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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Doctoral Dissertations

Morality

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

A Virtuous Cycle: Interdependence And The Ontogenesis Of Social Justice, Nathan Carnes Nov 2017

A Virtuous Cycle: Interdependence And The Ontogenesis Of Social Justice, Nathan Carnes

Doctoral Dissertations

Past research suggests that inequality has been the norm throughout most of human history (Piketty, 2014) until the shocks of the 20th century—especially mass mobilization for the world wars—spurred support for progressive public policies around taxation and social welfare (Scheve & Stasavage, 2010, 2012). The present research investigates why these collective events activated people’s beliefs about fairness. We propose that these collective events imbued people with a powerful sense of interdependence, and that this feeling of interdependence gave motivational force to the belief that group members have a moral responsibility to share and contribute to the welfare of the …


The Promise Of Mourning, Samantha Rose Hill Mar 2015

The Promise Of Mourning, Samantha Rose Hill

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation project offers a critique of the ethical turn within contemporary political theory through the Frankfurt School tradition of critical thought. While many contemporary political theorists rely upon Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia in order to argue for forms of democratic political action, I examine the relationship between loss, mourning, melancholy, and temporality in the works of Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Sheldon Wolin, and Theodor Adorno in order to think about the relationship between critical thinking and political action. Focusing on their different approaches to time, history, and loss in relationship to politics demonstrates how concepts like mourning …