Search

Why “hopeful pessimism” is not a contradiction in terms but a powerful source of moral and political commitmentThe climate debate is rife with calls for optimism. While temperatures rise and disasters intensify, we are asked to maintain optimism and hope, as if the real threat is pessimism and despair. In this erudite and engaging book, Mara van der Lugt argues that this is a mistake: crude optimism can no longer be a virtue in a breaking world, and may well prove to be our besetting vice. In an age of climate change and ecological devastation, the virtue we need is hopeful pessimism.Drawing on thinkers that range from J.R.R.Tolkien and Mary Shelley to Albert Camus and Jonathan Lear, van der Lugt invites us to rethink what we thought we knew about optimism and pessimism, hope and despair, activism and grief. She shows that pessimism is closely linked to a tradition of moral and political activism, and offers a different way to think about pessimism: not as synonymous with despair but as compatible with hope. Gently yet fiercely, van der Lugt argues that what we need to avoid is not pessimism but fatalism or self-serving resignation. Pessimism does not imply the loss of courage or the lack of a desire to strive for a better world; on the contrary, these are the very gifts that pessimism can bestow.What Hopeful Pessimism asks instead is that we strive for change without certainties, without expecting anything from our efforts other than the knowledge that we have done what we are called upon to do as moral agents in a time of change.

This book reconstructs the intense early post-Kantian debate on freedom of the will, choice, and moral imputability for the first time. It addresses the following questions: How is freedom of choice possible given the causal predetermination of the world? How can we escape skepticism about freedom of the will? What are the characteristics of moral freedom? Are we free to act immorally, and if so, how exactly? And finally: How can we conceive of our individual freedom as being compatible with nature and society?

Philosophers don't often write about the heart. At least, analytical philosophers don't. Why is this? Philosophers are said to live life “in their heads” rather than “from their hearts.” But even if that is so, why don't they think and write about the heart? Moreover, it can hardly have escaped philosophers'attention that matters of the heart are central to what we human beings value most about our lives, including our lives with animals. Philosophers write a lot about friendship and love, but they tend to do so in terms that leave out heartfelt connection. They speak rather of commitment to one another and each other's well-being, or taking each other as ends, or sharing deliberative standpoints or living life together, or a whole host of other topics, and much less about mutual emotional vulnerability and sharing and being in one another's hearts. Surely one explanation of philosophers'reticence is that talk of “the heart” seems unavoidably metaphorical. It turns out to be easy enough, however, to cash the metaphor in if we simply take “heart” refers to a cluster of emotional susceptibilities that have an essentially reciprocating structure. The heart aims at heartfelt connection-at shared experience of joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, and other personal emotions. We seek naturally to share these feelings with others and must suppress our natural tendencies if we wish to avoid doing so. Our heart's wish is to be open to other hearts in the hope that they will be open to ours, and thereby us, in return. This book is a systematic treatment-perhaps the first-of “attitudes of the heart”-remorse (versus guilt), love, trust, gratitude, personal anger (versus righteous anger), jealousy, and others-and their role in mediating personal relationship, attachment, and connection. This is obviously interesting in its own right, but it also shows how heartfelt attitudes mirror more extensively studied “reactive attitudes” of guilt, resentment, and blame (“attitudes of the will”). Whereas the latter mediate moral relations of mutual respect and accountability, attitudes of the heart are the currency of heartfelt connection and personal relationship.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is a towering figure of modern Western philosophy, someone whose thought continues to exert an influence across all areas of the discipline. His work is characterized by both breadth and unity: he writes powerfully about mind, epistemology, metaphysics, logic, mathematics, natural science, ethics, politics, aesthetics, education, and more. And across those areas, his work is concerned with defending a view of human beings and their place in nature according to which our own reason enables us to discover and uphold the laws of nature and freedomthat is, to think for ourselves. The Oxford Handbook of Kant provides an up-to-date account of recent scholarship on Kant's philosophy, taking in all areas of his writings. It will be essential reading for students and researchers who want to think for themselves about the topics he wrote with such insight. The individual chapters to this Handbook each provide a scholarly analysis and assessment of some aspect of Kant's thought, and the collection ranges across all the areas to which Kant contributed. It collectively presents a picture of where the study of Kant's philosophy finds itself at this point in the twenty-first century.

The idea that there is a distinctively practical use of reason, and correspondingly a distinctively practical form of knowledge, unites many otherwise diverse voices in the history of practical philosophy: from Aristotle to Kant, from Rousseau to Marx, from Hegel to G.E.M. Anscombe, and many others. This volume gathers works by scholars who take inspiration from these and many other historical figures in order to deepen our systematic understanding of questions raised by their work that still are, or ought to be, at the center of contemporary philosophical debate: the form and nature of practical reasoning, agential self-consciousness or practical knowledge, how knowledge of the good relates to our motivational capacity, and the shape of philosophical thinking about sound forms of living together. Accordingly, the volume is divided into three parts: action theory, meta-ethics, and political philosophy. This fusion of perspectives delivers novel possibilities not only for answering the systematic questions outlined above, but also for understanding both what unifies and distinguishes those historical voices that have sought to articulate the concept of practical reason. “This fascinating volume brings out the richness and profundity of an oft-neglected approach to understanding human agency, one that foregrounds action as itself an exercise of reason. Essays on ethics, mind, action, and political philosophy explore the history, substance, and implications of this idea, cutting across while also revealing the unity underlying various parts of philosophy that are typically treated separately.” – Eric Marcus, Auburn University

Philosophie als Wissenschaft, als Grundlagendisziplin und als interdisziplinäre Forschung: Ansätze, die sich eine zu Unrecht fast vergessene philosophische Schule zu eigen gemacht hat, nämlich die 1903 neu gegründete Fries'sche Schule um den Göttinger Philosophen Leonard Nelson (1882-1927). Sie steht in der Tradition der Philosophie Immanuel Kants (1724-1804) und Jakob Friedrich Fries'(1773-1843). Der Nelsonkreis hält dem Vergleich mit dem Wiener Kreis stand. Die Anhänger des Nelsonkreises kamen u.a. aus der Mathematik, Physik, Philosophie, Psychologie, Theologie und den Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften. Über sie wirkte die kantisch-friessche Philosophie teilweise in andere Disziplinen hinein. Zu nennen sind beispielsweise der Psychiater und Psychologe Arthur Kronfeld (1846-1941), der Biochemiker und Nobelpreisträger Otto Meyerhof (1884-1951), der Mathematiker Gerhard Hessenberg (1874-1925), die Philosophin und Physikerin Grete Henry-Hermann (1901-1984), die Pädagogin MinnaSpecht (1879-1961), der Wirtschaftswissenschaftler Alexander Rüstow (1885-1963), der Theologe Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), der Soziologe Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943) und der Sozialwissenschaftler Gerhard Weisser (1898-1989).Die Ausstrahlung des Nelsonkreises auf verschiedene Disziplinen sowie dessen Geschichte sind bislang noch nicht umfassend untersucht worden. Diese Forschungslücke soll mit dem vorliegenden Band geschlossen werden. Der systematische Forschungsband bietet zudem eine Einführung und einen Überblick zur Philosophie Leonard Nelsons.

