Query: Peonidis

title: Peonidis Filimon, Autonomy and sympathy: A post kantian moral image

title: Review of Democracy as Popular Sovereignty by Filimon Peonidis (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013)
abstract: Review of Democracy as Popular Sovereignty by Filimon Peonidis (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013)

title: John Stuart Mill, Ofelimismos [Utilitarianism] Introduction, translation and commentary by Filimon Peonidis (Athens: Polis, 2002) pp. 241

title: Making Sense of Dignity

title: Making Sense of Dignity: A Starting Point
abstract: Although appeals to human dignity became quite popular after the end of War World II in various moral and legal settings, the term retained an air of semantic indeterminacy, and scholars are of opposing minds concerning its usefulness and significance. In this essay I intend to offer a sketch of a "deflationary" account of human dignity viewed as one moral value among many others according to which it is conceived as the minimal respect we prima facie owe to our own personality, as well as to the personality of everyone else without any restriction or exception. This account is accompanied by a justification, which does not presuppose the endorsement of a particular moral theory, and envisages dignity as a bulwark to counter the morally abhorrent consequences of many categorical and normatively tainted dichotomies western societies have created.

title: Multiculturalism and liberal democracy
abstract: Filimon Peonidis: You were the first person who showed to us the significance of minority protection, cultural membership, and multiculturalism for mainstream AngloSaxon political philosophy. In the past all these were regarded as political, sociological or legal issues. A long period separates the publication of your first book on this topic, Liberalism, Community and Culture (1989) and your latest one, Multicultural Odysseys (2007) Have your views on liberal multiculturalism undergone any significant change during all these years?

title: Freedom of Expression, Secularism and Defamation of Religion: The Case of Charlie Hebdo
abstract: I argue that under normal circumstances a state that is liberal and secular should not use its legal apparatus to suppress the publication of cartoons like those that triggered the deadly terrorist attack on the premises of Charlie Hebdo in 2015, if it is determined to abide by its core values. These values, which include religious neutrality, religious freedom, and unhindered freedom of criticism, imply that individual citizens are prima facie legally free to express their disapproval of particular religions or religious faith in general, through any non violent means they consider appropriate, including parody and ridicule. This idea is open to various objections. Those focusing on the protection of religion as such can be easily dismissed, but the charge that defamation of religion causes offence to believers has to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, I defend the view that we need something stronger than taking offense to justifiably ban harsh religious criticism. In particular, I argue that, if the above sort of criticism prevents its recipients from exercising their basic rights or it incites third parties to engage in criminal activities against the above individuals, it should be subject to legal sanctions. However, this is not the case with the cartoons that appeared in Charlie Hebdo, since, as far as I can tell, no basic rights of French Muslims were violated, and no violent actions were committed against them as a result of their publication.

title: Intellectual history for the non converted
abstract: In the thirties, R. G. Collingwood drew a distinction between the 'reader of historical literature' and the 'reader of philosophical literature. He said that we 'consult historians' but we 'follow philosophers. He meant by this insightful remark that, in studying philosophy, we are interested more in the process of the philosopher's thought, in the method she applied, in the principles she relied upon and so forth rather than in the conclusions she reached. On the contrary, when we study history we focus more on the final product, the historical work, without placing much emphasis on the methodological principles underlying it. In his words 'what we demand of the historian is the product of his thought; what we demand of the philosopher is the thought itself. It appears to me that this distinction is not so clear cut as it was before the Second World War. The spectacular development of intellectual history from the late fifties and onwards, which is concisely and magisterially exposed by Richard Whatmore in hisWhat is Intellectual History? is marked by a pious and persistent concern for methodological issues, and it is heavily influenced by a variety of philosophical positions that were not meant by their original exponents to be applied in this field. It would not be an exaggeration to maintain that intellectual historians are now not only 'consulted, but 'followed, in the sense that academic readers are directly engaged with the theoretical and methodological assumptions and presuppositions of their work. However, intellectual history has an ambivalent relation with philosophy. On the one hand, Skinner's linguistic contextualism, the view still prevalent in the field at least in the Anglophone world, draws heavily on postwar developments in linguistic philosophy and especially the work of John Austin. On the other hand, in its original version, this approach dismisses an assumption that is almost commonplace among political philosophers: certain past philosophical positions are not that remote from our current concerns that they are not taken into consideration and form part of contemporary arguments, theories and conceptions. This close interplay between philosophy and intellectual history allows me to raise certain brief points for discussion from the standpoint of a political philosopher whose views are to a great extent informed and influenced by the long history of the discipline. First, I cannot but welcome Skinner's 1988 reply to the objection that linguistic contextualism ends up endorsing relativism. 'This seems' he said

title: Bentham and the Greek Revolution: New Evidence
abstract: Download this article Filimon Peonidis is Assistant Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He participates in a project on Bentham's involvement in the Greek War of Independence funded by the Hellenic Parliament Foundation for Parliamentarianism and Democracy.

title: Marsilius of Padova as a Democratic Theorist