Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue

Contemporary virtue ethicists widely accept thethesis that a virtuous agent's feelings shouldbe in harmony with her judgments about what sheshould do and that she should find virtuousaction easy and pleasant. Conflict between anagent's feelings and her actions, by contrast,is thought to indicate mere continence – amoral deficiency. This ``harmony thesis' isgenerally taken to be a fundamental element ofAristotelian virtue ethics.I argue that the harmony thesis, understoodthis way, is mistaken, because there areoccasions where a virtuous agent will findright action painful and difficult. What thismeans is that the generally accepteddistinction between continence and virtue isunsupportable. This conclusion affects severalwell-known accounts of virtuous action,including those of Philippa Foot and JohnMcDowell. A closer look at Aristotle, however, providesanother way of distinguishing betweencontinence and virtue, based in hiscategorization of goods as noble or base. Iargue that virtue is exhibited when anagent's feelings harmonize with his correctjudgments of value, while discrepancies betweenfeelings and correct judgments of valueindicate continence. This understanding ofcontinence and virtue enables us to accommodatethe problem cases I raise.     

A Lockean Argument for Black Reparations

This is a defense of blackreparations using the theory of reparations setout in John Locke's The Second Treatise ofGovernment. I develop two mainarguments, what I call the ``inheritanceargument' and the ``counterfactual argument,'both of which have been thought to fail. In nocase do I appeal to the false ideas that presentday United States citizens are guilty ofslavery or must pay reparation simply becausethe U.S. Government was once complicit in thecrime.     

胡适、杜威认识论思想模式比较

西方传统认识论以主客体二分和主体有认识能力的假设为基础,杜威认为这是旁观者知识论。在批判传统认识论的同时,杜威提出了实验的知识论。胡适虽然总体上接受了杜威对传统认识论的批判,但胡适的认识论模式仍然是传统的旁观者知识论,而不是杜威的实验的知识论。     

'My capital secret': Literature and the psychoanalytic agon

Taking as my departure point Freud 's unequivocal claim in The Question of Lay Analysis that psychoanalytic education should include "the history of civilization, mythology, the psychology of religion, and the science of literature" ( Freud, 1926b, p . 246), I advocate for an integration of psychoanalysis with the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences in psychoanalytic training. Foundations in these fields are not only acceptable as preliminary to clinical training but will also provide the diverse intellectual climate that is urgently needed in psychoanalytic institutes whose discursive range is often quite narrow. To provide one example of the salutary effect of such disciplinary integration on clinical practice, I illustrate how the transformative power of literature provides compelling metaphors for the psychoanalytic encounter. Through an example drawn from within my own experience as literary critic and psychoanalyst, I describe the ways that the troubling tensions in Milton's Samson Agonistes functioned to illuminate, for me, an analysand 's 'capital secret'.     

RACE, IDEOLOGY, AND IDEAL THEORY

Abstract: Philosophers who have addressed the problems of enduring racial injustice have been suspicious of the role played by ideal theory in ethics and political philosophy generally, and in contemporary liberal political philosophy in particular. The theoretical marginalization of race in the work of Rawls has led some to charge that ideal theory is at the very least unhelpful in understanding one of the most significant forms of contemporary injustice, and is at worst ideological in the pejorative sense. To explore these concerns, I formulate five related criticisms of ideal theory and examine each as it would be applied to Rawls's political philosophy. My thesis is that the strongest criticisms—namely, that ideal theory is essentially ideological and cannot provide adequate grounds for justifying race-conscious, equality-securing measures—ultimately miss the mark. But other criticisms of ideal theory are more plausible, and most plausibly directed to an area of Rawls's thought often ignored in discussions of liberalism and race, namely, his account of citizenship and public reasoning.     

DUTIES OF JUSTICE TO CITIZENS WITH COGNITIVE DISABILITIES

Abstract: Many social practices treat citizens with cognitive disabilities differently from their nondisabled peers. Does John Rawls's theory of justice imply that we have different duties of justice to citizens whenever they are labeled with cognitive disabilities? Some theorists have claimed that the needs of the cognitively disabled do not raise issues of justice for Rawls. I claim that it is premature to reject Rawlsian contractualism. Rawlsians should regard all citizens as moral persons provided they have the potential for developing the two moral powers. I claim that every citizen requires specific Enabling Conditions to develop and exercise the two moral powers. Structuring basic social institutions to deny some citizens the Enabling Conditions is unjust because it blocks their developmental pathways toward becoming fully cooperating members of society. Hence, we have a duty of justice to provide citizens labeled with cognitive disabilities with the Enabling Conditions they require until they become fully cooperating members of society.     

RESPECTING HUMAN DIGNITY: CONTRACT VERSUS CAPABILITIES

Abstract: There appears to be a tension between two commitments in liberalism. The first is that citizens, as rational agents possessing dignity, are owed a justification for principles of justice. The second is that members of society who do not meet the requirements of rational agency are owed justice. These notions conflict because the first commitment is often expressed through the device of the social contract, which seems to confine the scope of justice to rational agents. So, contractarianism seems to ignore the justice claims of the severely cognitively impaired. To solve this problem, Martha Nussbaum proposes the capabilities approach. The justifiability condition, on this approach, is met by the idea of overlapping consensus. This essay argues that overlapping consensus cannot meet liberalism's justifiability condition, nor is it more inclusive of the cognitively impaired. Therefore, we have reason to retain the contract device and look for another way to ensure that liberalism respects the justice claims of all.     

DIVINE AGENCY AND THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

Many contemporary thinkers seeking to integrate theistic belief and scientific thought reject what they regard as two extremes. They disavow deism in which God is understood simply to uphold the existence of the physical universe, and they exclude any view of divine influence that suggests the performance of physical work through an immaterial cause. Deism is viewed as theologically inadequate, and acceptance of direct immaterial causation of physical events is viewed as scientifically illegitimate. This desire to avoid both deism and any positing of God as directly intervening in the physical order has led to models of divine agency that seek to defend the reality of divine causal power yet affirm the causal closure of the physical. I argue, negatively, that such models are unsuccessful in their attempts to affirm both the reality of divine causal power acting in the created world and the causal closure of the physical and, positively, that the assumption that underlies these models, namely that any genuine integration of theistic and scientific belief must posit the causal closure of the physical on pain of violating well-established conservation principles, is mistaken.