This book offers the first substantial account of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's significant influence on Kant's ethics. Arguing that Baumgarten's impact is more extensive and profound than previously thought, the book provides a novel interpretation of the formation of Kant's ethical framework.Scholars have made use of Baumgarten's Ethica philosophica (1740) to elucidate Kant's complex terminology and to provide a background against which to understand Kant's nuanced relationship to his predecessors. To date, however, no English book explores the specific influence of Baumgarten's Ethica on Kant. This book comments on passages from the Ethica and contrasts them with Kant's treatment of the same concepts, topics, and questions in his ethics. Notably, Baumgarten articulates ethics around the concept of duty and the principle of perfection, leading to his version of the categorical imperative: ‘perfect yourself'. While Kant rejects this ethical framework, it is evident that he directly adopts Baumgarten's ideas and critiques them at the same time. Each chapter examines a major topic: the relationship between religion and ethics, duties to oneself, duties to others, duties in particular cases, and the relationship between ethics and political philosophy.Baumgarten's Legacy in Kant's Ethics is an essential resource for scholars and advanced students working on Kant, 18th-century philosophy, and the history of ethics.

Kant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant's conception of reason and its philosophical significance. Karl Schafer argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or'comprehension'). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, it enables us to see why the activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason reads Kant as presenting a compelling picture of the role that reason, as a capacity or power, should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality as fundamental, but instead provides a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of rational constitutivism, which contrasts both with the forms of reasons fundamentalism that are currently fashionable and the forms of agency-first constitutivism that have dominated Kantian metaethics. In this sense, this volume aims to vindicate Kant's insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason's implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness.

Levinas formuliert die strukturell einzig mögliche Kritik an Hegel, indem er eine Dimension menschlicher Subjektivität freilegt, die von der dialektischen Totalität vorausgesetzt werden muss, ohne in sie aufgehoben werden zu können. Anne Clausen rekonstruiert diese Dimension menschlicher Subjektivität als Gewissen und konfrontiert sie mit Hegels Gewissenskritik, in der sich die zentrale Figur auch des Hegel'schen Denkens exemplifiziert. Die Doppelstudie leistet damit ein Zweifaches: Zum einen klärt sie das Verhältnis von Hegel und Levinas in seiner logischen Grundstruktur auf. Sie hat aber nicht nur historischen Charakter, sondern beansprucht zum anderen, einen systematischen Beitrag zur Verständigung über den Begriff des Gewissens zu leisten. Das Gewissen lässt sich nicht auf eine rein psychologische Bedeutung reduzieren. Es geht vielmehr in die Konstitution von Subjektivität überhaupt ein. Jenseits aller Ordnungen kosmologischer, theonomer oder metaphysischer Provenienz steht das Gewissen für unsere Bindung an das Gute, die aber nicht als Bindung an bestimmte Inhalte gedacht werden kann, sondern als die Erfahrung eines unbedingten Anspruches des anderen Menschen verstanden werden muss.

Freedom after Kant situates Kant's concept of freedom in relation to leading philosophers of the period to trace a detailed history of philosophical thinking on freedom from the 18th to the 20th century. Beginning with German Idealism, the volume presents Kant's writings on freedom and their reception by contemporaries, successors, followers and critics. From exchanges of philosophical ideas on freedom between Kant and his contemporaries, Reinhold and Fichte, through to Kant's ideas on rational self-determination in Hegel and Schelling, we see Kant's original arguments transformed through concepts of autonomy, freedom and absolutes. The political aspect of Kant's freedom finds further articulation in chapters on Marx and Mill who developed their own notions of political freedom after Kant. Revealing how Kant's concept of freedom shaped the history of philosophy in the broadest sense, contributors chart the development of an ethics of freedom in the 20th century which brings Kant into conversation with Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Levinas and Murdoch. This line of thinking on freedom signals a new departure for Kantian studies which brings his ideas into the present day and traverses major schools of thought including Idealism, Marxism, existentialism and moral philosophy.

New Conversations in Philosophy, Law, and Politics offers a new agenda for work where these three disciplines meet. It showcases three generations of scholars--from newly minted professors to some of today's most distinguished thinkers. Consisting of fifteen conversations, pairs of chapters dedicated to a single topic, the volume provides intergenerational and multidisciplinary perspectives on aspects of our social world. Each conversation comprises a first paper by a scholar who sets the topic, followed by a second paper by a scholar of a different generation, and usually a different discipline, who offers further insight or commentary. Each conversation thus provides two sets of original thoughts about a matter of lively current interest and interdisciplinary significance. Topics investigated include moral revolutions, AI and democracy, trust and the rule of law, responsibility, praise and blame, reasonableness, duty, political obligation, justice and equality, justice and intersectionality, domination, pornography, intentions in the law, and legal argumentation. Written in clear prose, the volume is accessible by philosophers, lawyers, political theorists, and beyond.

This interdisciplinary volume connects the philosophy of history to moral philosophy with a unique focus on time. Taking in a range of intellectual traditions, cultural, and geographical contexts, the volume provides a rich tapestry of approaches to time, morality, culture, and history. By extending the philosophical discussion on the ethical importance of temporality, the editors disentangle some of the disciplinary tensions between analytical and hermeneutic philosophy of history, cultural theory, meta-ethical theory, and normative ethics. The ethical and existential character of temporality reveals itself within a collection that resists the methodological underpinnings of any one philosophical school. The book's distinctive cross-cultural approach ensures a wide range of perspectives with contributions on life and death in Japanese philosophy, ethics and time in Maori philosophy, non-traditional temporalities and philosophical anthropology, as well as global approaches to ethics. These new directions of study highlight the importance of the ethical in the temporal, inviting further points of departure in this burgeoning field.

