Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5840/symposion20229217
Min Seong Kim
The innovation of Alain Badiou’s theory of change, which has attracted a great amount of attention from scholars working in disciplines across humanities, social sciences, and art over the past two decades, cannot be appreciated independently of the account of situations prior to an event’s irruption, namely, the order of being that is conceived using modern set theory in his treatise on general ontology. Retracing the meticulous systematicity with which pre-evental situations are conceived in Being and Event, this paper offers a reconstruction of Badiou’s general ontology that points toward the potential therein for articulating an account of structures and situations that may be qualified as social.
{"title":"The Social Ontology of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event","authors":"Min Seong Kim","doi":"10.5840/symposion20229217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/symposion20229217","url":null,"abstract":"The innovation of Alain Badiou’s theory of change, which has attracted a great amount of attention from scholars working in disciplines across humanities, social sciences, and art over the past two decades, cannot be appreciated independently of the account of situations prior to an event’s irruption, namely, the order of being that is conceived using modern set theory in his treatise on general ontology. Retracing the meticulous systematicity with which pre-evental situations are conceived in Being and Event, this paper offers a reconstruction of Badiou’s general ontology that points toward the potential therein for articulating an account of structures and situations that may be qualified as social.","PeriodicalId":37705,"journal":{"name":"Symposion","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78282294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.5840/symposion2021829
A. Blum
We show that Kripke’s argument for the necessity of identity statements relating objects a and b by their rigid designators demands an additional significant premise.
{"title":"Kripke on Identity Statements","authors":"A. Blum","doi":"10.5840/symposion2021829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/symposion2021829","url":null,"abstract":"We show that Kripke’s argument for the necessity of identity statements relating objects a and b by their rigid designators demands an additional significant premise.","PeriodicalId":37705,"journal":{"name":"Symposion","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78970825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.5840/symposion2021814
Daniel Rönnedal
In this paper, I will develop a new theory of the nature of happiness, or “perfect happiness.” I will examine what perfect happiness is and what it is not and I will try to answer some fundamental questions about this property. According to the theory, which I shall call “the fulfillment theory,” perfect happiness is perfect fulfillment. The analysis of happiness in this paper is a development of the old idea that happiness is getting what you want and can be classified as a kind of desire-satisfaction theory. According to the fulfillment theory of happiness, it is necessarily the case that an individual x is perfectly happy if and only if all x’s wants are fulfilled. The interpretation of this basic definition is important, since the consequences of the particular version defended in this essay are radically different from the consequences of many other popular theories of happiness. The fulfillment theory is also quite different from most other desire-satisfaction theories of happiness. We will see that it has many interesting consequences and that it can be defended against some potentially serious counterarguments. The upshot is that the analysis of (perfect) happiness developed in the present paper is quite attractive.
{"title":"Perfect Happiness","authors":"Daniel Rönnedal","doi":"10.5840/symposion2021814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/symposion2021814","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I will develop a new theory of the nature of happiness, or “perfect happiness.” I will examine what perfect happiness is and what it is not and I will try to answer some fundamental questions about this property. According to the theory, which I shall call “the fulfillment theory,” perfect happiness is perfect fulfillment. The analysis of happiness in this paper is a development of the old idea that happiness is getting what you want and can be classified as a kind of desire-satisfaction theory. According to the fulfillment theory of happiness, it is necessarily the case that an individual x is perfectly happy if and only if all x’s wants are fulfilled. The interpretation of this basic definition is important, since the consequences of the particular version defended in this essay are radically different from the consequences of many other popular theories of happiness. The fulfillment theory is also quite different from most other desire-satisfaction theories of happiness. We will see that it has many interesting consequences and that it can be defended against some potentially serious counterarguments. The upshot is that the analysis of (perfect) happiness developed in the present paper is quite attractive.","PeriodicalId":37705,"journal":{"name":"Symposion","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88215432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.5840/symposion20218213
R. Sampath
