Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Empiricism And Wesleyan Ethics, Kevin Twain Lowery

Faculty Scholarship – Theology

In this article, the open-endedness of Wesleyan ethics is affirmed; attempts to articulate a system of Wesleyan ethics have been few, and it would be virtually impossible for any single expression of Wesleyan ethics to be regarded as definitive for the tradition as a whole. The fact that Wesleyan ethics is a relatively open field allows it to be developed in a number of ways that can still be regarded as Wesleyan or are at least consistent with basic Wesleyan commitments. Wesley’s allegiance to empiricism is then recalled, and the importance of addressing epistemological questions is stressed. An outline of …

Is Global Poverty A Moral Problem For Citizens Of Affluent Societies?, Harry Van Der Linden

Harry van der Linden

The gap between the affluent and the global poor has increased during the past few decades, whether it is measured in terms of private consumption, income, or wealth. One would expect that severe poverty in a world of abundance would constitute a moral challenge to the affluent, but in fact it hardly seems a serious ethical concern. Affluent citizens seem so little morally concerned with global poverty. However, the most promising approach seems to be to explore and divulge factually and conceptually the numerous ways in which the affluent are implicated in a wholly unjust world of growing inequality. Changing …

Social Contracts, Fair Play, And The Justification Of Punishment, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In recent years, the counterintuitive claim that criminals consent to their own punishment has been revived by philosophers who attempt to ground the justification of punishment in some version of the social contract. In this paper, I examine three such attempts—“contractarian” essays by Christopher Morris and Claire Finkelstein and an essay by Corey Brettschneider from the rival “contractualist” camp—and I find all three unconvincing. Each attempt is plausible, I argue, but its plausibility derives not from the appeal to a social contract but from considerations of fair play. Rather than look to the social contract for a justification of punishment, …

Saving Morality: Why We Cannot, And Why We Must, Jon Drake

Honors Theses

Philosophers and laymen alike have often used morality to invite misconceptions of human life into ethics, and also of ethics into human life. The Kant/Williams discourse provides a rich backdrop on which to consider these misconceptions. But the misconceptionsof morality involved are just as numerous and just as serious. One thing that the Kant/Williams discourse shows is this: that ethics can be neither contained by nor cultivated without morality. Though much of Williams’ critique of Kantian morality is quite astute, thephilosophical and ethical wisdoms of morality abound in spite of these. Morality understands the fundamental condition of moral loss, and …

Kant And The Fact Of Reason, Kenneth Kh Chung

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

It is often thought that Kant abandoned his argument for the justification of morality in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals for a radically different argument in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the Groundwork, Kant appears to try to justify our commitment to the moral law on the basis of our freedom, but in the Critique, he tries to justify that commitment on the basis of what he calls the fact of reason. I assess and reject influential interpretations of both arguments as being philosophically unsound, and I propose, what I take to be, a …

Legitimate Authority, Following Orders, And Wars Of Questionable Justice, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this article, the author discusses philosophy teacher David Estlund's belief that subjects of a state with a morally justified claim to political authority have a duty to obey its legal commands to wage a particular war, even if they believe that the state has made a mistake in its reasons for waging the war. The author argues that Estlund's theory also allows for individuals to assess the justice of the wars they fight. He also argues that Estlund's view also holds that individual combatants should not be held accountable for any injustice of a war that the state believes …

You And Me Baby Ain't Nothing But Mammals: Disgust, Evolution, And The Transcendence Of An Immaterial Soul, Sara G. Gottlieb

Psychology Honors Projects

Materialist theories of mind are disturbing for those who endorse the idea that an immortal soul is distinct from the material body. Many argue for a uniqueness of the human spirit that transcends bodily qualities. The present research focuses on the rejection of human evolution from the perspective of disgust, which has both a physical (body) and moral (soul) component and is elicited by objects that remind us of both death and animals. Study 1 asked whether those primed to feel disgusted would show an implicit preference for creationism over evolution on an Implicit Associations Test but failed to find …

