The Incomprehensible Art of Thomas Hobbes

The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is one of the cornerstones of modern liberalism. Resting on controversial doctrines of freedom, perception, human nature, and history, the foundations of Hobbesianism presuppose an emergence of reason from matter-in-motion that Hobbes never adequately explains. In this paper I explore the motivations and consequences of his neglect of fundamental philosophical problems through a series of ambiguous uses of key terms manifested his work: nature, necessity, and God in metaphysics and theology; freedom in politics; intelligible unity in epistemology; and imagination in ethics. These show up, respectively, in his doctrines of naturalism, political science, phenomenalism, and the state of nature. While it may be that Hobbes’s metaphysical ideas are finally incoherent, this only raises a further question: Might Hobbes have recognized that the goal of a liberal state—a common human war against death—can only be grounded on sketchy and inadequate metaphysics, to be suppressed and avoided so far as possible? Primarily through a reading of the Leviathan, I explore this question and tentatively propose that an affirmative answer is warranted.     

It's Personal—Or Not At All: On God as Love/r

Abstract : Henriksen discusses what it means that God is personal, with special regard to the claim that God is love. If God is love, God must be understood as personal. This approach is related to different elements concerning human life and human freedom, and how to engage in human life. Also the radical alternative is suggested: instead of understanding God as love, the alternative is considered that death is God (as the final and strongest power there is). This alternative shows that it is the most likely interpretation of actual human conduct to opt for the alternative that God is love. Hence, to understand God as love is part of what it means to relate humanely and with hope to what is taking place in human life.     

Introducing Science to the Psychology of the Soul: Experimental Existential Psychology

ABSTRACT— Humans live out their lives knowing that their own death is inevitable; that their most cherished beliefs and values, and even their own identities, are uncertain; that they face a bewildering array of choices; and that their private subjective experiences can never be shared with another human being. This knowledge creates five major existential concerns: death, isolation, identity, freedom, and meaning. The role of these concerns in human affairs has traditionally been the purview of philosophy. However, recent methodological and conceptual advances have led to the emergence of an experimental existential psychology directed toward empirically investigating the roles that these concerns play in psychological functioning. This new domain of psychological science has revealed the pervasive influence of deep existential concerns on diverse aspects of human thought and behavior.     

Technology and Human Becoming

Technology is a mirror that reflects human nature and intentions: (1) we want certain things done and we want tools to do those things; (2) we are finite, frail, and mortal; (3) we create technology in order to bring alternative worlds into being; (4) we do not know why we create or what values should guide us. Imagination is central to technology. Human nature and human freedom are brought into focus when we reflect on the central role of imagination in technology.     

Reasons-Responsiveness and Ownership-of-Agency: Fischer and Ravizza's Historicist Theory of Responsibility

No one has done more than John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza toadvance our understanding of the important dispute in the theoryof responsibility between structuralists and historicists.This makes it all the more important to take the measure of Responsibility and Control, their mostrecent contribution to the historicist side of the discussion. In this paper I examine some novelfeatures of their most recent version of responsiblity-historicism,especially their new notions of ``moderate reasons-responsiveness' and ``ownership-of-agency.' Fischer and Ravizza intend these newelements to solve two problems untouched by earlier versions of theirtheory: the ``problem of strange preference patterns' and the ``reasons-responsivenessproblem of induction.' I argue that they cannot solve these problemswithin the theoretical strictures they place upon themselves, namely aminimalist meta-ethics of value and practical reason, and attentiononly to certain formal features of preference-acquisition. I concludethat historicist compatibilists cannot hope to meet the challenge ofstructuralist compatibilism, from the one side, and of incompatibilism,from the other, unless they take on the full task of accounting for thedifference between the child's acquisition (via education) of autonomoussubstantive preferences and values and her acquisition (viaindoctrination) of heteronomous ones.     

Ethics and science: Educating the public

This article looks at the public debate which took place in the first half of the twentieth century and has repercussions to the present day. It was about the ethical stance of scientists, and how science should be organized. In particular, it examines the positions taken by Professor F. Soddy, F.R.S. and Nobel Laureate, who stressed the responsibility of scientists for the uses made of their research, Professor Michael Polanyi, F.R.S., who emphasised the obligation of scientists to the truth and the essential role of morality in the organization of science, and Professor J.D.Bernal, F.R.S., who insisted that science was practised for utilitarian reasons and should be consciously developed for the good of society.     

Conflicts of interest in Germany: A legal perspective

In spite of recent efforts to promote cooperation between universities and industry, Germany still lacks a sufficient legal framework for regulating potential conflicts of interest resulting from university-industry cooperation. Prospective regulation of conflicts of interest has to take into account specific constraints imposed by the German constitution. It has to follow stringent procedural and material requirements and carefully weigh the individual researcher’s right to academic freedom against the public demand for objectivity in research. Because of this cautious consideration of the conflicting interests constitutionally mandated in Germany, a potential regulation legitimate in this country may serve as a model for other countries facing the need of the adoption of such a regulation. The ideas presented in this paper are developed in detail in the author’s dissertation, Rechtsfragen der Kooperation zwischen Hochschulen und Wirtschaft — Ein Rechtsvergleich: Deutschland — USA, Verlag Vahlen, München, 2002. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.     

On the psycho-social conditions of psychotherapy in post-Soviet Georgia

The article describes the social, economic and political conditions that influence the practice of psychotherapy in post-Soviet Georgia. The author looks at the specific Soviet and post-Soviet mentalities and defines certain characteristics of these mentalities, the master-slave relationship between the people and the State, the materialistic world view, the nostalgia for the past and idealization of Soviet times, the identity crisis produced by the socio-economic traumas. The paper then provides clinical illustrations of these phenomena and shows how they can interfere with the process of psychotherapy.     

Freedom and the value of games

This essay explores the features in virtue of which games are valuable or worthwhile to play. The difficulty view of games holds that the goodness of games lies in their difficulty: by making activities more complex or making them require greater effort, they structure easier activities into more difficult, therefore more worthwhile, activities. I argue that a further source of the value of games is that they provide players with an experience of freedom, which they provide both as paradigmatically unnecessary activities and by offering opportunities for relatively unconstrained choice inside the ‘lusory’ world that players inhabit.