Philosophy Commons^™

Nietzsche, Virtue, And The Horror Of Existence, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

Robert Solomon argues that Nietzsche is committed to a virtue ethic like Aristotle's. Solomon’s approach seems unaware of Nietzsche’s belief in the horror of existence. A life that contains as much suffering as Nietzsche expects a life to contain, could not be considered a good life by Aristotle. To go further, as Nietzsche does in his doctrines of eternal recurrence and amor fati, to advocate loving such a fate, to refuse to change the slightest detail, Aristotle would find debased. Nietzsche is committed to a virtue ethic, but not an Aristotelian one.

After Utopia: Three Post-Personal Subjects Consider The Possibilities, Jeffrey P. Cain

English Faculty Publications

Review essay.

The task for those exploring the relationship of Deleuze to cultural issues is not to extend his thought in a straight line, but to swerve or veer into thinking a productive approach to the cultural events that actualise themselves in our time. Cain states that the virtue of these three books is that they do not simply go back to the same old questions; all of them represent departures in thinking in the best sense of the word.

William E. Connolly (2008). Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Alexander García Düttmann (2007). …

Break The Sky: An Exploration Of Ethics With Swords And Superheroes, Kris Miranda

Honors Theses

In an extended piece of speculative fiction (specifically, a cross between the sword-and-sorcery and superhero genres), I try to explore the complexities of ethical deliberation in difficult circumstances. Through my protagonist I also present an “alternative” to Enlightenment ethics. I’ve referred to this alternative as an “ethics of the badass and the beautiful,” a little (but only a little) jokingly. The reason for doing all of this through fiction, and not a conventional philosophical paper, is that I believe my ethical education started in stories, and it’s still in good stories and the creative exploration of concretely realized personalities (as …

A Natural History Of The Mind : Edwards, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Michael Edmund Jonik

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This project examines how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American writers drew on European natural science and philosophy - specifically in terms of concepts of form, perception, and experience - to open new possibilities for thinking the relationship between the mind and the physical world. In each of the moments of American intellectual history here considered - the natural theology of Calvinism, the idealistic natural history of Transcendentalism, and the movement towards an evolutionary process-philosophy of Pragmatism - "place" becomes not only geographical location, but a dynamic field of interactions of natural historical, literary, theological, and philosophical knowledge. I trace this through …

The Archaeology And Translation Of Greek Tragedy : Tragedy And The Emotions, Daniel Edward Gremmler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The history of interpreting Greek tragedy and the emotions is a history of logos. Tragedy, however, is poiēsis and speaks the language of muthos. This project approaches popular interpretations of tragedy and the emotions as problems of translation between various discourses: between Greek and English, past and present, historical and transhistorical, logos and muthos. After identifying the ways in which logos clashes with logos from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and modern classicists, we suggest a new framework through which the emotional effect of tragedy, the tragic pleasure, can be understood: the thaumon and the deinon (wondrous and terrible).

Governmentality, Biopower, And The Debate Over Genetic Enhancement, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Although Foucault adamantly refused to make moral pronouncements or dictate moral principles or political programs to his readers, his work offers a number of tools and concepts that can help us develop our own ethical views and practices. One of these tools is genealogical analysis, and one of these concepts is “biopower.” Specifically, this essay seeks to demonstrate that Foucault’s concept of biopower and his genealogical method are valuable as we consider moral questions raised by genetic enhancement technologies. First, it examines contemporary debate over the development, marketing, and application of such technologies, suggesting that what passes for ethical deliberation …

Intentions And Interpretations: Philosophical Fiction As Conversation, Jukka Mikkonen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Appeals to the actual author's intention in order to legitimate an interpretation of a work of literary narrative fiction have generally been considered extraneous in Anglo-American philosophy of literature since Wimsatt and Beardsley's well-known manifesto from the 1940s. For over sixty years now so-called anti-intentionalists have argued that the author's intentions – plans, aims, and purposes considering her work – are highly irrelevant to interpretation. In this paper, I shall argue that the relevance of the actual author's intentions varies in different approaches to fiction, and suggest that fictions are legitimately interpreted intentionally as conversations in a certain kind of …

Demonstrative Induction And The Skeleton Of Inference, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

It has been common wisdom for centuries that scientific inference cannot be deductive; if it is inference at all, it must be a distinctive kind of inductive inference. According to demonstrative theories of induction, however, important scientific inferences are not inductive in the sense of requiring ampliative inference rules at all. Rather, they are deductive inferences with sufficiently strong premises. General considerations about inferences suffice to show that there is no difference in justification between an inference construed demonstratively or ampliatively. The inductive risk may be shouldered by premises or rules, but it cannot be shirked. Demonstrative theories of induction …

Ciis Today, Fall 2008 Issue, Ciis

CIIS Today

This volume is the Fall 2008 issue of CIIS Today, the Magazine of the California Institute of Integral Studies.

