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Themistius As A Commentator On Aristotle: Understanding And Appreciating His Conception Of 'Nous Pathetikos' And 'Phantasia', Myrna Gabbe

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Themistius is not only a commentator on Aristotle; he is also one of our main sources of Theophrastus on the intellect. Hence, it is important to understand how he approaches and reads texts. It is my view that care and rigor are reflected in his treatment of nous pathêtikos. In this paper, I argue that Themistius postulates a third intellect whose job is to discern enmattered forms-i.e., sensible particulars-on the reasonable assumption that the productive and potential intellects are responsible solely for our contemplation of un-enmattered forms. As such, the passive intellect is responsible for what Aristotle calls incidental …

On The Concept Of A Morally Relevant Harm, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this paper I explicate and defend the concept of a morally relevant harm. This concept figures prominently in common-sense and contractualist moral reasoning concerning cases where an agent can prevent harm to members of a large group or a small one, but not both. When the two harms to which members of these groups are exposed are morally relevant to one another, an agent is permitted (or perhaps required) to take into account the number of people he can save. When the harms are irrelevant, an agent should not even consider preventing the lesser harm, regardless of how many …

Traditional Culture And Global Commodification, Albert Borgmann

Philosophy Faculty Publications

We can think of technology and Christianity as competing forms of life. Technology promises a life of ever greater liberty and prosperity where liberty is the liberation from the limits and burdens of the human condition and prosperity is the variety and refinement of pleasures. Christianity bears the good news of salvation, the assurance that the coming of Christ has enabled us to live a life of grace and love that is affirmed by eternal life in the presence of God.

Mead And The International Mind, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this paper I analyze the conceptions of internationalism and the international mind that Mead uses in "The Psychological Bases of Internationalism" (1915); in his 1917 Chicago Herald columns defending U.S. entry into the war; in Mind, Self, and Society (1934); and in "National- Mindedness and International Mindedness" (1929). I show how the terms "internationalism" and "the international mind" arose within conversations among some Anglo-American thinkers. While Mead employs these terms in his own philosophical and sociological theorizing, he draws their meaning from these conversations and does not generate their meaning from within his own theorizing. This places Mead among …

Simone Weil's Spiritual Critique Of Modern Science: An Historical-Critical Assessment, Joseph K. Cosgrove

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This paper evaluates Simone Weil's philosophy and theology of science from the perspective of an historical phenomenology of science.

The Responsibility Of Thinking In Dark Times: Hannah Arendt Versus Hans Jonas, Lawrence A. Vogel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Digital Law Vs. Analog Lawyers, Albert Borgmann

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Lawyers are conflicted and confused about the role technology plays in their lives, and their attempts at clarification that I’m familiar with have been thoughtful for the most part, but not successful. Most lawyers do understand that technology can be a problem either as the subject or as the background of their practice. It’s their subject when they litigate issues of electronic surveillance or copyright infringements on the Internet. It’s the background of their practice when they use a computer, a cell phone, or PowerPoint.

Emmanuel Levinas And The Judaism Of The Good Samaritan, Lawrence A. Vogel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Cover Songs: Ambiguity, Multivalence, Polysemy, Kurt Mosser

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The notion of a “cover song” is central to an understanding of contemporary popular music, and has certainly received its share of attention in writing about contemporary music, from the mainstream press to slightly more technical ethnomusicological studies such as “Cross-Cultural ‘Countries’: Covers, Conjuncture, and the Whiff of Nashville in Música Sertaneja (Brazilian Commercial Country Music)” (Dent, 2005). In many major U.S. cities, musicians make a living in “cover” bands, recreating the music of well-known groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, U 2, the Who, ABBA, the Dave Matthews Band, the Grateful Dead, and others. Consumers …

Necessity And Possibility: The Logical Strategy Of Kant's 'Critique Of Pure Reason', Kurt Mosser

Philosophy Faculty Publications

If logic provides rules for thought, can there be similar rules for human experience? Kurt Mosser argues that reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as an argument for such a logic of experience makes more defensible many of Kant's most controversial claims, and makes more accessible Kant's notoriously difficult text. By pursuing this strategic hint, Kant's philosophical claims about human experience are seen as extraordinarily strong―as universal and necessary―but only as providing the conditions for experience to be possible. Thus, just as logic does not determine what thoughts are about, logic of experience does not determine the content of experience. …

