Byron Williston

To self-forgive is to foreswear specific self-directed negative attitudes, attitudes that result from an agent’s recognition of his own moral failing. What does this foreswearing process involve? When is it justified? And what is the relation between self-forgiveness and interpersonal forgiveness? I will make two arguments in an attempt to answer these questions. First, self-forgiveness essentially involves a process of shaming whose ultimate goal is restoration of the wrongdoer’s goodness. Second, if a wrongdoer is to merit the forgiveness of his victim(s), he is morally ’required’ not merely ’permitted to’ forgive himself first

In The Devil and Secular Humanism Howard Radest explored the enlightenment roots of humanism; in this book he moves on humanism’s “personal and transcendental” features. As he sees it, contemporary humanism faces two enemies. There is, first, the “shadow enlightenment.” Radest describes this as that version of enlightenment principles with which humanists operate today, but which distorts the original meaning of those principles. Thus, for example, in place of the revolutionary idea of the moral equivalence of all persons, we are now said to be guided by a specious and superficial individualism. Second, Radest denounces those cultural ideologies—religious fundamentalism, New Ageism, and postmodernism— which have arisen as a critical response to the enlightenment’s distorted self-image. Radest’s goal is, therefore, to counteract the power of these ideologies by way of refurbishing what he takes to be humanism’s immanent conceptual appeal.

This dissertation has as its focus a tension at the heart of Descartes' theory of the passions, one which defines and therefore problematizes his final ethic. As he sees it, the passions can both contribute to our good and prevent us from seeing it perspicuously. It is not so much the presence of this tension itself in Descartes' thinking which is noteworthy---the tension is an old one in the history of philosophy---but his epistemological treatment of it, the fact that it emerges within and can only be resolved through the new philosophy of ideas. I explore this fundamental tension as it relates to two closely related themes, both of which are of major importance to Descartes throughout his career. The first is the problem of knowledge or truth, the second that of freedom. As I argue, the account of freedom in Meditation Four is canonical for Descartes. This means that the ideal formal relation between intellect and will which that account lays down applies in all spheres of prospective knowledge acquisition---from metaphysics to morals. ;The intersection of truth and freedom in Meditation Four is well-known: only when the will's operations are spontaneously directed by the "light" of the intellect can our beliefs or actions be fully free. However, Descartes' mature ethic, contained almost exclusively in The Passions of the Soul, presents that doctrine of freedom with a good deal of conceptual trouble. For although it is quite clear what the object of moral knowledge is---the good of the composite self---it remains difficult to specify exactly how the passions can reveal this object for what it univocally is. This is, I claim, due to the inherent "opacity" of passion-ideas, their irreducibly problematic status as representational entities. They are, it would seem, both the only means to self-knowledge and moral freedom and a persistent hindrance to this dual ideal. ;Nevertheless, with the concept of generosity, Descartes claims to offer us a clear picture of what it means to achieve the ideal. The criterion of self-knowledge employed by the generous agent is that of "control": she is aware of the degree of control she is capable of exercising over people and things external to herself, and she structures her desires accordingly. But this result is, allegedly, not obtained at the cost of suppressing the passions. The generous agent thus combines, in optimal measures, the pleasures afforded by the passions with full rational control of the will. ;I close with some sceptical reflections on the ideal of generosity thus construed