درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The concept of place is ultimately a matter of ethical significance—of where something fits in a nexus or structure of meaning.  Often this meaning is quite personal, involving a sense of presence we associate with a place.  This essay investigates this connection through a study of Wordsworth’s poem, “Tintern Abbey.”  It argues that the notion of a presence-infused place is ultimately that of a second-personal space.  Presence is a matter of second-personal openness.  Therefore, when presence infuses place, it makes its space second-personal also.

The paper argues that the moral philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is unified by a complex conception of reason that imposes consistency norms of both rationality and reasonableness.  Hobbes’s conceptions of rightness as reciprocity, and moral goodness as sociability belong to an original and attractive moral theory that is neither teleological nor classically deontological, nor as interpreters have variously argued, subjectivist, contractarian, egoist, or dependent on divine command.

It is widely affirmed that human beings have irreplaceable valuable, and that we owe it to them to treat them accordingly.  Many theorists have been drawn to Kantianism because they think that it alone can capture this intuition.  One aim of this paper is to show that this is a mistake, and that Kantianism cannot provide an independent rational vindication, nor even a fully illuminating articulation, of irreplaceability.  A further aim is to outline a broadly Aristotelian view that provides a more fitting theoretical framework for this appealing conception of human value.  This critique of Kantianism extends to contemporary theorists with a broadly Kantian orientation, including Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Darwall and John Rawls.  The problem with these views, at heart, is that they attempt to ground morality in respect alone.  Yet it is love, not respect, that brings irreplaceability into view.  The paper closes with a sketch of a virtue-theoretic theory that follows Aquinas in taking love to be a master virtue that refines the other virtues so as to ensure a continuous and practically efficacious sensitivity to the irreplaceable value of fellow human beings.

Originally introduced by Plato and Aristotle, Moderation Theory in Ethics is the most prevalent theory of ethics among Islamic scholars. Moderation Theory suggests that every virtue or excellence of character lies in the mean between two vices: excess or defect. Every ethical virtue comes from moderation in actions or emotions and every ethical vice comes from excess or defect. This paper suggests that while Islamic scholars have been influenced by this doctrine, they have also developed and re-conceptualized it in innovative ways. Kindī, Miskawayh, Avicenna, Rāghib Isfahānī, Nasīr al-Dīn Ṭusī, and others are among the Islamic contributors to the subject. Some of their innovations in this theory are as follows: bringing together Aristotle's doctrine of the mean with Plato's psychology (by Kindī), dividing virtues into four higher genuses, dividing vices into eight higher genuses, setting various kinds of vices and virtues under these higher genuses (by Miskawayh), adding the vice qualitative criteria to Aristotle's vice quantitative criteria (excess and defect) (by Ṭusī), dividing various conceptualizations of justice (by Avicenna), adding religious and mystical virtues into the existing list of virtues (by Rāghib Isfahānī), and proposing a comprehensive model for curing diseases of the soul. This paper seeks to establish the main contributions of these Muslim scholars to Moderation Theory and elaborate on this theory’s evolution within the Islamic world.