Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Citizen Responsibility For War In Imperfect Democracies, Lisa Rivera

Lisa Rivera

Are individual citizens of imperfect democracies morally responsible for unjust wars waged by their state? Moral responsibility for unjust wars involves both retrospective and social responsibility. Citizens of imperfect democracies are retrospectively responsible when they choose to vote for a leader they know will wage an unjust war. This situation may occur very rarely. For example, US citizens did not have this political option at the outset of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. However, even when citizens are not retrospectively responsible they have the social responsibility to engage in collective action to address the harms unjust war causes.

Sacrifices, Aspirations And Morality: Williams Reconsidered, Lisa Rivera

Lisa Rivera

When a person gives up an end of crucial importance to her in order to promote a moral aim, we regard her as having made a moral sacrifice. The paper analyzes these sacrifices in light of some of Bernard Williams’ objections to Kantian and Utilitarian accounts of them. Williams argues that an implausible consequence of these theories is that that we are expected to sacrifice projects that make our lives worth living and contribute to our integrity. Williams’ arguments about integrity and meaning are shown to be unconvincing when the content of projects is left open. However, a look at …

Ethics And The Golden Rule, Harry Gensler, S.J.

Harry J. Gensler, S.J.

Harry J. Gensler defends the golden rule and addresses all of the major philosophic objections, pointing out several common misunderstanding and misapplications. Gensler first discusses golden-rule reasoning and how to avoid the main pitfalls. He then relates the golden rule to world religions and history, and to areas like moral education, egoism, evolution, society, racism, business, and medicine. The book ends with a discussion of theoretical issues (like whether all morality reduces to the golden rule, which the author argues against).

Democratic Participation, Engagement, And Freedom, Cillian Mcbride

Cillian McBride

It is commonly supposed that democracies should encourage greater political participation and civic engagement. This article identifies two distinct perspectives on political participation and civic engagement: a ‘freedom-centred’ model and an ‘ethical’ model. The ‘freedom-centred’ model defended here draws on the republican concept of freedom as non-domination, together with the political liberal notion of fair deliberative proceduralism, while the ethical model draws on Aristotelian, perfectionist, sources. It is argued that the ‘ethical’ model is overly concerned with the ‘moral renewal’ of modern social life, and is insensitive to problems of domination posed by its account of civic reciprocity and trust. …

Adult Children And Eldercare: The Moral Considerations Of Filial Obligations, H Theixos

H Theixos

This essay investigates the demands on adult children to provide care for their elderly/ill parents from a socio-moral perspective. In order to narrow the examination, the question pursued here is agent-relative: What social and moral complexities are involved for the adult child when their parent(s) need care? First, this article examines our society’s expectation that adult children are morally obligated to provide care for their parents. Second, the essay articulates how transgressing against this normative expectation can inure significant moral criticism. The final sections present these tensions within the context of disability.

Ethics: Contemporary Readings, Edited By Harry J. Gensler, Earl W. Spurgin, And James C. Swindal, Harry Gensler, S.J., Earl Spurgin, James Swindal

Harry J. Gensler, S.J.

No abstract provided.

Imagining Woman Otherwise, Or Nothing: Sexuation As Discourse In Lacanian Thought, Rahna Carusi

Rahna M Carusi

My dissertation looks at the connections between Lacan’s four discourses and the sexuation graph in order to claim that sexuation is discursive and that, as Lacan presents it with the phallus as its quilting point, the sexuation graph is a narrative based on patriarchal hegemony, which is one of many possible narratives. I argue that through the hysteric’s discourse and a removal of the phallus as the Symbolic-Imaginary quilting point, we can begin to formulate new narratives of sexuated subjectivities. The textual objects I use for this project are literary and filmic works where women are the central topic or …

Great Men, Little Black Dresses, & The Virtues Of Keeping One’S Feet On The Ground, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

One can use phenomenology, along with the usual tools of scholarship and analysis, to make the point that the promises of the 1960’s and 1970’s especially those of the women’s movement, have yet to bear significant fruit in the academy. Hence, for everybody’s non-thingly phenomenology of non-practice, a handy-dandy wiki-check on the net yields the claim that “U.S. Department of Education reports indicate that philosophy is one of the least proportionate, and possibly the least proportionate, fields in the humanities with respect to gender,” with a rather dismal addendum reporting that in “2004, the percentage of Ph.D.s in philosophy going …

Adorno On Science And Nihilism, Animals, And Jews, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

No less than Heidegger or Nietzsche, Adorno had his own critical notions of truth/untruth. But Adorno’s readers are unsettled by the barest hint of anything that might be taken to be anti-science. Thus it is argued that Adorno opposes not science but scientism. But, and here not unlike Arendt, Adorno argued that so-called “scientistic” tendencies are the very conditions of society and of scientific thought.” I ask how we are to read Adorno by exploring his thought on animals and nihilism.

The Ister: Between The Documentary And Heidegger’S Lecture Course Politics, Geographies, And Rivers, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

The Ister, the 2004 documentary by the Australian scholars and videographers, David Barison, a political theorist, and Daniel Ross, a philosopher, appeals to Martin Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course, Hölderlins Hymne «Der Ister»and the video takes us «backward» as the river flows: beginning from the Danube’s delta where it ends in the sea and «journeying» with it to its source in the Alps. the value of the Barison/Ross documentary for both political theory and philosophy is its illustration of the technological incursions or assaults on the river itself, that is to say: its representation of the ‘uses’ and hence of the …

Ex Aliquo Nihil: Nietzsche On Science And Modern Nihilism. Acpq, 84-2 (Spring 2010): 231-256., Babette Babich

Babette Babich

This essay explores the nihilistic coincidence of the ascetic ideal and Nietzsche’s localization of science in the conceptual world of anarchic socialism as Nietzsche indicts the uncritical convictions of modern science by way of a critique of the causa sui, questioning both religion and the enlightenment as well as both free and unfree will and condemning the “poor philology” enshrined in the language of the “laws” of nature. Reviewing the history of philosophical nihilism in the context of Nietzsche’s “tragic knowledge” along with political readings of nihilism, willing nothing rather than not willing at all, today’s this-worldly and very planetary …

Nietzsche’S Post-Human Imperative: On The “All-Too-Human” Dream Of Transhumanism, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

No abstract provided.

