This article offers a contribution to the study of Leibniz's thought on possibility and existence based on a reconstruction of the evolution of Kant's thought on these notions in Nova dilucidatio (1755), Beweisgrund (1763) and Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781–1787). Its aim is to shed light on Kant's debt to Leibniz and to show that only the critical turn could make them diverge on this question through a twofold opposition on epistemology (the role of experience) and ontology (the eclipse of God).

Romantic love and its predecessor eros have both been characterized as forms of egoistic love. Part of this claim is concerned specifically with the relation between love and knowledge. Real love, it is claimed, is prior to knowledge and is not motivated by it. Romantic love and eros according to this view are egoistic in that they are motivated by a desire for knowledge. Agapic love characterized by bestowal represents a true form of love unmotivated by selfish desires. I argue that such an emphasis on bestowal at the expense of knowledge or appraisal of the beloved is problematic. The knowledge dimension of romantic love, rather than contributing to selfishness, can be a means of freeing us from egoism when we understand identity in its relational or social form.

The opposition between community and society set out by Collingwood in his New Leviathan (1942) should be compared with the distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft that Tönnies had introduced in 1887. The debate on ideal types of social organizations apparently pertains to «pure sociology» and was continued by Durkheim and Weber. However, Collingwood's use of this distinction may be construed as an attack on the very idea of sociology in the name of the primacy of rational will.

In this article I defend the view that all feminists should be contractarians. Indeed, I argue that feminists should be Hobbesian or rational-choice contractarians at that. The argument proceeds by critically examining some of the main reasons why feminists have been resistant or even hostile to contractarian moral theory, and showing that the criticisms are misguided against Hobbesian versions of the theory. I conclude with a brief positive argument to the effect that contractarianism provides a plausible explanation of what is wrong with patriarchy and so can serve as the theoretical basis for feminist ethics.

This article examines the claim recently put forward by Terry Nardin, Kok-Chor Tan, and Carla Bagnoli that humanitarian intervention ought to be conceived, not as an imperfect duty (a duty of assistance to the victims of crimes against humanity left to the discretion of the members of the international community), but—assuming that the permissibility conditions have been satisfied—as a perfect duty (an unconditional obligation demanded by justice). After explaining why such a position can be considered as legitimate, it underlines some of its difficulties and provides the elements of a response in order to overcome them.

This article explores Wittgenstein's little known remarks on colour from his notebooks of the early 1930s. It emphasizes the importance of the notion of logical multiplicity contained in these remarks. The notion of logical multiplicity indicates that Wittgenstein, as in the years of the Tractatus, is committed to a theory of logical space in which every colour is embedded. However, logical multiplicities in his remarks of the early 1930s do not depend on an apparatus of simple objects, states of affairs, and elementary propositions. I suggest that, in this period, the logical multiplicity of colour space is a matter of how we see colours.

This essay examines and criticizes a set of Kantian objections to Parfit's attempt in Reasons and Persons to connect his theory of personal identity to practical rationality and moral philosophy. Several of Parfit's critics have tried to sever the link he forges between his metaphysical and practical conclusions by invoking the Kantian thought that even if we accept his metaphysical theory of personal identity, we still have good practical grounds for rejecting that theory when deliberating about what to do. The argument between Parfit and his opponents illuminates broader questions about the relationship between our metaphysical beliefs and our practical reasons.

In this article we aim to see how far one can get in defending the identity thesis without challenging the inference from conceivability to possibility. Our defence consists of a dilemma for the modal argument. Either “pain” is rigid or it is not. If it is not rigid, then a key premise of the modal argument can be rejected. If it is rigid, the most plausible semantic account treats “pain” as a natural-kind term that refers to its causal or historical origin, namely, C-fibre stimulation. It follows that any phenomenon that is not C-fibre stimulation is not pain, even if it is qualitatively similar to pain. This means there could be phenomena that feel like pain but are not pain since they are not C-fibre stimulation. These possible phenomena can be used to explain away the apparent conceivability of pain without C-fibre stimulation. On either horn of the dilemma, the identity theorist has ample resources to respond to Kripke's argument, even without wandering into the contentious territory of conceivability and possibility.

We begin by discussing some logical constraints on the psychological approach to personal identity. We consider a problem for the psychological approach that arises in fission cases. The problem engenders the need for a non-branching clause in a psychological account of the co-personality relation. We look at some difficulties in formulating such a clause. We end by rejecting a recently proposed formulation of non-branching. Our criticism of the formulation raises some interesting questions about the individuation of person stages.