Hypocrisy as Either Deception or Akrasia

The intuitive, folk concept of hypocrisy is not a unified moral category. While many theorists hold that all cases of hypocrisy involve some form of deception, I argue that this is not the case. Instead, I argue for a disjunctive account of hypocrisy whereby all cases of “hypocrisy” involve either the deceiving of others about the sincerity of an agent's beliefs or the lack of will to carry through with the demands of an agent's sincere beliefs. Thus, all cases of hypocrisy can be described either as cases of deception or as cases of akrasia. If this analysis correct, then I suggest further that the moral status of all instances of hypocrisy must be reduced either to the moral blameworthiness of deception or to the moral blameworthiness of akrasia. There can be no unified account of the moral wrongness of “hypocrisy” that holds across the disjunction.     

Aristotle,Akrasia, and the Place of Desire in Moral Reasoning

This paper serves both as a discussion of Henry’s (Ethical Theory Moral Practice, 5:255–270, 2002) interpretation of Aristotle on the possibility of akrasia – knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway – and an indication of the importance of desire in Aristotle’s account of moral reasoning. As I will explain, Henry’s interpretation is advantageous for the reason that it makes clear how Aristotle could have made good sense of genuine akrasia, a phenomenon that we seem to observe in the real world, while maintaining non-trivial distinctions between temperance (sôphrosunê), self-indulgence (akolasia), self-control (enkrateia) and akrasia. There are, however, some interpretive challenges that follow from Henry’s account and this paper is intended to explain and resolve those.     

Natural Tensions in Aristotle’s Polis and Their Contemporary Manifestations

Topoi - In this paper, I perform an analysis of Aristotle’s organic analogy when discussing the different “organs” of the Greek polis. I argue that this analysis demonstrates that...     

Aristotle on Pleasure and the Worst Form of Akrasia

The focus of this paper is Aristotle's solution to the problem inherited from Socrates: How could a man fail to restrain himself when he believes that what he desires is wrong? In NE 7 Aristotle attempts to reconcile the Socratic denial of akrasia with the commonly held opinion that people act in ways they know to be bad, even when it is in their power to act otherwise. This project turns out to be largely successful, for what Aristotle shows us is that if we distinguish between two ways of having knowledge (‘potentially’ and ‘actually’), the Socratic thesis can effectively account for a wide range of cases (collectively referred to here as ‘drunk-akrasia’) in which an agent acts contrary to his general knowledge of the Good, yet can still be said to ‘know’ in the qualified sense that his actions are wrong. However, Book 7 also shows that the Socratic account of akrasia cannot take us any farther than drunk-akrasia, for unlike drunk-akrasia, genuine akrasia cannot be reduced to a failure of knowledge. This agent knows in the unqualified sense that his actions are wrong. The starting-point of my argument is that Aristotle's explanation of genuine akrasia requires a different solution than the one found in NE 7 which relies on the distinction between qualified and unqualified ‘knowing’: genuinely akratic behaviour is due to the absence of an internal conflict that a desire for the ‘proper’ pleasures of temperance would create if he could experience them.     

Making sense of akrasia

There are two extreme poles in the literature on akrasia. Internalists hold that it’s impossible to act intentionally against your better judgment, because there’s a necessary internal relation between judgment and intentional action. To the contrary, externalists maintain that we can act intentionally against our better judgment, because the will operates independently of judgment. Critics of internalism argue that it fails a realism test—most people seem to think that we can and do act intentionally against our better judgment. And critics of externalism argue that it flirts with incoherence by severing the intimate link between judgment and action. Drawing on resources from phenomenology, the cognitive sciences, analytic action theory, and recent “hybrid models” of skilled action, I argue that one route beyond this theoretical impasse is to understand akrasia as a form of skillful pre-reflective intentional action. This strategy, I argue, preserves the internalist insight that there is indeed an intimate relation between judgment and intentional action; and it also confirms the externalist claim that this relation is defeasible, but it does so without falling into incoherence.     

