phlogma

Notes on M. O’C. Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations” (with Wittgenstein)
Drury recalls what Wittgenstein said about Otto Weininger.
106
He alludes to von Wright’s remarks on Wittgenstein’s high regard for Weininger. Wittgenstein recommended Sex and Character to Drury as “a work of remarkable genius” and Drury remembers that Wittgenstein said that Weininger, at twenty-one and before anyone […]

Notes on Rush Rhees, “Postscript” (on Wittgenstein)
Editor’s note: Luno comments on Rush Rhees’ published recollections, a chief source for biographical understanding of certain perceived peculiarities of Wittgenstein’s makeup, specifically, his relationship to his Jewishness, to Otto Weininger, women, and politics. In the course of these notes, Luno offers one of his more remarkable summations of […]

Notes on David G. Stern and Béla Szabados, Wittgenstein Reads Weininger
Editor’s note: Luno comments on Stern, David G. and Szabados, Béla, “Reading Wittgenstein (on) Reading: An Introduction” in Wittgenstein Reads Weininger, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 1-28. He has something to say about every essay in the collection.
8
While there is little, in our judgment, that […]

In this classic paper in the literature on the idea of supererogation (acts above and beyond moral duty), Urmson argues for recognition of a special class of moral acts that, while clearly moral, cannot be required—at least not generally. In the course of his argument, he makes explicit a masculine assumption about the feminine relation to morality. Susan Wolf reacts to this paper. Together, Urmson’s seemingly off-handed remark and Wolf’s response, are symptomatic of the deep rift in moral perspective between women and men. The underlying clash of principles were first clearly examined by Otto Weininger a century ago. Luno picks up where Weininger left off, using Urmson and Wolf as philosophical occasions.

Wolf does not consider moral perfection “a model of personal well-being.” She disagrees with the assumption “that one ought to be as morally good as possible.” Either we must make our ideals more “palatable” or, as she will argue, tinker with what we mean when we affirm a moral theory. She explores what is wrong with being a moral saint.

O’Neill addresses the Kantian moral concepts of not treating others as means (i.e., using them) and treating them positively as persons, how these are related, and finally how “an adequate understanding of what it is to treat others as persons must view them not abstractly as possibly consenting adults, but as particular men and women with limited and determinate capacities to understand or consent to proposals of action.” The Kantian moral ideal so far as it has practical application must take account of human limitations.

Notes on Harriet Taylor Mill, The Enfranchisement of Women
[The essay first appeared in the Westminster Review (1851), then in 1868 in a pamphlet under her name, and in John Stuart Mill’s Dissertations and Discussions in 1875. After some confusion as to its authorship, J. S. Mill attributed the essay to Harriet Taylor (1807–1858). Mill elaborated […]

Notes on J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women, chapter 1
[The “feeling” Mill addresses is that the legal subordination of women is somehow justified.]
…So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a […]

Notes on J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women, chapter 4
[All emphasis in the quoted passages is added by me.]
The self-worship of the monarch, or of the feudal superior, is matched by the self-worship of the male. Human beings do not grow up from childhood in the possession of unearned distinctions, without pluming themselves upon […]

Notes on Catherine MacKinnon, “Pornography: On Morality and Politics”
264
In contemporary industrial society, pornography is an industry that mass produces sexual intrusion on, sexual access to, possession and use of women by and for men for profit. It exploits women’s sexual and economic inequality for gain.
This understanding of the reality of pornography must contend not only […]