What makes Johannes de Silentio sleepless? : An universal prescriptivist reading of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling

This paper will examine Kierkegaard's concept of teleological suspension of the ethical, and argue that his insistence that Abraham cannot be ethically justified is unsuccessful and resulted from his narrow conception of "the ethical". Next, I argue from the universal prescriptivist perspective in history of ethical theory, that the main purpose of his writing the book was to keep his contemporaries aware of what it means to praise Abraham. Lastly, I will suggest a more relevant alterative of the source of the book title

Kierkegaard's media critic

As we see, Kierkegaard was in the first generation of self-conscious and reflective mass media users and critics. In fact Kierkegaard's youth saw the rise of popular journalism, and people energetically discussed about freedom of press. Shortly later he saw the prosperity and rage of yellow journalism, and suffered from the infamous "Corsair Affair". I think his second reflection on society and media changed the direction of his conception of the ethical.19世紀実存哲学者として知られるキェルケゴールは、マスメディア批判者の第一世代であった。彼の青年期に、デンマーク市民の間で言論の自由と規制に関して激しい議論が行なわれ、彼は言論の自由に対して批判的な態度をとっていた。のちにキェルケゴールは「低俗」な大衆ジャーナリズムの標的となり、有名な「コルサー」事件をひきおこした。この事件は、「倫理なものは公開的である」であるとした彼の初期の思想を再考するきっかけとなり、後期の有名な「倫理に関しては内面性こそが重要である」という主張へとつながることになる

Do mood-enhancement threaten our authenticity? : Comparing pharmacological mood-enhancement and CBT

In this paper, I will discuss the ethical concerns about pharmacological mood enhancement, by comparing pharmacological means and psychotherapeutic interventions, which seem less threatening to our wellbeing, to find the reasons for concern for chemical means and mood enhancements in general

Suzaku View of the Swift/BAT Active Galactic Nuclei (I): Spectral Analysis of Six AGNs and Evidence for Two Types of Obscured Population

We present a systematic spectral analysis with Suzaku of six AGNs detected in the Swift/BAT hard X-ray (15--200 keV) survey, Swift J0138.6-4001, J0255.2-0011, J0350.1-5019, J0505.7-2348, J0601.9-8636, and J1628.1-5145. This is considered to be a representative sample of new AGNs without X-ray spectral information before the BAT survey. We find that the 0.5--200 keV spectra of these sources can be uniformly fit with a base model consisting of heavily absorbed (log $N_{\rm{H}} > 23.5 \rm{cm}^{-2}$) transmitted components, scattered lights, a reflection component, and an iron-K emission line. There are two distinct groups, three "new type" AGNs (including the two sources reported by \citealt{Ueda2007}) with an extremely small scattered fraction ($f_{\rm{scat}} < 0.5$) and strong reflection component ($R = \Omega / 2 \pi \gtrsim 0.8$ where $\Omega$ is the solid angle of the reflector), and three "classical type" ones with $f_{\rm{scat}} > 0.5$ and $R \lesssim 0.8$. The spectral parameters suggest that the new type has an optically thick torus for Thomson scattering ($N_{\rm{H}} \sim 10^{25} \rm{cm}^{-2}$) with a small opening angle $\theta \sim 20^{\circ}$ viewed in a rather face-on geometry, while the classical type has a thin torus ($N_{\rm{H}} \sim 10^{23-24} \ \rm{cm}^{-2}$) with$\theta \gtrsim 30^{\circ}$. We infer that a significant number of new type AGNs with an edge-on view is missing in the current all-sky hard X-ray surveys.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

「パーソン論」はその後どうなったの？ : 我々と同じ将来説、動物説、そして時間相対的利益説

妊娠中絶や脳死者の扱い等にかかわる、ヒト胚、胎児、脳死者などの境界的な生命の価値についての倫理的な選択や判断は難しい。こうした生命倫理の問題については、国内では「パーソン論として」トゥーリーやウォレンらによる1970年代から1980年代の古典的な議論が知られている。この種の「人」の存立をめぐる議論は、1990年代以降もかなり錯綜した形で議論が続けられている。本論では、最近のマクマハンやドゥグラツィアらの議論を見て、境界的存在をめぐる論争の現在を紹介する。In this article, I will discuss Don Marquis' "Future Like Ours Account", which suggests grave immorality of abortion, and show that it is heavily related to the problem of personal identity. As a plausible candidate for the criterion of personal identity, I will line up the four plausible view of the problem, that is, Psychological Account, Embodied Mind Account, Genetic Account, and Animal Account. I will show that even if either Genetic Account or Animal Account is true, Jeff McMahan's Time-relative Interest Account can provide an argument against Future Like Ours Account

国内の生命倫理学における「パーソン論」の受容

本稿では、国内の生命倫理学研究者の間ではマイケル・トゥーリーらに代表される「パーソン論」と呼ばれる考え方が正確に理解されておらず、それが国内の生命倫理学の健全な発展を阻害している可能性があることを指摘する。In this paper, I will show that many Japanese bioethicists have long misunderstood Michael Tooley's seminal article "Abortion and Infanticide" and other philosophers' important arguments, and this has caused much trouble in discussing abortion issues in Japan

ポルノグラフィに対する言語行為論アプローチ

国内のジェンダー論・セクシュアリティ論に大きな影響を持つジュディス・バトラーの『触発する言葉』（バトラー, 2004）2）は、英国の哲学者J. L. オースティンの言語行為論を積極的に援用あるいは「脱構築」し、憎悪表現、ポルノグラフィなどの社会的・法的問題を扱っている。しかしこのバトラーの解釈はさまざまな問題がある3）。ここでは、バトラーの曖昧で難解な4）議論を追うことはできない。しかしバトラーの議論全体は、レイ・ラングトンの論文（Langton,1993）のオースティン解釈に多くを負っており5）、またラングトンの議論は哲学的にも実践的にも興味深いものであって、この議論の魅力とその弱点は正確に理解される必要があると思われる6）。そのための作業として、本論では「言語行為speech act」としてポルノグラフィや憎悪表現をとらえることが、どの程度の理論的含意を持つのかを確かめたい。In this paper, I will introduce Rae Langton's approach to the problems of pornography in her "Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts". I will try to show that her approach has a merit of being philosophically interesting and practically important, but has some fundamental flaws. Pace Langton, I will show that "act" of pornographic expression should be considered as perlocutional act, and we need some empirical evidences of harms in order to regulate pornography legally. In conclusion, I will argue that we need psychological / phenomenological investigations how ordinry men read, watch, and experience pornography