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Philosophy

This  paper focuses on the phenomenology of whoness.

Self Liberation in Phenomenology and Dzogchen, Essays WELCOME TO WHOVILLE By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Wed, Oct 23, 2013 Rudolph Bauer Ph.D., Author Our .personal innermost awareness is our very own subjectivity . Our subjectivity is our awareness and awareness is our subjectivity. Aham ah! I am becoming who I am!. This subjectivity is not the subjectivity of the mind. Such mind based subjectivity is of mind alone. Such subjectivity is bound like I am my mind or I am my thinking function or I am my feeling function or I am my sensation function, I am memory function. This subjectivity of mind is limited and contained and is often called the ego and is locked into duality. Western phenomenology undersands that person must know the difference between their mind and their awareness. In the upadesha instructions of dzogchen there is the admonition that it is necessary to experience the difference between your awareness and your mind. In this way you can directly and easily know that your very own innermost awareness is the manifestation of primordial awareness itself. The primordial ground manfiest within us as our own awareness. Primordial awareness manifest within us as us. This self recognition can and does take place easily. This awareness is not the mind or the functions of the mind . Nonetheless the mind can be an expression of this awareness field. The essential method of dzogchen is by becoming aware of awareness we experience directly the manifestation of ground awareness, pure awareness. To know awareness as awareness is to know primordial awareness what ever the context,whatever the dimension. In experiencing awareness we soon discover that awareness is a field whose qualities are spaceousness or emptyness, energy, light and the resonance of compassion.. The vajrajana tradition describe this field quality as dbying. Western phenomenology as expessed by later Husserl, later Heidegger and Merleau Ponty all converge on the profound field qualities of awareness. And although this awareness is not simply our body or mind, this pervasive field of awareness manifest completely within our body and mind. This primordial awareness is not a thing, and neither is our own personal awareness a thing. Our innermost awareness is not a thing. Awareness is no thingness from which everything and anything arises. Our own personal awareness is not a thing , and from within our no thingness everything and anything can arise.No thingness is the potential space within our own awareness. Since this awareness is not a thing does not mean it does not exist. Awareness exist as who. A human being is a who, who is no thing. The who is not an entity although the who is contained within a thing of mind and the thing of body and thingness of circumstances .Being a human being is paradoxical we are no thingness within thingness. We are not an entity within the entity of mind an body You are a who. In knowning the who of your own awareness you can know the who in the awareness of another person. And in knowing the who in the other person you can know the who in yourself. You can love the who in the other.This recognition of whoness is the great compassion. In knowing the who whether in your self or in the other you are actually meeting and knowning and recognizing primordial awareness manifestation as who, as pure potentiality of this singular whoness who is no thingness.. This is natural knowning of whoness in sensient beings is more often then not a prereflective knowing, a knowing that is direct without reflection and without the understanding of representational mind. We can naturally know the experience of whoness without all kinds of linguistic signifiers. The who of the mother experiences so directly and profoundly the who of the baby, and the who of the baby is brought forth by the moms experiencing the whoness within the baby as the baby. This is the process of natural realization of divinity with and as human beings. This recognition and experience of whoness in ones self and whoness in the other is actually the experience of primordial awareness within us and within the other. As the great master of awareness Swami Muktananda so often said god dwells within you and you and see god in each other. This is divinity as primordial awareness manifesting as the world and as us. Sometimes .we experience whoness which is no thingness as thingness..In experiencing the person as a thing whoness disappears. The structure of mind that fosters this unhappy change we will call and use the metaphor of the superego . The superego has something to do with this unhappy turn of events. There is often the transition from whoness to thingness in human experience.when we loose our sense of being in our awareness ..We can relocate our sense of being a subject within mind alone. When we are in mind alone we can be organized by the minds conscious and unconscious structure which contemporary psychology calls the superego. When we are subsumed into structure of our mind of the superego we become a thing and all otherness becomes things. The superego is a developmental structure of judgementalness. This judgmentalness is often primitive and pervasive. The superego is preoccupied with Right and Wrong, Good and Evil , Better and Best, and Truth and Falsity.This judgmentalness splits all phenomena into the polarities just described. This judgmentalness judges everything and every person. The superego is preoccupied with security and survival and is an attempt to contain the primitive terrors of deprivation and annihilation. The superego creates whoness into thingness.This judgmentalness permeates clericalism and fundamentalism in so many forms of human experience. The life of marriage, the life of parenting, the life of families, the life of so many human organizations such as religion, corporations, tribal life on and on. God becomes a thing, and awareness becomes a thing and all whos become things. For instance in corporations there are no whos but economic signifiers as things. In this way corporations and religions are very similar in there allegiance to superego constructions and cruelty based ethics.. THE WHO OF GNOSIS AND THE MIND OF THE JUDGEMENTALNESS The who is the qualities