The Pariah And The Poet: Hannah Arendt’S Alternative Reading Of Goethe’S «Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre» As A Critique Of Enlightenment «Bildung», John Macready
Dec 2018
The Pariah And The Poet: Hannah Arendt’S Alternative Reading Of Goethe’S «Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre» As A Critique Of Enlightenment «Bildung», John Macready
John Macready
The German ideal of Bildung—the process of self-development through culture that Goethe dramatized in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre—and its connection to the crises of Jewish emancipation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been the topic of intense scholarly discussion. At issue is whether Bildung compromised Jewish identity. One of the earliest and strongest critics of Bildung was Hannah Arendt. Although Bildung was seen by many Jewish intellectuals, like Moses Mendelssohn, to be an answer to widespread anti-Judaism in European society, Arendt saw it as an apolitical concept that jeopardized Jewish emancipation in Europe. Arendt was skeptical of the …
Hate Speech As Theater, Adam White
Jul 2018
Hate Speech As Theater, Adam White
Adam White
More public and philosophical attention has recently been given to hate speech. Hate speech does not merely hurt feelings; it is public communication that implies that the targeted group does not merit the constitutional protections assured the speaker. Hate speech poses a riddle given the liberal commitment to freedom of speech independent of content.
This paper argues that philosophers misdiagnose hate speech. The novel claim is that hate speech is a tactic in a game being played by the speakers. The game’s prize is the same kind of personal buzz felt by effective theater actors. Winning requires manipulating the audience’s …
The Difference Principle: Rawls’S Two Oversights, Adam White
Jul 2018
The Difference Principle: Rawls’S Two Oversights, Adam White
Adam White
John Rawls’s Difference Principle demands that basic social institutions be ordered such that the prospects of the worst off office are maximized, even if it constrains the prospects of all the better off offices. This is a conservative demand, at odds with an obligation to maximize total welfare. Rawls defends against this concern by arguing that as cooperative schemes evolve the worst off office should not make concessions before the better off offices do. Or, this is my reading of Rawls’s schematic illustrations of the difference principle.
The aim of this paper is to point out two important oversights in …
Crime Futures Market, Adam White
Jul 2018
Crime Futures Market, Adam White
Adam White
Responding to the legally guilty is typically presented as a choice between incarceration and rehabilitation. This paper suggests a third option: preemptive rehabilitation. The argument presents an innovative institutional approach and a unique moral justification. The vision is a crime futures market that transfers the risk of potential crime away from undeserving victims and into the portfolios of willing investors. Instead of taxpayers paying exclusively for prisons, the proposal would allow young adults to sign contracts to not get involved in crime, but pay the award only upon their future success. Because the contracts represent a future payment they are …
Term Accountability, Adam White
Jun 2018
Term Accountability, Adam White
Adam White
Democratic constitutions allow citizens to hold officeholders accountable via election. Legislative elections are typically held either by the calendar or at the legislature’s own discretion, i.e., “no confidence”. But both are inferior to a third option: having citizens decide when the next election will be. This procedure, “Term Accountability”, optimally aligns policymaker motivations with citizen interests. Ideally, pathological legislatures would serve short terms while productive legislatures would serve long terms.
Our generation is familiar with contesting and perfecting constitutional practices as they pertain to citizen rights. But there is an apparent intellectual bias against institutional revision. This supports a presumption …
Corruption Cop, Adam White
Jun 2018
Corruption Cop, Adam White
Adam White
Corruption is a primary descriptor of politics, and of course corruption is bad on its merits. But what is wrong about the practice it is the lack of an adequate response. Assume then that corruption persists, not primarily because of bad moral character on the part of officers, but because of poor constitutional design.
It is curious however that contemporary constitutional theory resists innovation. This paper takes up the challenge by proposing a new, fourth constitutional branch and office: a “corruption cop”. A corruption cop possesses the exclusive authority to remove corrupt officers from public office.
The authority to remove …
Support For The Precautionary Principle, Jennifer Mather
Jun 2018
Support For The Precautionary Principle, Jennifer Mather
Jennifer Mather, PhD
The precautionary principle gives the animal the benefit of the doubt when its sentient status is not known. This is necessary for advanced invertebrates such as cephalopods because research and evidence concerning the criteria for sentience are scattered and often insufficient to give us the background for the decision.
Cephalopods Are Best Candidates For Invertebrate Consciousness, Jennifer A. Mather, Claudio Carere
Jun 2018
Cephalopods Are Best Candidates For Invertebrate Consciousness, Jennifer A. Mather, Claudio Carere
Jennifer Mather, PhD
Insects might have been the first invertebrates to evolve sentience, but cephalopods were the first invertebrates to gain scientific recognition for it.
An Invertebrate Perspective On Pain, Jennifer A. Mather
Jun 2018
An Invertebrate Perspective On Pain, Jennifer A. Mather
Jennifer Mather, PhD
Although Key (2016) argues that mammals feel pain and fish do not, from an invertebrate perspective, it is obvious that the pain experience is shared by animals from a number of different animal groups.
