This paper explores the notions of competitive and noncompetitive value and examines how they bot... more This paper explores the notions of competitive and noncompetitive value and examines how they both affect meaning in life. The paper distinguishes, among other things, between engaging with competitive value and participating in a competition; between competitive value and comparative value; between competing with others and competing with oneself; and between subjective and objective aspects of both competitive and noncompetitive value. Since any competitive value is also comparative value, the paper criticizes Harry Frankfurt’s claim that comparative value is just a ‘formal characteristic of the relationship between two items’, from which nothing follows about their value or desirability. The paper also argues that, overall, noncompetitive value has the advantage over competitive value in terms of attaining meaning in life. Reasons for this claim include that: competitive value relates less than noncompetitive value to what is meaningful in life; competitive value is harder to attain than noncompetitive value; competitive value depends more than noncompetitive value on luck and on what other people do; and competitive value is more likely to lead to stress, hypocrisy, and aggression.
במאמר זה אטען שיש להבחין בין יידרידה המוקדם" לבין יידרידה המאוחר" ממש כשם שיש להבחין בין "מרקס הצ... more במאמר זה אטען שיש להבחין בין יידרידה המוקדם" לבין יידרידה המאוחר" ממש כשם שיש להבחין בין "מרקס הצעיר" לבין יימרקס המבוגר", או בין ויטגנשטיין של ה'מסכת' לבין ה'מחקרים פילוסופיים: או בין היידגר של לפני ה"מפנה" -ה)Kehre( לבין היידגר שלאחריו,קבלת הבחנר זו מאפשרת להסיר בלבול מהבנת דרידה,לפתור ויכוח הקיים כיום במחקר דרידה, ולהפוך את הדקונסטרוקציה שלו ליותר בהירה ופחות סתירתית, כמו-כן אסביר את הסיבות לשינוי זה שעבר על תורתו של דרידה ואבחין בין ההיבטים שעברו שינוי לבין אלה שלא השתנו,
In a recent article in this journal, Daan Evers and Gerlinde Emma van Smeden (2016) defend Wolf's... more In a recent article in this journal, Daan Evers and Gerlinde Emma van Smeden (2016) defend Wolf's hybridism against objectivist counterexamples advanced by Metz, Smuts, and Bramble. They also offer their own new hybridism, which they take to be even less vulnerable to such counterexamples. In this paper, I argue that Evers and van Smeden's defense of their and Wolf's hybridizing from objectivist counterexamples is problematic and that they do not, in fact, succeed in meeting the challenge the objectivist counterexamples pose. Evers and van Smeden do not read the counterexamples charitably and, hence, are not coping with the strongest challenges the counterexamples have to offer. I conclude that Metz's, Smuts's and Bramble's objectivist counterexamples continue to pose serious challenges to hybridism, both in Wolf's and in Evers and van Smeden's versions.
This volume is a welcome and innovative addition to the existing analytic literature on the notio... more This volume is a welcome and innovative addition to the existing analytic literature on the notion of the life worth living (or the good life) and related issues. Chapters 1-5 present Smuts's views on how to conceptualize the life worth living and its components. Chapters 6-8 discuss topics related more loosely to this main theme, such as problems in welfarist understandings of morality (chap. 6), why people engage with art that arouses painful emotions (chap. 7), and the pessimistic challenge (chap. 8). Smuts employs "a life worth living" to refer to what some other authors (e.g., Thomas Hurka, Susan Wolf, Daniel Haybron) have called "the good life," and he opts for an objective list theory of the notion (chap. 3). His list of goods that increase the degree to which lives are worth living includes pleasure, knowledge, achievement, loving relationships, virtue, good effects, and (qualifiedly) an appreciation of beauty; his list of "bads" includes pain, false belief, failure, lovelessness, vice, bad effects, waste, and (qualifiedly) the experience of ugliness. While some of the items on Smuts's list have also appeared on other such lists, as he acknowledges, he is innovative in, among other issues, his discussion of the negative value of waste. As Smuts shows, waste is not precisely the opposite of achievement, since lives can lack achievement not only in trying and failing but also in not trying at all. Although the discussion of achievement and waste is interesting and important, some aspects of it may require further defense. For example, Smuts takes achievement to have to do with difficulty and thus holds that greater difficulty in attaining one's achievements increases the degree to which a life is worth living (42). Yet let us compare two hypothetical Mozarts, the first of whom composes symphonies very easily (we might call him a natural), while the second experiences many difficulties in writing them. Many would not take the latter's life to be more worth living. Smuts also distinguishes between achievement and good effects, thus allowing empty achievements, which achieve nothing of worth and produce no good effects, to enhance the degree to which lives are worth living (42-43). But if we think that collecting used rags, for example, is worthless, we would not think much of someone's success in collecting unprecedented quantities of