Katerina Deligiorgi | University of Sussex (original) (raw)
Books by Katerina Deligiorgi
Autonomy is a key concept in contemporary moral philosophy with deep roots in the history of the ... more Autonomy is a key concept in contemporary moral philosophy with deep roots in the history of the subject. However, there is still no agreed view about the correct way to formulate an account of autonomy that adequately captures both our capacity for self-determination and our responsiveness to reasons. In this book I develop a theory of autonomy that is Kantian in orientation but which engages closely with recent arguments about agency, morality, and practical reasoning.
Papers by Katerina Deligiorgi
Kant and some more issues about freedom
Kant and some issues about freedom
We're human beings. That is to say we are an organic life form, living, breathing, moving, hurtin... more We're human beings. That is to say we are an organic life form, living, breathing, moving, hurting and mending, doing and suffering beings. It would be an odd moral philosophy that loses sight of this fact. The paper is concerned with a contemporary Aristotelian position in moral philosophy, defended originally by Philippa Foot (2001) and subsequently by Michael Thompson (2003, 2004, 2008), that aims to put this fact at the heart of our philosophical reflections about morality. This strand of neo-Aristotelianism1 is of special interest from a Kantian perspective for a number of reasons. Both ethics are objectivist. Whereas Kantian ethics, at least as it is usually presented, is rationalist, absolutist and abstract, the neo-Aristotelian version has its roots in nature, addresses human beings as natural beings, and is attentive to the particulars of human life.2 Perhaps the best way to capture the difference from which others flow is that nature and reason are not contraries in the neo-Aristotelian account, rather it is natural for human beings to be rational, to reason about the good, and act on the basis of practical reasoning. From a contemporary perspective, this is particularly attractive because it allows for a naturalistic defence of moral value that fits within the broader trend towards 'liberal' or 'expansive' naturalism.3 Finally, because natural goodness rather than moral legislation is the guiding notion, the problem of the authority of the moral law, a problem originally identified by Elisabeth Anscombe (1958) as being particularly tricky for Kant's moral philosophy, simply does not arise for Aristotelianism. In summary, Aristotelian ethics has the resources to address a range of first as well as second order ethical questions precisely in those areas in which Kantian ethics is traditionally supposed to be weak. My aim in this chapter is to examine some of these questions, narrowing my remit to those concerning the nature of the good and the authority of norms. In particular, I want to motivate and sketch a non-naturalist
we all know that the fix, the cure is the same thing that hurt us. The cause is the cure and the ... more we all know that the fix, the cure is the same thing that hurt us. The cause is the cure and the cure is the cause. 1
Description: The aim of this special issue is to tackle Hegel's approach to the constitution of t... more Description: The aim of this special issue is to tackle Hegel's approach to the constitution of the normative on the basis of natural premises and to investigate his original version of naturalism. In the ambit of the American analytical philosophy, scholars like Sellars, Brandom and McDowell have already pointed out that Hegel's thought is based on the inferential analysis of the logical and pragmatic elements constituting the mind, reason, self-consciousness and the normative. More recently authors like Terry Pinkard, Michael Thompson and Robert Pippin have highlighted that the Hegelian philosophy leads to the investigation about the natural requisites and premises of the cognitive and intentional stances, pinpointing that a naturalistic method of scrutiny is in play. Hegel's naturalism is therefore a novel version of naturalism enhancing our understanding of the cognitive, intentional and social human dispositions by addressing their dependence on natural elements like life, desires, instincts and perception. As a naturalist Hegel claims that philosophy deals with natural entities and that the occurrence in human life of non observational entities like mind, cognition, self-consciousness, etc. has to be explained as emerging from and depending on natural requisites that the empirical sciences can directly observe like organic and biological properties. The domain of the normative is, following Hegel, constituted by means of the self-conscious life, namely the capacity to articulate concepts and to constitute a social dimension based on norms and interpersonal interaction. Self-conscious life and the normative, namely the domain of freedom and autonomy, are not explained in his thought as irreducible to and independent from nature understood as the domain of causality, but rather as elements proper of a natural substratum with which they establish a mutual dependence. Briefly illustrated, his naturalism consists in keeping the difference between the normative and nature and, nonetheless, avoiding any sort of dualism or unsolvable contrast between them. The advantage of this approach is explaining these two ambits as reciprocally dependent: self-conscious life does not originate by the separation from nature, but rather by establishing and understanding its own
The paper analyses the logical category of the individual in Hegel's work, argues that it is not ... more The paper analyses the logical category of the individual in Hegel's work, argues that it is not a metaphysical simple, but rather it is treated by Hegel as an incomplete term. The paper concludes with an examination of the political implications of Hegel's use of this category.
