Anton Leist

University of Zurich | UZH · Philosophisches Seminar

This is a review of the book by Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit

When we want to justify claims against one another, we discover that conceptual thought alone is not sufficient to legitimize property and income in the relative and proper proportions among members of a productive group. Instead, the basis for justification should also be seen in motivational states, validated less by rational thought than by an e...

Inquiry into the compatibility of equality and desert/merit

Review of book by Martin Suter

review of book by Bichsel

Review of Buchanan/Powell, The Evolution of Moral Progress, OUP 2018

This article is about the convergence between ecological sustainability and conservatism, represented by Roger Scruton.

The academic boycott against Israeli academics is often justified on the basis of Israeli human rights violations. Against this reasoning this article defends a politics of academic boycott in a narrower, self-contained sense, which is based on the traditional idea of the academic community as a truthdirected social collective. Against postmodern c...

Could it be that human rights have come into existence not, as standard history would have it, by the discovery of ‘human reason,’ but rather through the influence of a religion-based ‘sacredness’ of the human person? This is what Hans Joas in his book The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights suggests. On closer inspection, eve...

Among philosophers and social scientists, Hume’s idea of justice is generally identified with a system of rules based on mutual advantage, their moral quality playing either an insignificant or no part at all. This conventional or contractarian model, respectively, is not adequate to the special institution of morality or, in Hume, to the virtues,...

Among philosophers and social scientists, Hume's idea of justice is generally identified with a system of rules based on mutual advantage, their moral quality playing either an insignificant or no part at all. This conventional or contractarian model, respectively, is not adequate to the special institution of morality or, in Hume, to the virtues,...

The degradation of natural resources in the environment is, technically speaking, a form of depleting a public good. Public goods are notorious for free-riding among egoists, but the marginality of individual contributions provides no less an obstacle, both to moral duty and motivation. This article discusses the problems of minimized and missing c...

Zusammenfassung Herbert Schnädelbach: Was Philosophen wissen und was man von ihnen lernen kann. C.H. Beck Verlag, München 2012, 237 S.

Today philosophy falls apart into a “theoretical” and a “practical” sub-discipline, a situation to the detriment of both. On the back of a sketch of three stages of Western philosophy a diagnosis is made as to the practical origin of the theoretical/practical split, which also already contains within it the clue for a therapy. Both parts of philoso...

Much present normative thinking within ethics and politics falls either into thinking about ethics or thinking about politics. This is due, in part, to apolitical conceptions of ethics and ethically neutral conceptions of politics. MacIntyre's work has never allowed for an easy categorization into the one or the other field, and his more recent app...

Since Hobbes’ Leviathan was published in 1651, the ‘problem of order’ has been known for some time. Despite this long gestation period for social theory even today we do not have a universally agreed upon answer to this ‘problem’. One of the reasons behind this lacuna may be the overly dispersed work being done in the economic and sociological trad...

Myers' offer of cooperation as a medicine for ailing moral theories is welcomed as potentially helpful, even if his handling of it is diagnosed as implicitly one-sided consequentialist. His search for an ethically "substantive way of engaging with others" is shown as not coherent with his remarks on the tasks cooperation as an ethical concept has t...

1. Wie passt die Moral in die übrige Welt? Die gegenwärtige Ethik ist unter anderem mit zwei Problemen konfron-tiert, deren Zusammenhang auf den ersten Blick undurchsichtig ist. Das erste Problem ergibt sich aus dem schwierigen Verhältnis von Ethik und Wissenschaft. Die Wissenschaften besitzen die letzte öffentliche Autorität bei fast allen Themen,...

Buchkritik über: Gottfried Seebass: Handlung und Freiheit. Philosophische Aufsätze. Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 2006, 411 S. (= a).

1. Die historistische Perspektive Wenn es eine ›europäische Botschaft‹ der westlichen Medizinethik oder überhaupt der westlichen Ethik gibt, die für nicht-europäische Kulturen interessant sein könnte, dann ist sie mit der europäischen Aufklärung ver- bunden. Zentral innerhalb der europäischen Aufklärung ist ein Programm der Vernunft, und wenn man d...

It is not easy to give up on a tradition that promises to rationalize, explain, and thereby ultimately help improve, society. This article narrates the history of Critical Theory in three stages, following the dynamics of its own self-criticism during distinct historical periods and within different societies. Horkheimer/Adorno, Habermas and Honnet...

