Volume 64, Issue 3

Leibniz holds that we cannot give an account of the synchronic and diachronic identity of a person without appealing to a substance. This paper analyses his reasons for this anti-Lockean thesis. It first looks at his theory of substance, paying particular attention to his commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason: the existence of a well-ordered series of mental states cannot be sufficiently explained without reference to a substance. The paper then examines the distinction Leibniz draws between the substance as the “real person” and the “appearing person” that comes into existence through reflexive consciousness. It argues that there can be no appearing person without a real person and looks at the relationship between these two types of person. Leibniz’s distinction is still relevant because it shows that questions concerning the metaphysical constitution of a person need to be carefully distinguished from questions concerning the psychological construction of a personality.

Within the phenomenological tradition, one frequently finds the bold claim that interpersonal understanding is rooted in a sui generis form of intentional experience, most commonly labelled empathy (Einfühlung). The following paper explores this claim, emphasizing its distinctive character, and examining the phenomenological considerations offered in its defence by two of its main proponents, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein. Having offered in section 2 some preliminary indications of how empathy should be understood, I then turn to some characterizations of its distinctive structure, considering, in section 3, the Husserlian claim that certain forms of empathy are perceptual in nature, and in section 4, Stein’s insistence that empathetic experience frequently involves explicating the other’s own intentional experiences. Section 5 will conclude by assessing the extent to which their analyses lend support to a conception of empathy as an intuitive experience of other minds.

Pragmatist ethics is not a special discipline. Human action and human experience as such have to be described and analysed in an ethical perspective. This means a reinterpretation of the whole idea of normative ethics. John Dewey’s philosophy provides a rich source for this task. In the article I show the interdependencies between a “logic of experience”, an “aesthetics of experience”, and an “ethics of experience”. The “logic of experience” offers a key to understanding and deepening our concrete experiences. If we study possible situations thoroughly (“aesthetics of experience”), we can see why and how a distinction between facts and norms becomes necessary. This brings up the question whether one’s own or others’ behaviour preserves the conditions of the variability of experience. It is the purpose of an “ethics of experience” to show the strength of this question for normative orientation and judgement.

Values are neither discovered nor constructed. Pragmatist thinkers, by rejecting both alternatives, are able to develop convincing answers to the question about the place of values in nature. The argument unfolds in three steps: (1)The meaning of the term “naturalism” is differentiated in the light of Pragmatist insights. Deweyan naturalism rejects both scientism and subjectivism and treats values as being developed naturally in the course of ordinary experience. Values are qualities of the interaction-cycle between organism and environment and accordingly as real as atoms and their interactions. (2) Value-experiences integrate receptivity and reflexivity. The desirable is elaborated as the reflective transformation of the factually desired and thus always retains contingent experiences. (3) The human good as articulated in values is always prone to particularistic, exclusionary interpretations. Hence the importance of universal norms as checking-instances (“Prüfinstanzen”, H. Joas) for values. But, conversely, normative universalism remains anaemic without support by actually lived value-orientations.

It is commonly assumed that classical pragmatism has not developed an ethical outlook that deserves to be taken seriously despite the fact that John Dewey, in particular, has published several books on ethics. Major contemporary textbooks in ethics do not mention a possible pragmatist ethics. However, recently there have been various approaches in ethics and political philosophy that claim to base their normative accounts on pragmatist ideas (Philip Kitcher, Elizabeth Anderson). The article introduces these approaches and suggests that they adopt a methodological or proceduralist interpretation of pragmatism devoid of substantial ethical assumptions. It is then claimed that a purely methodological or procedural reading of pragmatism runs into problems that can only be solved if a closer look is taken at some of the more substantial ethical assumptions of pragmatism. Following a review of central elements of Dewey’s ethics, in particular his description of the role of the self in moral dilemmas, typical criticisms of these assumptions are discussed and partially rebutted. It is then suggested that one might conceptualise a pragmatist ethics as a “consequentialism of character”.

Our letter focuses on the present status of Modern Greek philosophy as a discipline and an activity (mainly exercised within its academic setting). We attest the continuous growth of academic philosophy during the last thirty years, especially in the fields of Ancient and Byzantine philosophy, analytical philosophy, liberal political philosophy, bioethics, hermeneutics and Critical Theory. In the two last fields as well as in the case of Kant and German Idealism the dialogue with German philosophy is distinct. Generally, the Greek philosophical community seeks to discard its former scholastic character by orienting itself towards participating in contemporary international debates. In Greece however, philosophy is rarely understood as a field of confrontation between conflicting ideas. Institutional philosophers are reluctant to undertake the role of an active critical intellectual, even though the current economic and social crisis has a strongly negative impact on universities and philosophical research.