By Robert Hanna

[I] was then making plans for a work that might perhaps have the title, “The Limits of Sense and Reason.” I planned to have it consist of two parts, a theoretical and a practical. The first part would have two sections, (1) general phenomenology and (2) metaphysics, but this only with regard to its method. (Letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772 [C 10: 129])

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By Otto Paans

Thus profound metaphysics is rooted in an implicit geometry which — whether we will or not — confers spatiality upon thought; if a metaphysician could not draw, what would he think?

— Gaston Bachelard, Dialectics of Inside and Outside

[I]f pure experience means to know things just as they are, then simplicity or passivity are not characteristics of it — the truly direct state is constitutive and active.

— Kitarō Nishida, An Inquiry Into the Good

Introduction

This essay is an elaborated and extended version of an earlier essay, “How To Do Real Metaphysics: 22 Theses.”[i] In this revised version, I’ve…

By Z

Robert Hanna’s The Fate of Analysis: Analytic Philosophy From Frege To The Ash-Heap of History, And Toward a Radical Kantian Philosophy of the Future is a comprehensive revisionist study of the history of Analytic philosophy from the early 1880s to the present, with special attention paid to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work and the parallels and overlaps between the analytical and phenomenological traditions. It provides a synoptic introduction to European and Anglo-American philosophy from the 1880s to the present, including accessible, clear, and critical descriptions of works by Gottlob Frege, G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein — featuring close readings of the Tractatus…

By Otto Paans

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— Gaston Bachelard, Dialectics of Inside and Outside

[I]f pure experience means to know things just as they are, then simplicity or passivity are not characteristics of it — the truly direct state is constitutive and active.

— Kitarō Nishida, An Inquiry Into the Good

Introduction

This essay is an elaborated and extended version of an earlier essay, “How To Do Real Metaphysics: 22 Theses.”[i] In this revised version, I’ve tried to work out some of the relations between individual theses, illuminating the theoretical foundations on which they build. …

By Robert Hanna

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction

II. Refuting the Dignity-Skeptic and Debunking a Dignity-Debunking Argument

III. The Metaphysics of Human Dignity

III.1 What Human Dignity Is

III.2 Real Persons and Minded Animals

III.3 A Metaphysical Definition of Real Personhood

IV. Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory

IV.0 How Nonideal Can a World Be?

IV.1 The Skinny Logic and the Fat Semantics of Moral Principles in Broadly Kantian Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory

V. Some Hard Cases For Broadly Kantian Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory

VI. Enacting Human Dignity and The Mind-Body Politic

VII. Conclusion

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This installment contains section IV.1.

But you can also download or read a .pdf…

Robert Hanna

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[I] was then making plans for a work that might perhaps have the title, “The Limits of Sense and Reason.” I planned to have it consist of two parts, a theoretical and a practical. The first part would have two sections, (1) general phenomenology and (2) metaphysics, but this only with regard to its method. (Letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772 [C 10: 129])

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An edgy essay by Robert Hanna

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You can also download and read or share a complete .pdf of this essay HERE.

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The Fallacy of Inevitability: From Chattel Slavery to Digital Technology

Sadly, moral thinking and sociopolitical thinking are rife with fallacies. Here’s the general form of a particularly pernicious one that I’ll call The Fallacy of Inevitability:

(i) X is a very large social institution (in terms of the number of people who are members of that institution), X is very profitable for an elite group of powerful people, X has been in existence for a very long time (let’s say, anywhere from 50 years to hundreds or even thousands of years), and X is very…

By Robert Hanna

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction

II. Refuting the Dignity-Skeptic and Debunking a Dignity-Debunking Argument

III. The Metaphysics of Human Dignity

III.1 What Human Dignity Is

III.2 Real Persons and Minded Animals

III.3 A Metaphysical Definition of Real Personhood

IV. Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory

IV.0 How Nonideal Can a World Be?

V. Some Hard Cases For Broadly Kantian Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory

VI. Enacting Human Dignity and The Mind-Body Politic

VII. Conclusion

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This installment contains section IV.0.

But you can also download or read a .pdf of the complete text of this essay HERE.

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IV. Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory

A conflict of duties would be a relation between them…