Philosophy

Although Kant argues that a world republic with coercive public law is the only rational way to secure a lawful cosmopolitan condition, he states that it is an unachievable ideal, and he proposes a voluntary, non-coercive federation of states as a substitute. While some scholars have criticized Kant for moving away from this ideal due merely to pragmatic considerations, I argue that his rejection of a coercive world republic is based on his conception of state sovereignty and what is required for a lawful condition. I consider how we can institutionalize a lawful condition between states without a coercive world republic in ways that go beyond Kant’s voluntary federation.

By considering how the right to adequate food has been interpreted and applied in international law, I argue that there are important pragmatic reasons to appeal to the right to adequate food in promoting and ensuring food security.  I respond to practical and conceptual objections against recognizing the right to adequate food as a human right.  First, I consider the objection that the right to adequate food, like other socio-economic rights, is not a real human right because it cannot be enforced by courts in the same way as civil-political rights (the justiciability objection).  In addition to considering how the right to adequate food and other socio-economic rights have been legally enforced by courts or monitoring bodies in international law and in other domestic legal systems, I also consider how some socio-economic rights have been protected in state constitutions within the United States and how courts have enforced these, an area that is often neglected in discussions of socio-economic rights in the United States.  I also respond to a more conceptual objection that the right to adequate food and other rights to goods and services are not real rights or real normative claims since it is not clear who has a duty to fulfill these rights (the claimability objection).  Onora O’Neill provides the strongest defense of this objection.  While I agree that these rights will remain empty manifesto rights until corresponding duties are specified and allocated, I argue that duties need to be defined automatically from the idea of the right itself or pre-institutionally, as O'Neill suggests.  In my response, I consider different dimensions of the right to adequate food and recent issues in the United States that can be addressed by this right, such as food deserts.

A revised version of the attached paper has been published here: http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_jurisprudence/vol8/iss1/2/

International legal scholars and lawyers have primarily tried to refute the objection that international law is not really law because it lacks a supranational system of coercive sanctions by demonstrating that international law is in fact coercively enforced albeit it in decentralized ways.  I will focus instead on the presumption behind this skeptical view – the idea that law must be coercively enforced.  First, I argue that coercive enforcement is not conceptually necessary for law or legal obligations.  Second, I consider the claim that coercive enforcement is nonetheless necessary for instrumental reasons.  I argue that while physical coercion is instrumentally useful for increasing compliance in the domestic case, this is less effective and more problematic in the international case.  In considering what then is essential and distinctive about law and what would increase the effectiveness of international law, I propose that, first, international law needs to be generally accepted as binding by states, officials, and other agents, and second, that international legal rules should be determinatively interpreted and applied by authoritative adjudicative and administrative institutions.

After examining the various harms experienced by victims of online abuse, and the limitations of different legal responses in the U.S. and in other countries, I consider how philosophical debates about free speech apply to these cases of online abuse against women. There are very good reasons to protect free speech as much as possible, even offensive and vulgar speech. Not only is this necessary to ensure a free and democratic society, it also an important aspect of one’s exercise of autonomy. The Internet has opened up a shared space for public discourse. It is important to recognize, however, that the very values and goals that are promoted by protecting free speech can be undermined by online harassment. Online abuse has a silencing effect not only on the particular women targeted, but on other women as well. It limits the free exchange of ideas, democratic dialogue, self-expression, and autonomy. Given this, the very values and goals that justify the protection of free speech can also be used to delineate the limits of free speech. While it is valuable to strengthen laws and policies against online harassment, it is even more vital to create social norms against online harassment through public campaigns and by encouraging social media companies and others to adopt anti-harassment policies, in the same way that the sexual harassment in the workplace movement educated employers and urged them to develop workplace policies.