of awareness...spaceousness, luminousity or clarity , compassion and energy. To know the who is to naturally bring forth compassionate perception. To know the mind of the who is not the same as knowning the who. The mind of the who can often become a thing, both the judge and judge become thingness. Judgement can make a who into a thing. Both the who who judges the who and the who who is being judged becomes things. Groups of whos are easily be made into things. Groups of whos can easily make us into things. Some historical epochs are completely thingfields. Parents easily treat the little whos as little things. When a person is no longer a who and everyone is a thing, then absolutely everything and anything can be done to the who things.Genocide is the killing of thingness, entire fields of whos are very bad things. So too children can become bad things in light of manical minds of judgementalness. Psychopathicness is not simply the lack of superego as some naïve people think. In fact psychopathicness is the lack of the experience of whoness in ones self and the other. If you do not know whoness in yourself you can not know who ness in the other. Many if not most people know whoness within themselves in a particular context and then outside that context whoness disappears. Judgementalness destroys the perception of whoness in ones own self.. Whoness is space. The space of the who is the space of awareness.The greater the spaceousness the more the knowner can experience and embrace experience, all experience. Space is the great inclusiveness. The field of awareness is space,vast unbound space. If there is no space or only a tiny bit of space in the who, then the limited space of who can only experience so much, embrace so much experience. A tiny whoness is easily disturbed. The less there is space of awareness then the more the who will depend on judgement and separates experience into good and bad, right and wrong, better and best and truth or falsity compulsively and relentlessly, and unendingly. So many whos who do not cultivate the space of their awareness and located in mind alone distance themselves from experience of everything and anything including the whoness in themselves and in others. Such whos are ambilvalent and often distance or dissociate themselves from the range of manifestation of the presencing of primordial awareness.They use the method of dissociation and divinize this dissociative approach to human experience as the virtue of detachment. This detachment reflects their ambilvalence to the range of human experience and engagement. This detachment allows the who to be neither here nor there. The who is especially afraid of the power of love and the consuming presence of love. The presence of love is the presence of the primordial ground. The whoness is a field and the more vast the field and unbound the field then the who can directly enter the whoness of the other and experience the natural indivisibllity between the me who and the you who. The capacity of the who to extend its self is actually beyond the physical boundaries of the body. And so the whoness is in a certain way non local and can extend through space and beyond the boundaries. The place of the who can be extended and inclusive. Sometimes whos hid themselves in solipsism and in doing so become contained and locked in whoness. And their indivisibility with all whos become only a thought or a good idea. The who has depth and breath and vast range..The range of awareness of the who is ultimately the unbound range of primordial awareness, the dharmakaya. The superego of psychoanalysis is the languaging of a mental structure of mind that can contain the who and creates the base of who as the mind of judgementalness. The who may thinks discernment and wisdom discrimination is actually a judgement which is an act of the mind and not awareness not whoness. Actually judgment takes the person outside of whonesss ever so briefly and subtly. To be in whoness is actually to see rather directly and translucently. Whoness and gnosis are naturally in oneness. Clearly. Whoness can enter a whoness and know without distance. The who can experience non duality. Knowning non duality is so direct that secrets and situation are unveiled directly. The whoness can experience non duality within duality. When whoness enters whoness the non duality of whoness is manifest. This non duality of whoness takes place within the duality of circumstances and differentiated personality of mind and body within which is whoness. Ultimately realization is experience the completeness and vast of whoness. To be a who is to be both in duality and non duality. Often a who does not know that it is in non duality. Baby whos know this easily if there is good enough circumstances. Since primoridial awareness itself is a vast who the more one becomes aware of awareness the more the whoness of universe becomes evident. All of the infinite and singular events who reflect the vast singular actuality of whoness which is primordial awareness. The primitive affective states that are often contained and manifested within the super ego are deprivation and annihilation. And of course you can be on either side or both sides . You can be both deprived and depriving and having the terror of annihilation and imposing the terror of annihilation on another. Guilt is a sense of both. O lord I am not worthy,say but the word and my soul shall be healed. Unworthiness is actually deprivation..i am not enough and will suffer annihilation or should be annilated. The superego is not love but judgment and cruelty.The preedipal stage which is non conceptual and preverbal is deprivation and annihilation anxiety. The aedipal is at first glance achievement and accomplismnet and being in the world but i the back ground is failure ,deprivation and annihilatiion . Religion is rather strange in that it recognizes the vast who which is great and then religion combines the knowningness of whoness with the great institutionalized superego of right and wrong. The human superego confabulates the very whoness of the big who as a big judgmental thing and makes all the little whos become things . Of course other whos become bad things who do not believe in the big who of one group of who's .Of course religion treats awareness like a thing and so everything has to be counted...and