Stephen Ingram defends a robustly realistic metaethical theory, based on the concept of normative arbitrariness, of which he provides the first in-depth analysis. He argues that, in order to capture the normative non-arbitrariness of moral choice, we must commit to the existence of robustly stance-independent, categorical, irreducibly normative, non-natural moral facts. Specifically, he identifies five ways in which a metaethical theory might fail to capture the non-arbitrariness of moral choice. The first involves claims about the bruteness of moral attitudes or facts. The second involves claims about the privileging of some attitudes over others. The third involves the claim that some metaethical theories leave a normative deficit. The fourth involves a claim about our ownership over moral reality. And the fifth involves the claim that certain metaethical theories introduce a destabilising contingency into the moral domain. Ingram argues that robust realism is the theory that is best placed to avoid all five of these arbitrariness charges. He then goes on to show that, by exploring the nature of interpersonal moral dialogue, robust realists can defend epistemological and meta-semantic theories that are friendly to their view. Specifically, he defends a dualistic form of moral intuitionism on which some moral beliefs are justified on the basis of a priori intuitions, whilst others are justified on the basis of a posteriori moral experiences, and provides a theory of'moral mental files'to explain how moral terms and concepts are able to refer to robust moral facts.

This is the first English edition of a major work by the Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup (1905-81). It is the culmination of his critical engagement with Kierkegaardianism, which had begun almost 20 years earlier. In this text, Løgstrup focuses on four main themes in Kierkegaard: his understanding of Christ and thus of Christianity; his understanding of suffering in human existence; Christian vs. secular ethics; and Platonistic influences on Kierkegaard's position, which Løgstrup characterises as nihilistic. Løgstrup presents his own alternative conception in response: that Christ revealed universal ontological ethical structures that put Christians and non-Christians on a par; that suffering is a basic human experience and so there is no such thing as a particular Christian suffering; that sovereign expressions of life such as trust, sincerity, and compassion are the fundamental phenomena of ethics that enable our lives to function, and are thus given as a gift of creation, not of faith; and finally that human existence as created is meaningful and holds value and so is not a Kierkegaardian'nothingness'of mere relativity. As well as offering a classic and yet controversial critique of Kierkegaard, this text also develops Løgstrup's conception of the sovereign expressions of life, which was to become central to his later ethics, further deepening his distinctive understanding of the human condition. Here translated in full for the first time, it will now be possible for English-speaking readers to explore the issues that drew Løgstrup into his controversion with Kierkegaard.

The various social roles we occupy, such as teacher, parent, or friend, shape our ethical lives and colour our perceptions of each other and ourselves. Social roles have long been a central topic in sociology, and specific social roles frequently feature within applied moral philosophy and professional ethics. In striking contrast, the normative significance of social roles per se--the'ethics of social roles'as a distinct field of philosophical enquiry--has been relatively neglected. Indeed, the view that social roles have genuine ethical bite is often tacitly dismissed as socially regressive, as if the pull of a social role must always be towards'knowing one's place'. The present collection aims to change this by putting social roles back where they belong: at the centre of normative ethics. After an editors'introduction aimed at readers new to the topic, fourteen original chapters by an international line-up of new and established authors show how the topic of social roles is a kind of missing link between several better-established topics, including collective agency, special obligations, wellbeing, and social and political justice. These contributions are organized into four parts. The first looks at the topic through a historical lens, since philosophers have not always neglected social roles. The second addresses the source of the apparent normative force of social roles. The third examines the relation of a social role's normativity to its wider institutional context. The fourth looks at implications for self and wellbeing.

Groundbreaking in its range of disciplines and cultural backgrounds, Thinking through Science and Technology explores how individual and societal beliefs, values, and actions are transformed by science, technology, and engineering. Practical and theoretical insights from philosophers, policymakers, STS scholars, and engineers illuminate the promise, perils, and paradoxes that arise with technoscientific change. This collection of original research develops a philosophical understanding of technology and its inscription in a wider web of social and political meanings, values, and civilizational change. It explores foundational beliefs at the core of engineering education and practice, with an emphasis on the movement of ideas between Western and Chinese scholars, as well as the complex interwoven relationship between ideas from religion, science, and technology as they have evolved in the West. Contributors also critically examine the forces and frameworks that shape the development and evaluation of scientific practice and the innovation and adoption of technology, with an emphasis on national and global policy. The volume offers a critical and timely reflection on science and technology that counters trends toward technological optimism, on the one hand, and disciplinary and cultural regionalization, on the other. Chapters written by prominent and promising scholars from around the world make this a global resource; its breadth and clarity make it a superb introduction for those new to its fields. It serves as an essential reference for established scholars as well as anyone seeking a more comprehensive understanding of social and technoscientific entanglements that permeate contemporary life. List of contributors: Gordon Akon-Yamga, Jennifer Karns Alexander, Andoni Alonso, Pamela Andanda, Larry Arnhart, Li Bocong, Albert Borgmann, Adam Briggle, Jose A. López Cerezo, Mark Coeckelbergh, Daniel Cérézuelle, Neelke Doorn, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Andrew Feenberg, Jose Luís Garcia, Tricia Glazebrook, Janna van Grunsven, J. Britt Holbrook, Helena Jerónimo, Tong LI, Yongmou LIU, Lavinia Marin, Glen Miller, Carl Mitcham, Suzanne Moon, Byron Newberry, Jean Robert, Sabine Roeser, Taylor Stone, Sajay Samuel, Daniel Sarewitz, Jen Schneider, José Antonio Ullate, Carlos Verdugo-Serna, Nan WANG.

Ethics, the practical part of philosophy, tries to answer three questions central to human life: What kind of person should I be? What should I do? How should I decide? It defines, describes, and explains the important terms, concepts, theories, and thinkers from all areas and eras of the history of ethics: from ‘Abba Mika'el to Zhuangzi, from the Abilene Paradox to Zen Buddhism, including such central figures as Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, and Plato as well as lesser-known thinkers such as Clarke, Fichte, Meinong, and Xenophon. It covers Western and non-Western traditions, and presents detailed treatments of ancient and medieval ethics, including discussions of each of Plato's dialogues that concerns ethical topics. It covers both analytic and continental approaches to contemporary moral thinking.Historical Dictionary of Ethics, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries on the important terms, concepts, theories, and thinkers from all areas and eras of the history of ethics. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about ethics.