Worthy Lives, Lisa Rivera

Philosophy Faculty Publication Series

Susan Wolf's paper "Meaning and Morality" draws our attention to the fact that Williams's objection to Kantian morality is primarily a concern about a possible conflict between morality and that which gives our lives meaning. I argue that the force of Williams's objection requires a more precise understanding of meaning as dependent on our intention to make our lives themselves worthwhile. It is not meaning simpliciter that makes Williams's objective persuasive but rather meaning as arising out of our positive evaluation of the value of our lives as a whole. This type of meaning has a normative element: it involves …

Moral Limits Of Dworkin's Theory Of Law And Legal Interpretation, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

At the foundation of Justice for Hedgehogs is a commitment to moral objectivity – the doctrine that there are right answers to moral questions. This nicely complements Dworkin’s legal theory, which holds that right answers to legal questions depend on right answers to moral questions. Without the doctrine of moral objectivity, Dworkin could not reasonably maintain, as he does, that law provides determinate answers to legal questions.

Marx And Morality: An Impossible Synthesis?, Harry Van Der Linden

Harry van der Linden

A discussion of Allen E. Buchanan, Marx and Justice (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982); Marshall Cohen, Thomas Nagel, and Thomas Scanlon, eds., Marx. Justice. and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); and Kai Nielsen and Steven C. Patten, eds., Marx and Morality, Supplementary Volume VII of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy, 1981).

Morally Justifying Oncofertility Research, Carolyn Mcleod

Philosophy Publications

Is research aimed at preserving the fertility of cancer patients morally justified? A satisfying answer to this question is missing from the literature on oncofertility. Rather than providing an answer, which is impossible to do in a short space, this chapter explains what it would take to provide such justification.

Killing, Letting Die, And The Case For Mildly Punishing Bad Samaritanism, Ken M. Levy

Journal Articles

For over a century now, American scholars (among others) have been debating the merits of “bad-samaritan” laws – laws punishing people for failing to attempt “easy rescues.” Unfortunately, the opponents of bad-samaritan laws have mostly prevailed. In the United States, the “no-duty-to-rescue” rule dominates. Only four states even have bad-samaritan laws, and these laws impose only the most minimal punishment – either sub-$500 fines or short-term imprisonment.

This Article argues that this situation needs to be remedied. Every state should criminalize bad samaritanism. For, first, criminalization is required by the supreme value that we place on protecting human life, a …

Das Subjekt Als Moralische Person. Zu Husserls Späten Reflexionen Bezüglich Des Personenbegriffs, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

In this essay, I will attempt a systematic reconstruction of the general shape of Husserl's late philosophy, insofar as it centers on the concept of personhood. The systematic concatenation of this and other themes in Husserl's late work - the method of epoché and reduction, ethics, personhood, and teleology - has only recently begun to be explored in Husserl scholarship, and this article is a modest contribution to the further e1ucidation of their mutual relationship. One of the most striking results of this reconstructive analysis is Husserl's final concept of "person", which goes beyond the traditional distinctions, such as "heart" …

Moral Foundation Theory And The Law, Colin Prince

Seattle University Law Review

Moral foundation theory argues that there are five basic moral foundations: (1) harm/care, (2) fairness/reciprocity, (3) ingroup/loyalty, (4) authority/respect, and (5) purity/sanctity. These five foundations comprise the building blocks of morality, regardless of the culture. In other words, while every society constructs its own morality, it is the varying weights that each society allots to these five universal foundations that create the variety. Haidt likens moral foundation theory to an “audio equalizer,” with each culture adjusting the sliders differently. The researchers, however, were not content to simply categorize moral foundations—they have tied the foundations to political leanings. And it is …

