Steppingstones Toward an Ethics for Fellow Existers: Essays 1944-1983

ISBN-13: 9789401084277 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 337 str.

E. Spiegelberg

Opis

In releasing the text of this volume, originally set aside as a collec tion for possible posthumous publication, during my lifetime, I am acting in a sense as my own executor: I want to save my heirs and literary executors the decision whether these pieces should be print ed or reprinted in the present context, a decision which I wanted to postpone to the last possible moment. As to the reasons why I changed my mind I can refer to the Introduction. Here I merely want to make some acknowledgments, first to the copyright holders for the reprinted pieces and then to some personal friends who had an important influence on the premature birth of this brainchild. The copyright holders to whom I am indebted for.the permis sion to reprint here, in the original or in slightly amended form, the articles listed are, with their names in alphabetical order: Ablex Publishing Company: 'Putting Ourselves into the Place of Others' Atherton Press: 'Equality in Existentialism' and 'Human Dignity: A Challenge to Contemporary Philosophy' Friends Journal: 'Is There a Human Right to One's Native Soil?' Gordon Breach: 'Human Dignity: A Challenge to Contemporary Philosophy?' Humanities Press: 'Ethics for Fellows in the Fate of Existence' Journal of the History of Ideas: 'Accident of Birth: A Non-utili tarian Motif in Mill's Philosophy' Philosophical Review: 'A Defense of Human Equality' Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry: 'On the I-am me Experience in Childhood and Adolescence' The Monist: 'A Phenomenological Approach to the Ego'"

