Mourning the Dead,Following the Living

In this paper I take up the ambivalence we rightly feel toward leaders by examining the relationship between charismatic authority and moral exemplarity. Drawing on the social theory of Max Weber, and in dialogue with a case study of an anti‐militarism movement called the SOA (School of Americas) Watch, I demonstrate that through a “politics of sacrifice” leaders synchronize their own stories with those of communally recognized exemplars and act in ways that evidence a solidarity in the suffering of those exemplars thereby generating their charismatic authority. While performing crucial strategic, motivational, and pedagogical roles, this charisma also introduces problematic temptations to authoritarianism that short‐circuit the practical reasoning that exemplars supposedly help to form. In the end this leaves our sense of ambivalence intact. What is needed, I argue, are practices of critique that reopen the distance between leader and follower and thus allow the possibility of practical reason.     

Two Versions of the Conceptual Content of Experience

ABSTRACT

In ‘Avoiding the Myth of the Given’, McDowell revisits the main themes of Mind and World in order to make two important corrections: first, he does not longer believe that the content of perceptual experience is propositional in character; second, he does not believe now that the content of an experience needs to include everything the experience enables us to know non-inferentially. In this article, I take issue with both retractions. My thesis is that McDowell’s first version of perceptual content is preferable to the latest one.     

Kant: constitutivism as capacities-first philosophy

Over the last two decades, Kant’s name has become closely associated with the “constitutivist” program within metaethics.¹1 The association of Kant and constitutivism is due above all to the work of Korsgaard – see for example Korsgaard (1996 Korsgaard, Christine. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2008 Korsgaard, Christine. 2008. The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2009 Korsgaard, Christine. 2009. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). A close second in significance in this regard is Velleman (2000 Velleman, David. 2000. The Possibility of Practical Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar], 2009 Velleman, David. 2009. How We Get Along. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). For some of the other (Kantian and anti-Kantian) variants on the constitutivist idea, see Foot (2003 Foot, Philippa. 2003. Natural Goodness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]), O'Neill (1989 O’Neill, Onora. 1989. Constructions of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]), Thomson (2008 Thomson, J. J. 2008. Normativity. New York: Open Court. [Google Scholar]), Thompson (2008 Thompson, Michael. 2008. Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Smith (2012 Smith, Michael. 2012. “Agents and Patients, or: What We Learn About Reasons for Action by Reflecting on Our Choices in Process-of-Thought Cases.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112 (3): 309–331. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9264.2012.00337.x[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2013 Smith, Michael. 2013. “A Constitutivist Theory of Reasons: Its Promise and Parts.” LEAP: Law, Ethics, and Philosophy 1: 9–30. [Google Scholar]), James (2012 James, Aaron. 2012. “Constructing Protagorean Objectivity.” In Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, edited by J. Lenman, and Y. Shemmer, 60–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Walden (2012 Walden, Kenny. 2012. “Laws of Nature, Laws of Freedom, and the Social Construction of Normativity.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 7: 37–79. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199653492.003.0002[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Katsafanas (2013 Katsafanas, Paul. 2013. Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Setiya (2013 Setiya, Kieran. 2013. Knowing Right from Wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]), and Lavin (forthcoming Lavin, Doug. forthcoming. “Pluralism about Agency”. [Google Scholar]). But is Kant best read as pursuing a constitutivist approach to meta-normative questions? And if so, in what sense?²2 I’ve discussed this question previously (with a contemporary focus) in Schafer (2015a Schafer, Karl. 2015a. “Realism and Constructivism in Kantian Metaethics 1.” Philosophy Compass 10: 690–701. doi: 10.1111/phc3.12253[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2015b Schafer, Karl. 2015b. “Realism and Constructivism in Kantian Metaethics 2.” Philosophy Compass 10: 702–713. doi: 10.1111/phc3.12252[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2018a Schafer, Karl. 2018a. “Constitutivism About Reasons: Autonomy and Understanding.” In The Many Moral Rationalisms, edited by K. Jones, and F. Schroeter, 70–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]). See also the discussion of Sensen (2013 Sensen, Oliver. 2013. “Kant’s Constructisivm.” In Constructivism in Ethics, edited by Carla Bagnoli, 63–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), which arrives at a somewhat similar conclusion, albeit in a different systematic context. In this essay, I argue that we can best answer these questions by considering them in the context of how Kant understands the proper methodology for philosophy in general. The result of this investigation will be that, while Kant can indeed be read as a sort of constitutivist, his constitutivism is ultimately one instance of a more general approach to philosophy, which treats as fundamental our basic, self-conscious rational capacities. Thus, to truly understand why and how Kant is a constitutivist, we need to consider this question within the context of his more fundamental commitment to “capacities-first philosophy”.     

The Cultural Turn: Empirical Studies and their Implications

This essay uses empirical studies to engage Richard Miller’s advocacy of a “cultural turn” in the study of religious ethics found in Friends and Other Strangers. The particular kind of empirical research I highlight here, cultural cognition, emphasizes the ways that belonging to a cultural group influences one’s reasoning when faced with controversial issues involving disputed facts. This approach underscores the significance of the cultural turn, but it also raises some important challenges for Miller’s accounts of moral psychology and public reason. I work to elucidate what those challenges are and point to some ways that taking cultural cognition seriously might open up fresh avenues for addressing perennial ethical issues.     

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.     

论人才自我埋没的心理原因及其克服

古往今来，造成人才埋没的原因很多。本文主要从成才者主体因素的角度来探讨人才埋没的主要原因，从而找到克服人才埋没的基本措施，帮助人才主体培养健全的心理结构和素质。本文分三部分，第一部分，探讨人才自我埋没的内涵及其类型。第二部分，探讨人才自我埋没的心理原因。第三部分，探讨如何帮助人才克服不利的心理因素，争取社会承认。     

Happiness as the constitutive principle of action in Thomas Aquinas

Constitutivism locates the ground of practical normativity in features constitutive of rational agency and rests on the concept of a constitutive norm – a norm that is internal to a thing such that it both defines and measures it. In this essay, I argue that Aquinas understands happiness as the constitutive principle of human action, since happiness is the end that both defines and measures it. Turning to the thought of Aquinas opens up new possibilities for constitutivism by showing how the constitutive principle of action can be the ground of a practical realism in ethics.     

潜在思想再论

思想是行为的先导,行为反映思想。然而实然思想与外显行为不匹配、不一致的现象却时有发生,究其缘由乃潜在思想使然。因此,从潜在的层面把握思想,进而分析思想与行为的辨证统一关系不失为一个好的路径选择。