Philosophy Commons^™

High Art, Folk Art, And Other Social Distinctions, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Most discussions of the arts by critics and philosophers could be characterized in terms of a rather studied neglect of folk and popular art. This neglect is hardly absolute, however, for it is important in order to articulate a specific conception of aesthetic taste, beauty, or style to contrast the standard being used or praised with some other, less desirable, even degraded way of producing or appreciating something similar. It is perhaps more than a historical coincidence that the formation of the modern concept of taste and aesthetic judgment, in the eighteenth century, coincides roughly with the discovery and valorization …

To Philosophize Is To Learn To Die, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As the quintessential man of letters, Roland Barthes had the genial gift of being able to sympathize with an endless variety of discourses, texts, myths, and semiotic systems. The profusion of apparent subjects-Japan, Brecht, Balzac, photography, "mythologies," classical writing, the theater-is perhaps calculated to provoke the purist who insists on the values of thoroughness and well-grounded inquiry. At the same time, one would have to be obtuse to fail to recognize the critical projects that animate the many books, essays, and studies; these are explorations that put into question the often closed and crabbed commitment of the scholar or critic …

A Considertation Of Cost-Benefit Analysis In The Context Of Public Policy Decision-Making, Kathleen M. Wong

Honors Theses

Just what is to be understood by the term "cost-benefit analysis" ("benefit-cost analysis")? The question itself arises from a curiosity into how government decisions (which affect all) are made. This paper gives an elementary discussion of constitutive parts, raising and responding to some initial criticisms. It seems fairly evident, unneedful of additional explanation or elaboration. The individual on the street would simply declare that it sounded like some rather ordinary decision-making process which involved the consideration of the costs and benefits incurred by the paths of action that might be selected. "Ordinary" means accessible to anyone and not the exclusive …

Warcraft And The Fragility Of Virtue, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

There is much talk currently about virtue and virtues, and this, I suppose, is all to the good. But if the current debate aspires to be more than an academic exercise, it needs to show how discussion of the virtues makes a difference in moral philosophy. Any serious alternative to the status quo should satisfy the following three conditions: It should involve a shift in the fundamental vocabulary of ethics; it should reorder, if not reject, some of the emphases and priorities found in the status quo; and finally, it should issue in a reevaluation of specific acts and policies …

Canons, Careers, And Campfollowers: Randall And The Historiography Of Philosophy, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

For some very good reasons John Herman Randall, Jr. saw himself as an innovator and a deviant within the discourse that is called the history of philosophy. In an early chapter of The Career of Philosophy he pronounces this characteristically salty judgment on the main tendency of such work:

The history of philosophy, in truth, since German professors captured it and made it the handmaiden of academic advancement, has been a rigid tradition. Philosophy began with Thales, it falls neatly into Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, and it culminates in the men now writing for your favorite philosophical journal, God forgive …

Objectivity And Aesthetic Judgment, Glenn Poskocil

Honors Theses

Where do we draw the line between what is and is not a work of art? and, how are we to distinguish between so called "good" and "bad" works of art? There is a tendency to blur the distinction between these questions because they seem, in certain senses, to be inextricably bound to one another. It is not uncommon, for instance, to hear someone praise something by referring to it as a "work of art," yet most of us agree that not all works of art are "good," even in the aesthetic sense. Too often this distinction is muddled by …

An Ancient Quarrel In Hegel’S Phenomenology, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The Phenomenology of Spirit has been in rich and equal measures a source of both frustration and fascination to its readers. Coming to it from the more conventional texts of our tradition (even including Hegel's later writings) readers have been puzzled, first, by the structure of the Phenomenology. Despite his suggestions that he is following an actual historical development of some sort Hegel will pass from the Terror of 1793-94 to prehistoric religions of nature, or from Kantian universality in morality to the life of the Greek polis. In addition the Phenomenology contains a vast number of allusions to particular …

