Autonomy and Common Good: Interpreting Rousseau’s General Will

Rousseau’s project in his Social Contract was to construct a conception of human subjectivity and political institutions that would transcend what he saw to be the limits of liberal political theory of his time. I take this as a starting point to put forward an interpretation of his theory of the general will as a kind of social cognition that is able to preserve individual autonomy and freedom alongside concerns with the collective welfare of the community. But whereas many have seen Rousseau’s ideas as a prelude to communitarianism or authoritarianism, we should instead see his project as articulating an alternative model of moral-cognitivist reasoning. In order to provide a framework for this interpretation, I propose reading his conception of the general will through the theory of collective intentionality and social ontology. I end with a consideration of how this interpretation of the general will can provide a more satisfying understanding of political and practical rationality contemporary debates over republicanism and liberalism.     

The explanatory power of local miracle compatibilism

Local miracle compatibilists claim that we are sometimes able to do otherwise than we actually do, even if causal determinism obtains. When we can do otherwise, it will often be true that if we were to do otherwise, then an actual law of nature would not have been a law of nature. Nevertheless, it is a compatibilist principle that we cannot do anything that would be or cause an event that violates the laws of nature. Carl Ginet challenges this nomological principle, arguing that it is not always capable of explaining our inability to do otherwise. In response to this challenge, I point out that this principle is part of a defense against the charge that local miracle compatibilists are committed to outlandish claims. Thus it is not surprising that the principle, by itself, will often fail to explain our inability to do otherwise. I then suggest that in many situations in which we are unable to do otherwise, this can be explained by the compatibilist’s analysis of ability, or his criteria for the truth of ability claims. Thus, the failure of his nomological principle to explain the falsity of certain ability claims is no strike against local miracle compatibilism.     

First–Person Plural Legislature: Political Reflexivity and Representation*

Abstract

In the Social Contract Rousseau gives what could be called a philosophical rule of recognition for law in Modernity: a law is law if and only if ‘the whole people rules over the whole people’. Thus, he defines self-legislation as, at bottom, collective intentional action. I will first map out the speech act structure [LEX] underlying self-legislation on this account. In particular, I argue for a first person plural counterpart of the reflexive structure inherent to intentions generally: the notion of a collective self. Then I take issue with Bratman's analysis of shared intentional activity in terms of mutuality, submitting that it misses out on the specifically political presupposition involved in ‘doing something together’. I will show why ‘mutuality’ requires representation of the unity of a polity, and how this representation can take form without either external authority or mutual responsiveness.     

Beyond Existence and Non-Existence

Abstract

When Husserl speaks of the so-called ‘transcendental reduction’ or ‘phenomenological epochē’ many believe that he is eschewing the question of truth or existence. Two reasons are given for this: First, Husserl explicitly states that when we perform the reduction, we should no longer naively ‘accept [the world] as it presents itself to me as factually existing’ (Id I §30, p. 53) and should suspend our judgement with regard to ‘the positing of its actual being’ (Id I §88, p. 182). Second, Husserl seems to have no problem in referring to an ‘object’ of thought even when we refer to non-existent, hallucinatory or indeed impossible objects. This seems to suggest that he is not interested in the question whether or not there is a corresponding ‘ordinary’ object. The paper seeks to question this and will show that his inquiry never loses sight of the questions of truth and existence but rather brings them into the foreground.     

The oldest solution to the circularity problem for Humeanism about the laws of nature

According to Humeanism about the laws, the laws of nature are nothing over and above certain kinds of regularities about particular facts (the “Humean mosaic”). Humeanism has often been accused of circularity: according to scientific practice laws often explain their instances, but on the Humean view they also reduce to the mosaic, which includes those instances. In this paper I formulate the circularity problem in a way that avoids a number of controversial assumptions routinely taken for granted in the literature, and against which many extant responses are therefore ineffective. I then propose a solution that denies the alleged Humean commitment that laws are explained by their instances. The solution satisfies three desiderata that other solutions don’t: it provides independent motivation against the idea that Humean laws are explained by their instances; it specifies the sense in which Humean laws are nonetheless “nothing over and above” their instances; and it gives an alternative account of what does explain the laws, if not their instances. This solution, I will argue, is not only the simplest but also the oldest one: it appeals only to tools and theses whose first appearance predates the earliest statements of the circularity problem itself.

