Bryan Lueck | Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (original) (raw)

Books by Bryan Lueck

Edinburgh University Press, 2019

Bryan Lueck offers a substantially new solution to a classic philosophical problem: how is it pos... more Bryan Lueck offers a substantially new solution to a classic philosophical problem: how is it possible that morality genuinely obligates us, binding us without regard to our perceived or actual well-being? Staging a fruitful dialogue between the analytic and Continental philosophical traditions, while reflecting specifically on the work of Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Serres and Nancy, Lueck offers a creative new approach. Building on Immanuel Kant’s fact of reason – the idea that being a moral subject presupposes that one has accepted the bindingness of obligation – Lueck shows that moral obligation must be rethought as the fact of sense.

Papers by Bryan Lueck

Parrhesia, 2023

In this paper I begin by suggesting that Immanuel Kant’s argument for the impermissibility of tre... more In this paper I begin by suggesting that Immanuel Kant’s argument for the impermissibility of treating others with contempt seems to be subject to a paradox very similar to the well known paradox of forgiveness first described by Aurel Kolnai. Specifically, either the object of the judgment of contempt is not really contemptible, in which case the prohibition on treating him with contempt is superfluous, or else the person truly is contemptible, in which case the prohibition seems unjustifiable, reducing to a mere condonation of wrongdoing. My goal in the paper is to show that this paradox is only apparent. Making use of the philosophy of phrases that Jean-François Lyotard develops in The Differend—emphasizing especially the ideas of phrase-event, presentation, situation, addressor, and addressee—I argue that the Kantian prohibition on treating others with contempt is rationally defensible, even in cases in which we believe the object of the judgment of contempt truly is contemptible.

Critical Horizons, 2022

Since the early modern period, the vast majority of philosophers who have written on contempt hav... more Since the early modern period, the vast majority of philosophers who have written on contempt have understood it as a denial of respect. But there has been considerable disagreement about precisely what kind of respect we deny people when we contemn them. Contemporary philosophers who defend contempt as a morally appropriate attitude tend to understand it as a denial of what Stephen Darwall calls appraisal respect, while early modern writers, who all believe that contemning others constitutes a serious moral wrong, seem to understand it more as a denial of recognition respect. In this paper, I argue that neither of these understandings of contempt hits the mark and that we do better to conceptualize it as a denial of recognition in the sense articulated by Axel Honneth and by other critical theorists who have been influenced by his work.

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2022

According to Stephen Darwall, being with others involves an implicit, second-personal respect for... more According to Stephen Darwall, being with others involves an implicit, second-personal respect for them. I argue that this is correct as far as it goes. Calling on Jean-Luc Nancy’s more ontological account of being-with, though, I also argue that Darwall’s account overlooks something morally very important: right at the heart of the being-with that gives us to ourselves as answerable to others on the basis of determinate, contractualist
moral principles, we encounter an irreducible excess of sense that renders those principles questionable. Following Nancy, I characterize this exposure to excess as adoration and develop some of its moral implications.

Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2020

Two of the most basic commitments of virtue ethics, both ancient and contemporary, are that virtu... more Two of the most basic commitments of virtue ethics, both ancient and contemporary, are that virtue is knowledge and that this knowledge is a kind of moral sensitivity that is best understood on the model of perception. This view is vulnerable to two potentially very serious objections, both of which concern virtue ethics’ commitment to metaethical internalism, which holds that judgments of the form “x is right” entail some kind of motivation to do x. I argue in this paper that we can find the resources to respond adequately to these objections in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.

Philosophy Today, 2020

Building on the theory of humor advanced by Yves Cusset in his recent book Rire: Tractatus philo-... more Building on the theory of humor advanced by Yves Cusset in his recent book Rire: Tractatus philo-comicus, I argue that we can understand the phenomenon in terms of what Jean-Luc Nancy, following Roland Barthes, has called the exemption from sense. I attempt to show how the humorous sensibility, understood in this way, is entirely incompatible with the experience of others as contemptible. I conclude by developing some of the normative implications of this, focusing specifically on the question whether it is ever morally permissible to treat others with contempt.

