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53Schopenhauer's Five-Dimensional Normative EthicsIn David Bather Woods & Timothy Stoll (eds.), The Schopenhauerian Mind, Routledge. forthcoming.Most Anglophone commentators ignore Schopenhauer's normative ethics, and those who do consider it often dismiss it as simplistic. In this chapter, we argue that Schopenhauer in fact offers a rich normative ethics. Taking a cue from Scanlon, we offer a reading of Schopenhauer on which actions are subject to five distinct dimensions of ethical assessment. The resulting view is nuanced and, in many respects. We conclude, however, by arguing that none of the evaluative dimensions equip Schopenhauer …Read more
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53Kant on ModalityIn Anil Gomes & Andrew Stephenson (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Kant, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.This chapter analyzes several key themes in Kant’s views about modality. We begin with the pre-critical Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, in which Kant distinguishes between formal and material elements of possibility, claims that all possibility requires an actual ground, and argues for the existence of a single necessary being. We then briefly consider how Kant’s views change in his mature period, especially concerning the role of form and thought in…Read more
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196Schopenhauer's Titus ArgumentIn Patrick Hassan (ed.), Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy, Routledge. forthcoming.In one of his arguments for taking compassion to be the basis of morality, Schopenhauer offers a thought experiment involving two characters: Titus and Caius. The 'Titus Argument,' as I call it, has been misunderstood by many of Schopenhauer's readers, but is, I argue, worthy of attention by contemporary ethicists and metaethicists. In this chapter, I clarify the argument's structure, methodology, and its key philosophical move, drawing comparisons with Newton's experimental methodology in optic…Read more
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215Moral realism in Spinoza's EthicsIn Yitzhak Melamed (ed.), The Cambridge Critical Guide to Spinoza's Ethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 248-65. 2017.I argue that Spinoza is more of a moral realist than an anti-realist. More specifically, I argue that Spinoza is more of a realist than Kant, and that his view has deep similarities with Plato's metaethics. Along the way, I identify three approaches to the moral realism/anti-realism distinction. Classifying Spinoza as a moral realist brings out a number of important complexities that have been overlooked by many of Spinoza's readers and by many contemporary metaethicists.
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524Schopenhauer on the Content of CompassionNoûs. forthcoming.On the traditional reading, Schopenhauer claims that compassion is the recognition of deep metaphysical unity. In this paper, I defend and develop the traditional reading. I begin by addressing three recent criticisms of the reading from Sandra Shapshay: that it fails to accommodate Schopenhauer's restriction to sentient beings, that it cannot explain his moral ranking of egoism over malice, and that Schopenhauer requires some level of distinction to remain in compassion. Against Shapshay, I arg…Read more
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48Kant on Reflection and Virtue, by Melissa Merritt (review)Mind 128 (511): 1002-1011. 2019.Kant on Reflection and Virtue, by MerrittMelissa. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 2018. Pp. xvi + 219.
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49Mendelssohn, Kant, and the Mereotopology of ImmortalityErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 4. 2017.In the first Critique, Kant claims to refute Moses Mendelssohn’s argument for the immortality of the soul. But some commentators, following Bennett (1974), have identified an apparent problem in the exchange: Mendelssohn appears to have overlooked the possibility that the “leap” between existence and non-existence might be a boundary or limit point in a continuous series, and Kant appears not to have exploited the lacuna, but to have instead offered an irrelevant criticism. Here, we argue that e…Read more
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23Eric Watkins . Kant on Persons and Agency Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018 Pp. xii + 242, hbk ISBN 9781107182455, £75.00 (review)Kantian Review 24 (2): 327-333. 2019.
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1718Kant and SpinozaIn Yitzhak Melamed (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Spinoza, Blackwell. forthcoming.In this chapter, I explore the connections between Spinoza’s philosophy and Immanuel Kant's. I begin by considering whether Kant engaged with Spinoza's actual views, and conclude that he did not. Despite that, I argue that there some philosophically-striking points of near-convergence between them. In addition to both privileging substance monism over other traditional metaphysical views, both Spinoza and Kant advance arguments for (a) epistemic humility based on the passivity of our senses and …Read more
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120Kant's Theory of the Self (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (5): 950-952. 2010.The self for Kant is something real, and yet is neither appearance nor thing in itself, but rather has some third status. Appearances for Kant arise in space and time where these are respectively forms of outer and inner attending (intuition). Melnick explains the "third status" by identifying the self with intellectual action that does not arise in the progression of attending (and so is not appearance), but accompanies and unifies inner attending. As so accompanying, it progresses with that at…Read more
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435Kant’s (Non-Question-Begging) Refutation of Cartesian ScepticismKantian Review 24 (1): 77-101. 2019.Interpreters of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism face a dilemma: it seems to either beg the question against the Cartesian sceptic or else offer a disappointingly Berkeleyan conclusion. In this article I offer an interpretation of the Refutation on which it does not beg the question against the Cartesian sceptic. After defending a principle about question-begging, I identify four premises concerning our representations that there are textual reasons to think Kant might be implicitly assuming. Using…Read more
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231Comparative Metaethics: Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality (edited book)Routledge. 2019.This collection of new essays focuses on metaethical views from outside the mainstream European tradition. The guiding motivation is that important discussions about the ultimate nature of morality can be found far beyond ancient Greece and modern Europe. The volume’s aim is to show how rich the possibilities are for comparative metaethics, and how much these comparisons can add to contemporary discussions of the foundations of morality. Representing five continents, the thinkers discussed range…Read more