accounted..and judged. Religion likes and preoccupied with the death of the who.. Religion tells whos that if you mess up at death then you are in for it..A lot of escatalogical narratives are metaphors of cruely and the rage of judgementalness on the cosmological level. The realms of judgementalness of right and wrong, good and evil, better and best, truth and falsity with cruel and everlasting consequences. Much of religion is the cultural formation of the superego...within religious tradtions There is a relentless judgmentalness.with eastern as well as western traditions. There is intrinsic tension between clericalism and shamanism, a tension between historical dogmatism and mysticism....a tension between truth as judgment and truth as revelation of Being within all beings. THE WHONESS OF PRIMORDIAL AWARENESS AS WHO We will use transliterations of the dzogchen trantric text The All Creating Sovereign. The text declares When the rupakaya(forms as archetypical(SAMBOGAKAY) and the dimension of flesh(NIRMANAKAYA) appears objectively ,that is the manifestation of my Being. I am the all creating sovereign , and you self liberate yourself through me and you will be seen by my eyes. I gaze both into them and through them. When the experiences of the mind are articulated through language ,then this is the elaboration of my Being. All language indicate Being. Whether you pursue me or not this is the sound of who I am. if you are able to sustain your experience of wisdom awareness which is remaining in awareness of awareness then original ground is experienced as presencing all the infinitely different experiences of form, sight ,sound and the sensory stimuli. And even if you are not in aware of awareness then you are still experiencing the original ground manifesting all the infiintie and different experiences. To know directly the all creating monarch is to sustain wisdom awareness . And even if wisdom awareness is not sustained you are still knowning me directly even if you do not know that. By staying in luminous spaceous knowningness with whatever phenomena is presenting itself is to know me directly and easily. Yes you can know me through all phenomena as well as through innermost awareness. There is the manifestation of innermost awareness as you and the manifestation of innermost awareness as everyone else, all who's. When all kinds of thoughts occur within the who , this is the sublime nonconceptual samdhi of who I am. All thoughts are manifestations of the whoness of me. I am not a thing I am not thingness although I manifest everything and within every who as a who. Primordial awareness manfiest both mind and body and circumstances and the who who is embodied in time and space and circumstance. The who is a place. The place of the who is a you or I. The mind grasping and fixated can hide and lose the sense of the who. Nonetheless the who I am will still be present, I am always present wheither I am known or not. Even the grasping and fixation is none the less who I am. I am the who of all the whos. Wherever a who is, I am. Written by Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. A.B.P.P. The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies .


Review: Ellis, Elizabeth, _Kant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications_

Philosophy

/7/13 7:36 AMKant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 1 of 5file:///Users/hvarden/Desktop/Varden%20NDPR%20Review%20Ellis%20Kant's%20Political%20Theory.webarchive College of Arts and Letters Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2013.01.33 Author Elisabeth Ellis (ed.) Kant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications Published: January 29, 2013 Elisabeth Ellis (ed.), Kant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications, Penn State University Press, 2012, 256pp., $64.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780271053776. Reviewed by Helga Varden, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Kant's legal-political philosophy has a peculiar interpretive history even by Kantian standards. Not only did it take extraordinarily long to receive much attention by the scholarship at all, but Kantian inspired political theories received much more attention than did Kant's own. For example, two of the most influential political theories of the last few decades are those of Habermas and Rawls -two Kantian positions that were initially developed without taking Kant's own legal and political writings as their starting point. Although Habermas has increasingly become preoccupied with and inspired by Kant's legal-political philosophy -and especially Kant's main writing on the issue, the Doctrine of Right in The Metaphysics of Morals -the same was never true of Rawls. Rawls was clearly inspired by some of Kant's shorter, political essays, primarily in his thinking about global justice in The Law of Peoples, but most of the Kantian ideas developed as part of his theory of "justice as fairness" utilize core ideas in Kant's ethical writings, including some of those captured by the categorical imperative. One reason for this delay of scholarship is presumably the fact that Kant's main work on the issue -the Doctrine of Right -is written in a somewhat extreme form of Kantianese (technical Kant vocabulary) that is both difficult to understand and often presupposes an interpretation of key ideas in Kant's overall philosophical project. Furthermore, according to Kant himself the ideas presented are less worked out than he would have liked. (It was published towards the end of his life when he had less time to devote to polishing it.) In contrast, many of his shorter, political essays are among the most moving, well written, and most accessible of any of Kant's writings. Another reason why his political philosophy received little engagement is simply the fact that in the Doctrine of Right (as well as in the corresponding lecture notes written by his students) we find some of those statements seemingly presenting Kant as a stern absolutist with little or no patience for the poor and who is more than willing to use the whip to uphold his sexist and homophobic prejudices. In any case, whatever the reason for the delay, things have changed dramatically over the last three decades or so, and today there is little doubt that Kant's legal-political philosophy, including the