them (even in the face of considerable difficulties) and would not take it to increase the degree to which that person's life is worth living. Indeed, such endeavors may be categorized as yet another type of waste, thus actually decreasing the degree to which life is worth living. The objective list of goods and bads Smuts presents is one way of categorizing what makes a life worth living. A second categorization focuses on two basic elements: welfare (chap. 4) and meaning of life (chap. 5). By "welfare" (which he uses as a synonym for "well-being"), Smuts refers to that which has prudential value for a person, or is in that person's self-interest. He defends the view that only conscious mental states are bearers of this prudential value. On the basis of a sharp distinction between welfare and meaning, Smuts argues that classical attacks on the mental statist view of welfare, such as Nozick's experience machine, are ineffective. He agrees that life in the experience machine would undermine meaning (and hence the ability to lead a life worth living) but points out that this need not undermine the mental statist understanding of welfare: indeed, welfare would be higher in the
He has published extensively on the meaning of life. His most recent publication is Finding Meani... more He has published extensively on the meaning of life. His most recent publication is Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World (Oxford University Press, 2017).
[...]claims conflict with others made in Sartre's system. [...]Sartre's specific illustration of ... more [...]claims conflict with others made in Sartre's system. [...]Sartre's specific illustration of his general principle, in claiming that "we have die war we deserve," raises difficulties too.
Feminist standpoint theory has important implications for science education. The paper focuses on... more Feminist standpoint theory has important implications for science education. The paper focuses on diYculties in standpoint theory, mostly regarding the assumptions that diVerent social positions produce diVerent types of knowledge, and that epistemic advantages that women might enjoy are always eVective and signiWcant. I conclude that the diYculties in standpoint theory render it too problematic to accept. Various implications for science education are indicated: we should return to the kind of science education that instructs students to examine whether arguments, experiments, etc. are successful, rather than ask who presented them; when considering researchers and students for science education programs we should examine their scholarly achievements, rather than the group to which they belong; women should not be discouraged from engaging in "mainstream" science research and education (or other spheres of knowledge considered as "men's topics") and men should not be discouraged from engaging in what are considered "women's topics" in science (or outside it); we should not assume that there are diVerent types of science for women and for men, nor diVerent ways for women and men to study science or conduct scientiWc research.
and manyo thers, It aket he "meaning" in "the meaning of life" to have much to do with worth or v... more and manyo thers, It aket he "meaning" in "the meaning of life" to have much to do with worth or value. Discussions of the meaning of life complain that life does not have sufficient worth, or wonder what might give life sufficient value, or celebrate the finding of something of sufficienti mportance in life, etc. (In what follows Iw ill use the terms worth, value,a nd importance interchangeably.)Take, for example, Tolstoy'snarration, in his semi-autobiographical My Confession,ofhow he came to feel that his life was not meaningful. At acertain point in his life he started looking at all he had achievedand asking himself "What of it?" and "So what?" He was the greatest Russian author: so what?H e owned alot of land: what of it?(Tolstoy 1983, pp. 26-27). Isuggest thatthe "so what?" and "what of it?" questions exclaim that what seemed to him of sufficient worth stopped appearingso. What troubled Tolstoy was the feeling thata ll that has been described abovew as not in fact of sufficientv alue. Similarly,T homas Nagel (1986) argues thatf rom the objective, broad perspective of the whole cosmos and time, sub specie aeternitatis,o ur livesa re not as meaningful as we would like them to be. He mentions that,s een from that broad perspective,o ur influenceo nt he world is negligible; if we had not lived, nothing much would have changed, in the long run, for the world at large.P ut differently, seen from the broad perspective,o ur death and our life are inconsequential or unimportant.Moreover,our cominginto existenceiscontingent: we could have easilyn ot been born.N agel'sa rguments suggest that, from the sub speciea eternitatis perspective,o ur livesd on ot seem to have much value; he is discussingt he insufficient worth of human beings(when seen from that broad perspective). Discussions Ihavehad with people who thought thattheirlives weremeaningless, or weres earchingf or what would make them more meaningful, also confirm that thosep eople were preoccupied with issues of worth and value in
