ABSTRACT Recent literature in the history of twentieth‐century philosophy has centred on the historical and philosophical connections between four philosophers: G. E. M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch. The surge of interest in this so‐called “Wartime Quartet” is in large part due to the publication of two books, Benjamin Lipscomb’s 2022 The Women are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics and Clare MacCumhaill and Rachael Wiseman’s 2022 Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life . Much of the critical response to these books has called into question whether and to what extent the four focal figures are philosophically unified in some way. This paper explores and examines critiques targeted at the Quartet's unity. I show that critiques differ in their choice of “grouping concept”: the criteria and desiderata considered relevant and important to the construction of a philosophical group. By analysing one of the most common forms of objection to the Quartet's unity—that Mary Midgley is, in Jenifer Frey's words “the odd woman out”—I argue that the Quartet counts as a philosophical group relative to the purpose that grouping is meant to serve. If philosophical groupings are tools for organising philosophy's past, then Midgley's inclusion is a matter of what we want from the grouping. Although some critical questions remain, this paper shows that both books use the “Wartime Quartet” effectively as a tool to their chosen ends and that disputes over philosophical groupings are best advanced by first stating the desiderata against which a grouping is to be judged.
ABSTRACT Intellectual property (IP) law shapes how knowledge, culture, and innovation are created, shared, and valued, yet philosophical reflection on it has fallen behind its rapid development. Generative AI has made the gap visible: it opens policy vacuums that cannot be filled until the concepts beneath them are clarified. Rather than a historical overview, this article offers a systematic reconstruction organized around three questions that any IP regime must answer about itself. Why is the restriction IP imposes justified? Who may claim it? And what, exactly, does it protect? These are the questions of value, authorship, and ontology, and they are minimal: no regime can be stated without answering all three. I begin with value, distinguishing optimistic strategies that justify IP's liberty‐restricting privileges—consequentialist, deontological, and, more recently, virtue‐based—from global and local skeptical positions, including communitarian reframings that contest the terms of the question. I then turn to authorship, and to the pressure that collective and machine production place on the traditional individualistic and human‐centered assumptions of copyright. Finally, I discuss ontology, comparing descriptive type‐based models with revisionary accounts that ground IP in concrete artifacts.
ABSTRACT The following essay, which comes in two parts, examines three prominent readings of Fichte's normative ethics: a consequentialist reading, a deontological reading, and a hybrid reading that combines teleological and deontological features. An alternative to the current hybrid readings on offer is provided. The alternative hybrid reading endorses the view that Fichte's ethics (1) qualifies as a form of perfectionism, and particularly a form of normative perfectionism, (2) presents self‐sufficiency as an agent‐neutral value to be perfected, and (3) argues that his normative perfectionism accepts an agent‐centered restriction on how the agent‐neutral value of self‐sufficiency is promoted. Part 1 provides a brief overview of Fichte's major work on ethics, The System of Ethics , examines the distinction between teleological and deontological ethical theories, introduces the idea that Fichte's perfectionism qualifies as a form of normative perfectionism, and, finally, examines the consequentialist reading.
ABSTRACT The following essay, which comes in two parts, examines three prominent readings of Fichte's normative ethics: a consequentialist reading, a deontological reading, and a hybrid reading. An alternative to the current hybrid readings on offer is provided. The alternative hybrid reading endorses the view that Fichte's ethics (1) qualifies as a form of perfectionism, and particularly a form of normative perfectionism, (2) presents self‐sufficiency as an agent‐neutral value to be perfected, and (3) argues that his normative perfectionism accepts an agent‐centered restriction on how the agent‐neutral value of self‐sufficiency is to be promoted. Part II critically examines the most prominent deontological reading of Fichte's ethics and an influential hybrid reading that views Fichte's ethics as incorporating teleological and deontological commitments. An alternative hybrid reading is presented that reconsiders how the deontological commitment should be understood. The essay concludes by examining worries or objections one might have to Fichte's normative perfectionism in general or the alternative hybrid reading in particular.
ABSTRACT Do emotions belong to the class of rationally assessable phenomena or should they be classified as arational reactions? This article provides an overview of the debate on this question, focusing on contemporary attempts to show that emotions are rationally assessable. We look at these attempts through the lens of the prominent distinction between a structuralist and a substantivist conception of rationality. According to the structuralist view, rationality requires coherence among our mental states. By contrast, on the substantivist view, it requires responsiveness to reasons. Whereas the most explicit contemporary defenses of emotional rationality endorse structuralism, we explore in detail the case for the view that emotions are substantively rational. Topics addressed include how we should construe the claim that emotions are rational, whether reasons‐talk is intelligible in the case of emotions, candidates for normative reasons for emotion, and whether emotions can be genuine responses to reasons.
