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While the idea of art as self-expression can sound old-fashioned, it remains widespread—especially if the relevant 'selves' can be social collectives, not just individual artists. But self-expression can collapse into individualistic or anthropocentric self-involvement. And compelling successor ideals for artists are not obvious. In this light, I develop a counter-ideal of creative receptivity to basic features of the external world, or artistic objectivity. Objective artists are not trying to express themselves or reach collective self-knowledge. However, they are also not disinterested or emotionless. They can be unmoved by personal feelings and human concerns, but they are still receptive—just attuned to the more elemental forces that creatively inspire them. I elaborate this ideal in dialogue with John Ruskin's influential critique of the pathetic fallacy. By contextualizing Ruskin's view vis-à-vis Romantic and Modernist poetics, post-Kantian aesthetics, modern environmental art, and contemporary theories of expressiveness, I show how it indirectly motivates my account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of literature needs a kind of justification that it currently does not appear to have. It needs a justification that can articulate its role in relation to democratic social and political values, and it needs to do so in ways that are able to distinguish those from the economic motives and the interests of science that also drive culture, and ultimately it needs to do so in relation to a very changed global order. The historical picture reveals that while literature has long been looked to as a source for the transmission of cultural values, it has also been without a very solid set of well‐articulated principles to justify its role within higher education. This lack is attributable (1) to the divergence between 'college' and 'university' institutional models; (2) to the framing of the value of literature in relation to science rather than independently; and (3) to the fact that literature provides resources for practical reasoning (phronēsis), reasoning about what to do, rather than knowledge of facts or of universal laws. The stresses under which democratic ideals currently find themselves further challenge those who would advocate for the teaching of literature as part of higher education to identify a more expanded range of capacities that literary education can support than was the case up until the end of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses utopian and dystopian literature and its role in political education in order to make the case for imparting a 'utopian aspiration' that nurtures hope for the pursuit of political ideals. I note an 'anti‐utopian' theme in both literature and political philosophy, a theme that emerges in a particularly fascinating pair of works in the dystopian canon, Orwell's 1984 and Zamyatin's We. I argue that Zamyatin's story provides a more nuanced and valuable approach to the problem of political ideals and their potential for harm than the bleak message favoured by Orwell. Utopian and dystopian themes, I contend, can offer an invaluable orientation in political critique and practice if they nourish a utopian aspiration. The idea of hope for the new is a vital part of our political education, which is too easily dismissed by critics who purport to proffer more 'realistic' views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most controversial issues in recent studies of Fichte concerns the status of his normative ethics, that is, his theory of what makes actions morally good or bad. Scholars are divided over Fichte's view regarding the 'final end' of moral striving, since it appears this end can be either a specific goal permitting maximizing calculations (the consequentialist reading defended by Kosch 2015), or an indeterminate goal permitting only duty-based decisions (the deontological reading defended by Wood 2016). While I think both interpretive positions contain an element of truth, my aim in this paper is to defend a third alternative, according to which Fichte's normative ethics presents us with a unique form of social perfectionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the musical composition "Carmina Burana" by Carl Orff. Topics discussed include the poetic subject of the composition, goddess Fortuna's control over human love, joy and suffering; the ideals of German life reform movement Lebensreform in the composition; and the disillusionment with society in the Germany.

Choices that are underdetermined by reason, such as choices arising from incommensurability among values, involve an element of arbitrariness, and arbitrary choices are commonly thought to be inimical to the rule of law. In this article, I suggest that we should distinguish between two different ideals of the rule of law, and that the arbitrariness of some judicial choices has different implications for these different ideals. One ideal of the rule of law can be understood as 'the rule of authority'; the other can be understood as 'the rule of reason'. The latter ideal is opposed to decisions that lack reason, but not to arbitrary choices between undefeated reasons. The arbitrariness involved in choosing between undefeated reasons may be a deficit in one ideal of the rule of law (the rule of authority), but not a deficit in the other (the rule of reason). Moreover, it is important to recognise that these are distinct ideals that can conflict, and not rival interpretations of a single ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses seventeenth century discourse of the human body over the Early English Books Online full-text corpus. Topics include fiction and poetry tend to represent the body as a social entity, knowable primarily through intersubjective action and ethical ideals, and deep conceptual structures at work underneath both anatomy and fiction underlie a conception of the body that informs more particularized notions of mobility, sociality, and physicality.

