‘On the Power of Sound’

Published as ‘Stanzas on the Power of Sound’ in Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems (1835), this later poem (subsequently called ‘On the Power of Sound’) evolved from lines composed not later than March 1828 and was revised for publication through March 1835. Reflections on the compositional processes of ‘On the Power of Sound’ draw attention to the consequences of underlying divisions in Wordsworth’s theories of poetic subjects and their treatment. His use here of flexibly rhymed variable cadences in an English Pindaric style and their capacity simultaneously to look backward and forward are considered in the light of its effort to ‘invest the material Universe’ with spirituality and ‘to exhibit its most ordinary appearances’ under a ‘moral relation’. Yet the equivocal power of the sound of the poem underlines its fundamental disjunctions between the ‘material […] ordinary’ and the spirituality of that ‘moral relation’. If this disjunction powers the poem’s laboriously lofty voice, providing its appeal to some Victorian readers, it simultaneously reveals a loss of confidence in the immanence of that relation.

Architektur und Ethik

The architect who plans and designs our living environment in town and country can neither think exclusively technologically nor act completely independently. Rather, his designs and actions are always in moral relation to the environment, i. e. to nature and landscape as well as to the city/town or the people who live daily with and within the built space and thus have a kind of effective group affiliation. But to what extent does architecture – in the sense of Hegel’s phrase the “sensuous in the meaningful” – already possess ethical implications?

What is a Moral Law?

This chapter explores bridge-law non-naturalism: the view that when a particular thing possesses a moral property or stands in a moral relation, this fact is metaphysically grounded in non-normative features of the thing in question together with a general moral law. Any view of this sort faces two challenges, analogous to familiar challenges in the philosophy of science: to specify the form of the explanatory laws, and to say when a fact of that form qualifies as a law. The chapter explores three strategies for answering these questions, all of which maintain that a moral law is a true generalization of the form [It is normatively necessary that whatever ϕ‎s is (thereby) F].

‘The Good Citizen’

This article explores how healthcare-seeking practices and the transformation of bodily sensations into symptoms are embedded in what we term a ‘moral sensescape’ of everyday life. Based on fieldwork in a suburban middle-class neighbourhood in Denmark, we discuss how a moral relation between the Danish welfare state and the middle-class population is embodied in a responsibility for individual health. Overall, we identify a striving to be a ‘good citizen’; this entails conflicting moral possibilities in relation to experiencing, interpreting and acting on bodily sensations. We examine how people meet the conflicting moral possibilities of complying with current public health rhetoric on proper healthcare seeking, including timely presentation of symptoms, and simultaneously try to avoid misusing the healthcare system and be characterised as overly worried or even as a hypochondriac; this challenge constitutes complex navigational routes through the moral sensescape of the Danish middle class.

Cosmopolitanism for Earth Dwellers: Kant on the Right to be Somewhere

The paper provides a systematic account of Kant’s ‘right to be somewhere’ as introduced in the Doctrine of Right. My claim is that Kant’s concern with the concurrent existence of a plurality of corporeal agents on the earth’s surface (to which the right speaks) occupies a rarely appreciated conceptual space in his mature political philosophy. In grounding a particular kind of moral relation that is ‘external’ (as located in bounded space) but not property-mediated, it provides us with a fundamentally new perspective on Kant’s cosmopolitanism, which I construe as a cosmopolitanism for ‘earth dwellers’.

Holiness without the holy One(s): Towards an ‘evental’ account of holiness

Should holiness be conceived as a predicate (an attribute), a state (a mode of being) or an event (a process)? It can certainly be understood as God‘s primary attribute. This is how much of classical Christian theology sees it. It can also be thought of as a particular modus of existence shared by God and the holy ones (the saints and the angels), as attested by much of Christian tradition and popular imagination. A more dynamic view of holiness can be found in Scripture and throughout Christian theological tradition; and yet, in the modern era, it has been overshadowed by the first two tendencies. This article offers a tentative enquiry into an ‘evental’ account of holiness by drawing from (1) Niels Gregersen’s and Elizabeth Johnson’s reflection on ‘deep incarnation’ and ‘deep resurrection’ as well as (2) John B. Cobb’s and Marjorie Suchocki’s process theology of the Spirit. Firstly, the ‘from above’ approach to holiness, prevailing in modern Christian theology, is briefly discussed based on John Webster’s understanding of holiness as God’s personal moral relation to humanity. Secondly, I suggest an alternative ‘from below’ approach to holiness based on Gregersen’s and Johnson’s deep Christology. Thirdly, Cobb’s and Suchocki’s take on ‘creative transformation’ and Suchocki’s original appropriation of Cobb’s insights on process pneumatology are used as a hermeneutic key to reinterpret holiness as an ‘evental’ category. Finally, the notion of the holiness of life is reconsidered in light of my proposal.

WHAT’S VIRTUOUS ABOUT THE LAW?

ABSTRACTDebates about our moral relation to the law typically focus on the moral force of law. Often, the question asked is: Do we have a moral duty to follow the law? Recently, that question has been given a virtue-ethical formulation: Is there a virtue in abiding by the law? This paper considers our moral relation to the law in terms of virtue but focuses on a different question from the traditional ones. The question here is: Can the law model virtue in beneficial ways that enable us to cultivate virtue? This paper shows that the law can do this by setting a moral example that we have good reason to emulate. This is significant given the distinctive influence the law has over our lives. The paper begins by examining the nature of a model, comparing different models of virtue, and then questions the possibility of a complete model of virtue such as the so-called Virtuous Person. The paper then articulates several ways in which the law can model virtue for us and responds to three objections: 1) the embodiment problem, 2) the poisoning problem, and 3) the emulation problem.