Volume 98, Issue 1

Abstract: This paper considers two competing interpretations of Socrates’ discussions of the appropriateness of grief in Plato’s Republic. The commonly accepted ‘Stoic Reading’ maintains that Plato thinks grief can and should be eliminated by the fully virtuous individual. I offer a textual case for the ‘Conflict Reading’, according to which grief is ineliminable, and sometimes appropriate. I focus primarily on three passages: the justification for censoring depictions of grief in Book III (387d–388a), the shared grieving of the collective family in Book V (462a–463e), and the Book X passage about the decent person’s measured grief (603e–604d). I show that these passages offer not only evidence that grief cannotbe eliminated, but also hint at an underlying account of why it resists elimination.

Abstract: I propose a new way of understanding Kant’s doctrine of freedom. My reading seeks to combine features of two popular opposed lines of interpretation, namely, of metaphysical and anti-metaphysical readings. I defend the view that Kant’s idealist attempt to ‘save’ human freedom involves substantive metaphysical commitments. However, I show that this interpretation can fruitfully integrate important insights that are standardly associated with deflationary readings: first, the idea that for Kant freedom and natural necessity can be ascribed to one and the same human being; and second, the idea that for Kant the belief in freedom and the belief in natural necessity belong to two different standpoints.

Abstract: I argue that there are two meanings of ‘attribute’ for Spinoza. It can refer to 1) an essential feature of substance, or 2) a perception by the infinite intellect of such a feature. I put this forth as a reading of Spinoza’s definition of ‘attribute’ (E1d4), which is notoriously framed in terms of the perceptions of the intellect. The primary benefit of this reading is that it provides a uniquely powerful and much-needed answer to the puzzle of how the mentalistic character of E1d4 is consistent with a so-called ‘objectivist’ picture of Spinoza’s metaphysics and epistemology.

Abstract: This essay discusses the first of Kant’s anti-theodicean arguments as unfolded in his 1791 On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy . In this argument, Kant coins a neologism, the absolute counterpurposive (=ACP), and vehemently rejects the theodicean claim that denies that there is ACP in the world. As I show, Kant’s rejection of the theodicean denial of ACP is not based on epistemological, but on moral grounds: a denial of ACP seems to lead to a denial of the unconditional status of morality. Thus, it is not the denial of ACP as such but rather the consequence of its denial that truly troubles Kant. Upon thoroughly construing Kant’s argument, and unveiling two major ambiguities which lurk in his argument, I argue that Kant’s anti-theodicean argument is not cogent.