This paper attempts a careful reading of chapter I of Division Two, particularly section 53, on death in Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927). Our aim is to deconstruct some of Heidegger’s assumptions while imagining the margins of his text that could warrant a comparison and contrast with the biblical theological material of the New Testament. In parallel by reading the Synoptic Gospel of Mark on Jesus’s agony in the garden prior to his arrest, trial, death, and resurrection, we can initiate a series of comparisons and contrasts. For Heidegger, there is no conception or idea beyond death, and yet death itself as a possibility, even as the greatest possibility to be, is not like any other point in time that a human being can experience, grasp, remember, or anticipate while they are alive. It is not the witnessing of the medically certified death of another person or animal. Out of this paradox, we will argue for a greater philosophical degree of complexity that Jesus the human being experiences when it comes to the possibility of death and the impossibility to surmount it. In the same token we cannot exclude the theological doctrine of the single hypostatic substance (as two natures) of the historically finite person Jesus as human flesh and divine transcendence. So philosophically speaking, his death is unique even though its event as physical expiration on the Cross is like any other human being. However, the physical death of the human called Jesus does not answer the question of the meaning of death in the split-natured unified hypostatic substance of Christ, the Second Person of the Triune Christian God, which includes the First Person of the Father and the Third Person of the Holy Spirit. By tracing a series of complicated philosophical relations, we hope to contribute to the fields of philosophical theology, albeit a heterodox one, and the philosophy of religion while attending to the inherent secular limits that Heidegger’s philosophy requires in so far as he imagines his project as ‘ontological,’ and not ‘theological’ or ‘historical.’ We conclude with certain philosophical speculations to what is other to both Heidegger’s ontology and mainstream Christian theology.
{"title":"An Inhuman God for Our Inhuman Times","authors":"R. Sampath","doi":"10.5840/symposion20218213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/symposion20218213","url":null,"abstract":"This paper attempts a careful reading of chapter I of Division Two, particularly section 53, on death in Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927). Our aim is to deconstruct some of Heidegger’s assumptions while imagining the margins of his text that could warrant a comparison and contrast with the biblical theological material of the New Testament. In parallel by reading the Synoptic Gospel of Mark on Jesus’s agony in the garden prior to his arrest, trial, death, and resurrection, we can initiate a series of comparisons and contrasts. For Heidegger, there is no conception or idea beyond death, and yet death itself as a possibility, even as the greatest possibility to be, is not like any other point in time that a human being can experience, grasp, remember, or anticipate while they are alive. It is not the witnessing of the medically certified death of another person or animal. Out of this paradox, we will argue for a greater philosophical degree of complexity that Jesus the human being experiences when it comes to the possibility of death and the impossibility to surmount it. In the same token we cannot exclude the theological doctrine of the single hypostatic substance (as two natures) of the historically finite person Jesus as human flesh and divine transcendence. So philosophically speaking, his death is unique even though its event as physical expiration on the Cross is like any other human being. However, the physical death of the human called Jesus does not answer the question of the meaning of death in the split-natured unified hypostatic substance of Christ, the Second Person of the Triune Christian God, which includes the First Person of the Father and the Third Person of the Holy Spirit. By tracing a series of complicated philosophical relations, we hope to contribute to the fields of philosophical theology, albeit a heterodox one, and the philosophy of religion while attending to the inherent secular limits that Heidegger’s philosophy requires in so far as he imagines his project as ‘ontological,’ and not ‘theological’ or ‘historical.’ We conclude with certain philosophical speculations to what is other to both Heidegger’s ontology and mainstream Christian theology.","PeriodicalId":37705,"journal":{"name":"Symposion","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91247767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.5840/symposion20218212
Daniel Rönnedal
The paper develops a Kantian view of the highest good and the relation between virtue and happiness. Several Kantian theses are defended, among them the thesis that the highest good is realized only if every virtuous individual is happy, the view that virtue is neither necessary nor sufficient for happiness, and the proposition that virtue is both necessary and sufficient for the worthiness of being happy. The author argues that the highest good ought to be realized and that it ought to be that everyone who is virtuous is happy. To prove these claims, the author will use techniques developed by modern deontic logicians. According to Kant, we do not have an immediate duty to promote our own happiness, the aim of morality being not personal satisfaction but rather virtue and the good will. The important question is not “How do I become happy?” but “How do I become good?”. The arguments in this paper support this view.