The Guise of the Guise of the Bad

It is undeniable that human agents sometimes act badly, and it seems that they sometimes pursue bad things simply because they are bad. This latter phenomenon has often been taken to provide counterexamples to views according to which we always act under the guise of the good (GG). This paper identifies several distinct arguments in favour of the possibility that one can act under the guise of the bad. GG seems to face more serious difficulties when trying to answer three different, but related, arguments for the possibility of acting under the guise of the bad. The main strategies available to answer these objections end up either undermining the motivation for GG or failing to do full justice to the nature of perverse motivation. However, these difficulties turn out to be generated by focusing on a particular version of GG, what I call the “content version”. But we have independent reasons to prefer a different version of GG; namely, the “attitude version”. The attitude version allows for a much richer understanding of the possibility of acting on what we conceive to be bad. Drawing on an analogy with theoretical akrasia and theoretical perversion, I try to show how the attitude version can provide a compelling account of perverse actions.     

中西形而上学的异通发微

中国传统哲学属于境界形态的形而上学 ,它与西方的自亚里士多德以来的实体形态的形而上学不同。亚氏的形而上学是由对是的逻辑分析开始的 ,即由对逻辑命题的分析而寻找不变的实体存在。亚氏的思维方式对西方文化产生了深远的影响。中国传统哲学则不然 ,它是由“省身”、“尽心、知性、知天”、“思诚”、“静观”、“玄览”、觉悟而去认识世界的本体 ,这种形而上学固然是境界形态的。至于现代 ,西方哲学出现了转向 ,存在主义者海德格尔对存在 (是 )作了新的诠释 ,海氏的诠释在某种意义上与中国传统哲学有契合之处 ,这从一个侧面说明了中国传统哲学所潜含的现代意义。     

Editor’s Introduction

The theme of the 2018 Spindel Conference was “Decolonizing Philosophy.” In this introduction, I will elaborate on this theme as a way to set the stage for the essays in this volume. Beginning with the question of what it means to consider philosophy “colonized” in the first place, I will focus on the subfield of the history of philosophy as a way to draw out my account. After elaborating what I take the claim that philosophy is colonized/colonizing to mean, I will turn to ways one might approach its decolonization. Again, my principle focus will be on the history of philosophy, though I take my analysis to extend beyond this subfield. Finally, I will elaborate four key tasks that I take to be essential to the decolonization of philosophy.     

White Habits,Anti-Racism,and Philosophy as a Way of Life

This paper examines Pierre Hadot’s philosophy as a way of life in the context of race. I argue that a “way of life” approach to philosophy renders intelligible how antiracist confrontation of racist ideas and institutionalized white complicity is a properly philosophical way of life requiring regulated reflection on habits—particularly, habits of whiteness. I first rehearse some of Hadot’s analysis of the “way of life” orientation in philosophy, in which philosophical wisdom is understood as cultivated by actions which result in the creation of wise habits. I analyze a phenomenological claim about the nature of habit implied by the “way of life” approach, namely, that habits can be both the cause and the effect of action. This point is central to the “way of life” philosophy, I claim, in that it makes possible the intelligent redirection of habits, in which wise habits are more the effect than simply the cause of action. Lastly, I illustrate the “way of life” approach in the context of anti-racism by turning to Linda Martín Alcoff's whiteness antieliminativism, which outlines a morally defensible transformation of the habits of whiteness. I argue that anti-racism provides an intelligible context for modern day forms of what Hadot calls “spiritual exercises” insofar as the “way of life” philosophy is embodied in the practice of whites seeing themselves seeing as white and seeing themselves being seen as white.     

Eudaimonism,Human Nature,and the Burdened Virtues

This article explores the prospects for a eudaimonist moral theory that is both feminist and Aristotelian. Making the moral philosophy developed by Aristotle compatible with a feminist moral perspective presents a number of philosophical challenges. Lisa Tessman offers one of the most sustained feminist engagements with Aristotelian eudaimonism (Tessman 2005). However, in arguing for the account of flourishing that her eudaimonist theory invokes, Tessman avoids taking a stand either for or against the role Aristotle assigned to human nature. She draws her account of flourishing instead from the beliefs about flourishing implicit in the feminist and black freedom movements. I examine the implicit conception of flourishing in the writings of two prominent leaders of the black freedom movement—Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X—and argue that Tessman's attempt to avoid the “sticky issue” of human nature is not successful. Tessman's defense of the burdened virtues depends on a particular reading of human nature as does a eudaimonist account of the virtues more generally.     