The Methodology Of Musical Ontology: Descriptivism And Its Implications, Andrew Kania

Philosophy Faculty Research

I investigate the widely held view that fundamental musical ontology should be descriptivist rather than revisionary, that is, that it should describe how we think about musical works, rather than how they are independently of our thought about them. I argue that if we take descriptivism seriously then, first, we should be sceptical of art-ontological arguments that appeal to independent metaphysical respectability; and, second, we should give ‘fictionalism’ about musical works—the theory that they do not exist—more serious consideration than it is usually accorded.

Book Review: Nanoethics: The Ethical And Social Implications Of Nanotechnology, Kevin Elliott

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Las Cuestiones Sicilianas De Ibn Sab‘Īn: El Texto, Sus Fuentes Y Su Contexto Histórico, Anna Ayşe Akasoy

Publications and Research

The Sicilian Questions are the earliest pre-served text of the philosopher and Sufi Ibn Sab‘īn of Murcia (c. 614/1217-668/1270). Even though the prologue of the text claims that it is a response to questions sent by Frederick II to the Arab world, it seems more likely that it was an introductory manual for Arab students of philosophy, dealing with four specific and controversial problems as away of presenting general concepts of Aristotelian philosophy. This article analyses the structure and way of argumentation in the Sicilian Questions. Particular attention is being paid to the relationship between mysticism and philosophy and …

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.

Reid's Defense Of Common Sense, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Thomas Reid is often misread as defending common sense, if at all, only by relying on illicit premises about God or our natural faculties. On these theological or reliabilist misreadings, Reid makes common sense assertions where he cannot give arguments. This paper attempts to untangle Reid's defense of common sense by distinguishing four arguments: (a) the argument from madness, (b) the argument from natural faculties, (c) the argument from impotence, and (d) the argument from practical commitment. Of these, (a) and (c) do rely on problematic premises that are no more secure than claims of common sense itself. Yet (b) …

Piece For The End Of Time: In Defence Of Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania

Philosophy Faculty Research

Aaron Ridley has recently attacked the study of musical ontology—an apparently fertile area in the philosophy of music. I argue here that Ridley’s arguments are unsound. There are genuinely puzzling ontological questions about music, many of which are closely related to questions of musical value. While it is true that musical ontology must be descriptive of pre-existing musical practices and that some debates, such as that over the creatability of musical works, have little consequence for questions of musical value, none of this implies that these debates themselves are without value.

Metaphysics Without Pre-Critical Monism: Hegel On Lower-Level Natural Kinds And The Structure Of Reality, James Kreines

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

My focus here is on what Hegel has to say about nature and natural kinds, in ‘Observing Reason’ from the Phenomenology, and also in similar material from the Logic and Encyclopedia. I intend to argue that this material suggests a surprising way of stepping beyond the fundamental debate. There can of course be no question of elaborating and defending here a complete interpretation of Hegel’s entire theoretical philosophy. I will have to restrict myself to arguing for the unlikely conclusion that there is an approach that can combine and integrate the strongest points made by both sides in …

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.

The Philosophy Of Mathematics, Erin Wilding-Martin

Sabbaticals

The philosophy of mathematics considers what is behind the math that we do. What is mathematics? Is it some cosmic truth we discover, or is it created by humans? Do mathematical objects such as numbers and functions really exist, or are they just symbols we have invented? Two of the great debates in the history of mathematical philosophy center around ontology and epistemology. Where did mathematics come from? How do we know that it is true?

Where did mathematics come from? Is it discovered or created? Ontological questions are concerned with the nature and status of mathematical objects. Some people …

Fibs In The Wikipedia (Supplemental Data), P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

These are details of research conducted in November and December 2007. The file is meant as a supplement to publication, and I have not attempted here to provide any analysis of the results

Works, Recordings, Performances: Classical, Rock, Jazz, Andrew Kania

Philosophy Faculty Research

In this essay, I undertake a comparative study of the ontologies of three quite distinct Western musical traditions – classical, rock, and jazz – approached from the unusual angle of their recordings. By the ‘ontology’ of a tradition I mean simply the kinds of things there are in that tradition and the relations that hold between them. A study of this scope is bound to leave many questions unanswered when restricted to this length. The ontology of classical music has been debated in the analytic tradition for close to half a century, and there has been a growing interest in …

Forgetting The Subject, Christa Davis Acampora

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Stephen James On The Challenge Of Human Rights: Origin, Development And Significance By Jack Mahoney. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. 215pp., Stephen James

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Challenge of Human Rights: Origin, Development and Significance by Jack Mahoney. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. 215pp.