Die analytische Handlungstheorie ist gegenwärtig in einem Stadium, in dem sie sich anschickt, ihre vor allem von D. Davidson fixierte Programmatik zu verlassen. Unter den zwei Bedingungen, Beschreibungsabhängigkeit und Gründe-Ursachen-Synthese, gewinnt, anders als bei Davidson, die Erstere zunehmend größeres Gewicht. Den hoffnungsvollen Übergang zu...

Seit zwei Jahrzehnten gilt das Prinzip Nachhaltigkeit als Leitfaden für jede rational informierte und kontrollierte Umweltpolitik. Im großen Maßstab ist es aufgrund seines versteckten Naturrealismus unbrauchbar und sollte durch das Ideal ökologischer Gerechtigkeit ersetzt werden.

Experimental economists have been trying for some time to discover the laws of behaviour in micro-social situations. Fehr's experimental research on altruistic behaviour attempts to correct the egoistic version of the concept of homo oeconomicus by resorting to the notion of altruistic dispositions. This article discusses Fehr's results from two po...

Seit einiger Zeit versuchen experimentelle Ökonomen Verhaltensgesetze in mikrosozialen Situationen ausfindig zu machen. Ernst Fehrs experimentelle Forschung zu altruistischem Verhalten ist ein solcher Versuch, mit dem die egoistische Version des Homo oeconomicus durch Nachweis altruistischer Verhaltensdispositionen korrigiert werden soll. Dieser Ar...

Ernst Fehr’s experimental research on altruistic behaviour aims at superseding the classical homo oeconomicus in micro-economic behaviour theory. This essay discusses Fehr’s results from two points of view: first, in regard to the understanding of social action associated with the term “altruism”; second, in regard to the ‘anthropological’ strategy...

J. Asch and M. Quante (eds), Brain Death and Organ Transplantation Noam Zohar, Alternatives in Jewish Bioethics Roger B. Dworkin, Limits: The Role of Law in Bioethical Decision Making Peta Bowden, Caring: Gender-Sensitive Ethics Mary Anne Warren, Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things Ruth Chadwick, Mairi Levitt and Darren Shi...

Unter Kants vielfältigen Hinterlassenschaften an die Gegenwart ist seine Ethik, neben seiner Friedenspolitik, die heute vielleicht lebendigste. Die sich abzeichnenden Möglichkeiten von Humangentechnik und Gentechnologie motivieren auch zur Suche nach Grenzen des Verfügbaren im Menschen. In striktem Gegensatz zu allem Nutzendenken verspricht Kants V...

Health and beauty are the most important physical ideals. This paper seeks to compare and contrast these ideals, based on a value theory of human abilities. Health is comprehended as a potential ability to act grounded in bodily functions. Beauty is explained as a symbolising reference to happiness, physical beauty as a combination of organic orien...

Sustainability is currently the term dominating environmental policy. Its extensive political diffusion is in stark contrast, however, to the extent to which there is agreement over its meaning. Its ability to motivate is not in question, but a certain scepticism surrounds its ideological content. Since ideological terms have no objective basis, it...

In seinem im Stil einer vorlesungsartigen Einführung in die Ethik verfaßten Buch stellt Anton Leist die unausweichliche Bedeutung der Ethik für jeden einzelnen in seinem eigenen Leben heraus. Verstanden wird die Moral in einem an Kant orientierten Vorschlag als eine ideelle Konstruktion, die objektive Kriterien sowohl entwickelt wie ihnen gehorcht....

Soulignant l'ambiguite philosophique et sociale de l'ethique appliquee malgre le tournant pratique amorce des les annees 1970 avec la professionnalisation du debat ethique, l'A. montre que les theories morales classiques rencontrent une double difficulte concernant a la fois le contenu et la methode de l'ethique appliquee. Examinant le modele propo...

Morality and society in moral philosophy are rarely brought into direct contact, at least not at a fundamental level of justification. David Copp develops an account of practical and moral rationality that could constitute a radical change. According to Copp moral theory has tobe ‘society-centered’ rather than focussing on the individual. This arti...

In this article I want to enquire into the sense of the formulation chosen for the title, and to ask where it leads us.1 The idea involved is clearly from Kant, but here I will not follow the path of exegetical approach; nor is Rawls’ political theory the object of my interest. Rather, I want to understand in general the involvement persons have wi...