequences Aristotle's study of animal natures might have for the interpretation of Aristotle's thought more generally. [A]ttempting to preserve the unity of the composite by strongly identifying matter and form in the actual composite may have trouble accommodating the dynamic interaction of material and formal natures in the explanations we have looked at, as well as the extensive role played by material natures in those explanations. …

The Myth of the Last Judgment in the Gorgias

Abstract: I AT THE END OF A VERY LONG DISCUSSION with interlocutors who grow angrier and angrier with him, Socrates tells a story about the judgment of souls in the afterlife. He addresses the myth to Callicles, his final interlocutor, in the explicitly stated belief that the young man will not take it any more seriously than he would take a bunch of old wives' tales. (1) Socrates' prophecy about Callicles' response is likely to be correct. What is surprising, however, is that it also turns out to describe well the reaction of many readers of the dialogue. Plato scholars pay no attention whatsoever to the myth, at most devoting a few pages to Plato's sources. Does he rely on Orphic sources, or is he closer to the Pythagoreans? Once such problems are addressed, the myth is summarily dismissed. I find this myth very interesting. In it, Socrates describes a transformation of the human condition with respect to death. We learn that foreknowledge of death, which the mortals possessed in the age of Kronos, had been transformed by Zeus into the awareness of an unpredictable death. Correlatively, what is to count as a proper judgment of the soul receives a new definition. I want to discuss how issues such as awareness of death, truth and appearance, and surface and depth are subtly interwoven in the myth and raise fundamental questions about what it is to know the soul. Socrates' myth begins at 523a4 and ends at 524a8. At 524a9 Socrates says that this is what he heard and believes to be true. He adds: "and from these stories, on my reckoning, we must draw some such moral as this." Socrates' considerations on the myth are much longer than the myth itself. While the myth describes the passage from the time of Kronos to that of Zeus, Socrates' considerations concern the judgment of the soul after the event in the time of Zeus. The myth tells a stow and is mainly concerned with events. Socrates' considerations illustrate the consequences of these events for mankind. I will first analyze the myth and then turn to Socrates' discussion. II The myth concerns the final judgment of the dead in the afterlife, which determines who is to be sent to Tartarus and who to the Isles of the Blessed. According to Socrates, when Zeus took over his reign from his father, Kronos, he decided to put an end to the injustice that had characterized judgments in that age. Fairly often those who had wicked souls and had lived an unjust life ended up being sent to the Isles of the Blessed, while those who had lived a just and holy life were sent to Tartarus. According to Zeus, there were two reasons for these mistakes. First, human beings knew in advance when their last day would come. Second, the judges who decided the fate of the living were themselves still alive. The first reason given by Zeus, foreknowledge of death, made it possible for mortals to prepare for their last trial well in advance. The second, the fact of being judged while still living and by living judges, made it especially easy for those who had wicked souls to rely on appearance as the best means of self-defense: "many who have wicked souls are clad in fair bodies and ancestry and wealth, and at their judgment appear many witnesses to testify that theft lives have been just." (2) In response Zeus takes three measures. First, Prometheus is ordered to deprive the mortals of any foreknowledge of theft last day. Second, the last judgment must occur when the mortals are stripped bare of all things, thus not on theft last day of life, but after they are dead. Third, the judges are supposed to be dead as well. The ornament provided by the body of the mortals, which in the age of Kronos prevented a direct look into their souls, is taken away from them. Correlatively, the eyes and ears of the judges, liable to be charmed by the impressive theater of wealth, ancestry, and witnesses brought about by the wicked, are eliminated. A human soul, divested of all impediments and bereft of its body, is put in absolute proximity to the naked soul of the judge, itself stripped of the clothing provided by the living body. …

