Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Shame And History, Bennett B. Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

If history—our past, the sum of our thoughts, passions, and deeds—is so pervasive, influential, and meaningful, why then do we lose sight of it? Why do we not gain good values from it? And if it is part of our existential core, why then do we so often fail to ravel it into our deliberations?

I propose that very often and to a great degree it is shame that separates us from history. Shame: garrulous, compulsive, intense, omnivorous. A shamed person pushes away the experiences that shame her, thus cutting off the past.

Review Essay: Recent Works In The Political Theory Of Migration, Alexander Sager

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Thirty-five years ago, Joseph Carens published “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders” in the Review of Politics. It is only a slight overstatement to say that this article created the subfield of political theory of migration. Today, the field is flourishing. Migration continues to be one of today's most politically fraught and morally urgent issues. An estimated hundred million people have fled violence and persecution. Hundreds of millions more cross international borders every year. States have responded with highly restrictive policies, in which people need to resort to perilous routes, often in the hands of smugglers, to …

Care Ethics, Religion, And Spiritual Traditions, Inge Van Nistelrooij, Maureen Sander-Staudt, Maurice Hamington

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Care Ethics, Religion, and Spiritual Traditions is a collection of original essays that address the intersection between contemporary feminist care ethics and religious morality. Feminist care ethics is one of the most dynamic areas in modern theory. This relational approach to morality emphasizes context, emotion, and imagination over consequences, rules, and rights has only been around for about four decades, with its definition still being negotiated. Still, the respect for this approach is demonstrated by its widespread inclusion in moral discourse. Historically, care has been an overlooked concept in philosophy, but religion's ambivalence toward care ethics is even more pronounced. …

Gender Deviants: Subverting Regulatory Power In Medical Institutions, Ursa Nuffer-Rodriguez Mx.

University Honors Theses

Medical and psychiatric institutions have a long history of regulating and pathologizing the bodies of non-normative individuals. The harmful normativity of these institutions is particularly salient for trans* people pursuing gender-affirming medical care, as popular media representations of trans* identity reinforce narratives of certainty and aspirations towards cisgender standards of corporeality which rarely map onto authentic narratives of trans*ness. For the gender deviant subject, who conceives of hirself beyond these hegemonic notions of identity, navigating these institutions often requires a false projection of identity that fits the standard narrative, simply as a means to an end. In doing so, the …

The Long-Haul: Buddhist Educational Strategies To Strengthen Students’ Resilience For Lifelong Personal Transformation And Positive Community Change, Namdrol Miranda Adams, Kevin Kecskes

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

For decades, community engagement scholars have built a robust body of knowledge that explores multiple facets of the higher education community engagement domain. More recently, scholars and practitioners from mainly Christian affiliated faith-based institutions have begun to investigate the complex inner world of community-engaged students’ meaning-making and spiritual development. While most of this fascinating cross-domain effort has been primarily based on “Western” influenced Judeo-Christian traditions, this study explores service-learning/community engagement themes, approaches, rationale, and strategies from an “Eastern” perspective based on the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. This case study research focuses on curricular approaches, influences, and impacts of Buddhist …

Moving Beyond ‘Therapy’ And ‘Enhancement’ In The Ethics Of Gene Editing, Bryan Cwik

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Since the advent of recombinant DNA technology, expectations (and trepidations) about the potential for altering genes and controlling our biology at the fundamental level have been sky high. These expectations have gone largely unfulfilled. But though the dream (or nightmare) of being able to control our biology is still far off, gene editing research has made enormous strides toward potential clinical use. This paper argues that when it comes to determining permissible uses of gene editing in one important medical context—germline intervention in reproductive medicine—issues about enhancement and eugenics are, for the foreseeable future, a red herring. Current translational goals …

The Role Of Ethics Online And Among Social Media Designers, Meredith James

School of Art + Design Faculty Publications and Presentations

As communication designers, our roles have changed greatly with the technological advancements of the Internet and social media. With these vastly changing roles are equal (and often problematic) demands on designers to act as ethical interventionists. In specific, designers are more and more frequently finding themselves in roles of arbitration and decision-making surrounding ethical concerns. Such decisions span everything from what is to be considered “allowable content” (breastfeeding, for example) to deciding how our devices respond to crisis (Miner, et al., 2016). I intend to present several case studies of designers placed in authority positions centered around ethics and new …

Plato's Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Emmanuelle M. Mckinney

Young Historians Conference

Plato is undeniably one of the most influential men in the history of Western philosophy, and he deeply examined a remarkable number of diverse fields. However, in the attempt to understand his various writings, scholars too often over-categorize Plato’s work without recognizing that there are no partitioning lines between subjects: they are all blended together to form a complex body of thought. This paper summarizes Plato’s philosophy of ethics, with a focus on its inclusion of many contrasting disciplines.

