Interpretation, Comparison, and the History of Religions

This chapter critically examines the work of Jonathan Z. Smith and the Interpretive-Comparative Method for studying religion. It unpacks Smith’s ideas about theory and method and shows how they instantiate the guild’s ascetic ideal in the study of religion. It describes three signature ideas in his approach, noting in particular Smith’s silence about matters of purpose when theorizing about method. It then describes how he mobilizes his ideas in his treatment of the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana with the aim of overcoming incomprehension surrounding that event by invoking a method of interpretive and comparative reasoning. Drawing on the ideas of Peter Strawson, the chapter shows what a critical humanistic assessment of Jonestown would look like in contrast to Smith’s reading of them, focusing on the experience of indignation at injustice and the tragic loss of life at Jonestown.

From Structure to Rhizome: Transdisciplinarity in French Thought. Subject Re-/Decentred

The article is an interdisciplinary attempt to theologize the foundations of the concept of the subject in order to discover the “historical a priori” of the modern subject. Descartes did not postulate a Cartesian subject, but only had a persistent desire to avoid likening the thinking Self to a subject of thought. If Descartes at times used the word “subject,” it was only because his two opponents, first Hobbes and then Regius, forced him to adapt the subject to his dualistic idea of man. The Greek concept of hypokeimenon travelled a long road through hypostasis to reach the subject by way of the Christological problems that served as models for new philosophical problems and vice versa during a lengthy period in the history of philosophy. The union of two natures, the human and divine, in the hypostasis or “personality” of Christ is a model for the union of spirit and body as it was conceived from Leibniz to Peter Strawson. The subject arises from a combination of two conflicting models of subjectivity (Subiectität), which were gradually proposed, opposed and finally united in late Scholasticism: a combination of the Aristotelian (Peripatetic) philosophical concept of subjectivity (subjecthood) based on the relationships between hypokeimenon and accidents; and the Augustinian theological concept based on the relationship between ousia and hypostases, the cohabitation of the three hypostases, their mutual immanence, and the hypostatic alliance of the dual nature of Christ. Heidegger’s Subiectität will have historical value only if we believe that it includes two competing components inherited from late ancient philosophy and theology — hypokeimenon and hypostasis — that will then allow us to understand the modern version of subject as a “connecting bridge,” a transdisciplinary entity. This concept is a compromise for connecting two conceptual schemes: inherence and attribution. It defines what is required to be a subject in terms of subjecthood; however, it formulates what is proper to an I or ego, or to being an agent of thought and will, in terms of personality as a “combined center of choice and action” characterized by intentionality and spontaneity. Descartes never subscribed to an all-encompassing concept that places personality, identity, ego and causality under the single rubric of “subjecthood.” Before becoming decentralized, the subject had to become “centered.” It was to become the “center” of perception, the “center” of acting and enduring. The outlines of this concept were set in the Middle Ages.

Bad Blood

In his landmark essay “Freedom and Resentment,” the philosopher Peter Strawson coined the term “reactive attitude” to refer to our emotional reactions to wrongdoing or acts of goodwill in the context of social relationships, such as your resentment toward a person who wronged you or gratitude toward a person who did you a favor. These emotional reactions, Strawson argued, are beneficial because they serve to uphold the standards of our moral community. Strawson didn’t take an official stance on whether hatred can perform a similar beneficial role. But subsequently, a number of thinkers have argued that it serves no worthwhile purpose. In terms of safeguarding our moral ideals, we are better off without it. Hate is frowned upon because of its close ties to vengeance. Vengeful hate is dehumanizing. But, this chapter argues, vengeance is not essential to hate. Without it, hate can be a gateway to moral vision.

Obrigação, autoridade e demanda moral

O artigo discute a relação entre obrigação e autoridade moral a partir da pressuposição endossada por Peter Strawson, R. Jay Wallace e Stephen Darwall de que moralidade se constitui como um contexto normativo relacional. Depois de destacar o problema, analiso o papel preponderante que culpa moral e atitudes reativas negativas possuem para determinar aquilo que constitui a erradez moral de uma ação. Isso posto, abordarei os tipos de obrigação moral que podemos extrair deste modelo e sua relação com o que chamarei de coeficiente de autoridade. Por fim, questiono o resultado dessa relação e apresento considerações que desafiam essa estratégia.