{"title":"The Highest Good and the Relation between Virtue and Happiness","authors":"Daniel Rönnedal","doi":"10.5840/symposion20218212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/symposion20218212","url":null,"abstract":"The paper develops a Kantian view of the highest good and the relation between virtue and happiness. Several Kantian theses are defended, among them the thesis that the highest good is realized only if every virtuous individual is happy, the view that virtue is neither necessary nor sufficient for happiness, and the proposition that virtue is both necessary and sufficient for the worthiness of being happy. The author argues that the highest good ought to be realized and that it ought to be that everyone who is virtuous is happy. To prove these claims, the author will use techniques developed by modern deontic logicians. According to Kant, we do not have an immediate duty to promote our own happiness, the aim of morality being not personal satisfaction but rather virtue and the good will. The important question is not “How do I become happy?” but “How do I become good?”. The arguments in this paper support this view.","PeriodicalId":37705,"journal":{"name":"Symposion","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81954382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.5840/symposion20218211
Janelle Pötzsch
This paper discusses Mill’s early essay on marriage and divorce (1832) and gives two possible sources of influence for it: Plato’s arguments on the appropriate scope of the law in book IV of his Republic and Unitarian ideas on motherhood. It demonstrates that Plato’s Republic and Mill’s essay both emphasize the crucial role of background conditions in achieving desirable social aims. Similar to Plato’s claim that the law should provide only a rough framework and not concern itself with questions of etiquette (Republic, 425d), Mill envisions a society in which men and women meet as equals and hence are in no need of marriage laws. Besides, this paper will relate Mill’s essay on marriage and divorce to Unitarian ideas on the social role of women to account for his reservations about the gainful employment of married women and mothers. Mill’s claim that the rightful employment of a mother is “the training of the affections” (Mill 1970, 76) is fueled by the Unitarian conception of women as the moral educators of future citizens.
{"title":"The Early J.S. Mill on Marriage and Divorce","authors":"Janelle Pötzsch","doi":"10.5840/symposion20218211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/symposion20218211","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses Mill’s early essay on marriage and divorce (1832) and gives two possible sources of influence for it: Plato’s arguments on the appropriate scope of the law in book IV of his Republic and Unitarian ideas on motherhood. It demonstrates that Plato’s Republic and Mill’s essay both emphasize the crucial role of background conditions in achieving desirable social aims. Similar to Plato’s claim that the law should provide only a rough framework and not concern itself with questions of etiquette (Republic, 425d), Mill envisions a society in which men and women meet as equals and hence are in no need of marriage laws. Besides, this paper will relate Mill’s essay on marriage and divorce to Unitarian ideas on the social role of women to account for his reservations about the gainful employment of married women and mothers. Mill’s claim that the rightful employment of a mother is “the training of the affections” (Mill 1970, 76) is fueled by the Unitarian conception of women as the moral educators of future citizens.","PeriodicalId":37705,"journal":{"name":"Symposion","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90674430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"About the Journal","authors":"City Space Architecture","doi":"10.1093/labmed/lmaa100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/labmed/lmaa100","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":37705,"journal":{"name":"Symposion","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75803737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.5840/symposion20218210
R. Donoghue
G.W.F. Hegel offers a thorough, complex, and unique theory of free will in the Philosophy of Right. In what follows, I argue that Hegel’s conceptualization of free will makes the mistake of collapsing the possibility of organic freedom (the ability to act freely of causal determination) into the potential for moral freedom (the capacity to act in accordance with Reason). This article engages in three distinct tasks in making this argument. First, I provide a critical overview of Hegel’s conception of free will – namely, how he envisages the movement from the abstract, incomplete, and undeveloped will, to that of a concrete, complete, and developed one through the unfolding of Reason. Second, I introduce the contemporary debate regarding nomological determinism between libertarians and skeptics, of both the in compatibilist and compatibilist variety. I suggest that, in the context of the modern free will debate, Hegel is best categorized as a compatibilist as he both accepts causal determinism but remains committed to the notion that certain persons can act in concert with their own volition. Third, I argue that Hegel’s compatibilist understanding of free will has important and problematic consequences for legal theory, particularly normative jurisprudence. Compatibilism, generally, and Hegel’s particular version, substantiates the idea of basic moral desert which poses a serious threat to the possibility of moral progress from a retributive justice system to a consequentialist one.