     

The quest for the good life in Rousseau's Emile: an assessment

Rousseau's Emile has attracted an avalanche of critical responses. His theme of negative education, or as he defines it, well-regulated freedom, has been denounced as outright manipulation in disguise, which instead of respecting the child's autonomy and dignity, places him at the whim of the teacher's machinations and stratagems. His recommendation that the child's imagination be curtailed (that he may not acquire desires which cannot be satisfied) is widely held to militate against one of the most cherished goals of education: the fostering of the natural curiosity of the child. Rousseau is also accused of professing an ideology of childhood which ignores the real needs of children. In the sterilized environment which Rousseau proposes for the growing child, affection, praise and approval, are some of the sacrifices made to this ideology. Furthermore, his views on women are considered degrading, outrageous and blatantly sexist.Yet despite the myriad criticisms leveled against his work, Rousseau's Emile highlights one of the most exacting challenges for education — how to educate the child without alienating him. Rousseau connects this issue with the larger problem of alienation: namely, that experienced by man within the modern social order. Rousseau's views anticipate the contemporary debate between virtue-based and deontological ethics.The purpose of this paper is (i) to describe Rousseau's diagnosis of the problem of alienation as it arises in the various spheres of human life, paying special attention to the moral domain, and (ii) to assess the solutions he offers to the problem of alienation. These solutions are based on a conception of the good life which, I argue, is unacceptable. I also argue that this conception dissipates one form of alienation only at the expense of creating another.The paper begins by tracing the changes which the concept of alienation has undergone, and consequently I draw a distinction between two kinds of alienation — conscious and unconscious. I demonstrate that even if Rousseau is successful in offering a remedy for conscious alienation, this very remedy itself gives rise to unconscious alienation.     

Taking People as They Are?

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The Problem of Obligation,the Finite Rational Will,and Kantian Value Realism

Abstract

Robert Stern's Understanding Moral Obligation is a remarkable achievement, representing an original reading of Kant's contribution to modern moral philosophy and the legacy he bequeathed to his later-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century successors in the German tradition. On Stern's interpretation, it was not the threat to autonomy posed by value realism, but the threat to autonomy posed by the obligatory nature of morality that led Kant to develop his critical moral theory grounded in the concept of the self-legislating moral agent. Accordingly, Stern contends that Kant was a moral realist of sorts, holding certain substantive views that are best characterized as realist commitments about value. In this paper, I raise two central objections to Stern's reading of Kant. The first objection concerns what Stern identifies as Kant's solution to the problem of moral obligation. Whereas Stern sees the distinction between the infinite will and the finite will as resolving the problem of moral obligation, I argue that this distinction merely explains why moral obligations necessarily take the form of imperatives for us imperfect human beings, but does not solve the deeper problem concerning the obligatory nature of morality—why we should take moral norms to be supremely authoritative laws that override all other norms based on our non-moral interests. The second objection addresses Stern's claim that Kantian autonomy is compatible with value realism. Although this is an idea with which many contemporary readers will be sympathetic, I suggest that the textual evidence actually weighs in favor of constructivism.     

Branching and (In)determinism

Abstract

It might seem, and it has been argued, that if time is linear the threat of determinism is more severe than if time is branching, since in the latter case the future is open in a way it is not in the former one where, so to speak, there exists only one branch—one future. In this paper, I want to resist this claim. I shall first concentrate on what ‘branching’ is or could be, and I shall discuss various versions and interpretations of this view. I shall then (more quickly) turn my attention to what determinism is or could be, and I will distinguish three (well-known) kinds of it—focusing mainly on ‘metaphysical determinism’. I will then ask (and answer) the question whether branching time helps with avoiding determinism or not. As we shall see, it is incorrect to think that under the branching hypothesis the threat of determinism is any smaller.     

The Empirical Status of the Laws of Emotion

Abstract

Smedslund's view that my laws are non-empirical and tautological is based upon two arguments that I do not share. First, the content of the definition of emotion from which he starts is for me an empirically verifiable theory. Secondly, elements in that definition or theory, and in its derivations, are tautological only when these elements (like “want”) are merely understood as states of awareness, and not as constructs referring to observables outside the awareness of the subject of emotion: antecedents, conditions. processes, and overt responses. In short, I think that my laws could be proven wrong or, more plausibly, unproductive, and thus not necessarily true.