Doctrine of Right, has come into its own. Looking more closely at the rapidly growing secondary literature on Kant's legal-political philosophy reveals a distinction between two common trends regarding how it is engaged. On the one hand, a significant number of interpretations focus primarily on Kant's political writings (even if they also secondarily draw on other Kant texts). These interpretations typically emphasize the Doctrine of Right with an aim of identifying or developing a coherent overall interpretation of the position. On the other hand, a significant number of interpretations explore the relationship between Kant's legal-political writings and the historical period in which they were written or with regard to other aspects of his philosophy, including his theoretical, historical, educational, anthropological, and aesthetic writings. Since the aim of Elisabeth Ellis' anthology is to "introduce Kant's political thought to a new generation of readers and to demonstrate the fruitfulness and vibrancy of a broadly Kantian approach to political philosophy" (3), it is natural that the anthology includes representatives from both interpretive streams. 2/7/13 7:36 AMKant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 2 of 5file:///Users/hvarden/Desktop/Varden%20NDPR%20Review%20Ellis%20Kant's%20Political%20Theory.webarchive There's something for everyone, even if everything is not there and if everything that is there is not for everyone. Kant's Political Theory consists of nine articles as well as one of the currently richest bibliographies on Kant's legal-political thought. The authors are a mix between well-established scholars in the field and newer voices. They include philosophers, historians and political scientists. Moreover, applying the distinction between the two kinds of writings we commonly find in the secondary literature on Kant's legal-political thought yields two groups of papers. Five of the papers (by Onora O'Neill, Arthur Ripstein, Thomas W. Pogge, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Robert S. Taylor) explore Kant's political thought by primarily focusing on the Doctrine of Right and the political essays. The remaining four papers (by Michaele Ferguson, Ian Hunter, Mika LaVaque-Manty, and John Christian Laursen) explore aspects of Kant's political thought by looking to some of his other writings and/or the historical setting of his academic life. Of the papers in the first group, the first two -by O'Neill and Ripstein -seek to identify core elements in the basic philosophical structure of Kant's theory and to use them to situate Kant's theory in relation to the historical canon. The main idea suggested by O'Neill in "Kant and the Social Contract Tradition" is that rather than using the prominent social contract ideas of hypothetical or actual (explicit or implicit) consent to understand Kant's basic claim that just impositions on persons' exercise of their external freedom can be consented to by these persons whose freedom is so constrained, we should use a modal notion of consent, meaning that such consent must be possible (36). The implication of this, O'Neill suggests, is that if we want to call Kant a social contract theorist, we should be aware that "he is a peculiar one." (27) O'Neill ends by saying that the main reason why we need justice and the state is that human beings not only have to interact, but have an irreducible "unsociable" aspect (39) and are not "reliably altruistic" (37). Despite the many agreements between O'Neill's and Ripstein's articles, it is clear that challenging this very last idea -that Kant affirmed the historically prominent idea that justice fundamentally remedies human beings' typical tendency not to act virtuously (insufficiently altruistically) -motivates a great deal of Ripstein's interpretation in "Kant and the Circumstances of Justice." Ripstein argues that even if we assume away our "crooked timber," or our typical tendencies to act in ignorant, biased, selfish, or vicious ways, we still need justice. And to fully establish justice, we need states (the rule of law). Against much Kant interpretation (including the majority of the other articles in the anthology) and other prominent theories of justice, such as those we find in Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, Ripstein defends the claim that for Kant "neither justice nor the law is remedial." (44) The first part of Ripstein's paper aims to demonstrate that this basic assumption fundamentally informs Kant's proposal that establishing the state is constitutive of realizing justice, including why the pre-state condition or the state of nature, at best, is "devoid" of justice. (Because this "remedial/non-remedial" assumption is crucial for how one tries to make sense of Kant's writings, I indicate below which conception of justice and the state the other articles presuppose, if one is presupposed.) In the second part of the paper, Ripstein shows that though justice requires a state (the rule of law) anyone who manages to establish a monopoly on coercion (rule-governed violence) does not thereby also establish a minimally just state. Therefore, barbaric regimes like Nazi-Germany cannot issue political obligations on those subject to its force. In the third article, "Is Kant's Rechtslehre a 'Comprehensive Liberalism'?" Pogge utilizes Rawls's influential distinction between "freestanding, political conceptions of justice" and "comprehensive doctrines" to explore a particularly puzzling feature of Kant's Doctrine of Right, namely the way in which justice and the law are seen as restricted to so-called "external" freedom. Rawls' distinction is utilized to explain aspects of the way in which Kant separates ethics ("internal" freedom) from justice or right ("external" freedom). Pogge suggests that Kant's conception of justice is freestanding and political in the Rawlsian sense. Consequently like Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness," Kant's legal-political theory is compatible with -can fit as a "module" into -many very different comprehensive doctrines and not only Kant's own (as Rawls thought). In addition to making this larger point, Pogge engages some of the more specific aspects of Kant's argument for the establishment of the state, including expressing some worries that Kant's justification of the state does not