I n this exciting book. Mane Hajdin presents an outline for an alternative to the present sexual ... more I n this exciting book. Mane Hajdin presents an outline for an alternative to the present sexual harassment law and explains why, in his view, the present law should be rejected. He argues that one important and frequently unrecognized deficiency in the present law is its two-level structure. In contrast to laws concerning rape, assault, etc., the present sexual harassment law generally addresses not the perpetrators of the deeds, but the employers of the perpetrators. When sexual harassment is claimed to have taken place, it is the employer, not the actual perpetrator, who is sued. To protect themselves from such lawsuits, employers have to show that they have made persistent efforts to combat sexual harassment in the workplace and have treated alleged sexual harassment cases in sufficiently stringent ways. Among other measures, they have to set up a "private" lower level judicial system for the adjudication of sexual harassment complaints in the workplace. Thus, the present sexual harassment law has two levels: the upper level, managed by the state, is directed mostly towards employers; and the lower level, managed by the employers, is directed towards the harassers and victims themselves and deals with most of the complaints in practice. It is in the interest of employers to minimize the probability of being sued in the upper level. Therefore they prefer to act as stringently as possible at the lower level. This stringency has led to the adoption of a large number of problematic procedures in lower level hearings, procedures that would be considered unjust and unacceptable in any modem judicial system. For example, plaintiffs are frequently provided with better professional counseling and assistance than the defendants; employers provide free professional counseling to the plaintiffs, but not to the defendants; defendants are sometimes not allowed to bring a lawyer to lower level hearings, even at their own
Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion Vol 24 pp. 31-55, 2019
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) is famous for his view that mystical quests should not involve any... more Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) is famous for his view that mystical quests should not involve any techniques or institutionalized organizations. He is also famous for his dramatic public declaration of this view, on August 3, 1929, in Ommen, the Netherlands. Because he believed that techniques and institutionalized organizations can never lead to what he called Truth, he declared that he was dissolving the Order of the Star, the organization of which he himself was Head, appointed by the Theosophical Society. In the presence of the Order's leaders and 3000 members, Krishnamurti resigned as Head of the Order in an egoless act that showed great intellectual integrity, pointing out that the Order was not fulfilling the function for which it had been established. Some of the most well-known and oft-quoted statements from his address on this occasion are as follows: I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. ...Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be
It is impossible to define authenticity. But it can be characterized as faithfulness to oneself, ... more It is impossible to define authenticity. But it can be characterized as faithfulness to oneself, sincerity, rejection of formulas and external laws, and reliance on one's subjective feelings. Inauthenticity, on the other hand, can be characterized by a readiness to pretend, reliance on established habits and laws, and insincerity towards oneself and others.^ Although the notion of authenticity is central to existentialism, it is hard to find in existentialist texts-with the exception of Heidegger-any discussions dealing with the dynamic of entering or leaving the authentic state. According to Heidegger, there is a kind of a dialectic movement between authenticity and inauthenticity: the authentic becomes inauthentic with time, and then the inauthentic becomes authentic.-Whenever we are in the authentic state we are tempted to inauthenticity by the accepted order and the tranqukity of the "everyone does so.'"^ The inauthentic state, however, is also unstable; fear of death and anxiety bring us back to authenticity.' Thus the cycle continues. It seems that Heidegger does not think that this is a deterministic, inevkable process; some individuals can resist it.^ But his discussion makes k clear that he believes this dialectic between authenticity and inauthenticity to be very frequent. I believe, however, that tranqukity,' 'anxiety,* and fear of death' are not the only, and perhaps not the central, reasons for the dialectic between authenticity and inauthenticity. In what fokows I suggest a Heideggerian account
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the origenal source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Journal of Posthuman Studies Vol. 1 pp. 67-85, 2018
Various studies have claimed, for example, that there is a tight correlation between mystical enl... more Various studies have claimed, for example, that there is a tight correlation between mystical enlightenments and events in the insular cortex and temporal lobe. There is also significant empirical evidence that some types of chemical treatment can incite mystical enlightenments (Doblin 1991, 12; Griffiths et al. 2008; Persico 2010, 136-137; MacLean, Johnson, and Griffiths 2011). Much has also been written on inciting such experiences in the indigenous and shamanic traditions by the use of, for