Continental Philosophy Review, 2019

Recent literature on forgiveness suggests that a successful account of the phenomenon must satisf... more Recent literature on forgiveness suggests that a successful account of the phenomenon must satisfy at least three conditions: it must be able to explain how forgiveness can be articulate, uncompromising, and elective. These three conditions are not logically inconsistent, but the history of reflection on the ethics of forgiveness nonetheless suggests that they are in tension. Accounts that emphasize articulateness and uncompromisingness tend to suggest an excessively deflationary understanding of electiveness, underestimating the degree to which forgiveness is a gift. Accounts that emphasize electiveness, on the other hand, tend to weaken the safeguards that keep forgiveness distinct from condonation, excuse, or mere servility. I argue in this paper that we can do justice to the three conditions by understanding forgiveness in terms of the concept of institution that Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed in his work from the early- to mid-1950s.

Critical Horizons, 2017

In the early modern period, contempt emerged as a persistent theme in moral philosophy. Most of t... more In the early modern period, contempt emerged as a persistent theme in moral philosophy. Most of the moral philosophers of the period shared two basic commitments in their thinking about contempt. First, they argued that we understand the value of others in the morally appropriate way when we understand them from the perspective of the morally relevant community. And second, they argued that we are naturally inclined to judge others as contemptible, and that we must therefore interrupt that natural movement of sense-bestowal in order to value others in the morally appropriate way. In this paper I examine in detail the arguments of Nicolas Malebranche and Immanuel Kant concerning the wrongness of contempt, emphasizing the ways in which they depend on conceptions of community and of the interruption of moral sense-bestowal. After showing how each of these arguments fails to comprehend the nature and the wrongness of contempt, I argue that we can find the resources for a more adequate account in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, and specifically in his reflections on ontology and on the meaning of community.

Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2018

In Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, the narrator finds himself involved in a moral rela... more In Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, the narrator finds himself
involved in a moral relation with the title character whose sense he
finds difficult to articulate. I argue that we can make sense of this
relation, up to a certain point, in terms of the influential account
of obligation that Stephen Darwall advances in The Second-Person
Standpoint. But I also argue that there is a dimension of moral
sense in the relation that is not captured by Darwall’s account, or
indeed by any of the accounts of obligation that have been most
prominent in the history of western philosophy from the early
modern period up to the present. More specifically, I argue that
what is brought out in the relation between Bartleby and the
narrator is the separation of the experience of moral necessitation
from the rule that would give its content. I attempt to show that
this obligation without rule is a genuine moral phenomenon and
that we can begin to understand it in terms of the ideas of love,
singularity, and potentiality as these are developed in the work of
Giorgio Agamben.

Continental Philosophy Review, 2016

Dignity, according to some recent arguments, is a useless concept, giving vague expression to mor... more Dignity, according to some recent arguments, is a useless concept,
giving vague expression to moral intuitions that are better captured by other, better defined concepts. In this paper, I defend the concept of dignity against such skeptical arguments. I begin with a description of the defining features of the Kantian conception of dignity. I then examine one of the strongest arguments against that conception, advanced by Arthur Schopenhauer in On the Basis of Morality. After considering some standard accounts of dignity, showing how they fail adequately to address Schopenhauer’s concern, I propose and defend a new account of dignity,
drawing on the ontology of Jean-Luc Nancy.

Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 2016

I argue in this paper that Immanuel Kant's account of the moral wrongness of contempt in the Meta... more I argue in this paper that Immanuel Kant's account of the moral wrongness of contempt in the Metaphysics of Morals provides important resources for our understanding of the nature of moral subjectivity. Although Kant typically emphasizes the subject's position as autonomous addressor of the moral law, his remarks on contempt bring into relief a dynamic relationship at the heart of practical subjectivity between the addressor and addressee positions. After tracing the development of reflection concerning the addressor and addressee positions in early modern philosophy, beginning with Francisco Suarez and Samuel Pufendorf, I articulate and defend what I take to be a Kantian conception of the relation between those positions. More specifically, I argue that to be a moral subject at all it is necessarily to position oneself as the addressor of the moral law, but that one must at the same time maintain oneself in the addressee position, resisting the full conversion to the addressor position that autonomy seems to demand.