The Human A Priori is a collection of essays by A.W. Moore, one of them previously unpublished and the rest all revised. These essays are all concerned, more or less directly, with something ineliminably anthropocentric in our systematic pursuit of a priori sense-making. Part I deals with the nature, scope, and limits of a priori sense-making in general. Parts II, III, and IV deal with what are often thought to be the three great exemplars of the systematic pursuit of such sense-making: philosophy in the case of Part II, ethics in the case of Part III, and mathematics in the case of Part IV. Much of the attention throughout is devoted to the work of other philosophers: Kant and Wittgenstein feature prominently, and five of the essays take the form of reviews or critical notices of recent work in philosophy. But the interest in never purely exegetical. One of the lessons that emerges from the essays, either in opposition to the views of these other philosophers or by invocation of their views, is that we humans achieve nothing of real significance in philosophy, ethics, or mathematics except from a human point of view, and hence that all three of these pursuits can be said to betoken what may reasonably be called'the human a priori'.

Why does ethics only weakly contribute to the most crucial problems of the current world? Relational Agency and Environmental Ethics: A Journey Beyond Humanism as We Know It explores how the concept of moral agency embedded in modern humanist ethics, in its reliance on environmentally harmful and scientifically implausible presuppositions, prevents ethics from efficiently supporting a sustainability transition. The modernist individualist notion of agency includes conceptual dichotomies between moral agency and human nature, mind and body, reason and emotion, and knowledge and will, yet it should be revised without dismissing responsibility, normativity, and a shared ground for critical assessment. Suvielise Nurmi proposes an agential shift resting on a relational concept of agency, combining ecofeminist and evolutionary criticisms of modernism together with various interdisciplinary discussions involving philosophy of mind, cognitive science, anthropology, social ontology, and developmental biology and psychology. This book argues that the relational shift can resolve the dilemma and bring environmental relationships to the core of ethical discourse: there is no ethics distinct from environmental ethics. Environmental responsibilities can be justified as responsibilities for one's relationally considered agency.

This book addresses the topic of'being bound'from a philosophical and a sociological perspective. It examines several ways in which we are bound. We are bound to acknowledge the truth and to follow laws; we are bound to others and to the world. Who we are is partly defined by those bonds, regardless of whether we live up to them – or even of whether we acknowledge them. Puzzling questions arise from the fact that we are bound, such as: How are those bonds binding? Wherein lies their normative character? A venerable philosophical tradition, particularly since Kant, has provided an account of normativity that crucially appeals to such notions as “self-legislation.” But can our normative bonds be properly understood in these essentially first-personal terms? Many argue that our social condition resists any account of those bonds that fails to acknowledge the perspectives of the second and the third person. The first part of the book explores these themes from a historical perspective in the tradition of transcendental philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger); it examines the phenomenon of “being bound”, i.e., why and how we are bound. The second part of the book offers a sociological analysis of social bonds that is both historical and systematic. Based on sociological approaches to “solidarity” and “reflexivity”, it explores the way in which the phenomenon of “being bound” manifests through the concept of a “social relation”.

The term “scientism” is used in several ways. It is used to denote an epistemological thesis according to which science is the source of our knowledge about the world and ourselves. Relatedly, it is used to denote a methodological thesis according to which the methods of science are superior to the methods of non-scientific fields or areas of inquiry. It is also used to put forward a metaphysical thesis that what exists is what science says exists. In recent decades, the term “scientism” has acquired a derogatory meaning when it is used in defense of non-scientific ways of knowing. In particular, some philosophers level the charge of “scientism” against those (mostly scientists) who are dismissive of philosophy. Other philosophers, however, embrace scientism, or some variant thereof, and object to the pejorative use of the term. This book critically examines arguments for and against different varieties of scientism in order to answer the central question: Does scientism pose an existential threat to academic philosophy? Or should philosophy become more scientific?

Value in Modernity examines a historical paradigm in ethics that has hitherto not been identified as such: existential modernism. Peter Poellner discusses the central claims of this paradigm through detailed examination of the thought of four of its main exponents: Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Scheler, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Robert Musil. In the case of Nietzsche and Sartre, Poellner offers novel interpretations, reconstructing lines of thought in their work that have usually been neglected. He also offers a new assessment of Scheler's subtle phenomenological version of affective value intuitionism, which is a crucial influence on Sartre's existentialism but has so far enjoyed virtually no reception in an anglophone context. Musil's philosophical novel The Man without Qualities is interpreted as contributing a highly original version of ethical perfectionism to the existential modernist paradigm. While Musil's thought on emotions and moods has begun to receive philosophical recognition in recent years, the significance of the philosophical core of his seminal work has so far not been fully appreciated. In Poellner's interpretation, what we find in the existential modernists is an approach in ethical philosophy that combines a qualified form of affective value intuitionism and a kind of ethical perfectionism. This book reconstructs and defends a version of this approach that integrates elements drawn from each of these thinkers, supplemented by an original elaboration of ideas only implicit in some of them.

Throughout history, humans have explored new places, making both good and bad moral decisions along the way. As humanity proceeds to explore space, it is important that we learn from the successes and not repeat the mistakes of the past. This book provides the first comprehensive introduction to ethics as it applies to space exploration and use. It examines real-world case studies that exemplify the ethical challenges we face in exploring beyond Earth: space debris, militarization in space, hazardous asteroids, planetary protection, the search for extraterrestrial life, commercial and private sector activities in space, space settlements, very long duration missions, and planetary-scale interventions. Major themes include human health, environmental concerns, safety and risk, governance and decision-making, and opportunities and challenges of multidisciplinary and international contexts. Ideal for classroom use and beyond, the book provides ways of thinking that will help students, academics and policymakers examine the full range of ethical decisions on questions related to space exploration.

The Proceedings present the contributions to the 13th International Kant Congress which was held at the University of Oslo, August 6-9, 2019. The congress, which hosted speakers from more than thirty countries and five continents, was dedicated to the topic of the court of reason. The idea that reason stands before itself as a tribunal characterizes the whole of Kant's critical project. Without such a court, reason falls into conflict with itself. With such a court in place, however, it may succeed in establishing the possibility and limits of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, law and science. The idea of reason being its own judge is not only pivotal to a proper understanding of Kant's philosophy, but can also shed light on the burgeoning fields of meta-philosophy and philosophical methodology. The 2019 Kant Congress put special emphasis on Kant's methodology, his account of conceptual critique, and the relevance of his ideas to current issues in especially political philosophy and the philosophy of law. Additional sections discussed a wide range of topics in Kant's philosophy. The Proceedings will provide anyone who is interested in exploring the variety of present-day work on Kant and Kantian themes with a wealth of fruitful inspiration.

