•  4
    Love, reason, and will: Kierkegaard after Frankfurt (edited book)
    Bloomsbury Academic. 2015.
    An introduction to the philosophy of love, bridging analytic and continental philosophy and the philosophy of religion, through the writings of Harry G. Frankfurt and S.ren Kierkegaard.
  •  17
    This essay argues for a new conception of bad faith based partly on Harry Frankfurt's famous account of personal autonomy in terms of higher‐order volitions and caring, and based partly on Sartre's insights concerning tacit or pre‐thetic attitudes and “transcendent” freedom. Although Sartre and Frankfurt have rarely been connected, Frankfurt's concepts of volitional “wantonness” and “bullshit” (wantonness about truth) are similar in certain revealing respects to Sartre's account of bad faith. Ho…Read more
  •  25
    Today, any credible philosophical attempt to discuss personhood must take some position on the proper relation between the philosophical analysis of topics like action, intention, emotion, normative and evaluate judgment, desire and mood --which are grouped together under the heading of `moral psychology'-- and the usually quite different approaches to ostensibly the same phenomena in contemporary theoretical psychology and psychoanalytic practice. The gulf between these two domains is so deep t…Read more
  •  24
    In his contribution to a recent symposium on Habermas's work, (1) Charles Larmore critiques Habermas's Between Facts and Norms (2) from a largely Rawlsian perspective. His reading raises fundamental questions that divide Habermas from American pragmatists and other contextualists, and helps reveal, in my view, that the differences between Habermas's and Rawls's conceptions of justice are more basic than is often recognized. Yet as I will argue, in several places Larmore misconstrues Habermas's p…Read more
  • Online Exclusive: For A Federation Of Democracies
    Ethics and International Affairs 23 (1). 2009.
    Davenport argues for a federation of democracies to replace the United Nations Security Council. This new level of government, he says, is necessary to achieve the international cooperation needed to manage a global economy and address global problems
  •  93
    This paper begins by tracing the Hobbesian roots of `representationalism:' the thesis that reality is accessible to mind only through representations, images, signs or appearances that indicate a reality lying `behind' them (e.g. as unperceived causes of perceptions). This is linked to two kinds of absolute realism: the `naive' scientific realism of British empiricism, which provoked Berkeley's idealist reaction, and the noumenal realism of Kant. I argue that Husserl defined his position against…Read more
  •  8
    In the 21st century, as the peoples of the world grow more closely tied together, the question of real transnational government will finally have to be faced. The end of the Cold War has not brought the peace, freedom from atrocities, and decline of tyranny for which we hoped. It is also clearer now that problems like economic risks, tax havens, and environmental degradation arising with global markets are far outstripping the governance capacities of our 20th century system of distinct nation-s…Read more
  •  7
    Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 4 Seiten: 468-473.
  •  6
    Natural Law and Practical Rationality by Mark C. Murphy
    International Philosophical Quarterly 43 (2; ISSU 170): 229-240. 2003.
  •  79
    I will discuss Kant 's arguments in these section in three parts. In Part I, I will try to show how we can make sense of the obviously close relations in theme and content between the Refutation of Idealism and the two version of the Fourth Paralogism, as well as the second Postulate of Empirical Thought. This will serve as a kind of introduction, since on a cursory first reading, the connections might be far from apparent. In the process, I will try to isolate a few basic.
  • Chris M. Sciabarra, Marx, Hayek, and Utopia Reviewed by
    Philosophy in Review 16 (2): 141-143. 1996.
  •  3
    In Defense of the Responsibility to Protect: A Response to Weissman
    Criminal Justice Ethics 35 (1): 39-67. 2016.
    This article defends the Responsibility to Protect doctrine against critiques by Fabrice Weissman in this journal, and against similar criticisms of humanitarian intervention and human rights norms made by postmodern thinkers in the Nietzschean tradition, such as Alain Badiou and Anne Orford. I argue against Weissman that R2P can be effective in stopping or preventing mass atrocities, and in particular that opposition to military intervention in Syria during the 2013 debates was a terrible mista…Read more
  •  9
    Four Moral Grounds for the Wide Distribution of Capital Endowment Goods
    Quaestiones Disputatae 8 (1): 21-56. 2017.
    This article argues for a social proviso concerning capital endowments that is analogous to Locke's original proviso on access to productive natural capital.
  •  42
    Piety, MacIntyre, and Kierkegaardian Choice
    Faith and Philosophy 15 (3): 352-365. 1998.
    This paper concerns a debate between two previous articles in Faith and Philosophy. In 1995, Bruce Ballard criticized Marilyn Piety’s argument that the Kierkegaardian “choice” between the ‘aesthetic’ and ‘ethical’ modes of existence is not an irrational or criterionless leap. Instead, Ballard defended MacIntyre’s view that Kierkegaard’s position succumbs to the tensions inherited from its opposing enlightenment sources. I argue in response that Ballard sets up a false dilemma for Kierkegaard and…Read more
  •  180
    Augustine on Liberty of the Higher-Order Will
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 81 67-89. 2007.
    I have argued that like Harry Frankfurt, Augustine implicitly distinguishes between first-order desires and higher-order volitions; yet unlike Frankfurt, Augustineheld that the liberty to form different possible volitional identifications is essential to responsibility for our character. Like Frankfurt, Augustine recognizes that we can sometimes be responsible for the desires on which we act without being able to do or desire otherwise; but for Augustine, this is true only because such responsib…Read more
  •  56
    In the last two decades, interest in narrative conceptions of identity has grown exponentially, though there is little agreement about what a "life-narrative" might be. In connecting Kierkegaard with virtue ethics, several scholars have recently argued that narrative models of selves and MacIntyre's concept of the unity of a life help make sense of Kierkegaard's existential stages and, in particular, explain the transition from "aesthetic" to "ethical" modes of life. But others have recently rai…Read more
  • Chris M. Sciabarra, Marx, Hayek, and Utopia (review)
    Philosophy in Review 16 141-143. 1996.
  • This dissertation develops a new account of the will as a motivational power of commitment or resolve, which contrasts with volition in the 'thin' sense as a mere decision to form an intention. After tracing the historical background of these concepts in Chapter I, Chapter II argues that will involves the capacity to motivate oneself "projectively" in devotion to causes and purposes for which one did not necessarily have an antecedent "desire." "Projective motivation" differs from three types of…Read more
  • The essence of eschatology: A modal interpretation
    Ultimate Reality and Meaning 19 (3): 206-239. 1996.
    This paper argues that eschatology is defined by a combination of sacred cosmogonic power and moral requirement. Moralizing religion is this combination, which claims to ground a distinctive kind of possibility (possible hereafter states). Eschatology has certain features that hold in all of its forms, with variations in whether the hereafter is conceived as a timeless and body-less eternity, or a more temporal and concrete existence. The paradigm for this analysis is found in Soren Kierkegaard'…Read more