F.H. Bradley: An Unpublished Note on Christian Morality

1983 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Kendal
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Moral View ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
Moral Importance ◽  
Unpublished Note

At some time between 1907 and 1912, probably very much nearer the earlier date, Bradley produced the first draft of an article on Christian morality. He did this in response to criticism that his moral ideas were anti-Christian. This charge was based mainly on the content of two articles that he published during 1894 in the International Journal of Ethics, one called ‘Some Remarks on Punishment’ and the other ‘The Limits of Individual and National Self-Sacrifice’. In these Bradley had maintained that the conventional ‘Christian’ belief in the sacredness of life undermined any sensible approach to punishment and any clear understanding of the moral importance of self-assertion (in contrast to self-sacrifice). It encouraged a squeamishness about retribution and ‘social surgery’. It devalued proper human ends and interests, and the rights and duties founded on them. There was needed ‘a correction of our moral view, and a return to a non-Christian and perhaps a Hellenic ideal’, one that would recognize the unlimited right of the moral organism (i.e. virtually the state) to dispose of its members and to use force internationally in defence of right. Bradley pulled no punches and had this to say about the self-styled ‘Christian’ party:

Egalitarianism and the Separateness of Persons

1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis McKerlie
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
The Other ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Moral View ◽  
Moral Importance ◽  
Separateness Of Persons

Different people live different lives. Each life consists of experiences that are not shared with the other lives. These facts are sometimes referred to as the ‘separateness of persons.’ Some writers have appealed to the separateness of persons to support or to criticize moral views. John Rawls thinks that the separateness of persons supports egalitarianism, while Robert Nozick believes that it supports a rights view. I will call the claim that the separateness of persons counts in favor of a particular moral view the ‘positive connection.’ Both these writers think that utilitarianism is objectionable because it ignores the moral importance of the separateness of persons. I will call the claim that the separateness of persons counts against a moral view the ‘negative connection.’In this paper I will discuss several different attempts at explaining the connection between the separateness of persons and specific moral views. I will begin by describing how egalitarianism, unlike utilitarianism, treats individual lives as morally important units. I will discuss the kind of egalitarianism that aims at equality, but the same points could be made about egalitarian views that give priority to helping the worst off or require that everyone should receive at least a specified minimum share of resources or happiness.

Man is a Wolf to Man1

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Still
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
Fruit And Vegetables ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Natural Man

This focuses on Derrida’s analysis of the figure of the wolf in the first volume of The Beast and the Sovereign, particularly in La Fontaine’s fables (where the wolf can represent the sovereign as well as the outlaw) and in political philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, notably Hobbes’s De Cive and Rousseau’s Discourses. This is developed with reference to other texts of the period such as the Encyclopédie in which wolves are represented as man’s enemies, rivals for scarce resources, notably food. The wolf is typically evoked as solitary and hungry; for Hobbes he, like man in the state of nature, is dangerous. For Rousseau, on the other hand, both wolf and pre-social man are shy rather than violent, preferring flight to fight – and food is naturally abundant for natural man who would in any case prefer fruit and vegetables to meat. The politics of food and taste are critical both in the self-fulfilling prophecy that man will become a wolf to man, and in the extermination of wolves.

scholarly journals The Technologies of Total Domination.

2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Los
Keyword(s):  
Ideal Type ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
State Law ◽  
Total Domination ◽  
The Social

Could revised concepts of Panopticon and bio-power shed some new light on the unique technologies of totalitarian power? This article explores the key mechanisms of total domination constructed as an ideal type. It treats Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany as paragons of modern totalitarianism that is characterized by the explicit use of an obligatory, comprehensive, ‘scientific’ ideology as a political tool of domination. The issues addressed include freedom; the state, law and terror; relations of truth; the self (and the other), and bio-power. Specific strategies of surveillance, dissolution of the self and obliteration of the “social” are highlighted to enable recognition of possible re-emergence of totalitarian practices in the current, technologically and politically transformed global universe.

