Are People More Important than the Other Animals?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Ultimate Purpose

This chapter criticizes the familiar idea that humans are more important than animals. After examining some reasons why we treat humans and animals differently, and showing that they do not imply the superior importance of humans, it argues that the claim of superior human importance is not so much false as (nearly) incoherent. Importance and goodness are “tethered” values: things are only important or good when they are important-to or good-for some creature. To be important or good absolutely is to be important-to or good-for all creatures. One kind of creature could be absolutely more important than others only if the fate of that kind of creature were more important to others than their own fates. Only a teleological picture of the world that made human good the ultimate purpose of the world could support the conclusion that humans are more important than the other animals.

Legalism and Humankind

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Frank I. Michelman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Normative Argument

Prescriptive political and moral theories contain ideas about what human beings are like and about what, correspondingly, is good for them. Conceptions of human “nature” and corresponding human good enter into normative argument by way of support and justification. Of course, it is logically open for the ratiocinative traffic to run the other way. Strongly held convictions about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of certain social institutions or practices may help condition and shape one's responses to one or another set of propositions about what people are like and what, in consequence, they have reason to value.

Plato

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-33
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
Difficult Case ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Other Regarding

Plato rejects Socrates’ belief that knowledge of the good is sufficient for being virtuous; he argues that human souls have a non-rational part (emotions, impulses), and that the virtues require not only knowledge, but also the correct training of the non-rational part. He rejects Socrates’ belief that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Instead he argues that the virtuous person is always happier than anyone else. He defends this view in the most difficult case, the other-regarding virtue of justice. Plato recognizes that one may plausibly argue that my justice is good for other people, but harmful to me. None the less he rejects this argument. The appropriate relation between the rational and the non-rational parts of the soul promotes both the agent’s good and the good of others; that is why the just person is happier than anyone else. Those who suppose that the just person may be worse off by being just do not understand the character of the human good.

Innovation from the Inside Out

Overcrowded ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Verganti
Keyword(s):  
Opposite Direction ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Good For ◽  
Inside Out ◽  
Innovation Processes ◽  
Outside The Box

This chapter shows why in a world overcrowded by ideas innovation should come from the inside-out, i.e. the process should start from ourselves rather than from clients or outsiders. Traditional innovation processes are typically oriented the other way around: from the outside in. Their focus on solutions requires us to look first outside our organization, and outside ourselves; when we want to innovate solutions we start by going out and observing how users use existing products; then we are advised to “think outside the box” in order to be more creative; and even to invite outsiders to propose masses of novel ideas. Instead, the search for a new direction, i.e. the innovation of meaning, comes from the inside out. It’s a vision that comes from us and is offered to people. A gift to love because, foremost, we love it and we authentically believe it will make their lives better. And it could not be otherwise. You can borrow solutions from outsiders, but you cannot borrow directions and visions from outsiders: you cannot wear the eyes of others. You have to see things yourself. Or, put differently, when it comes to innovation of meanings, the myth of outside-in innovation does not work. We need to take exactly the opposite direction: from the inside out. This has three reasons, which we will elaborate in depth. First, meanings are interpretations, and interpretations cannot be outsourced; they can only come from us. Second, our own interpretations are precious; people will never love something we do not love ourselves. Third, we have the responsibility to drive the world in the direction that we believe makes more sense; this is good for people, for business, and for us; if we abdicate, what is our role in this world?

Locke’s Property Problem

2020 ◽  
pp. 16-66
Author(s):  
Daniel Layman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Good For ◽  
The One ◽  
Private Right

According to Locke, all people are free and equal. Consequently, the natural world belongs to all people in common. But each person, along with his labor, belongs only to himself. Thus, although all people share a common right to use the world, each person acquires a private right to resources he “mixes” with his labor. Before large-scale economic development, there was no problem with each person appropriating as much as he could use, because this left “enough, and as good” for others. But once money spurred development, people could efficiently use far more. Under these new conditions, there was no longer enough and as good lying in common. Consequently, although everyone got richer through economic development, the world divided into resource owners and employees working on others’ resources. All of this posed a dilemma for Locke. On the one hand, people could be required to leave the world lying in common, preserving equal standing but sacrificing well-being for all. On the other, people could be permitted to develop the world into a network of private plots, greatly increasing well-being for all but sacrificing equal standing. Locke notices the tension, but he lacks an adequate solution. He implausibly appeals to our purported consent to money and its consequences before ending the chapter, thus leaving his property problem for others to solve.

The Priority of the Good and the Contrapuntal Character of Aristotle’s Politics I

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Human Good ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Good For

Abstract Politics I has been the subject of a number of textual questions about the relation of the Ethics to the Politics. These textual questions involve us in theoretical questions about the differences between contemporary and ancient conceptions of political rule. Resolving the exegetical challenges can help us clarify the theoretical differences. A fresh approach to the textual challenges reveals that Politics I has a contrapuntal character with two reinforcing movements. One explores why and how despotic conceptions of politics fail using case studies of despotic power: slavery and money-making. Aristotle shows dialectically how this despotic approach to rule undermines the requirements for political life. The other movement explores the character of natural human associations, culminating in the polis. The two movements converge in Aristotle’s claim about the centrality of the human good for political rule. This claim challenges modern social contract theory’s understanding of the differences between despotic and political rule.

