Conditions of Knowledge

In this paper I suggest an account of knowledge by adding a fourth condition to the traditional analysis in terms of justified true belief. I am going to make a first proposal ruling out the Gettier-counterexamples.1 This proposal will then be corrected in the light of other counterexamples. The final analysis will be a combination of a justified-true-belief-account and a causal account of knowledge. Some philosophers have disputed that Gettier‟s examples must be accepted as refutations of the justified true belief analysis of knowledge.2 Their rejection rests on declining a principle underlying Gettier‟s reasoning, namely – as Thalberg calls it – the principle of deducibility of justification (PDJ). PDJ reads as following: For any proposition p, if a person S is justified in believing p, and p entails q, and S deduces q from p and accepts q as a result of this deduction, then S is justified in believing q. This principle allows, for example, the move in Gettier‟s first example from the proposition a) “Jones is the man who will get the job and Jones has ten coins in his pocket” to proposition b) “The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket”.

Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Civic Virtue

This paper explores the question whether perfectionism amounts to a political doctrine that is more attractive than liberalism. I try to show that an egalitarian liberalism that is open to questions of value and that holds a conception of limited neutrality can meet the perfectionist challenge. My thesis is that liberalism can be reconciled easily with perfectionism read as a moral doctrine. Perfectionism as a political doctrine equall stays within the value framework of liberalism. Finally, I try to show that liberalism can give an account of civic virtue that is a sufficient basis for developing the normative guidelines of a rich and meaningful social life

Freedom and Equality: Beyond Egalitarianism and Anti-Egalitarianism

Philosophy, as we know, is an abstract expression of worries, sentiments and longings that move people and societies. Philosophical debates are often innovative, but sometimes we have reason to ask ourselves why they develop at all and what general social trends they follow. An example of such a philosophical discussion-one that seems bewildering to many-is the current dispute between egalitarians and anti-egalitarians which has also reached German-speaking countries and which divides philosophers into opposing camps. Given feminist arguments against egalitarianism that seem initially to have the potential to erode the social responsibilities of societies, the debate must seem especially strange to those feminist philosophers who have considered the European welfare state as a reasonable normative standard. The political shifts of the last decade, especially the change in former communist countries and the globalization of markets, provide the general social background for these challenges to egalitarian thinking. Yet a look at these causal factors does not answer compelling questions such as, Are the normative demands of a strict egalitarianism really binding? Are these demands morally compelling? Are the arguments with which we justify people's acess to certain social and economic goods in fact egalitarian? Do we have to base an acceptable conception of society and its fundamental institutions on the ideal of equality at all? In this talk I shall not address in detail the debate between egalitarians and anti-egalitarians. Instead I shall argue for an autonomy-based political theory that defines a specific structure among basic political values like universal respect, freedom, and equality. My claim is that such a theory integrates the value of equality in a form that allows us to leave behind the dispute between egalitarianism and anti-egalitarianism. Finally I shall try to show that an autonomy-oriented political theory is attractive from a feminist point of view