succeed as an "a 2/7/13 7:36 AMKant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 3 of 5file:///Users/hvarden/Desktop/Varden%20NDPR%20Review%20Ellis%20Kant's%20Political%20Theory.webarchive priori" (or "non-remedial") argument, but only as the weaker "empirical" ("remedial") argument. (86f) This and other arguments in this paper can be fruitfully engaged by reading it along with the contributions by O'Neill, Ripstein, and Hodgson (next chapter), all of which were written subsequent to Pogge's contribution, which was a groundbreaking piece (originally published in 1998). In "Realizing External Freedom: The Kantian Argument for a World State," Hodgson engages another central debate in the literature, namely issues concerning global justice. In short, Hodgson utilizes arguments structurally similar to the ("nonremedial") ones Ripstein presents for the domestic case in order to justify the claim that Kant does and Kantians should support the establishment of a world state. The world state is viewed as a legal-political framework with legislative, judiciary, and executive powers restricted to interactions between states and between states and aliens. Within the existing secondary literature, the position Hodgson defends is on one extreme, where the other extreme maintains that Kant rejects the permanent establishment of any kind of a global public authority with coercive powers. Interestingly, as the relevant secondary literature shows, one can end up on either extreme -and anywhere in between -regardless of whether one interprets Kant and the Kantian project as "remedial" or "non-remedial." Hodgson's paper is a fine illustration of how one can end up firmly within the world state camp by means of non-remedial arguments. The four papers already described focus primarily on Kant's Doctrine of Right. In contrast, Taylor explores Kant's thought by making one of Kant's political essays his primary focus. "The Progress of Absolutism in Kant's Essay 'What is Enlightenment?'" explains how Kant's "Enlightenment" essay contributes to the specific debate in his time of how to understand the concept of enlightenment. Taylor also takes us through some of the key arguments in the "Enlightenment" essay, such as Kant's somewhat peculiar distinction between private and public uses of reason. He then argues that understanding Kant's contribution involves seeing how Kant conceived of the possible, historical or developmental transitions from an absolute monarch to an enlightened republic "in a manner wholly consistent with both justice and the short-run interests of the regent himself." (148) To strengthen his case, Taylor draws on several of Kant's other political essays as well as Kant's treatment of historical religions and the Doctrine of Right. Although many of the details of Taylor's argument can be disputed, it is not hard to see that an interpretation along this line is relatively easily made compatible with much of what is claimed in the previous four essays (even with their differences on whether to accept the remedial or nonremedial assumption). Looking at the first set of five papers together, there is little doubt that they give a good starting point for engaging much of the literature surrounding many of the larger interpretive questions in Kant scholarship. There are a few larger questions that are not addressed by any of the papers, such as discussions of Kant's conceptions of domestic public right, freedom of speech, and punishment, but the papers as a whole yield a solid beginning for new readers to engage many classical systematic issues in relation to Kant's legal-political theory. A second, possible drawback (the anthology is entitled Kant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications) is that most of the classical or common applied topics in legal-political philosophy, such as distributive justice (poverty), children's rights, abortion, animals' rights, health care rights, environmental protection etc., are not addressed by these (or the remaining) papers. Let us turn now to the second set of papers, which are less attentive to a technical exploration of Kant's legal-political writings as such, and instead are more focused on other works or historical facts that may have a bearing on how we consider certain aspects of Kant's legal-political thought. Two of these papers, like Taylor's, consider Kant's theory of justice in relation to issues of history and historical progress. But their approaches are quite different. Ferguson's "Unsocial Sociability: Perpetual Antagonism in Kant's Political Thought" argues that in order to understand Kant's core notion of "unsocial sociability," including what we find in the essay "The Idea for Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose," we must look not only to Kant the "moral philosopher," but also to Kant the "phenomenologist" (152). As we do, we must notice the distinction and tension in a way that Kant himself and Kantians do not (153). The problem is that Kant and Kantians conflate human nature 2/7/13 7:36 AMKant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 4 of 5file:///Users/hvarden/Desktop/Varden%20NDPR%20Review%20Ellis%20Kant's%20Political%20Theory.webarchive (viewed as things about us that pose problems for our morality or cause "moral failure") and the human condition (the morally neutral plurality of humankind) when they consider antagonism's role in human societies and their development (159f). Consequently, Kant typically sees antagonism from the point of view of moral philosophy, according to which antagonism should be overcome. Hence Kant asserts that a united will provides a means for overcoming or, to use Ripstein's language, "remedying" antagonisms (163). Similarly, contemporary Kantian approaches, like those of Rawls and Habermas, mistakenly search for the construction of some procedures, "rational will formation," or "cosmopolitan institutions that could guarantee peaceful and just relations around the globe." (153) In contrast, Ferguson argues that if we see antagonism from the point of view of phenomenology, we can appreciate how the pursuit of a cosmopolitan future -perpetual peace -- "both requires and is undermined by antagonism." (164) For example, she argues that even though antagonism as a result of moral failure (human nature) makes peace difficult, antagonism as a result of