Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Journal

2014

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication

Articles 1 - 30 of 32

Full-Text Articles in Ethics and Political Philosophy

Law’S Evolution And Law As Custom, William A. Edmundson Dec 2014

Law’S Evolution And Law As Custom, William A. Edmundson

San Diego Law Review

normative, and law works by channeling custom-in-gross into progressively finer and more precise grooves. If there is normative moral value resident in the custom of elevating and following leaders, then that normativity ought to flow downstream into the finer channels officials carve and into the fresh territory they wish us to occupy. In places, that flow is too diluted, and normativity trails off. In places, officials direct the stream over a cliff, and it is no longer normative at all. In places, the stream is overtaken by stronger normative streams and can only make a difference yet farther downslope, where …


Le Génocide Comme Défi À L’Éthique, Théoneste Nkeramihigo Dec 2014

Le Génocide Comme Défi À L’Éthique, Théoneste Nkeramihigo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article proposes the genocide constitutes moral defiance for at least three evident reasons: by the suffering of the innocent, it shows the failure of the moral vision that establishes a causal link between pain suffered and evil committed, of ethics and redistribution. And finally, the genocide challenges ethics by spreading the mortal conflict of opposite moral systems meaning the genocide was perpetrated according to a particular moral code. The article examines an essential aspect of politics, the hostility towards finding the structure of reception of the genocidal drift. Then, how to imagine a moral code that effectively fights the …


Do People Obey The Law?, Frederick Schauer Dec 2014

Do People Obey The Law?, Frederick Schauer

San Diego Law Review

It is customary in a symposium honoring a book as valuable as Laurence Claus’s for the commentators to begin by noting their general agreement with the author’s thesis and then explaining that, in the spirit of academic engagement, they will focus on one small but interesting area in which the author and the commentator disagree. On this occasion, however, it seems more appropriate to reverse that approach. For reasons I will make clear, I am in substantial disagreement with Claus’s normative argument against authority. Unlike Claus, I believe that “because I said so” is often, especially when backed by the …


Freedom, Benefit And Understanding: Reflections On Laurence Claus’S Critique Of Authority, John Finnis Dec 2014

Freedom, Benefit And Understanding: Reflections On Laurence Claus’S Critique Of Authority, John Finnis

San Diego Law Review

With wide-ranging and illuminating determination, Law’s Evolution and Human Understanding offers a refutation of the illusion of authority. No one, it rightly contends, has the right to be obeyed. Still less, as it correctly says, do any persons have the right that their say so be obeyed because they said so. Given the book’s stipulative definition of “authority,” these truths entail that authority is an illusion, and provide some important premises for a plausible further conclusion or pair of conclusions: it is harmful, both in practice and in theory, to say that some person or body has authority (“the rule …


Prediction Theories Of Law And The Internal Point Of View, Michael S. Green Dec 2014

Prediction Theories Of Law And The Internal Point Of View, Michael S. Green

San Diego Law Review

In my remarks here, I will try to defend Claus’s iconoclastic tone by identifying the important difference between prediction theories of law and Hart’s. I start with a number of distinctions. By a prediction theory of law I mean a theory under which a statement about the law, such as “The Securities Exchange Act is valid law,” is a prediction of the behavior and attitudes of people in a community. In addition to offering this theory, Claus tacks on what I will call a prediction theory of lawmaking, under which the words uttered or written by lawmakers are themselves essentially …


Law’S Evolution And Human Understanding, Laurence Claus Dec 2014

Law’S Evolution And Human Understanding, Laurence Claus

San Diego Law Review

What a privilege and delight it was to welcome the participants to this conference. I am deeply grateful to the outside commentators, Bill Edmundson, John Finnis, Michael Steven Green, Mark Greenberg, Fred Schauer, and Larry Solum, for contributing so generously. My thanks also go to the many faculty colleagues who joined in the celebration, and particularly to Larry Alexander for convening the event and leading the proceedings, as he so often does, and does so well. This response to the insightful commentaries on Law’s Evolution and Human Understanding grows out of three propositions: law comes first, law is signals, law …


“Much Virtue In If”: Ethics And Uncertainty In Hamlet And As You Like It, David Summers Nov 2014

“Much Virtue In If”: Ethics And Uncertainty In Hamlet And As You Like It, David Summers

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.


