Kant’s Theory of Divine and Secondary Causation

2021 ◽  
pp. 265-294
Author(s):  
Desmond Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Causal Activity ◽  
Scholastic Philosophy ◽  
Significant Milestone

This chapter examines Kant’s theory of the relation between God’s causal activity in the world and so-called “secondary” causation, the causality of created beings. The central question he faces here is the traditional one for a theistic metaphysics: How does the activity of God viewed as primordial creator and conserver of the world relate in general to the causal activity, if any, of created beings? His own evolving account of the divine causal role is shaped by his ongoing engagement with three competing theories of divine causation distinguished in late scholastic philosophy, and vigorously debated in the modern period by Malebranche and Leibniz. It is shown here that the most significant milestone in the emergence of Kant’s mature account does not lie in his transition from pre-Critical to Critical philosopher, but in an earlier one from necessitarian to libertarian on human agency.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
The Right

This chapter lays out the book’s central question: Assuming agency reductionism—that is, the thesis that the causal role of the agent in all agential activities is reducible to the causal role of states and events involving the agent—is it possible to construct a defensible model of libertarianism? It is explained that most think the answer is negative and this is because they think libertarians must embrace some form of agent-causation in order to address the problems of luck and enhanced control. The thesis of the book is that these philosophers are mistaken: it is possible to construct a libertarian model of free will and moral responsibility within an agency reductionist framework that silences that central objections to libertarianism by simply taking the best compatibilist model of freedom and adding indeterminism in the right junctures of human agency. A brief summary of the chapters to follow is given.

The Inner Rational Agent

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Sugden
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Welfare Economics ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Empirical Content ◽  
Normative Economics ◽  
Normative Analysis ◽  
True Preference ◽  
Implicit Model ◽  
The World ◽  
Psychological Foundation

Chapter 4 reviews ‘behavioural welfare economics’—the approach to normative analysis that is favoured by most behavioural economists. This approach assumes that people have context-independent ‘true’ or ‘latent’ preferences which, because of psychologically-induced errors, are not always revealed in actual choices. Behavioural welfare economics aims to reconstruct latent preferences by identifying and removing the effects of error on decisions, and to design policies to satisfy those preferences. Its implicit model of human agency is of an ‘inner rational agent’ that interacts with the world through an imperfect psychological ‘shell’. I argue that there is no satisfactory evidence to support this model, and no credible psychological foundation for it. Since the concept of true preference has no empirical content, the idea that such preferences can be reconstructed is a mirage. Normative economics needs to be more radical in giving up rationality assumptions.

Environmental Management in the Anthropocene

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Schlosberg
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Management ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Intervention ◽  
Preservation And Restoration ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Visible Human

In the filmBeasts of the Southern Wild, the main character, Hushpuppy, lays out the dilemma of environmental management in the Anthropocene: “For the animals that didn’t have a dad to put them in the boat, the end of the world already happened.” The Anthropocene will not recede, and the central question of environmental management will be whether we can develop ways to reflexively and sustainably manage ecosystems, habitats, and human needs. This chapter examines four possible normative underpinnings for such management: traditional notions of preservation and restoration, the idea of ecological limits and boundaries, the continued hubris of promethean technological intervention, and a conception of ecological receptivity or a “politics of sight” that makes visible human immersion in natural systems. As sight is a particular characteristic of the Anthropocene, this form of receptivity may hold some promise for environmental management.

scholarly journals Development of trade and economic cooperation between China and Russia in new geopolitical conditions

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (51) ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
A.V. Brizitskaya
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Bilateral Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
Agricultural Products ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Trade War

The article analyzes the trade relations between Russia and China in the modern period characterized by changes in the situation on the world stage and in the domestic political life of countries. The dynamics and commodity structure of bilateral trade of Russia and China have been studied, the Index of trade com-plementarity has been calculated, which showed that Chinese exports are more complementary to the structure of Russian imports than vice versa. Emphasis is placed on traditional trade in goods, excluding services and cross-border e-Commerce. The paper identifies two main directions which the development of Russian exports to China can take in the conditions of the "trade war" of China and the United States. The short-sighted policy of increasing only fuel and energy exports is justified. The reasons hindering the development of non-resource exports of Russia, primarily agricultural products and food, to China have been identified.

Autochthony and the Crisis of Citizenship: Democratization, Decentralization, and the Politics of Belonging

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Geschiere ◽  
Stephen Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
The World ◽  
Recurrent Theme

Abstract:The recent upsurge of “autochthony” and similar notions of belonging is certainly not special to Africa. All over the world, processes of intensifying globalization seem to go together with fierce struggles over belonging and exclusion of “strangers.” A central question in the contributions to this special issue concerns the apparent “naturalness” of autochthony in highly different settings. How can similar slogans seem so self-evident and hence have such mobilizing force under very different circumstances? Another recurrent theme is the somewhat surprising “nervousness” of discourses on autochthony. They seem to promise a basic security of being rooted in the soil as a primal form of belonging. Yet in practice, belonging turns out to be always relative: there is always the danger of being unmasked as “not really” belonging, or even of being a “fake” autochthon. A comparative perspective on autochthony—as a particular pregnant form of entrenchment—may help to unravel the paradoxes of the preoccupation with belonging in a globalizing world.