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442Never Mind the Intuitive Intellect: Applying Kant’s Categories to NoumenaKantian Review 23 (1): 27-40. 2018.According to strong metaphysical readings of Kant, Kant believes there are noumenal substances and causes. Proponents of these readings have shown that these readings can be reconciled with Kant’s claims about the limitations of human cognition. An important new challenge to such readings, however, has been proposed by Markus Kohl, focusing on Kant’s occasional statements about the divine or intuitive intellect. According to Kohl, how an intuitive intellect represents is a decisive measure for h…Read more
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482Compassionate Moral RealismOxford University Press. 2018.This book offers a ground-up defense of objective morality, drawing inspiration from a wide range of philosophers, including John Locke, Arthur Schopenhauer, Iris Murdoch, Nel Noddings, and David Lewis. The core claim is compassion is our capacity to perceive other creatures' pains, pleasures, and desires. Non-compassionate people are therefore perceptually lacking, regardless of how much factual knowledge they might have. Marshall argues that people who do have this form of compassion thereby f…Read more
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34Review: Kitcher, Kant's Thinker (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (6). 2011.British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 6, Page 1226-1229, December 2011
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766Schopenhauer and Non-Cognitivist Moral RealismJournal of the History of Philosophy 55 (2): 293-316. 2017.I argue that Schopenhauer’s views on the foundations of morality challenge the widely-held belief that moral realism requires cognitivism about moral judgments. Schopenhauer’s core metaethical view consists of two claims: that moral worth is attributed to actions based in compassion, and that compassion, in contrast to egoism, arises from deep metaphysical insight into the non-distinctness of beings. These claims, I argue, are sufficient for moral realism, but are compatible with either co…Read more
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327Self, World, and Art: Metaphysical Topics in Kant and HegelIn Sally Sedgwick & Dina Emundts (eds.), Bewusstsein/Consciousness, De Gruyter. pp. 281-285. 2016.
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3Kant and Skepticism (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (2): 319-320. 2009.Kant's theoretical philosophy is often read as a response to skeptical challenges raised by his predecessors. Yet Kant himself explicitly discusses skepticism in relatively few places in his published work, so Michael Forster's focused examination of Kant's relation to skepticism is a useful addition to the literature. Forster sets out to distinguish different types of skepticism to which Kant might be responding, determine what responses Kant offers, and evaluate the strength of those responses…Read more
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2472Kant’s One Self and the Appearance/Thing-in-itself DistinctionKant Studien 104 (4): 421-441. 2013.Kant’s transcendental idealism hinges on a distinction between appearances and things in themselves. The debate about how to understand this distinction has largely ignored the way that Kant applies this distinction to the self. I argue that this is a mistake, and that Kant’s acceptance of a single, unified self in both his theoretical and practical philosophy causes serious problems for the ‘two-world’ interpretation of his idealism.
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2524Does Kant Demand Explanations for All Synthetic A Priori Claims?Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (3): 549-576. 2014.Kant's philosophy promises to explain various synthetic a priori claims. Yet, as several of his commentators have noted, it is hard to see how these explanations could work unless they themselves rested on unexplained synthetic a priori claims. Since Kant appears to demand explanations for all synthetic a priori claims, it would seem that his project fails on its own terms. I argue, however, that Kant holds that explanations are required only for synthetic a priori claims about (purportedly) exp…Read more
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229The Mind and the Body as 'One and the Same Thing' in SpinozaBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 17 (5): 897-919. 2009.I argue that, contrary to how he is often read, Spinoza did not believe that the mind and the body were numerically identical. This means that we must find some alternative reading for his claims that they are 'one and the same thing'
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212Kant's Metaphysics of the SelfPhilosophers' Imprint 10 1-21. 2010.I argue that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason offers a positive metaphysical account of the thinking self. Previous interpreters have overlooked this account, I believe, because they have held that any metaphysical view of the self would be incompatible with both Kant's insistence on the limitations of cognition and with his project in the Paralogisms. Closer examination, however, shows that neither of those aspects of the Critique precludes a metaphysical account of the self, and that other aspec…Read more
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318Lockean EmpathySouthern Journal of Philosophy 54 (1): 87-106. 2016.This paper offers an epistemic defense of empathy, drawing on John Locke's theory of ideas. Locke held that ideas of shape, unlike ideas of color, had a distinctive value: resembling qualities in their objects. I argue that the same is true of empathy, as when someone is pained by someone's pain. This means that empathy has the same epistemic value or objectivity that Locke and other early modern philosophers assigned to veridical perceptions of shape. For this to hold, pain and pleasure must be…Read more
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62Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought, by Yitzhak Melamed (review)The Leibniz Review 23 187-194. 2013.
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434Hume versus the vulgar on resistance, nisus, and the impression of powerPhilosophical Studies 172 (2): 305-319. 2015.In the first Enquiry, Hume takes the experience of exerting force against a solid body to be a key ingredient of the vulgar idea of power, so that the vulgar take that experience to provide us with an impression of power. Hume provides two arguments against the vulgar on this point: the first concerning our other applications of the idea of power and the second concerning whether that experience yields certainty about distinct events. I argue that, even if we accept Hume’s conception of the vulg…Read more
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Meta-Ethics |
Arthur Schopenhauer |
Immanuel Kant |
Baruch Spinoza |
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Arthur Schopenhauer |
Kant: Respect |
PhilPapers Editorships
Kant: Philosophy of Mind |
Spinoza: Epistemology |
Spinoza: Works |