ABSTRACT : Many philosophers and psychologists think that moral norms have a different nature as rules from convention: while we are obliged to respect moral norms because of what they are in themselves, our respect for conventions depends on our attitude toward a particular social context. I question this distinction between moral norms and conventions and argue that conventions depend on social context because the context structures the agents’ expectations, sets reference points for the assessment of gains and losses, and helps the observer to infer the presence and the seriousness of harms.

The term “ontology”, as is well enough known, is of seventeenth-century vintage. According to current research, it first appears in the year 1613. By the end of the century it had waxed firm in common recognition. Through the influence of Christian Wolff in the following century, the eighteenth, it quickly became standard in the school tradition for the science of being in general, the science of being qua being. In its morphology the term showed clearly enough that it was meant to designate a science that bore upon being in the widest range of the notion. In that tenor it was described at the time as metaphysica de ente, philosophia de ente, doctrina de ente, or entis scientia, in the sense that “being” denoted its proper subject matter (objectum proprium) more correctly than did “metaphysics”.' Accordingly, it was intended to imply that “being”, tout court, was to be regarded as the object of a philosophical science quite as “soul”, for instance, played the role of object for psychology.

ABSTRACT: Neo-sentimentalism is the view that to judge that something has an evaluative property is to judge that some affective or emotional response is appropriate to it, but this view allows for radically different versions. My aim is to spell out what I take to be its most plausible version. Against its normative version, I argue that its descriptive version can best satisfy the normativity requirement that follows from Moore’s Open Question Argument while giving an answer to the Wrong Kind of Reason Objection. Finally, I argue that the circularity that is involved is not vicious: understood epistemically, neo-sentimentalism remains instructive.

This article analyzes the relation between Godwin (1756–1836), Republican and author of Politcal Justice (1793), and French philosophers, particularly Helvétius. Both Godwin and Helvétius were in favour of a political understanding of the theory of knowledge as opposed to an intellectual treatment of policy. They continually questioned the links between policy, history of the human understanding, and moral science from the perspective of the question of education. After the September Massacres (1792), Godwin's thought changed radically and began to revolve around the notion of perfectibility. The final disagreement marked a distinction between French reformers, who advocated state control, and English writers, influenced by dissent and reformation, who held the idea of perfectibility.

The main sources of the style of contemporary philosophy, sources which run counter to the style of classical philosophy, come together in the intellectual development and works of Jean-Paul Sartre. In him can be seen the styles of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and perhaps even of Wittgenstein. Sartre's L'être et le néant was one focal point of these influences. A re-evaluation of Marx is characteristic of his later works. Marx's philosophical theory is more than just a theory:

… it was not the idea which unsettled us; nor was it the condition of the worker, which we knew abstractly but which we had not experienced. No, it was the two joined together. It was—as we would have said then in our idealist jargon even as we were breaking with idealism—the Proletariat as the incarnation and vehicle of an idea.

Charles Taylor's well-known essay, “Atomism”, criticizes libertarian theories of rights like Nozick's that make individual rights independent of any duties to belong to, support, or obey the law in the society in which those rights are to be enjoyed. Taylor argues that if one grounds rights to important liberties on the human capacity for autonomy, this commits one to the view that the development of autonomy in oneself and others is morally obligatory. Further, Taylor argues that most people cannot develop autonomy in the absence of a certain sort of social and political environment. Hence, if it is morally obligatory to try to develop autonomy in oneself and others, it is also obligatory to belong to, support, and give obedience to those institutions which create the environment in which autonomy can be developed.

Dans le troisième paragraphe de la troisième section de la Grundlegung, Kant dénonce une «espèce de cercle dont, à ce qu'il semble, il n'y a pas moyen de sortir» (450, 18–19, 187). Indispensable à l'interprète de cette section, l'identification de ce cercle s'annonce cependant difficile. En effet, l'objet du débat, la justification de l'éthique, suggère déjà des cercles possibles. On n'évitera donc d'en prêter trop rapidement, par respect ou par vanité, la dénonciation à Kant qu'en s'accrochant à ses ipsissima verba: «Nous nous supposons libres dans l'ordre des causes efficientes afin de nous concevoir dans l'ordre des fins sous (unter) des lois morales, et nous nous concevons ensuite soumis (unterworfen) à ces lois parce que nous nous sommes attribué (beigelegt haben) la liberté de la volonté» (450, 19–23, 187).