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy , 2016

According to Immanuel Kant, the objective validity of obligation is given as a fact of reason, wh... more According to Immanuel Kant, the objective validity of obligation is given as a fact of reason, which forces itself upon us and which requires no deduction of the kind that he had provided for the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason. This fact grounds a moral philosophy that treats obligation as a good that trumps all others and that presents the moral subject as radically responsible, singled out by an imperatival address. Based on conceptions of indifference and facticity that Charles Scott has articulated in his recent work, I argue that these broadly Kantian commitments are mistaken. More specifically, I argue that the fact of obligation is given along with a dimension of indifference that disrupts the hierarchical relation between moral and non-moral goods and that renders questionable the unconditional character of responsibility.

Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29 (2): 218-235 (2015)

In this paper I argue that a phenomenological account of moral sense-bestowal can provide valuabl... more In this paper I argue that a phenomenological account of moral sense-bestowal can provide valuable insight into the possibility of moral dilemmas. I propose an account of moral sense-bestowal that is grounded in the phenomenology of expression that Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed throughout the course of his philosophical work, and most explicitly in the period immediately following the publication of Phenomenology of Perception. Based on this Merleau-Pontian account of moral sense-bestowal, I defend the view that there are genuine moral dilemmas, i.e., that we can be faced with situations of conflicting oughts that we cannot resolve without moral remainder.

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 20(1): 195-211 (2015)

I argue in this paper that some of the most basic commitments of Kantian ethics can be understood... more I argue in this paper that some of the most basic commitments of Kantian ethics can be understood as
grounded in the dynamic of sense that Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes in his Phenomenology of Perception. Specifically, I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s account supports the importance of universalizability as a test for the moral permissibility of particular acts as well as the idea that the binding character of the moral law is given as something like a fact of reason. But I also argue that Merleau-Ponty’s account of reversibility suggests an important dimension of moral experience that is given in the experience of contact and that is underthematized in moral philosophies like Kant’s that emphasize the role of universalizability.

Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 19 (1): 249-267 (2015)

In this paper I examine the conception of evil and the prescriptions for its mitigation that Mich... more In this paper I examine the conception of evil and the prescriptions for its mitigation that Michel Serres has articulated in his most recent works. My explication of Serres’s argument centers on the claim, advanced in many different texts, that practices of exclusion, motivated by what he calls “the terrifying concupiscence of belonging,” are the primary sources of evil in the world. After explicating Serres’s argument, I examine three important objections, concluding that Serres overestimates somewhat the role of exclusion in perpetuating evil and that his prescriptions for mitigating evil are excessively optimistic.

Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 18 (1): 176-193 (2014)

In The Troubadour of Knowledge, Michel Serres demonstrates, by means of an extended discussion of... more In The Troubadour of Knowledge, Michel Serres demonstrates, by means of an extended discussion of learning, that our capacity to adopt a position presupposes a kind of disorienting exposure to a dimension of pure possibility that both subtends and destabilizes that position. In this paper I trace out the implications of this insight for our understanding of obligation, especially as it is articulated in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Specifically, I argue that obligation is given along with a dimension of moral possibility, and not, as Kant thought, as an unmediated fact of reason.

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (2): 425-442 (2012)

I argue in this paper that Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides a compelling account of alterity in The... more I argue in this paper that Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides a compelling account of alterity in The Prose of the World. I begin by tracing this account of alterity back to its roots in Phenomenology of Perception. I then show how the dynamic of expression articulated in The Prose of the World overcomes the limitations of the account given in the earlier work. After addressing an objection to the effect that the account given in The Prose of the World fails for the same reason as the one given in Phenomenology of Perception, I argue that the key to Merleau-Ponty’s more successful account of alterity is provided by the phenomenon of orientation.

