Recent Responses

I've been trying to learn a bit about communitarian philosophy, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. The thrust of the line of thinking seems to be that individuals are socially constituted beings and that the community should therefore be the focal unit of ethical and political action, rather than the individual (which is what is advocated by the liberal theorists communitarians criticize). That is, at least, the impression I'm getting. I may be confused, but there seems to be a problem here. Communitarians seem to want to exclude contingent "lifestyle enclaves" from their thought, defining community instead in geographical, historical and familial terms - i.e. communities we can't escape being defined into, no matter how hard we might try. But just because a person is part of a particular racial, geographical, linguistic and socioeconomic community does not mean logically imply that that community is the best place for them to flourish in the way they desire. What does communitarian thought have to say about people who don't want to participate in their communities, or who wish to live in ways that are at odds with the practices of their communities? Is the desire to flourish in ways not valued by one's community pathological in communitarian thought, even if the way a person may want to live is not harmful?

Charles Taliaferro April 1, 2012 (changed April 1, 2012) Permalink Excellent set of concerns! The history of communitarianism is a bit complex; the term was first introduced by a German sociologist F. Tonnies (d1936), but the term did not really get a lot of philosophical attention until we get the mature work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. I s... Read more

If an intellectual who publicly advocates for justice and claims to practice fair ethics commits a plainly unjust act (e.g. if it's a professor, sexual harassment and assault of a student), does that discredit the merits of his work?

Charles Taliaferro April 1, 2012 (changed April 1, 2012) Permalink I wager that most philosophers would say 'no.' In fact, the term "genetic fallacy" is used when someone seeks to discredit a view due to its origin (or genesis) and if you were to say some professor's philosophy lacks merit because he assaults a student, you would probably be told that you... Read more

Could someone please explain to me what Sartre meant by "negating the absolute."

Douglas Burnham March 31, 2012 (changed March 31, 2012) Permalink Unfortunately, this is not a uniquephrase in Sartre, and neither 'negation' or 'absolute' refer only tosingular moments in his thinking. So, we probably need theexact citation in order to help you. However, one possibility is thatthis is a description of the relationship between the in-itsel... Read more

When playing games, be they sports, board games, video games or what have you, there are almost always fixed rules, and violating these rules is usually accepted to be illegal within the game. However, there are also often informal rules of good sportsmanship and fair play which would prohibit certain kinds of behavior. However, such informal rules aren't explicitly a part of the game, and it seems that violating them is still within the rules of the game. If a person participates in a game, expecting good sportsmanship of some kind or another, but is instead treated to a game where their opponents demonstrate poor sportsmanship, is it within the player's rights to complain about that poor sportsmanship? Has the player been wronged? It seems that on the one hand, in consensually participating in a game without explicit rules of conduct punishing poor sportsmanship, the player has set themselves up for a situation in which they have no right to complain. On the other hand, it seems entirely reasonable for a person to expect good sportsmanship on the part of all players involved (unless the individual players are known for poor sportsmanship, but let's assume that isn't the case). So how legitimate are complaints about poor sportsmanship?

Oliver Leaman March 29, 2012 (changed March 29, 2012) Permalink They are legitimate since implicit rules are important too. If we all play as though the rules of sportsmanship are being observed and someone does not, then he or she gains an unfair advantage and others can rightly object. It is all a matter of establishing an even playing field, and if there... Read more

A website I came across reads: "Can I Kiss You?" Ask any woman and she will tell you – a man should NEVER "ask" for a kiss. Asking for a kiss goes against EVERYTHING a woman is looking for in a man… you may as well just tell her right there that you are a BOY. Her answer might be "yes" if she is being polite… but her attraction meter on the inside will read a firm, "No!" Now assuming this is true--------Aren't women essentially demanding that men are supposed to risk a violation of their boundaries during the courtship ritual? According to academically sanctioned feminists (most of whom are ironically put in place by the predominantly male controllers of the universities) "unwanted sexual attention" is always a problem that men impose on women unfairly. People who advocate for men's rights (who are actually trying to help women realize their true powers) say that actually women's courtship demands often require that men take a risk that might be unwanted and that the expectation that men always read women's needs perfectly is a throwback to patriarchal values which vertically assesses men in terms of how "good they are with women" as if women were creatures that had to be manipulated rather than engaged with in terms of a mutual form of relating. Can't we address issues like "sexual harassment" while also asking that women need to change their behaviors and expectations as well?