Time Served In Prison Shakespeare, Niels Herold, Matt Wallace Nov 2014

Time Served In Prison Shakespeare, Niels Herold, Matt Wallace

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.


Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces Nov 2014

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 4


Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces Nov 2014

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 4.


Žižek’S Hegel: Less Than Nothing: Hegel And The Shadow Of Dialectical Materialism, Gavin Hyman Nov 2014

Žižek’S Hegel: Less Than Nothing: Hegel And The Shadow Of Dialectical Materialism, Gavin Hyman

International Dialogue

Followers of Slavoj Žižek’s work had long been awaiting his “big book on Hegel.” In interviews and other appearances, he made no secret of the fact that this work was in progress and, furthermore, that he considered it to be a labour of love, his magnum opus, and, in a sense, a culmination. Big the book certainly is—1010 pages of text to be precise. If such a book were to be written by any other author, readers would doubtless have waited considerably longer to receive it. But so prolific is this author that the waiting has been minimal, and many …


Martin Heidegger And The First World War, David A. White Nov 2014

Martin Heidegger And The First World War, David A. White

International Dialogue

The subtitle of this work is “Being and Time as Funeral Oration.” This addition helps a reader to appreciate that the book functions on various levels: scholarly, to the extent that it offers a reading of selected details in Heidegger’s first major work; historical, in that Altman asserts with great vigor that Being and Time should be seen as a “funeral oration” for those who died in World War One; biographical, in that we read much about Heidegger’s personal actions in political and academic contexts leading to and during both WWI and a decade after the conclusion of the “Great …


A World Of Becoming, Stanimir Panayotov Nov 2014

A World Of Becoming, Stanimir Panayotov

International Dialogue

It is difficult to respond in a genre other than philosophical prose when writing about one. Philosophical prose is a very demanding and small club: it is almost like the poetry club of philosophy recognized in and by itself. Few are the specimens of the genre and plenty are those raising hands from within. This is largely because genre-determined writing such as this one is both about style and Zeitgeist. And to rise up to the standards of styling the spirit(s) of time is an ordeal of both the heart and the mind even trained thinkers fail to do. With …


The Sports Gene: Inside The Science Of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, Dave Ogden Nov 2014

The Sports Gene: Inside The Science Of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, Dave Ogden

International Dialogue

David Epstein is another author chasing the elusive answer to one of the basic and ageless issues of social and natural sciences: Nature versus nurture. His discoveries and conclusions in The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance are not necessarily new, but he provides ample and interesting evidence that leans more heavily on the side of nature. In doing so, he takes on stock believers in Karl Anders Ericsson’s theoretical set called “deliberate practice.” Ericsson and his colleagues have studied elite “performers” in a variety of fields, including typing, chess playing, musicianship, and athletic skills. Ericsson found …


Leviathans At The Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous And Corporate Actors In Papua New Guinea, Jerry K. Jacka Nov 2014

Leviathans At The Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous And Corporate Actors In Papua New Guinea, Jerry K. Jacka

International Dialogue

Social analysis in anthropology today “oscillates uneasily” between a concern with Foucauldian global regimes of governance on the one hand and Deleuzian assemblages of agentive actors on the other. In Leviathans at the Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous and Corporate Actors in Papua New Guinea, Alex Golub asks if there is “a better way to do justice to a contemporary scene characterized by both spontaneity and regime” (2). Golub’s book seeks to find this middle road through the analysis of the development of a world-class gold mine on the homelands of a group of indigenous people—the Ipili— living in the highlands …


Essential Chan Buddhism: The Character And Spirit Of Chinese Zen, Owen G. Mordaunt Nov 2014

Essential Chan Buddhism: The Character And Spirit Of Chinese Zen, Owen G. Mordaunt