the plurality constitutive of the human condition (our unsocial sociability) drives much of human progress, including our recognition of the need for the rule of law and public institutions at both the domestic and global levels (155f). As we have seen above, some of the prominent interpretations of Kant today challenge the remedial interpretation of Kant's justification of the need for justice and the state. If they are correct in maintaining that Kant provides both remedial and non-remedial justifications for justice and the state, then, correspondingly, Kant may not have been confused about this, and Ferguson's interpretation may be closer to getting Kant right on "unsocial sociability" than she thinks. Contrary to Ferguson who thinks that much can be learned if we merely untangle various confusions found in Kant's and Kantian legal-political thinking, Hunter's "Kant's Political Thought in the Prussian Enlightenment" is much more ambitious. He seeks to uncover the true structure of Kant's legal-political philosophy -a structure that is invisible if one reads only Kant's legal-political and moral writings. Consequently, it is unappreciated by currently prominent Kant scholars. Hunter's first task is to inform contemporary Kantians of "the complex cultural-political terrain" Kant was operating in -a terrain that is "largely terra incognita in studies of Kant's moral philosophy" (175f). He aims to show that Kant's political and religious writings, despite appearances, seek to defend Kant's ideal of the intellectual as "the Protestant German university metaphysician" (185) against various competing moral-religious programs. Second, he employs this historical knowledge to uncover Kant's real purpose in the Doctrine of Right, which he summarizes in the following way: Kant's Rechtslehre is thus based on the metaphysical anthropology of man the self-determining pure intelligence that he elaborated in his metaphysics of morals. In fact Kant's political and legal doctrine is formed on the basis of the extraordinary conception that right or justice originates when this pure intelligence, existing outside space and time, seeks to exercise its freedom 'externally' by occupying the global surface of the earth. (182) There is almost no end to the interpretive puzzles and controversies raised by this statement (and statements of its kind throughout the paper), some of which readers may discern from consulting the other papers in the volume. That this statement and many other interpretive claims throughout the paper are textually implausible gives Hunter little pause, however, since what Kant appears to be saying is not so important. To understand what Kant really means in his legalpolitical writings, we need to look elsewhere. In particular, we need to appreciate a particular (also controversial) interpretation of Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, the plausibility of which is seen as stemming from a particular interpretation of various historical facts that influenced Kant deeply (including in ways Kant himself wasn't aware). LaVaque-Manty's "Kant on Education" explores aspects of Kant's view of education. It starts by explaining how Kant was particularly influenced and supportive of the Philanthropinen education movement (founded by Johann Bernhard Basedow) before moving on to the way in which Kant's conception of education complements his moral philosophy -both his ethics and his legal-political philosophy. Of particular importance, LaVaque-Manty points out, is the emphasis Kant puts on children being treated as children whose aim is to learn to master their freedom -both their internal and their external 2/7/13 7:36 AMKant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame Page 5 of 5file:///Users/hvarden/Desktop/Varden%20NDPR%20Review%20Ellis%20Kant's%20Political%20Theory.webarchive (including embodied) freedom. LaVaque-Manty does not explore whether or how this impacts the issue of children's rights or public law issues concerning education, but clearly it points to many concerns such an account will consider. The final paper, Laursen's "Kant, Freedom of the Press, and Book Piracy" primarily focuses on Kant's argument for book piracy, though at the very end it touches upon the question of freedom of the press. Laursen begins by arguing that Kant's small section on book piracy in the Doctrine of Right ("What is a Book?") contains arguments he had presented in an essay in Berlinische Monatsschrift a decade earlier -an essay aimed at refuting his contemporary, Martin Ehler. According to Ehler, book piracy should be outlawed because it involves stealing the author's thoughts or ideas, whereas Kant proposes that piracy should be outlawed because it involves "the transaction of business in the name of another without his consent." (230) Laursen's paper is particularly useful for learning about the historical setting in which Kant was formulating his piracy arguments. To me, a general drawback of these last four papers is that they do not reveal an intimate familiarity with the kinds of positions defended in the first five papers and hence that they do not try to draw any connections to them. Therefore they are unconnected from currently prominent interpretations of Kant's Doctrine of Right and his legal-political essays. At least this seems to be the reason why these last four papers do not utilize the kinds of interpretations found in the first five papers as they develop their own. Then again, this disconnect is prominent in the literature, so perhaps Ellis is quite right in making this selection in her effort to represent the current literature accurately. In sum, then, although the selection of some of the papers puzzles me somewhat and, as mentioned above, although there are some types of papers I believe the anthology would have benefitted from including, in my view it certainly succeeds in its aim of providing new readers with a good starting point for approaching the literature surrounding Kant's legal-political thought. These new readers should be fairly well versed in legal-political philosophy beforehand, but to such readers the anthology provides a very good sense of the current variety of approaches to Kant's theory of justice. Copyright © 2013 ISSN: 1538 1617 College of Arts and Letters Notre Dame, IN


Should you have the right to be forgotten on Google?