The Architecture Of Law: Building Law In The Classical Tradition, Brian M. Mccall
May 2018
The Architecture Of Law: Building Law In The Classical Tradition, Brian M. Mccall
Brian M McCall
The Architecture of Law explores the metaphor of law as an architectural building project, with eternal law as the foundation, natural law as the frame, divine law as the guidance provided by the architect, and human law as the provider of the defining details and ornamentation. Classical jurisprudence is presented as a synthesis of the work of the greatest minds of antiquity and the medieval period, including Cicero, Artistotle, Gratian, Augustine, and Aquinas; the significant texts of each receive detailed exposition in these pages.
Along with McCall’s development of the architectural image, he raises a question that becomes a running …
The Property Question.Pdf, William A. Edmundson
Apr 2018
The Property Question.Pdf, William A. Edmundson
William A. Edmundson
The “property question” is the constitutional question whether a society’s basic resources are to be publicly or privately owned; that is, whether these basic resources are to be available to private owners, perhaps subject to tax and regulation, or whether instead they are to be retained in joint public ownership, and managed by democratic processes. James Madison’s approach represents a case in which prior holdings are taken for granted, and the property question itself is kept off of the political agenda. By contrast, John Rawls approach abstracts from any actual pattern of holdings, while putting the property question on the …
Democracy And Scientific Expertise: Illusions Of Political And Epistemic Inclusion, J.D. Trout
Jan 2018
Democracy And Scientific Expertise: Illusions Of Political And Epistemic Inclusion, J.D. Trout
J.D. Trout
Realizing the ideal of democracy requires political inclusion for citizens. A legitimate democracy must give citizens the opportunity to express their attitudes about the relative attractions of different policies, and access to political mechanisms through which they can be counted and heard. Actual governance often aims not at accurate belief, but at nonepistemic factors like achieving and maintaining institutional stability, creating the feeling of government legitimacy among citizens, or managing access to influence on policy decision-making. I examine the traditional relationship between inclusiveness and accuracy, and illustrate this connection by discussing empirical work on how group decision-making can improve accuracy. …
儒家领袖与儒家民主, Stephen C. Angle
Dec 2017
儒家领袖与儒家民主, Stephen C. Angle
Stephen C. Angle
儒家民主主义者认为,如同现代儒家政治体必须从君主制转变到民主制一样,必须对儒家政 治领袖的角色进行反思,但是,这并不意味着现代儒家必须摈弃传统儒家视野下的领袖观.尽管在现代民 主儒学的新背景下,一些关键的儒家见解在某种程度上呈现出新的意涵,但这些洞见的传统内涵依旧重 要.陈祖为和陈永政在论证儒家强调领导力胜过制度这一观点上并无过错,但我们还应该重视那些儒家 所依赖的用来培养和选拔贤德领袖的制度.儒家从未认为政治的运转可单独依赖于启发型的领袖,优秀 领导力的运作依赖于一系列背景制度的支撑和推进.慈继伟认为儒家在深层次上是非民主的,但这一观 点却恰恰能够帮助我们解释,为什么儒家必须向民主演进.儒家民主仍然需要政治领袖来扮演那些能够 承继传统儒家领袖精神的角色,现代儒家需要通过拥抱人本民主,而不是民本威权主义,来解决传统儒学 中的张力.
The Property Question.Pdf, William A. Edmundson
Dec 2017
The Property Question.Pdf, William A. Edmundson
William A. Edmundson
for presentation at the Property and Political Economy Conference at the Smith Institute,
Chapman University, April 20-21, 2018
The “property question” is the constitutional question whether a society’s basic resources are
to be publicly or privately owned; that is, whether these basic resources are to be available to
private owners, perhaps subject to tax and regulation, or whether instead they are to be
retained in joint public ownership, and managed by democratic processes. James Madison’s
approach represents a case in which prior holdings are taken for granted, and the property
question itself is kept off of the political agenda. By …
Lost Expectations: On Derrida's Abraham, Mary-Jane V. Rubenstein
Dec 2017
Lost Expectations: On Derrida's Abraham, Mary-Jane V. Rubenstein
Mary-Jane Rubenstein
This chapter undertakes a critical analysis of Jacques Derrida’s reading of Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven) in The Gift of Death (Donner la mort). In a gesture that might be called a faithful betrayal, Derrida seeks in this text to “go further” than de Silentio, pushing Abraham’s singular near-sacrifice of Isaac into “the most common” experience of decision, his absolute relation to the Absolute into every relation to any other. Composed largely of anonymous fragments, the essay at hand evaluates the theo-ethico-political stakes of this deconstruction, seeking to re-read Derrida’s tout autre in light of …
Artificial Intelligence And Role-Reversible Judgment, Stephen E. Henderson, Kiel Brennan-Marquez
Dec 2017
Artificial Intelligence And Role-Reversible Judgment, Stephen E. Henderson, Kiel Brennan-Marquez
Stephen E Henderson
As intelligent machines begin more generally outperforming human experts, why should humans remain ‘in the loop’ of decision-making? One common answer focuses on outcomes: relying on intuition and experience, humans are capable of identifying interpretive errors—sometimes disastrous errors—that elude machines. Though plausible today, this argument will wear thin as technology evolves.
Here, we seek out sturdier ground: a defense of human judgment that focuses on the normative integrity of decision-making. Specifically, we propose an account of democratic equality as ‘role-reversibility.’ In a democracy, those tasked with making decisions should be susceptible, reciprocally, to the impact of decisions; there ought to …
