Crusius über die Vernünftigkeit des Wollens und die Rolle des Urteilens

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-618
Author(s):  
Sonja Schierbaum
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Normative Conception ◽  
Rational Desire ◽  
Contemporary Perspective ◽  
Normative Criteria

Abstract In this paper, I consider the relevance of judgment for practical considerations by discussing Christian August Crusius’s conception of rational desire. According to my interpretation of Crusius’s distinction between rational and non-rational desire, we are responsible at least for our rational desires insofar as we can control them. And we can control our rational desires by judging whether what we want complies with our human nature. It should become clear that Crusius’s conception of rational desire is normative in that we necessarily desire things that are compatible with our nature, such as our own perfection. Therefore, a desire is rational if the desired object is apt to satisfy the desires compatible with our nature. From a contemporary perspective, such a normative conception of rational desire might not appear very attractive; it is apt, however, to stimulate a debate on the normative criteria and the role of judgment for rational desire, which is the ultimate aim of this paper.

Kropotkin

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Kinna
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
Special Character ◽  
Revolutionary Politics

This book is designed to remove Peter Kropotkin from the framework of classical anarchism. By focusing attention on his theory of mutual aid, it argues that the classical framing distorts Kropotkin's political theory by associating it with a narrowly positivistic conception of science, a naively optimistic idea of human nature and a millenarian idea of revolution. Kropotkin's abiding concern with Russian revolutionary politics is the lens for this analysis. The argument is that his engagement with nihilism shaped his conception of science and that his expeditions in Siberia underpinned an approach to social analysis that was rooted in geography. Looking at Kropotkin's relationship with Elisée Reclus and Erico Malatesta and examining his critical appreciation of P-J. Proudhon, Michael Bakunin and Max Stirner, the study shows how he understood anarchist traditions and reveals the special character of his anarchist communism. His idea of the state as a colonising process and his contention that exploitation and oppression operate in global contexts is a key feature of this. Kropotkin's views about the role of theory in revolutionary practice show how he developed this critique of the state and capitalism to advance an idea of political change that combined the building of non-state alternatives through direct action and wilful disobedience. Against critics who argue that Kropotkin betrayed these principles in 1914, the book suggests that this controversial decision was consistent with his anarchism and that it reflected his judgment about the prospects of anarchistic revolution in Russia.

Thomas More's “rule” of pleasure before, after, and inUtopia

Moreana ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (Number 207) (1) ◽  
pp. 36-56
Author(s):  
Gerard Wegemer
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Biblical Allusions ◽  
De Officiis

After establishing a context of More's lifelong engagement with the “calculus” of pleasure, this essay shows how the section devoted to the Utopians' pleasure philosophy is structured around five formulations of a “rule” to calculate “true and honest [honesta]” pleasure in ways that playfully imitate and echo the “rule” Cicero formulates several times in De officiis to discern one's duty when there seems to be a conflict between honestas et utilitas. When followed, the Utopian pleasure calculus shows the necessary role of societas, officii, iustitia, caritas, and the other aspects of human nature, most importantly friendship, that Cicero stresses in his rule and that he argued Epicurus ignored. Much of the irony and humor of this section depends on seeing the predominance of Ciceronian vocabulary in Raphael's unusual defense [patrocinium] of pleasure, rather than a Ciceronian defense of duty rooted in honestas. Throughout, however, this essay also shows how More goes beyond Cicero by including Augustinian and biblical allusions to suggest ways that our final end is not as Epicurus or the Stoics or Cicero claim; the language and allusions of this section point to a level of good cheer and care for neighbors and for God in ways quite different from any classical thinker.

The Role of Experience in the Assessment of Human Nature

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-337
Author(s):  
Jan-Olav Henriksen
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature

Shame and Honor: Aristotle’s Thumos as a Basic Desire

Apeiron ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-95
Author(s):  
Victor Saenz
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
Social Value ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
Virtuous Agent ◽  
Rational Desire ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Rational Motivation

Abstract One of three basic types of desire, claims Aristotle, is thumos (‘spirit,’ ‘passion,’ ‘heart,’ ‘anger,’ ‘impulse’). The other two are epithumia (‘appetite’) and boulêsis (‘wish,’ ‘rational desire’). Yet, he never gives us an account of thumos; it has also received relatively little scholarly attention. I argue that thumos has two key features. First, it is able to cognize what I call ‘social value,’ the agent’s own perceived standing relative to others in a certain domain. In human animals, shame and honor are especially important manifestations of social value. Second, thumos provides non-rational motivation to pursue what affirms the agent’s social value and avoid what denies it. Interpretations that hold thumos just is anger, or that its object is the fine (kalon), I argue, are mistaken. My account also explains the role of thumos in moral education. In a virtuous agent thumos will be affectively attuned to the correct social rankings; it will take the practically wise, the lovers of the fine, or moral exemplars, as authorities.