A Moral Investigation Of Torture In The Post 9.11 World, Joe Moloney

Undergraduate Review

The field of philosophy is unique, as it allows one to logically examine issues in all disciplines, from science to politics to art. One further important discipline that philosophy examines is criminal justice. In this respect, one approach philosophy can take when examining criminal justice is to assess each issue by questioning its morality—that is, whether an action within the issue is right or wrong based upon a system of ethics. This approach concerns the subfield of philosophy known as ethics, a subfield that includes questions concerning what is morally good and morally bad. When one is faced with an …

Cohen, Collective Responsibility, And Economic Democracy, Harry Van Der Linden

Harry van der Linden

My main objective in this paper is to show that Hermann Cohen's ethics offers an important but hitherto neglected contribution to the- current debate within Anglo-American ethics on the moral status of the modern business corporation.

Hermann Cohen’S Political Philosophy And The Communitarian Critique Of Liberalism, Harry Van Der Linden

Harry van der Linden

My main aim here is to examine what the significance is of the communitarian critique of liberalism for Hermann Cohen's political philosophy. I will conclude that Cohen's socialist Kantianism can successfully meet this critique. Also, I will argue that his political philosophy can better deal with some of the problems that communitarians detect in our Western democracies than can communitarianism itself. One crucial reason for this is that Cohen completes the original Kantian liberal project by making all agents fully autonomous in the economic sphere.

Republicanism And Crime, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

These are but two of the difficult questions that arise when one examines the claim that crime is a public wrong. I take it, though, that their difficulty is an indication of the importance of thinking through the presuppositions and implications of this conception of crime, not a reason to abandon it. A thorough 'thinking through' is too large and complex a task for this chapter, but it is possible to make a case here for the right way to proceed with such an undertaking. That right way, in my view, is to look to the republican tradition of political …

The Oxford Handbook Of Philosophy And Literature, Richard Thomas Eldridge

Philosophy Faculty Works

This introductory article explains the coverage of this book, which is about the relations of complementarity and opposition between philosophy and literature. This book explores the interests for human life of specific genres of literature, considers broad modes of attention that have marked off certain large cultural periods from one another, traces workings of certain central literary devices for achieving attention and evaluates the use of literature as a practice in relation to the practices of inquiry, morality and politics. It also discusses the significance of the works of some philosophers in analyzing literary practice.

Architectural Chastity Belts: The Window Motif As Instrument Of Discipline In Italian Fifteenth-Century Conduct Manuals And Art, Jennifer Megan Orendorf

Quidditas

Offering advice on a range of topics from the quotidian to the extraordinary, from superstition to scientific, fifteenth-century conduct manuals appealed to readers of all Italian social classes. This essay focuses specifically on manuals which prescribe behaviors for women, and investigates the reception of these precepts and the extent to which these notions informed and transformed women’s lives. Specifically, I examine one piece of advice which recurs throughout instructional literature during this time: the prescribed notion that women should remain far removed from their household windows for the sake of their honor, reputation and chastity. Widely read manuals, such as …

Competing Conceptions Of Modern Desert: Vengeful, Deontological, And Empirical, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The dispute over the role desert should play, if any, in assessing criminal liability and punishment has a long and turbulent history. There is some indication that deserved punishment -- referred to variously as desert, just punishment, retributive punishment, or simply doing justice -- may be in ascendance, both in academic debate and in real world institutions. A number of modern sentencing guidelines have adopted it as their distributive principle. Desert is increasingly given deference in the purposes section of state criminal codes, where it can be the guiding principle in the interpretation and application of the code's provisions. Indeed, …

Galileo, Biotechnology, And Epistemological Humility: Moving Stewardship Beyond The Development-Conservation Debate, Charles C. Adams

Pro Rege

This paper was presented, in modified form, at the sixty-first annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, at Calvin College, July 28-31, 2006.