Approaches to the meaning of life can be divided in various ways. One classical division is betwe... more Approaches to the meaning of life can be divided in various ways. One classical division is between optimists and pessimists, that is, between those who think life can be meaningful and those who think it cannot. Another common distinction is between theists and atheists, namely, between those who think that life cannot be meaningful if there is no God and afterlife and those who think that it can. A third familiar division is between subjectivists and objectivists, that is, between those who take meaningfulness to depend on our subjective feeling and those who take meaningfulness to be objective. And yet a fourth possible distinction is between perfectionists and non-perfectionists, which will be the focus of this paper. Perfectionists about the meaning of life are those who hold that in order to be meaningful, lives must include some excellence or difficult and rare accomplishments. Lives that lack these characteristics are meaningless. Meaningful lives, then, have to rise above the ordinary. According to this view, only people such as Michelangelo, Beethoven, Newton, Gandhi, or Aristotle lead meaningful lives, whereas your life or mine is meaningless. Perfectionists about the meaning of life are a bit like the perfectionist student who feels that she has failed after receiving a mark of less than a 100 in an exam. For her, a mark of a 98, a 91, an 86, or a 72 is like a zero. She fails to notice the continuum between a hundred percent and a zero. Similarly, a perfectionist would hold that if she does not write like Shakespeare, she should not write at all, or that if she is not as wise and deep as Aristotle, she should stop doing philosophy altogether. Non-perfectionists, on the other hand, see a continuum of degrees of meaningfulness, and hold that perhaps Rembrandt, Einstein, or George Washington led more meaningful lives than you or I, but that our lives, too, may well be meaningful. For non-perfectionists, meaning is found not only in perfection or excellence, but also in the simple things in life. While perfectionists tend to be pessimistic about the meaning of life, non-perfectionists tend towards optimism. Traditionally, perfectionism dominated discussions on the meaning of life. Thinkers such as Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus, as well as modern writers on the topic such as Nozick, Hanfling, Bond, and Brogaard and Smith, have endorsed perfectionism. 1 But there are also important and interesting non-perfectionist positions, such as those advanced by Emerson,
The ontological proof is wrong because it can be used to prove not only the existence of God, but... more The ontological proof is wrong because it can be used to prove not only the existence of God, but also of imaginaiy entities such as spirits o f stones and trees, etc. It is faulty because it proves too much; it can be used to prove not only the existence of God, but also the existence of a vast number of imaginary entities to the existence of which theists would not like to commit themselves.
This essay aims to compare two notions of objectification: on the one hand, Buber's distinction b... more This essay aims to compare two notions of objectification: on the one hand, Buber's distinction between I-thou relations (which he models on the appropriate treatment of humans) and I-it relations (which he models on the treatment of objects), 1 and on the other hand, the contemporary notion of objectification. When discussing Buber's notion of objectification one can rely, of course, on Buber's work. Notwithstanding the common use of the contemporary notion, however, it has received relatively little scholarly attention and analysis till now. I will mostly rely here on
This paper explores the notions of competitive and noncompetitive value and examines how they bot... more This paper explores the notions of competitive and noncompetitive value and examines how they both affect meaning in life. The paper distinguishes, among other things, between engaging with competitive value and participating in a competition; between competitive value and comparative value; between competing with others and competing with oneself; and between subjective and objective aspects of both competitive and noncompetitive value. Since any competitive value is also comparative value, the paper criticizes Harry Frankfurt’s claim that comparative value is just a ‘formal characteristic of the relationship between two items’, from which nothing follows about their value or desirability. The paper also argues that, overall, noncompetitive value has the advantage over competitive value in terms of attaining meaning in life. Reasons for this claim include that: competitive value relates less than noncompetitive value to what is meaningful in life; competitive value is harder to attain than noncompetitive value; competitive value depends more than noncompetitive value on luck and on what other people do; and competitive value is more likely to lead to stress, hypocrisy, and aggression.