Freedom From Equality: Democratic Education And The Failure Of The Nclb, Andrew X. Fleming

Student Research Symposium

Deeply rooted societal concerns about what role democratic ideals should play within systems of education, and how much sway the federal government should hold over educational institutions, have been at the forefront of American educational policy for decades. These questions have more recently been brought into the limelight once again within the context of the implementation of charter schools and the controversial No Child Left Behind act, and its subsequent failure. The expressed goal of this paper is to provide an examination of what philosophies and ideals of so-called "democratic education" are have played major roles in developing the discourse …

Methodological Nationalism, Migration, And Political Theory, Alexander Sager

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Political theorists of migration have largely operated within a conceptual scheme that treats the nation-state as the natural political unit for analysis at the expense of transnational, regional, and local analyses. Migration is discussed in the contexts of nation-building or in an international framework of autonomous, sovereign states. I show that this paradigm of “methodological nationalism” ignores transnational networks, associations, and organizations and global social and economic structures. This in turn, blinds political theorists to questions of agency and structure and to causal relations that entail moral responsibilities. My aim is to show how debates on migration and distributive justice …

Conventional Wisdom About Yugoslavia And Rwanda: Methodological Perils And Moral Implications, Aleksandar Jokić

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

While ostensibly a response to a critique, the main goal of this Article is to demonstrate how easily conventional wisdom, usually shaped by the media and politics, can corrupt scholarship when it is simply presupposed by those engaged in what should be an academic polemic, yet often also includes ‘activism in scholarship’. The examples of approved narratives in the West on Yugoslavia and Rwanda are used for the sake of this demonstration.

The Hanford Advisory Board: A Case Study In Democracy, Technology, And Representation, Alexander Sager, Alex Zakaras

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highly technical policy decisions present daunting challenges for democracy. In order to hold public officials accountable, citizens must be able to see how policy decisions stand to affect their interests. If they are unable to do so, they can find themselves exposed to bureaucratic domination through the discretionary power of bureaucrats, scientists, or policy experts. One of the major tasks of empirically informed democratic theory is to analyze and evaluate practices and institutions that use public participation to try to render highly technical public decision-making more accountable to the public, and therefore more legitimate. This paper presents a case study …

What's A Just War Theorist?, Aleksandar Jokić

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

The article provides an account of the unlikely revival of the medieval Just War Theory, due in large part to the efforts of Michael Walzer. Its purpose is to address the question: What is a just war theorist? By exploring contrasts between scholarly activity and forms of international activism, the paper argues that just war theorists appear to be just war criminals, both on the count of aiding and abetting aggression and on the count of inciting troops to commit war crimes.

Complexity Theory & Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street [Presentation], Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Complexity theory can assist our understanding of social systems and social phenomena. This paper illustrates this assertion by linking Talcott Parsons' model of societal structure to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Parsons' model is used to organize ideas about the underlying causes of the recession that currently afflicts the US. While being too abstract to depict the immediate factors that precipitated this crisis, the model is employed to articulate the argument that vulnerability to this type of event results from flaws in societal structure. This implies that such crises can be avoided only if, in Parsons' terms, structural change occurs …

Complexity Theory & Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Complexity theory can assist our understanding of social systems and social phenomena. This paper illustrates this assertion by linking Talcott Parsons' model of societal structure to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Parsons' model is used to organize ideas about the underlying causes of the recession that currently afflicts the US. While being too abstract to depict the immediate factors that precipitated this crisis, the model is employed to articulate the argument that vulnerability to this type of event results from flaws in societal structure. This implies that such crises can be avoided only if, in Parsons' terms, structural change occurs …

The Implications Of Migration Theory For Distributive Justice, Alexander Sager

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper explores the implications of empirical theories of migration for normative accounts of migration and distributive justice. It examines neo-classical economics, world-systems theory, dual labor market theory, and feminist approaches to migration and contends that neo-classical economic theory in isolation provides an inadequate understanding of migration. Other theories provide a fuller account of how national and global economic, political, and social institutions cause and shape migration flows by actively affecting people's opportunity sets in source countries and by admitting people according to social categories such as class and gender. These empirical theories reveal the causal impact of institutions regulating …

Euthanasia, The Ethics Of Patient Care And The Language Of Propaganda, Elizabeth Maria Krapf

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is an examination of euthanasia, eugenics, the ethic of patient care, and linguistic propaganda in the Second World War. The examination of euthanasia discusses not only the history and involvement of the facility at Hadamar in Germany, but also discuss the current euthanasia debate. Euthanasia in World War II arose out of the Nazi desire to cleanse the Reich and was greatly influenced by the American eugenics movement of the early 20th century. Eugenics was built up to include anyone considered undesirable and unworthy of life and killed many thousands of people before the invasion of allied troops …