International Dialogue

This book embraces the essence of talks Guo Jun gave at a fourteen-day retreat at Chan Forest in the hills of Jakarta in 2010 as well as subsequent conversations the editor and his wife had with him. It is highly readable and accessible to the reader. It has poetic, spontaneous and witty qualities, providing deep insight into Chan (also spelled Cha’n) Buddhism. Chan is the Chinese form of Zen and is not well-known in the West as Zen is, but it derives from the traditions of India. It has flourished and continued to develop through many masters and its teachings …


Democracy, Islam, And Secularism In Turkey, Renat Shaykhutdinov Nov 2014

Democracy, Islam, And Secularism In Turkey, Renat Shaykhutdinov

International Dialogue

This book edited by Ahmet Kuru and Alfred Stepan provides an important contribution to the understanding of the nexus between democracy and democratization, religion and secularism in the context of Turkey, arguably the most stable Muslim-majority democracy in the greater Middle East. The volume features a select group of scholars and policy makers and is a product of two conferences held at Columbia University with the subsequent meetings and a thorough review and revision process. Among the contributors to the volume is Ergun Özbudun, the head of the academic commission for the new constitutional draft, whose chapters problematize the conflict …


Human Rights & Gender Violence: Translating International Law Into Local Justice, Pattaka Sa-Ngimnet Nov 2014

Human Rights & Gender Violence: Translating International Law Into Local Justice, Pattaka Sa-Ngimnet

International Dialogue

This book explains how international human rights laws are created by consensus through representatives of local and national governments and then become translated into content acceptable to local communities. In an introductory chapter the author presents the overall arguments of the entire work. She also gives examples that support the arguments and lays out the pattern of human rights legislation by using the specific example of gender violence. Emphasizing language, she explains how it is understood in diverse ways. The rest of the book is concerned with more specific examples. Chapter two deals with creating human rights law (36–71). Chapter …


What Is A Palestinian State Worth?, Paul Kriese Nov 2014

What Is A Palestinian State Worth?, Paul Kriese

International Dialogue

Sari Nusseibeh begins his study of the “Palestinian problem” with the comment “this is not an academic study” (18). Maybe that is why this particular study is so good. When asked to write this review my first response was not very positive. Most studies of this region lack clarity or are so ideological as to not be very useful. Many of these studies often also claim to be “academic.” Nusseibeh’s study is, unlike many reviews, a masterful academic study. His study succinctly and accurately portrays the tangled and tortured history of the region from a view that is both sympathetic …


Kindly Inquisitors, The New Attack On Free Thought, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz Nov 2014

Kindly Inquisitors, The New Attack On Free Thought, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz

International Dialogue

George F. Will’s forward to the 2013 edition of this book provides important focus to the problems arising when even one person is “offended” by free speech (xiii). From campus speech codes to legal and social theory aimed at balancing the First Amendment against other rights, Will flatly rejects the liberal movement toward “sensitivity,” “inclusiveness,” “multiculturalism” and other values that attempt to limit expression: What is needed is a book explaining why the usual, and intended, result of this practice is a finding that those objectives… are more worthy than the objective of maintaining a liberal regime of protected expression. …


The Words And The Land: Israeli Intellectuals And The Nationalist Myth, Abdelwahab Hiba Hechiche Nov 2014

The Words And The Land: Israeli Intellectuals And The Nationalist Myth, Abdelwahab Hiba Hechiche

International Dialogue

Shlomo Sand opens this book with a significant sentence: “Every book is part autobiography” and, consequently, “autobiographical confession” (7). Although he was born in 1946, his early recollection has been marked by a certain residue of the consequences of the Shoa, because as a child he was an eyewitness of the living conditions of people “like his Polish parents moving from one “displaced persons camp to another” (8). But during that same period of his early childhood, his memory resonated with his father’s reminding him that “we had taken someone else’s home” (8).The reader begins to witness an existential ethical …


Avatar And Nature Spirituality, Martin Schönfeld Nov 2014

Avatar And Nature Spirituality, Martin Schönfeld

International Dialogue

“To put it mildly, the world is a mess.” Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State, 27 July 2014 James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) was the first film to combine stereoscopic imagining and motion-capture animation for a flawless 3-D presentation. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, and won three, for Cinematography, Art Direction, and Visual Effects. It was also the first box-office hit to gross more than $2 billion, and it remains the highest-grossing film to date. It made cinematic history. But it was more than an aesthetic triumph. Avatar is also a cultural …