Philosophy

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275673865 Should You Have The Right To Be Forgotten On Google? Nationally, Yes. Globally, No. Article in New Perspectives Quarterly * April 2015 DOI: 10.1111/npqu.11510 CITATIONS 7 READS 126 1 author: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: The Ethics of Digital Well-Being View project BITrum: Interdisciplinary Elucidation of the Information Concepts, Theories, Metaphors and Problems View project Luciano Floridi University of Oxford 461 PUBLICATIONS 14,417 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Luciano Floridi on 15 July 2021. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Should You Have The Right To Be Forgotten On Google? Nationally, Yes. Globally, No. LUCIANO FLORIDI is director of research, and professor of philosophy and ethics of information, at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He is a member of Google's Advisory Council on the Right to be Forgotten. His last book is The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality (Oxford University Press, 2014). In February, an advisory council to Google published its report on the European Union's recently recognized legal principle of the "right to be forgotten" online. The report is the outcome of seven consultations with many experts and the public in Europe from September to November 2014. Luciano Floridi, one of the members of the advisory council, shares his thoughts about the report and the future of the debate. report summary: When Google approves a delink request in Europe, the report recommends Google continue its practice of removing the link across all its European versions of Google (Google.fr in France, Google.de in Germany, etc). The report suggests four main criteria that may help Google to evaluate individual deleting requests: 1) the public role of the data subject, 2) the types of information that may bias towards a private or public interest, 3) the source of the information (e.g. a newspaper) and 4) the time frame (relevance of old information). The report also advised that publishers should be notified of delinking requests and should have means to challenge improper delinkings. The report also advised that publishers should be notified of delinking requests and should have means to challenge improper delinkings. SPRING 201524 08-58 SECTION 1.qxp_Layout 1 3/18/15 12:08 PM Page 24 In May 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued a landmark ruling. It stated that in some circumstances, Google must remove (from its search index) links to personal information if this is "inaccurate, inadequate or no longer relevant." The ruling concerned a specific request by a Spanish citizen, Mario Costeja González. His name featured prominently in Google search because of two foreclosure notices published under legal requirement in 1998, when his property was repossessed for debt. In the end, the court accepted Mr. Costeja's claim that providing links to the notices was irrelevant to Google's purposes as a search engine under the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive. The links had to be removed. It seemed a small episode, of no relevance. But it was actually a spark that ignited a lively international debate on how to regulate the availability and accessibility of legally published information online. We soon discovered that two fundamental principles, namely privacy and freedom of speech, had collided. This is why the outcome of such a debate may have long-lasting consequences and represent a watershed in the evolution of the Internet. Since the May ruling, Google has received about 210,000 requests of removal and has taken down about 40 percent of them (updated figures: Google Transparency Report). Because the ruling concerned the Spanish case, it left unspecified several important aspects of implementation when other cases are in question. In order to identify the right policies to deal with each request of delinking, Google set up an advisory council. After having received contributions and feedback from experts and the public, we have now published our findings and recommendations. I would like to share some comments on two difficult points present in the report on which I was happy to compromise, even if I had slightly different views. The first point concerns the geographical scope of the ruling-the socalled territoriality issue. For centuries, roughly since the Peace of Westphalia (1648), political geography has provided jurisprudence with an easy answer to the question of how far a ruling should apply-that is, as far as the national borders within which the legal authority operates. A bit like "my place, my rules; your place your rules." It may now seem obvious but it took a long time and immense suffering to reach such a simple approach. And it's still perfectly We soon discovered that two fundamental principles, namely privacy and freedom of speech, had collided. SPRING 2015 25 08-58 SECTION 1.qxp_Layout 1 3/18/15 12:08 PM Page 25 fine today, as long as you operate within a physical space. However, when it comes to the Internet, the space is logical, being made of data, protocols, URLs, interfaces and so forth. Which means that any place is only a click away. The result is that a ruling that concerns the Internet cannot rely on the old, Westphalian solution. If you ask Google to delink personal information in Spain, all it takes to find the removed links is to check the same search engine in another country. The non-territoriality of the Internet works wonders with the unobstructed circulation of information. In China, for example, the government has to make a constant and sustained effort to control information online. But the same feature proves awkward if you are trying to implement the right to be forgotten. The report strikes a fair balance, recommending to implement the delinking policy at the European level-that is, if a request is approved, links are removed from all European version of Google's search engine. Personally, I argued in favor of a more restricted, nation-based delinking. The reasons in favor of this option are pragmatic. Most users never leave their local search engines. Also because of linguistic reasons, Spaniards use google.es, Italians google.it, Germans google.de and so forth. The power of default is enormous. It follows that if Alice, who is French and lives in Paris, asks Google to delink some legally published information about herself, the most effective implementation is to remove the links from Alice's local search engine, namely google.fr. Over 95 percent of all searches in Europe are on local versions of Google. Thus, it is useless to remove them also from google.pt because virtually nobody in France will ever care to check information about Alice using the Portuguese version of Google, while the very few who may care will not be deterred by a pan-European delinking anyway. Someone