Autonomy in bioethics is coming under sustained criticism from a variety of perspectives.My aim i... more Autonomy in bioethics is coming under sustained criticism from a variety of perspectives.My aim in this essay is to show that we need indeed to rethink the theoretical bases of autonomy and the practical guidance we draw from it.The critical argument, which takes up most of the paper, aims to motivate the proposed re-appraisal of the concept.
Hegel's criticism of morality has had a decisive influence in the reception of his thought. By ge... more Hegel's criticism of morality has had a decisive influence in the reception of his thought. By general acknowledgement, while his writings support a broadly neo-Aristotelian ethics of self-actualization, his views on moral philosophy are exhausted by his criticisms of Kant, whom he treats as paradigmatic exponent of the standpoint of morality. My aim in this essay is to correct this received view and show that Hegel offers a positive argument about the nature of moral willing.
τὰ γενόµενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων Most commentary on Kant's and Hegel's writings 1 on history focuses on th... more τὰ γενόµενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων Most commentary on Kant's and Hegel's writings 1 on history focuses on their substantive claims about progress, especially the nature and plausibility of these claims. 2 Very little attention is devoted to the concept of history both philosophers employ, namely, the concept of a whole composed of what Herodotus calls "that which is brought about [τὰ γενόµενα] by human beings"). 3 Such neglect is perhaps explicable on the grounds that philosophical history belongs to a discipline outside philosophy, such as the history of historiography, or that philosophical history does not deserve serious philosophical attention because, by allowing reference to a unified domain of human action, it facilitates illegitimate claims about this whole, for example, claims about progress. 4 Yet, Kant's and Hegel's basic philosophical 1 Citation to Kant is to the Akademie edition [=AA], by volume and page number with the exception of the first Critique [=KrV], cited according to the original A and B editions. Citation to Hegel is to Werke, (ed.) M. Moldauer and K. Markus. Frankfurt, by volume and page number.
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
When Paul Guyer surveyed the literature on the sublime about twenty years ago, he noted the flour... more When Paul Guyer surveyed the literature on the sublime about twenty years ago, he noted the flourishing of psychoanalytic and deconstructionist interpretations of the sublime by literary theorists and offered his own interpretative essay on Kant’s sublime as a contribution to a sparsely populated field. Today the situation is reversed. In the field of philosophical aesthetics, understood to include analytic aesthetics as well as theoretical approaches to literary and visual culture, serious doubts have been raised about the coherence of theories of the sublime and indeed the usefulness of the concept. By contrast, the sublime is increasingly studied by Kantians who value its role in Kant’s moral psychology and consider it a useful, and in some cases indispensible, element to his ethics. The questions the present paper sets out to answer are: Is a coherent theory of the sublime possible? Is the sublime a useful concept? Is the chief interest in the sublime moral? The answers, briefly, are: yes, yes, and no. Although the argument supporting these conclusions focuses on Kant’s analysis, the aim is to show how a certain conception of human agency permits an aesthetic interpretation of the sublime with broader application and significance.
Inquiry, 2011
Abstract In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an id... more Abstract In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an ideal of life can play within an autonomist ethic. I begin by examining the critical role Schiller gives to emotions in tackling specific motivational concerns in Kant's ethics. In the Kantian ...
European Journal of Philosophy, Jan 1, 2002
Autonomy is a key concept in contemporary moral philosophy with deep roots in the history of the ... more Autonomy is a key concept in contemporary moral philosophy with deep roots in the history of the subject. However, there is still no agreed view about the correct way to formulate an account of autonomy that adequately captures both our capacity for self-determination and our responsiveness to reasons. In this book I develop a theory of autonomy that is Kantian in orientation but which engages closely with recent arguments about agency, morality, and practical reasoning.