Spinoza's Possibilities

Abstract: MORE THAN MOST PHILOSOPHERS, Spinoza needed a coherent and sophisticated set of views on the nature of possibility: many of his most important philosophical positions and arguments depended on it. (1) As one example, take Ethics IP33. This Proposition--among the most famous (infamous?) of the Ethics--states, "Things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced." (2) In a salutary attempt to clarify the meaning of IP33 et relata, Spinoza adds in the first Scholium to IP33 that "by these propositions I have shown more clearly than the noon light that there is absolutely nothing in things on account of which they can be called contingent." Now, such assertions were bound to give rise to numerous objections and Spinoza knew it. To meet these objections, he immediately proceeds to one of the most powerful: namely, are there not things that actually have been "produced by God" that need not have been "produced by God?" And would it not make sense to call these things "contingent or possible?" (3) In reply, Spinoza reinterprets the concept of possibility. We call existing things "contingent" (or "possible"--here the two notions are not distinguished) "only because of a defect of our knowledge." There are, he continues, two types of deficiency that lead us to regard existing things as "contingent or possible": either we do not know "that the thing's essence involves a contradiction" or we do know that the thing's essence does not involve a contradiction but we do not know enough about the "order of causes" to affirm anything "certainly about its existence." IP33 and attendant Propositions have long posed interpretative challenges; I wish to skirt those problems here, making instead a simple point about the rhetoric of this passage. In it, Spinoza has finished what he takes to be an important proof of a peculiar type of determinism, a conclusion that he realizes will incite controversy. Much of the controversy centers on the concept of possibility; furthermore, the potential consequences of this controversy are enormous. To resolve these problems, Spinoza states his own alternative account of the possible. Although it may not be discussed because of its intrinsic philosophical interest, the concept of possibility is crucial (at least, in Spinoza's view) to the success or failure of IP33 and, arguably, of the whole Ethics. For unless he can convince his readers of taking the possible a certain way and so convince them to accept IP33, the entirety of his ethical project (which essentially involves reconciling people to the truth of his determinism (4)) will come undone. In this way, then, we can see the pivotal place of the concept of possibility in Spinoza's philosophy. In this paper, I delineate Spinoza's main concepts of possibility. I say "concepts," plural, because I think he had two of them: one doxastic, the other metaphysical. These concepts play very different conceptual roles in his philosophy, as we shall see when we look at the evidence for them, and this is one reason why he could maintain them both. One goal of my paper is to unwind the sometimes tortuous (torturous?) presentation of these concepts, to show their distinct yet complementary roles in his philosophical system, and to argue against a reduction or elimination of one concept to or in favor of the other. Another goal is to display the general philosophical significance of and interest in Spinoza's concepts of possibility. By studying them, I contend, we can learn something about our own conceptions of possibility as well as that perennial bogeyman of determinists, the necessitarian. I The "TdIE" (1): Comments on "fingere." I begin with what I call Spinoza's doxastic concept of possibility. Of the two concepts of possibility that I will attribute to Spinoza, the doxastic is more well established: it figures in major works from the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (henceforth, "TdIE") onward. …

Hegel's Family Values

Abstract: Our objectively appointed end and so our ethical duty is to enter into the married state. (1) FEW PHILOSOPHERS, NONE APPROACHING HIS STATURE, would agree with Hegel's claim that we have an ethical duty to marry. (2) More commonly, philosophers sanction marriage as ethically permissible, as Kant does, or even, at least in recent years, reject marriage as ethically illegitimate. Hegel's view reflects his understanding of the family as a moral institution, that is, an institution in which mere participation is a moral act and, therefore, obligatory. (3) The notion that the family is or, at least, is supposed to be moral has become so deeply ingrained that it may sound perverse to suppose that its morality needs any sort of justification; on the other hand, it is difficult to understand why marriage and family should be obligatory. The first aim of this paper is to answer the question, why does Hegel think that marriage is a moral institution that we have a duty to enter? The issue here is not how to recover or preserve "family values" but why the family has any value at all morally. To refine the issue, I will contrast Hegel's approach with that of someone who, surprisingly, denies the intrinsic moral value of the family, Aristotle. In order to answer the question of the family's morality, it is necessary to raise another question, a particularly thorny and important metaphysical question that is today rarely considered: What binds people together in marriage? Or, posed more metaphysically, how do two or more distinct individuals become a single spiritual (4) entity, a family? The obvious answer is "love." But love does not belong exclusively to marriage--"loving relationships" has become a catch phrase for nontraditional relationships--and anyway, Hegel, following Kant, could not allow a relationship based on sentiment to be a moral one. The "love" that binds the family together into a moral institution cannot be a feeling; but if love is not a feeling, then to speak of it as the glue of a relationship conveys no apparent meaning. This paper will explore the answers Hegel gives to these two questions in his Philosophy of Right. I shall try to explain Hegel's account, not to defend it; my more important goal is to show the difficulty and enduring importance of the two issues. It is unclear to me that Hegel or anyone else has adequately resolved them. The merit of his account is that he recognizes and addresses them. Before proceeding further, I must acknowledge that, on my reading, Hegel answers both questions by invoking a doctrine of sex roles in marriage. Ironically, the very feature that today seems to some to make marriage immoral and oppressive is the character that Hegel fastens upon to make marriage loving and moral. Few topics elicit as much moral indignation as sex roles in marriage. This fact is unfortunate both because marriage could bear dispassionate reflection and because it makes Hegel's account difficult to understand and appreciate. His treatment of the family is probably the least discussed portion of the Philosophy of Right, and those who do discuss it tend to downplay sex roles. Alan Wood, for example, calls sex roles "quaintly repugnant reminders of the social practices of Hegel's age and the prejudices of his class," and he denies that they are necessary to Hegel's account. (5) Others, agreeing that sex roles are a remnant of his era rather than a proper part of his philosophy, have proposed Hegelian accounts of the family without rigid sex roles; such accounts include a broader array of relationships than Hegel himself sanctioned. (6) These approaches are understandable; for those who write about or have been influenced by Hegel, as well as other figures in the history of philosophy, are usually anxious to focus on claims that they find true and meaningful. By their very choice of topics to consider, they separate, as it were, the wheat from the chaff of Hegel's philosophy. …