Toward A Poeticognosis: Re-Reading Plato's The Republic Via Wallace Stevens' "An Ordinary Evening In New Haven", Dan Disney

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article is a language-based re-reading of Plato's exile of the poets via Wallace Stevens' poem-manifesto, "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven." I examine how philosophy and poetry use language differently in order to deconstruct an origin of the speech-acts -- wonder -- that I then identify as a phenomenological difference between philosophers and poets. I contend that the thinking-into-language of philosophers is based in theoria, comprehension, and a resulting closure of wonder. I contrast this with the processes of poets, who I show to be moving thought into language via gnosis, apprehension, and a phenomenology opening onto …

Not Just Mere Things, Thomas E. Wartenberg

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper examines Arthur Danto's contention, put forward in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, that at a certain point in its history art becomes philosophy. The similarities and differences between Danto's view and the Hegelian one from which it is derived are examined. Using Danto's favorite example of a philosophical work of art, Andy Warhol's Brillo Box (1965), it is argued that a more plausible interpretation of the meaning of the work undermines Danto's claims about art's transformation into philosophy.

Adam Smith And His Sources: The Evil Of Independence, Sandra J. Peart, David M. Levy

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This paper explores the foundations of Adam Smith’s view that the philosopher is the same as the street porter. Despite their innate similarity, Smith recognized that the role of the philosopher, someone who provides useful instruction to fellow humans, is not that of the street porter (Pear and Levy 2005; Schliesser 2005, 2006). He also saw that this potentially useful employment may entail a biased perspective on human conduct. Motivated by matters too distant for ordinary people to notice, the philosopher may come to believe that he is better than those he studies and to regard himself as independent form …

Kerr, William Bugg, 1894-1993 (Sc 1317), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1317. William Bugg Kerr, a Bowling Green, Kentucky educator, businessman and farmer, records his philosophy and his reminiscences, for his family, in his paper titled "The High Road."

Computing Mechanisms, Gualtiero Piccinini

Philosophy Faculty Works

This paper offers an account of what it is for a physical system to be a computing mechanism—a system that performs computations. A computing mechanism is a mechanism whose function is to generate output strings from input strings and (possibly) internal states, in accordance with a general rule that applies to all relevant strings and depends on the input strings and (possibly) internal states for its application. This account is motivated by reasons endogenous to the philosophy of computing, namely, doing justice to the practices of computer scientists and computability theorists. It is also an application of recent literature on …

Will As Commitment And Resolve: An Existential Account Of Creativity, Love, Virtue, And Happiness, John Davenport

Philosophy & Theory

In contemporary philosophy, the will is often regarded as a sheer philosophical fiction. In Will as Commitment and Resolve, Davenport argues not only that the will is the central power of human agency that makes decisions and forms intentions but also that it includes the capacity to generate new motivation different in structure from prepurposive desires.

The concept of "projective motivation" is the central innovation in Davenport's existential account of the everyday notion of striving will. Beginning with the contrast between "eastern" and "western" attitudes toward assertive willing, Davenport traces the lineage of the idea of projective motivation from …

Nietzsche’S Doctrine Of Eternal Return, David R. Gadon

Senior Honors Projects

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche challenges the reader to imagine that every moment of his or her life, every joy and every sorrow, every smile and every tear, will be repeated in exactly the same way from beginning to end. He asks us to envision these things recurring, not one more time, but for all infinity into the past and future alike. Amongst the many revolutionary and profound concepts put forward by the witty and vitriolic Nietzsche, there is none as inscrutable and seemingly inapproachable as this doctrine of eternal return of the same. In just three of his …

The Tragedy Of Death In The Pursuit Of Spiritual Immortality, And The Physician’S Response, Rachel Furman

Senior Honors Projects

Life is a tragedy in the sense that it amounts to one single contradiction: man will die, and knows this, yet he still does not want to die. He thus spends his entire life fighting the battle to survive, though he knows that victory is impossible. That is, victory in the sense of corporeal immortality is impossible – but what happens to the soul? That human soul, which we have come to distinguish from the body by placing it above the temporal world, and equating it with eternity. Belief in immortality, in this case, spiritual immortality, is, according to Miguel …