who is determined to find a piece of information about Alice will simply use a search engine not based in Europe. Some have bitten the bullet and argued that all this is correct, but this is precisely why the delinking should be worldwide-that is, applied to all versions of any search engine. In the case of Google, this means delinking the information in question also from, for example, google.br (Brazil). I disagree. Why? Remember: my place my rules, but your place your rules. How could one explain to Brazilians I would have preferred a national rather than a European delinking because it would be effective without being excessive. SPRING 201526 08-58 SECTION 1.qxp_Layout 1 3/18/15 12:08 PM Page 26 that some legally published information online should no longer be indexed in a Brazilian search engine because the European Court of Justice has ruled so? Would the opposite also apply? Could Brazilians appeal? And how could one determine what is of public interest in this or that country? Maybe I am an investor from Brazil, and I do need to know whether a person has (for example) had some properties repossessed in the past. Some have called for Google to extend its delinking to all its global search sites, since they are accessible within Europe. However, consider the following scenario. The day after some worldwide delinking starts being implemented, nothing will stop undemocratic and illiberal places from hosting a search engine that provides links to all information anyway. It would be ironic if we were to find information using a search engine based in North Korea because it was more complete than the local ones. Geographical space is no longer the solution; so the approach recommended by the report is a good compromise that adapts an outdated answer to a new question. It does not work very well but it is the classic "better than nothing" solution. Opting for a global delinking would be, instead, the classic "perfect is the enemy of good." It would be just another way of killing the Westphalian approach by asking the world to adapt to European decisions. When it came to finalizing the text of the report, I was happy, pragmatically, to concede the point because a pan-European delinking simply adds nothing to a national one, in terms of effective protection of individuals. It would be a different story if one were to argue that some legally published information online should be removed (the information itself, not just the link) altogether or blocked at the source (for example, by not allowing any search engine to index it in the first place). I am not against similar options, but I suspect that, in order to consider them, we would have to have a serious debate about how harmful the information in question needs to be to justify such a drastic solution. But this is something with which not everybody in favor of the "right to be forgotten" seems to be willing to engage. The second point concerns the publishers, and it is simpler. I am of the view that publishers should be fully involved in the evaluation of a delinking request. They should have the right to know about whether someone has It would be ironic if we were to find information using a search engine based in North Korea because it was more complete than the local ones. SPRING 2015 27 08-58 SECTION 1.qxp_Layout 1 3/18/15 12:08 PM Page 27 requested a search engine to delink some information that they legally published; to be informed about what decision has been taken by the search engine with regard to such a request; and to appeal, if they disagree with the delinking decision. All this applies even more strongly if a worldwide delinking approach were to be adopted. Of course, the risk is that, by informing the publishers, one may enable them to re-publish the same contents in ways that can bypass the ruling and the delinking decision itself, both of which concern only personal information and hence "name and surname" searches. Yet this is a case in which I would recommend a principled approach. One could certainly implement disincentives, but the fact that publishers may misuse the meta-information about a delinking request is not an argument against their right to know and hence being able to appeal. This will be even more obvious the further we move towards a situation in which not being indexed by a search engine simply means "not being," full stop. In this case too, the report has found a fair balance, by recommending Google to follow the good practice of notifying the publishers "to the extent allowed by the law." It is a bit vague, and I would have liked to see an even more incisive position in favor of a full involvement of the publishers throughout the process, but it is a satisfactory compromise. At the end of our consultations and internal discussions, once the report had reached a final version, each member of the advisory council had the possibility of adding a dissenting opinion. This is common practice but, given that the report is a finely balanced compromise that has been reached through long consultations and difficult negotiations, I was in favor of not taking advantage of such a possibility. So I invited all members to make an extra effort to agree on the outcome. Some of us decided to opt for such a conciliatory approach. Compromises have the distinctive property of leaving each party a bit dissatisfied. Our report is not an exception. But I hope that those who will discuss it will use it not to take it apart, but to make further progress on an issue so vital for the future of the Internet. We are the transitional generation. In the future, both people in front and behind a desk during a job interview, for example, will be digital natives. When everybody will be on the other side of the divide, embarrassing pictures on Publishers should have the right to know about whether someone has requested a search engine to delink some information that they legally published. SPRING 201528 08-58 SECTION 1.qxp_Layout 1 3/18/15 12:08 PM Page 28 Facebook may just be normal and acceptable. An analogy may be drawn with prenuptial sex-something normal today, but still scandalous only a couple of generations ago. How our culture and our notions of privacy and freedom of speech will change is very hard to guess but change they will. They are dynamic features of our social life and will evolve with it. I hope that they will change for the better, in favor of more relaxed and tolerant views of what, in the future, will be our personal information online. And I trust that more ideas, better technological solutions and new legal frameworks will provide for a reconciliation of privacy and freedom of expression-two necessary pillars of any liberal democracy.  An analogy may be drawn with prenuptial sex-something normal today, but still scandalous only a couple of generations ago. SPRING 2015 29 08-58 SECTION 1.qxp_Layout 1 3/18/15 12:08 PM Page 29 View publication stats