How should we pursue aesthetic value, or incorporate it into our lives, if we want to? Is there an ideal of aesthetic life? Philosophers have proposed numerous answers to the analogous question in moral philosophy, but the aesthetic question has received relatively little attention. There is, in essence, a single view, which is that one should develop a sensibility that would give one sweeping access to aesthetic value. I challenge this view on two grounds. First, it threatens to undermine the meaningful attachments we form with aesthetic items, e.g., poems, paintings, songs, or items of design and dress. Second, it fails to accommodate the motivational character of our encounter with beauty, which can diminish our desire to pursue the wider world of aesthetic value. I conclude that whatever the aesthetic ideal is, it must reconcile our desire to broaden our access to aesthetic value with our desire to maintain and cultivate our meaningful aesthetic attachments. I motivate the alternative thought that having style is the aesthetic ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion aims to give a normative theoretical basis for a “best judgment” model of surrogate decision making rooted in a regulative ideal of love. Currently, there are two basic models of surrogate decision making for incompetent patients: the “substituted judgment” model and the “best interests” model. The former draws on the value of autonomy and responds with respect; the latter draws on the value of welfare and responds with beneficence. It can be difficult to determine which of these two models is more appropriate for a given patient, and both approaches may seem inadequate for a surrogate who loves the patient. The proposed “best judgment” model effectively draws on the values incorporated in each of the traditional standards, but does so because these values are important to someone who loves a patient, since love responds to the patient as the specific person she is. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author expresses his opinion on some legal and philosophical considerations in intrinsic and instrumental values of diversity and the selection of competing visions of the world. Topics discussed by the author include instrumental and intrinsic values as two basic values, values in practical decision making, the affirmative action cases in education in the U.S., and the consideration for democratic intervention.

This article presents reflections on the political ideals of capitalism, democracy and liberalism in the United States throughout the 20th century. Connections are made between common 20th-century views portraying the capitalism and democracy as being related and complimentary. Discussion is then offered charting the growth of these social values throughout the century alongside the liberal movement, contrasting them with the growing social-political controversy of economic inequality in the 21st century. Illustrations of these various ideals are highlighted through the life of the mid-century American author and liberal activist Lillian Hellman.