Critics of international law argue that it is not really law because it lacks a supranational system of coercive sanctions. International legal scholars and lawyers primarily refute this by demonstrating that international law is in fact enforced, albeit in decentralized and less coercive ways. I will focus instead on the presumption behind this skeptical view—the idea that law must be coercively enforced. First, I argue that coercive enforcement is not conceptually necessary for law or legal obligations. Second, I consider the claim that coercive enforcement is nonetheless necessary for instrumental reasons. I argue that while physical coercion is instrumentally useful for increasing compliance in the domestic case, this is less effective and more problematic in the international case. What then is essential and distinctive about law, and what would increase the effectiveness of international law? First, international law needs to be generally accepted as binding by states, officia...

Augustine of Hippo has expressed a vision of beauty in nature that could, if better known, encourage traditional Christians and secular ecologists to affirm the ground they have in common. For Augustine the ideal would be to see nature as God sees it, feeling deeply both its beauty and its impermanence, loving nature without clinging to it. With such clear seeing would come love and the motivation for sustained and skillful action. This paper discusses Augustine's paradigm and what blocks us from seeing it, and then frames principles for an authentically Augustinian response.

Subtitle: Essays on Emergent Self-consciousness in the Systems of Sankara, Aquinas and Husserl. Find it on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Convergent-Phenomenology-Steins-Philosophical-Eidetics/dp/3659660078/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
The work tackles the fearsome project of breaking open the a priori science of Husserlian phenomenology and re-structuring it according to its towardness to what the scholastics called the 'actus purus essendi' of the divine reality of God. This is exactly the way J. N. Mohanty, in his FOREWORD to the book, describes the project in question: "Ruddy does take out a part from the Aristotle-Aquinas heritage—the theory of real relations, of relations which are asymmetrical, real from one side and intentional from another, and embeds it in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. The result is what the author calls “convergent phenomenology” embodying the truth that Husserlian pure object consciousness points beyond itself to the pure subject consciousness of God as He is in Himself. With this finding, the theme of ‘God’ is drawn into, and limits, transcendental phenomenology. I hope this faithful re-interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology will receive the close attention of Husserl scholars and of phenomenologists that it deserves."
  Donn Welton says of the book: " The relentless exploration by Jim Ruddy of the illusive notion of relation and its place in Being is itself a reminder of the sort of radical insights that phenomenology inspires.  This work is an invitation to take this journey with him."

This paper wishes to show that, immanent within Edith Stein's groundbreaking phenomenological work, lie helpful " foothills " toward the mountainous realm of a full blown ethical formalism in the tradition of Kant and Scheler. The way towards such a higher realm may very well lie in what Stein famously called the human mind's own originative and empirical/intellective experience viewed as " an interplay of the outer and the inner " respectively. Thus we should perhaps begin to employ at the start precisely the expansive, dialectical elasticity of that very methodology of Stein herself as a sure guide to finding the higher realm in question. Such a methodology is a unique methodology, itself set in motion by this dual, and yet interdependent, core-activation of outward and inward intentionality as such. Accordingly, at that point where it is seen as a vibrant and unique human towardness pointing directly beyond itself toward a higher " subject-consciousness " (in other words, toward a proto-consciousness which Aquinas viewed as in sui natura cognoscibilis1), it can become a clear and luminous path that can help us to follow Stein's own upward journey toward a purely formal ethical science. This originative and pre-predicative, exterior/interior " interplay " in question comes into singular focus in a remarkable passage from Potency and Act:

Using both Father Kevin Wall’s eidetic matrix of “the relational unity of being” and Edith Stein’s remarkable synoptic view of intentionality in both Aquinas and Husserl, this book uncovers purely logical ground for a subalternate eidetic science called "convergent phenomenology," itself located at the inmost depths of Husserlian phenomenology. Convergent phenomenology emerges as a distinctively new discipline dealing with relation-like objectivity as opposed to the thing-like objectivity of traditional phenomenology. This has grand implications for the way we as humans conceive of God and being. The book thus benefits theologians, logicians, and phenomenologists by revealing the constitutive interrelationality of transcendental logic in an utterly new light as already flowering forth into formal ontology itself. What emerges is a rich conception of divinity and humanity.
Jim Ruddy holds a doctorate in Comparative Philosophy from Madras University in Chennai, India. He is the author of Being, Relation and the Re-Worlding of Intentionality (2016).