The Second-Person Standpoint in Law and Morality

The papers of this special issue are the outcome of a two-­‐day conference entitled “The Second-­‐Person Standpoint in Law and Morality,” that took place at the University of Vienna in March 2013 and was organized by the ERC Advanced Research Grant “Distortions of Normativity.” The aim of the conference was to explore and discuss Stephen Darwall’s innovative and influential second-­‐personal account of foundational moral concepts such as „obligation“, „responsibility“, and „rights“, as developed in his book The Second-­‐Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Harvard University Press 2006) and further elaborated in Morality, Authority and Law: Essays in Second-­‐Personal Ethics I and Honor, History, and Relationships: Essays in Second-­‐Personal Ethics II (both Oxford University Press 2013). With the second-­‐person standpoint Darwall refers to the unique conceptual normative space that practical deliberators and agents occupy when they address claims and demands to one another (and to themselves). The very first sentence of Darwall’s examination of the second-­‐personal conceptual paradigm summarizes the gist of the argument succinctly when he claims that “the second-­‐person standpoint [is] the perspective that you and I take up when we make and acknowledge claims on one another’s conduct and will.” (Darwall 2006, 3) The Second-­‐Person Standpoint reminds us that this perspective has been ignored for much too long and that it better take centre stage in any philosophical analysis of moral phenomena, in order to yield a satisfying account of morality as a social institution. The negative part of Darwall’s strategy is to show that neither a purely first-­‐personal approach (represented by Kant and contemporary Kantians), nor a third-­‐personal state-­‐of-­‐affairs-­‐perspective (represented by most varieties of contemporary consequentialism) are capable of accounting for the categorical bindingness characteristic of moral obligation. The latter feat can only be accomplished, and this is the positive part of Darwall’s argument, when those second-­‐ personal normative “felicity conditions” and conceptual presuppositions are acknowledged and spelled out that are already presupposed in every instance of issuing (putatively valid) claims and demands. It is especially second-­‐personal competence and second-­‐personal authority that are the bedrock of these normative conceptual presuppositions, without which engaging in any meaningful address would be impossible. Kantians and utilitarians alike have neglected this critical dimension of the normative landscape. In addition to working out an original conception of moral obligation, the first eight chapters of The Second-­‐Person Standpoint articulate this fundamental insight with respect to a variety of traditional projects in ethical theory such as developing accounts of moral responsibility, rights, dignity, and autonomy. In this context, special emphasis is to be awarded, on the one hand, to Darwall’s refreshing second-­‐personal interpretation of Strawson’s influential account of reactive attitudes and moral responsibility and, on the other, to his historically well-­‐informed reconstruction of Samuel Pufendorf’s often neglected version of an enlightened theistic voluntarism concerning moral authority. Darwall dedicates the second part of The Second-­‐Person Standpoint to the urgent question: how should one respond to the sceptical challenge that expresses utter indifference to the second-­‐person standpoint, including all its multifarious normative presuppositions and implications? What commits us to all this? It is at this point that Darwall, firstly, refines his criticisms of the Kantian, first-­‐personal, paradigm of normativity and emphasizes that only if one already incorporates the second-­‐personal conceptual apparatus into a Kantian analysis of moral obligation is the latter going to yield a convincing account. Secondly, and this certainly is one of the highlights of Darwall’s theory, the Second-­‐Person Standpoint employs themes from Fichte’s philosophy of right in order to strengthen the case for the inescapability of taking up the second-­‐person standpoint of moral obligation. In his contribution for this special issue Darwall further develops his diagnosis that Fichte’s thought offers in many respects a more promising, since more second-­‐personal, foundation of morality than, for example, Kant’s. By now, the impact of Darwall’s second-­‐person standpoint theory has far transcended the confines of contemporary debates on moral obligation. Darwall has put to use the second-­‐personal apparatus to critical engagements with Joseph Raz’s theory of legal authority and Derek Parfit’s convergence arguments for his recent Triple Theory of moral wrongness. The constant theme that unifies all these diverse applications remains the one so impressively presented in The Second-­‐Person Standpoint: without paying attention to the “interdefinable” and “irreducible” circle of (four) foundational second-­‐ personal concepts (valid demand, practical authority, second-­‐personal reason, and accountability), neither superior epistemic status (Raz) nor the identification of optimific states of affairs (Parfit) are potent enough sources to generate anything close to the authority relationships that underlie the idea involved in obligating ourselves and one another. Given all of the above, it comes as no surprise that Darwall reserves his strongest sympathies for a specific ethical theory, namely contractualism. Our commitment to equal basic second-­‐personal authority, that Darwall arrives at through his Fichtean rectification of the Kantian project, leads him to the endorsement of a contractualist paradigm in the spirit of broadly Rawls and Scanlon

Contractualism and the Second-Person Moral Standpoint

This article explores Darwall’s second-­‐personal account of morality, which draws on Fichte’s practical philosophy, particularly Fichte’s notions of a summons and principle of right. Darwall maintains that Fichte offers a philosophically more appealing account of relations of right than Kant. Likewise, he thinks that his second-­‐personal interpretation of morality gives rise to contractualism. I reject Darwall’s criticism of Kant’s conception of right. Moreover, I try to show that Darwall’s second-­‐personal conception of morality relies on a Kantian form of contractualism. Instead of accepting Darwall’s claim that contractualism depends upon a second-­‐personal account of morality, I will argue that contractualism provides the foundations not only for second-­‐personal moral relations, but also for first-­‐personal moral authority

Zivilgesellschaft. Was kann und soll es bedeuten?

Es war auf einer Konferenz im September 2000 in London, einer Konferenz über feministische Bioethik. Eine kanadische Kollegin hielt einen Vortrag, in dem sie mit Hilfe der geometrischen Figur der Fraktale, jener komplexen Dreiecksstrukturen, die angeblich den strukturellen Aufbau aller Entitäten bestimmen, das Wesen der Schwangerschaftsbeziehung zu erklären versuchte, also jener Beziehung, die angeblich mehr als eines und weniger als zwei umfasst. Die Reaktionen auf den Vortrag reichten von euphorischer Zustimmung bis zu verständnislosem Kopfschütteln. Am nächsten Morgen fragte mich eine Kollegin, es war Alison Jaggar, die den Vortrag nicht gehört hatte, nach dessen Inhalt und Thesen. Und als ich ihr zu erklären versuchte, was Fraktale sind und was diese mit dem Thema Schwangerschaft zu tun haben könnten, meinte sie: "Ah, I see, that's just like civil society. It can be anything." Die seit geraumer Zeit ungebrochene Konjunktur der Idee der Zivilgesellschaft gibt genügend Anlass und Gelegenheit, über Alison Jaggars kritische Bemerkung nachzudenken