In addition, contrary to Smedslund, I hold that the laws of emotion can in part be contradictory precisely because they do not represent logical, but empirical, facts. Humans have contradictory interests and may well have provisions to Serve these interests.     

The Rationality of Happiness

Abstract

In his recent book, Happiness: personhood, community, purpose, Pedro Tabensky answers the question of what happiness is. He develops an Aristotelian account of happiness that, he claims, is everyone’s maximally rational ideal. Much of the support for this claim rests on what Tabensky calls the method of critical introspection. This method involves introspecting on the kind of beings that we are and the kind of lives we can thus lead. If properly carried out, Tabensky claims, critical introspection will reveal to any individual that the active life of virtue is in fact the maximally rational ideal. I argue that two features of Tabensky’s account undermine this claim. The first is his account of the method of critical introspection itself. The second is his account of the nature and acquisition of virtue developed in his analogy between living and painting, and in his discussion of the eudaimon community. Tabensky’s account of critical introspection carried out at the general level of persons shows only that it works negatively to identify the kind of lives we could not lead as persons. It does not function positively to reveal that the maximally rational life for any person is the active exercise of virtue. Tabensky does suggest that the method carried out by particular individuals will reveal the kind of life they should be leading. However, it follows from Tabensky’s account of the nature and acquisition of virtue, I argue, that critical introspection can only reveal the active life of virtue to be the maximally rational ideal for those individuals who have had the right sort of upbringing in the right sort of community.     

The im-possibility of secular critique: The future of religion's memory

The legacy of secular critique, with its Greek, Christian, Kantian, modernist traces, constitutes an aporetic law (or contradiction). That law is this: a critical legacy, if it is critical, can affirm and sustain itself only by trying to separate it from itself (from the very crisis that it is). The legacy or history of ‘religion’ is always a history of such critique. Such a legacy always anticipates critiquing itself, its memory (of whatever kind – racist, sexist, colonialist, nationalist). Such a legacy of critique is always a legacy of crisis. However, the crisis of such a legacy cannot be resolved, because critique, as kairos/krisis (critical/decisive moment), can admit of no resolution. Yet the (secular) history of religion, if it is ever historical, can only be a history of such aporetic critique. Such an aporetic critique will be the heritage of religion's im-possible ¹ ?1. I write the word impossible/impossibility with and without a hyphen. When I hyphenate im-possible, I do so to remain true to Derrida's use of it. The im-possible is irreducible to either possibility or impossibility. Sometimes Derrida also writes the word without hyphenating it, but he still implies such irreducibility. future. It is an im-possible future because it will always be a promise, a promise to separate it from itself, a promise that will remain always deferred, always to come. Today, the promise of this secular critique is (in) democracy with its sovereign ‘decisive’ politics. We can no longer simply critique the (future) legacy of religion, understood this way. To do so is to fulfil that legacy's own messianic wish. This is the aporetic limit of secular critique. To think at the limits of the legacy of the critique of religion is to think the very question of the (secular) history of ‘religion’ and its others, that is, ‘religions’.     

The Function and Content of Amusement

Abstract

Once we establish that the fundamental subject matter of the study of humour is a mental state - which I will call finding funny - then it immediately follows that we need to fmd the content and function of this mental state. The main contender for the content of finding funny is the incongruous (the incongruity thesis); the main contenders for the function of finding funny are grounded either in its generally being an enjoyable state (the gratfi cation thesis) or its tendency to lead to biased social attitudes (the favouritism thesis). While all three of these families of claims are well-supported and individually plausible, the situation looks different once we attempt to unify our accounts of the content and function of finding funny. While functions based in the gratification thesis readily combine with the incongruity thesis, it is not at all clear how the phenomenon described by the favouritism thesis arises from a state with this content. The upshot is that we may have to sideline the favouritism thesis in our theory of humour.     