Addressing Walter Hopp’s original application of the distinction between agent-fallibility and method-fallibility to phenomenological inquiry concerning epistemic justification, I question whether these are the only two forms of fallibility that are useful or whether there are not also others that are needed. In doing so, I draw my inspiration from Husserl, who in the beginnings of his phenomenological investigations struggled with the distinction between noetic and noematic analyses. For example, in the Preface to the Second Edition of the Logical Investigations he criticizes the First Investigation as having been “one-sidedly” noetically directed and as having thus neglected the noematic aspects of meaning (XVIII 13–14). Also, in an addendum to the Fifth Investigation he notes that in the transition from the First Edition to the Second he has learned to broaden the concept of “phenomenological content” to include not only the “real” (reell) contents (noetic, subjective) of consciousness but also the “intentional” (noematic, objective) (XIX/1 411). The fact that, in gradually moving from consciousness (noesis) to what consciousness is of (noema), Husserl struggled with this distinction is an indication of the immensity of the perplexing problems and potential solutions that Hopp has led the phenomenology of knowledge into by introducing his useful notions of agent-fallibility and method-fallibility. Like Husserl, he has focused mainly and mostly on the noetic issues; like Husserl as well, I will try to move step by step from the noetic area into the noematic. I conclude that Hopp’s approach has the potential to become seminal.

Horizont ist der Gesichtskreis, der all das umfaßt und umschließt, was von einem Punkt aus sichtbar ist. In der Anwendung auf das denkende Bewußtsein reden wir dann von Enge des Horizontes, von möglicher Erweiterung des Horizontes, von Erschließung neuer Horizonte usw. Insbesondere hat der philosophische Sprachgebrauch seit . . . Husserl das Wort verwendet, um die Gebundenheit des Denkens an seine endliche Bestimmtheit und das Schrittgesetz der Erweiterung des Gesichtskreises dadurch zu charakterisieren. Wer keinen Horizont hat, ist ein Mensch, der nicht weit genug sieht und deshalb das ihm Naheliegende überschätzt. Umgekehrt heißt Horizont haben: Nicht-auf-das-Nächste Eingeschränktsein, sondern über es Hinaussehenkönnen. Wer Horizont hat, weiß die Bedeutung aller Dinge innerhalb dieses Horizontes richtig einzuschätzen nach Nähe und Ferne, Größe und Kleinheit. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 307-308

In Heidegger und der Mythos der jüdischen Weltverschwörung (2014), Peter Trawny claims that in his Black Notebooks (2014/15) Martin Heidegger is guilty of «ontological-historical anti-Semitism» (seinsgeschichtlicher Antisemitismus). There can be no doubt that Heidegger describes «the Jews» as «a kind of humanity» that lives by «the principle of race», displays «empty rationality and calculative capacity», and employs «the machinations of world Jewry» to propagate a «homeless» and «worldless» way of life accompanied by «ahistorical» and «atemporal» thinking-as «a people» that took advantage of «the metaphysics of the West», «especially in its modern development», to pursue «the uprooting of all being(s) from Being» as its «world-historical task». The question is whether in his narrative Heidegger assigns a relevant or pivotal role to his former mentor, colleague, and friend, Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement and a Jewish convert to Christianity, because he seems to suggest that there is a connection between Husserl's Jewishness and his philosophy, as well as that his break with him was the result of the latter's failure to deal with Being in terms of time or history. This paper investigates whether Heidegger's remarks and Trawny's reflections have any significant implications for an understanding of the philosophical relationship between Husserl and Heidegger. It finds that Trawny makes a strong case that a number of Heidegger's statements in his Black Notebooks reveal him to be generally guilty of «ontological-historical © GEORGE HEFFERNAN, 2016 HORIZON 5 (1) 2016 anti-Semitism», but that he does not present a convincing case that in these texts Heidegger's critique of Husserl specifically is motivated by «ontological-historical anti-Semitism».