Descartes Published the Latin text of his Meditations in 1641 and its French translation, by the Due de Luynes, in 1643. There have been many subsequent editions of this version, the most recent being that of M. André Robinet and Mile Anne Becco. In addition to the original text, this edition contains a more or less complete index, a mini-concordance, and some other valuable statistical information. In this brief study we use this index as the basis for an investigation of some of the conceptual ties in this historically important and still very controversial work.

La Déduction transcendantale des Catégories constitue le nœud de la Critique de la Raison Pure. C'est en ce point que tiennent ensemble ou que s'effondrent les éléments de la Philosophie kantienne. Elle démontre à la fois la possibilité d'une connaissance systématique de l'expérience possible et l'impossibilité d'une connaissance qui irait au-delà des limites de l'expérience possible. Ainsi l'Analytique et la Dialectique transcendantales y trouvent leurs assises.

It is widely assumed that the arguments tendered by Sokrates in the Protagoras involve serious logical fallacies. My contention is that this view is mistaken, and I shall argue that Sokrates makes no significant logical errors in this dialogue. I shall begin with a few general assertions about the dialogue as a dramatic whole, since I believe that a grasp of the general theme and character of the dialogue is essential for understanding the argumentation.

La confrontation que nous chercherons à faire ici porte sur deux entreprises contemporaines que nous conviendrons de placer dans le mouvement structuraliste, celle de Foucault dans les Mots et les Choses, et celle des empiristes logiques dans leurs multiples travaux d'analyse du langage scientifique.

According to the jacket cover, John Leslie's Universes is “the first book by a philosopher on these controversial affairs.” Sadly, I must report, the controversy has gotten the better of his philosophy. Leslie's contribution to this area is merely to see, within the dispute, a narrow window through which to promote his own curious view of extreme axiarchism. This alone would not disturb me, were it not for the apparent disdain with which Leslie depicts views opposed to his own, and his infuriating technique of responding to those critics who fail to see the point of his tremendously contrived examples by dogmatically waving these same examples.

A quick survey of the literature reveals that authors disagree as to which sentiments are moral and which are not, they disagee as to how to distinguish between moral and other sentiments, and finally that often the same author will claim a sentiment is moral at some times but not at others. These difficulties arise, I argue, from an underlying concept of emotion that I call atomism. Viewing emotions as means of coordination among agents, rather than as psychic atoms, suggests a radically different approach to the question of morality and affects, one where emotions pave the way for normative expectations.

Cette rupture est nécessaire si l'on veut que la sémiologie, ou étude des «signes» (au sens inclusif), dépasse le stade préparatoire où elle se cantonne jusqu'aujourd'hui. La sémiologie (la sémiotique) doit entrer dans ce qu'on pourrait appeler son troisième âge; après avoir été constituée d'abord par des réflexions isolées et sporadiques sur la nature des signes ; après avoir été, ensuite, ramenée à la linguistique, partie dévorante qui occulte de tout, – elle doit s'émanciper en une discipline autonome, fondée sur la distinction entre signes etsymboles.

Inclassable. C'est le qualificatif qui vient à l'esprit de celui qui s'interesse à l'oeuvre de Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Pierre Vidal-Naquet est et se veut avant tout historien. Mais il ne s'agit pas là d'une étiquette qui l'enferme dans une période donnée, dans un genre déterminé. S'attachant à des domaines aussi différents que l'économique, le social, le politique, le religieux et le philosophique, l'intérêt de Pierre Vidal-Naquet va de l'antiquité aux derniers rebondissements de l'actualité, de la Grèce ancienne à la France actuelle et à l'Etat d'Israël.

Is there a problem about justifying deduction? Why shouldn't there be? There is, after all, a direct analogue of Hume's dilemma for induction which applies, presumably with equal force, to deduction: We cannot justify deduction inductively since it would be far too weak to say, what such a justification could at best say, that usually when the premisses of a valid deductive argument are true, then the conclusion is true as well. But neither can we justify deduction deductively, because such ajustification would be circular. This much, it seems to me, is enough to think the issue worth raising. But if there is a genuine concern here, it is safe to say that few philosophers have paused long to worry about it. One of the reasons for this is that with the exception of Sextus Empiricus, J.S. Mill and a few others, philosophers have not been willing to entertain the notion that there is, or even that there could be, anything drastically wrong with deductive reasoning.