Michael Thompson

This is the German version of a manuscript written for an Italian journal.  It attempts (in the fashion of 'Life and Action',  'Apprehending Human Form' and 'Forms of Nature' ) to show that typical attacks on Foot's 'Natural Goodness' import into the text the writers' own 'vulgar' (as I suppose) conceptions of the category of a life form - and consequently the bearer's epistemic relations to it.

This is a (very) elementary exercise showing how one might lucidly represent states of affairs of what are sometimes (wrongly) called 'second personal' character. The focus is on the movement of knowledge between people, especially where 'I' and/or 'you' are used in the assertion that constitutes the movement (circumstances being otherwise auspicious for genuine transfer of knowledge).  The writing is a bit rough, on reflection; it was originally a talk and handout, presented - with inadequate apologies! - to my distinguished friend Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer for his Festschrift.

One doctrine  here propounded is that in the relations ("nexuses") of persons that have propositional or sub-propositional content, there is no distinction of persons: the first person is the second person (as will be explained).  The distinction is a device of language, which is sometimes used for constituting such nexuses or intellectual relations.  Another little would-be theorem is that in our sort of case  - e.g. "X informed Y that he* loved her** or equivalently "Y learned from X that he** loved her* -- only an Anscombe-Loar-Lewis account of is even intelligible; thus only an Anscombe-Loar-Lewis account of first person belief and knowledge - "Y knows that X loves her*" can be true.  A 'Fregean' view of these intellectual acts are involving relation to a complete Thought or 'proposition' is impossible.

As it happens I have no interest in the topics of knowledge or testimony, and least of all language. The matter arises here as preliminary to topics of justice and recognition, the falsehood of consequentialism, the 'reasons' exhibited in the just act, the nature of the state of the just agent, etc.  These topics are so far ill-considered, as I imagine, because the quasi-logical difficulties I try to bring out here are not faced. The nexus of informing someone of something - or, reciprocally, learning something from someone - just make for an easy approach to the logical or categorial troubles.  So-called social relations of all sorts are frequently essentially relations with content - 'propositional nexuses' broadly speaking. Such would be e.g. the relation "X promises Y that he*ll do A for her**" - if only because (as I think) it contains as an element that X and Y understand themselves to be thus related - or if you like that they relate each other to each other through the two place relation: __ promises __ that he*ll do A for her**.  In myself bringing X and Y under such a relational concept, I think of the concept I possess and exercise as also possessed by each of them, and of them as relating themselves to each other through it.

The essay is meant to assist with a monograph restating the content of my essay "What is it to Wrong Someone?"

This was originally a talk for an APA panel 'Anscombe's Intention, 50 years after' (in 2008 I think) ; it was reprinted in Ford, Hornsby, Stoutland, 'Essays on Anscombe's Intention', HUP 2014  The exhibition of Anscombe's independence from Wittgenstein is a crucial element in 'rescuing [her] from the enormous condescension of posterity', though it is pretty artlessly attempted in the first few pages here.

This is the text of some lectures I gave in Potsdam and at the Stuttgart Hegel Kongress.  I am attempting to write a proper monograph on practical wisdom or phronēsis; this is a sort of outline or abstract and should be taken in that spirit.  I apologize for its undeveloped state, but some people seem to have found it helpful despite this. It has now appeared in the proceedings of the Hegel Kongress http://www.klostermann.de/Freiheit (I have seen it cited thus: Thompson, Michael, "Forms of nature", in G. Hindrichs, Axel H. (eds.), Freiheit. Stuttgarter Hegel-Kongres, Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann 2013, 701-735)


The criticism of McDowell in this particular presentation, suffers somewhat from terminological difficulties; I think I will drop any use of him, because the labor of clarification is too distracting.  McDowell uses 'nature' to mean something like 'the totality of facts' - which makes sense given his point of departure (it is, if you like,  'natura naturata' - Spinoza's 'modes' /are/ a bit like 'facts'). The qualifications 'first' or 'second' are epistemological in character, meaning something like 'the sub-region of the totality of facts that includes only facts that can be known thusly' - in the one case, through empirical science; in the other through the exercise of the virtue of the cognizer; etc. An expression like 'Clara Zetkin's first nature' thus means something like 'the sub-region of the totality of facts the elements of which a) can be apprehended with the instruments of empirical science and b) have Clara Zetkin as subject'  The fact that she was a bearer of justice and a benefactor of humankind will not be one of those facts.

It goes without saying that Aristotelian writers will assign a quite different category to uses of expressions like 'the nature of x', where they find any use for them at all.

These are the slides that accompanied a lecture to the Aristotelian Society (interleaved with notes to the speaker).
http://www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk/proceedings/mp3/thompson.mp3 is probably not intelligible without them; of course it's probably not intelligible with them either.