Robert Stern’s research while affiliated with The University of Sheffield and other places

In this paper, we do two things: first, we offer a metaphysical account of what it is to be an individual person through Hegel’s understanding of the concrete universal; and second, we show how this account of an individual can help in thinking about love. The aim is to show that Hegel’s distinctive account of individuality and universality can do justice to two intuitions about love which appear to be in tension: on the one hand, that love can involve a response to properties that an individual possesses; but on the other hand, what it is to love someone is not just to love their properties, but to love them as the distinct individual they are. We claim that Hegel’s conception of the relation between individuals and their properties, which relies on his account of the concrete universal, can resolve this tension and make sense of this aspect of love.

Løgstrup is the most significant Danish theological and philosophical thinker after Søren Kierkegaard (see Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye) and the most important Danish intellectual of the twentieth century if judged on originality and influence on the contemporary cultural debate. In his key work Den etiske fordring (The Ethical Demand 1956), he explores our mutual vulnerability, and argues that this gives rise to a ‘radical demand which says that the other’s life should be cared for in a way that best serves the other’ (1956: 48). Despite his own personal religious commitments, and the apparent religiosity of some of his language, he resists attempts to ground this demand in theological notions (such as God as a commander or a creator), and so attempts to articulate this ethics in ‘purely human terms’ (1956: 3). In doing so, he presents an original ‘ontological ethics’ which grounds ethics in the basic structure of being; this involves him in secularising some key Lutheran ideas while at the same time criticising a range of alternative accounts, including those proposed by Kant, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the contemporary analytic ethics of his time.

This article considers an apparent ‘Achilles’ heel’ for Kant’s transcendental idealism, concerning his account of how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible. The problem is that while Kant’s distinctive attempt to explain synthetic a priori knowledge lies at the heart of his transcendental idealism, this explanation appears to face a dilemma: either the explanation generates a problematic regress, or the explanation it offers gives us no reason to favour transcendental idealism over transcendental realism. In the article, I consider G. E. Moore’s version of the problem, which I argue has not yet received an adequate response. Instead, I offer a way out of this dilemma by focusing on the normativity rather than the metaphysics of the mind (sections 3–6).

This paper deals with the issue of self-determination and agency in moral action. On the one hand, it seems that where possible, the moral agent should use their practical reason to identify what it is right for them to do, and act accordingly; on the other hand, this seems to leave little room for the agent to decide for themselves how to act, where this is often said to be a marker of freedom and how the will is exercised. In response to this difficulty, Ruth Chang has argued recently that at least some reasons themselves need to be seen as being created through an act of will. Looking at the work of Iris Murdoch, it is argued that this response is problematic. At the same time, it is also argued that Murdoch can provide a fruitful way of dealing with this problem through her account of the imagination. This gives a role to the will of the agent, not in creating reasons, but in attuning us to those reasons, thereby locating the will within practical reasoning itself and showing how the authority of the good can be made compatible with human freedom.

My aim in this paper is to consider whether, by thinking of our ethical relation to one another in terms of vulnerability, we can better resolve the problem of overdemandingness – namely, that certain moral views and theories seem to require more of us than is reasonably acceptable. I will suggest that there is a way in which focusing on vulnerability, rather than merely needs or wants, can help address the issue of overdemandingness, largely because of the relational nature of vulnerability, and how this connects to our power over others. In arguing this case, I will draw on the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup.

The aim of this paper is to consider the relations between the Hegelian conception of recognition which is championed by Axel Honneth and others, and the conception of second-personal authority put forward by Stephen Darwall. It is argued that despite appearances to the contrary, they are not to be as easily aligned as some might suspect or hope, and in particular that an individual can be granted recognition in an Hegelian sense, without being granted second-personal authority. This view is defended by appeal to key texts on Hegelian recognition from the Phenomenology: the account of confession and forgiveness, and of the master/slave dialectic.

This book concerns the nature of ethics and the relation between ethics and politics in the philosophy of Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup. In the book, Løgstrup argues that apart from deontology and teleology, there is a third main tradition within philosophical ethics, which he calls ontological ethics. According to Løgstrup, ontological ethics is rooted in the fundamental conditions of human life and is closely related to Martin Luther’s natural law ethics. Løgstrup sees the fundamental ethical relationship between humans as one of interdependence based on mutual vulnerability. In this respect, Løgstrup is reprising ideas from his earlier work The Ethical Demand (1956), where he introduced his ethical position. In the present book, Løgstrup connects his understanding of the ethical demand with his new key ethical conception of sovereign expressions of life, a concept he introduced a few years earlier in his 1968 Controverting Kierkegaard, but did not then discuss in relation to the ethical demand. Finally, Løgstrup also ventures into the area of political philosophy, discussing how it is possible to connect his own ontological ethics to politics.