Letters To Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals, Russell Jacoby Nov 2014

Letters To Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals, Russell Jacoby

International Dialogue

“Some of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don’t matter in today’s great debates.” So opens a recent New York Times column headlined, “Professors, We Need You!” (February 2014) Nicholas Kristof’s thoughts on the disappearance of the professoriate elicited heated responses, both irate and enthusiastic. The flap illustrates that the place of intellectuals in American life continues to generate controversy. Samuel McCormick, as assistant professor of communications at Purdue University, joins this on-going dispute with Letters to Power, a wide-ranging and historically informed study of intellectual dissent. …


Democratic Teaching: An Incomplete Job Description, Rachel Bradshaw Sep 2014

Democratic Teaching: An Incomplete Job Description, Rachel Bradshaw

Democracy and Education

The importance of public education in democratic states is almost beyond dispute. Too often, though, discussions of democratic education focus solely on policies and systems, forgetting the individual teachers who are ultimately responsible for educating future citizens. This paper attempts to illustrate just how complex and significant the role of teachers in a democratic republic can be.


Human Dependence On Nature: How To Help Solve The Environmental Crisis By Haydn Washington, Lorelei Hanson Aug 2014

Human Dependence On Nature: How To Help Solve The Environmental Crisis By Haydn Washington, Lorelei Hanson

The Goose

Review of Human Dependence on Nature: How to Help Solve the Environmental Crisis by Haydn Washington.


Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction By Dawne Mccance, Rosemary-Claire Collard Aug 2014

Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction By Dawne Mccance, Rosemary-Claire Collard

The Goose

Review of Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction by Dawne McCance.


Why We Should Stop Creating Pets With Lives Worth Living, Chelsea Haramia Jul 2014

Why We Should Stop Creating Pets With Lives Worth Living, Chelsea Haramia

Between the Species

Pedigreed breeding often leads to severe health problems for, say, those dogs who exist as a result of the practice. It is also the case that virtually all of those unhealthy animals would not exist at all if it were not for the practice of pedigreed breeding. If those animals have lives worth living, then it follows that they are not harmed by the practice—assuming that a life worth living is better than no life at all. It would seem, then, that the standard account of harm cannot account for the wrongness of our intentionally creating pets with lower welfare. …


The Fair And Laissez-Faire Markets: From A Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Baseline To A Fair Market, Eric L. Dixon Jun 2014

The Fair And Laissez-Faire Markets: From A Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Baseline To A Fair Market, Eric L. Dixon

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

The essay begins with a brief overview of the role of the neoliberal conception of the laissez-faire market in modern political economy. The essay then goes on to defend three claims: 1) the laissez-faire version of a market should not be considered the economic ideal or baseline version of a market because often the fundamental conditions required to reach a genuine equilibrium are unfulfilled under a laissez-faire environment, 2) a distribution resultant from a laissez-faire market should not be considered the ultima facie just distributive baseline because an unregulated market may allocate commodities according to morally arbitrary factors and requires …


Humanesis By David Cecchetto, Max Ritts Jun 2014

Humanesis By David Cecchetto, Max Ritts

The Goose

Review of Humanesis by David Cecchetto.


Akedah, The Holocaust, And The Limits Of The Law In Roth's "Eli, The Fanatic", Aimee L. Pozorski Jun 2014

Akedah, The Holocaust, And The Limits Of The Law In Roth's "Eli, The Fanatic", Aimee L. Pozorski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Akedah, the Holocaust, and the Limits of the Law in Roth's 'Eli, the Fanatic'" Aimee L. Pozorski argues that Philip Roth's 1957 short story dramatizes the tension between the law on the one hand and the philosophy of ethics, on the other hand with the story's protagonist ultimately choosing ethics as evidenced by his identification with a displaced Hasidic Jew near the story's end. In reading the story through the inter-textual references to the Genesis story of the Akedah, Pozorski discusses the limits of the law in the face of vulnerable children and within the context of …