The Morality of Peacekeeping.Daniel H. Levine -2013 - Edinburgh University Press.detailsPeacekeeping, peace enforcement and 'stability operations' ask soldiers to use violence to create peace, defeat armed threats while having no enemies and uphold human rights without taking sides. The challenges that face peacekeepers cannot be easily reduced to traditional just war principles. Built on insights from care ethics, case studies including Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Liberia and scores of interviews with peacekeepers, trainers and planners in the field in Africa, India and more,Daniel H. (...) Levine sheds light on the challenges of peacekeeping. And he asserts that the traditional 'holy trinity' of peacekeeping principles "e; consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force "e; still provide the best moral guide for peacekeepers. (shrink)
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Addiction: More than innate rationality.Daniel H. Lende -2008 -Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (4):453-454.detailsRedish et al. rely too much on a rational and innate view of decision-making, when their emphasis on variation, their integrative spirit, and their neuroscientific insights point towards a broader view of why addiction is such a tenacious problem. The integration of subjective, sociocultural, and evolutionary factors with cognitive neuroscience advances our understanding of addiction and decision-making.
Aquinas's Opposition to Killing the Innocent and its Distinctiveness within the Christian just War Tradition.Daniel H. Weiss -2017 -Journal of Religious Ethics 45 (3):481-509.detailsThis essay argues that Aquinas's position regarding the killing of innocent people differs significantly from other representatives of the Christian just war tradition. While his predecessors, notably Augustine, as well as his successors, from Cajetan and Vitoria onward, affirm the legitimacy of causing the death of innocents in a just war in cases of necessity, Aquinas holds that causing the death of innocents in a foreseeable manner, whether intentionally or indirectly, is never justified. Even an otherwise legitimate act of just (...) war cannot legitimate causing the death of innocent people, as this can never advance the common good. This stance also contrasts sharply with much modern and contemporary double effect theorizing in relation to jus in bello. In this regard, Aquinas's position, shaped decisively by his biblical and theological commitments, may point the way towards an ethical orientation beyond the typical divisions of “pacifism” and “just war.”. (shrink)
Iewish perspectives on natural theology.Daniel H. Frank -2013 - In J. H. Brooke, F. Watts & R. R. Manning,The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology. Oxford Up. pp. 137.detailsThis chapter analyzes Maimonides' revisionist reading of Job, which is a good example of the ‘naturalizing’ of Judaism – a reductive and deflationary analysis that revisions grand theological categories which tended to magnify the gulf between divine and human. In the Jewish philosophical tradition, such a reductive analysis is typified by thinkers such as Saadia Gaon, the first systematic Jewish philosopher; Maimonides himself; and at the very end of the classical tradition, Spinoza. Saadia's defence of rabbinic Judaism against its detractors (...) and Spinoza's vigorous critique of Maimonides are discussed. (shrink)
A People Apart: Chosenness and Ritual in Jewish Philosophical Thought.Daniel H. Frank -1993 - SUNY Press.detailsPhilosphical speculations on chosenness and ritual in Judaism.
Commandment and Community: New Essays in Jewish Legal and Political Philosophy.Daniel H. Frank -1995 - SUNY Press.detailsThis book includes contemporary Jewish political practice, and both systematic and historical treatments of issues in Jewish political theory and legal thought.