Caring, Journalism, And The Power Of Particularism, Maurice Hamington

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Why do some people donate blood while most eligible individuals do not? Why do many self-identified environmentalists eat meat? Why do numerous people who are concerned with social justice ignore oppressive practices affecting women? These questions have both ethical and psychological dimensions. Ethics, as it is traditionally understood in terms of rules, rights, and consequences, emphasizes rationality but often reason is not enough to compel moral action. One can make compelling rational arguments with empirical evidence to support donating blood, becoming vegan, and advocating education and aid to assist girls and women in developing nations. Yet, cognitive assent is insufficient …

Liberté, Égalité, Sororité: How Care Ethics Informs Social Justice, Maurice Hamington

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Virginia Held has claimed that "there can be care without justice" but "there can be no justice without care." Alternatively, bell hooks has suggested that there can be "no love without justice." What is the relationship between justice and care? Does justice need an emotive, particularist, contextual aspect or is it fundamentally a universal and abstract concept?

Care ethics, as contemporary feminists have defined it, is only a quarter of a century old. When theorists were first struggling to distinguish this new ethical approach, some chose to sharply differentiate it from theories of justice. Now that care ethics has matured …

Book Review Of, Nietzsche And The Transcendental Tradition, R. Kevin Hill

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reviews the book "Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition" by Michael Steven Green

Toward A Theory Of Feminist Hospitality, Maurice Hamington

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Immigration, international conflicts, and world debt have contributed to rising unease over the power relations created by burgeoning globalization. Absent from much of the political rhetoric surrounding global issues is a role for the social value of hospitality. Political theorists and philosophers such as the late Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas have reinvigorated interest in hospitality. This article suggests that the work of feminist theorists such as Seyla Benhabib, Margaret Urban Walker, and Iris Marion Young on issues of identity, inclusiveness, reciprocity, forgiveness, and embodiment can contribute to an alternative theory of hospitality. Consistent with feminist care ethics, the theory …

Book Review Of, Friedrich Nietzsche And The Politics Of History, R. Kevin Hill

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reviews the book "Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History" by Christian J. Emden.

Nietzsche's Debt To Kant's Theory Of The Beautiful In 'Birth Of Tragedy', R. Kevin Hill

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nietzsche describes Birth of Tragedy as a contribution to “the science of aesthetics”. In this paper, I will argue that a crucial influence on his emerging views was Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Nietzsche’s early aesthetic views are often attributed to some combination of Schopenhauer’s analyses of the plastic arts (inspiring Nietzsche’s conception of the Apollinian) and his analysis of music (inspiring Nietzsche’s conception of the Dionysian) along with Nietzsche’s own original insights into how these combine to form the tragic. As we shall see, the resources of Schopenhauer’s aesthetics were unavailable to Nietzsche due to epistemological commitments he had …

The Reemergence Of Kantian Ethics: Have We Adequately Responded To Hegel's Objections?, Gwen C. Thompson

Dissertations and Theses

The philosophies of Kant and Hegel have experienced a renaissance for the past thirty years, and a debate continues as to whether Hegel's objections to Kant's moral philosophy are sound, and/or whether Hegel's ethics are an improvement on Kant's. This debate takes many forms, and most recently, theorists have been interested in measuring Hegel's objections against contemporary theories following in the Kantian tradition. 'Critics,' (theorists defending Hegel's moral point of view) suggests such reconstructed theories leave themselves open to identical criticisms Hegel wielded at Kant almost 200 years ago. 'Defenders,' (theorists supporting Kant's moral philosophy, or a revised version) reply …

Macintyre's Nietzsche: A Critique, R. Kevin Hill

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

In Alastair MacIntyre's "After Virtue", Nietzsche is presented as (1)an emotivist, (2) the culmination of the liberal tradition, and (3) fundamentally opposed to Aristotle. All three claims are criticized, thus casting doubt not only on MacIntyre's interpretation of Nietzsche, but also on his larger account of the history of Western ethical theory and practice, as well as on his proposal that we return to the tradition which Nietzsche has called into question.

The Doctrine Of Experience In The Philosophy Of Jonathan Edwards, Puritan Divine, Joseph S. Trachtenberg

Dissertations and Theses

A number of basic themes suggest themselves as focal points for a study of the thought of Jonathan Edwards. The dissertation is an attempt to argue that experience is one of them, and that an attentive eye to the doctrine of experience will reveal it as the unifying theme of his philosophy. Specifically, at the center of Edwards' aesthetic and religious vision there lies a rich and profound sense of experience, and of the relation of all things to some form of perception.

The evidence is to be found in Edwards' extensive published and unpublished writings. Among the several editions …

George Berkeley On Moral Demonstration, Graham P. Conroy

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

An essay in which the author attempts to illustrate how Berkeley's moral philosophy shows him to be a transitional figure between 17th century rationalistic ethics and the empirical moral philosophy of the 18th century,