Indonesian Literature’s Position in World Literature

TEKNOSASTIK ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Dina Amelia
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Western World ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
The Voice

There are two most inevitable issues on national literature, in this case Indonesian literature. First is the translation and the second is the standard of world literature. Can one speak for the other as a representative? Why is this representation matter? Does translation embody the voice of the represented? Without translation Indonesian literature cannot gain its recognition in world literature, yet, translation conveys the voice of other. In the case of production, publication, or distribution of Indonesian Literature to the world, translation works can be very beneficial. The position of Indonesian literature is as a part of world literature. The concept that the Western world should be the one who represent the subaltern can be overcome as long as the subaltern performs as the active speaker. If the subaltern remains silent then it means it allows the “representation” by the Western.

Experiment role in the world music (based on the «The Road» album of the Ukrainian «Dakha Brakha» band)

2018 ◽  
pp. 215-227
Author(s):  
Iia Fedorova
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
World Music ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Music ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
The Road ◽  
Music Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Musical Practices

The main objective of this study is the substantiation of experiment as one of the key features of the world music in Ukraine. Based on the creative works of the brightest world music representatives in Ukraine, «Dakha Brakha» band, the experiment is regarded as a kind of creative setting. Methodology and scientific approaches. The methodology was based on the music practice theory by T. Cherednychenko. The author distinguishes four binary oppositions, which can describe the musical practice. According to one of these oppositions («observance of the canon or violation of the canon»), the musical practices, to which the Ukrainian musicology usually classifies the world music («folk music» and «minstrel music»), are compared with the creative work of «Dakha Brakha» band. Study findings. A lack of the setting to experiment in the musical practices of the «folk music» and «minstrel music» separates the world music musical practice from them. Therefore, the world music is a separate type of musical practice in which the experiment is crucial. The study analyzed several scientific articles of Ukrainian musicologists on the world music; examined the history of the Ukrainian «Dakha Brakha» band; presented a list of the folk songs used in the fifth album «The Road» by «Dakha Brakha» band; and showed the degree of the source transformation by musicians based on the example of the «Monk» song. The study findings can be used to form a comprehensive understanding of the world music musical practice. The further studies may be related to clarification of the other parameters of the world music musical practice, and to determination of the experiment role in creative works of the other world music representatives, both Ukrainian and foreign. The practical study value is the ability to use its key provisions in the course of modern music in higher artistic schools of Ukraine. Originality / value. So far, the Ukrainian musicology did not consider the experiment role as the key one in the world music.

Does Literature Matter Today? Thoughts of the Outside

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Shaobo Xie
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
The World

The paper celebrates the publication of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature across Continents as a significant event in the age of neoliberalism. It argues that, in spite of the different premises and the resulting interpretative procedures respectively championed by the two co-authors, both of them anchor their readings of literary texts in a concept of literature that is diametrically opposed to neoliberal rationality, and both impassionedly safeguard human values and experiences that resist the technologisation and marketisation of the humanities and aesthetic education. While Ghosh's readings of literature offer lightning flashes of thought from the outside of the Western tradition, signalling a new culture of reading as well as a new manner of appreciation of the other, Miller dedicatedly speaks and thinks against the hegemony of neoliberal reason, opening our eyes to the kind of change our teaching or reading of literature can trigger in the world, and the role aesthetic education should and can play at a time when the humanities are considered ‘a lost cause’.

Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Individuation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Hengehold
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Other ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World

Most studies of Simone de Beauvoir situate her with respect to Hegel and the tradition of 20th-century phenomenology begun by Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. This book analyzes The Second Sex in light of the concepts of becoming, problematization, and the Other found in Gilles Deleuze. Reading Beauvoir through a Deleuzian lens allows more emphasis to be placed on Beauvoir's early interest in Bergson and Leibniz, and on the individuation of consciousness, a puzzle of continuing interest to both phenomenologists and Deleuzians. By engaging with the philosophical issues in her novels and student diaries, this book rethinks Beauvoir’s focus on recognition in The Second Sex in terms of women’s struggle to individuate themselves despite sexist forms of representation. It shows how specific forms of women’s “lived experience” can be understood as the result of habits conforming to and resisting this sexist “sense.” Later feminists put forward important criticisms regarding Beauvoir’s claims not to be a philosopher, as well as the value of sexual difference and the supposedly Eurocentric universalism of her thought. Deleuzians, on the other hand, might well object to her ideas about recognition. This book attempts to address those criticisms, while challenging the historicist assumptions behind many efforts to establish Beauvoir’s significance as a philosopher and feminist thinker. As a result, readers can establish a productive relationship between Beauvoir’s “problems” and those of women around the world who read her work under very different circumstances.

Modernism, Empiricism, and Rationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Squires
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Dimensional Spectrum ◽  
Culture History ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rule Out

Modernism is usually defined historically as the composite movement at the beginning of the twentieth century which led to a radical break with what had gone before in literature and the other arts. Given the problems of the continuing use of the concept to cover subsequent writing, this essay proposes an alternative, philosophical perspective which explores the impact of rationalism (what we bring to the world) on the prevailing empiricism (what we take from the world) of modern poetry, which leads to a concern with consciousness rather than experience. This in turn involves a re-conceptualisation of the lyric or narrative I, of language itself as a phenomenon, and of other poetic themes such as nature, culture, history, and art. Against the background of the dominant empiricism of modern Irish poetry as presented in Crotty's anthology, the essay explores these ideas in terms of a small number of poets who may be considered modernist in various ways. This does not rule out modernist elements in some other poets and the initial distinction between a poetics of experience and one of consciousness is better seen as a multi-dimensional spectrum that requires further, more detailed analysis than is possible here.

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