{"title":"Hegel’s Treatment of the Free Will Problem","authors":"R. Donoghue","doi":"10.5840/symposion20218210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/symposion20218210","url":null,"abstract":"G.W.F. Hegel offers a thorough, complex, and unique theory of free will in the Philosophy of Right. In what follows, I argue that Hegel’s conceptualization of free will makes the mistake of collapsing the possibility of organic freedom (the ability to act freely of causal determination) into the potential for moral freedom (the capacity to act in accordance with Reason). This article engages in three distinct tasks in making this argument. First, I provide a critical overview of Hegel’s conception of free will – namely, how he envisages the movement from the abstract, incomplete, and undeveloped will, to that of a concrete, complete, and developed one through the unfolding of Reason. Second, I introduce the contemporary debate regarding nomological determinism between libertarians and skeptics, of both the in compatibilist and compatibilist variety. I suggest that, in the context of the modern free will debate, Hegel is best categorized as a compatibilist as he both accepts causal determinism but remains committed to the notion that certain persons can act in concert with their own volition. Third, I argue that Hegel’s compatibilist understanding of free will has important and problematic consequences for legal theory, particularly normative jurisprudence. Compatibilism, generally, and Hegel’s particular version, substantiates the idea of basic moral desert which poses a serious threat to the possibility of moral progress from a retributive justice system to a consequentialist one.","PeriodicalId":37705,"journal":{"name":"Symposion","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81515001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.5840/symposion20207213
H. Beebee, Anne-Marie McCallion
Louise Antony draws a now well-known distinction between two explanatory models for researching and addressing the issue of women’s underrepresentation in philosophy – the ‘Different Voices’ (DV) and ‘Perfect Storm’ (PS) models – and argues that, in view of PS’s considerably higher social value, DV should be abandoned. We argue that Antony misunderstands the feminist framework that she takes to underpin DV, and we reconceptualise DV in a way that aligns with a proper understanding of the metaphilosophical framework that underpins it. On the basis of that reconceptualisation – together with the rejection of her claim that DV posits ‘cognitive’ differences between women and men – we argue that Antony’s negative assessment of DV’s social value is mistaken. And, we argue, this conclusion does not depend on endorsing the relevant feminist metaphilosophical framework. Whatever our metaphilosophical commitments, then, we should all agree that DV research should be actively pursued rather than abandoned.
Louise Antony在研究和解决女性在哲学中代表性不足的问题时,对两种解释模型——“不同的声音”(DV)和“完美风暴”(PS)模型——进行了众所周知的区分,并认为,鉴于“不同的声音”具有相当高的社会价值,DV应该被抛弃。我们认为安东尼误解了她用来支撑家庭暴力的女权主义框架,我们以一种与支撑家庭暴力的哲学框架的正确理解相一致的方式重新定义了家庭暴力。在这种重新概念化的基础上——连同对她关于家暴假定男女之间存在“认知”差异的说法的拒绝——我们认为安东尼对家暴社会价值的负面评估是错误的。而且,我们认为,这一结论并不依赖于赞同相关的女权主义形而上学框架。无论我们的哲学承诺是什么,我们都应该同意,家庭暴力研究应该积极进行,而不是放弃。
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