Michael P. Levine

This philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of racism brings together some of the most influential analytic philosophers writing on racism today. The introduction by Tamas Pataki outlines the historical and thematic development of conceptions of race and racism, and locates the following essays against the backdrop of contemporary reactions to that development. While the framework is primarily analytic, the volume also includes essays deeply informed by psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and feminist and social theory. The fourteen chapters in this collection address three interrelated questions: What is racism? What are the causes of racism? and What are the moral and political implications of racism? Although their approaches are wide ranging, the contributors to Racism in Mind broadly endorse a psychological-characterological approach to the understanding of many aspects of racism.

The shift from the logical to the empirical argument from evil against the existence of God has been seen as a victory by analytic philosophers of religion who now seek to establish that the existence of evil fails to make the existence of God improbable. I examine several arguments in an effort to establish the following: (i) Their victory is pyrrhic. They distort the historical, philosophical and religious nature of the problem of evil. (ii) In attempting to refute the empirical argument they rely on disguised but well-worn strategies. (iii) A refusal to let evil count in any way against the probability of the existence of God indicates that their rejection is ideological and contrary to traditional theism. (iv) Aspects of their arguments are morally repugnant. (v) Their arguments are indicative of a lack of vitality, relevance and “seriousness” in Christian analytic philosophy of religion.

Many people who do not believe in God believe that 'everything is God' - that everything is part of an all-inclusive divine unity. In _Pantheism_, this concept is presented as a legitimate position and its philosophical basis is examined. Michael Levine compares it to theism, and discusses the scope for resolving the problems inherent in theism through pantheism. He also considers the implications of pantheism in terms of practice. This book will appeal to those who study philosophy or theology. It will also be of interest to anyone who does not believe in a personal God, but does have faith in a higher unifying force, and is interested in the justification of this as a legitimate system of thought.

Many people who do not believe in God believe that 'everything is God' - that everything is part of an all-inclusive divine unity. In _Pantheism_, this concept is presented as a legitimate position and its philosophical basis is examined. Michael Levine compares it to theism, and discusses the scope for resolving the problems inherent in theism through pantheism. He also considers the implications of pantheism in terms of practice. This book will appeal to those who study philosophy or theology. It will also be of interest to anyone who does not believe in a personal God, but does have faith in a higher unifying force, and is interested in the justification of this as a legitimate system of thought.

This chapter argues that Hume’s argument against justified belief in miracles in Part 1 of his essay is a priori and applies to firsthand experience of a miracle as well as to testimony. The disputed issues cannot be decided on how closely one reads the text or on what Hume “actually says” but are interpretive and require setting them in the context of Hume’s Treatise—his peculiar empiricism, his account of causation, and his theory of a posteriori reasoning. But even if, contrary to the a priori reading of Hume’s argument in Part 1, Hume never thought it impossible to justifiably believe in a miracle, and even if Hume’s argument in Part 1 fails, this does nothing to support the view that anyone has ever been “justified” in believing in a miracle or that “difficult and delicate empirical investigations” are needed before one justifiably rejects such belief.

While accepting and welcoming our main thesis and project, Schäfer and Hühn’s Commentary on our paper focuses on two main criticisms, both of which seem to us mistaken. The first of these is that our paper falsely argues “that the existing definitions of leadership out there fall short in describing the role of ethics in leadership.” The second seems to be a belief that (i) we claim to be offering an entirely new definition of leadership and misrepresenting its nature because (ii) in the view of Schäfer and Hühn this supposedly new definition “is essentially un-Aristotelian.”

Accounts of leadership in relation to ethics can and do go wrong in several ways that may lead us too quickly into thinking there is a tighter relationship between ethics and leadership than we have reason to believe. Firstly, these accounts can be misled by the centrality of values talk in recent discussions of leadership into thinking that values of a particular kind are sufficient for leadership. Secondly, the focus on character in recent leadership accounts can lead to a similar error. The assumption here is that because good character is often a locus of descriptions of leaders, such character is necessary and sufficient for leadership. Thirdly, we can fall victim to an observer bias that colors our accounts of the leaders we admire and thus wish to either have or be, which in turn leads to the fourth way in which accounts of leadership can go wrong in their description of the role of ethics in leadership. Through inattention or through wishful thinking accounts of leadership can become merely prescriptive and stipulate that ethics is requisite and at least partly constitutive of leadership. Keeping in mind these ways in which accounts of leadership commonly go astray, we can say that any adequate account of leadership must, at least in the first instance, be able to differentiate not only between leadership and good ethical character, but also between leadership and power, authority, influence, managerial ability, and charisma. Taking a closer look at some of the ways that the relation between leadership and ethics is misconstrued is necessary to better understanding both leadership and its connection to ethics. It is, however, just a first step. Asking whether we have reason to think of leadership as an Aristotelian virtue should, we think, enable us to give a more accurate and useful account of the complexity of the relation. It also captures underlying reasons for wanting to see the two as intrinsically connected.

This paper begins with an examination of Amelie Rorty’s claim that although “emotions cannot be rational in the narrow sense of being logically derived from accepted premises, they can be deemed rational... as ‘appropriately formed to serve our thriving.’” This is the background against which (i) I develop a notion of ‘emotional holism’ based on the aetiology of emotion in infantile phantasy; and (ii) introduce a dark corollary about the likelihood that our emotions do not, on the whole, match the myths we use to describe them to ourselves. The paper has five sections: (1) The Rationality of Kinds of Emotion and the Argument Against the Rationality of Particular Emotions; (2) Alternative Views of the Rationality of Emotions; (3) Is EmotionaI Behavior RationaI?; (4) Do Particular Emotions Generally Serve Our Thriving?; and (5) Are There Emotions Not Worth Having?: EmotionaI Holism and Manipulating One’s Emotional Repertoire.