Philosophy Commons^™

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the pages of my thesis, I comprehensively analyze the processes, intentions, and production of my thesis film Stay Woke. My examination will exhaustively probe every stage of the film from development to preproduction to production to postproduction and beyond. Individual aspects of this process including writing, casting, locations, production design, cinematography, directing, budgeting, scheduling, and postproduction workflows will be detailed. As I make elaborations in each section, I will explain my learning experiences from each day’s new tasks, challenges, and lessons. All of these things will be framed with regards to the overall goal and themes of the …

Stasi Brainwashing In The Gdr 1957 - 1990, Jacob H. Solbrig, Jacob Hagen Solbrig

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the methods used by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), more commonly known as the Stasi, or East German secret police, for extraction of information from citizens of the German Democratic Republic for the purpose of espionage and covert operations inside East Germany, as it pertains to the deliberate brainwashing of East German citizens. As one of the most efficient intelligence agencies to ever exist, the Stasi’s main purpose was to monitor the population, gather intelligence, and collect or turn informants. They used brainwashing techniques to control the people of the GDR, keeping the populace paralyzed with fear …

Food Waste In The United States: Issues, Ethics, And Solutions, Patrick Erickson

Honors College Theses

One-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally. In North America and Europe, 280-300 kg of food is wasted per capita each year, with more than 40% of the losses occurring at the retail and consumer level. In this paper, I compare the amount of food wasted in the United States to the amounts wasted by different societies around the world, and discuss the reasons for the food waste, and the consequences that the waste has on our society, in terms of resource consumption and production of pollution. The pragmatic philosophy of Richard Rorty states …

Libertarianism, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Libertarianism is a theory in political philosophy that strongly values individual freedom and is skeptical about the justified scope of government in our lives. Libertarians see individuals as sovereign, as people who have a right to control their bodies and work, who are free to decide how to interact with willing others, and who cannot be forced to do things against their will without very strong justification.

For some, the argument in support of this view hinges on the principle of self-ownership. To them, individual rights are morally foundational, the basic building blocks of their theory. Many others, however, take …

A Game We Have To Lose: Overcoming The Harm Of Coming Into Existence, Hannah Strang

Honors Projects

This paper explores the asymmetry of pleasure and pain as expressed in David Benatar’s book Better Never to Have Been, which is the basis for the argument that it is always an irreparable harm to bring a person into existence, and therefore we are morally obligated to pursue extinction as a species. I will examine Benatar’s argument in support of the asymmetry’s existence and analyze the strength of his argument for extinction overall, ultimately determining that his conclusion is too strong. I will defend this claim on the grounds that Benatar’s asymmetry implies the truth of two claims that must …

Oral History Conversation With Yasmin Alkhal, Elona Bebla, Nick Del Mundo

Philosophy 111: Philosophy of Human Nature

This oral history project builds on an ongoing storytelling project by freelance photographer Jim Lommasson entitled What We Carried: Fragments from the Cradle of Civilization, which has now become a traveling exhibit. The exhibit features various artifacts and belongings that Iraqi and Syrian refugees have carried with them on their journey to America. Each artifact bears a story about particular objects, images, or memories that reconnect refugee communities to what they have lost or left behind.

In their conversations with Iraqi and Syrian refugees, USD students invited members of the Iraqi/Syrian communities in San Diego to share the life …

Toward A Legal Harm Principle: Constructing And Applying A Legal Principle From John Stuart Mill's General Harm Principle, Kathryn Alice Zawisza

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My goal in this work is to outline a specifically legal harm principle that is derived from John Stuart Mill’s harm principle in On Liberty. I will do this by providing a close reading of On Liberty and comparing it to what he says in chapter V of Utilitarianism. I believe that these two works provide a foundation for a harm principle that defines the domain and limits of the law. While this goal is not new, I focus on Mill’s general harm principle and the two maxims that he believes make it up in order to construct a relatively …

Martin Luther's Contribution To Public Ethics Today, David G. A. Pfrimmer

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Sharing Responsibility For Divesting From Fossil Fuels, Eric S. Godoy

Faculty Publications - Philosophy

Governments have been slow to address climate change. If non-governmental agents share a responsibility in light of the slow pace of government action then it is a collective responsibility. I examine three models of collective responsibility, especially Iris Young's social connection model, and assess their value for identifying a collective, among all emitters, that can share responsibility. These models can help us better understand both the growth of the movement to divest from fossil fuels and the nature of responsibility for collective action problems. Universities and colleges share a responsibility because they occupy similar positions of, among other things, power …

A ‘‘Practical’’ Ethic For Animals, David Fraser

David Fraser, PhD

Drawing on the features of ‘‘practical philosophy’’ described by Toulmin (1990), a ‘‘practical’’ ethic for animals would be rooted in knowledge of how people affect animals, and would provide guidance on the diverse ethical concerns that arise. Human activities affect animals in four broad ways: (1) keeping animals, for example, on farms and as companions, (2) causing intentional harm to animals, for example through slaughter and hunting, (3) causing direct but unintended harm to animals, for example by cropping practices and vehicle collisions, and (4) harming animals indirectly by disturbing life-sustaining processes and balances of nature, for example by habitat …

American Populism Shouldn’T Have To Embrace Ignorance, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Public ignorance is an inherent threat to democracy. It breeds superstition, prejudice, and error; and it prevents both a clear-eyed understanding of the world and the formulation of wise policies to adapt to that world.