MonoKL 10: 216-230 (2011)

Sense, according to Hegel, "is this wonderful word that is used in two opposite meanings. On the ... more Sense, according to Hegel, "is this wonderful word that is used in two opposite meanings. On the one hand it means the organ of immediate apprehension, but on the other hand we mean by it the sense, the meaning, the thought, the universal underlying the thing. " 1 Hegel is referring here to the German word Sinn, which names both the sensible intuition of the given and the universal, the intelligible meaning of the given. This double meaning of the word Sinn is not accidental, Hegel thinks, but rather reflects a penetrating metaphysical insight embedded within the German language. Sinn names the givenness of the sensible and its intelligible meaning as a unified phenomenon: the yellow, rubbery, sour-smelling object that is given by the senses is the lemon (the universal, the meaning), and conversely, the meaning "lemon" is the meaning of this sensuously given object. The two senses of sense thus refer to and complete each other: as a unified phenomenon, sense is mediation, the relation to self that gives a thing to be what it is.

Edinburgh University Press, 2019

Parrhesia, 2023

Critical Horizons, 2022

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2022

Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2020

Philosophy Today, 2020

Continental Philosophy Review, 2019

Critical Horizons, 2017

Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2018

Continental Philosophy Review, 2016

Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 2016

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy , 2016

Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29 (2): 218-235 (2015)

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 20(1): 195-211 (2015)

Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 19 (1): 249-267 (2015)

Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 18 (1): 176-193 (2014)

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (2): 425-442 (2012)

MonoKL 10: 216-230 (2011)

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 41 (3): 246-260 (2010)

One of the dominant themes structuring the trajectory of Jean-François Lyotard's philosophical wo... more One of the dominant themes structuring the trajectory of Jean-François Lyotard's philosophical work is his concern to think the event in a way that renders it intelligible, but that also respects the alterity and the uncanniness that are essential to it. In this paper I defend Lyotard's earlier understanding of the event, articulated most thoroughly in Discours, figure, from the criticisms of the later Lyotard, articulated most thoroughly in The Differend. More specifically, I attempt to demonstrate that the event, as disruption of the stable system of signification, is given immediately with the signification that it disrupts.

In 1993 and in 2012, Michel Serres presented lectures on the nature of virtue at the Académie Fra... more In 1993 and in 2012, Michel Serres presented lectures on the nature of virtue at the Académie Française. In these lectures he presented only the outlines of an argument in support of his conception. My aim in this paper is to flesh out Serres' account of virtue, focusing specifically on the kind of reasons one has to cultivate virtue in Serres' sense. I argue that these reasons are not based on so-called Aristotelian categoricals concerning the nature of human beings. Instead, they are the sorts of reasons that count as such only for persons who have already cultivated the virtue.

In this paper I address two common and closely related criticisms of Michel Serres’ conception of... more In this paper I address two common and closely related criticisms of Michel Serres’ conception of the natural contract: first, that the sense he gives to the notion of a contract is merely metaphorical and second, that the metaphor is ill-suited to Serres’ purpose, given that the reasons that signatories have for abiding by the terms of a contract are grounded in their self-interest. I defend Serres’ position by invoking an unlikely ally, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who argues in his Foundations of Natural Right that a kind of originary, unrepresentable intersubjective contract constitutes a necessary normative condition for the possibility of contractual relations as they are normally understood. I argue that Serres’ account deepens Fichte’s insight, positing a more originary bond with the natural world as playing the same role.

In law, prescription is a means by which rights against others can be relinquished through failur... more In law, prescription is a means by which rights against others can be relinquished through failure to enforce them during a specified period of time. In this paper I examine the possibility of a moral analogue of this. Drawing on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and in particular on his Phenomenology of Perception, I argue that prescription is distinct from related phenomena such as forgiveness, forgetting, acquiescence, and excusing and that it is a genuinely moral phenomenon.

In his 1903 book Principia Ethica, G.E. Moore set the agenda for almost all of twentieth-century ... more In his 1903 book Principia Ethica, G.E. Moore set the agenda for almost all of twentieth-century metaethics with his open question argument. I argue in this paper that Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of expression gives us valuable resources for answering two important questions concerning this argument. First, how can we make sense of the open feel of questions of the form "Is X good?" And second, what conclusions can we draw from this concerning the nature of moral goodness?