Aristotle’s dilemma

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle appears to use an elegant short argument to attack Plato’s doctrine of the good, which argument equally appears to attack Aristotle’s own doctrine of the good. I consider these two questions: First: Why does Aristotle reverse the judgment of Socrates/Plato on the issue: Which is better – things that are (only) good in themselves, or things that are both good in themselves and good for their consequences? Second: Why does Aristotle attack Plato’s doctrine that the Form of the Good is the chief good, with an argument that appears to threaten his own view that eudaimonia is the chief good? I think the answers to these two questions are related. The elegant short argument in question I call “Aristotle’s Fast Argument.”After apologizing for criticizing views held by friends of his, Aristotle deploys the Fast Argument as a clincher to cap off his refutation of Plato’s view that the Form of the Good is the chief good: “And one might ask the question, what in the world they mean by ‘a thing itself’, if in man himself and in a particular man the account of man is one and the same. For in so far as they are men, they will in no respect differ; and if this is so, neither will there be a difference in so far as they are good. But again it will not be good any the more for being eternal, since that which lasts long is no whiter than that which perishes in a day.” (Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1096 a34–b4). I explore this sketchily presented Fast Argument. I consider why Aristotle may think it is valid and why he does not seem to realize that, on readings that make it effective against Plato’s view, his Fast Argument also seems to apply to his own view that eudaimonia is the chief good. This is what I will call “Aristotle’s Dilemma.” If the Fast Argument is interpreted too narrowly, its point about the whiteness of a white thing being independent of its duration will not apply to the goodness of the Form of the Good. If it is interpreted broadly enough to undermine the claim of the Form of the Good to be the chief good, it will equally undermine that claim for eudaimonia. Finally, I discuss some of the things Plato and Aristotle say about the chief good, and comparable things Immanuel Kant says about the good will. I draw some speculative conclusions that focus on the importance for Aristotle of the goodness of the chief good not being at risk.     

II. Causation and basic actions

The classical roots of ecological sensibility lie not only in the “theatre of reason” (Greek nature philosophy and natural history), but also in religious mythology. More important than the world seen as the “theatre of the gods”, however, was the radically ecological view of death stated in mythic form by Empedocles and the Pythagoreans. The very emergence of the “theatre of reason” marked a significant stage of man's alienation from nature (and from himself), though the struggle between rationalistic anthropocentrism and a more ecological perspective reappeared within philosophy itself, so that the legacy of “the Philosopher” is a dual one.     

Forms of Our Life: Wittgenstein and the Later Heidegger

The paper argues that an internal debate within Wittgensteinian philosophy leads to issues associated rather with the later philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Rush Rhees's identification of the limitations of the notion of a “language game” to illuminate the relation between language and reality leads to his discussion of what is involved in the “reality” of language: “anything that is said has sense‐if living has sense, not otherwise.” But what is it for living to have sense? Peter Winch provides an interpretation and application of Rhees's argument in his discussion of the “reality” of Zande witchcraft and magic in “Understanding a Primitive Society”. There he argues that such sense is provided by a language game concerned with the ineradicable contingency of human life, such as (he claims) Zande witchcraft to be. I argue, however, that Winch's account fails to answer the question why Zande witchcraft can find no application within our lives. I suggest that answering this requires us to raise the question of why Zande witchcraft “fits” with their other practices but cannot with ours, a question of “sense” which cannot be answered by reference to another language game. I use Joseph Epes Brown's account of Native American cultures (in Epes Brown 2001) as an exemplification of a form of coherence that constitutes what we may call a “world”. I then discuss what is involved in this, relating this coherence to a relation to the temporal, which provides an internal connection between the senses of the “real” embodied in the different linguistic practices of these cultures. I relate this to the later Heidegger's account of the “History of Being”, of the historical worlds of Western culture and increasingly of the planet. I conclude with an indication of concerns and issues this approach raises, ones characteristic of “Continental” rather than Wittgensteinian philosophy.     