This paper concerns the relation between goodness, or value, and practical reasons, and in particular the so-called 'buck-passing' account (BPA) of that relation recently offered by T. M. Scanlon, according to which goodness is not reason-providing but merely the higher-order property of possessing lower-order properties that provide reasons to respond in certain ways. The paper begins by briefly describing BPA and the motivation for it, noting that Scanlon now accepts that the lower-order properties in question may be evaluative. He also insists that the BPA is not biconditional (wisely, since otherwise goodness becomes a 'Cambridge property'), which leaves him with the task of explaining why goodness arises only in a sub-set of cases in which lower-order properties ground reasons. Having rejected two attempts to do this, based on elucidation of the responses and of the reasons, I suggest that Scanlon may claim that goodness arises in, and only in, cases where the lower-order properties are evaluative and that goodness itself provides us with a way of distinguishing the evaluative from the non-evaluative. In other words, he should retain the negative component of BPA, according to which being good is not itself reason-providing, while surrendering the positive, according to which the property of goodness is merely the higher-order property of having lower-order properties that provide reasons to respond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists exploring educational injustice often focus on socio-economic segregation as a central measure of injustice. The comprehensive ideal, furthermore, has the idea of socio-economic integration built into it. The current paper argues that socio-economic segregation is valuable only insofar as it serves other, more fundamental values. This matters because sometimes policy-makers will find themselves facing trade-offs between increasing integration and promoting the other, more fundamental values that underpin the value of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Common schooling and multicultural education intuitively seem to be mutually reinforcing and possibly even mutually necessary: each is motivated by and/or serves the aims of promoting social justice and equality, common civic membership, and mutual respect and understanding, among other goals. An examination of the practical relationship between the two, however, reveals that neither one is a necessary or sufficient condition for achieving the other; in fact, each may in fairly common circumstances make the other harder to achieve. In other words, there is no direct instrumental relationship between multicultural education and common schools. Nor is there a clear expressive relationship between the two. Although common schools may serve as explicit, public symbols of our multicultural civic commitment to diversity, mutual respect and egalitarian inclusiveness, many demographically common schools neglect or even betray multicultural ideals, while many restricted entry and even segregated schools may express these ideals better than most comprehensive and integrated schools. Hence, while multicultural education and common schooling do intuitively stand for similar, mutually reinforcing ideals, in practice they may be linked more closely in the confusions and dilemmas of implementation they both raise than in their mutual realisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing constitutions means having to cope with problems of understanding that which is unfamiliar and constructing a variety of texts. A layered narrative is a way to address these methodological and theoretical challenges. It starts from the assumption that the comparatist, while never able to see the whole picture, must nonetheless focus on seemingly marginal details. To capture the interaction between constitutions and cultures, the narrative has at its base a broad conceptual grid. The next layer is informed by four constitutional archetypes—the constitution as contract, manifesto, program, and law. In a more structuralist vein, the narrative analyzes the constitutional architecture dominated by a master plan whose elements are rights and principles, values and duties, organizational provisions, and rules for constitutional amendment and interpretation. While the elements of the master plan correspond to a global repertoire, their specific composition and distinctive details reflect the local knowledge that is crucial to the revitalization of comparative constitutional law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Explains the politics of the silent bishop in Ignatian scholarship. Location of the silent bishops of Asia Minor in a rhetorical culture in which rightly timed speaking and controlled speech are the measure of a man; Citation of Ignatius' admiration of the silent bishop as a small part of the Greek rhetorical culture of the bishop of Antioch's social world; Use of civic ideals to persuade the Asia Minor churches to give up their discord in favor of ecclesial peace.

In reaction to Doret De Ruyter's recent defence of the importance of ideals in education, I advocate cautiousness in three respects. First, I explain the importance of distinguishing ideals more sharply from goals by demonstrating the problems of considering ideals even approximately realisable. Second, I substantiate my doubts about their indispensability in human motivation, and question the desirability of encouraging the motivational use of ideals. Third, I question whether ideals could or should be ‘passed on’ in education, drawing attention to their non-objective, personally created nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's comments on the article "Luck and Desert," by N. Richards that was published in a previous issue of the journal. As stated, the fundamental difficulty with Richards's account is his failure to appreciate that desert would be radically different under his construal. As stated, Richards misses the issue of imperfect alignment of ideals for attributing desert and the practices in which those attributions are rooted in the generation of the problem of moral luck.

The author discusses the condition of the forest at urban parks in the U.S. The author states that the big tree persona is the condition of urban park forests have been them most viable for protection. The author notes that the forests face the risk of becoming primeval rabbit patches. The author mentions that urban forests should not only be dignified with goals but also actively manage them with understanding that ideals alone cannot sustain the stature of forest.

The article replies to the article “Levinson on the Aesthetic Ideal” by professor of philosophy Nicholas Riggle in the same issue, in which Riggle is critical of the author's proposals in his work "Artistic Worth and Personal Taste." The article discusses one's aesthetic history and personality as they affect aesthetic preferences, the way in which ideal critics differ in aesthetic profiles due to these factors and claims made by Riggle concerning ideal art critics and their individual aesthetic experiences.