Plato believed it was more than a threat: He thought it characterized democracies, and would lead them inevitably into anarchy and ultimately tyranny. But the liberal democracies of the modern era, grudgingly extending suffrage, have extended public education in parallel, in the hope of cultivating an informed citizenry. Yet today, given the persistence and severity of public ignorance, the ideal of an enlightened electorate seems …

Human Development, Human Rights, And The 50th Anniversary Of Populorum Progressio, Ellen Maccarone

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

At the 50^th anniversary of the encyclical Populorum Progressio, we have a critical opportunity to bring Paul VI’s insights to the social practice of human rights. The development of peoples discussed by the encyclical isolates areas of significant concern to the Church and humanity more broadly. This, however, is not to say that there are not other issues overlooked in Populorum Progressio that also need to be addressed.

In this paper I argue that the understanding of human development found in Populorum Progressio serves as an important yet sometimes overlooked foundation in Catholic social teaching for the advancement of …

Trump, Populism, Fascism, And The Road Ahead, Harry Van Der Linden

Harry van der Linden

This review essay offers a discussion of some recent studies that help to explain the election of Donald Trump as president of the USA. The studies examine Trump as “media spectacle,” analyze his support among Tea Partiers, and discuss his backing by the white working class left behind by neoliberalism and global capitalism. Special attention is given to two questions: Is Trump a rightwing populist or closer to a fascist? Relatedly, is Trump a threat to liberal democracy? The essay concludes with some suggestions of how to move beyond Trump.

Can One Love The Distant Other? Empathy, Affiliation, And Cosmopolitanism, Gregory R. Peterson

Gregory Peterson

An ongoing debate in political and moral philosophy concerns the nature of international obligations. While cosmopolitans argue that duties of justice are independent of national borders, statists argue otherwise, sometimes basing their account on the limitations of our empathic concern, a line of argument found much earlier in Adam Smith. Although critics argue that empathy is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality, and although statists imply that psychological limitations of the kind that would be based in empathy prevent the realization of commitments to distant others beyond humanitarian aid, I argue that both these views are incorrect. While the possession …

Introduction To The Ethics Of Physical Embodiment, Linda M. Johnston

Siegel Institute Ethics Research Scholars

Introduction to the Ethics of Physical Embodiment

The Concept Of Intrinsic Goodness: Essays In Moorean Moral Philosophy, Miles Tucker

Doctoral Dissertations

I defend and explicate a Moorean program in value theory. I claim that intrinsic goodness is the fundamental concept of axiology, and argue that the notion should be understood as G.E. Moore suggested in the Principia Ethica. In the first three chapters, I address popular challenges to the Moorean project, including objections raised by Judith Jarvis Thomson, Shelly Kagan, and Christine Korsgaard. After, I turn to explication: I attend to the connection between goodness and other normative notions, and present what I take to be the most attractive version of the Moorean view. Finally, I address a perennial puzzle …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 7

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 7.

The Glocal Hiv/Aids Epidemic And The Need For An Extended Theory Of Power In International Relations, Annika Hughes

International Dialogue

This paper argues for an extended theory of power in International Relations (IR), using the example of the glocal HIV/AIDS epidemic. It will argue that world power relations depend not only on military, economic, social and cultural power, but also on the power of the human body itself. This argument builds on the author’s own theory of glocalised world power, which combines a Foucaultian with a structurationist approach to argue for the existence of four-faced power relationships across the following twelve interdependent sites of power: 1) time; 2) space; 3) knowledge and aesthetics; 4) morality and emotion; 5) identities; 6) …

Agamben’S Comic Messianism: Giorgio Agamben: Beyond The Threshold Of Deconstruction; Agamben And Politics: A Critical Introduction, Anthony Curtis Adler

International Dialogue

The publication of Giorgio Agamben’s The Use of Bodies in 2014, followed the next year by Adam Kotsko’s English translation, marked a momentous event in the history of more recent continental thought, bringing to a close one of the most far reaching and ambitious scholarly and philosophical labors of the twentieth century. Initiated in 1995 with Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Agamben’s project, named after the first volume, would come to comprise nine separate books, published at fairly regular intervals over the course of twenty years. While neither Kevin Attell’s Giorgio Agamben: Beyond the Threshold of Deconstruction (BTD) …

Ethics Of Mobility, Globalization, Political Economy, And Culture: Refugees, Terror And Other Troubles With The Neighbors: Against The Double Blackmail, Edward Sandowski, Betty J. Harris

