Winch and Romanticism

Philosophy ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-279
Author(s):  
D. Z. Phillips

Philosophical romanticism is the view that, in maintaining out forms of life, we are engaged in the endless task of “acknowledging the human” in reading and being read by others. Winch's discussions of “human nature” and the principle of universalizability in ethics should discourage us from imputing such romanticism to his work. On the other hand, his discussions of generality in “the human” and the human neighbourhood might tempt one to do so. Winch's contemplative conception of philosophy should, in the end, count against this temptation. His work is a passionate example of doing conceptual justice to different readings of “the human”.

Author(s):  
Rebecca L. Stangl

Descriptive moral relativism is often thought to present a challenge for the justification of any non-skeptical normative theory of ethics. But does it present a special challenge for the justification of virtue ethics, more serious than the challenge it presents for deontological or consequentialist theories of ethics? On the one hand, and especially given its emphasis on concrete forms of life rather than abstract or universal norms, some have argued that it does. On the other hand, important strains of neo-Aristotelianism seek to ground virtue ethics in an objective account of human nature. This might suggest that virtue ethics has special resources for responding to the challenge posed by descriptive moral relativism. This chapter argues that neither of these claims is correct. Virtue ethics faces no special challenge from descriptive moral relativism, but neither does neo-Aristotelian naturalism provide any special resources for answering that challenge.


Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Epongse Nkealah ◽  
Olutoba Gboyega Oluwasuji

Ideas of nationalisms as masculine projects dominate literary texts by African male writers. The texts mirror the ways in which gender differentiation sanctions nationalist discourses and in turn how nationalist discourses reinforce gender hierarchies. This article draws on theoretical insights from the work of Anne McClintock and Elleke Boehmer to analyse two plays: Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon by Bole Butake and Gilbert Doho and Hard Choice by Sunnie Ododo. The article argues that women are represented in these two plays as having an ambiguous relationship to nationalism. On the one hand, women are seen actively changing the face of politics in their societies, but on the other hand, the means by which they do so reduces them to stereotypes of their gender.


Author(s):  
Hugh H. Benson
Keyword(s):  
The One ◽  

This chapter presents a reading of Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito. These dialogues, in which Plato depicts the weeks leading up to Socrates’s last day, are replete with various philosophical explorations. Among those explorations is the question of how to live our lives. On the one hand, Socrates is clear and straightforward. We should live the examined life—making logoi and examining ourselves and others in order to determine whether we are as wise as we think we are, and we should live the virtuous life. This is how Socrates lives his life. On the other hand, the examined life undercuts, or at least should undercut, the confidence with which he seeks to live the virtuous life. It may help bring some stability to the general principles by which he lives his life, but it can do so only defeasibly and without certainty.


2018 ◽  
pp. 761-769
Author(s):  
Olga A. Ginatulina ◽  

The article analyzes the phenomenon of document as assessed in the study of value. To begin with, it poses a problem of contradictory axiological status of document in modern society. On the one hand, document is objectively important, as it completes certain practical tasks, and yet, on the other hand, documents and document management are receive a negative assessment in public consciousness. In order to understand this situation, the article analyzes the concept of ‘value’ and concludes that certain objects of the material world receive this status, if they are included in public practice and promote progress of society or human development. Although this abstract step towards a better understanding of values does not provide a comprehensive answer to the question of axiological nature of document, it however indicates a trend in development of thought towards analysis of the development of human nature. The document is an artifact that objectifies and reifies a certain side of human nature. Human nature is a heterogeneous phenomenon and exists on two levels. The first abstract level is represented by the human race and embodies the full range of universal features of humanity. The second level is the specific embodiment of generic universal human nature in specific historical type of individuals. Between these two levels there is a contradiction. On the one hand, man by nature tends toward universality, on the other hand, realization of his nature is limited by the frameworks of historical era and contributes to the development of only one side of the race. Accordingly, document has value only within a certain historical stage and conflicts with the trend of universal development of human nature, and thus receives a negative evaluation. However, emergence of a new type of work (general scientific work) will help to overcome this alienation between generic and limited individual human being, and therefore will make a great impact on the nature of document, making it more ‘human,’ thus increasing its value in the eyes of society.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-288
Author(s):  
Stefan Keine ◽  
Trupti Nisar ◽  
Rajesh Bhatt

We describe and analyze the previously undocumented verbal agreement system of Kutchi (Indo-Aryan). We argue that Kutchi instantiates a novel type of split ergativity. First, it exhibits an aspect split in that agreement in non-perfective clauses behaves on a par with agreement in intransitive perfective clauses, in stark contrast to transitive perfective clauses. A striking property of Kutchi is that these asymmetries manifest themselves in the richness of agreement. In the former configurations, the verb agrees with the subject for person, number and gender. In the latter, on the other hand, agreement is systematically defective and reliable fails to cross-references certain φ-features. In addition to this aspect split, Kutchi displays a person split: While the verb normally agrees with the subject, it surprisingly fails to do so in transitive perfective clauses with a 1st person subject. Instead, it is the object that triggers agreement in these configurations, likewise in a defective manner. We will argue that these agreement asymmetries are syntactic in nature rather than morphological. Our analysis builds on, and extends, previous work by Laka (2006) and Coon (2010).