Fiction as a Base of Interpretation Contexts

In this paper, I want to deal with the problem of how to find an adequate context of interpretation for indexical sentences that enables one to account for the intuitive truth-conditional content which some apparently puzzling indexical sentences like “I am not here now” as well as other such sentences contextually have. In this respect, I will pursue a fictionalist line. This line allows for shifts in interpretation contexts and urges that such shifts are governed by pretense, which has to be understood in terms of socially shared make-believe games. By appealing to pretense so conceived, I will show that the fictionalist perspective is halfway between an intentionalist perspective, according to which the above indexical sentences have to be interpreted in a shifted intended context, (this perspective is primarily defined by Predelli 1998, Analysis 58, 107; Mind and Language 13, 400) and a conventionalist perspective, according to which indexical reference shifts in accordance with a conventional setting. (For this perspective, cf. Corazza et al. 2002, Philosophical Studies 107, See also Corazza 2004, Reflecting the Mind: Indexicality and Quasi-Indexicality, Oxford University Press). Finally, I will claim that the fictionalist analysis of cases of non-ordinary uses of indexicals like “here” and “now” can be retained in face of a new alternative analysis of those cases in terms of an ‘unbound anaphora’ – theory (cf. Corazza 2004, Synthese 138, 145).     

The Economic Sphere

Herman Dooyeweerd (1985) argued that among the modalities making up the fabric of reality a specifically economic one is to be found. The aim of the present paper is to discuss the texture of such a modality and how it both differentiates and intertwines with others. For an updated brief, albeit cogent and analytically lucid presentation of the Law Framework ontology, see Clouser (2009). Dooyeweerd’s view entails that the proper object of economics is irreducible to that of other disciplines, but a non-reductionist view of the object of economics presupposes that the nuclear meaning of that discipline has been clearly delimited: this is required in order to determine its nature and separate identity as a scientific discipline. By ‘the nuclear meaning of a discipline’ I understand a pre-theoretical delimitation of its field of research, such as that of the field of physics, characterized by the laws governing force and energy. Within one and the same field there may be many theories, theories competing to explain the same phenomena, or dealing with phenomena so different that it is nearly impossible to trace conceptual connections among them. This last situation calls for a unified-field theory. In the second section of this paper I will attempt to defend a rather commonly accepted definition of the field of economics that sees this discipline as a science of choice. In the third I will show how the analytical conception it involves can be naturally complemented with a classificatory one. According to a classificatory conception, the aggregated social-level phenomena, patterns and regularities economic theories usually deal with, are economic in that sense, even though they are not prima facie cases of individual behavior, or are unintended consequences of aggregated individual choices. In the fourth I will discuss the meaning of the most general, supra-arbitrary economic laws—the modal laws of economics. In the final section I will offer a non-reductionist view of economics that nevertheless takes into account its intertwining with other spheres.     

I—Liberty's Chains

Is the principal concern of political philosophy the source of political authority? And, if so, can this source be located in individual consent? In this article I draw on Rousseau to answer the second question negatively; and in rejecting that answer, why we might answer the first question in the negative as well. We should be concerned with questions of legitimacy rather than with the source of authority and political obligation. Our principal concern, that is, should be with the question how well political institutions meet the needs of individuals. I pursue these issues in the context of interpreting Rousseau's distinctive contribution to political thought. I start out by asking the question 'What problem is the General Will designed to solve?' I argue that Rousseau's challenge to Hobbes represents a crucial step in the move from the source of authority and political obligation to a focus on legitimacy.     

The Theoretical Reformer: on Husserl’s Plato (Husserl and the Figures of the History of Philosophy)

ABSTRACT

The present research contributes to the elucidation of an important aspect of Husserl’s interpretation of the history of philosophy, that is, his reading of the beginning of Western thought. In particular, it aims to clarify the sense in which Husserl deems Plato the father of the idea itself of philosophy as a science. As will be maintained, Husserl thinks of Socrates and Plato together as providing the first reform of philosophy, whose overall goal is to give reason (Vernunft) a universal method of self-justification against the general skepticism of the sophists. The analysis will be both systematically and historically oriented, for, it will try to both reconstruct Husserl’s interpretation of the background against which Plato first introduces the idea of philosophy as a science, and to show that what is truly at stake for Husserl is the nature of philosophy itself.