Kant and some more issues about freedom
Kant and some issues about freedom
We're human beings. That is to say we are an organic life form, living, breathing, moving, hurtin... more We're human beings. That is to say we are an organic life form, living, breathing, moving, hurting and mending, doing and suffering beings. It would be an odd moral philosophy that loses sight of this fact. The paper is concerned with a contemporary Aristotelian position in moral philosophy, defended originally by Philippa Foot (2001) and subsequently by Michael Thompson (2003, 2004, 2008), that aims to put this fact at the heart of our philosophical reflections about morality. This strand of neo-Aristotelianism1 is of special interest from a Kantian perspective for a number of reasons. Both ethics are objectivist. Whereas Kantian ethics, at least as it is usually presented, is rationalist, absolutist and abstract, the neo-Aristotelian version has its roots in nature, addresses human beings as natural beings, and is attentive to the particulars of human life.2 Perhaps the best way to capture the difference from which others flow is that nature and reason are not contraries in the neo-Aristotelian account, rather it is natural for human beings to be rational, to reason about the good, and act on the basis of practical reasoning. From a contemporary perspective, this is particularly attractive because it allows for a naturalistic defence of moral value that fits within the broader trend towards 'liberal' or 'expansive' naturalism.3 Finally, because natural goodness rather than moral legislation is the guiding notion, the problem of the authority of the moral law, a problem originally identified by Elisabeth Anscombe (1958) as being particularly tricky for Kant's moral philosophy, simply does not arise for Aristotelianism. In summary, Aristotelian ethics has the resources to address a range of first as well as second order ethical questions precisely in those areas in which Kantian ethics is traditionally supposed to be weak. My aim in this chapter is to examine some of these questions, narrowing my remit to those concerning the nature of the good and the authority of norms. In particular, I want to motivate and sketch a non-naturalist
we all know that the fix, the cure is the same thing that hurt us. The cause is the cure and the ... more we all know that the fix, the cure is the same thing that hurt us. The cause is the cure and the cure is the cause. 1
Description: The aim of this special issue is to tackle Hegel's approach to the constitution of t... more Description: The aim of this special issue is to tackle Hegel's approach to the constitution of the normative on the basis of natural premises and to investigate his original version of naturalism. In the ambit of the American analytical philosophy, scholars like Sellars, Brandom and McDowell have already pointed out that Hegel's thought is based on the inferential analysis of the logical and pragmatic elements constituting the mind, reason, self-consciousness and the normative. More recently authors like Terry Pinkard, Michael Thompson and Robert Pippin have highlighted that the Hegelian philosophy leads to the investigation about the natural requisites and premises of the cognitive and intentional stances, pinpointing that a naturalistic method of scrutiny is in play. Hegel's naturalism is therefore a novel version of naturalism enhancing our understanding of the cognitive, intentional and social human dispositions by addressing their dependence on natural elements like life, desires, instincts and perception. As a naturalist Hegel claims that philosophy deals with natural entities and that the occurrence in human life of non observational entities like mind, cognition, self-consciousness, etc. has to be explained as emerging from and depending on natural requisites that the empirical sciences can directly observe like organic and biological properties. The domain of the normative is, following Hegel, constituted by means of the self-conscious life, namely the capacity to articulate concepts and to constitute a social dimension based on norms and interpersonal interaction. Self-conscious life and the normative, namely the domain of freedom and autonomy, are not explained in his thought as irreducible to and independent from nature understood as the domain of causality, but rather as elements proper of a natural substratum with which they establish a mutual dependence. Briefly illustrated, his naturalism consists in keeping the difference between the normative and nature and, nonetheless, avoiding any sort of dualism or unsolvable contrast between them. The advantage of this approach is explaining these two ambits as reciprocally dependent: self-conscious life does not originate by the separation from nature, but rather by establishing and understanding its own
The paper analyses the logical category of the individual in Hegel's work, argues that it is not ... more The paper analyses the logical category of the individual in Hegel's work, argues that it is not a metaphysical simple, but rather it is treated by Hegel as an incomplete term. The paper concludes with an examination of the political implications of Hegel's use of this category.
Autonomy in bioethics is coming under sustained criticism from a variety of perspectives.My aim i... more Autonomy in bioethics is coming under sustained criticism from a variety of perspectives.My aim in this essay is to show that we need indeed to rethink the theoretical bases of autonomy and the practical guidance we draw from it.The critical argument, which takes up most of the paper, aims to motivate the proposed re-appraisal of the concept.
Hegel's criticism of morality has had a decisive influence in the reception of his thought. By ge... more Hegel's criticism of morality has had a decisive influence in the reception of his thought. By general acknowledgement, while his writings support a broadly neo-Aristotelian ethics of self-actualization, his views on moral philosophy are exhausted by his criticisms of Kant, whom he treats as paradigmatic exponent of the standpoint of morality. My aim in this essay is to correct this received view and show that Hegel offers a positive argument about the nature of moral willing.
