Louis P. Pojman

(1935 - 2005)

It is a widely held belief that one can will to believe, disbelieve, and withhold belief concerning propositions. It is sometimes said that we have a duty to believe certain propositions. These theses have had a long and respected history. In one form or another they receive the support of a large number of philosophers and theologians who have written on the relationship of the will to believing. In the New Testament Jesus holds his disciples responsible for their beliefs, reprimands them for doubting, and speaks of the ability to believe as if it were optional. Paul makes it clear that he thinks propositional belief is a necessary condition for salvation. If a man confesses Christ as Lord with his lips and believes in his heart that God has raised him from the dead, he shall be saved . The writer of Hebrews implies that unless we have certain propositional beliefs we cannot please God . In the New Testament most cases of pistis involve more than a propositional attitude. They involve the idea of trust and faithfulness. Nevertheless, a prima facie case for saying that the volitional theses can be found in the New Testament can be made. Forms of volitionalism can be found stated more explicitly in the writings of the early Church, in the writings of Irenaeus, in the Athanasian Creed, and in Augustine. Acquinas describes faith as an act of the intellect moved by the will. Descartes is perhaps the classic example of a volitionalist, holding that if we were not responsible for our beliefs , then God would be - which is tantamount to blasphemy in that it makes God into a deceiver

The plan of this study is founded on a hypothesis that there is an overall argument in the Climacus writings : 1) There are two opposing ways to approach the truth: the objective and the subjective ways, 2) The objective way fails, 3) Hence the only appropriate way to the truth is the subjective way, 4) Christianity is the subjective way of life that meets all conditions for the highest subjectivity, 5) Hence Christianity is the appropriate way to reach the truth. The present work is sympathetically critical - always appreciative of Kierkegaard's genius but not always endorsing his arguments

The world is becoming an ever-shrinking global village in which the events of one neighborhood tend to reverberate through the whole. In this essay I examine the best arguments available for both nationalist commitments and for moral cosmopolitanism and then try to reconcile them within a larger framework of institutional cosmopolitanism or World Government. My thesis is that in an international Hobbesian world like ours, increasingly threatened by global problems related to the environment, trade, injustice, crime, migration, health, terrorism, and war, institutional cosmopolitanism offers the best prospect for world peace with justice.

Classics of Philosophy, 2/e, is the most comprehensive anthology of writings in Western philosophy in print. Spanning 2500 years of thought, it is ideal for introduction to philosophy and history of philosophy courses that are structured chronologically. More than seventy works by forty-two philosophers as well as fragments from the Pre-Socratics are included, offering students and general readers alike an extensive and economical collection of the major works of the Western tradition. This anthology contains the most important writings from Thales to Rawls; seventeen of these are complete works, while the others are judiciously abridged so that little of value to the student is lost. Unabridged works include such classics as Plato's The Apology, Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy, Leibniz's The Monadology, Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Kant's Foundation for the Metaphysic of Morals, Mill's Utilitarianism, Russell's A Free Man's Worship, Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism, and Rawls's "Justice as Fairness." A lucid introduction, including a brief biographical sketch, accompanies each of the featured philosophers. Classics of Philosophy, 2/e, provides an extensive view of the most significant stages of growth in Western philosophy, including its birth with the Pre-Socratics as well as its contemporary developments. The second edition includes new selections by Augustine, Berkeley, Hume, Wollstonecraft, Nagel, and Foot.

In 1941 Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish friar from Warsaw was arrested for publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets and sentenced to Auschwitz. There he was beaten, kicked by shiny leather boots, and whipped by his prison guards. After one prisoner successfully escaped, the prescribed punishment was to select ten other prisoners who were to die by starvation. As ten prisoners were pulled out of line one by one, Fr. Kolbe broke out from the ranks, pleading with he Commandant to be allowed to take the place of one of the prisoners, a Polish worker with a wife and children dependent upon him. "I'm an old man, sir, and good for nothing. My life will serve no purpose," the 45 year old priest pleaded. He was taken, thrown down the stairs into a dank dark basement with the other nine prisoners and left to starve. Usually, prisoners punished like this spent their last days howling, attacking each other and clawing the walls in a frenzy of despair.

The concept of desert, which once enjoyed a central place in political and ethical theory, has been relegated to the margins of much of contemporary theory, if not excluded altogether. Recently a renewed interest in the topic has emerged, and several philosophers have argued that the notion merits a more central place in political and ethical theory. Some of these philosophers contend that justice exists to the extent that people receive exactly what they deserve, while others argue that desert should replace such considerations as rights, need, and equality as the basis for distributions. Still others argue that morality involves a fitting match between one's moral character and a degree of happiness. All of these positions have encountered opposition from egalitarians, libertarians, and those who are skeptical about the coherence of the concept of desert. The first anthology of its kind, What Do We Deserve? is a balanced collection of readings that brings sharply opposing positions and arguments together and stimulates debate over the meaning and significance of desert in current thought. The book begins with eight classical readings on desert (by Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Smith, Kant, Mill, Sidgwick, and Ross), and later turns to contemporary interpretations of the issue. The selections examine the concept itself, analyze its relationship to the ideas of freedom and responsibility, engage in the debate between John Rawls and his critics on the merits of desert, and, finally, study the wider role and significance of desert in political and ethical theory.

The dominant contemporary political theory is egalitarianism, yet egalitarians seldom give a clear justification of their position. In this paper I examine such questions as, What is egalitarianism all about? What is so attractive about equality? And what is the proper criterion? What do egalitarians want to equalize and why? My primary hypothesis is that current egalitarian theories either illicitly attempt to derive substantive conclusions from formal notions or, if they are substantive, are beset with weighty objections. A corollary is the hypothesis that the idea of equality is an empty, rhetorical notion, one that, with one possible exception, does no useful philosophical work.

It is widely held that we can obtain beliefs and withhold believing propositions directly by performing an act of will. This thesis is sometimes identified with the view that believing is a basic act, an act which is under our direct control. Descartes holds that the will is limitless in relation to belief acquisition and that we must be directly responsible for our beliefs, especially our false beliefs, for otherwise we could draw the blasphemous conclusion that God is responsible for them. For Descartes and his followers judgment and assent are acts of the will which may be made both when they ought and when they ought not to be made. They are expressions of freedom of the will and as such we are directly responsible for the beliefs we acquire. Other philosophers who seem to espouse volitionalism include Aquinas, Locke, Kierkegaard, Newman, James, Pieper, Chisholm and Meiland.