The Jazz Solo as Virtuous Act

This article presents a new aesthetic of the improvised jazz solo, an aesthetic grounded in the premise that a solo is an act indivisible from the actor (the soloist) and the context. The solo's context includes the local and large‐scale conventions of jazz performance as well as the soloist's other work. The theme on which a solo is based serves not as a “work,” but as part of the solo's stylistic context. Knowledge of this context inheres directly into proper apprehension of the musical surface; it does not constitute a separate plane of appreciation. I begin by examining the improvisational error. This examination supports the position that the solo is an act, not a work. From this position, I detail a new aesthetic of the improvised solo, grounded in the soloist's virtues. In a successful solo, the soloist's actions display a balance of two aesthetic “virtues”: compositional skill and a commitment to the spirit of improvisation. Compositional skill manifests in a solo as coherence. The improvisational spirit manifests as courage, spontaneity, and related qualities. These virtues often come into conflict; each soloist negotiates this conflict differently.     

形而上学的原初“制作”——西方哲学诞生的技术现象学考察

探讨形而上学的原初制作,意味着要从技艺的角度去追问原初形而上学的构造。本文拟从语言技艺的技术现象学视域,来尝试探索从柏拉图到亚里士多德之原初形而上学制作的隐秘。一、原初形而上学与语言技艺一般认为,形而上学的形成以巴门尼德的存在学说为其开端,中经苏格拉底-柏拉图的理念论,在亚里士多德的形而上学中初步完成。(张志伟等,第16页)这个观点并非没有争议。譬如,     

Chinese Philosophy in the New Era from the Perspective of the Theme of the 24th World Congress of Philosophy

“Learning to be Human” is the theme of the 24th World Congress of Philosophy, to be held in Beijing in 2018, and also an important topic in traditional Chinese Confucian philosophy. Different interpretations of this theme, however, directly determine how to understand the study of Chinese philosophy in the context of world philosophy today. Changes in contemporary philosophy urge us to reconsider philosophical research in today’s China. Reflecting on the status quo of research on Chinese philosophy and finding a method for solving certain existing difficulties will ultimately enhance the study of Chinese philosophy.     

Mentorship in Method: Philosophy and Experienced Agency

Against the background of the exclusion of many feminist methodologies from mainstream philosophy, and in light of the methodological challenges of providing accounts of experience responsive to the lives of agents, in this paper I return to early feminist philosophers of emotion to highlight how they anticipate and respond to methodological criticisms. Sue Campbell (1956–2011) was one philosopher who used methodological quandaries to strengthen her account of the formation and expression of feelings (Campbell 1997 ). By rereading selected texts together intentionally for their structural and methodological strategies, I emphasize the power of formal characteristics to make insightful claims about experience possible. I consider how feminist philosophers of “experienced agency” can put these strategies to use in facing ongoing methodological criticisms, taking as a case study an account of how it can feel to act responsibly against injustice.     

Abstract

Although Aristotle did not mention it, integrity can be understood in an Aristotelian framework. Seeing it in these terms will show that it is an executive virtue which concerns the existential well being of an agent. This analysis is not offered as an exegesis of Aristotle's text, but as an attempt to use an Aristotelian framework to understand a virtue deemed important today. This account will have the benefit of solving some problems relating to motivational internalism and, as such, will contribute to that recent current of thought which has been highlighting the importance of virtue thinking in moral theory. I will distinguish moral judgement from decision and show that moral judgement is dependent upon virtue more strongly than it is upon impartial rationality. I will suggest that integrity is the virtue to which moral judgement gives expression and is the virtue which links judgement to decision so as to overcome akrasia.     

Guilt,Remorse and Victims

In Shame and Necessity, Bernard Williams describes the experience of guilt in terms of fear at the anger of an internalised other, who is a “victim or enforcer.” Williams says it is a merit of his account that it shows how our guilt turns us towards the victims of our wrongdoing. I argue that his account in fact misses the most important form of guilt's “concern with victims”– the experience of remorse. I consider, and reject, one way of trying to supplement this lack in Williams's account of guilt. Finally, I sketch some features of remorse that suggest that remorse belongs to a very different moral picture from the one painted by Williams.