The Passions and Human Nature

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Jay L. Garfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
In Virtue Of

This chapter addresses the causes of the passions and their role in Hume’s psychology. I argue that the passions form the foundation of Hume’s naturalistic program to explain human nature and normativity. It also addresses the relationship between the passions and the idea of the freedom of the will, showing that the account of the passions undergirds Hume’s critique of the idea of freedom. This chapter also shows how central our social context is to the development of the passions, and to our psychology in general, in virtue of Hume’s argument that not only is our social nature determined by our passions, but that many of our passions are conditioned by social factors.

scholarly journals THE COMMUNITY WITHIN US: ABOUT THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN WILLE AND WILLKÜR

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto PIRNI
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Negative Dimension ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Entire Faculty ◽  
The Relationship

Starting with an analysis of the concepts of Wille and Willkür, the essay distinguishes different meanings attributedto the freedom of the will (§ 1). Secondly, it distinguishes a positive from a negative dimension of that freedom, referred both to as Wille and Willkür (§ 2). Finally, the development of this aspect leads to a rethinking of the internal dynamics of the entire faculty of the will from a communitarian perspective (§ 3), by redefining as an a priori figure the relationship between singular subject and multiplicity of subjects, which Kant considered to operate already in the inner forum of every single being capable of reason.

Free Will, Responsibility, and Blame in Psychotherapy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Zürcher
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Freedom Of Will ◽  
Patient’S Autonomy ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Therapeutic Context ◽  
The Relationship

Freedom of the will is not only an issue in the attribution of moral and legal responsibility—it also fundamentally shapes how we look at ourselves and how we interact with others. This is essential in everyday life but even more so in psychotherapy. In the debate on freedom of will, the main controversy is concerned with the relationship between determinism and free will. In this chapter, different positions are presented and discussed. The compatibilist viewpoint, which claims determinism and freedom of will to be compatible, is defended against competing theories and applied to psychotherapeutic work. Mental disorders affect free will in many ways, as is demonstrated by the examples. Nevertheless, a compatibilist approach to free will can be used as a resource to increase the patient’s autonomy. As a result, it is justified and sometimes appropriate within the therapeutic context to ascribe responsibility and, within certain limits, to express blame.

Liberty and Mutability

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-124
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Do So

Perkins’ understanding of human willing was also defined by the traditional Augustinian definition of the four states of human nature: before the fall, after the fall in sin, after regeneration by grace, and in final glory. This chapter takes up the issue of willing in the first two states, in which the will at first is righteous and sinless but able to sin and then, following the fall, is not able not to sin. Nonetheless, the will remains free according to its nature—initially free in righteousness, and after the fall, free to determine its own choices, albeit bound to do so sinfully. The fall does not remove the inherent freedom of the will. Choice remains a genuinely contingent act, defined by alternativity within the bounds of a sinful nature.

Tradycja petrażycjańska w polskiej socjologii prawa albo o tym, co zyskaliśmy, nie odwołując się do Ehrlicha

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 99-133
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Cywiński
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sociology Of Law ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

The goal of the presented paper is to show the qualities of Polish sociology of law that arise from how it formed and developed under the influence of a particular theoretical inspiration – the theory of Leon Petrażycki – specifically the ways that tradition has been influencing the direction of studies, as well as the descriptions of legal reality. According to the author, that influence is not limited to direct references, but has a broader scope that is expressed in an approach to analyzing the social context and functions of legal phenomena. To further emphasize the originality of Polish sociology of law, the article explains the differences between selected elements of Petrażycki’s theories and the proposals of Eugene Ehrlich. The problems that were undertaken by both scholars, and are still important to socio-legal studies, were presented from that point of view. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes the elements of Petrażycki’s works that did not appear elsewhere in early socio-legal thought. The study field is crucially narrowed by not orienting it towards analyzing and comparing initial ideas of Petrażycki and Ehrlich. Rather, it aims to analyze the possible influence of different views on differentiating the subjects of studies as well as their goals. In particular, the paper draws attention to the way Polish scholarship uniquely perceives the problematics of the social nature of legal phenomena, legal pluralism, the relationship between law and state (and especially legal phenomena unrelated to the state), legal culture and the usefulness of law as an instrument of social change. This is the perspective from which the paper presents selected Polish research projects and socio-legal analyses. The paper chiefly attempts to show a very particular quality of Polish sociology of law: the affirmation of legal phenomena that forms the basis for critique of faulty and socially dysfunctional official law.