Human Discourse, Eros, and Madness In Plato’s Republic

Abstract: I IN BOOK 9 OF THE REPUBLIC, Socrates tells Adeimantus that the "tyrant-makers" manage to defeat the relatives of the nascent tyrant in the battle over the young man's soul by contriving "to make in him some eros, a sort of great winged drone, to be the leader of the idle desires." This "leader of the soul," Socrates claims, takes madness as its bodyguard and is stung wild, and if it detects in the man any opinions or desires deemed good and which still feel some shame, it kills them and pushes them out of him until it purges the soul of moderation and fills it with foreign madness. Adeimantus responds to this account of eros and madness with the claim that Socrates' description of the genesis of the tyrant is most perfect ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). Whereupon Socrates asks, "Is it because of this that love has been from old called a tyrant?" (1) Socrates' description of the role of eros in the genesis of the tyrant contains the fiercest criticism of eros in Plato's dialogues. The strange coupling of an implanted ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) eros and an imported ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) madness cannot help but call to mind the very different association of eros and madness we find in the Phaedrus. Moreover, the assessment of eros as a tyrant is in direct contradiction to Socrates' claim in the Phaedrus that eros is "a god, or something divine." (2) Indeed, the Republic, the Symposium, and the Phaedrus contain not only, in general, strikingly different representations of eros, they also contain directly contradictory assessments of eros's supposed divinity, with each of these assessments seemingly endorsed by Socrates in the context of the various dialogues. (3) Previous interpretations of these divergent assessments of eros have, for the most part, either gestured toward the more or less ascetic moods created by the different subject matters of the various dialogues or have suggested that each dialogue presents us with a different stage in Plato's developing assessment of the role of eros in human life. (4) In contrast to these interpretations I would like to suggest that Plato's intention in presenting these different accounts of eros is both more systematic and more programmatic. Whatever else we can say about Plato's conception of philosophic eros, it seems clear that it deals with the way in which we are led from our everyday experience of the world toward those things which "most truly are," and hence with the relation between opinion and knowledge. I would like to suggest that the different representations of eros in the Republic, the Phaedrus, and the Symposium correspond to three different philosophic orientations or hypotheses concerning the relation between human discursive activity and the intelligible realm. (By "human discursive activity" I mean to comprehend both discursive rationality and poetic activity.) These three orientations are: (1) human discursive activity is considered relatively autonomous and conceived as radically separate from the intelligible realm, which is the orientation I associate with the Republic; (2) human discursive activity is considered directly dependent upon and revelatory of the intelligible realm, which is the orientation I associate with the Phaedrus; and (3) human discursive activity is indirectly revelatory of the intelligible realm, which can only be apprehended through human discursive activity but is not directly apprehended in that activity, which orientation I associate with the Symposium. I do not mean to suggest by this claim that each of these dialogues contains no reference to the perspectives represented by the other two dialogues. Instead, I believe that each dialogue gestures toward possible limitations with its given orientation. Moreover, although I believe that Plato viewed these three hypotheses as the most significant alternatives regarding the relation between human discursive activity and the intelligible, I do not believe that Plato viewed them as equally valid. …