Much of the literature on the ethics of forgiveness is devoted to the problem of resolving a conf... more Much of the literature on the ethics of forgiveness is devoted to the problem of resolving a conflict between two of our most strongly held intuitions about the concept. On the one hand, forgiveness seems like a kind of gift: it is never something we strictly owe to a wrongdoer, such that he or she could demand it as a matter of right. Vladimir Jankélévitch expresses this intuition especially clearly in his claim that genuine
forgiveness must be gratuitous and aneconomic. But on the other hand, we have the intuition that forgiveness must be distinct from mere acquiescence to wrongdoing. If we forgive too readily, without demanding an apology or even an acknowledgement of the wrongdoing, then we run the risk of compromising our self-respect. But if forgiveness is
only morally permissible when the wrongdoer has given some evidence of remorse, then it is conditional and not gratuitous. In my paper I argue that we can provide an account of forgiveness that is compatible with both of the competing intuitions by understanding it in terms of the concept of institution that Maurice Merleau-Ponty develops in his works of the early- and mid-1950s. Responding explicitly to concerns raised in the analytic literature, I argue that forgiveness can be elective, granting more than is owed to the wrongdoer, without violating the forgiver’s duty to treat him- or herself with respect. This is possible if forgiveness is understood as an event that retroactively redetermines the sense of an interpersonal relationship that had been damaged by a wrong, establishing the possibility for future relations characterized by good will and mutual respect.

In Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, the narrator finds himself involved in a moral rela... more In Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, the narrator finds himself involved in a moral relation whose sense is difficult to discern. Faced with an employee, Bartleby, who prefers not to do any of the work he had been hired to do, the narrator feels it would be morally impermissible to fire him. I argue in this paper that the narrator is not entirely wrong to feel that way and that we can make sense of his relation to Bartleby, up to a certain point, in terms of Stephen Darwall’s influential account of the phenomenon of obligation. But I also argue that there is a dimension of moral sense in the relation that is foreign to the phenomenon of obligation understood in Darwall’s sense and that we can understand this dimension in terms of the ideas of love, singularity, and potentiality as these are developed in the work of Giorgio Agamben.

, and The Differend (1983). 1 The vast majority of scholarship on Lyotard's work, however, comple... more , and The Differend (1983). 1 The vast majority of scholarship on Lyotard's work, however, completely ignores the first two of these "real" books, focusing instead on later themes, including most prominently the postmodern, the differend, and the sublime. The relative neglect of the two earlier books is, to some extent at least, understandable. Libidinal Economy is undoubtedly a very strange book, reading at many points more like a provocation than a coherent philosophical argument. And Discourse, which has only recently appeared in English translation, covers such a dizzying array of topics-linguistics, painting, poetry, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Merleau-Pontian phenomenology, and many others-that it can be

Réda Bensmaïa's Alger ou la maladie de la mémoire is a novel about sense. It is about the sense o... more Réda Bensmaïa's Alger ou la maladie de la mémoire is a novel about sense. It is about the sense of identity, of belonging, of community, and more generally about what in French is called le sens de la vie, the meaning of life. The book is about sense, in all of these senses and more, despite the fact that it does not make sense. Or more precisely, the book does not make good sense. I cannot represent its diegesis to myself in any coherent way. It is often difficult, for example, to follow the chronology. The scenes that comprise the story seem to proceed in something like the form of a montage, so that the relations between events that take place at different times are left obscure. Moreover, it is often difficult to determine the referent of the first-person singular pronoun. Sometimes it is clearly Mrad, the novel's protagonist, who says "I" but at other times it seems to be the one who is telling Mrad's story. And that person, we are given in the novel to understand, is Réda Bensmaïa. But then what precisely is the relationship between Mrad and Réda Bensmaïa? Do these names have the same referent but different senses, like the morning star and the evening star? And if their senses are different, then what are those senses and how are they related?