This book advances our understanding of the nature, grounds and limits of human dignity by connecting it with Kant's notion of an ideal moral community, or'Kingdom of Ends'. It features original essays by leading Kant scholars and moral and political philosophers from around the world.Although Kant's influential injunction to treat humanity as an end in itself and never merely as a means has garnered the most attention among those interested in analyzing human dignity with a Kantian lens, Kant himself places much more emphasis on the Kingdom of Ends as crucial for defining human dignity. The chapters in this collection focus not only on interpretive issues related to the Kingdom of Ends but also on practical applications that have the potential to advance discussions about the nature and foundations of rights, the content of moral principles, the importance of moral ideals and attitudes and the nature of moral motivation. Exploring and connecting the ideas of human dignity and the Kingdom of Ends significantly deepens our moral understanding, advances discussions in moral and political philosophy and enhances our appreciation of Kant's moral theory.Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspectives and Practical Applications will appeal to scholars and advanced students of Kant, moral philosophy, political philosophy, and political theory.

Los recursos naturales cimentan el poder de los dictadores del mundo. Autócratas como Putin y los príncipes saudíes invierten el dinero del petróleo en armas y represión. Las milicias del Estado Islámico y el Congo utilizan el dinero del petróleo en atrocidades y munición. Desde hace décadas los regímenes autoritarios y extremistas, financiados por estos recursos, han forzado interminables crisis en Occidente, y la verdadera fuente de su dinero somos nosotros, los consumidores occidentales, pagando en la gasolinera y en el centro comercial. En este libro de gran alcance uno de los principales filósofos politicos del momento, Leif Wenar, analiza las reglas ocultas que amenazan la democracia y el desarrollo y que nos vinculan con las personas más peligrosas del mundo. Petróleo de sangre nos muestra como se puede liderar una revolución pacífica acabando con esta dependencia.

Kant's arguments for the reality of human freedom and the normativity of the moral law continue to inspire work in contemporary moral philosophy. Many prominent ethicists invoke Kant, directly or indirectly, in their efforts to derive the authority of moral requirements from a more basic conception of action, agency, or rationality. But many commentators have detected a deep rift between the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, leaving Kant's project of justification exposed to conflicting assessments and interpretations. In this ground-breaking study of Kant, Owen Ware defends the controversial view that Kant's mature writings on ethics share a unified commitment to the moral law's primacy. Using both close analysis and historical contextualization, Owen Ware overturns a paradigmatic way of reading Kant's arguments for morality and freedom, situating them within Kant's critical methodology at large. The result is a novel understanding of Kant that challenges much of what goes under the banner of Kantian arguments for moral normativity today.

Respect plays a prominent role in contemporary moral philosophy, as well as our every-day moral thought. Ordinary discussion about morality is often framed in terms of demands for respect or complaints about being disrespected, yet basic questions about the concept and role of respect are frequently overlooked. Here, leading philosophers present their latest ideas and fresh perspectives to point research on the topic in new directions. Following an introduction to the historical rise of respect as a central concept in moral discourse, Part I addresses the fundamental questions of what respect is; its nature and basis. Part II then examines questions in moral theory, for example what exactly ought to be respected, what role respect plays in morality, and which different types of respect are appropriate and morally significant. Part III concludes with the practical application of requirements of respect, with implications for significant moral issues of our time including environmental ethics, social justice, disability, bioethics, and more.

Reasoning with autobiography is a way to self-knowledge. We can learn about ourselves, as human beings and as individuals, by reading, thinking through, and arguing about this distinctive kind of text. Reasoning with Edmund Gosse's Father and Son is a way of learning about the nature of the good life and the roles that pleasure and self-expression can play in it. Reasoning with Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs is a way of learning about transformative experience, self-alienation, and therefore the nature of the self. Good Lives: Autobiography, Self-Knowledge, Narrative, and Self-Realization develops this claim by answering a series of questions: What is an autobiography? How can we learn about ourselves from reading one? On what subjects does autobiography teach? What should we learn about them? In particular, given that autobiographies are narratives, should we learn something about the importance of narrative in human life? Could our storytelling about our own lives make sense of them as wholes, unify them over time, or make them good for us? Could storytelling make the self? Samuel Clark provides an authoritative critique of narrative and a defence of a ^self-realization account of the self and its good. He investigates the wide range of extant accounts of the self and of the good life, and defends pluralist realism about self-knowledge by reading and reasoning with autobiographies of self-discovery, martial life, and solitude. The volume concludes by showing that autobiography can be reasoning in pursuit of self-knowledge; each of us is an unchosen, initially opaque, seedlike self; our good is the development and expression of our latent capacities, which is our individual self-realization; and self-narration plays much less role in our lives than some thinkers have supposed, and the development and expression of potential much more.

This book develops an original version of act-consequentialism. It argues that act-consequentialists should adopt a subjective criterion of rightness.The book develops new arguments which strongly suggest that, according to the best version of act-consequentialism, the rightness of actions depends on expected rather than actual value. Its findings go beyond the debate about consequentialism and touch on important debates in normative ethics and metaethics. The distinction between criterion of rightness and decision procedures addresses how, why, and in which sense moral theories must be implemented by ordinary persons. The discussion of the rationales of'ought'implies'can'leads to the discovery of a hitherto overlooked moral principle,'ought'implies'evidence', which can be used to show that most prominent moral theories are false. Finally, in the context of discussing cases that are supposed to reveal intuitions that favour either objective or subjective consequentialism, the book argues that which cases are relevant for the discussion of objectivism and subjectivism depends on the type of moral theory we are concerned with (consequentialism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, etc.).From Value to Rightness will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in normative ethics and metaethics.

Moral Philosophy and Moral Life addresses the questions of the role of moral philosophy and its relationship to our ordinary moral lives. Christensen's argument is motivated by the belief that one of the most important obstacles for doing work in moral philosophy today is the lack of a coherent answer to the question of the role and status of moral philosophy and the theories it develops. The first part untangles various criticisms of the dominant view of moral theories that challenge the explanatory, foundational, authoritative, and action-guiding role of these theories. It also offers an alternative understanding of moral theories as descriptions of moral grammar. The second part investigates the nature of the particularities relevant for an understanding of moral life; both particularities tied to the moral subject, her character, her commitments, and her moral position, and particularities tied to the context of the subject, her moral community, and her language. The final part marks a return to moral philosophy and addresses the wider question of what the revised conception of moral theories and the affirmation of the value of the particular mean for moral philosophy by developing a descriptive, pluralistic, and elucidatory conception of moral philosophy. While the scope of the argument is wide, the aims are more moderate: to present an understanding of descriptive moral philosophy aimed at spurring debate about the status and role of moral philosophy in relation to our moral lives.