Analytic Philosophy and the Hegelian Turn

Abstract: THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW CENTURY provides a good time to reflect on the most influential philosophers of this period, or those most likely to survive, or again whom we should be reading in a hundred years. The answer one gives to this type of question obviously depends on what one thinks philosophy is about. I would like to suggest that at the beginning of the new century, at the start of the new millennium, the philosopher we will and should still be reading at the end of the new century is not one of the obvious candidates, like Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Heidegger, Peirce, or Dewey, Rorty's favorite, but the nineteenth century German thinker, G. W. F. Hegel. Heidegger, who insists on the importance of coming to grips with Hegel but who did not know much about contemporary philosophy, seems not to understand the extent to which the discussion of his time was deeply dependent on Hegel. (1) Almost thirty years ago Richard Bernstein made a strong case for Hegel as the figure against whom the main contemporary philosophical movements react. Bernstein had in mind Hegel's influence on philosophies of action or activity, including the Marxist interest in practice (praxis). (2) A different way of making a similar claim would be through Hegel's influence on the three new philosophical movements which have emerged over the last century: American pragmatism, analytic philosophy, and what is misleadingly called the phenomenological movement. (3) Each of these movements is built on a reaction to Hegel. Peirce, the founding figure of American pragmatism, was influenced by Hegel throughout his career, claiming finally that his own view is a nonstandard form of Hegel's. (4) The phenomenological movement is based on Husserl's influence. Sartre even claims that Husserl invented phenomenology. Yet since Hegel was also a phenomenologist, at most Husserlian and post-Husserlian forms of phenomenology represent variations on a theme but not a wholly new type of philosophy. In considering Hegel's relation to analytic philosophy, Bernstein mainly focuses on action, especially action theory. Although he points out the utter disdain which then existed for Hegel among analytic thinkers, he notes that for reasons concerned with the internal dialectic of the analytic discussion, the possibility of a rapprochement with Hegel now exists. (5) I believe Bernstein was right but for reasons which a generation ago he did not fully grasp. He correctly picks up the hidden continuity between the founding fathers of analytic philosophy, Russell and Moore, and the idealism against which they rebelled. (6) He notes that analytic philosophers and Hegel share a concern to describe human action, (7) but he notes neither the distortion inherent in the analytic reaction to Hegel nor the way that analytic philosophy, even then, was already returning to Hegelian idealism. On the Analytic Reaction to Hegel. Even among great philosophers, Hegel stands out as a widely misunderstood but equally influential writer. In claiming that Hegel is often misunderstood, I am not saying anything new about someone who, in the best of cases is an astonishingly difficult thinker. (8) It would hardly be surprising if analytic philosophers, who are generally uninterested in Hegel, who tend not to know the texts well, and who are more interested in problems than people, did any better in reading Hegel than his other students. The relation of analytic philosophy to Hegel, on which I will be concentrating here, is largely unknown, even to historians of philosophy. (9) If I am right, Hegel turns out to be a key but mainly unacknowledged figure in analytic philosophy, from whom it departs and to which it is now returning, but which it has twice misunderstood. The first, highly productive misunderstanding was one ingredient in the rise of analytic philosophy. It remains to be seen whether the second misunderstanding, which is only now taking shape, will prove as productive in the further evolution of analytic philosophy. …

Are categories invented or discovered? a response to foucault

Abstract: JLn A PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS I believe the speaker is allowed more lati tude than in a more ordinary speech. There is more freedom to ex plore and perhaps even preach. So I am going to do a bit of both. My chapter and verse, some of you will be surprised to know, is a passage from the preface to Foucault's The Order of Things, in which he ar gues that categories are a matter of invention.1 This text has had enor mous impact on the issue I wish to address today, and in many ways has helped to define it and to establish as definitive, in the minds of many of our contemporaries, the view that categories are invented.