Gadamer, Habermas And The Death Of Art, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Since the appearance of Jurgen Habermas's critical review of Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method [Wahrheit und Methode], there has been talk of the ‘Gadamer-Habermas debate' among those who are interested in the nature of historical understanding and social rationality. More recently a number of philosophers have come to see that the issues involved are of wider scope, and that the opposition of the two can be seen as emblematic of two very general styles or approaches to philosophy, which are at the centre of contemporary discussion. As one might expect, differences at fundamental levels concerning truth and understanding …

British Hermeneutics And The Genesis Of Empiricism, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In an essay of 1961, "The History of Philosophy and Historicity," Paul Ricoeur has suggested that the narratives which we construct of the history of philosophy tend either toward excessive integration or disintegration. On the first alternative we tend to view the history of philosophy, or a segment of it, as a succession of systems understood from the perspective of that system closest to our own philosophical inclinations; on the second alternative we tend toward a dispersive attention toward specific problems, thinkers, and texts. Neither approach is satisfying, but Ricoeur maintains that in the history of philosophy, as contrasted to …

The Man Of Letters And The Author Of Nature: Hume On Philosophical Discourse, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Recent philosophy in the English language manifests a concern with the status and nature of the philosophical text which seems virtually unprecedented in Anglo-American thought. The very suggestion that the concept of the philosophical text ought to be taken seriously by philosophers (as opposed to publishers or literary historians) appears to be a recent addition to our world of discourse. For in the dominant tradition of Anglo-American philosophy, the philosophical enterprise has usually been construed as an open-ended inquiry, a posing and sharpening of questions, counter-questions, objections, and refutations in which the important thing is doing philosophy. So far this …

From The Sublime To The Political: Some Historical Notes, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Let me document my suggestion that modernist poetics tends to give a privileged position to what has traditionally been known as the sublime by adducing two examples from rather disparate traditions. Martin Heidegger's ontological poetics can reasonably be viewed as a renewal of the aesthetics of the sublime -- although Heidegger never uses the term sublime, so far as I know -- and is explicitly hostile to the limitations of aesthetics, conceived as an autonomous study of a certain kind of experience. Harold Bloom does recur to the Romantic terminology of sublimity in his attempt to construct a poetics which …

Nietzschean Aphorism As Art And Act, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Nietzsche is commonly said to be an aphoristic writer, perhaps the master of the aphorism. Yet it is not clear what is entailed by this stylistic designation or how far it takes us in understanding Nietzsche's thought and writing. It is a mistake to see Nietzsche's writings as exclusively aphoristic, if this is meant to imply that his writings lack philosophical and literary structure. Certainly sections of those books (conveniently numbered and titled) can be regarded as independent aphorisms (if aphorisms are ever independent, a question which must be assessed). In fact the long third essay of The Genealogy of …

Peirce And Derrida On First And Last Things, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The movement of philosophical ideas across national and linguistic borders, especially in these days of international conferences, is notoriously slower than the physical movements of philosophers themselves. When rumblings of new names or new ideas come from afar, there is a rather predictable but unphilosophical tendency to claim that the putative new thoughts are either old hat, trivial or absurd; this trichotomy is not much of an improvement on the older positivistic dichotomy of tautologically trivial or merely empirical. Jacques Derrida is a philosopher of some eminence in France who has generally been subjected to such treatment by English-speaking philosophers, …

[Introduction To] Hermeneutics: Questions And Prospects, Gary Shapiro, Alan Sica

Bookshelf

The essays in this collection are meant to be representative both of the current work on the nature of interpretation and of the necessity for such work to go beyond narrow disciplinary interests. Several individuals and institutions aided in bringing the essays together. Since a 1981 conference, many of these papers have been revised to take into account the exchange of views that took place. The other essays in the book are intended to reflect the broad range of hermeneutical alternatives that are now being actively explored.