Spis treści

1. My Major Concern.- 2. Why I Waited So Long.- 3. New Challenges from Today’s Human Situation.- 4. New Dimensions of Human Existence.- 5. First Responses to the New Challenges.- 6. Minimum and Optimum Meanings for Human Existence.- 7 The Steppingstones: A Preview.- I New Ontic Dimensions of the Self.- 1. On the I-Am-Me Experience in Childhood and Adolescence.- 1.1 Purpose of the Study.- 1.2 Autobiographical Material.- 1.3 The ‘I-am-me’ Experience and the Discovery of the Ego and the Self.- 1.4 A Questionnaire Study Based on a Literary Stimulus.- Table I.- Table II.- 1.5 A Second Questionnaire Study Based on Authentic Case Materials.- 1.6 Possible Developments of the Questionnaire Study.- 1.7 Wider Perspectives.- 2. A Phenomenological Approach to the Ego.- 2.1 Introductory Remarks.- 2.2 Phenomenology and Language.- 2.3 The Choice of the Topic.- 2.4 Plan of Approach.- 2.5 Findings.- 2.6 Conclusion.- 3. On the Motility of the Ego.- 3.1 Erwin Straus on the Dancing Ego.- 3.2 Concerning the Localization of the Ego in the Body.- 3.3 An Outline of the Structure of the Ego.- 3.4 On Ego-Identification.- 3.5 Identification with the Body.- 3.6 The Ego in Music.- 3.7 Coda.- 3.8 Postscript 1978.- 4. Initiating: A Phenomenological Analysis.- 4.1 The Theme.- 4.2 On the Language of Initiating.- 4.3 The Novelty of the Phenomenon.- 4.4 The Place of Initiating in Everyday Living.- 4.5 The Essential Structure of Initiating.- 4.6 Ways in Which Initiating Appears.- 4.7 The Role of the Initiator.- 4.8 The Validity of the Evidence for Initiating.- 4.9 The Significance of Initiating for Self-Existence.- 5. Putting Ourselves into the Place of Others: Toward a Phenomenology of Imaginary Self-Transposal.- II New Ethical Dimensions.- 6. ‘Accident of Birth’: A Non-Utilitarian Motif in Mill’s Philosophy.- 6.1 Introductory.- 6.2 The Textual Evidence.- 6.3 Antecedents of Mill’s ‘Accident of Birth’.- 6.4 What Mill meant by the ‘Accident of Birth’.- 6.5 The Accident of Birth and Utilitarianism.- 7. A Defense of Human Equality.- 7.1 The Challenge.- 7.2 Unravelling the Problem.- 7.3 Human Inequalities and Human Equalities.- 7.4 The Basis for the Postulate of Human Equality.- 7.5 Related Arguments.- 7.6 Conclusion.- 8. Equality in Existentialism.- 8.1 Existentialism: Core and Fringe.- 8.2 An Existentialist Outsider: Vladimir Jankélévitch On Equality.- 8.3 Equality in the Thought of Jean-Paul Sartre.- 8.4 Equality of the Sexes in the Thought of Simone de Beauvoir.- 8.5 Human ‘Universality’ in the Thought of Merleau-Ponty.- 8.6 Some Critical Queries.- 8.7 On Chances for Strengthening the Existentialist Case for Equality.- 8.8 Equality in the Accident of Birth and Circumstance.- 8.9 Supplement 1982.- 9. Human Dignity: A Challenge to Contemporary Philosophy.- 9.1 The Present Role of the Idea of Human Dignity.- 9.2 The Newness of the Idea.- 9.3 Inconsistencies and Vaguenesses in our Ideas about Human Dignity.- 9.4 Denials of Human Dignity.- 9.5 The Philosophers’ Case for Human Dignity.- 9.6 Some Basic Distinctions.- 9.7 The Phenomenon of Human Dignity in Itself.- 9.8 Grounds of Human Dignity.- 10. Ethics for Fellows in the Fate of Existence.- 10.1 Basic Concerns.- 10.2 Types of Fellowship.- 10.3 Fellowships in Parallel Fate.- 10.4 Accidents of Birth as Parallel Fates.- 10.5 Some Premises for the Ethical Implications of the Fellowship in the Fate of Existence.- 10.6 Ethical Implications of the Fellowship in the Fate of Existence.- 10.7 Final Pleas.- 11. Good Fortune Obligates: Albert Schweitzer’s Second Ethical Principle.- 11.1 Textual Evidence.- 11.2 The Novelty of the ‘Other Thought’.- 11.3 Clarifying the Meaning of the New Thought.- 11.4 The Evidence for the New Principle.- 11.5 The Foundation of the Second Principle: Justice Reinterpreted.- 11.6 Conclusion.- 12. Why Compensate the Naturally Handicapped?.- 12.1 Natural Inequalities and the Human Rights of the Naturally Handicapped.- 12.2 The State of the Question About Natural Inequalities.- 12.3 The Problems of Compensation for the Naturally Handicapped.- 12.4 Grounds for the Compensation of Natural Handicaps.- 12.5 The Dilemmas of Compensatory Justice for the Handicapped.- 12.6 Toward an Alternative: The Co-existential Fellowship of the Handicapped with the Nonhandicapped.- III Applications Problems of the Nuclear Age.- 13. Is there a Human Right to One’s Native Soil?.- I. Epilogue 1982.- 14. Toward Global Solidarity.- 15. The Nuclear Powers are Forfeiting their Claim to Civil Obedience.- IV Phenomenological Foundations.- 16. Unfairness and Fairness: A Phenomenological Analysis.- 16.1 Introduction.- A. Aims.- B. Previous Discussions of Fairness.- C. A Start from Ordinary Language: ‘Linguistic Phenomenology’.- D. The Phenomenological Approach.- 16.2 An Analysis of Unfairness and Fairness (Phenomenological Ontology).- A. Where Unfairness and Fairness Appear: Their Locus.- B. What Can Be Unfair and Fair: Their Carriers.- C. Unfairness and Fairness Themselves.- D. Is the Relation Between Unfairness and Fairness Disjunctive?.- 16.3 How Unfairness and Fairness Appear (Phenomenology Proper).- 16.4 How Certain is our Knowledge of Unfairness and Fairness? (Epistemology).- 16.5 Grounds for Unfairness and Fairness.- 16.6 Implications of the Phenomenology of Unfairness and Fairness.- A. Implications for the Theory of Justice: Rawls’ ‘Veil of Ignorance’.- B. Implications for Normative Ethics.- C. Implications for Metaphysics and Philosophical Anthropology.- D. Implications for the ‘Steppingstones Toward an Ethics for Fellow-Existers’.- 16.7 Summary and Conclusions: The Meaning of Phenomenological Analysis.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.