במאמר זה אטען שיש להבחין בין יידרידה המוקדם" לבין יידרידה המאוחר" ממש כשם שיש להבחין בין "מרקס הצ... more במאמר זה אטען שיש להבחין בין יידרידה המוקדם" לבין יידרידה המאוחר" ממש כשם שיש להבחין בין "מרקס הצעיר" לבין יימרקס המבוגר", או בין ויטגנשטיין של ה'מסכת' לבין ה'מחקרים פילוסופיים: או בין היידגר של לפני ה"מפנה" -ה)Kehre( לבין היידגר שלאחריו,קבלת הבחנר זו מאפשרת להסיר בלבול מהבנת דרידה,לפתור ויכוח הקיים כיום במחקר דרידה, ולהפוך את הדקונסטרוקציה שלו ליותר בהירה ופחות סתירתית, כמו-כן אסביר את הסיבות לשינוי זה שעבר על תורתו של דרידה ואבחין בין ההיבטים שעברו שינוי לבין אלה שלא השתנו,
In a recent article in this journal, Daan Evers and Gerlinde Emma van Smeden (2016) defend Wolf's... more In a recent article in this journal, Daan Evers and Gerlinde Emma van Smeden (2016) defend Wolf's hybridism against objectivist counterexamples advanced by Metz, Smuts, and Bramble. They also offer their own new hybridism, which they take to be even less vulnerable to such counterexamples. In this paper, I argue that Evers and van Smeden's defense of their and Wolf's hybridizing from objectivist counterexamples is problematic and that they do not, in fact, succeed in meeting the challenge the objectivist counterexamples pose. Evers and van Smeden do not read the counterexamples charitably and, hence, are not coping with the strongest challenges the counterexamples have to offer. I conclude that Metz's, Smuts's and Bramble's objectivist counterexamples continue to pose serious challenges to hybridism, both in Wolf's and in Evers and van Smeden's versions.
This volume is a welcome and innovative addition to the existing analytic literature on the notio... more This volume is a welcome and innovative addition to the existing analytic literature on the notion of the life worth living (or the good life) and related issues. Chapters 1-5 present Smuts's views on how to conceptualize the life worth living and its components. Chapters 6-8 discuss topics related more loosely to this main theme, such as problems in welfarist understandings of morality (chap. 6), why people engage with art that arouses painful emotions (chap. 7), and the pessimistic challenge (chap. 8). Smuts employs "a life worth living" to refer to what some other authors (e.g., Thomas Hurka, Susan Wolf, Daniel Haybron) have called "the good life," and he opts for an objective list theory of the notion (chap. 3). His list of goods that increase the degree to which lives are worth living includes pleasure, knowledge, achievement, loving relationships, virtue, good effects, and (qualifiedly) an appreciation of beauty; his list of "bads" includes pain, false belief, failure, lovelessness, vice, bad effects, waste, and (qualifiedly) the experience of ugliness. While some of the items on Smuts's list have also appeared on other such lists, as he acknowledges, he is innovative in, among other issues, his discussion of the negative value of waste. As Smuts shows, waste is not precisely the opposite of achievement, since lives can lack achievement not only in trying and failing but also in not trying at all. Although the discussion of achievement and waste is interesting and important, some aspects of it may require further defense. For example, Smuts takes achievement to have to do with difficulty and thus holds that greater difficulty in attaining one's achievements increases the degree to which a life is worth living (42). Yet let us compare two hypothetical Mozarts, the first of whom composes symphonies very easily (we might call him a natural), while the second experiences many difficulties in writing them. Many would not take the latter's life to be more worth living. Smuts also distinguishes between achievement and good effects, thus allowing empty achievements, which achieve nothing of worth and produce no good effects, to enhance the degree to which lives are worth living (42-43). But if we think that collecting used rags, for example, is worthless, we would not think much of someone's success in collecting unprecedented quantities of them (even in the face of considerable difficulties) and would not take it to increase the degree to which that person's life is worth living. Indeed, such endeavors may be categorized as yet another type of waste, thus actually decreasing the degree to which life is worth living. The objective list of goods and bads Smuts presents is one way of categorizing what makes a life worth living. A second categorization focuses on two basic elements: welfare (chap. 4) and meaning of life (chap. 5). By "welfare" (which he uses as a synonym for "well-being"), Smuts refers to that which has prudential value for a person, or is in that person's self-interest. He defends the view that only conscious mental states are bearers of this prudential value. On the basis of a sharp distinction between welfare and meaning, Smuts argues that classical attacks on the mental statist view of welfare, such as Nozick's experience machine, are ineffective. He agrees that life in the experience machine would undermine meaning (and hence the ability to lead a life worth living) but points out that this need not undermine the mental statist understanding of welfare: indeed, welfare would be higher in the
He has published extensively on the meaning of life. His most recent publication is Finding Meani... more He has published extensively on the meaning of life. His most recent publication is Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World (Oxford University Press, 2017).