Erinnern und Vergessen. Österreichs verfehlte Politische Ethik

Nicht selten entwickeln sich gesellschaftliche Diskurse im gewollten Spiel von provokanter Zuspitzung und eitler Inszenierung zum grotesken Zerrbild. Ein Beispiel ist die seit einigen Jahren in Österreich geführte Debatte über das Thema von Erinnern, Vergessen und Moralisierung. Kaum scheint diese zu verebben, wird sie mit neurotischer Beharrlichkeit und Zwanghaftigkeit wieder aufgegriffen. Es ist nicht ganz leicht, die wesentlichen Thesen dieser semantisch diffusen Auseinandersetzung eindeutig zu benennen. Die Quintessenz scheint zu sein: Wir tun gut daran, die Erinnerung an bestimmte Episoden der Geschichte aus dem öffentlichen Raum zu verbannen, da sich die öffentlich verordnete Erinnerungskultur längst in eine moralisierende und verlogene Gesinnungskontrolle durch selbsternannte Tugendwächter verkehrt hat. Vergessen scheint angebracht, ja notwendig. \ud So weit, so gut. Das Problem ist, dass sich der "Aufruf zum Vergessen" auf die historisch sensibelste Periode Österreichs bezieht: die Zeit von 1938-1945, somit auch auf die Mitwirkung am Holocaust. \ud Was soll man zu solchen Thesen sagen? Wie soll man dazu Stellung beziehen? Vor allem: Wie soll man sich zu einer Debatte äußern, in der sich der Sachgehalt von Aussagen längst verwischt hat und - wie der bisherige Verlauf zeigt - sämtliche Versuche der Denkredlichkeit an den Immunisierungsstrategien einer wendigen Beliebigkeit der Argumente abgleiten? Es empfiehlt sich der Rückzug auf Trivialitäten und Bekanntes

Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit: Moraltheorie Im Kontext der Geschlechterdifferenz

What picture do we get when wie apply gender analysis to mainstream moral philosophy? Starting with an analysis of Kant, Hume and Rawls, Pauer–Studer develops the categorical framework of a moral theory that is free from any "male bias"

Kelsen's Legal Positivism and the Challenge of Nazi Law

Kelsen’s legal positivism has often been criticized for having supported the compliance of the\ud German judiciary with Nazi law. Especially Kelsen’s insistence on the separation of law and\ud morality was considered as a crucial deficiency. I reject that criticism. My argument is that\ud Kelsen’s thesis that law and morality constitute two distinct normative spheres seems\ud persuasive if one takes into account that the Nazi legal theorist’s program of a ‘unification of\ud law and morality’ served to extend the authority and power of the Nazi-regime. I criticize,\ud however, Kelsen’s relativist account of morality which made his position vulnerable to the\ud post-war objections that legal positivism provided no safeguard against the Nazi perversion of\ud law

Law and Morality under Evil Conditions: The SS Judge Konrad Morgen

In Anglo-American legal theory the issue of Nazi law has to a large extent been seen in light of the exchange between HLA Hart and Lon L Fuller in the 1958 issue of the Harvard Law Review. That discussion centred on a particular problem that arose in the aftermath of the Nazi regime, namely, under which statutes could conduct that seemed legal in the Third Reich but grossly immoral under post-war rule-of-law conditions be tried by post-war courts. \ud \ud <br /> <br />\ud \ud The famous Grudge Informer Case raised the question of how denunciation for malicious personal motives should be tried by post-war German courts. Hart argued that there was no other solution than solving the case on the basis of retroactive legislation, while Fuller suggested that the issue should be handled on the premise that Nazi legal\ud statutes like the one applied in denunciation cases, the 1934 ‘Law Against Malicious Attacks on the State and the Party and for the Protection of the Party Uniform’, were\ud not law in any meaningful normative sense.\ud \ud <br /> <br />\ud \ud \ud The purpose of this article is not to take sides on the Grudge Informer Case. What is relevant for this paper is the framework in which the debate was situated and the implications it had for the perception of the problem posed by Nazi law. Given the obvious difficulty of rejecting Nazi legal regulations while granting ‘validity’ to any legal system whatsoever, the Grudge Informer Case was taken by many philosophers of law to show that the proper reaction to the distortions of the Nazi legal system was to tighten the connection between law and morality and declare Nazi laws not to be proper law. The upshot was that the issue of Nazi law was perceived mainly as a moral problem, less a legal problem