Clancy Martin

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Borges Forgets NietzscheClancy MartinHow little moral would the world appear without forgetfulness! A poet could say that God has placed forgetfulness as a doorkeeper on the threshold of human dignity.—Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-HumanIn his short story "Funes, the Memorious," Jorges Luis Borges writes of his singular nineteen-year-old hero, Funes: "He was, let us not forget, almost incapable of general, platonic ideas. It was not only difficult for him to understand that the generic term dog embraced so many unlike specimens of differing sizes and differing forms; he was disturbed by the fact that a dog at three-fourteen (seen in profile) should have the same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen in front)." And he goes on to say that "... he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details" (pp. 42–43).1 About a century earlier, in 1872, in a passage from his famous unpublished essay "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects... Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things... We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us."2 [End Page 265]From this and other passages, mostly in "On Truth and Lies," Nietzsche scholars have derived Nietzsche's much-debated (or so-called, depending on who you talk to) "theory of perspectivism." This is the idea that, roughly speaking, "truths" about the world are at best truths uttered from the perspective of some knower, who inevitably brings to world (and thus, to those truths) a particular way of looking at things, of seeing some details and excluding others, of valuing some aspects of the world more than others, etc.I will not be addressing the well-known problems of Nietzsche's theory of perspectivism (if indeed he had such a truth-theory).3 What interests me here is something most scholars have ignored about Nietzsche's perspectivism,4 and what Borges tries to illuminate in his strange little fable: the importance of forgetting to thinking and the difficulties memory may present to one who would think about "truth" as something more than "an impossible idiom in which each individual object, each stone, each bird and branch [has] an individual name" (p. 42). For Nietzsche, and for Borges writing under Nietzsche's influence, the human facts about forgetting and remembering illustrate that our epistemological projects are much more psychological than some philosophers would like to admit. Once we acknowledge the deeply psychological character of those projects, we see that they may not be "truth" projects at all, but rather psychologically valuable (perhaps even necessary) projects of strategic falsification.IThe "absent-minded" narrator of Borges's story tells us that he is adding his own tale to a collection of testimonials to Funes, as part of the project "that all those who knew him should write something about him" (pp. 35–36). Thus the play of words in the title: "Funes" is "memorious" not just because of the accident that results in his amazing and infallible memory, but also because this text is part of a larger memorial. A relationship between memory and knowing from a particular perspective is introduced immediately: Funes will be known and remembered through the gathering of many individual memorials to him. None of these testimonies will be "objective" or "impartial": all of them will necessarily preserve the perspective of the particular individual who is recalling Funes. As the narrator of our memorial confesses, his own efforts will be impoverished by "the deplorable fact of my being an Argentinian... when the theme is a Uruguayan" (p. 35). [End Page 266]Our narrator offers three...

Michelle Kosch's study of autonomy and moral agency in Kant, Schelling and Kierkegaard is a model of clear-thinking analysis, deeply involved with the scholarly literature , and informed by the best contemporary work on ethics and rationality. The book is a pleasure to read, and it boldly takes on one of the most difficult problems in philosophy: what does it mean to be free? Kosch does not herself offer an answer the question, but shows a history of one attempt to solve the problem, beginning in Kant and culminating in what she calls the "double incompatibilism" of Kierkegaard. Along the way Kosch controversially but persuasively demonstrates the influence of Schelling upon Kierkegaard

In today's business world, ethics is not simply a peripheral concern of executive boards or a set of supposed constraints on free enterprise. Ethics stands at the very core of our working lives and of society as a whole, defining the public image of the business community and the ways in which individual companies and people behave. What people do at work--and how they think about work--determines their attitudes and aspirations, affecting and even structuring their personal lives and habits. Working from this premise, Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader provides a practical overview of business ethics that concentrates on the ethical problems and dilemmas students are most likely to face in their prospective work environments. Classic and recent articles and cases cover a broad spectrum of issues and concerns--from private ethical dilemmas to larger considerations of corporate values--and propose guidelines for thinking about the business world in a moral context. Each reading and case is followed by lively questions for discussion. Offering a welcome alternative to the impersonal tone of most business ethics texts, the editors address students in an appealing and conversational manner. They provide engaging chapter introductions that include personal narratives and also present the ideas of great philosophers in a unique way--as emails. Ideal for introductory undergraduate and MBA courses in business ethics, Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader can be read as a coherent narrative but also offers instructors great flexibility, as its various chapters, readings, and cases can be pursued in almost any order. A Companion Website featuring chapter objectives and summaries, study questions, self-tests, and off-site links of interest will soon be available. An Instructor's Manual with Test Bank is available to adopters

The most up-to-date reader with cases in professional ethics available.What does it mean to be an ethical professional? A professional career can be so demanding that it permeates every aspect of a person's life and personality. In light of this fact, it is especially important for students who are planning to enter a chosen profession to understand its moral status,moral virtues, and possible moral pitfalls, so that they will be equipped to deal with the inevitable moral quandaries that they will encounter as professionals.The most up-to-date professional ethics reader available, Ethics Across the Professions analyzes the complex ethical issues that arise in such fields as engineering, finance, healthcare, journalism, and law. Featuring a wide array of both classic and contemporary sources, it ranges from works byAristotle and Kant to selections by Michael Bayles, Sissela Bok, Paul Ekman, and Thomas Nagel. Organized topically, the anthology covers what it means to be a professional, outlines several ethical models, and addresses key issues including deception in professional life, privacy, loyalty, socialwelfare, conflicts of interest, and self-regulation. The book includes detailed chapter introductions, several practical case studies at the end of each chapter, and provocative discussion questions on issues like "whistle-blowing," the Iraq War, educating illegal immigrant children, andadvertisements for pharmaceutical companies. Edited by three renowned ethicists, Ethics Across the Professions is especially suited for introductory professional ethics courses taught in philosophy departments as well as in nursing schools, business schools, and other professional programs.