τὰ γενόµενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων Most commentary on Kant's and Hegel's writings 1 on history focuses on th... more τὰ γενόµενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων Most commentary on Kant's and Hegel's writings 1 on history focuses on their substantive claims about progress, especially the nature and plausibility of these claims. 2 Very little attention is devoted to the concept of history both philosophers employ, namely, the concept of a whole composed of what Herodotus calls "that which is brought about [τὰ γενόµενα] by human beings"). 3 Such neglect is perhaps explicable on the grounds that philosophical history belongs to a discipline outside philosophy, such as the history of historiography, or that philosophical history does not deserve serious philosophical attention because, by allowing reference to a unified domain of human action, it facilitates illegitimate claims about this whole, for example, claims about progress. 4 Yet, Kant's and Hegel's basic philosophical 1 Citation to Kant is to the Akademie edition [=AA], by volume and page number with the exception of the first Critique [=KrV], cited according to the original A and B editions. Citation to Hegel is to Werke, (ed.) M. Moldauer and K. Markus. Frankfurt, by volume and page number.
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
When Paul Guyer surveyed the literature on the sublime about twenty years ago, he noted the flour... more When Paul Guyer surveyed the literature on the sublime about twenty years ago, he noted the flourishing of psychoanalytic and deconstructionist interpretations of the sublime by literary theorists and offered his own interpretative essay on Kant’s sublime as a contribution to a sparsely populated field. Today the situation is reversed. In the field of philosophical aesthetics, understood to include analytic aesthetics as well as theoretical approaches to literary and visual culture, serious doubts have been raised about the coherence of theories of the sublime and indeed the usefulness of the concept. By contrast, the sublime is increasingly studied by Kantians who value its role in Kant’s moral psychology and consider it a useful, and in some cases indispensible, element to his ethics. The questions the present paper sets out to answer are: Is a coherent theory of the sublime possible? Is the sublime a useful concept? Is the chief interest in the sublime moral? The answers, briefly, are: yes, yes, and no. Although the argument supporting these conclusions focuses on Kant’s analysis, the aim is to show how a certain conception of human agency permits an aesthetic interpretation of the sublime with broader application and significance.
Inquiry, 2011
Abstract In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an id... more Abstract In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an ideal of life can play within an autonomist ethic. I begin by examining the critical role Schiller gives to emotions in tackling specific motivational concerns in Kant's ethics. In the Kantian ...
European Journal of Philosophy, Jan 1, 2002
British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Jan 1, 2006
BULLETIN-HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT …, Jan 1, 2002
History of Philosophy Quarterly, Jan 1, 2006
The central issue in the philosophical debate about hell is whether hell is morally justifiable. ... more The central issue in the philosophical debate about hell is whether hell is morally justifiable. The present paper is an indirect contribution to this debate: it identifies and examines the different conceptions of agency that inform this discussion and the ideas about responsibility that underpin them. What emerges from this reconsideration of 'hell' is a complex and demanding conception of the judgment of moral responsibility that provides the foundation for a non-classical view of hell.
Retour page d'accueil Chercher, sur, Tous les supports. Retour page d'accueil, Plus de ... more Retour page d'accueil Chercher, sur, Tous les supports. Retour page d'accueil, Plus de 1.622.000 de titres à notre catalogue ! Notice. ...
European Journal of Philosophy, Jan 1, 2009
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2011
Retour page d'accueil Chercher, sur, Tous les supports. Retour page d'accueil, Plus de ... more Retour page d'accueil Chercher, sur, Tous les supports. Retour page d'accueil, Plus de 1.622.000 de titres à notre catalogue ! Notice. ...
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2013
Hegel Bulletin, 1997
... ID Code: 699. Deposited By: Dr Katerina Deligiorgi. Deposited On: 10 January 2007. Archive St... more ... ID Code: 699. Deposited By: Dr Katerina Deligiorgi. Deposited On: 10 January 2007. Archive Staff Only: edit this record. Site maintained by: Chris Keene (CJKeene@sussex.ac.uk) Live system | Disclaimer | Feedback.
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Jan 1, 2008
s Critique of Kant. From Dichotomy to Identity, Oxford, 2012, 194 pp., $ 65.00 (hbk), ISBN 978 0 ... more s Critique of Kant. From Dichotomy to Identity, Oxford, 2012, 194 pp., $ 65.00 (hbk), ISBN 978 0 19 969836 3. Hegel's Critique of Kant: From Dichotomy to Identity amply rewards the patience of those who have been eagerly awaiting a book-length treatment of the position Sally Sedgwick has been developing over a number of years through her engagement with classical German philosophy. The book offers an original thesis with characteristic clarity, fine conceptual articulation and an expository style that combines the virtues of immanent interpretations with those of reconstructive ones, careful reading of the primary texts is put to the service of showing what is true in our philosophical past.
European Journal of Philosophy, Jan 1, 2009