Most of us are more or less dissatisfied with some aspect of our present self and want to change it to a better future self. This makes us divided beings. The beliefs, emotions, and motives of our present self prompt us to act in one way and our desired future and better self often prompts us to act in another way. This makes us ambivalent. One of the shibboleths of the present age is that the key to overcoming our ambivalence is to cultivate autonomy. This Kantian ideal is defended, developed, and somewhat revised by Christine Korsgaard, who constructs an ideal theory of self-constitution. This theory is untenable. Its very nature makes it incapable of addressing the concrete problems ambivalence presents to us in our very different individual circumstances. It unreasonably claims that either we meet arbitrary, unrealistic, and mind-bogglingly complex requirements, or disqualify ourselves from being rational and moral agents. And it optimistically assumes that by becoming more autonomous, we become more rational and moral, rather than merely continue to act in the ways we have been acting before. The failure of this latest ideal theory does not show that there is something wrong with autonomy. It shows that the extravagant claims Korsgaard makes for autonomy are groundless. The way to cope with our ambivalence is not to follow a theory, but to think better and harder about what we – individuals in individual circumstances – are, and want to be.

Paul Edwards' October 1989 essay, ‘Heidegger's Quest for Being’ illustrates the wisdom of the dictum that the only legitimate criticism of a philosopher's position is a constructive criticism. His negative critique amounts to no more than expressions of distaste, dislike, and displeasure, and nothing of philosophical interest follows from his assertions, as the discourse is primarily an argument ad hominem. He grossly misinterprets Heidegger on some elemental and fundamental matters as well. In particular, he sorely misinterprets what he refers to as the ‘Quest for Being’, which only further contributes to the objectionable character of the essay.

Hume is sometimes thought to provide a ‘naturalistic’ response to the sceptic. I consider two ways in which this response may be construed. According to the first, the fact that we are psychologically determined to hold a belief provides it with justification. According to the second, ‘natural’ beliefs provide limits within which reason can legitimately be employed, limits which the sceptic transgresses when he attempts to defend his position. Both versions of the naturalistic response to scepticism, I will argue, aren't plausible. And they aren't, at least not predominantly, Hume's.

The Object of this paper is the development of a view of punishment which incorporates what is of importance in retributive and utilitarian justifications of the practice of punishment. This proposed theory was noted and referred to as the plene esse, but not fully worked out, in the course of a discussion paper (‘Mr Quinton on “an odd sort of right”’) in which my concern was to offer an alternative view, to that of Mr Anthony Quinton, by construing ‘the right to punishment’ as meaning that ‘the offender has the right to be regarded as responsible for his actions’.

The aim of this paper is to argue that the normative significance of the inner aspects of filial piety – in particular, filial love – is better captured when we understand filial love as part of the virtue of filial piety rather than as an object of duty. After briefly introducing the value of filial love, I argue that the idea of a duty to love one's loving parents faces serious difficulties in making sense of the normative significance of filial love. Then I show why the virtue-ethical approach to filial love, which views filial love as a constitutive part of the virtue of filial piety, can do justice to its normative significance while avoiding the difficulties.

I TRY to do the following things in this paper. I. To show briefly how one might argue for the mutual dependence of our demonstrative and descriptive conventions as they now stand. II. To suggest that this duality of convention may be a dispensable, though in some ways desirable, aspect of language and that if one of these conventions is non-essential it is our descriptive conventions. III. To show something of the philosophical implications of such a ‘non-word’ language. Perhaps not the least uninteresting among these implications is what may then be said about our demonstrative and descriptive conventions as they now stand and especially what this might mean for attempts to reduce our demonstrative to our descriptive conventions, which involves us again in section I. It might be said that, while section I offers some linguistic facts, sections II and III attempt to show the contingency of some of these linguistic facts.

The gist of these objections to the possible world account of necessity is that, for it to be true, ‘possible’ would have to be a name for an attribute. But to say that something is possible is not to describe it, but to say that there could be such a thing. And possibilities are not classes of entities. Possible worlds have been described as ways, but a way of getting to London from Cambridge is not an entity, and that there is a way is entailed by facts such as that if you travel south along the M3, you will get there.

The so-called Picture Theory of Meaning of the Tractatus (‘the PT’, for short) offers interesting parallels with two earlier theories of judgment, given by Moore in Mind, 1899, and Russell in Philosophical Essays, 1910, and The Problems of Philosophy, 1912. Indeed, it may be a combination of them, although this is not entirely obvious, because it is not quite certain what the PT says about the constituents of elementary propositions (EPs) or about their logical character. A further limitation is imposed by the weakness of the Russellian concept of ‘order’ whose role is very like one of the roles of ‘logical form’ in the Tractatus.

I argue that the type of progress exhibited by philosophy is not that exhibited by science (as analysed e.g. by Thomas Kuhn), but rather is akin to the kind of progress exhibited (say) be someone becoming ‘older and wiser’. However, as actually-existing philosophy has gotten older, it has not always gotten wiser. As an illustration, I consider Rawls's conception of justification. I argue that Rawls's notion of what it is to have a philosophical justification exhibits no progress at all from Euthyphro's. In fact, drawing on a remark of Wittgenstein's, I suggest that Rawls's conception is inferior to the situation as depicted in Plato's famous dialogue – because at least in the case of Plato's Euthyphro, there is no illusion of justification.