Categories, Logical Functions, and Schemata in Kant

Abstract: IN THE FIRST EDITION TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION of the categories Kant does not mention the logical functions of judgment. In the second edition (the B edition) the Deduction can be said to be dominated by the logical functions of judgment. A transcendental deduction supplies a method for showing that pure concepts can have applicability. My contention is that the two deductions constitute exactly the same method, and so are the exact same deduction. The difference between them, rather, is in the characterization of the pure concepts that the method is supposed to be a method for. The undifferentiated categories of the A edition become the logical functions together with their schemata in the B edition. This does not mean that Kant has split the A edition notion of categories since the A edition categories are equivalent to just the schemata themselves. The B edition simply adds the logical functions to the characterization of the pure concepts. The rationale for this addition is that Kant's radically new theory of cognition had so changed the notion of judgment or thought that the issue of the relation of judgment, thus newly understood, to logical reasoning was called into question. I believe the picture I shall present clarifies not only the structure of the B edition Deduction, but the nature of the Metaphysical Deduction and the Schematism as well. I We begin with a characterization of the A edition Deduction. In the first of what he calls the preparatory sections of the Deduction, (1) Kant characterizes objective cognition or objective representation as cognition that involves a constraint which "prevents our modes of knowledge from being haphazard or arbitrary." (2) Kant holds that this constraint cannot be from an object outside our sensible representations. I believe that such objects for Kant would have to be represented purely conceptually or discursively, a kind of representation Kant had allowed in the Inaugural Dissertation but soon after came to reject. In any case, Kant locates the constraint, rather, in rules for sensible representation. (3) My actual sensible representations or reactions may be constrained by a rule of how it is proper or legitimate to react. This unity of reactions under a rule is equally a necessary unity since a rule unifies according to how it is necessary or required to proceed. Objective unity, in thus being identified with rule unity, is said by Kant to be "nothing other than the formal unity of consciousness" (4) or "nothing but the necessary unity of consciousness." (5) The unity of a rule, I suggest, is the unity of apperception. (6) In the second of the preparatory sections of the Deduction, (7) Kant introduces the idea of one single experience (one and the same general experiences (8)) to which all possible perception belongs. Rules enable us not only to constrain our actual reactions but to extend cognition beyond actual experience altogether. Thus, it may have been proper to react so-and-so a long time ago (before my birth) even though such reaction is beyond my actual experience. Kant is saying here that not only do we cognize objectively, but that we cognize a world extending way beyond the course of actual experience. All possible appearances, Kant says, must stand in relation to apperception. (9) That is, my present cognitive ability (10) must encompass a set or repertoire of rules that together cover the full scope of all proper reactions (ranging over our "entire sensibility," (11) or over the full reach of space and time). This is an utterly central characterization of our cognitive power for Kant. I shall be suggesting that there is no understanding of Kant's proofs of substance and causation if one thinks that the "functions of synthesis," as Kant puts it, (12) pertain basically to other possible aspects of one's actual experience (such as the back side of a perceived object) as opposed to possible experience completely beyond actual experience. …

Hegel and the Political Theology of Reconciliation

Abstract: All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:18 The Hegelian philosophy is the last magnificent attempt to restore Christianity by identifying it with the negation of Christianity. Feuerbach MAN IS ALIENATED AND IN NEED OF RECONCILIATION. This idea is as old as human thought and appears in countless forms in the myths and religions that have come down to us. In these we learn how the cosmos--whether by necessity or chance--lost its original self-identity, experienced a division within itself, and passed this division down into the natural and human worlds. Man is alienated because the cosmos is alienated, and he will not be made whole until the One is restored to itself. Whether the cosmos is fated to be reconciled, whether man must assist in bringing this about--on these matters opinions differ; but there is agreement across many traditions that man is estranged from his true being and must await a time when his wholeness will be restored. Among these traditions the Christian account of alienation and reconciliation is unique in several respects. Like orthodox Judaism it refuses to trace human alienation to a cosmic source and places responsibility instead squarely on the shoulders of sinful man. By willfully separating himself from God, man has made himself homeless in a world where he must now toil, govern himself, and suffer the consequences of his fallen nature, until his death. Unlike Judaism, however, Christianity refuses to concede to fallen man the ability to expiate his sins through punctilious observation of the law and thereby reconcile himself to his God and his fellow man through his own efforts. Christ alone can reconcile us. Only through his grace can man be justified before the Father and thus be redeemed. Repentance is a necessary condition of receiving grace, but it alone is insufficient to work a reconciliation. Christianity teaches that unrepentant and untouched by grace, man has no power to overcome alienation. Yet once he does repent and joins the company of the faithful, man's collective power to work reconciliation in the world is great indeed--certainly greater than Judaism imagined was possible through observance of the law. What is unique to Christianity is the conviction that Christendom is the universal agent for reconciliation in the world. It is this conviction that lies at the root of its theological-political problems. Beginning with the Church Fathers, Christianity posited itself as an unprecedented form of human community defined by the inner conviction of those belonging to it. Taken individually, each believing Christian is a pilgrim in the world, awaiting reconciliation with God in the beyond; taken collectively, however, the community of believers founded by the Messiah has already achieved a measure of reconciliation within itself, and thus becomes an agent for reconciliation in the world. How the reconciliation achieved within Christendom compares eschatologically to the final redemption at the Second Coming, whether it is legitimate to conceive of the City of God in political terms, how that City relates to temporal life--these are permanent problems of Christian theology and political thought. (1) But however they have been resolved by Christian thinkers, the reconciling mission of Christendom has never come into question. Hegel was not a Christian thinker. His philosophy, however, is undeniably a philosophy of reconciliation, of Versohnung. No account of Hegelian dialectic or theory of history is adequate if it fails to reckon with the awkward fact that they are conceived in light of an ultimate Versohnung, a central term in Hegel's philosophical vocabulary. (2) Dialectic and history have their ends. This is why it has been suggested, not without reason, that Hegel and his epigones must be seen within the traditions of myth and pagan gnosticism that try to relieve man's sense of alienation. …