Dignity, according to some recent arguments, is a useless concept, giving vague expression to mor... more Dignity, according to some recent arguments, is a useless concept, giving vague expression to moral intuitions that are better captured by other, better-defined concepts. In this paper, I defend the concept of dignity against skeptical arguments like these. I begin with an exposition of one of the strongest arguments against dignity, advanced by Arthur Schopenhauer in On the Basis of Morality. I then consider some standard accounts of dignity, showing how they fail adequately to address Schopenhauer's concern. Finally, drawing on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, I propose a new account of dignity that resists the force of skeptical arguments.

In the philosophical literature on cosmopolitanism, we find two competing conceptions of the kind... more In the philosophical literature on cosmopolitanism, we find two competing conceptions of the kind of identity that is most ethically appropriate to the age of globalization. Some contend that we must re-affirm our particular, locally rooted identities, arguing that moral consciousness is necessarily cultivated within the context of particular moral communities. Others argue that the moral distinction between "us" and "them" is rationally indefensible. They contend that we must learn to identify not merely with our particular communities, but more basically with humanity as a whole. In this paper, I would like to argue that both of these conceptions of identity are abstractions, based on an inadequate understanding of the process of identity formation. Making use of the phenomenology of expression advanced by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I will attempt to show how the development of any kind of identity, whether particular or universal, presupposes a more basic and irreducible openness to the meaningful worlds of others. It is this openness itself, I argue, that we must learn to identify with in order to respond in the most ethically sensitive way to the challenges of globalization.

Immanuel Kant develops a determination of the moral law based on what he calls "common rational m... more Immanuel Kant develops a determination of the moral law based on what he calls "common rational moral cognition." 1 Kant believes that there are certain fundamental concepts, such as good will, duty, obligation, and moral worth, that belong to our moral common sense. In order to arrive at an appropriately rigorous, philosophical formulation of the moral law, one need only unpack what is contained in these common sense concepts.

Throughout his work, from The Structure of Behavior through The Visible and the Invisible, Mauric... more Throughout his work, from The Structure of Behavior through The Visible and the Invisible, Maurice Merleau-Ponty never ceased to interrogate the relations between his own thinking and that of Freudian psychoanalysis. What Merleau-Ponty always found most compelling in Freud's thought was its rejection of the dualisms of mind and body, for-itself and in-itself. All human activity, Freud thought, was best understood with reference to the meaning that it expressed, and not by reference to the body, objectively and mechanistically conceived. So, for example, when Freud passes by a storefront and reads the word "Antiquities" on the sign, even though the word is in fact something different but similar, the error is not to be traced back to a malfunction in the eye or brain. The better explanation of the misreading would emphasize that collecting antiquities was an especially meaningful part of Freud's life, and that his perception of the word on the sign was informed by that meaning. 1 What cases like this demonstrate, according to Merleau-Ponty, is that "all our gestures in their fashion participate in that single activity of making explicit and signifying which is ourselves. . . . With psychoanalysis mind passes into body as, inversely, body passes into mind." 2 This sentence would be even truer if we replaced "psychoanalysis" with "phenomenology." Even truer because, as Merleau-Ponty notes, psychoanalysis retains as holdovers from medicine and biology various objectivizing concepts and metaphors, such as unconscious representation and psychic system, which betray its best insights. Thus the role of phenomenology, as Merleau-Ponty articulates it in his Preface to Hesnard's L'Oeuvre de Freud, is to "reformulate certain Freudian concepts in the framework of a better philosophy," in order to help psychoanalysis "to be completely itself." 3 1 Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life in The Standard 67.