Nietzsche On Envy, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

A recent newspaper story suggests a significant change in the attitude of some baseball fans. While the phenomenon of harassment of players from the stands is not new, there seems to be a new spirit behind the hurling of bottles and other dangerous debris. Whereas such attacks were once motivated by scorn for poor performance or by a violent enthusiasm for the opposing team, spectators are now also apparently moved by envy. They are, according to a number of sportswriters, jealous and resentful of the high salaries and prestige of professional ballplayers. No doubt envy is an ancient phenomenon, but …

Some Genres Of Post-Hegelian Philosophy, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

There are a number of important texts, sometimes treated as philosophical and sometimes as literary works, which do not usually find an appropriate audience. Paradigms of what I have in mind are: Kierkegaard's pseudonymous writings, almost all of Nietzsche, Marx's narratives of capital and class-struggle, Sartre's complex series of fictions, plays, treatises, critical performances and autobiography, and Heidegger's hypnotic meditations and textual exegeses. Responses by philosophers, especially Anglo-American ones, seldom take account of the specific literary forms of these works or of their authors’ very self-conscious concern with the problems and strategies of writing. It is true that the texts …

Nietzsche Contra Renan, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

I mean by the title of this essay to allude to Nietzsche Contra Wagner and thereby to suggest the use which Nietzsche made of Renan in formulating some of his most distinctive thoughts. More specifically I suggest that Nietzsche's later view of history, especially as expressed in The Genealogy of Morals and The Antichrist, is a critique and parody of Renan's History of the Origins of Christianity. (I speak deliberately of Nietzsche's "view of history" rather than his "philosophy of history" because the latter phrase contains too many associations which Nietzsche's view rejects.) What is at issue is not a …

The Preferential Hiring Of Women As Compensatory Justice, Carolyn W. Nicander

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Harm, Utility, And The Obligation To Obey The Law, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In a recent essay, "Political Obligation", R. M. Hare sets out a utilitarian account of the obligation to obey the law which he believes to be immune to an objection often brought against such accounts. In what follows I shall briefly review this objection and Professor Hare's response to it; than I shall go on to argue that Hare's response, ingenious as it is, fails to defeat the objection. Hare's argument is instructive nonetheless, for its failure tells us something about wrongs and harm as well as utility and political obligation.

Understanding The General Will, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

While I do not accept all of these rationalistic readings of the general will, I do share the general conviction that we can make sense of Rousseau's concept, and his argument, without resorting to metaphysics or psychology. What I shall offer here, accordingly, is in some respects only a variation on a theme now well known to students of Rousseau's political philosophy. It is an important variation nonetheless, for it enables us to reconcile passages in the Social Contract which otherwise appear to be contradictory. That, at least, is what I shall argue in this essay.

Peirce's Critique Of Hegel's Phenomenology And Dialectic, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Although Peirce clearly and repeatedly stated his intention to construct a philosophical system, each of his attempts in that direction is at best fragmentary and some are ultimately incoherent. The ambiguities of Peirce's cosmology, his theory of meaning and his conception of truth cannot be avoided by anyone who carefully considers his own "guess at the riddle." Rather than cataloguing these puzzles, I hope to give at least a partial account of why they remain in the work of a philosopher who was avowedly systematic, possessed great analytic and synthetic powers, and had an acute sense of the physiognomy of …

Nietzsche's Graffito: A Reading Of The Antichrist, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Even those writers who have good things to say about Nietzsche usually do not have good things to say abut his penultimate book, The Antichrist. Like Ecce Homo it is often described as at least prefiguring Nietzsche's madness if not (as is sometimes the case) said to be part of that desperate glide itself. Those inclined to reject the book may be encouraged in this view by Nietzsche's statement to Brandes, in November 1888, that The Antichrist is the whole of The Transvaluation of All Values (originally announced as a series of four books) and that Ecce Homo is its …

Styling Nietzsche: A Review Essay Of Jacques Derrida Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Any examination of a text by Derrida challenges us to begin with an inquiry into its style. ''The Question of Style" was in fact the originally announced title of this essay which Derrida has since changed to Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles (Èperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche). Style is often regarded as a somewhat extraneous aspect of the philosophical enterprise; it is thought to be a variable form or container which may obstruct our comprehension of the matter or spirit of philosophical communication. Now it is well known that Derrida's whole enterprise involves a challenge to the "logocentric" tradition of philosophy according …