Metaethics and Teleology

Abstract: THERE IS AN IMPORTANT RESPECT in which virtue-centered ethical realism needs to be more Aristotelian than it is typically willing to admit. This concerns the way in which teleological considerations need to be more explicitly acknowledged. Reflection on moral phenomenology, discourse, and practice supports realism and also reveals that teleological considerations cannot be entirely disowned by it. The teleology is not a grand teleology, however; it is not the view that there is a unique perfection of human nature, and it is not the view that ethics is read off of a teleological metaphysics. On the other hand, this is not just the teleology of this and that particular subjective project, concern, or purposive action. Much of the current debate in metaethics can be diagnosed as a dispute between a basically Aristotelian position and a basically Humean one, not in respect of first-order ethical doctrine, but in respect of the overall moral anthropology shaping the positions. On both sides, the influence of Wittgenstein is evident. We will examine what divides Aristotelian realism from Humean projectivism, and in the course of doing so we will be able to motivate a suggestion about why virtue-centered realism needs to include teleological considerations in an unembarrassed way. I First, how does Wittgenstein figure in all of this? The short answer is that he is widely seen as having made normativity respectable again. One of the main lessons taken from his later work, by philosophers of many different kinds, is that the use of concepts in general is a normative matter. The rule-governed behavior of making judgments and communicating is ineliminably normative. This normativity is not a question of there being values as some sorts of entities, perhaps apt for a Platonist ontological interpretation. Neither is the rule-governed activity of thought and discourse explicable in terms of a psychological mechanism or some particular fact of the matter in the mind or brain. This is a way between both ontological inflation and naturalistic reduction. Moreover, if the use of concepts generally is normative, then if there is a special way in which the normativity of moral judgments is worse off than normativity in general, perhaps it has to be shown and cannot be taken as a datum. There is unproblematic (which is not the same thing as "perfectly transparent, and fully explicable") normativity involved in judging that, "The cows broke out of their enclosure"--so why should, "It is wrong to harm someone just out of jealousy," be problematic? I do not mean that this point about ethical discourse was made explicitly by Wittgenstein. (1) It is, though, a point taken from his thinking by both realists and antirealists. (Not by all of them of course, but by many.) For each of the statements above there is a thick, familiar, inescapable context of judgments, perceptions, and shared responses which is their setting in the overall activity of making claims and giving reasons. It is in those contexts that we find the criteria for the correctness or mistakenness of them. If we wish to call this a kind of naturalism, that is all right, as long as we make clear that this is not a reductive naturalism. The Wittgensteinian insights are congenial to realists, for it better enables us to go in for cognitivism with regard to value and the truth-evaluability of moral judgments without special objects and special faculties to perceive them. They are also congenial to an ethic that gives a central place to virtues, understood as centrally involving recognitional abilities and as enabling certain sorts of judgments. Recent realism, such as McDowell's, takes the virtues seriously in respect of their roles in practical cognition, rather than as constitutive means to the realization of human form. The work the virtues do in Aristotle's perfectionist teleology has been largely replaced by their role in ethical comprehension, the focus having shifted from the metaphysics of actualization to the epistemology of cognitive ability. …

