This paper argues for the proposition that there is fundamental incoherence in the idea of a divine designer. Such a being would have to have intentions and thoughts prior to designing and making a world. But it is a necessary truth that thought - of the complex and articulated kind necessary for the design of a cosmos - presupposes possession of language. It is further necessarily true that language is impossible, save for beings who inhabit a public world containing other linguistic subjects. The divine designer would be the impossible exemplar of the private language, whose incoherence was demonstrated by Wittgenstein. Objections to this line of argument are noted and rebutted.

This essay critically engages Dreyfus's widely read interpretation of Heidegger's Being and Time. It argues that Dreyfus's reading is rooted in two primary claims or interpretative principles. The first - the Cartesianism thesis - indicates that Heidegger's objective in Being and Time is to overturn Cartesianism. The second - the hermeneutics of suspicion thesis - claims that Division II is supposed to suspect and throw into question the results of the Division I analysis. These theses contribute to the view that there are two conflicting accounts of inauthenticity that threaten the coherence of Heidegger's notion of authenticity. This view concerning authenticity is mistaken, as are the two theses that support it. The first thesis is incorrect because Heidegger's explicit aim is to investigate the question of the meaning of being not to overturn Cartesianism. The second is incorrect because the analyses of Division I describe the structures of everyday human existence in preparation for a closer examination in Division II of what makes them possible. Division II does not undercut Division I; it carries the analysis deeper. Authenticity, then, is not a negation of everydayness; it is a deepening of the self-understanding expressed in everydayness.

Urban-based nature conservation elites often condemn rural communities as backwards when they appeal to the value of tradition. Nevertheless, drawing from an interview study of Swedish hunters, we show that appeals to tradition express a coherent, if problematic, philosophical vision. We ask, then, two questions: (1) Do the ideas of Swedish hunters reflect a coherent philosophical vision? (2) Could this vision have a positive function in facilitating improved public dialogue over conservation policy? We examine this overlooked phenomenon of philosophical beliefs as the basis for contesting conservation policy. We also elucidate the negative consequences of this oversight for nature conservation policy debates. Finally, we discuss its positive function in nature conservation policy-making. Overall, we argue that policymakers should strive for a better understanding and appreciation of the hunters’ philosophical vision and that the hunters themselves should strive to better articulate this vision rather than their resentments.

Because of their status of res nullius-owned by no one-property theory is underdeveloped in regard to wildlife. In this article, wildlife is seen to be sometimes subject to a shadow ownership by class interests in society. Hunters accuse protected wolves of being the pets or property of an urban-based conservationist middle class. This phenomenon fragments the common fauna and undermines responsibility taking and policy compliance for wildlife that is seen as being owned by an oppositional social class. Using an empirical case study of Swedish hunters, we show how responsibility for wildlife has become entangled with property rights. A historical materialist analysis reveals that hunters once experienced ownership of wildlife by the nobility as co-opting state coercive power. Today, however, aristocracy is replaced by a new elite class of conservationists. Noting the hunters' tendency to evoke quasi-aristocratic virtues of ownership, we advance recommendations for an alternative approach. We appeal to deliberative democracy to promote the communing of wildlife across classes in fora that withstand co-optation by class interests.

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Is the proper object of phenomenology meaning or normativity? This essay argues that it is principally meaning. The phenomenological focus on the world as a space of meaning develops as an extension and modification of the neo-Kantian notion of validity (Geltung). It is argued that the recent normative turn in phenomenology obscures the topic of validity and meaning by recasting it in normative terms that emphasize the normative force of claims. The debate between the early phenomenologists and the neo-Kantians over the meaning of “validity” shows that Husserl and Heidegger reject this view. The normativity proper to phenomenological meaning consists in the validity of meaning-content, which is understood as already holding or as a priori. Developing on Heidegger’s account of involvement, interpretation, and the fore-structures of understanding, a distinction between ontic and ontological senses of the a priori is sketched.

This chapter investigates the Stoic understanding of impressions, assent, opinion, scientific knowledge, and cognition. By analyzing these concepts, I describe one major difference between the wise Stoic sage and unwise people: the wise person is capable of scientific knowledge and strong assent, while the rest of us are not. I will also interpret the Stoic account of the cognitive impression and describe several ways that the student of Stoicism might make epistemological progress.

This introductory chapter, I lay out the idea of a global perspective on civil disobedience by appeal to Rawls’ Law of Peoples. Indeed, I argue for an extension of the theory of civil disobedience from the peoples of liberal-democratic nation states to the international community of decent peoples. Here, the international standard of decency replaces the principles of liberal social justice as justification for diverse cosmopolitan citizens and states disobeying domestic or international law. Decency thus lays the foundation for a global practice of civil disobedience. The chapter offers brief discussions of the three cases of such a disobedient practice that I take up in detail in the subsequent chapters, along with the different issue that they raise for global justice. It also lays out my general approach to civil disobedience in a global perspective. I stress both the limits of liberal theory in light of diverse conceptions of justice capable of supporting a global disobedience practice, and the positive contribution of non-liberal viewpoints to advancing important global justice causes.

The reasons view holds that morally worthy actions are right actions motivated by the reasons that make them right. Opponents object that such actions are only accidentally right, and it is widely held that morally worthy actions cannot be accidentally right. My aim here is to defend the reasons view from this objection by considering conditional reasons. Once these reasons are in view, actions motivated by the reasons that make them right will no longer appear accidentally right. Keywords: Moral worth; Moral reasons; Conditional reasons

In Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, Margaret Atwood examines different forms of debt and their various interrelations. Her work invites, but does not provide, an account or philosophy of debt or its deep implication in Christian beliefs such as sin, satisfaction, and atonement. This paper aims to bring to light insights into the link between debt and some aspects of Christian belief, especially the ideas of sin and satisfaction. It draws upon another unlikely source-the Ethics and political treatises of Spinoza. Spinoza’s view at least implies that the idea that sin (understood as the voluntary actions of a free agent) creates a ‘debt’ that is ‘paid’ by punishment is a potentially dangerous ‘fiction.' Spinoza intuits that the subsumption of the idea of debt into notions of retribution, vengeance, satisfaction, or atonement, are driven by ‘superstition,' envy, and hatred, and through imitating others’ hateful ideas of oneself. The idea of ‘debt’ is an artefact of civil authority that can only assume affective, normative purchase through internalizing fear of the implicit threat of punishment inherent in law. I will seek, finally, to suggest an implicit critique in Spinoza of the imaginative subsumption of debt into the space of religio.