Unity of the intellectual virtues

The idea that moral virtues form some sort of “unity” has received considerable attention from virtue theorists. In this paper, I argue that the possibility of unity among intellectual virtues has been wrongly overlooked. My approach has two main components. First, I work to distinguish the variety of different views that are available under the description of a unity thesis. I suggest that these views can be categorised depending on whether they are versions of standard unity or of strong unity. Standard unity claims that the possession of one virtue implies possession of all the others. Strong unity claims that the virtues are, in some sense, all the same thing. By exploring what these different versions of unity would look like when applied to intellectual virtues, I aim to provide a menu of options for future work in virtue epistemology. I then develop and defend one of these options in more detail, arguing that the initially less plausible strong unity has merit when applied to the intellectual sphere. In these two ways, I aim to show that the possibility of unity among the intellectual virtues is deserving of serious consideration.

Disunity of Virtue

This chapter contains the argument against the unity of the virtues, which presupposes that the virtues are not unified and vindicates anti-imperialism about virtue. It describes the unity of the virtues that was more or less universally affirmed in ancient ethics and notes that the dominant tendency in contemporary moral philosophy is to reject it. It also sketches a position on the interrelation of the virtues that avoids the falsity of the unity thesis, while still salvaging some of its more attractive aspects. The chapter focuses on the thesis that one cannot have one virtue without having all of the others. It elaborates that if there is any one virtue that a person lacks, then it follows that this person does not have any of the other virtues.

The Phenomenal Unity of Consciousness

Philosophical interest in unity of consciousness goes back at least to Kant. A recent revival of interest among analytic philosophers of mind focuses on unity of consciousness, construed as phenomenal unity. This chapter will survey some of the issues and questions that have been central to this recent work before sketching an alternative to what may be seen as a dominant, though implicit, tendency in the recent literature on unity: to formulate the idea that phenomenal unity is a natural feature of consciousness in terms of what the chapter will term the Unity Thesis. According to this thesis, all synchronous experiences of a conscious subject at a moment are phenomenally unified with each other. The chapter then rebuts another trend in recent literature: the tendency to understand phenomenal unity as obtaining in virtue of a type of oneness or singularity. The chapter advances an alternative that sees phenomenal unity as obtaining in virtue of connectivity conditions over relations among phenomenal experiences.

HUKUM DAN KEADILAN: ISU BAGIAN HULU DAN HILIR

<p><strong>Abstrak</strong><br />Hubungan antara hukum dan keadilan seperti aliran sungai yang mengalir dari hulu ke hilir. Sesuai analogi ini, keadilan adalah isu inheren dalam pembentukan undang-undang (isu bagian hulu) dan ajudikasi (isu bagian hilir). Konsisten dengan ini, penulis meyakini bahwa undang-undang dan ajudikasi harus adil karena presumsi bahwa keadilan adalah nilai internal hukum. Kita harus mewaspadai posisi bebas-nilai positivis karena mengarah pada pemikiran yang bersifat reduksionis tentang hukum. Untuk menanggapi isu tersebut penulis mendukung pendapat yang mengklaim bahwa kita tidak dapat memisahkan hukum dan keadilan. Kita mengacu hanya pada hukum hanya karena hukum tersebut adil.</p><p><strong>Abstract</strong><br />The relationship between law and justice is analogous to a river. Like a river stream, justice flows from the upstream to the downstream in the legal discourse. According to this analogy, justice is inherent issue in the rule-making (the upstream issue) and adjudication (the downstream issue). Consistent with this statement the author believes that legislation and adjudication should be just because the presumption that justice is the internal value of the law. We should be aware that a value-free standpoint proposed by the positivist would lead us to a reductionist thinking about law. In order to address this issue, the author therefore argues for the unity thesis that claims that we cannot separate law and justice. We invoke only to the law because a conviction that the law is just.</p>

The Early Albertus Magnus and his Arabic Sources on the Theory of the Soul

Albertus Magnus favours the Aristotelian definition of the soul as the first actuality or perfection of a natural body having life potentially. But he interprets Aristotle's vocabulary in a way that it becomes compatible with the separability of the soul from the body. The term “perfectio” is understood as referring to the soul's activity only, not to its essence. The term “forma” is avoided as inadequate for defining the soul's essence. The soul is understood as a substance which exists independently of its actions and its body. The article shows that Albertus' terminological decisions continue a tradition reaching from the Greek commentators, and John Philoponos in particular, to Avicenna. Albertus' position on another important issue is also influenced by Arabic sources. His defense of the unity of the soul's vegetative, animal and rational parts rests on arguments from Avicenna and Averroes. It is shown that Averroes' position on the problem is not clearcut: he advocates the unity thesis, but also teaches the plurality of the generic and individual forms in man. This double stance is visible in the Latin reception of Averroes' works, and also in Albertus, who presents Averroes both as supporter and opponent of the plurality thesis.