Katerina Deligiorgi

(2017) 'Interest and Agency', in Gabriel, Markus and Rasmussen, Anders Moe (eds.) German Idealism Today. De Guyter Verlag. Abstract: Undeterred by Kant’s cautionary advice, contemporary defenders of free will advance substantive metaphysical theses in support of their views. This is perhaps unsurprising given the mixed reception of Kant’s solution of the conflict between freedom and natural necessity, which is supposed to vindicate reason’s withdrawal from speculation. Kant argues that neither libertarians nor determinists can win, because they deal with concepts of unrestricted scope, and proposes instead to regiment the reference conditions of each concept and to specify the domain, ‘world’, proper to each. However, the precise character of this solution, its conceptual and metaphysical commitments, continues to be a matter of controversy among Kant scholars. In particular, there is ever-renewed concern about the incipient dualism of the position. Although I will be examining some of this material, my primary aim in this paper is not to make a contribution to the interpretative debate about the antinomy. Rather, I want to draw on two lessons from Kant’s treatment of the antinomy to argue for the importance of a certain way of putting the problem of human freedom.

In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an ideal of life can play within an autonomist ethic. I begin by examining the critical role Schiller gives to emotions in tackling specific motivational concerns in Kant's ethics. In the Kantian response I offer to these criticisms, I emphasise the role of metaphysics for a proper understanding of Kant's position whilst allowing that with respect to moral psychology, Kant and Schiller are in agreement about the importance of emotions in our moral lives. I conclude by returning to the themes broached in the introduction to consider the extent to which the teleological concerns that motivate Schiller can be addressed within Kant's autonomist ethics.

Does Hegel have anything to contribute to moral philosophy? If moral philosophy presupposes the soundness of what he calls the 'standpoint of morality [Moralität]' (PR §137), then Hegel's contribution is likely to be negative. As is well known, he argues that morality fails to provide us with substantive answers to questions about what is good or morally required and tends to gives us a distorted, subject-centred view of our practical lives; moral concerns are best addressed from the 'standpoint of ethical life [Sittlichkeit]' (ibid.). Hegel's criticism of morality has had a decisive influence in the reception of his thought. By general acknowledgement, while his writings support a broadly neo-Aristotelian ethics of self-actualization, his views on moral philosophy are exhausted by his criticisms of Kant, whom he treats as paradigmatic exponent of the standpoint of morality. My aim in this essay is to correct this received view and show that Hegel offers a positive argument about the nature of moral willing.

© 2013 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyThe aim of this book, set out in the first chapter, is to offer an account of rational action that can accommodate both a model of rationality that is performance‐based and one that is agent‐based. On the former model, rationality is measured in terms of successful performance and amounts to fitness of the performance to the task at hand, so the performance is rational if it does the job it was supposed to do; on the latter, it is a feature of the deliberative processes that determine the choice of the action by the agent, so the action is rational if it is ‘the outcome of considered deliberation’. The proposed reconciliation is effected through the notion of expert opinion, which is authoritative because it is expert, and is accepted because it is authoritative. Fisch and Benbaji seek to show that...

Roman Sexualities. Edited by Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) x + 348 pp. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 19: History of Political Ideas—Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity. Edited with an introduction by Athanasios Moulakis (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1997) 281 pp. $34.95 cloth.Managing Knowledge: Experts, Agencies and Organizations. By Steven Albert and Keith Bradley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) xi + 215 pp. £40.00 cloth, £14.95 paper.Projecting Illusion: Film Spectatorship and the Impression of Reality. By Richard Allen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). x + 176 pp. $54.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.Chaucer in Context: Society, Allegory and Gender. By S. H. Rigby. Manchester Medieval Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996) xii + 205 pp. £35.00 cloth, £12.99 paper.Jung's Seminar on Nietzsche's Zarathustra. By C.G. Jung, ed. James L. Jarrett, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) xxviii + 393 pp. $17.95, £10.95 paper.Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. By Bernadette J. Brooten (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996) xxii + 412pp. £34.95, $27.95 cloth.Political Communication Today. By Duncan Watts (Manchester: Manchester University Press) x + 228 pp. £40.00 cloth, £10.99 paper.A Primer on German Enlightenment. By Sabine Roehr (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1995) xi + 282 pp. £36.95 cloth.Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages. By André Vauchez. Trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) xxvii + 645 pp. £65.00, $95.00 cloth.

Autonomy in bioethics is coming under sustained criticism from a variety of perspectives. The criticisms, which target personal or individual autonomy, are largely justified. Moral conceptions of autonomy, such as Kant’s, on the other hand, cannot simply be applied in bioethical situations without moralizing care provision and recipience. The discussion concludes with a proposal for re-thinking autonomy by focusing on what different agents count as reasons for choosing one rather than another course of action, thus recognising their involvement in the decision process.

Interpretations of Hegel’s social and political thought tend to present Hegel as critic of modern individualism and defender of institutionalism or proto-communitarianism. Yet Hegel has praise for the historically emancipatory role of individualism and gives a positive role to individuals in his discussion of ethics and the state. Drawing on Hegel’s analysis of the category of ‘individual’ in his Logic, this chapter shows that Hegel criticizes the conception of ‘individual’ as a simple and argues instead that it is a term in need of specification or completion. Hegel’s revisionary logic of the category of ‘individual’ is both interesting in itself and useful as an interpretative tool, because it shows the consistency of his various statements about individuals in his practical philosophy.