Ambedkar’s Framing of the ‘Political’ within Ethical Practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
Rajeev Kadambi
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Original Formulation ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Moral Conduct ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Practices Of The Self

This article advances Ambedkar’s recasting of pure politics and the political within an ethical framework. It explores Ambedkar’s ethos of radical action grounded in the limitation of the state, law and institutional structures to transform society. In foregrounding Ambedkar’s idea of transformation and change through practices of the self, the essay locates self-transformation as going beyond a critique of existing social and economic frameworks. In furtherance, this view captures an ethics of internal transformation resulting from the change in moral conduct achieved through voluntary conversion. Dhamma was based on techniques of self-restraint that stressed on an unremitting duty owed to the other including an adversary and stranger. It inaugurated an inclusive and ecological notion of kinship based on empathy and friendship whose aim was to break down all barriers and create a compassionate society. Ambedkar furnishes us with an original formulation to think through a notion of compassionate justice from the moral lexicon of the broken men.

scholarly journals A Virtual Dialogue between Gandhi and Levinas

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 422
Author(s):  
Ephraim Meir
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mahatma Gandhi ◽  
Mutual Learning ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Many

Mahatma Gandhi and Emmanuel Levinas have much in common. They interpret religion in a radical ethical way and develop an ethical hermeneutics of religious sources. Levinas’s thoughts on a holy history, not to be confused with history, are comparable with Gandhi’s swaraj as the spiritual independence and self-transformation of India. Escaping war logics, they maintain a “beyond the state” in the state and insert ethics in politics. Yet, Gandhi’s ethico-politics works with radical interrelatedness, whereas Levinas differentiates more between the self and the other. Gandhi trusted that, in the end, the good would vanquish evil. Levinas, in turn, did not venture into the future: the present was under “eschatological judgment.” Gandhi’s love of the enemy and his attempt to soften the opponent’s heart are absent in Levinas’s metaphysics. In addition, Levinas does not radically deconstruct the term self-defense, although Gandhi notoriously made also exceptions to his ahimsa. A dialogue can be established between Levinas’s ethical metaphysics and Gandhi’s ahimsa and satyagraha. Both thinkers make a radical critique of a peace based on rational contracts and equate peace with universal brother- and sisterhood. Without underestimating the many similarities between Levinas and Gandhi, I also highlight their dissimilarities. I argue that precisely the differences between both thinkers allow for a “trans-different” dialogue, which respects specificities and promotes communication, in a movement of hospitality and mutual learning.

Territorial Justice in Israel/Palestine

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-304
Author(s):  
Margaret Moore
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Justice Theory ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Territorial Rights ◽  
State Of Israel

AbstractThis Article examines the two dominant theories of territorial justice — one associated with justice, the other with self–determination. It applies these theories to the case of Israel/Palestine, and to ongoing claims by political actors with respect to territorial rights there. It argues that justice theory seems to straightforwardly suppose the territorial rights of the State of Israel, at least if historical and retrospective considerations are not at the forefront, though once they are brought in, this argument can be deployed in support of a number of different political positions. The self–determination argument, it is argued, is somewhat less indeterminate and seems to most straightforwardly support a “two–state” compromise. However, as with justice theory, its assumptions can be challenged on a number of fronts, and could also be deployed to buttress other arguments. The merits and challenges of both theories are analyzed through this case study.

Pascal: Reasoning and Belief

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Moriarty
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Self ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Truth Claims

The book is a study of Pascal’s defence of Christian belief in the Pensées. It aims to expound, and in places to criticize, what it argues (drawing on existing scholarship about the history of the text) is a coherent and original apologetic strategy. It sets out the basic philosophical and theological presuppositions of his project, drawing the distinction between convictions attained by reason and those inspired by God-given faith. It sets out his view of the contradictions within human nature, between the ‘wretchedness’ (our inability to live the life of reason, to attain secure and durable happiness) and the ‘greatness’ (the power of thought, manifested in the very awareness of our wretchedness). His mind–body dualism and his mechanistic conception of non-human animals are discussed. Pascal invokes the biblical story of the Fall and the doctrine of original sin as the only credible explanation of these contradictions. His analysis of human occupations as powered by the twin desire to escape from painful thoughts and to gratify one’s vanity is subjected to critical examination, as is his conception of the self and self-love. Pascal argues that, just as Christianity propounds the only explanation for the human condition, so it offers the only kind of happiness that would satisfy our deepest longings. He thus argues that we have an interest in investigating its truth-claims as rooted in the Bible and in history. The closing chapters discuss his view of Christian morality and the famous ‘wager’ argument for opting in favour of Christian belief.