Con-textos Kantianos, 2023

As the title of her book suggests, Alice Pinheiro Walla's aim is to clarify Kant's conception of ... more As the title of her book suggests, Alice Pinheiro Walla's aim is to clarify Kant's conception of happiness and to describe the role that it plays in his moral, political, and legal philosophy. This, of course, is no easy task. Kant himself never offers a sustained, detailed account of happiness; what we have instead are relatively brief remarks scattered throughout his writings. And making the problem worse is the fact that some of these remarks seem, if not straightforwardly contradictory, then at least difficult to reconcile. Pinheiro Walla's book is devoted to resolving these tensions, with each chapter focusing on a different interpretive difficulty. In the first chapter, which lays the foundation for all the rest, Pinheiro Walla focuses on two of Kant's claims, both of which capture something essential about the place of happiness in his moral philosophy but that also seem to be in tension with each other. The first is that happiness is an "end that can be presupposed as actual in all rational beings…according to a natural necessity" (Pinheiro Walla 7, citing 4:415). The second is that happiness cannot be the natural end for finite rational beings like us. What can it mean both to affirm that we necessarily pursue happiness as an end and to deny that happiness is our natural end? One possible answer is that the first claim is true of us qua finite, i.e., qua beings whose faculties of desire are sensuously affected, while the second is true of us qua rational agents. On this sort of account, the natural necessity of pursuing happiness as an end would impose itself on us from outside our faculty of reason. Our task as moral beings would be to struggle against that non-rational necessitation. Pinheiro Walla rejects this familiar account, arguing instead that both of these claims are implications from Kant's conception of what it means to have a finite rational will. Willing, on Kant's account, requires not just a formal principle but also a material one: without the latter the will would not be practical, and so would not be a will at all. The matter of the will is always some object that promises pleasure. As Kant argues explicitly in the Groundwork, in order genuinely to will some end we must also will the means necessary to its realization; to desire the object without willing the means to its realization would be merely to wish for it (4:417). Now as long as we are simply wishing and not willing, we do not need to form a determinate conception of happiness for ourselves. The object of our wish, then, would be happiness as the unpresentable idea under which "all inclinations unite under one sum" (4:399). But the end of our willing is necessarily some determinate, realistically achievable conception of happiness. The "natural" in the natural necessity of making happiness our end, then, refers to the nature of a finite rational will and not simply to our non-rational animal nature. The reason supporting the second of the two apparently conflicting claims-that happiness cannot be our natural end-is spelled out in the well-known teleological argument from the Groundwork. While many Kant scholars regard this argument as something of an embarrassment, Pinheiro Walla finds in it a vitally important insight about the relationship between morality and happiness. If it is true that nature has given us practical reason because it is most fit for some purpose, then it cannot be the case that its natural end is the pursuit of happiness. That end would be better achieved by instinct. The end that can be achieved only by practical reason is the good will. This once again suggests a familiar picture of Kant's ethics as pitting morality against happiness. But Pinheiro Walla argues convincingly that this picture is wrong: it is because happiness is not the natural end of reason that morality and happiness are merely contingently, and not necessarily, incompatible. If we took happiness to be our natural end, then we would conceive morality and happiness as necessarily incompatible. Moreover, we would inevitably become embittered by the realization that reason was so ill-suited to its supposedly natural end. It is actually for the best then, both from the point of view of morality and of happiness, that the latter is not our natural end.

University of Toronto Quarterly, 2018

This edited volume comprises thirteen essays written by some of the most insightful and highly re... more This edited volume comprises thirteen essays written by some of the most insightful and highly regarded contemporary specialists in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The quality of the contributions is uniformly very high. Each of the essays advances careful, well reasoned arguments that will be thought provoking for even the most seasoned Merleau-Ponty scholars. The essays are divided into three sections, the themes for which are suggested in the title of the book: "Memory and the Temporality of the Self,"

a paper titled "Avouer-l'impossible: 'retours,' repentir, et réconciliation" ("Avowing-The Imposs... more a paper titled "Avouer-l'impossible: 'retours,' repentir, et réconciliation" ("Avowing-The Impossible: 'Returns,' Repentance, and Reconciliation") at the Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue française. The paper is devoted to the question of how to live together well, and more basically to the question of what it means to live together in general. The two books that I will discuss in this review essay take up the questions of Derrida's paper, focusing on concrete problems of living together that have plagued much of the Islamicate world for at least the last seventy years. The first of the books that I will discuss-Living Together: Jacques Derrida's Communities of Violence and Peace-comprises fourteen essays that respond explicitly to Derrida's paper, the English translation of which is included in the volume. The second book-Islam and the West: A Conversation with Jacques Derridaengages the questions raised in "Avowing-The Impossible" somewhat more indirectly and informally. In what follows, I will summarize the argument of Derrida's paper and then evaluate the two books as responses to the themes it advances.