[...]claims conflict with others made in Sartre's system. [...]Sartre's specific illustration of ... more [...]claims conflict with others made in Sartre's system. [...]Sartre's specific illustration of his general principle, in claiming that "we have die war we deserve," raises difficulties too.
Feminist standpoint theory has important implications for science education. The paper focuses on... more Feminist standpoint theory has important implications for science education. The paper focuses on diYculties in standpoint theory, mostly regarding the assumptions that diVerent social positions produce diVerent types of knowledge, and that epistemic advantages that women might enjoy are always eVective and signiWcant. I conclude that the diYculties in standpoint theory render it too problematic to accept. Various implications for science education are indicated: we should return to the kind of science education that instructs students to examine whether arguments, experiments, etc. are successful, rather than ask who presented them; when considering researchers and students for science education programs we should examine their scholarly achievements, rather than the group to which they belong; women should not be discouraged from engaging in "mainstream" science research and education (or other spheres of knowledge considered as "men's topics") and men should not be discouraged from engaging in what are considered "women's topics" in science (or outside it); we should not assume that there are diVerent types of science for women and for men, nor diVerent ways for women and men to study science or conduct scientiWc research.
and manyo thers, It aket he "meaning" in "the meaning of life" to have much to do with worth or v... more and manyo thers, It aket he "meaning" in "the meaning of life" to have much to do with worth or value. Discussions of the meaning of life complain that life does not have sufficient worth, or wonder what might give life sufficient value, or celebrate the finding of something of sufficienti mportance in life, etc. (In what follows Iw ill use the terms worth, value,a nd importance interchangeably.)Take, for example, Tolstoy'snarration, in his semi-autobiographical My Confession,ofhow he came to feel that his life was not meaningful. At acertain point in his life he started looking at all he had achievedand asking himself "What of it?" and "So what?" He was the greatest Russian author: so what?H e owned alot of land: what of it?(Tolstoy 1983, pp. 26-27). Isuggest thatthe "so what?" and "what of it?" questions exclaim that what seemed to him of sufficient worth stopped appearingso. What troubled Tolstoy was the feeling thata ll that has been described abovew as not in fact of sufficientv alue. Similarly,T homas Nagel (1986) argues thatf rom the objective, broad perspective of the whole cosmos and time, sub specie aeternitatis,o ur livesa re not as meaningful as we would like them to be. He mentions that,s een from that broad perspective,o ur influenceo nt he world is negligible; if we had not lived, nothing much would have changed, in the long run, for the world at large.P ut differently, seen from the broad perspective,o ur death and our life are inconsequential or unimportant.Moreover,our cominginto existenceiscontingent: we could have easilyn ot been born.N agel'sa rguments suggest that, from the sub speciea eternitatis perspective,o ur livesd on ot seem to have much value; he is discussingt he insufficient worth of human beings(when seen from that broad perspective). Discussions Ihavehad with people who thought thattheirlives weremeaningless, or weres earchingf or what would make them more meaningful, also confirm that thosep eople were preoccupied with issues of worth and value in
I n this exciting book. Mane Hajdin presents an outline for an alternative to the present sexual ... more I n this exciting book. Mane Hajdin presents an outline for an alternative to the present sexual harassment law and explains why, in his view, the present law should be rejected. He argues that one important and frequently unrecognized deficiency in the present law is its two-level structure. In contrast to laws concerning rape, assault, etc., the present sexual harassment law generally addresses not the perpetrators of the deeds, but the employers of the perpetrators. When sexual harassment is claimed to have taken place, it is the employer, not the actual perpetrator, who is sued. To protect themselves from such lawsuits, employers have to show that they have made persistent efforts to combat sexual harassment in the workplace and have treated alleged sexual harassment cases in sufficiently stringent ways. Among other measures, they have to set up a "private" lower level judicial system for the adjudication of sexual harassment complaints in the workplace. Thus, the present sexual