Mindscapes And Landscapes: Hayek And Simon On Cognitive Extension, Leslie Marsh

Leslie Marsh

Hayek’s and Simon’s social externalism runs on a shared presupposition: mind is constrained in its computational capacity to detect, harvest, and assimilate “data” generated by the infinitely fine-grained and perpetually dynamic characteristic of experience in complex social environments. For Hayek, mind and sociality are co-evolved spontaneous orders, allowing little or no prospect of comprehensive explanation, trapped in a hermeneutically sealed, i.e. inescapably context bound, eco-system. For Simon, it is the simplicity of mind that is the bottleneck, overwhelmed by the ambient complexity of the environmental. Since on Simon’s account complexity is unidirectional, Simon is far more ebullient about the prospects …

A Healthy Mania For The Macabre, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

The article discusses the fascination with death in art in response to several exhibits which display preserved human bodies, such as the "Body Worlds" traveling exhibit which features human bodies preserved with silicon after an acetone bath, a technique discovered by medical scientist Gunther von Hagens. The author looks at human curiosity with morbidity and artists such as Damien Hirst that use it as the focus of their work. Topics include comments by Richard Harris, creator of "Morbid Curiosity" exhibition in Chicago, Illinois, art historian Paul Koudounaris, and the beauty of death and morbidity according to New York artist and …

Op-Ed: Banning Protesters An Attack On Democracy, Stephen D'Arcy

Stephen D'Arcy

A defence of academic freedom at Western U.

Trust And The Trickster Problem, Zac Cogley

Zac Cogley

In this paper, I articulate and defend a conception of trust that solves what I call “the trickster problem.” The problem results from the fact that many accounts of trust treat it similar to, or identical with, relying on someone’s good will. But a trickster could rely on your good will to get you to go along with his scheme, without trusting you to do so. Recent philosophical accounts of trust aim to characterize what it is for one person to trust another so as to avoid this problem, but no extant account successfully does so. I argue that connecting …

Stigmergy 3.0: From Ants To Economies, Leslie Marsh, Margery Doyle

Leslie Marsh

No abstract provided.

Restructuring Science, Re-Engaging Society, Danielle Lake

Danielle L Lake

Letter To The Editor: Adderall Abuse Sets Add Patients Back, Andrew Blitman

Andrew Blitman

No abstract provided.

Op-Ed: Occupiers Begin 'To Build A New Democracy', Stephen D'Arcy

Stephen D'Arcy

A defence of the Occupy movement.

Categorical Imperative As The Source Of Morality, Joyce Lazier

joyce lazier

No abstract provided.

Ethics And Experience: Life Beyond Moral Theory, Harry Gensler, S.J.

Harry J. Gensler, S.J.

The article reviews the book "Ethics and Experience: Life Beyond Moral Theory," by Timothy Chappell.

Coerced Confessional, Miracle Exoneration: The Case Of Ex-Monster Jerry Hobbs, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

No abstract provided.

Love, Sex Shouldn't Be Free, Andrew Blitman

Andrew Blitman

No abstract provided.

Hayek's Philosophical Psychology, Leslie Marsh

Leslie Marsh

Hayek's philosophical psychology as set out in his The Sensory Order (1952) has, for the most part, been neglected. Despite being lauded by computer scientist grandee Frank Rosenblatt and by Nobel prize-winning biologist Gerald Edelman, cognitive scientists -- with a few exceptions -- have yet to discover Hayek's philosophical psychology. On the other hand, social theorists, Hayek's traditional disciplinary constituency, have only recently begun to take note and examine the importance of psychology in the complete Hayek corpus. This volume brings together for the first time state-of-the-art contributions from neuroscientists and philosophers of mind as well as economists and social …

Can Businesses Be Too Good? Applying Susan Wolf's 'Moral Saints' To Businesses, Earl Spurgin

Earl W. Spurgin

Susan Wolf famously argues that moral sainthood is not an ideal for which persons should aim because it requires one to cultivate moral virtues to the exclusion of significant, nonmoral interests, and skills. I find Wolf's argument compelling in her context of persons, and seek to demonstrate that it remains so when the context is expanded to businesses. I argue that just as moral perfection precludes individuals from challenging societal norms and traditions in ways that benefit us, moral perfection prevents businesses from challenging norms and traditions in ways that can promote positive social change. I also describe, and respond …

Nozick’S Taxation Is Forced Labor Argument, Jason Waller

Jason Waller

No abstract provided.

Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction, Harry Gensler, S.J.

Harry J. Gensler, S.J.

No abstract provided.

Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions, David Keller

David R. Keller

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Logic, Harry Gensler, S.J.

Harry J. Gensler, S.J.

This Second Edition arranges chapters in a more useful way for students, starting with the easiest material and then gradually increasing in difficulty. It provides an even broader scope with new chapters on the history of logic, deviant logic, and the philosophy of logic. It also expands the section on informal fallacies and includes a more exhaustive index and a new appendix on suggested further readings. Finally, it includes updates to the LogiCola instructional program, which is now more visually attractive as well as easier to download, install, update, and use.