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articles
1. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
About Our Contributors
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2. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Chris Bessemans Universalizability in Moral Judgments: Winch’s Ambiguity
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Peter Winch once objected to Sidgwick’s universalizability thesis in that an agent’s nature would be of no interest to his judgment or the judgment about the agent’s action. While agreeing upon the relevance of the agent-as-person in moral judgments, I disagree with Winch’s conclusions. The ambiguity in Winch’s text reveals that Winch’s moral judgment is inconsistent, and this indicates that there is something wrong in Winch’s account. My claim, for which I am indebted to Aurel Kolnai, is that inserting the relevance of the circumstantially relevant features of the agent-as-person does not imply that one has to deny the universalizability of moral judgments. Differences in agents, if relevant to the situation, can cause differentiations in judgments and can allow bystanders to say that the agent did right or wrong although they themselves would have acted differently. But this possibility does not mean that the universalizability of moral judgments should be denied.
3. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Joseph Palencik Kant and the Limitations of Legitimized Historical Knowledge
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Kant’s emphasis on the individual knower often overshadows the social dimension in his thought. In particular, it is infrequently recognized that he has a coherent and well-developed theory of testimony. In this paper I develop Kant’s view of testimony and argue for the important distinction that he holds between historical belief derived from testimony and what I shall call mere belief. While beliefs of the former type can be justified and often amount to instances of knowledge, beliefs of the second type are not justified, cannot lead to knowledge, and yet may still be legitimately held.
4. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Stephen R. Palmquist Could Kant’s Jesus Be God?
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Although Kant had a high regard for Jesus as a moral teacher, interpreters typically assume that his philosophy disallows belief in Jesus as God. Those who regard Kant as a moral reductionist are especially likely to offer a negative construal of the densely-argued subsection of his 1793 Religion that relates directly to this issue. The recent “affirmative” trend in Kant-scholarship provides the basis for an alternative reading. First, theologians must regard Jesus as human so that belief in Jesus can empower believers to become good. Second, theologians may refer to Jesus as divine by identifying his disposition as exemplifying the “archetype of perfect humanity.” Third, Judeo-Christian history poses an empirical problem that theologians can solve by interpreting Jesus’s divinity according to the schematism of analogy. While this does not constitute a robust (identifiably Christian) doctrine of Jesus’s divinity, it does provide clear guidelines for formulating such a tenet of historical faith.
5. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Yu Zhenhua Polanyi and Wittgenstein on Doubt
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There is an interesting convergence between Michael Polanyi and Wittgenstein with respect to the problem of doubt. Polanyi carries out his “critique of doubt” on the basis of the distinction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge and examines explicit doubt and tacit doubt. On the level of explicit doubt, Polanyi debunks the paradoxical nature of the principle of universal doubt and illuminates the fiduciary character of doubt. The introduction of the tacit dimension into the discussion of the problem of human knowledge leads Polanyi to discover tacit doubt. Polanyi’s critique of doubt finds strong echoes in Wittgenstein, especially in his On Certainty. Nevertheless, there are important differences between two thinkers. Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the practical aspect of a world-picture and Polanyi’s sensitivity to tacit doubt are among the most prominent items that set them apart.
6. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Siobhan Nash-Marshall Saint Anselm and the Problem of Evil, or On Freeing Evil From the “Problem of Evil”
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This article addresses one of the crucial metaphysical presuppositions of the contemporary problem of evil: the belief that evil is that which a good thing must eliminate, or to be more precise, that evil is that which God must eliminate. The first part analyzes J. L. Mackie’s atheological argument in “Evil and Omnipotence.” The second part analyzes the reasons why Saint Anselm rejected the claim that God must eliminate evil in his De Casu Diaboli. The article’s goal is not just raise crucial questions with respect to contemporary approaches to evil. It is also to reflect with Saint Anselm upon one of the genuine aporiai posed by existing evils: how does one remove them?
7. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Mark A. Tietjen Antitheory and Edification: Williams and Kierkegaard on Some Possibilities for Philosophy
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This paper shows the remarkable compatibility of the thought of Bernard Williams and Søren Kierkegaard regarding what Williams would call the “limits” of philosophical ethics and practice. In different ways both Williams and Kierkegaard critique a reductionist conception of the ethical life, its obligations, and the prescriptions that ethical theories make based upon such conceptions. Additionally, the high level of reflectiveness in their respective societies worries both. For Williams the concern is an epistemological one, whereas for Kierkegaard the issue is moral. Upon juxtaposing their thought in these areas, I show how Kierkegaard extends the concerns that he shares with Williams by demonstrating a wider vision of what philosophical ethics can and should do.
book reviews
8. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Victor M. Salas The Science of Being as Being: Metaphysical Investigations—Ed. Gregory T. Doolan
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9. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Curtis L Hancock Poetry, Beauty, & Contemplation: The Complete Aesthetics of Jacques Maritain—John G. Trapani
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10. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Brian Gregor Discourses at the Communion on Fridays—Søren Kierkegaard
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11. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Christina M. Gschwandtner Testing the Limit: Derrida, Henry, Levinas, and the Phenomenological Tradition—François-David Sebbah
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12. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Andrew Jampol-Petzinger Totality and Infinity at 50—Ed. Scott Davidson and Diane Perpich
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13. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Stephen Chamberlain Dialogical Practice and the Ontology of the Human Person: A Study of the Philosophies of Charles Taylor and Norris Clarke—Hugh Robert Williams
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14. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Books Received
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15. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Annual Index
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articles
16. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 3
About Our Contributors
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17. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 3
Anders Odenstedt Being a Child of One’s Time: Hegel on Thought and Cultural Context
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This paper discusses different senses of Hegel’s claim that the individual is “a child of his time.” Hegel argues that the individual’s mind (“subjective Spirit”) is profoundly influenced by its time, i.e., the cultural context that forms its temporal setting (“objective Spirit”). However, Hegel makes somewhat conflicting claims in this regard: (i) that individuals harbor the presuppositions of their cultural context unreflectively; (ii) that philosophy overcomes the form of this unreflectiveness, but that the content of philosophy remains tied to its time since it tries reflectively to justify current presuppositions; (iii) that this reflection occurs when a culture declines, and that reflection, too, therefore is a child of its time; (iv) that an individual may be a minority thinker (despite what claim [i] says), but that even such an individual is a child of his time in the (weaker) sense that he is unable to influence it precisely because he transcends it.
18. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 3
Kate Padgett Walsh Distance and Engagement: Hegel’s Account of Critical Reflection
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Hegel famously argues that Kant’s account of critical distance depends upon an impoverished conception of freedom. In its place, Hegel introduces a richer conception of freedom, according to which the self who is capable of self-determination is multifaceted: wanting and thinking, social and individual. This richer conception gives rise to an account of critical reflection that emphasizes engagement with our motives and practices rather than radical detachment from them. But what is most distinctive about Hegel’s account is the idea that when we reflect upon motives and practices, we draw upon shared self-understandings that are neither universal nor just particular to individuals. There is, Hegel argues, no presocial identity or self that can be detached from our socially constituted contexts of thought and value. This has important implications for how we conceive of critical reflection.
19. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 3
Philip J. Ivanhoe Understanding Traditional Chinese Philosophical Texts
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The descriptive aim of this essay is to sort out and distinguish among some different hermeneutical approaches to Chinese philosophical texts and to make clear that the approach that one employs carries with it important implications about the kind of intellectual project one is pursuing. The primary normative claim is that in order to be doing research in the field of traditional Chinese philosophy, one must make a case for one’s interpretation as representing philosophical views that have been held by Chinese thinkers and that making such a case is a distinctive type of intellectual activity analogous to making a case in a court of law. In addition to this conceptual or methodological point, I argue that the interpretation of Chinese philosophical texts should make clear and take into account the special role that commentary has played throughout the tradition.
20. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 3
John Kronen, Joy Laine Realism and Essentialism in the Nyāya Darśana
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Philosophers affiliated with the Nyāya school of classical Indian philosophy developed an impressive species of realism. Nyāya philosophers defended direct realism in holding that we perceive bodies, not just their qualities or mental images of their qualities. This sort of realism has been out of favor for centuries in the West and faces a number of problems that the Nyāya knew and answered in a sophisticated way. Rather than focus on the Nyāya defense of direct realism, we focus on the Nyāya defense of epistemological realism in order to explicate what Nyāya philosophers took to be implications of their view that we know something about the way things are in themselves. Specifically, we argue that the epistemological realism of the Nyāya philosophers commits them to a strong form of essentialism, which furthermore entails that substances exist and instantiate natural-kind universals.