Volume 5, Issue 1

There are in our time ongoing discussions on the question of global justice and inter-cultural dialogues. This question embraces not only questions of distribution and recognition, but also questions of peace and survival. In this paper, focusing on the latter, I shall discuss the question of the possibility of a philosophical justifi cation for universally binding principles for international law and thus for inter-state and intercultural behavior.

Moral principles are universally valid, valid for all human beings in so far as they are mature, responsible and of a sound mind – this idea is an essential part of our understanding of morality. Moral principles do not allow for any exceptions. Therefore, we expect from every person we take for mature and responsible to do her or his moral duty. This does not mean that we are naive about the moral goodness of human beings. We just cannot give up this expectation without considering a person as immature and irresponsible, as not being provided with a sound mind so that we cannot blame her or him for any moral failure. Any analysis of moral motivation therefore has to explain both that all responsible persons can and must have a disposition to moral agency and that for all of them this disposition is somehow privileged so that, in a case of confl icting dispositions of volition and action, it is the moral dispositions that finally determine the aim or purpose of the action. On this background, the theories of moral motivation provided by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith are compared. Whereas Hume seems to give up the whole idea of universal validity of moral principles and moral obligation, both Kant and Smith try to explain how dispositions to moral agency can be as omnipresent and motivationally strong as they should be – given the implication of our moral expectations. However, both theories meet with essential difficulties because they cannot exclude the influence of contingent factors on the moral motivation of a responsible person.

It is commonly assumed that Kant is indebted to Aristotle not to Plato. In this paper we argue, however, that the following four central topics in Kant's philosophy must be recognized as having Platonic roots. 1. The idea that metaphysics is a system of synthetic apriori judgements and the idea that such judgments require pure intuition. 2. The idea that geometrical objects have a certain purposiveness. 3. The notion of dialectic. 4. The notion of ideas and their role in the sphere of cognition and morality.

Why did Mill write On Liberty? After motivating the need for asking this seemingly unnecessary question, I argue that Mill's main concern was not with defi ning the scope and content of the principle of liberty or with eliciting assent from his contemporaries; but rather with showing what taking such a very simple principle to heart amounts to. The notion of taking a doctrine to heart highlights a common theme behind many of the seemingly unrelated issues of the book. Finally, the paper offers some explanations of our failure to take to heart doctrines which we at one level assent to.

This article is a critical assessment of Harry Frankfurt's hierarchical theory of freedom. It spells out and distinguishes several different and irreconcilable conceptions of freedom present in Frankfurt's work. I argue that Frankfurt is ambiguous in his early formulation as to what conception of freedom of the will the hierarchical theory builds on, an avoidability or a satisfaction conception. This ambiguity causes problems in his later attempts to respond to the objections of wantonness of second-order desires and of infinite regress. With his more recent idea of freedom as being satisfied with harmony in one's entire volitional system, Frankfurt may solve the infinite regress objection but he does so at the cost of ending up with a description of freedom, which comes very close to being identical to his own description of the wanton. Frankfurt's account leaves open the question of whether the satisfactory harmony is caused by the inability to do otherwise, or is independent of it. To answer this question, Frankfurt's hierarchical theory needs to be complemented with a number of “autonomy variables” (Double). Satisfaction may be a necessary condition of freedom, but it is not sufficient. We also need to know how the person came to be satisfied. If being satisfied is merely something that happens to one, it fails to be an adequate description of a free person – and it also contradicts some of Frankfurt's own earlier insights.

The article aims at a determination of Heidegger's contribution to a theory of subjectivity and self-consciousness. It does so through a discussion of Øverenget's book on this topic and in particular of his thesis that according to Heidegger the self is given “with” our consciousness of objects. Three ways are considered in which this thesis might apply on the one hand to Heidegger's argument and on the other to the phenomenon in question: with Kant as an expression of a functional conception of our self-awareness, as a determination of its epistemic structure, and as a claim of the irreducible concreteness of subjectivity. It is, among other things, argued that the first way at best does not exhaust the thesis, that the second way corresponds to Heidegger's intention, but that his argumentation does not reach such a determination, and that the third way expresses both his ultimate intention and the field of his real contribution in the theory of subjectivity. Besides, it is argued that Heidegger at these points is much closer to German idealism than he and Øverenget realize.