Terry Winant

Among those who speak of the future as "open" and of the past as "closed", both G.H. von Wright and J.-P. Sartre offer theories that grant a very important place to human agency. I explore the place of human agency in the relationship of past to future as it occurs in von Wright's work on causation and in Sartre's existential psychoanalysis. My method is taken from the metaphysical results of David Kaplan's work on semantics for direct reference. I show that von Wright is an Anti-Haecceitist with respect to individual states of affairs, and an Haecceitist with respect to human actions. I show that Sartre is an Anti-Haecceitist with respect to past human agents and a Haecceitist with respect to future agents. While von Wright allows trans-world identifications only to the extent that without them experimental procedure would be incoherent, Sartre explicitly asserts that all the meaningful trans-world identity statements are false. I argue that Sartre's account of bad faith serves as a solution to the problem of moral weakness: this allows his world-bound individuals to count as free individuals. ;Overall, the dissertation gives an account of the place of existentialism in the tension between efficient cause and final-cause theories of explanation

Abstract Following Hubert Dreyfus, this paper takes up the debate over the limits on what can be articulated by means of intentional analysis. Section 1 reviews the contrast between Husserl's position and Heidegger's position. Husserl's is an ?inexhaustibility theory? of the inarticulable, according to which, although it is in principle impossible to articulate everything, there is not anything that it is in principle impossible to articulate. Heidegger's is a genuine ?inarticulability?in?principle theory? of the inarticulable, according to which it is, in principle, impossible to articulate the whole of what makes human understanding possible. On this view, it is, in principle, impossible to articulate the background of skills and practices presupposed by and taken for granted in all our everyday human activities. Whereas Dreyfus has been largely interested in this debate for the sake of its parallels to developments in cognitive science, this paper aims, in Section 2, to consider the political importance of this debate. It is argued that the debate between the inexhaustibility theorist and the inarticulability theorist is misdirected. The two sides in this debate share a pair of questionable assumptions, which lead them to treat the problem of the inarticulable as though the participants in the practices that constitute the ?taken?for?granted background of everyday understanding? are all situated in equivalent positions in those practices. But the everyday phenomena of ostracism and marginalization show that there are political and social concerns that must be addressed as part of the study of constituting practices. ?Who gets to articulate what, and to whom?? is a question that should be asked before ?Is there anything that cannot be articulated??

This essay is my contribution to two projects currently gaining the attention of feminist theorists. The first is the project of interpreting the work of Hannah Arendt. The second, of providing a secure foundation for the claim that there can be a distinctively feminist position either in political philosophy or more generally in any field of philosophy. I explore in depth candidates for the feminist standpoint developed by Nancy Hartsock and Nancy Fraser. I connect the two projects, showing how feminists can learn from Hannah Arendt crucial lessons concerning speaking and thinking. It is thus in Arendt's work that I discover the missing element in recent attempts to ground the feminist standpoint.