Bacon’s Novum organum

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-46
Author(s):  
Elodie Cassan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Way

Dan Garber’s paper provides materials permitting to reply to an objection frequently made to the idea that the Novum Organum is a book of logic, as the allusion to Aristotle’s Organon included in the very title of this book shows it is. How can Bacon actually build a logic, considering his repeated claims that he desires to base natural philosophy directly on observation and experiment? Garber shows that in the Novum Organum access to experience is always mediated by particular questions and settings. If there is no direct access to observation and experience, then there is no point in equating Bacon’s focus on experience in the Novum Organum with a rejection of discursive issues. On the contrary, these are two sides of the same coin. Bacon’s articulation of rules for the building of scientific reasoning in connection with the way the world is, illustrates his massive concern with the relation between reality, thinking and language. This concern is essential in the field of logic as it is constructed in the Early Modern period.

Constructing human agency

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Natural Agents ◽  
The World ◽  
Theological Differences

This chapter argues that human agency is free agency. It is freedom, or dominium over one's own actions, which makes a human being different from all other animals; and it is the foundation of the world of the moral, the juridical, and the political, which are all continuous with one another and from which animals—and a fortiori all other natural agents—are excluded. However, during the sixteenth century, the idea that human beings are essentially and ineradicably free to control their own actions came under severe pressure from new and irreconcilable theological differences over the freedom of the human will—differences that therefore implicitly pressured the primary threshold of political space.

Iqbal, Bergson and the Reconstruction of the Divine Nexus in Political Thought

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. C. Hillier
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Philosophical Foundation ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Realities

This chapter looks at the reconstruction of the divine nexus in political thought in Muhammad Iqbal and Henri Bergson. Articulated in Mark Lilla's book Stillborn God (2007), the divine nexus — that is, the intersection of God, man, and the world — in Western political thought was abandoned in the early modern period and no thinker has effectively re-conceptualised it since. The chapter argues that through their shared metaphysical and epistemological ideas, Iqbal and Bergson form a new philosophical foundation that puts God at the centre of the cosmos. In this, both identify the centrality of prophecy/mysticism in the collective life of society and show the indispensable role that religion plays in challenging those political realities in the world that threaten human dignity, freedom, and well-being.

The World Essay Film and the Politics of Traceability

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
Giorgio Avezzù ◽  
Giuseppe Fidotta
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Distribution Networks ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
The World ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Conventional Representation

Genèse d’un repas(Moullet, 1979), Ananas(Gitai, 1984) and The Forgotten Space (Burch & Sekula, 2010) constitute three cinematic attempts at representing the global production and distribution networks of commodities. Giorgio Avezzù and Giuseppe Fidotta argue in this chapter that these films, due to their central concern with late capitalism and globalisation, can be labelled ‘World Essay Films’. They question, however, the multi-layered dynamics of global economy and cinema from the standpoint of Cultural Geography and Visual Studies. Although the World Essay Film’s central question pertains to the ways in which the interconnectedness of the world can be made visible, material, spatial, these films also play, as they argue, on the anxieties related to the invisibility of late-capitalist world, whose flows and networks seem to escape conventional representation. This inherent contradiction poses a challenge to realistic aesthetics and the documentary.

Modesty in the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-46
Author(s):  
Thom Dancer
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Critical Inquiry ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Aesthetic Expression

This chapter argues that modesty offers an alternative, legitimate model of critical engagement with a world defined by limited human agency and perpetual crisis in which we are irrevocably implicated. This argument is situated in the context of the profound changes in worldview entailed by what I call “Anthropocene thinking.” With this phrase, I signal a departure from solely environmental approaches to the Anthropocene, instead focusing on how the era unsettles conventional habits of aesthetic expression and critical inquiry. The second section offers a defence of “modesty” as opposed to other possible key terms (such as humility or generosity) by showing how critical modesty has a precursor in the style of William James’s pragmatism. The chapter offers a reading of literary and narrative form in the writing of Bruno Latour. Despite Latour’s growing popularity in literary studies, critics have tended to overlook the crucial function of form, style, and technique in his writing. Attending to Latour’s writing at a more granular level illustrates how a work can be formally modest about its position with respect to what it studies while also being critical, insofar as any redescription offers a contrasting account of the world. The chapter’s literary approach allows that the Latourian style of inquiry and novelistic discourse are up to the same kind of thing: attempting to make sharable a process of thinking that opens up conversation about the composition of our world.

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