Diane Jeske

Friendship, Virtue, and Impartiality

The two dominant contemporary moral theories, Kantianism and utilitarianism, have difficulty accommodating our commonsense understanding of friendship as a relationship with significant moral implications. The difficulty seems to arise from their underlying commitment to impartiality, to the claim that all persons are equally worthy of concern. Aristotelian accounts of friendship are partialist in so far as they defend certain types of friendship by appeal to the claim that some persons, the virtuous, are in fact more worthy of concern than are other persons. This article argues that we can preserve the underlying impartiality of Kantianism and utilitarianism, while also preserving a certain partiality with respect to our friends: the partiality of commonsense only seems objectionable if we fail to understand the true grounds, nature, and implications of such partiality. Neo-Aristotelian partiality should be rejected in favor of commonsense partiality.

Aging, Getting Older, and the Good Life

I distinguish between aging as merely getting chronologically older and aging as a process involving change. I then consider some prominent theories of value (hedonism, desire-satisfaction theory, and objective state theory) and examine how each theory evaluates the value or lack thereof involved in aging in either sense. I also discuss people’s subjective attitudes toward aging and show how the facts of such attitudes will play a role in each theory in determining the actual value of aging. I conclude by suggesting that everyone, young and old alike, would benefit from a cultural shift away from our current obsession with youth.

On Loyalty and Loyalties: The Contours of a Problematic Virtue, by John Kleinig

dichotomy of free will and determinism, opting instead for self-organization—a more naturalistic conception of motion in which entities interact, creating order among themselves. Implicitly relying on Zhuangzian descriptions of agency and the psychology of autotelic experience, Bruya argues that there are some forms of human action that exemplify self-organization and thereby lack intention and self-conscious thought. Two final thoughts—one of frustration and one of hope. First, I cannot help but register my exasperation that only one of the fifteen contributors is a woman. This is not simply disappointing for an otherwise superb collection, but it fails to reflect the excellent work of the many women working in Chinese philosophy and on topics covered in the anthology. Second, one might worry that the collection engages in intellectual colonization of the Chinese traditions. Bruya argues that this is not the case and, on this point, we agree. The direction of comparison and engagement is squarely on the Chinese challenge to the ‘very conceptual boundaries that constrain and guide the dialogue’ in Anglophone philosophy and how the collection seeks ‘the mutual development and transformation of both’ Chinese and Western philosophy [xxv]. Bruya conceives of philosophy as a joint enterprise across time and traditions. My hope is that mainstream philosophers read the collection and come to share Bruya’s conception of philosophy. Perhaps the anthology will be a catalyst for the profession coming closer to accepting Chinese philosophy. And perhaps more mainstream philosophers will engage Chinese philosophy on its own merits or be willing to engage Japanese, Indian, Africana, and other philosophies on theirs.