Modernities

The books Histories, Beliefs, and Values, and its companion volume in the same distinguished series, Solicitations: Poverties, Discourses, and Limits, appear in especially challenging times. For Europe, many informed persons keep saying, is once again in crisis. But exactly what the crisis is few seem able to say. When the exact nature of the "crisis" cannot be stated clearly, the "crisis" is certainly critical. On the one hand, so many geo political, economic, political, social, and cultural problems appear to be proliferating endlessly. Yet at the same time so many thoughtful persons continue to narrow their perspectives to almost single issue concerns. Good examples of both overly broad and overly narrow approaches include ongoing discussions at many levels concerning global economic collapse in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, accelerating climate change, worsening migration issues, and even increasingly widespread fears of coming tactical if not strategic nuclear warfare. Moreover, working seriously in sustained ways to find reasonable and efficient middle ground approaches between multifarious and mono causal reflections on current European crises often simply falls between the two poles instead of actually bridging them fruitfully. The main effort here is certainly not a matter of bridging. Rather the attempt is to inquire more particularly into some of the major philosophical and cultural grounds underlying so much general and specialized talk today of Europe's new crises. Accordingly, several basic headings stand out. Just three are selected here - alternative early modern histories of European post modern cultures today, contrasting readings of just how knowledge and belief are to be understood fundamentally, and rationally competitive visions of basic human values.

The author:
Peter McCormick is Fürst Franz Josef and Fürstin Gina Emeritus Professor of Ethics at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein. He is former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, and is a member of the Institut international de philosophie (Paris) and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Canada. In the libri nigri he published the books Blindly Seeing. Essays in Ethics: Discourses, Sayings, Sufferings and In Times Like These. Essays in Ethics: Situations, Resources, Issues.

Contents

Preface

Part One: Histories

Essay I: Modernities and Histories

Explanatory and Interpretive Accounts
Descartes versus Plato, Augustine, and Montaigne
Two Modernities: Descartes and Montaigne
The Disputed Origins of Modernity
The Frames of Our Histories and Modernities
Envoi: The Remaining Tension
Endnotes

Essay II: Internationalizing Law

Individual Autonomy and the Community of Values
The Task of Peace Today
Limitations and the Capacities of the Individual
Contingency and Individual Autonomy
Envoi: The Reflexive Triad
Endnotes

Essay III: Education and Nature

Living According to Nature
Nature as the Observable Universe
Nature as the Human Milieu
Nature as Human Nature
Envoi: The Nature in Nature
Endnotes

Part Two: Beliefs

Essay IV: Modernities and Beliefs

Subjectivation
From Procedural to Instrumental Rationality
Modern Origins of the Transformation of the Self
Lockean Belief and Substantive Reason
Substantive Reason and the Obligations of Belief
Rationality and Interpretation
Envoi: Reason, Belief, and Knowledge
Endnotes

Essay V: Visual Forms in Hogarth's Aesthetics

Analyzing Beauty
Disinterestedness
Aesthetic Attitude, Taste, and Beauty
Appearance, Reality, and Natural Continua
Modernity's Realist Backgrounds and the Aesthetic
Envoi: Realism After Modernity
Endnotes

Essay VI: Bolzano's Realisms

Kant and the Subjectivisation of Aesthetics
Bolzano and the Theory of the Beautiful
Elucidating Bolzano's Views
Appraising Bolzano's Aesthetics
Two Critical Questions
Envoi: Towards Realistic Phenomenologies
Endnotes

Part Three: Values

Essay VII: Modernities and Values

Moral Sources
Moral Frameworks
Moral Identities
Moral Articulacy
The Best Account Principle
Envoi: Stepping Back
Endnotes

Essay VIII: Cultural and Religious Identities

Cultural and Religious Questions Now?
Difficulties With Talk of Identity Today
Disambiguating Talk of Identity
Reformulating the Questions
Envoi: Fresh Questions
Endnotes

Essay IX: Personal Sovereignties

Realists and Legalists
What Persons Are
Who Persons Are
Persons as Essentially Sovereign
Envoi: Contingencies
Endnotes