Author(s):  
Vrizlynn L. L. Thing ◽  
Hwei-Ming Ying

As users become increasingly aware of the need to adopt strong password, it brings challenges to digital forensics investigators due to the password protection of potential evidentiary data. On the other hand, due to human nature and their tendency to select memorable passwords, which compromises security for convenience, users may select strong passwords by considering a permutation of dictionary words. In this chapter, the authors discuss the existing password recovery methods and identify promising password recovery approaches. They also present their previous work on the design of a time-memory tradeoff pre-computed table coupled with a new sorting algorithm, and its two new storage mechanisms. The results on the evaluation of its password recovery performance are also presented. In this chapter, the authors propose the design of a new password recovery table by integrating the construction of common passwords within the enhanced rainbow table to incorporate the two promising password recovery approaches. They then present the theoretical proof of the feasibility of this technique.


Born to Write ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 3-9
Author(s):  
Neil Kenny

Families were fundamental to social hierarchy in early modern France. Birth was widely accepted to indicate one’s divinely ordained social status, even if that view was not universal—in practice, some freedom was allowed for individuals to improve their status (especially among certain social groups) or indeed to worsen it. Certainly, the relation of birth to social status varied. It had a changing history even in respect of the nobility, which could be entered by routes other than birth. But birth was primordial at all levels of society, and for the nobility it became even more so in France in the second half of the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth. It was widely believed that the members of a given noble family shared their own, generally superior, instantiation of human nature. On the other hand, heredity was widely believed to predispose commoners too in certain directions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 311-331
Author(s):  
Suwei Wu ◽  
Alan Cienki

AbstractAn increasing number of studies are being devoted to the investigation of what aspects of grammar, and of events, expressed in speech are coordinated with gesture. However, previous studies have focused on gesture use in relation to either transitivity or event properties, without considering how these factors interact. In this study, we consider how gesture use relates to transitivity when the type of event in the causativeinchoative alternation is considered, and also how gesture use relates to properties of the events when the type of transitivity is considered. We found various relations both between gesture use and transitivity on the one hand, and between gesture use and certain properties of events on the other hand. Whereas some of the results contrast with the findings in previous studies about the relation between gesture and transitivity, other results obtained actually reinforce and complement some previous findings. The results concerning event properties and gesture also add to previous studies about which properties of certain motor-spatial events relate to gesture and how they do so. The study thus provides a more nuanced understanding of the relation between gesture and language.


Dialogue ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 701-724 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Miles

InLeibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought, Robert McRae alleges a flat “contradiction” (McRae 1976, p. 30) at the heart of Leibniz's doctrine of three grades of monads: bare entelechies characterized by perception; animal souls capable both of perception and of sensation; and rational souls, minds or spirits endowed not only with capacities for perception and sensation but also with consciousness of self or what Leibniz calls (introducing a new term of art into the vocabulary of philosophy) “apperception.” Apperception is a necessary condition of those distinctively human mental processes associated with understanding and with reason. Insofar as it is also a sufficient condition of rationality, it is not ascribable to animals. But apperception is a necessary condition of sensation or feeling as well; and animals are capable of sensation, according to Leibniz, who decisively rejected the Cartesian doctrine that beasts are nothing but material automata. “On the one hand,” writes McRae, “what distinguishes animals from lower forms of life is sensation or feeling, but on the other hand apperception is a necessary condition of sensation, and apperception distinguishes human beings from animals” (McRae 1976, p. 30). “We are thus left with an unresolved inconsistency in Leibniz's account of sensation, so far as sensation is attributable both to men and animals” (ibid., p. 34).


1996 ◽  
Vol 05 (02) ◽  
pp. 173-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
GREG KUPERBERG

We discuss the consequences of the possibility that Vassiliev invariants do not detect knot invertibility as well as the fact that quantum Lie group invariants are known not to do so. On the other hand, finite group invariants, such as the set of homomorphisms from the knot group to M11, can detect knot invertibility. For many natural classes of knot invariants, including Vassiliev invariants and quantum Lie group invariants, we can conclude that the invariants either distinguish all oriented knots, or there exist prime, unoriented knots which they do not distinguish.


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