Richard Heck March 29, 2012 (changed March 29, 2012) Permalink I guess I'm wondering why we should assume any such thing is true. Frankly, the website where I found that advice sounds like it's trying to explain precisely how to manipulate women. So the rest of the questions just don't seem to arise. And why believe there is any such thing as "women's cour... Read more

I have read that authors such as Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler write in such a way as to intimidate or subdue the reader into accepting what they have to say, using rhetorical techniques as well as obfuscation. The accusation that Derrida practiced "obscurantisme terroriste" is a good example of the kind of accusation I'm talking about; Martha Nussbaum made a somewhat similar critique of Judith Butler, and there are several other such instances besides. The core idea seems to be that these writers write using disjointed, heavy-handed rhetoric and difficult-to-decipher prose in order to discourage the reader from challenging their ideas. What do you think? As someone who is not a professional philosopher, I sometimes find myself hard pressed to distinguish between things I am not equipped to understand and things that are actively trying to make me stop trying to understand and simply submit. Do the authors named above engage in such practices, and if so, to what extent? Are there others guilty of such behavior as well?

Douglas Burnham March 29, 2012 (changed March 29, 2012) Permalink I really do not believe that any of the philosophers you mentionseek to 'bully' others in their writing, or to achieve the submissionof their readers. We are all human, so no doubt there areoccasionally misjudged attacks to be found in everyone, but I don'tbelieve these philosophers make it a... Read more

Why is Schiller's reductio ad absurdum of Kant's argument considered unfair: “I like to serve my friends but unfortunately I do so by inclination. And so I am bothered by the thought that I am not virtuous. There is no other way but this! You must seek to despise them. And do with repugnance what duty bids you.” Kant does argue that for an action to have moral worth and elicit our moral esteem it must be done from duty and not from inclination. Surely then, because Schiller serves his friends by inclination and not from duty, according to Kant he is not virtuous?

Douglas Burnham March 29, 2012 (changed March 29, 2012) Permalink It is unfair for two reasons, at least.First of all, a moral action for Kant is one that is motivated byduty, however, it may be in accordance with inclination. These twomotivations, that is, may be in agreement as to their 'direction'.The better the world is in terms of its moral organisatio... Read more

I was recently reading about the potential effects of violent media, such as film, on people. I noticed that the effects of film were being condemned using language that was rather utilitarian. Such films are said to be problematic because that kind of influence could cause the spectator to become violent and harm others in the future. However, this kind of argument seems, to me, to be remarkably similar to virtue ethics - where it is wrong to cultivate the wrong kind of character (in this case, a violent character). It would seem the wrongness of cultivating certain kinds of character stems precisely from the kind of influence that character has on its surroundings, which actually sounds rather consequentialist. So I wonder, is virtue ethics really just utilitarian ethics, but with a focus on the person performing the action rather than on the potential victims? Or is there more to it than that?

Bette Manter March 28, 2012 (changed March 28, 2012) Permalink This is a wonderful question, deserving of many responses, so let mine be brief. I would suggest that because a virtuous character is deemed to be the desired telos of human being, it is a type of consequentialism, but it is not utilitarianism. Utility, strictly defined, demands to maximize be... Read more

In scenarios where the metaphorical glass is either half-full or half-empty, so to speak, are there any compelling rational reasons to come down on one side or the other? Or is a person's optimism or pessimism just a character trait independent of rational thought?

Bette Manter March 28, 2012 (changed March 28, 2012) Permalink Thank you Andrew, for this thoughtful response. I have been wanting to respond with notions of false dichotomies and the like, but yours is far more probing and engaging. In my thought world, however, when someone asks me if the glass is half-empty or half-full (as my academic dean did once!)... Read more

Has anyone written about platonism with regard to emotions? I know that philosophers have written about platonism with respect to beauty and love, and while those are not proper emotions (at least, beauty is not an emotion), experiences of them certainly involve emotion. Has anyone written about platonism regarding, say, sadness? Couldn't a state of affairs be considered, in Plato's language, an instantiation of the form of sad events? Given the role of emotion in moral reasoning and love and appreciation of beauty, it isn't clear to me why platonism wouldn't apply to other instances of emotions.

Charles Taliaferro March 24, 2012 (changed March 24, 2012) Permalink There have been a number of philosophers in the Platonic tradition who have attended to sadness and the whole order of emotions in terms of proper pleasure and pain. You can find the latter in Aristotle, and more explicitly in Augustine's idea that there is an ideal order of love (ordo am... Read more

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