Introduction

Gottlob Frege and Bertand Russell are widely regarded as the founders of analytic philosophy. A longer list also includes G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This is not because analytic philosophers subscribe to Frege’s and Russell’s views about particular philosophical matters. It is hard to think of examples of such agreed-upon views. Rather, Frege’s and Russell’s role as founders is due, before all, to certain methodological ideas which they introduced. Especially important in this regard is the idea that philosophical progress could be achieved by means of the methods of symbolic or mathematical logic to whose development both contributed in important ways. This book, in essence, is an examination of Frege’s and Russell’s methodological and logical ideas and their further development and transformation by certain other philosophers, especially Ludwig Wittgenstein, but also Rudolf Carnap and Peter Strawson. It is in this sense a book on methodology in analytic philosophy. And although the book assumes the form of the examination of the history of analytic philosophy, especially the work of Wittgenstein, it is just as much—or more—about the future of analytic philosophy. The underlying question that motivates this book is what analytic philosophy could be or become, and whether it is possible for it to redeem its original promise of progress. For it seems fair to say that progress has been less impressive than Russell promised and more controversial than he may have expected (see ...

¿Las mujeres son más sensibles frente al maltrato animal? Experiencias entorno a la aplicación de la Ley 1774 desde 2016 hasta 2018

La presente investigación intenta dar una justificación al aparente mayor interés que tienen las mujeres por los casos de maltrato animal en Colombia. Por medio del análisis estadístico de la información obtenidas de los usuarios del Consultorio Jurídico para la Protección de Animales no Humanos –Abogato-, y tomando como base las reflexiones teóricas que realizan en el contexto de la ‘sensibilidad moral’ todo esto esgrimido por Peter Strawson y Ernst Tugendhat.

Introduction

This introduction explains the background for present concerns with a deeper understanding and defense of basic norms of plan rationality, both synchronic and diachronic. It gives an overview of the defense adumbrated in these essays: one that involves but goes beyond appeal to pragmatic benefits of general forms of practical thinking involved in our planning agency. A central idea is that these planning norms track conditions of a planning agent’s self-governance, both synchronic and diachronic. The reflective significance of this tracking thesis depends on an end of one’s self-governance over time. While this end is not essential to agency, it is a rationally self-sustaining keystone of a stable reflective equilibrium involving basic planning norms. It is thereby in a position to play a role in our planning framework that is analogous to the role of concern with quality of will in the framework of reactive attitudes, as understood by Peter Strawson.

On the Possibility of a Disembodied Mind

Even though the Cartesian mind-body dualism has largely been dismissed in contemporary philosophy, the idea that the conscious mind can be a bodiless and non-spatial entity is still held to be possible. This paper examines a series of arguments by Jaegwon Kim, Peter Strawson, and Immanuel Kant against the possibility of a disembodied mind. It is argued that although the concept of a disembodied mind is coherent, it derives from a more fundamental concept in which the mind and the body are originally unified. The unity of mind and body, which can be called a person, is logically prior to the concept of the mind as a disembodied person, and thus the possibility of a disembodied mind turns out to depend on the existence of the physical and spatial world.

Towards a Social Conception of Persons

This Chapter examines three sources of motivation for individualistic conceptions of persons (responsibility, identity, and practical rationality), all of which are in conceptual tension with the sorts of authority we can have over each other. We can relieve this tension in part by following Peter Strawson in understanding responsibility to depend on “human communities”—communities of respect by which we hold each other responsible to certain norms and so to certain practices or way of life. Yet the authority by which we hold others responsible presupposes the worth not only of the norms but also of the agent and the one holding her to those norms. We can understand such worth, it is suggested, in terms of communities of respect—in terms of its members’ joint respect for each other and for its norms and practices.