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Persons and Passions

Essays in Honor of Annette Baier

Edited by Joyce Jenkins, Jennifer Whiting, and Christopher Williams

“This collection conforms to a high standard of historical scholarship in philosophy. Students and scholars of early modern philosophy will find much of interest here.” —Jane McIntyre, Cleveland State University

The essays in this collection, written in honor of noted Hume scholar Annette Baier, reflect the influence of her work in the area of philosophical naturalism. Philosophical naturalism has ethical and epistemological implications that often run contrary to the rationalist tendencies of academic philosophy. These essays collectively examine the four main themes of Baier’s naturalism: a general resistance to thinking of persons atomistically, the importance of trust between persons and the mutual dependence of persons, the positive role of emotions in human judgment, and the modes of self-correction available to persons so conceived.

Many of the contributors to this volume take a historical approach, dealing particularly with Descartes and Hume. Others develop Baier’s naturalistic themes for feminist philosophical purposes. All of these essays offer original, and sometimes polemical, insights into the history of philosophy. This collection will be welcomed by philosophers, ethicists, feminists, and political theorists.

JOYCE JENKINS is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg.

JENNIFER WHITING is Chancellor Jackman Professor in the Arts at the University of Toronto.

CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Contributors: Christopher Williams, Lisa Shapiro, William Beardsley, Amy Schmitter, Lilli Alanen, Saul Traiger, Donald Ainslie, Janet Broughton, Alasdair MacIntyre, David Gauthier, Robert Shaver, Sergio Tenenbaum, Michele Moody-Adams, Karen Jones, Jennifer Whiting.

Reviews

“Joyce Jenkins, Jennifer Whiting, and Christopher Williams have compiled an exemplary volume of essays written to honor Annette Baier’s philosophical career. . . The essays collected here are of a uniformly high quality. The volume should appeal to anyone interested in the broader naturalism that Baier champions and in a rich moral psychology that in turn informs moral philosophy in both the history of philosophy and more contemporary discussions.” — Ethics

“The widely ranging essays in this volume capture perfectly the array of philosophical interests defining the career of Annette Baier, one of the ablest, most readable, and most precocious philosophers of the last thirty years. These essays written by Baier’s friends and admirers (many of them her former students) are a tribute to this fine career.” — Philosophy in Review