It’s complicated: Sex and the BDSM subculture

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072096130
Author(s):  
Julie Fennell
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Sexual Experience ◽  
Internet Survey ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

Drawing from extensive insider ethnographic work and an internet survey with a convenience sample of 1642 BDSM practitioners, I show that the social context of the BDSM subculture has a profound impact on pansexual BDSM practitioners’ interpretation of the relationship between BDSM and sex. Greater involvement in the public BDSM subculture and participation in feminine Dominance/masculine submission are both strongly associated with less preference for and experience of sexual BDSM. Greater involvement in the BDSM subculture increases participants’ likelihood of viewing their sexuality in terms of BDSM but decreases their likelihood of viewing BDSM in sexual terms. BDSM practitioners who meet new BDSM partners in BDSM subcultural contexts, even ones where sex is allowed, are much less likely to have sex with their partners than practitioners who met anywhere else. I argue that research should focus more on the social factors that influence participants’ experience and interpretation of BDSM, particularly on the influence of the BDSM subculture, and that theorists should think more broadly about the social determinants of “sex” and “sexual experience.”

Francis Turretin and Jonathan Edwards on Compatibilism

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-355
Author(s):  
Paul Helm
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Human Choice ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will

AbstractThe aim of this article is to show that the claim of Richard Muller in his recent book Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought, that the Reformed Orthodox were not compatibilists in their view of freedom but held to the indeterminate freedom of the will, is false. The argument takes the reader through Turretin’s claim in his Institutes that freedom does not consist in indifference but in rational spontaneity. It assesses Muller’s argument that indeterminate freedom incorporates choices between two or more contraries and of none by showing that Edwards respected the same distinctions, and that Turretin and Edwards were agreed that God, the human nature of Christ, and the redeemed in heaven did not act from indifference. The article ends with remarks on Muller’s interpretation of Turretin’s position, that it involves ‘multiple potencies,’ arguing that this proposal meets serious difficulties.

Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of the Will and his defence of the impeccability of Jesus Christ

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J Fisk
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Moment

AbstractIt is in Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of the Will (1754) that he reconciles impeccability and freedom of the will in the human soul of Jesus Christ, even when Jesus is in a state of trial. But how does he shape a synthesis between these two attributes without duplicity, and at the same time avoid theological and christological barbs, whether Arminian or Hobbist, Nestorian or Apollinist? For Edwards, the Son of God did not surrender impeccability when he undertook to fulfil – in human nature, and in a state of trial – intra-trinitarian promises, promises made not only by the Father to the Son, but by the Son to the Father. Edwards views the habits of the heart of Jesus Christ progressing in holiness from the moment of his incarnation. He understands the excellencies that the Son of God brought to the human nature in the incarnation in no way to have added to nor to have diminished the impeccable holy disposition of his person. A key to interpreting the holy habits of Jesus’ heart is, according to Edwards, to view the source of the impeccability of the soul of Jesus as lying in its essence, not in a cause outside his person; it lies in the very disposition of his heart.

Divine Command Theory in the Passage of History

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-328
Author(s):  
Simin Rahimi
Keyword(s):  
Divine Command ◽  
Divine Command Theory ◽  
The Will ◽  
Divine Commands ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Moral Facts

Are actions that are morally good, morally goosd because God makes them so (e.g., by commanding them)? Or does God urge humans to do them because they are morally good anyway? What is, in general, the relationship between divine commands and ethical duties? It is not an uncommon belief among theists that morality depends entirely on the will or commands of God: all moral facts consist exclusively in facts about his will or commands. Thus, not only is an action right because it is commanded by God, but its conformity to his commands is what alone makes it right. An action is right (wrong) solely because he commands (forbids) it, and solely in virtue of his doing so. This view has come to be known as the „divine command theory of morality". This paper is devoted to a brief reconstruction of claims and controversies surrounding the theory, beginning with Plato's Euthyphro, which is the historical initiator of the debate and to a reconstruction of the various lines of argument that have been set forth to defend the theory.

scholarly journals Decision-makers use social information to update their preferences—but choose for others as they do for themselves

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Michael ◽  
Alina Gutoreva ◽  
Huixian Michele Lee ◽  
Peng Ning Tan ◽  
Eleanor M. Bruce ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Risky Decisions

People’s risky decisions can be highly influenced by the social context in which they take place. Across three experiments we investigated the influence of three social factors upon participants’ decisions: the recipient of the decision-making outcome (self, other, or joint), the nature of the relationship with the other agent (friend, stranger, or teammate), and the type of information that participants received about others’ preferences: none at all, information about how previous participants had decided, or information about a partner’s preference. We found that participants’ decisions about risk did not differ according to whether the outcome at stake was their own, another agent’s, or a joint outcome, nor according to the type of information available. Participants were, however, willing to adjust their preferences for risky options in light of social information.

Liberty Restored

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-154
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Freedom Of Choice ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Temporal Moment ◽  
The Will

Of the issues confronting Perkins’ approach to the next two states of human nature, regeneration and glorification, the restoration of the will, specifically the lost “libertie of grace,” is the most complex. This is because he has assumed that the fallen will retains its basic freedom of choice and is both bound in sinfulness and incoercible. Given its condition, grace is not an object of choice for the will. It is not chosen—it is applied by God without abridging the freedom of the will. This is done in such a way that the will is freely active toward faith, obedience, and the good in the same temporal moment as the divine act of grace.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document