Reinstating Humanistic Categories

Abstract: BY OVEREMPHASIZING MATERIALISTIC VALUES, we have perverted the culture and set modern Western civilization on a self-destructive course. Some critics have said that the economy, science, and technology are the only healthy aspects of our society. We have what I have called a saber-toothed tiger civilization. In the evolutionary process, the saber-toothed tiger developed great tusks as effective weapons in combat, but perished because they obstructed its eating. We have developed a culture that is highly successful in advancing science and technology and producing wealth and power, but in doing so we have undermined and subjectivized the sectors of the culture that underwrite our identity, the meaning of our existence, and the norms and values by which we live our lives, organize our society, and run our institutions, including even science and the economy. (1) But unlike the saber-toothed tiger, we can discover our error and correct our course. I Cultural Reformation. A culture's conception of the human enterprise is reflected in its dominant values and shapes the way the culture and society develop. Our modern emphasis on materialistic values wrought a dramatic change in our governing assumptions and views about the knowledge-yielding powers of human beings. Only sensory experience under critical assessment came to be regarded as validating the concepts and providing the evidence for the house of knowledge, for sensory-based knowledge provides the kind of know-how that gives us power in imposing our will on the world. This wrought a reformation in science and put it in the service of technology, the economy, and the military; but this restricted view of knowledge gave rise to a shrunken view of the world and skepticism about, and subjectivistic interpretations of the humanistic dimension of the culture that nourishes the human spirit and sustains the social order. The world came to be understood as a purely factual structure through and through, consisting of only the existence of individuals and the exemplification of features and properties in them, and a causal structure that engages only elemental or antecedent factual events and conditions. The world, according to our modern view, has been stripped of inherent ends, normative structures and laws, values, and dimensions of inherent meaning and rationality. Objective reality is understood as imposing only factual limits on human beings, limits that can be progressively pushed back by advances in science and technology. This is a world made to order for our materialistic, technological, industrial civilization. However, it was realized early on, by some intellectuals at least, that human beings, in order to be rendered intelligible, had to be reprocessed conceptually so that they would fit into the world as delineated in the naturalistic categories of modern science. Thus, the rationality, knowledge, freedom, and creativity of human beings were brought into question. Naturalism, having rejected the possibility of knowledge of objective values and inherent structures of meaning, was faced with the impossible task of defending science as an island of objectivity in a sea of subjectivism, and even human rationality and creativity in a world that is factually structured through and through and in which causality engages only elemental and antecedent factual conditions. Perhaps the boldest response to these intellectual problems was the abandonment of the realistic view of even scientific knowledge, rejection of the possibility of metaphysics, and redefinition of knowledge along pragmatic lines as know-how. That did not solve the deep and disturbing intellectual problems in the culture. It only denied or tried to bypass them. Their detrimental effects in the lives of people and in the society went unabated. Rather than stubbornly following the logical consequences of the commitments of modern culture to their intellectually absurd, culturally deranging, and humanly devastating conclusions, why not critically examine and reconsider the defining commitments of the modern mind? …

Individuals, Universals, and Capacity

Abstract: SENSING PRESENTS TO US INDIVIDUALS But, though directing us practically, the way it presents them misleads us systematically about the nature of the individuals with which we have our practical dealings and poses serious questions about the status of the universals we use to describe them We are all quite aware of the consequences in the practical order of unsettling the question of universals The notion of capacity can overcome the problems involved What is it to be an individual thing? If we attend to the immediate evidence provided by seeing and touching, there are five characteristics involved To be an individual is to be (1) actual, (2) immediately present, (3) spatially circumscribed, (4) in external causal relations with other such actual, spatially circumscribed individuals, and (5) utterly other than the universals used to describe it Descriptive universals are mental constructions conventionally tagged by naming Seeing and touching, as individual acts of individual organisms produced by causal connections with other individuals, present us with such individuals Furthermore, looking at the conditions for seeing gives us a physical-physiological causal account of light propagation and electrical stimulation culminating inside the head of the seer wherein the individual privacy of visual awareness occurs All the evidence displays the general features of individuals as actual, immediately present, spatially circumscribed, in causal interaction with other such individuals, and utterly other than the problematic universals used to describe them Thus a common empiricist-nominalist account (1) What I intend to do is to reflect upon the capacities in things, most centrally the capacities for seeing and for being seen which together provide the overriding evidence as to the nature of individuals In so doing, I will present another and, I would claim, fuller account of individuals, which takes into consideration the conditions for the possibility of the account given above and generated out of the evidence provided by seeing The whole field of sensory givenness is comprised of features both actual and individual, with not a crack of capacity or universality showing As Sartre put it, the realm of the immediately given is full, like an egg (2) It is upon the individuality and actuality of the sensorily given that empiricist nominalism bases itself I will proceed in two stages First I will attend to the conditions for the possibility of seeing, which presents us with our typical evidential starting point In so doing, I will attempt to secure the general notion advanced in Plato's Sophist that the definition of being is the capacity of acting and being acted upon (3) In the second part I will attend to the capacities involved in giving an account, specifically the capacity for seeing and for intellection In the first part I proceed downward, so to speak, to a most general notion; in the second part I proceed upward to the specific capacity for "general notions" I Begin with the seeing capacity Though an individual feature of an individual organism, it is not simply individual in the way a seen object presents itself It is a universal orientation correlative to the kind of objects which it requires It is oriented a priori toward all those individuals that could actualize it, wherever and whenever they might appear So if there is the capacity for seeing, there are not simply individuals, but, of necessity, the kinds of individuals in the environment that correspond to it, namely colored objects (4) Visibility is spelled out in color, necessarily coexistent with extension and correlated with both light and distance from the seer as co-given eidetic features verified every time we open our eyes and look Thus we have universality, not simply in some abstract construction of the intellect, but in both the universality of the orientation of the capacity for seeing and in the existence of specific kinds of objects, instances of universals--in this case color and its eidetic accompaniments--in the environment …