Peirce And Hegel On Absolute Meaning, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

When Peirce's philosophy is approached in terms of his theory of meaning, it is usual to think of the connections between the pragmatic maxim and the more reductive accounts of classical empiricism or modern operationalism. The point of this paper is to suggest that this angle of approach is narrow and makes several aspects of Peirce's philosophy difficult to understand; on the positive side, I want to show how both the glories and miseries of Peirce's philosophical endeavor are thrown into high relief by noting his affinities and breaks with Hegel's dialectical theory of meaning. Peirce himself often pointed to …

Reading And Writing In The Text Of Hobbes's Leviathan, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Critics have often suggested that Hobbes is a paradigm case of a philosopher whose own style of writing violates the norms he sets down for rational discourse. Philosophy, he says, "professedly rejects not only the paint and false colors of language, but even the very ornaments and graces of the same." More specifically he says that metaphors must be "utterly excluded" from "the rigorous search of truth ... seeing they openly professe deceit, to admit them into counsel, or reasoning, were manifested folly.” Nevertheless, attention focuses on his flair for the dramatic or metaphorical, as in the great mise en …

Restitution, Punishment, And Debts To Society, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Of the many developments in the area of criminal justice over the last twenty years or so, the rediscovery of the victim may well be the most heartening. This rediscovery has produced both a new field of study, victimology, and a number of interesting programs and proposals that aim to redress the injuries suffered by the victims of crime. To this point, however, the rediscovery of the victim has not worked a fundamental transformation of our system of criminal justice. The question I wish to address here is whether it should do so.

Notes On The Animal Kingdom Of The Spirit, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

One of the more neglected chapters of Hegel's Phenomenology, which contains neither the obvious drama of the master and slave dialectic nor the deep enigmas of the final pages on absolute knowledge, carries the somewhat puzzling title Das geistige Tierrefrh und der Bertrug oder die Sache selbst. Of the major commentators on Hegel only Lukács has suggested its central place in the design of the whole: Kojéve and Lowenberg (following Royce) have suggested vivid readings of it as an analysis of the conflicts and jealousies of intellectual, artistic, and professional work. What follows is a series of remarks and variations …

The Owl Of Minerva And The Colors Of The Night, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

What I wish to do, however, is to call attention to the manner in which Hegel speaks of Minerva's owl and to juxtapose both the manner and the substance of his thought about the twilight of philosophy and civilization with some of Hölderlin's dichterisch and Heidegger's denkerisch meditations on similar themes. For if Hegel has announced the coming of the night, Hölderlin and Heidegger have sought to make the night their very own territory and to comprehend it from within. If Hegel has rather gingerly allowed himself to lapse into that famous figurative discourse of the owl and the gray …

Hegel's Dialectic Of Artistic Meaning, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Whatever else they are, works of art are intentional human products. Our responses to such works are understandings and interpretations. That the works are or may be physical objects, cultural symptoms, or commodities and that audiences may be shocked, sexually excited, or politically instructed are irrelevant to the cognitive poles of intention and interpretation; these make art philosophically significant and differentiate it from that which has no meaning, despite possible similarities in apparent structure or emotional effect. Cognitivist theories of art usually tend to focus rather exclusively on just one of the two poles which characterize art so conceived - …

Hegel On The Meanings Of Poetry, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Since Socrates' attack on poetry, philosophers and critics have been faced with the problem of reconciling two convictions which seem equally pressing. While poetry (or imaginative literature) is and has been valued as a source of insight and knowledge, it also seems clear that poetic meaning is of a rather different sort than that found in science, ordinary language, or (to introduce the classical contrast) prose. Philosophical theories of poetry, then, take one of two forms: either they deny one of these two beliefs, implying perhaps that poetry has only nonsensical or literal meaning, or they provide a cognitive analysis …