Borders, Citizenship, and the Local: Everyday Life in Three Districts of West Bengal

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-25
Author(s):  
Shibashis Chatterjee ◽  
Surya Sankar Sen ◽  
Mayuri Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Adaptive Processes ◽  
Sovereign Authority

Borders have been considered essential to understanding the self and the other, with identities on either side established through functions of exclusion and inclusion. These processes, initially considered to be the preserve of the state as exercised through its policies of border management, also exist in tandem or in an asynchronous manner at the local level. Constituted of processes of identification and networks of interdependences, localized construals of the borderland and subsequently positioned engagements, comes to shape notions of accessibility and restriction as well as perceptions of the “other”. These engagements are not always reflective of statist positions on the border which are often uniform in the conceptualization of its capacity to contain. They subsequently come to reflect the variations of divergent historical and locational realities. There is a need to further extend the analysis of borderlands beyond statist framings as passive recipients of policy as well as recognize the critical positioning of local adaptive processes as antithetical to state demarcations of territoriality and sovereign authority. Based on a survey of three districts in the state of West Bengal, India, this study posits an analysis of the multiple perceptions both within and outside of statist framings of borderland identity and territoriality, which color its inhabitants’ understanding of the border and perceptions surrounding and interactions with the communities that lie beyond it.

scholarly journals THE WAYS OF SHEVCHENKO’S POEMS RECEPTION

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 465-479
Author(s):  
Taras PASTUKH
Keyword(s):  
Universal Time ◽  
The State ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subjective Factor ◽  
History Of

The author of the article makes an attempt to consider the hermeneutic principles according to which the reader should approach the reception of Taras Shevchenko’s poetic works. He makes an excursus into the early history of the perception of T. Shevchenko’s poems and considers the responses of such readers and critics as H. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, V. Belinskyi, M. Kostomarov, P. Kulish, M. Drahomanov. This allows him to trace how certain socio-cultural predispositions of critics determined the perception of T. Shevchenko’s poetry. He also notes that already in the early reception of T. Shevchenko’s poems, two leading tendencies are outlined. One draws attention to their «truthfulness» and the other to their poetics. «Truthfulness» should be understood as the fact that T. Shevchenko’s poetry creates a figurative world according to certain rules that nature gives it through the author. Figurative expressiveness, compositional accuracy, semantic depth are the signs of «truthfulness» of T. Shevchenko’s poetry. It is essential to emphasize the self-importance of T. Shevchenko’s poetry, which was not a reflection of the author’s reality, but in which the specific structures of existence «manifested» themselves in a specific figurative form. And already being «manifested» in the figurative text, these structures somehow appealed to the surrounding reality, expressing and clarifying its individual fragments or situations. There are two leading trends in the art of understanding. The first one is that the reader should reduce his subjective factor to the possible minimum and turn his attention to understanding the work in its cultural-historical and author-biographical contexts. Another one indicates the temporality of understanding the text; the reader cannot perceive the work from the standpoint of the author’s time or some «universal» time. His understanding is always determined by his own time, which presupposes his socio-cultural situation, the state of language, the reader’s life biography. The reader must balance these two tendencies in his own interpretation. There are two important tendencies in the variety of possible approaches to reading the «Kobzar»: to study the language of texts and the existential and ontological situations that arise in them. Keywords: poetry, reception, hermeneutics, poetics, aesthetics, existence.

L'Arrêt de mort, Insomnia, Dreaming, Sleep: Derrida, Blanchot, Levinas

Derrida Today ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-139
Author(s):  
Simon Morgan Wortham
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Il Y A

In L'Arrêt de mort, as Derrida suggests, an ‘epochal suspension’ manifests itself, compulsively pulsating so as to conjure a certain spectrality beyond all consciousness, perception, or ordinary attentiveness. Re-reading Blanchot's text, I argue that it is on the borderlines of sleep that the ‘arrythmic pulsation’ of the arrêt de mort happens as impossible event  – ‘the state of suspension in which it's over – and over again, and you'll never have done with that suspension itself’, to quote Derrida once more. While ‘Living On’ makes little of sleep, however, I take this cue to follow a pathway which leads from Blanchot to Levinas. Blanchot's writing exposes the sleep of reason which occurs in the very promise of perfect day, a promise which mutates in the dream he associates with the ‘other night’, a dream which harbours the irrepressible return of ‘time's absence’, and which opens on to the very ‘outside’ which the world – and the self – lacks or wants (as much as ‘world’ or ‘self’ seek to overcome this ‘outside’ as such). Levinas, meanwhile, wants to think irremissible pure existing (il y a) in terms of insomnia; in contrast, consciousness seeks to assert itself over the unremitting presence of the ‘there is’ through its capacity for unconsciousness or sleep. This essay seeks to attend to the complexities of a certain ‘fatality of being’ that threatens to sweep away the ‘ego’ as consciousness's capacity to sleep is confronted by the radical vigilance of insomnia and the deep anonymity of the night (Existence and Existents).

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