The Persistence of the Problem of Freedom

Abstract: A CONCERN TO UNDERSTAND THE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS of human freedom is as old as philosophy. Yet the question whether and in what sense human beings are free agents still provokes heated debate. Even a century ago, as William James began his discussion of the issue, he wondered, with some bemusement, whether there could possibly be any "juice" left in it! (1) Happily, he concluded that there was still more to be said, but his eloquent defense of free will failed to convince; it became just another chapter in the ongoing and seemingly endless dispute. In the years since, many additional essays and books have been written, covering every aspect and espousing every possible view of the matter. The deep disagreements continue. It is this very phenomenon, the remarkable persistence--and resistance--of the problem of freedom, upon which I wish to reflect. Why is it that after such a long history the same vigorous differences endure? Is it more than mere philosophical partisanship that keeps the discussants talking past one another? I believe that there is more to it. I suspect, much as Kant thought, that there is here a sort of antinomy in which valid but seemingly incompatible intuitions are expressed over and over again. Perhaps by considering this possibility we can, even now, squeeze out a bit more juice. I Let me sketch the context of the debate as I see it. There is a kind of freedom that seems to everyone to be clear and uncontroversial: Political philosophers call it liberty, we can call it freedom of action. To be free in this sense is to be able to do what one wishes to do--within some acceptable range of actions, to be sure--without external (physical or social) interference. It means to be able to carry out one's intentions, to do what one chooses. Actualizing this freedom requires that one have, or develop, the appropriate abilities and resources and, as philosophers of all cultures remind us, it helps to be blessed by nature and to enjoy a benign social order. Politically, the force of this sort of freedom is largely negative--that one not be unwarrantedly prevented by others from acting as one chooses, or compelled to act contrary to what one chooses, that is, against one's will. Philosophers of every sort agree that this kind of freedom is crucially important for healthy political life, even though necessarily limited in certain respects. They agree that while human societies regularly repress appropriate expression of this freedom and may require reform or revolution, nothing in human nature, nothing in principle, prevents us human beings from exercising it as fully as desirable. There is another, closely related dimension of the freedom of action which seems to be commonly understood and accepted as well--namely, that one be able to do as one chooses not only without external interference, but also without internal (bodily or mental) interference due, perhaps, to some impediment, injury, or illness. Insofar as something in our individual natures or personal histories prevents us from carrying out actions we choose to undertake, or fully to realize them, we know generally what to do. We treat such "unfreedom" as an empirical problem, and we call upon medical or psychological therapies to provide whatever measure of remediation is possible. We easily recognize that freedom of action, in this twofold, external and internal sense, is necessary in order for a person to take or be assigned responsibility for his specific actions, and that the measure of one's responsibility is proportioned to the extent of one's freedom in these respects. But there is another kind of freedom, we might call it freedom in action, upon which philosophers have never been able to agree. This is the freedom not only to do what one chooses without external or internal interference, but the freedom to choose in the first place, the freedom to form and resolve to pursue one's own purposes--what the tradition, at least since Augustine, has called the freedom of the will. …