scholarly journals The Role of Instinct in David Hume's Conception of Human Reason

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-288
Author(s):  
James Hill
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Mathematical Thought ◽  
Natural Element ◽  
General Relations ◽  
Intellectual Power ◽  
As If ◽  
Experimental Reasoning

This article investigates the role of instinct in Hume's understanding of human reason. It is shown that while in the Treatise Hume makes the strong reductive assertion that reason is ‘nothing but’ an instinct, in the First Enquiry the corresponding statement has been modified in several ways, rendering the relation between instinct and reason more complex. Most importantly, Hume now explicitly recognises that alongside instinctive experimental reasoning, there is a uniquely human intellectual power of intuitive and demonstrative reason that is not itself an instinct. At first sight it may look as if this intellectual reason, that is capable of grasping ‘relations of ideas’, is not even grounded in instinct but is a thoroughly non-natural element in human nature. On closer analysis, however, it is shown that intellectual reason, in its apprehension of ‘abstract’ and general relations, is dependent on language – the use of ‘terms’ – and that language itself is grounded in instinctive associations of ideas. Thus, Hume's overall view is that even the intellect is an outgrowth of instinct and his conception of human nature is, therefore, shown to be fully naturalistic. Yet this naturalism can still make room for the ‘exceptionalism’ of human mathematical thought, which has no counterpart in the animal kingdom where language is lacking.

scholarly journals Depictions of Christ’s ancestors in the altar of Markov Manastir. A contribution to research

Zograf ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 89-106
Author(s):  
Marka Tomic-Djuric
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Church

The paper discusses the figures on the bema of the altar apse in the Church of St. Demetrios of Markov Manastir (Marko?s Monastery) painted in 1376/1377. It offers a more detailed overview of the programmatic and iconographic characteristics of previously known depictions of the Virgin?s ancestors and identifies the second ancestral couple. Following a reexamination of hypotheses that have been suggested so far, the paper concludes that the second pair of Old Testament personages should be identified as representing the original ancestors of humanity - Adam and Eve. The visual solution incorporating Sts. Joachim and Anne as well as Adam and Eve is highly unusual. The paper also discusses the peculiar thematic concept in the central apse of Markov Manastir, which was conceived so as to draw attention of the faithful to the human nature of Christ, while the choice of ancestors underlines the role of the Virgin?s parents in the economy of salvation and emphasizes the theological idea of absolution from ancestral sin and the rebirth of humanity beginning with the incarnation of God-Man.

An Economy beyond Instrumental Rationality

2021 ◽  
pp. 203-229
Author(s):  
Karl Johan Bonnedahl
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
New Economy ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Economic Discourse

Treating technology in a broad sense, including elements of social organization, this chapter discusses the role of technology as part of the dominant economic discourse and the instrumental perspective which characterizes modern exploitative human–nature relations. A key point is that values and assumptions of the conventional economy are very influential in determining what development is and should be. As such, they also determine technology and drive unsustainability. Hence, the solutions proposed build on alternative values and assumptions which can lead to a new economy beyond instrumental rationality. Here, the role of technology as respectful and fair social organization increases. Artefacts that create distance between humans and nature are given much less room, while technology as expansionist and exploitative means is dismantled.

Hobbes’s Argument for the Practical Necessity of Colonization

2021 ◽  
pp. 16-41
Author(s):  
David James
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
Science Of History ◽  
Practical Necessity ◽  
Liberation Movements ◽  
Historical Necessity

Hobbes attempts to show that practical necessity and human nature are related in such a way that colonization is unavoidable by virtue of its naturalness. Colonization is practically and historically necessary because unavoidable constraints generated by human nature combine with material and social factors to produce certain inevitable outcomes. Hobbes’s account of colonization can also be understood in terms of his negative idea of freedom. Hobbes fails, however, to provide a sufficient explanation of one aspect of modern colonialism, namely, the existence of national liberation movements, while the role of the sovereign implies a different idea of freedom to Hobbes’s purely negative one. This makes colonization appear less natural and necessary than he suggests. Finally, I explore the implications of Hobbes’s account of the causes of colonization in connection with the possibility of a ‘science’ of history and the idea of historical necessity.

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