EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY最新文献

This paper explores an argument for the claim that human flourishing is not possible. The argument is situated within the context of Aristotelian virtue ethics. It begins with a formal claim about the virtues: whatever substantive account we give of them, they are forms of excellence that equip us to lead flourishing lives. Yet, when we turn to our best substantive account of the virtues by considering those people who seem to be the best candidates for possessing the virtues, these often don't live flourishing lives. Moreover, this fact about them is not an accident, but there is a sense in which it is because of their seeming virtues that they fail to flourish. So, our best candidates for the virtues turn out not, after all, to be true virtues (when considered in light of the formal constraint just mentioned). But we also know that we need the virtues to flourish, since any amount of worldly success without the virtues can never amount to flourishing. Therefore, human flourishing is impossible. I call this condition, of having no true substantive account of the virtues that could constitute a way of life, having a ‘way of death.’ In this paper, I explore the plausibility of the premises of this argument by considering the life of Socrates—whether his life can count as a flourishing life and whether he can be considered truly virtuous. I argue that there is good reason to answer both questions in the negative and that this offers us a deeper understanding of Socratic ignorance and of the significance of aporia for Socratic philosophical activity.

According to some, luck forms an inevitable part of admirable moral agency. According to others, it is incompatible with a basic principle of moral worth. What's the issue? Is there a ‘problem’ of moral luck; or are there many, or none? With reference to the practice of moral praise, I suggest that there is no single problem of moral luck as traditionally understood. Instead, there is a family of issues regarding the interpretation and assessment of moral performance. In the background is a mixture of descriptive and normative issues, including how to understand the legitimacy of social expectations, the value of effort, and the duties of communities to enable their members to live good and virtuous lives.

While reading The Parmenidean Ascent, you will likely shake your head in disbelief. “Is Michael Della Rocca serious?” you will probably think “Has he gone mad?”. Well, let's put it like this. If Della Rocca went crazy, he did it with a lot of elegance, method and philosophical rigor. He, in fact, delivers a series of impressive arguments in support of the most important and bewildering thesis of his whole work, namely, strict monism. According to strict monism, there are no relations whatsoever. If we think in metaphysical terms, this means that there are no chairs, tables, stars and human beings. For the existence of all these entities would entail that there are some relations (or, at least, a relation of difference) between all of them. Chairs are not tables, and stars are not human beings. The same can be said about substances, properties, modes, accidents, and many of the other metaphysical categories with which we are so accustomed. Della Rocca, thus, concludes that, according to strict monism, there is nothing but pure, undifferentiated, not at all relational being. “We are looking at pure being” he writes “Undifferentiated being (…) is purely positive and not at all relational” (2020, p. 82).

As we all know, Della Rocca is also a great champion of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). Much of his philosophy has been informed by an uncompromising endorsement of this rationalist credo, and such a credo does not cease to play an important role in The Parmenidean Ascent. I have, however, no intention to put pressure on his Eleatic endeavor by questioning the PSR. First of all, I do not believe that an attempt to challenge the PSR will score any point against strict monism, for Della Rocca's argument against the existence of relations does not necessarily rely on the PSR. Secondly, I would like to take this opportunity to make a confession and bring myself out of the closet. As with Della Rocca, I am a great fan of the PSR. If this principle is taken to be the hallmark of rationalist thinking, well, let me tell you, I am more than happy to be called a rationalist. For this reason, I cannot be further from thinking that the PSR represents the heart of the problem.¹

Rather than criticizing that Della Rocca employs the PSR, I would like to question how he uses it. In particular, I suspect that the way in which Della Rocca uses the PSR forces him to face the following predicament. On the one hand, his employment of the PSR might commit him to what he calls a ‘darkest hour’. According to Della Rocca, a darkest hour takes place when a philosopher “reject[s] some rationalist commitment” (forthcoming, p. 1) by accepting something – a thing, a fact or even a philosophical principle – as ‘brute’ or ‘arbitrary’. On the other hand, any attempt to avoid such a darkest hour will get some o

This paper raises a new problem for the widely held view that, according to the Confucian philosopher Mencius, being a benevolent person necessarily entails being affectively disposed in morally relevant ways. I argue that ascribing such a view to Mencius generates an inconsistent triad with two of his central philosophical commitments on what it means to be a benevolent ruler. I then consider possible ways of resolving the triad and I argue that the most attractive option is to reject the view that a benevolent person must be affectively disposed in morally relevant ways; instead, being disposed to perform benevolent actions is enough.

I think both steps (1) and (2) of Della Rocca's argument are problematic as I will show in this paper: (1) treats relations as addenda to the relata which seem to exist independently of the relation. This is one way of thinking about relations – a way we will see very clearly also in Aristotle's account of relation. But it is by no means the only one as Della Rocca suggests for his argument; I will give several examples below of relations that cannot be thought along these lines. Subsequently, I will demonstrate problems with step (2), with the way in which Della Rocca gets the infinite regress going. This does not mean, however, that the core concern Della Rocca raises is not a real concern; it is in fact one dealt with in many debates about metaphysical foundationalism and coherentism.

Before I demonstrate this descent of Bradley's regress, I will first stay on the positive side and show how the kind of relations Della Rocca sketches are indeed problematic and have been shown to be worrisome already in ancient times, starting from Parmenides.

Della Rocca ties his argument against any distinctions to Parmenides and his monism, since a strict monism is the only position that, following Della Rocca's main argument, will ultimately be left for us. Parmenidean monism is based on his rejection of any distinctions. According to Della Rocca, this is in turn based on Parmenides' rejection of all forms of relations.⁵

The notion of relation is indeed a notion that is very problematic in ancient philosophy: Parmenides does not allow for any relations, and Plato and Aristotle point out problems with them. The main worry seems to be that if something is a relation or relational, then it seems to have only derivative existence, but no full being. We can see this in Plato's characterisation of Forms as being simple in itself while sensible things only exist in relation to Forms, or in Aristotle's account of accidentals, which can only exist in relation to some substance. Della Rocca stands in this long tradition of raising problems for the very notion of relation. Since Aristotle is the thinker who shows the problems relations may raise most explicitly, we can think of Della Rocca as an Aristotelian in this sense. However, like Aristotle, Della Rocca only takes certain kinds of relations into view which will turn out not all that there is to relations. But let us look at the problems Plato and Aristotle raise with respect to relations first.

Plato, like Parmenides, attempts to conceive what truly is, for him the Forms, as possessing no complexity, no distinctions. For Plato there is, however, a plurality of what-is, of Forms, and so the freedom from distinctions only concerns each Form internally: each is of one kind (monoeidês), simple, not composed, and indivisible (see, for example, Phaedo 78b-d). The late Plato, however, changes this, as we can see in the Sophist. There he not only demonstrates tha

Kant's emphasis on the aesthetic idea permeates the judgment of beauty and the creation of beauty. This paper argues that both natural and artistic beauty are concrete expressions of aesthetic ideas. Regarding natural beauty, the subject appreciates the natural object through a dual grasp of the aesthetic normal idea and the rational idea. Regarding artistic beauty, the aesthetic idea can make the rational idea sensible, allowing the subject to derive aesthetic pleasure by reflecting on the aesthetic representations of rational ideas. Moreover, genius as a natural gift is capable of giving rules for creating artistic beauty, in which the spirit realizes the universal expression of the aesthetic idea. In Kant's framework, the combination of taste and genius provides a context for reflective judgment, which can thus be reconciled with the “free play of the imagination and the understanding.” In this way, the aesthetic idea embodies the dual perspective of subject and object, thereby furnishing a normative dimension to Kant's aesthetics.