In der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts hat die traditionsreiche Tugendethik wieder stark an Bedeutung gewonnen. In diesem Handbuch versammeln sich internationale Experten der Ethik, um die Tugend in ihrem Verhältnis zu anderen Grundbegriffen der Ethik zu beleuchten, ihre Rolle in der Entwicklung des philosophischen Denkens zu darzustellen und die Möglichkeiten für ihre Wiederaneignung in den Diskursen der Moderne auszuloten.

Disability raises profound and fundamental issues: questions about human embodiment and well-being; dignity, respect, justice and equality; personal and social identity. It raises pressing questions for educational, health, reproductive, and technology policy, and confronts the scope and direction of the human and civil rights movements. Yet it is only recently that disability has become the subject of the sustained and rigorous philosophical inquiry that it deserves. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability is the first comprehensive volume on the subject. The volume's contents range from debates over the definition of disability to the challenges posed by disability for justice and dignity; from the relevance of disability for respect, other interpersonal attitudes, and intimate relationships to its significance for health policy, biotechnology, and human enhancement; from the ways that disability scholarship can enrich moral and political philosophy, to the importance of physical and intellectual disabilities for the philosophy of mind and action. The contributions reflect the variety of areas of expertise, intellectual orientations, and personal backgrounds of their authors. Some are founding philosophers of disability; others are promising new scholars; still others are leading philosophers from other areas writing on disability for the first time. Many have disabilities themselves. This volume boldly explores neglected issues, offers fresh perspectives on familiar ones, and ultimately expands philosophy's boundaries. More than merely presenting an overview of existing work, this Handbook will chart the growth and direction of a vital and burgeoning field for years to come.

L. Nandi Theunissen develops a non-Kantian account of the value of human beings. Against the Kantian tradition, in which humanity is absolutely valuable and unlike the value of anything else, Theunissen outlines a relational proposal according to which our value is continuous with the value of other valuable things. She takes the Socratic starting point that good is affecting, and more particularly, that good is a notion of benefit. If people are bearers of value, the proposal is that our value is no exception. Theunissen explores the possibility that our value is explained through reciprocal relations, or relations of interdependence, as when--as daughters, or teachers, or friends--we benefit others by being part or constitutive of relationships with them. She also investigates the possibility that we can be said to stand in a valuable relationship with ourselves. Ultimately, in The Value of Humanity, she proposes that people are of value because we are constituted in such a way that we can be good for ourselves in the sense that we are able to lead flourishing lives. Intuitively, a person matters because she matters to herself in a very particular sort of way; to appropriate a phrase, she is a being for whom her life can be an issue.

The Ethical Demand (1956) by K. E. Løgstrup is one of the great works of modern moral philosophy: it is presented here in a new translation with introduction and notes. Løgstrup puts forward his distinctive view concerning our vulnerability to each other and what this requires of us in response. He starts by considering Jesus's'proclamation'to love your neighbour and how this can be understood in'purely human terms'as relating to basic features of our existence. Reflecting on the phenomenon of trust, Løgstrup emphasizes the fundamental interdependence of human life and how this gives rise to an'ethical demand'on us to care for the other, which he characterizes as radical, silent, one-sided, and unfulfillable. In order to make sense of a demand of this sort, Løgstrup argues, we must see'life as a gift', rather than treating ourselves as the sovereign grounds for our own existence. He contrasts this demand to social norms, which are often reciprocal in this way, and argues that while such norms are changeable, the ethical demand itself is absolute. Løgstrup therefore makes a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the nature of-and basis for-our obligations to each other. In this critical edition, Løgstrup's original text is accurately rendered into readable English and paired with an introduction which explains the main themes and wider context of the work.

Owen Ware here develops and defends a novel interpretation of Fichte's moral philosophy as an ethics of wholeness. While virtually forgotten for most of the twentieth century, Fichte's System of Ethics (1798) is now recognized by scholars as a masterpiece in the history of post-Kantian philosophy, as well as a key text for understanding the work of later German idealist thinkers. This book provides a careful examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte's moral philosophy evolved, and of the specific arguments he offers in response to Kant and his immediate successors. A distinctive feature of this study is a focus on the foundational concepts of Fichte's ethics--freedom, morality, feeling, conscience, community--and their connection to his innovative but largely misunderstood theory of drives. By way of conclusion, the book shows that what appears to be two conflicting commitments in Fichte's ethics--a commitment to the feelings of one's conscience and a commitment to engage in open dialogue with others--are two aspects of his theory of moral perfection. The result is a sharp understanding of Fichte's System of Ethics as offering a compelling resolution to the personal and interpersonal dimensions of moral life

This book proposes a holistic transdisciplinary approach to sustainability as a subject of social sciences. At the same time, this approach shows new ways, as perspectives of philosophy, political science, law, economics, sociology, cultural studies and others are here no longer regarded separately. Instead, integrated perspectives on the key issues are carved out: Perspectives on conditions of transformation to sustainability, on key instruments and the normative questions. This allows for a concise answer to urgent and controversial questions such as the following: Is the EU an environmental pioneer? Is it possible to achieve sustainability by purely technical means? If not: will that mean to end of the growth society? How to deal with the follow-up problems? How will societal change be successful? Are political power and capitalism the main barriers to sustainability? What is the role of emotions and conceptions of normality in the transformation process? To which degree are reboundand shifting effects the reason why sustainability politics fail? How much climate protection can be claimed ethically and legally e.g. on grounds of human rights? And what is freedom? Despite all rhetoric, the weak transition in energy, climate, agriculture and conservation serves as key example in this book. It is shown how the Paris Agreement is weak with regard to details and at the same time overrules the growth society by means of a radical 1,5-1,8 degrees temperature limit. It is shown how emissions trading must – and can – be reformed radically. It is shown why CSR, education, cooperation and happiness research are overrated. And we will see what an integrated politics on climate, biodiversity, nitrogen and soil might look like.This book deals with conditions of transformation, governance instruments, ethics and law of sustainability. The relevance of the humanities to sustainability has never before been demonstrated so vividly and broadly as here. And in every areait opens up some completely new perspectives.(Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Club of Rome, Honorary President)Taking a transdisciplinary perspective, the book canvasses the entire spectrum of issues relevant to sustainability. A most valuable and timely contribution to the debate.(Prof. Dr. Klaus Bosselmann, University of Auckland, Author of “The Principle of Sustainability”)This books breathes life into the concept of sustainability. Felix Ekardt tears down the barriers between disciplines and builds a holistic fundament for sustainablility; fit to guide long-term decision-making on the necessary transformation and societal change.(Prof. Dr. Christina Voigt, Oslo University, Dept. of Public and International Law)

This book sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the'non-identity thinking'of Adorno and the'ethics of the Other'of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and'inhuman'material others such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life.