The Development of Maimonides’ Moral Psychology.Daniel H. Frank -2002 -American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (1):89-105.detailsMaimonides’ moral psychology undergoes development, which this essay attempts to detail. In the early Shemonah Peraqim (Eight Chapters) Maimonides charts out a seemingly anti-Aristotelian view that underscores the specificity of each part of the human soul and the utter distinctiveness of the human species. Human beings share nothing with non-human animals, prima facie not even the most “animalistic” features. Over time, however, a change in Maimonides’ position is to be noted. In his philosophical magnum opus, the Guide of the Perplexed, (...) Maimonides adopts a more Aristotelian position, understanding human beings as sharing with nonhumananimals certain sub-rational faculties, but differing from them in their ratiocinative capacities. As in Aristotle, human beings turn out to be essentially rational animals. (shrink)
The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs.Daniel H. Frank (ed.) -2002 - Hackett Publishing Company.detailsSaadya ben Joseph al-Fayyumi, gaon of the rabbinic academy at Sura and one of the preeminent Jewish thinkers of the medieval period, attempted to create a complete statement of Jewish religious philosophy in which all strands of philosophical thought were to be knit into a unified system. In _The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs_, Saadya sought to rescue believers from "a sea of doubt and the waters of confusion" into which they had been cast by Christianity, Islam, and other faiths. (...) By employing philosophical--or kalamic--argumentation to examine and defend traditional Jewish beliefs, Saadya hoped to turn blind faith into conviction based on rational understanding. First published in 1946, and reprinted here without alteration, Alexander Altmann’s judicious abridgment of his own translation has remained the standard edition of this influential work. A new Introduction byDaniel Frank sets Saadya’s work in its broader historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts. (shrink)
The Soul of the Golem.Daniel H. Cabrera -2009 -Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication 1 (1):107-121.detailsThere are many ways of interpreting the so-called new technologies. One of the most interesting is that which stems from defining them as a social imaginary, and therefore, as collective beliefs, fears and hopes. It is common to attribute to technologies all manner of threats that, founded or not, are real in the measure that the society makes decisions and acts in a way consistent with this conviction.The fears and anxieties of society lead to a consideration of the limits of (...) the human that technologies transgress. Among the figures with which one speaks about these limits there is Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus, which threatens modern fantasies with its deformity. There is, however, another man-made creature that can serve to orient our reflection, the Golem.In 1609, 400 years ago, Rabbi Loew died. He is credited with the creation of a homunculus by combining of secret codes. The problem of the Golem was its imperfect soul made manifest in its lack of speech. Its silent presence was a source of great fear in the community that finally asked to get rid of the creature.These figures of monstrosity, Frankenstein and above all Golem, will help us to make technologies understand from the fear that society projects onto them, and this will lead us to the question concerning the imaginary fears of the technological system. (shrink)
Twentieth-Century Multiplicity: American Thought and Culture, 1900-1920.Daniel H. Borus -2008 - Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.detailsThe book describes the ways in which American thinkers and artists in the first two decades of the twentieth century challenged notions that a single principle ...
Modern Jewish philosophy and the politics of divine violence.Daniel H. Weiss -2023 - New York: Cambridge University Press.detailsModern Jewish Philosophy and the Politics of Divine Violence Is commitment to God compatible with modern citizenship? In this book,Daniel H. Weiss provides new readings of four modern Jewish philosophers - Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin - in light of classical rabbinic accounts of God's sovereignty, divine and human violence, and the embodied human being as the image of God. He demonstrates how classical rabbinic literature is relevant to contemporary political and philosophical debates. Weiss (...) brings to light striking political aspects of the writings of the modern Jewish philosophers, who have often been understood as non-political. In addition, he shows how the four modern thinkers are more radical and more shaped by Jewish tradition than has previously been thought. Taken as a whole, Weiss' book argues for a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between Judaism and politics, the history of Jewish thought, and the ethical and political dynamics of the broader Western philosophical tradition. (shrink)
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Argumentative Virtues as Conduits for Reason’s Causal Efficacy: Why the Practice of Giving Reasons Requires that We Practice Hearing Reasons.Daniel H. Cohen -2019 -Topoi 38 (4):711-718.detailsPsychological and neuroscientific data suggest that a great deal, perhaps even most, of our reasoning turns out to be rationalizing. The reasons we give for our positions are seldom either the real reasons or the effective causes of why we have those positions. We are not as rational as we like to think. A second, no less disheartening observation is that while we may be very effective when it comes to giving reasons, we are not that good at getting reasons. (...) We are not as reasons-responsive as we like to think. Reasoning and argumentation are, on this view, charades without effect. This paper begins by identifying a range of theoretical responses to the idea that reasoning and argumentation have little casual role in our thoughts and actions, and, consequently, that humans are not the reasons-giving, reasons-responsive agents that we imagine ourselves to be. The responses fall into three categories: challenging the data and their interpretations; making peace with the loss of autonomy that is implied; and seeking ways to expand the causal footprint of reasoning and argumentation, e.g., by developing argumentative virtues. There are indeed possibilities for becoming more rational and more reasons-responsive, so the reports of our demise as the rational animal are greatly exaggerated. (shrink)
Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (review).Daniel H. Frank -2002 -Journal of the History of Philosophy 40 (2):263-264.detailsDaniel H. Frank - Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 263-264 Book Review Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority J. Samuel Preus. Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xvi + 228. Cloth, $54.95. This book is the history of ideas at its best. In lesser hands, volumes in the genre tend to be reductionist to (...) the point of redundancy and irrelevance, forcing the reader to wonder about the originality of the thinker under discussion and the ideas in question. If the relevant ideas are no more than those of others, then why should one take an interest in them ? Accounting for originality and genius bedevils the history of ideas. Preus is well aware of the problem of reductionism and redundancy throughout his book and works hard to show how Spinoza is.. (shrink)
The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (review).Daniel H. Frank -2006 -Journal of the History of Philosophy 44 (2):318-319.detailsDaniel H. Frank - The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.2 318-319 Robert Eisen. The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xii + 324. Cloth, $55.00 Robert Eisen has written a very good book on medieval philosophical interpretations of the Book of Job. In it he discusses the varying interpretations of Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Samuel Ibn (...) Tibbon, Zerahiah Hen, Gersonides, and Simon ben Zemah Duran. For readers of this journal, the aforementioned, with the exception of Maimonides and possibly Gersonides, may be just names, but in the context of medieval Jewish philosophy they together present a wonderful discussion.. (shrink)
Autonomy and Judaism: The Individual and Community in Jewish Philosophical Thought.Daniel H. Frank -1992 - SUNY Press.detailsThis volume brings together leading philosophers of Judaism on the issue of autonomy in the Jewish tradition. Addressing themselves to the relationship of the individual Jew to the Jewish community and to the world at large, some selections are systematic in scope, while others are more historically focused. The authors address issues ranging from the earliest expressions of individual human fulfillment in the Bible and medieval Jewish discussions of the human good to modern discussions of the necessity for the Jew (...) to maintain both a Jewish sensibility as well as an active engagement in the modern pluralistic state. Contributors include Eugene Borowitz, Elliot N. Dorff,Daniel H. Frank, Robert Gibbs, Lenn E. Goodman, Ze'ev Levy, Kenneth Seeskin, and Martin D. Yaffe. (shrink)
Argument is War... And War is Hell: Philosophy, Education, and Metaphors for Argumentation.Daniel H. Cohen -1995 -Informal Logic 17 (2):177-188.detailsThe claim that argumentation has no proper role in either philosophy or education, and especially not in philosophical education, flies in the face of both conventional wisdom and traditional pedagogy. There is, however, something to be said for it because it is really only provocative against a certain philosophical backdrop. Our understanding of the concept "argument" is both reflected by and molded by the specific metaphor that argument-is-war, something with winners and losers, offensive and defensive moments, and an essentially adversarial (...) structure. Such arguments may be suitable for teaching a philosophy, but not for teaching philosophy. Surely, education and philosophy do not need to be conceived as having an adversarial essence-if indeed they are thought to have any essence at all. Accordingly, philosophy and education need more pragmatic goals than even Pierce's idealized notion of truth as the end of inquiry, e.g., the simple furtherance of inquiry. For this, new metaphors for framing and understanding the concept of argumentation are needed, and some suggestions in that direction will be considered. (shrink)
Virtue, In Context.Daniel H. Cohen -2013 -Informal Logic 33 (4):471-485.detailsVirtue argumentation theory provides the best framework for accommodating the notion of an argument that is “fully satisfying” in a robust and integrated sense. The process of explicating the notion of fully satisfying arguments requires expanding the concept of arguers to include all of an argument’s participants, including judges, juries, and interested spectators. And that, in turn, requires expanding the concept of an argument itself to include its entire context.
The Letters. [REVIEW]Daniel H. Frank -1997 -Review of Metaphysics 50 (4):920-921.detailsSpinoza scholars have had good reason to be in Shirley's debt in the past on account of his excellent translations of the Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Now again, they will be no less in his debt with his translation of Spinoza's correspondence. The text translated is "based largely on Gebhardt, but takes into account the more recently discovered letters and additional critical work published through 1995". Shirley's is the first complete English translation of the correspondence since Wolf's pioneering effort (...) in 1928. Curley's translation has, to date, presented only letters 1-29. (shrink)
Arguments that Backfire.Daniel H. Cohen -2005 - In D. Hitchcock & D. Farr,The Uses of Argument. OSSA. pp. 58-65.detailsOne result of successful argumentation – able arguers presenting cogent arguments to competent audiences – is a transfer of credibility from premises to conclusions. From a purely logical perspective, neither dubious premises nor fallacious inference should lower the credibility of the target conclusion. Nevertheless, some arguments do backfire this way. Dialectical and rhetorical considerations come into play. Three inter-related conclusions emerge from a catalogue of hapless arguers and backfiring arguments. First, there are advantages to paying attention to arguers and their (...) contexts, rather than focusing narrowly on their arguments, in order to understand what can go wrong in argumentation. Traditional fallacy identification, with its exclusive attention to faulty inferences, is inadequate to explain the full range of argumentative failures. Second, the notion of an Ideal Arguer can be defined by contrast with her less than ideal peers to serve as a useful tool in argument evaluation. And third, not all of the ways that arguers raise doubts about their conclusions are pathological. On the contrary, some ways that doubts are raised concerning our intended conclusions are an integral part of ideal argumentative practice. (shrink)