This article examines Pierre Hadot’s rejection of the “purely spiritual” and “transcendent” philosophy of Plotinus as a viable philosophy of life. Despite an initial attraction to the Enneads, Hadot eventually concluded that the mystical quest of Plotinus was unrealistic and unacceptable because it required one to forsake the experience of the spiritual and ineffable in the concrete and the practical. I argue that Hadot’s critical assessment does not adequately appreciate the “descent vector” that is integral to Plotinus’s conception of the One. His mysticism requires reference not only to the efficacy of Intellect and the One but also to embodiment and creative participation in the everyday affairs of worldly existence. Plotinus cannot abandon the implications of the bi-directional dynamic of the One as it generates the richly diverse, beautiful cosmos. The profile of proper living extends across the ontological spectrum, observing the demarcations and dynamic affiliations, from the One to concrete materiality.

Discussions of the concept of authenticity often fail to define the conditions of an appropriate emotional orientation toward the world. With a more solid philosophical understanding of emotion, it should be possible to define more precisely the necessary conditions of emotional authenticity. Against this background, I interpret Kierkegaard’s Either/Or as a narrative text that suggests a moral psychology of emotion that points toward the development of a better way of thinking about the ethics of authenticity. In the process, I also engage with the positions of other philosophers, both “existential” and “analytic.” The upshot of my argument is that a cognitive phenomenology of emotion can flesh out the ideal of truthfulness as a virtue of character, while forcing moral philosophers to question whether authenticity should be understood as an achievement of the will rather than as a matter of affective receptivity.

My purpose is to argue the following theses: (1) Habituation into virtue, social relations, and paradigmatic persons are central for both Aristotle and Confucius. Both therefore need a notion of self to support them. (2) Aristotle’s individualistic metaphysics cannot account for the thick relations that this requires. (3) The Confucian self, if entirely relationistic, cannot function as a locus of choice and agency; if fully ritualistic, it cannot function as a source of moral norms that might help assess existing social proprieties. I shall suggest that each offers some corrective for the other and urge further dialogue between the friends of Confucius and Aristotle.

This paper discusses fundamental presuppositions underlying our communicative and interpretative practices by exploring the question of whether there can be logical aliens, that is, beings whose actions and utterances are unintelligible to us. I offer a critique of the dominant view of intelligibility in analytic philosophy that denies the possibility of logical aliens on a priori grounds. My argument tries to show that this transcendental view, one that derives from Davidson’s philosophy, rests on cognitivist and objectivist biases that distort communication. Building on a non-transcendental interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, I propose an alternative view of intelligibility: a contextualist hermeneutics that is action-based and socially-oriented and that does not impose a priori limitations on what is intelligible for us.

The fundamental presupposition of political philosophy is that the legitimate rule of one individual over another requires justification: political power may come out of the barrel of a gun but political authority does not. Classically, the philosopher of politics looked to nature. In the seventeenth century, however, the philosophical tide turns in a decidedly different direction: contractarianism. Political society becomes a consensual construct created through the heuristic vehicle of a hypothetical social contract. Simultaneously, within the confines of contractarianism itself, a remarkable transformation occurs. The theory originates in the hands of Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf as a justificatory tool for political absolutism and, paradoxically, reaches its zenith in Locke with a firm commitment to constitutionalism. I explore this transformation in detail, culminating with what I term the “Lockean Synthesis.”

During his lifetime, F.C.S. Schiller was viewed as a major figure in the pragmatist movement, but his reputation has faded. This article will challenge the view that he was an unoriginal or less important figure. In particular, I will attempt a reconstruction of Schiller’s position on first philosophy, which will examine the differences between Schiller and the other major figures in the pragmatist movement. By using texts from Schiller’s writings, I attempt to create an undistorted reconstruction of what he wrote in order to support this interpretation. I outline the implicit system contained in Schiller’s scattered writings and briefly examine the relation between Schiller’s humanism and other forms of pragmatism. The task seems both justified and worthwhile, since his work has been neglected, despite his prominence in the debates over pragmatism that took place when it emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century.