Pornography, Contemporary-Mainstream, Rebecca Whisnant

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Once a relatively small‐niche market, pornography in recent years has become a mainstream, technologically sophisticated multi‐billion‐dollar industry, one that plays a significant role in shaping our ideas about gender and sexuality. Like many complex and politically contested concepts, pornography can be defined in a number of different ways. While some defined pornography simply as any sexually explicit written or graphic material, others include additional criteria, such as that the material be produced for the purpose of sexually arousing its audience or that the material convey certain (typically sexist and degrading) ideas and attitudes about women, men, and sexuality. While these …

Theophrastus And The Intellect As Mixture, Myrna Gabbe

Philosophy Faculty Publications

De Anima III 5 introduces one of Aristotle’s most perplexing doctrines. In this short and obscure chapter, Aristotle distinguishes between an intellect that becomes all things, the so-called potential intellect, and an intellect that makes all things, the so-called productive intellect (430a14-15). It is generally held that the intellect that becomes all things is described in De Anima III 4, since Aristotle there tells us that the intellect knows by becoming its objects (429a15-18). This intellect has acquired the title “potential intellect” since it must be potentially the objects of thought in order to become and think the objects of …

Radicalism And Cultural Dislocation In Ethiopia, 1960-1974, Messay Kebede

Philosophy Faculty Publications

During the 1960s and early 1970s, a majority of Ethiopian students and intellectuals adopted a Marxist-Leninist ideology with fanatic fervor. The leading force in an uprising against the imperial regime of Emperor Haile Selassie, they played a decisive role in the rise of a Leninist military regime. In this original study, Messay Kebede examines the sociopolitical and cultural factors that contributed to the radicalization of the educated elite in Ethiopia, and how this phenomenon contributed to the country's uninterrupted political crises and economic setbacks since the Revolution of 1974.

Offering a perspective garnered from his direct participation in the student …

Apriority From The 'Grundlage' To The 'System Of Ethics', Sebastian Rand

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Husserl, Jacob Klein, And Symbolic Nature, Joseph K. Cosgrove

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This paper examines Husserl's later philosophy of science in light of Jacob Klein's work in the history of mathematics and in the context of 20th-century "spacetime" physics.

Adam Smith And The Stages Of Moral Development, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The writer explores Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, where Smith presents a rich and provocative account of morality. The writer offers an explication of Smith's moral psychology as a stage theory of moral development, with the intention of generating critical points on both mattes of detail and larger implications.

Collateral Damage, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The phrase "collateral damage" refers to harm done to persons, animals, or things that agents are not morally permitted to target in the conduct of war, as a side effect of attacks on persons, animals, or things that agents are morally permitted to target in the conduct of war. Call the first category that is, those persons, animals, or things that agents are not morally permitted to target - illegitimate targets of war, and the second category legitimate targets of war. Collateral damage, then, refers to harm done to illegitimate targets of war as a side effect of attacks on …

On The Foundation Of Rights To Political Self-Determination: Secession, Non-Intervention, And Democratic Governance, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

From a justificatory standpoint, perhaps the most basic question with respect to secession is what, if anything, provides the moral foundation for a group’s right to secede. My aim here is to make a start to answering this question. I do so, however, by considering a different, albeit closely related, question, namely what is the nature of the wrong done to members of a qualified group denied secession by the state that currently rules them? A compelling answer to this latter question, I suggest, will contribute significantly to a satisfactory answer of the former one.

(Dis)Solving The Chronological Paradox In Customary International Law: A Hartian Approach, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As traditionally conceived, the creation of a new rule of customary international law requires that states believe the law to already require the conduct specified in the rule. Distinguishing the process whereby a customary rule comes to exist from the process whereby that customary rule becomes law dissolves this chronological paradox. Creation of a customary rule requires only that states come to believe that there exists a normative standard to which they ought to adhere, not that this standard is law. What makes the customary rule law is adherence by officials in the international legal system to a rule of …

Assassins And Crusaders: Nietzsche After 9/11, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Nietzsche describes his four Unzeitgemiisse Betrachtungen as Attentate, assassination attempts. The first of these, his self-described "duel" with David Friedrich Strauss, published in 1873, begins with the question of war and time. It is untimely or out of season insofar as it challenges the smugness of the cultural philistines who take Germany's victory in the Franco-Prussian War to be a testament to the superiority of German culture. As those in the United States might have learned after the end of the Cold War and after the first Gulf War, "a great victory is a great danger," and we might …