Thomas Szasz's emphasis on goal-oriented behavior and moral responsibility has raised profound theoretical questions about an ancient and enduring problem in philosophy, the relationships amongfree will, determinism, and moral responsibility. Two early thinkers, Jonathan Edwards and Aristotle, have both contributed to an understanding of this dilemma. Edwards (1754) demonstrated that the concept of man as a moral agent and the doctrine of philosophical necessity are inextricably intertwined, in opposition to the tenets of contingency, moral indifference, and self-determining volition. However, his argument rested on efficient causationalone. For further light on the problem we can turn to Aristotle's writings, notably the distinguishing criteria of the ‘practical’ sciences (including psychology) as opposed to the theoretical and the productive sciences; and multiple causation, one of the most powerful tools for intellectual analysis ever invented, which includes material, formal, and final causes as well as the efficient cause. The implications of Szasz's work force a re-examination of the contributions of both Edwards and Aristotle and make them relevant to contemporary psychiatry.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticlesA CAUTIOUS OVERVIEW OF BEHAVIOUR THERAPY*M. E. GRENANDERM. E. GRENANDERThe Institute for Humanistic Studies, State University of New YorkAlbany Search for more articles by this author * Review of EDWARD ERWIN [1978]: Behaviour Therapy: Scientific, Philosophical, and Moral Foundations. Cambridge: University Press. £12.50. Paperback £4.25. Pp. xvi + 241.PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Volume 32, Number 1March 1981 Society: The British Society for the Philosophy of Science Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/32.1.85 Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 1981 by The Author. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:EDWARD ERWIN BEHAVIOUR THERAPY: A REPLY TO AN INCAUTIOUS DISCUSSION, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33, no.11 (Dec 2020): 53–60.https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/33.1.53

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticlesPSYCHOSIS: DISEASE OR RHETORIC?*M. E. GRENANDERM. E. GRENANDERThe Institute for Humanistic Studies State University of New YorkAlbany Search for more articles by this author Review of FRIED, YEHUDA and AGASSI, JOSEPH [1976]: Paranoia: A Study in Diagnosis. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 50. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Paperback 812.00. Pp. xv + 212 and SZASZ, THOMAS [1976]: Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, Inc. $10.00. Pp. xiv+237.PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Volume 30, Number 2June 1979 Society: The British Society for the Philosophy of Science Views: 5Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Views: 5Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/30.2.177 Views: 5Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 1979 by The Author. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:M. E. GRENANDER BEHAVIOUR THERAPY: A RESPONSE TO EDWARD ERWIN, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35, no.22 (Dec 2020): 149–156.https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/35.2.149

To collaborate with an author in perceiving the implied ethical problems he poses and passing a moral judgment on their solution can be, as Wayne Booth has remarked, a heady ex- perience for the enlightened reader.'') The wide attention given to OneFIew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, both as novel and as film, suggests to the student of literary history that nineteenth cen- tury fiction has also raised questions which may give pause to anyone considering the American Dream. Since Herman Melville's Benito Cereno and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were both mimetic portrayals of slavery, it is instructive to contrast the two. Each was an attempt, like Ken Kesey's book, to awaken its readers from somnolent optimism, forcing them to confront the realities of institutionalized evil. Yet Benito Cereno appeared almost thirty years before Huckleberry Finn, and it ad- dressed a pre-Civil War audience. Thus the in- sights provided by the psychiatric scholar Thomas S. Szasz for understanding a novel like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are ap- plicable to Melville's story, for reasons that I shall demonstrate in this paper. To begin with the obvious, which sometimes needs to be emphasized, we should remember that, like coercive psychiatry today, in large parts of the western hemisphere during most of the nineteeth century slaGery, though abhorred by many people, was legal, defended with all the power of the state. It was also socially sanc- tioned, in the antebellum North as well as in the South, with religion and custom combining to mask it as an institution benefiting not only white society but also the oppressed blacks. Hence much of the pathos of Huckleberry Finn lies in Huck's unquestioning acceptance of the fact that he is committing a crime by not surrendering his slave companion to Jim's legal owner. According to the beliefs of his society, Huck is also endangering his soul. The most poignant scene in the novel occurs when, after much mind-twisting vacillation, he finally resolves not to reveal Jim's whereabouts. Teetering back and forth in an agony of indeci- sion and doubt over what course to follow, he never doubts that one alternative involves com- pounding a crime and enacting a sin.

For almost two centuries American fiction has featured crime, but its treatment in popular literature, which strokes the norms of a mass audience, has been quite different from that in high art, which examines critically the assump tions and values of our society. A study of serious fiction can, therefore, probe fundamental issues for us: How does literature define crime? Why does this definition differ occasionally from the statutory one? What crimes has fiction taken most seriously? How does fiction assess the criminal's circumstances and motivation? What is the literary attitude to criminal responsibility? What is the victim's role in crime? How is the criminal apprehended? How does the trial contribute to equity? How are legal professionals, the jury, and the insanity defense portrayed? How does litera ture rank criminal punishments? We can postulate tentative answers to these rather open-ended questions, but in a larger sense their value is heuristic, forcing us to reconsider some hypotheses we may have taken for granted.