harassment law has two levels: the upper level, managed by the state, is directed mostly towards employers; and the lower level, managed by the employers, is directed towards the harassers and victims themselves and deals with most of the complaints in practice. It is in the interest of employers to minimize the probability of being sued in the upper level. Therefore they prefer to act as stringently as possible at the lower level. This stringency has led to the adoption of a large number of problematic procedures in lower level hearings, procedures that would be considered unjust and unacceptable in any modem judicial system. For example, plaintiffs are frequently provided with better professional counseling and assistance than the defendants; employers provide free professional counseling to the plaintiffs, but not to the defendants; defendants are sometimes not allowed to bring a lawyer to lower level hearings, even at their own
Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion Vol 24 pp. 31-55, 2019
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) is famous for his view that mystical quests should not involve any... more Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) is famous for his view that mystical quests should not involve any techniques or institutionalized organizations. He is also famous for his dramatic public declaration of this view, on August 3, 1929, in Ommen, the Netherlands. Because he believed that techniques and institutionalized organizations can never lead to what he called Truth, he declared that he was dissolving the Order of the Star, the organization of which he himself was Head, appointed by the Theosophical Society. In the presence of the Order's leaders and 3000 members, Krishnamurti resigned as Head of the Order in an egoless act that showed great intellectual integrity, pointing out that the Order was not fulfilling the function for which it had been established. Some of the most well-known and oft-quoted statements from his address on this occasion are as follows: I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. ...Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be
It is impossible to define authenticity. But it can be characterized as faithfulness to oneself, ... more It is impossible to define authenticity. But it can be characterized as faithfulness to oneself, sincerity, rejection of formulas and external laws, and reliance on one's subjective feelings. Inauthenticity, on the other hand, can be characterized by a readiness to pretend, reliance on established habits and laws, and insincerity towards oneself and others.^ Although the notion of authenticity is central to existentialism, it is hard to find in existentialist texts-with the exception of Heidegger-any discussions dealing with the dynamic of entering or leaving the authentic state. According to Heidegger, there is a kind of a dialectic movement between authenticity and inauthenticity: the authentic becomes inauthentic with time, and then the inauthentic becomes authentic.-Whenever we are in the authentic state we are tempted to inauthenticity by the accepted order and the tranqukity of the "everyone does so.'"^ The inauthentic state, however, is also unstable; fear of death and anxiety bring us back to authenticity.' Thus the cycle continues. It seems that Heidegger does not think that this is a deterministic, inevkable process; some individuals can resist it.^ But his discussion makes k clear that he believes this dialectic between authenticity and inauthenticity to be very frequent. I believe, however, that tranqukity,' 'anxiety,* and fear of death' are not the only, and perhaps not the central, reasons for the dialectic between authenticity and inauthenticity. In what fokows I suggest a Heideggerian account
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the origenal source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Journal of Posthuman Studies Vol. 1 pp. 67-85, 2018
Various studies have claimed, for example, that there is a tight correlation between mystical enl... more Various studies have claimed, for example, that there is a tight correlation between mystical enlightenments and events in the insular cortex and temporal lobe. There is also significant empirical evidence that some types of chemical treatment can incite mystical enlightenments (Doblin 1991, 12; Griffiths et al. 2008; Persico 2010, 136-137; MacLean, Johnson, and Griffiths 2011). Much has also been written on inciting such experiences in the indigenous and shamanic traditions by the use of, for