Tracing the relationship between truth and justice as articulated by Heidegger and Levinas, Rozemund Uljée presents the relation between the two thinkers as a subtle, profound, and complex rapport, which includes both their proximity and radical difference. This rapport is conceived not as a confrontation, but rather as a transformation, as Levinas's notion of justice does not renounce Heidegger's account of truth and its deployment. Thinking Difference with Heidegger and Levinas shows how the ethical relation transforms the essence and task of philosophy in its entirety, since it shifts the orientation of philosophy and the task of thinking from its concern with truth as ground or foundation to a question of justice. As a result, philosophy is no longer riveted to Being and its truth, but answers to the call for justice and must be conceived of as infinite commencement, where its impossibility to totalize meaning ensures that it remains open to the alterity of transcendence.

Despite the flood of self-help guides and our current therapeutic culture, feelings of alienation and spiritual longing continue to grip modern society. In this book, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn offers a fresh solution: a return to classic philosophy and the cultivation of an inner life.The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero wrote that philosophy is ars vitae, the art of living. Today, signs of stress and duress point to a full-fledged crisis for individuals and communities while current modes of making sense of our lives prove inadequate. Yet, in this time of alienation and spiritual longing, we can glimpse signs of a renewed interest in ancient approaches to the art of living. In this ambitious and timely book, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn engages both general readers and scholars on the topic of well-being. She examines the reappearance of ancient philosophical thought in contemporary American culture, probing whether new stirrings of Gnosticism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, and Platonism present a true alternative to our current therapeutic culture of self-help and consumerism, which elevates the self's needs and desires yet fails to deliver on its promises of happiness and healing. Do the ancient philosophies represent a counter-tradition to today's culture, auguring a new cultural vibrancy, or do they merely solidify a modern way of life that has little use for inwardness—the cultivation of an inner life—stemming from those older traditions? Tracing the contours of this cultural resurgence and exploring a range of sources, from scholarship to self-help manuals, films, and other artifacts of popular culture, this book sees the different schools as organically interrelated and asks whether, taken together, they can point us in important new directions.Ars Vitae sounds a clarion call to take back philosophy as part of our everyday lives. It proposes a way to do so, sifting through the ruins of long-forgotten and recent history alike for any shards helpful in piecing together the coherence of a moral framework that allows us ways to move forward toward the life we want and need.

In der jüngeren praktischen Philosophie sind verschiedene Theorien entwickelt worden, die das Problem der Rechtfertigung von praktischer Normativität mittels Rekurs auf handlungstheoretische Reflexionen zu lösen versuchen. In vorliegender Studie werden diese Theorien kritisch rekonstruiert. Im Mittelpunkt der Analysen stehen vor allem die beiden Ansätze von Alan Gewirth und Christine Korsgaard. Sie dienen als Ausgangspunkte für weiterführende Argumente, die für die allgemeine Tragfähigkeit der Idee praktischer Ethikbegründungen entwickelt werden.

This is first English edition of Ethical Concepts and Problems (1971) by Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup (1905-81). Originally published as a contribution to a textbook of ethics for students of theology, it propounds a philosophical ethics in continuity with Martin Luther's conception of the natural law. We find here the core idea from The Ethical Demand, that in our dealings with others we are faced with the demand that we take care of them, now conceptualized as the central tenet of an ontological ethics based on human interdependence as a fundamental condition of life. Later in his career, Løgstrup developed a conception of what he called'the sovereign expressions of life'-spontaneous other-regarding impulses or ways of conduct such as trust, sincerity, and compassion-and these are here described and determined in their relation to the ethical demand and moral norms. Furthermore, this key text discusses a number of central ethical concepts such as duty, responsibility, will, and choice. Løgstrup also explores the relationship between love of the neighbour and politics, before finally concluding with an extensive discussion of political questions such as cultural policy, democracy, and the right of resistance. Ethical Concepts and Problems therefore offers an instructive survey of important parts of Løgstrup's ethical and political thinking, from theological issues like Luther's doctrine of the bondage of the will, to the ideas of philosophers such as Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. In this edition Løgstrup's original text is accurately rendered into readable English and paired with an introduction which explains the main themes and wider context of the work.

This handbook presents the conceptions and principles central to every aspect of Hegel's systematic philosophy. In twenty-eight thematically linked chapters by leading international experts, The Palgrave Hegel Handbook provides reliable, scholarly overviews of each subject, illuminates the main issues and debates, and details concisely the considered views of each contributor. Recent scholarship challenges traditional, largely anti-Kantian, readings of Hegel, focusing instead on Hegel's appropriation of Kantian epistemology to reconcile idealism with the rejection of foundationalism, coherentism and skepticism. Focused like Kant on showing how fundamental unities underlie the profusion of apparently independent events, Hegel argued that reality is rationally structured, so that its systematic structure is manifest to our properly informed thought. Accordingly, this handbook re-assesses Hegel's philosophical aims, methods and achievements, and re-evaluates many aspects of Hegel's enduring philosophical contributions, ranging from metaphysics, epistemology, and dialectic, to moral and political philosophy and philosophy of history. Each chapter, and The Palgrave Hegel Handbook as a whole, provides an informed, authoritative understanding of each aspect of Hegel's philosophy.

The great Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup (1905-81) offers a distinctive assessment and comparative critique of two key thinkers in Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's Analysis of Existence and its Relation to Proclamation (1950). Løgstrup focuses on the central idea from Kierkegaard and Heidegger that our individuality and authenticity are threatened by'life in the crowd'or'das Man'. According to Løgstrup, Kierkegaard holds that the only way to escape the crowd is through a relation to an infinite demand which he nonetheless leaves empty, while Heidegger avoids offering any kind of ethics at all. Arguing against both philosophers, Løgstrup himself proposes an ethic which is not just a set of social rules, but which is also more contentful than Kierkegaard's infinite demand: namely, the requirement to care for the other person whose life is placed in your hands. This call to care for the other person becomes central to Løgstrup's position in his most famous publication The Ethical Demand (1956), so this earlier work, based on lectures given in Berlin, provides a crucial insight into the development of his thought. This is the first English translation of an original and compelling text by Løgstrup, rendered into accurate prose and paired with an introduction which explains the main themes and wider context of the work.

