Environmental ethics has long struggled with a dilemma: many mistrust as “anthropocentric” our judgments about the values of non-human nature, but it is unclear how we could make, let alone justify, “biocentric” judgments; and recent worries that the world is linguistically constituted only exacerbate the threat of skepticism. Happily, Plato’s Phaedrus gives some indication of how a “dialogue” with nature might proceed. But since Plato’s confidence in the forms is likely irrecoverable, I turn to Gadamer for an account of the language-world relation that allows us to concede the world’s linguistic constitution while still acknowledging the possibility of nature’s dialogue with us.

A key concept in Peter Wagner’s academic production is modernity, and the thought that modernity is experience and interpretation is central. Not the historical and social facts as such but the interpretation of them is the motor of modernity. The way Wagner understands history as interpretation and struggle for superiority of interpretation brings him close to the historical philosophy of Reinhart Koselleck, which is based on two fundamental conceptual couples: experiences and expectations, and critique and crisis. If interpretation constitutes the mode to approach modernity, the question remains of what the phenomenon we are approaching really is. What is modernity? Wagner’s answer is that the imaginary of being autonomous is the core of modernity. From this point of departure, the chapter discusses the distinction between individual and collective autonomy, highlighted by what since the 1830s has been referred to as the social question, under connection to the concepts of freedom and progress. The conclusion links up with Wagner’s recent emphasis on the dynamics between protest against and defence of domination.

In this paper, I defend the possible consent interpretation of Kant’s formula of humanity from objections according to which it has counterintuitive implications. I do this in two ways. First, I argue that to a great extent, the supposed counterintuitive implications rest on a misunderstanding of the possible consent interpretation. Second, I argue that to the extent that these supposed counterintuitive implications do not rest on a misunderstanding of the possible consent interpretation, they are not counterintuitive at all.

Central to several current philosophical projects is determining which conversational conventions will best locate and accommodate all the required participants. This article follows Troy Paddock’s lead in exploring a number of conventions currently on offer, particularly Heidegger’s aesthetic nearness-to-hand and Latour’s scientific Actor-Network-Theory. This article also introduces Donald Davidson’s social triangulation as a complementary model of approach: one thatimplicates propositional agents in potentially revealing relations. It concludes that a close study of implicational, as distinct from inferential, argument and judgment may prove profitable in establishing a secure and productive environment, and may foster the emergence of modeling techniques and metrics that could help in designing such conversations.

This paper explores some implications of Ricoeur’s conception of testimony. Testimony plays two roles: it enables us to know what actually happened and it reveals how the past continues to be meaningful. However, these two roles generate a peculiar problem: the meaning of the past, as bearing witness, cannot be exhausted by a narrative account of what happened. Furthermore, since testimony situates a people within a tradition and raises suspicion on such a narrative by showing that it does not fully bear witness to the past, Ricoeur’s understanding of testimony opens a site for ethical and political challenges.