Amelie Rorty

(1932 - 2020)

In his admirably sensible book, Scheffler shows that it is possible—but difficult—to combine a morally upright life with one that is rich and satisfying. He identifies the psychological traits that can be enlisted as allies in our attempts to act justly, arguing that the range of moral projects—and our success in fulfilling them—varies with our political conditions. Among the harms perpetrated by an unjust state is that of forming the psychology of its citizens in such a way that the tasks of morality are, for them, both far-reaching and difficult. The scope of their moral obligations to correct injustices is greater, and they are psychologically less well-equipped to discharge those obligations in a personally satisfying way.

Both morality and theories of morality play many distinctive—and sometimes apparently conflicting—functions: they identify and prohibit wrongful aggression; they chart and analyze basic duties; they present ideals for emulation; they set the terms or justice, rights and entitlements; they characterize the norms of basic decency and neighborliness. Since many of these can, in practice, come into conflict with one another, morality provides guidance for integrating priorities. Claims to morality can, however, be misused as well as used: sanctimonious self-righteousness, self-centered moral narcisism and deflecting, misleading justification all present an abusive mask of morality. In this paper, I analyze both the use and abuse of morality and offer an account of its appropriate use, as presenting multiple heuristic questions for reflection

The challenge of explaining the emotions has engaged the attention of the best minds in philosophy and science throughout history. Part of the fascination has been that the emotions resist classification. As adequate account therefore requires receptivity to knowledge from a variety of sources. The philosopher must inform himself of the relevant empirical investigation to arrive at a definition, and the scientist cannot afford to be naive about the assumptions built into his conceptual apparatus. The contributors to this volume have approached the problem of characterizing and classifying emotions from the perspectives of neurophysiology, psychology, and social psychology as well as that of philosophical psychology. They discuss the difficulties that arise in classifying the emotions, assessing their appropriateness and rationality, and determining their function in motivating moral action

Philosophy is a dangerous profession, risking censorship, prison, even death. And no wonder: philosophers have questioned traditional pieties and threatened the established political order. Some claimed to know what was thought unknowable; others doubted what was believed to be certain. Some attacked religion in the name of science; others attacked science in the name of mystical poetry; some served tyrants; others were radical revolutionaries. This historically based collection of philosophers' reflections--the letters, journals, prefaces that reveal their hopes and hesitations, their triumphs and struggles, their deepest doubts and convictions--allow us to witness philosophical thought-in-process. It sheds light on the many--and conflicting--aims of philosophy: to express skepticism or overcome it, to support theology or attack it, to develop an ethical system or reduce it to practical politics. As their audiences differed, philosophers experimented with distinctive rhetorical strategies, writing dialogues, meditations, treatises, aphorisms. Ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt, with contributions from 44 philosophers (Augustine, Maimonides, AlGhazali, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, among others) this remarkable collection documents philosophers' claim that they change as well as understand the world. In her introductory essay, "Witnessing Philosophers," Amelie Rorty locates philosophers' reflections in the larger context of the many facets of their other activities and commitments.

A close and sympathetic reading of the tensions between naturalism and non-naturalism in Hume's theory shows us something of the ideological issues involved, issues rooted in the differences between the political and social conditions which make naturalism and non-naturalism seem plausible analyses of normative discourse. If we read Hume as a transitional figure, who documented and analyzed a shift in the paradigms of moral situations and problems, we see that the naturalistic controversy is not the sort of disagreement that forces us to choose between the two positions. Hume shows us one way in which the two theories can be bridged and made compatible in a "unified" theory: that is why he can, without being inconsistent, be read as a non-naturalist by some interpreters, and as a naturalist by others.

Aristotle's philosophy of mind has recently attracted renewed attention and respect from philosophers. This volume brings together outstanding new essays on De Anima by a distinguished international group of contributors including, in this paperback efdition, a new essay by Myles Burnyeat. The essays form a running commentary on the work, covering such topics as the relation between body and soul, sense-perception, imagination, memory, desire, and thought. the authors, writing with philosophical subtlety and wide-ranging scholarship, present the philosophical substance of Aristotle's views to the modern reader. they locate their interpretations firmly within the context of Aristotle's thought as a whole.

While this treatment of modalities captures some of the characteristics of our use of "necessary" and "possible," there are important features that are not captured unless we complicate the analysis, and expand the notation. My remarks are not made as a criticism of the possible worlds gambit, but rather as a challenge to formulate a finer network of distinctions to capture notions that now elude us. And there is precedent for this: Plantinga's attempt to distinguish modalities de dicto and de re, Kaplan's attempt to provide a notation for specifying the contexts for demonstrative terms, Marcus' and Bennett's attempts to provide a notation for non-trivial essential properties. And of course there are by now a set of systems that are alternatives to S5, limiting accessibility to possible worlds by a variety of restrictions.