Karen Ng sheds new light on Hegel's famously impenetrable philosophy. She does so by offering a new interpretation of Hegel's idealism and by foregrounding Hegel's Science of Logic, revealing that Hegel's theory of reason revolves around the concept of organic life. Beginning with the influence of Kant's Critique of Judgment on Hegel, Ng argues that Hegel's key philosophical contributions concerning self-consciousness, freedom, and logic all develop around the idea of internal purposiveness, which appealed to Hegel deeply. She charts the development of the purposiveness theme in Kant's third Critique, and argues that the most important innovation from that text is the claim that the purposiveness of nature opens up and enables the operation of the power of judgment. This innovation is essential for understanding Hegel's philosophical method in the Differenzschrift (1801) and Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), where Hegel, developing lines of thought from Fichte and Schelling, argues against Kant that internal purposiveness constitutes cognition's activity, shaping its essential relation to both self and world. From there, Ng defends a new and detailed interpretation of Hegel's Science of Logic, arguing that Hegel's Subjective Logic can be understood as Hegel's version of a critique of judgment, in which life comes to be understood as opening up the possibility of intelligibility. She makes the case that Hegel's theory of judgment is modelled on reflective and teleological judgments, in which something's species or kind provides the objective context for predication. The Subjective Logic culminates in the argument that life is a primitive or original activity of judgment, one that is the necessary presupposition for the actualization of self-conscious cognition. Through bold and ambitious new arguments, Ng demonstrates the ongoing dialectic between life and self-conscious cognition, providing ground-breaking ways of understanding Hegel's philosophical system.

This book presents an original worldview, Homo risibilis, wherein self-referential humor is proposed as the path leading from a tragic view of life to a liberating embrace of human ridicule. Humor is presented as a conceptual tool for holding together contradictions and managing the unresolvable conflict of the human condition till Homo risibilis resolves the inherent tension without epistemological cost. This original approach to the human condition allows us to effectively address life's ambiguities without losing sight of its tragic overtones and brings along far-ranging personal and social benefits.By defining the problem that other philosophies and many religions attempt to solve in terms we can all relate to, Homo risibilis enables an understanding of the Other that surpasses mere tolerance. Its egalitarian vision roots an ethic of compassion without requiring metaphysical or religious assumptions and liberates the individualfor action on others'behalf. It offers a new model of rationality which effectively handles and eventually resolves the tension between oneself, others, and the world at large. Amir's view of the human condition transcends the field of philosophy of humor. An original worldview that fits the requirements of traditional philosophy, Homo risibilis is especially apt to answer contemporary concerns. It embodies the minimal consensus we need in order to live together and the active role philosophy should responsibly play in a global world. Here developed for the first time in a complete way, the Homo risibilis worldview is not only liberating in nature, but also illuminates the shortcomings of other philosophies in their attempts to secure harmony in a disharmonious world for a disharmonious human being.

In Capitalism, Alienation and Critique Asger Sørensen offers a wide-ranging argument for the classical Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, thus endorsing the dialectical approach of the original founders (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse) and criticizing suggested revisions of later generations (Habermas, Honneth). Being situated within the horizon of the late 20th century Cultural Marxism, the main issue is the critique of capitalism, emphasizing experiences of injustice, ideology and alienation, and in particular exploring two fundamental subject matters within this horizon, namely economy and dialectics. Apart from in-depth discussions of classical political economy and Hegelian dialectics, the explorative and inclusive argument also takes issues with Émile Durkheim's theory of value, the general economy of Georges Bataille and the dialectics of Mao Zedong.'[The] volume is not lacking in solid demonstrations; among else, into how the evergrowing mathematization of political economy is covering up its deeply ideological violence, which leaves out the problem of social (and political) justice.'-Kristina Egumenovska, Nordicum-Mediterraneum. Icelandic E-Journal of Nordicum and Mediterranean Studies 15.1 (2020). Please find a seminar on Asger Sørensen's Capitalism, Alienation and Critique here.

Hans Kelsen and the Natural Law Tradition provides the first sustained examination of Hans Kelsen's critical engagement, itself founded upon a distinctive theory of legal positivism, with the Natural Law Tradition. This edited collection commences with a comprehensive introduction which establishes the character of Kelsen's critical engagement as a general critique of natural law combined with a more specific critique of representative thinkers of the Natural Law Tradition. The subsequent chapters are then devoted to a detailed analysis of Kelsen's engagement with prominent theorists from the Natural Law Tradition. The volume concludes with an exploration, focusing upon the delineation of a non-positivist legal theory in the debate between Robert Alexy and Joseph Raz, of the continued presence of Kelsenian legal positivism in contemporary legal theory.

Throughout his corpus, Kant repeatedly and resolutely denies that there is a duty to promote one's own happiness, and most present-day Kantians seem to agree with him. In Kant, Ought Implies Can, the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, and Happiness, Samuel Kahn argues that this denial rests on two main ideas: (1) a conception of duty that makes the principle of ought implies can (OIC) and the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) analytic, and (2) the claim that humans necessarily promote their own happiness. This book defends OIC and PAP but nonetheless attacks the second idea, and it supplements this attack with two additional arguments—an interpersonal one and an intrapersonal one—for the claim that a modern day Kantian ethics should affirm a duty to promote one's own happiness.

A new way of understanding the essence of moral obligationThe Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of morality—namely, as a set of requirements that connect agents normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations. According to this relational interpretation, moral demands are directed to other individuals, who have claims that the agent comply with these demands. Interpersonal morality, so conceived, is the domain of what we owe to each other, insofar as we are each persons with equal moral standing.The book offers an interpretative argument for the relational approach. Specifically, it highlights neglected advantages of this way of understanding the moral domain; explores important theoretical and practical presuppositions of relational moral duties; and considers the normative implications of understanding morality in relational terms.The book features a novel defense of the relational approach to morality, which emphasizes the special significance that moral requirements have, both for agents who are deliberating about what to do and for those who stand to be affected by their actions. The book argues that relational moral requirements can be understood to link us to all individuals whose interests render them vulnerable to our agency, regardless of whether they stand in any prior relationship to us. It also offers fresh accounts of some of the moral phenomena that have seemed to resist treatment in relational terms, showing that the relational interpretation is a viable framework for understanding our specific moral obligations to other people.