Is Global Poverty A Moral Problem For Citizens Of Affluent Societies?, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The gap between the affluent and the global poor has increased during the past few decades, whether it is measured in terms of private consumption, income, or wealth. One would expect that severe poverty in a world of abundance would constitute a moral challenge to the affluent, but in fact it hardly seems a serious ethical concern. Affluent citizens seem so little morally concerned with global poverty. However, the most promising approach seems to be to explore and divulge factually and conceptually the numerous ways in which the affluent are implicated in a wholly unjust world of growing inequality. Changing …

The New York Police Officer: Democratic And Moral Accountability In Conflict, Sarah Ryan, Dan Williams

Publications and Research

The following case draws upon two views of accountability. One is democratic accountability the other is accountability to one's own moral conscience. As the story unfolds, other facts may get in the way but these central views should not be forgotten. The focus of this case is on the individual. However, the material also covers institutional decisions and policies that deserve considering. The institutional story is the background, not the foreground, of this case. Yet, when the institutional features are considered, they may give new insight to the individuals' decisions.

The Public Funding Of Health Care: A Brief Historical Overview Of Principles, Practices, And Motives, Paul Carrick

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Nationally sponsored programs designed to fund health care for the general public are largely a twentieth century phenomenon. Yet a long glance backward at the medical and public health history of Western civilization, extending from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century, reveals earlier periods when governments, religious institutions, and other groups provided some measure of medical relief for the sick, the poor, and the homeless. In this essay, I will provide not an exhaustive but rather an illustrative account of this oft forgotten fact. My objectives are threefold.

First, to remind us that the active concern of society for …

Moral Conflict And The Indeterminacy Of Morality, Matthew Pianalto

Matthew Pianalto

Cases of moral conflict often occupy a central role in arguments against claims that moral judgments admit truth. In this paper, I argue that the employment of moral conflicts against the truth-susceptibility of moral judgments rests upon a false conception of the determinacy of morality.

Nietzsche On The Future And Value, John Ranta

Philosophy Theses

This thesis addresses two interpretative questions concerning the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first is to ascertain the primary objection that Nietzsche has to a morality that he describes as decadent. The conclusion reached is that Nietzsche’s objection to decadent morality is based on the harm it does to a class of “higher” individuals who have valuable work to perform in achieving a desirable future for humanity. The second question is to determine the manner in which Nietzsche’s own values are to be understood based on the skepticism he expresses concerning the objectivity of value. The conclusion reached is that …

The Color Of The Sublime Is White, Jeffrey Downard

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this paper, I examine Melville's discussion in Moby Dick of the whiteness of the whale from the perspective of a Kantian account of the sublime. My aim, in the first instance, is to see if the comparison helps to shed light on Melville's puzzling discussion of the color white and why this color serves to heighten the feeling of being overwhelmed by terror when confronted with something extremely large or powerful. In turn, I intend to use Melville's discussion of whiteness to put pressure on some of the philosophical assumptions behind a Kantian analysis of the sublime. In particular, …

Toward A Genealogy Of Aryan Morality: Nietzsche And Jacolloit, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

While Nietzsche’s writings of the late 1880s reveal waxing interests in Hinduism, Sanskrit philology, Aryan culture, and the related Indo-European hypothesis, these interests have been remarkably understudied by Nietzsche scholarship, with the exception of a scant few articles that have recently appeared. The presence of the aforementioned topics was crucial for the configuration of the works written in 1887 and 1888: On the Genealogy of Morality, The Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist, as well as for some of the notions at hand in Nietzsche’s correspondence with Heinrich Köselitz, but the provenance of the ideas that …

Carrying The Jade Tablet: A Consideration Of Confucian Artistry, Eric C. Mullis

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this paper I discuss the aesthetic dimension of ritual action. In order to demonstrate how the rites render action aesthetically expressive, I draw on the notion of an "art of context" and further detail the Confucian understanding of artistic practice as an essential component for moral cultivation. In turn, I use John Dewey's account of aesthetic form in order to support and further demonstrate the ability of the rituals and arts to organize action and to thereby render it aesthetically significant. However, Dewey's account entails that we question either conceptual or institutional limitations of aesthetic form as such limitations …