International Dialogue

Slavoj Žižek’s Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors-Against the Double Blackmail is yet another book demonstrating Žižek’s ability to seize on major contemporary social phenomena and to bring to bear on a topic, with provocative results, his unusual combination of traits. He is very much a European educated by study and travel into an especially vivid awareness of the connections of Western Europe (and the UK), with Central and Eastern Europe (including his native Slovenia), and much of North America. He has an expansive sense of being European that includes a sense of special kinship with historical and …

Bosnia’S Paralyzed Peace, Oliver P. Richmond

International Dialogue

This study offers a powerful blow by blow analysis of the attempts to create peace in BiH since the Dayton Agreement. According to Christopher Bennett, Dayton provided a “balance of terror,” was full of unrealistic deadlines, and aimed at providing internationals with an exit strategy (81) and international involvement constantly suffered from an “enforcement gap” (110) derived from the contradiction between trusteeship and democracy as well as limited resources (114). It has even reinforced existing power structures (the ethnos rather than the demos (116, 182), connected to para-states, and undermined democracy. A “new ethno-national reality now exists” even extending to …

War And Individual Rights: The Foundation Of Just War Theory, Nathan Wood

International Dialogue

Rights are a cornerstone of much contemporary moral and political philosophy. They tell us what we are owed by others, what protections we enjoy against both private citizens and against the state, and they inform us of the restrictions on our freedom that morality and law demand.

Human Rights And Cultural Diversity. Core Issues And Cases, Stener Ekern

International Dialogue

As clearly explained on the very first page, this book is about “the troubled relationship between the promotion of human rights and the promotion of cultural diversity.” Its purpose is to discuss (and overcome, I presume) some of the “core areas of anxiety” that this trouble speaks of. Anyone working with human rights, academically or in more applied ways, will be familiar with the anxieties that arise from trying to reconcile individual and collective rights in a consistent and convincing manner. A book holding the promise of taking you one step further towards simultaneously handling the issues of individual moral …

Adam Smith: His Life, Thought And Legacy, Sarah Otten

International Dialogue

Since the publication of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith by Oxford University Press in the 1970s and 80s, there has been increasing interest in the philosophical aspects of Smith’s writings. While in the public mind, he is associated with economics through his second book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (Wealth of Nations) Adam Smith was a professional philosopher, holding the chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University for eleven years. It was a period he regarded as “the most useful, and, therefore, as by far the happiest” …

The Empty Place: Democracy And Public Space, Asma Mehan

International Dialogue

The relationship of public space to democracy is dominated by two competing, yet intertwined, theoretical bases: political philosophy and spatial theory. But how does the architect make political space? Can architectural practice create political space through design? In this book, Teresa Hoskyns theorizes that the converging point between theoretical foundations and democratic practices is “participation” within “social production of space.” Therefore, “participation” from joint perspectives of architecture and political philosophy has been studied in two different frameworks: the theoretical and the practical. Unlike most previous works on the relationship between architecture and democracy, Hoskyn’s book transcends the spatial and political …

The Legacy Of Iraq: From The 2003 War To The “Islamic State”, Kieran Mcconaghy

International Dialogue

Benjamin Isakhan’s The Legacy of Iraq attempts to take a holistic look at the totality of political developments and relationships in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The book has contributions from more than a dozen experts in aspects of Iraq’s history and politics.

The Making Of Salafism: Islamic Reform In The Twentieth Century, Matthew Vondrasek

International Dialogue

Henri Lauzière takes the reader on a multi-dimensional counterintuitive journey with The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century. The book might be more aptly titled The Conceptual Construction of Salafism as its most illuminating and insightful features focus more on linguistics and heuristic devices rather than history or political developments. Through detailed analysis of language, religion, history, and politics, Lauzière shows how Salafism, as it is understood today, represents a misunderstood construction that is often portrayed back into history onto primary sources. Perhaps the most important parts of the text help the reader “unlearn.”

The Good Crisis: How Population Stabilization Can Foster A Healthy U.S. Economy, Owen G. Mordaunt

International Dialogue

Even though there is a notion of a birth dearth, this text aims at debunking the common belief that a population that is not growing due to declining fertility spells disaster for our world. The population has declined over time, but in reality the world continues to add 83 million people each year. Some birth dearthers, citing low fertility in affluent nations, express concern about “moral decay” (vi). For example, “smaller and unconventional families” will harm the United States because there will be fewer children and there will not be enough people to care for the elderly (vii). The authors …

Hitler’S American Model: The United States And The Making Of Nazi Race Law, Michael J. Kelly

International Dialogue

Yale’s James Whitman jumps straight into academic controversy with his new book outlining how the lawyers of the Third Reich modeled their anti-Jewish race laws on older Jim Crow era laws in the United States. Prior American and German scholars had previously tackled this hypothesis with mixed results—some dismissing the idea or playing it down, others acknowledging some limited influence. After plumbing primary sources from the Nazi government, however, Whitman goes much further and plants his flag squarely in the influence camp. The sources, read soberly, paint a different picture. Awful it may be to contemplate, but the reality is …