Holm Tetens on the Moral Argument for Theism: A Kantian Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kurt Mocker
Keyword(s):  
States Of Mind ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Theistic Belief

SummaryThis paper presents a reconstruction and discussion of Holm Tetens’ new moral argument for theistic belief. The argument is a pragmatic one in that it intends to show that believing in God is rational because it has some morally desirable consequences. It asserts that the suffering of countless victims of evil in this world causes in atheists who try to be moral some morally questionable states of mind. By contrast, theists who have certain beliefs about the afterlife, judgment, and reconciliation are not subject to these bad states of mind. Therefore, Tetens argues, theistic belief is more rational than disbelief.

Divergent Memories of Tumen Shan-shui

2019 ◽  
pp. 229-10.33526/EJKS.20191901.229
Author(s):  
Xiaoxuan Lu
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Research Study ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Geographical Research ◽  
River Region ◽  
Production Techniques ◽  
Landscape Research ◽  
Border Areas ◽  
The Creation

Focusing on the interplay between memory and place, this article examines the rationale behind the use of axonometric drawings (axons) in a geographical research study of the Tumen/Tuman River region encompassing the borders shared by China, Russia and North Korea. The concepts of “memory of place” and “place of memory” guide the structure of this project and the flow of this article. “Memory of place” emphasises the lived experience of our physical senses, and helps determine the great potential of visual methodologies in the fields of geographical and landscape research and study. Drawn up using the graphic production techniques of abstracting, foregrounding, highlighting and juxtaposing, axons avail themselves of and inform both realist and idealist states of mind. In contrast, “place of memory” references a particular type of materiality and helps us understand Tumen Shan-shui as a library of memories that reveals a profusion of contested aesthetic, cultural and political meanings. Axons serve to tell narratives revealing desires, actions and undertakings that have shaped and continue to shape the substance of the memory sites in question including infrastructure, architecture and signage. Initially adopted by the author as a medium for recording and communicating due to security restrictions imposed in the border areas in question, the creation of axons generated new insights on methods of documentation in landscape research, and the places and landscapes themselves.

Variations of the Mixed Discourse

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Jaquet
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Shed Light

Lastly, on the basis of this definition, the author shows how affects shed light on the body-mind relationship and provide an opportunity to produce a mixed discourse that focuses, by turns, on the mental, physical, or psychophysical aspect of affect. The final chapter has two parts: – An analysis of the three categories of affects: mental, physical, and psychophysical – An examination of the variations of Spinoza’s discourse Some affects, such as satisfaction of the mind, are presented as mental, even though they are correlated with the body. Others, such as pain or pleasure, cheerfulness (hilaritas) or melancholy are mainly rooted in the body, even though the mind forms an idea of them. Still others are psychophysical, such as humility or pride, which are expressed at once as bodily postures and states of mind. These affects thus show us how the mind and body are united, all the while expressing themselves differently and specifically, according to their own modalities.

Another Look at the Speeches of Reuben and Judah in Genesis 37

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-319
Author(s):  
Hee-Sook Bae
Keyword(s):  
Present Position ◽  
Moral Argument

Abstract Using a narratological synchronic reading, this article argues that Reuben and Judah are contrastively juxtaposed in their rhetoric and intentions in Genesis 37. Reuben considers the brothers’ plot a criminal act and bans both their internal intentions and their external evildoings against Joseph, whereas Judah repeatedly forbids them from killing Joseph, their own brother, posing a moral argument against fratricide. Problematically, however, he permits another evildoing, the sale of their own brother. The contrastive parallel of the two brothers in Genesis 37 does not support the classic documentary hypothesis, nor the supplementary expansion in favour of Judah. Rather, Judah’s problematic dealings with his own brother harkens to the practice of selling of own “flesh” and “kindred” into slavery in the post-exilic period. Genesis 37 in its present position provides a natural link to Genesis 38, as both chapters are identical in their negative depiction of Judah.

Rights and Demands

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Joint Commitment ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Joel Feinberg ◽  
Joseph Raz ◽  
The Right ◽  
Judith Thomson ◽  
Stephen Darwall

This book is the first extended treatment of demand-rights, a class of rights apt to be considered rights par excellence. Centrally, to have a demand-right is to have the standing or authority to demand a particular action from another person, who has a correlative obligation to the right-holder. How are demand-rights possible? Linking its response to central themes and positions within rights theory, Rights and Demands argues for two main theses. First, joint commitment, in a sense that is explained, is a ground of demand-rights. Second, it may well be their only ground. The first thesis is developed with special reference to agreements and promises, generally understood to ground demand-rights. It argues that both of these phenomena are constituted by joint commitments, and that this is true of many other central social phenomena also. In relation to the second thesis it considers the possibility of demand-rights whose existence can be demonstrated by moral argument without appeal to any joint commitment, and the possibility of accruing demand-rights through the existence of a given legal system or other institution construed without any such appeal. The relevance of the book’s conclusions to our understanding of human rights is then explained. Classic and contemporary rights theorists whose work is discussed include Wesley Hohfeld, H. L. A. Hart, Joel Feinberg, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Scanlon, Judith Thomson, Joseph Raz, and Stephen Darwall.

Knowing by Doing: The Role of Geometrical Practice in Aristotle’s Theory of Knowledge

Elenchos ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Ugaglia
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
General Process ◽  
The Real ◽  
Analogical Model ◽  
Primary Function ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Abstract Aristotle’s way of conceiving the relationship between mathematics and other branches of scientific knowledge is completely different from the way a contemporary scientist conceives it. This is one of the causes of the fact that we look at the mathematical passages we find in Aristotle’s works with the wrong expectation. We expect to find more or less stringent proofs, while for the most part Aristotle employs mere analogies. Indeed, this is the primary function of mathematics when employed in a philosophical context: not a demonstrative tool, but a purely analogical model. In the case of the geometrical examples discussed in this paper, the diagrams are not conceived as part of a formalized proof, but as a work in progress. Aristotle is not interested in the final diagram but in the construction viewed in its process of development; namely in the figure a geometer draws, and gradually modifies, when he tries to solve a problem. The way in which the geometer makes use of the elements of his diagram, and the relation between these elements and his inner state of knowledge is the real feature which interests Aristotle. His goal is to use analogy in order to give the reader an idea of the states of mind involved in a more general process of knowing.

Psychoanalysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Work Group ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
2016 Election

Abstract The intersection between psychoanalysis and politics, with their shared investment in the dynamics of self–other relationships, emerged as a key concern in psychoanalytic thinking in 2019. This year’s review examines five texts which explore this intersection through a diverse range of approaches and is divided into five sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Contemporary Subjects: Psychoanalysis in 2019, which examines Julia Kristeva’s, Passions of Our Time; 3. Mourning Subjects: Politics and Psychoanalysis, which reviews Stephen Frosh, Those Who Come After: Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness and Noëlle McAfee, Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis alongside Conrad Chrzanowski’s article, ‘The Group’s Vulnerability to Disaster: Basic Assumptions and Work Group Mentalities Underlying Trump’s 2016 Election’; 4. Creative Subjects: Psychoanalysis and Visual Art, where I consider Patricia Townsend, Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist’s Process, with Alberto Stefana’s article, ‘Revisiting Marion Milner’s Work on Creativity and Art’; and 5. Dis-membered Subjects: Psychoanalysis at the Margins, which explores Gabrielle Brown (ed.), Psychoanalytic Thinking on the Unhoused Mind.

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