Philosophy,Early Modern Intellectual History,and the History of Philosophy

Historians of philosophy are increasingly likely to emphasize the extent to which their work offers a pay‐off for philosophers of un‐historical or anti‐historical inclinations; but this defence is less familiar, and often seems less than self‐evident, to intellectual historians. This article examines this tendency, arguing that such arguments for the instrumental value of historical scholarship in philosophy are often more problematic than they at first appear. Using the relatively familiar case study of René Descartes' reading of his scholastic and Aristotelian contemporaries, the article attempts to problematize this notion of pay‐off from an historian's perspective.     

Answerability,Blameworthiness, and History

This paper focuses on a non-volitional account that has received a good deal of attention recently, Angela Smith's rational relations view. I argue that without historical conditions on blameworthiness for the non-voluntary non-volitionist accounts like Smith’s are (i) vulnerable to manipulation cases and (ii) fail to make sufficient room for the distinction between badness and blameworthiness. Towards the end of the paper I propose conditions aimed to supplement these deficiencies. The conditions that I propose are tailored to suit non-volitional accounts of blameworthiness. Unlike some volitional historical conditions on blameworthiness, the conditions that I propose do not require that the person have exercised voluntary control (e.g., via choices or decisions) over the acquisition of her attitudes or values.     

Obligation,Responsibility, and History

I argue that, each of the following, appropriately clarified to yield a noteworthy thesis, is true. (1) Moral obligation can affect moral responsibility. (2) Obligation succumbs to changes in responsibility. (3) Obligation is immune from changes in responsibility.     

History,Theory, and Ideology

This review article argues that the critique of contemporary discourses about religious self-improvement offered by Craig Martin cannot bear the claim that the notion of individual religion must be dropped. On the one hand, comparable phenomena are not restricted to a Western present, and, on the other, they do not disprove the utility of heuristic terms like religion or individualisation. However, a religious semantic of entrepreneurship might be a phenomenon well worth further research.     

Christ, Providence, and History: Hans W. Frei's Public Theology

Books reviewed:
Mike Higton, Christ, Providence, and History: Hans W. Frei's Public Theology. Reviewed by Joseph Mangina Wycliffe College, Toronto     

施特劳斯、斯金纳与政治哲学史的当代相关性

作为当代政治思想史的重要人物,施特劳斯和斯金纳都力图用政治思想史的资源回应现实政治问题.斯金纳倡导在语境中理解政治思想,促进共和主义的当代复兴,施特劳斯则试图在政治哲学文本的历史解读中突显哲学的永恒问题.     

History, Homosexuality and God

An adapted version of a paper given in Oxford at the 1986 conference of Friend. Friend is a national organisation dedicated to the counselling and befriending of homosexuals.     

On A History of Women Philosophers,Vol. I

This book sets higfa standards for itself. Regrettably it fails to meet them: apart from a few displays of thorough and competent research, it is generally based on substandard scholarship.     

History, Human Rights, and Globalization

An illustrative comparison of human rights in 1948 and the contemporary period, attempting to gauge the impact of globalization on changes in the content of human rights (e.g., collective rights, women's rights, right to a healthy environment), major abusers and guarantors of human rights (e.g., state actors, transnational corporations, social movements), and alternative justifications of human rights (e.g., pragmatic agreement, moral intuitionism, overlapping consensus, cross‐cultural dialogue).     

Causality,Action and Effective History. Remarks on Gadamer,von Wright and Others

ABSTRACT

Hermeneutics should take Gadamer’s claims about experience and reality seriously, the hermeneutic urgency, described in the following concise ways:

aus der Wahrheit des Erinnerns etwas entgegensetzen: das immer noch und immer wieder Wirkliche. WuM, p. XXVI