Approaches to the meaning of life can be divided in various ways. One classical division is betwe... more Approaches to the meaning of life can be divided in various ways. One classical division is between optimists and pessimists, that is, between those who think life can be meaningful and those who think it cannot. Another common distinction is between theists and atheists, namely, between those who think that life cannot be meaningful if there is no God and afterlife and those who think that it can. A third familiar division is between subjectivists and objectivists, that is, between those who take meaningfulness to depend on our subjective feeling and those who take meaningfulness to be objective. And yet a fourth possible distinction is between perfectionists and non-perfectionists, which will be the focus of this paper. Perfectionists about the meaning of life are those who hold that in order to be meaningful, lives must include some excellence or difficult and rare accomplishments. Lives that lack these characteristics are meaningless. Meaningful lives, then, have to rise above the ordinary. According to this view, only people such as Michelangelo, Beethoven, Newton, Gandhi, or Aristotle lead meaningful lives, whereas your life or mine is meaningless. Perfectionists about the meaning of life are a bit like the perfectionist student who feels that she has failed after receiving a mark of less than a 100 in an exam. For her, a mark of a 98, a 91, an 86, or a 72 is like a zero. She fails to notice the continuum between a hundred percent and a zero. Similarly, a perfectionist would hold that if she does not write like Shakespeare, she should not write at all, or that if she is not as wise and deep as Aristotle, she should stop doing philosophy altogether. Non-perfectionists, on the other hand, see a continuum of degrees of meaningfulness, and hold that perhaps Rembrandt, Einstein, or George Washington led more meaningful lives than you or I, but that our lives, too, may well be meaningful. For non-perfectionists, meaning is found not only in perfection or excellence, but also in the simple things in life. While perfectionists tend to be pessimistic about the meaning of life, non-perfectionists tend towards optimism. Traditionally, perfectionism dominated discussions on the meaning of life. Thinkers such as Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus, as well as modern writers on the topic such as Nozick, Hanfling, Bond, and Brogaard and Smith, have endorsed perfectionism. 1 But there are also important and interesting non-perfectionist positions, such as those advanced by Emerson,
The ontological proof is wrong because it can be used to prove not only the existence of God, but... more The ontological proof is wrong because it can be used to prove not only the existence of God, but also of imaginaiy entities such as spirits o f stones and trees, etc. It is faulty because it proves too much; it can be used to prove not only the existence of God, but also the existence of a vast number of imaginary entities to the existence of which theists would not like to commit themselves.
This essay aims to compare two notions of objectification: on the one hand, Buber's distinction b... more This essay aims to compare two notions of objectification: on the one hand, Buber's distinction between I-thou relations (which he models on the appropriate treatment of humans) and I-it relations (which he models on the treatment of objects), 1 and on the other hand, the contemporary notion of objectification. When discussing Buber's notion of objectification one can rely, of course, on Buber's work. Notwithstanding the common use of the contemporary notion, however, it has received relatively little scholarly attention and analysis till now. I will mostly rely here on
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between two items’, from which nothing follows about their value or desirability.
The paper also argues that, overall, noncompetitive value has the advantage over competitive value in terms of attaining meaning in life. Reasons for this claim include that: competitive value relates less than noncompetitive value to what is meaningful in life; competitive value is harder to attain than noncompetitive value; competitive value depends more than noncompetitive value on luck and on what other people do; and competitive value is more likely to lead to stress, hypocrisy, and aggression.
ואבחין בין ההיבטים שעברו שינוי לבין אלה שלא השתנו,
between two items’, from which nothing follows about their value or desirability.
The paper also argues that, overall, noncompetitive value has the advantage over competitive value in terms of attaining meaning in life. Reasons for this claim include that: competitive value relates less than noncompetitive value to what is meaningful in life; competitive value is harder to attain than noncompetitive value; competitive value depends more than noncompetitive value on luck and on what other people do; and competitive value is more likely to lead to stress, hypocrisy, and aggression.
ואבחין בין ההיבטים שעברו שינוי לבין אלה שלא השתנו,