Introducing Philosophy: A Text with Integrated Readings, Tenth Edition, is an exciting, accessible, and thorough introduction to the core problems of philosophy and the many ways in which they are, and have been, answered. The authors combine substantial selections from significant works in the history of philosophy with excerpts from current philosophy, clarifying the readings and providing context with their own detailed commentary and explanation. Spanning 2,500 years, the selections range from the oldest known fragments to cutting-edge contemporary essays. Organized topically, the chapters present alternative perspectives--including analytic, continental, feminist, and non-Western viewpoints--alongside the historical works of major Western philosophers.PEDAGOGICAL FEATURES:* Discussion questions, a summary, and a bibliography with suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter* Questions at the end of each subsection* Marginal quotations from the featured readings* Key philosophical terms, boldfaced in the text and collected at the end of each chapter* A glossary at the end of the book.

Artificial Intelligence and Music Ecosystem highlights the opportunities and rewards associated with the application of AI in the creative arts. Featuring an array of voices, including interviews with Jacques Attali, Holly Herndon and Scott Cohen, this book offers interdisciplinary approaches to pressing ethical and technical questions associated with AI. Considering the perspectives of developers, students and artists, as well as the wider themes of law, ethics and philosophy, Artificial Intelligence and Music Ecosystem is an essential introduction for anyone interested in the impact of AI on music, including those studying and working in the creative arts.

What does it mean to be an ethical professional? A professional career can be so demanding that it permeates every aspect of a person's life and personality. In light of this fact, it is especially important for students who are planning to enter a chosen profession to understand its moral status, moral virtues, and possible moral pitfalls, so that they will be equipped to deal with the inevitable moral quandaries that they will encounter as professionals. The most up-to-date professional ethics reader available, Ethics Across the Professions analyzes the complex ethical issues that arise in such fields as engineering, finance, healthcare, journalism, and law. Featuring a wide array of both classic and contemporary sources, it ranges from works by Aristotle and Kant to selections by Michael Bayles, Sissela Bok, Paul Ekman, and Thomas Nagel. Organized topically, the anthology covers what it means to be a professional, outlines several ethical models, and addresses key issues including deception in professional life, privacy, loyalty, social welfare, conflicts of interest, and self-regulation. The book includes detailed chapter introductions, several practical case studies at the end of each chapter, and provocative discussion questions on issues like "whistle-blowing," the Iraq War, educating illegal immigrant children, and advertisements for pharmaceutical companies. Edited by three renowned ethicists, Ethics Across the Professions is especially suited for introductory professional ethics courses taught in philosophy departments as well as in nursing schools, business schools, and other professional programs.

We introduce and study a natural extension of Marcus external contextual grammars. This mathematically simple mechanism which generates a proper subclass of simple matrix languages, known to be mildly context-sensitive ones, is still mildly context-sensitive. Furthermore, we get an infinite hierarchy of mildly context-sensitive families of languages. Then we attempt to fill a gap regarding the linguistic relevance of these mechanisms which consists in defining a tree structure on the strings generated by many-dimensional external contextual grammars, and investigate some related issues. Several open problems are finally discussed

Introducing Philosophy: A Text with Integrated Readings, Tenth Edition is a thorough introduction to the core problems of philosophy, including explanations and background by the authors along with generous excerpts from the philosophers under discussion. Organized topically, the chapters present alternative perspectives-including analytic, continental, feminist, and non-Western viewpoints-alongside the historical works of major philosophers. The text provides the course materials that allow instructors and students to focus on a variety of philosophical problems and perspectives. Spanning 2,500 years, the selections range from the oldest known fragments to cutting-edge contemporary essays

Introducing Philosophy: A Text with Integrated Readings, Eleventh Edition, is an exciting, accessible, and thorough introduction to the core questions of philosophy and the many ways in which they are, and have been, answered. The authors combine substantial selections from significant works in the history of philosophy with excerpts from current philosophy, clarifying the readings and providing context with their own detailed commentary and explanation. Spanning 2,500 years, the selections range from the oldest known fragments to cutting-edge contemporary essays. Organized topically, the chapters present alternative perspectives--including analytic, continental, feminist, and non-Western viewpoints--alongside the historical works of major Western philosophers.

What can well-meaning people do about terror and genocide? The more we fight against systems of violence, the further we seem to sink into them. This book explores the lives and letters of ordinary and intellectual Germans who faced the ethical challenges of the Third Reich. Trained in history, literary criticism, philosophy, and theology, its four authors look at the role of myths, lies, non-conformity, irony, and modeling in cultivating a self. They explain how we might use these ordinary strategies of selfhood to bear the burden of historical responsibility and be happy doing so."