Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

The Morality Of Humanitarian Interventions, Per Bauhn

International Dialogue

In this paper I develop an argument to the effect that humanitarian moral interventions, far from being inconsistent with the normative framework of just war, fit in very well with the justifying conditions of this framework. The argument develops by considering three objections against humanitarian military interventions, emanating from just war criteria. The criteria in question are just authority, just cause, and non-combatant immunity. It will be argued that while just authority logically depends on just cause and has no independent argumentative force of its own, the criterion of just cause should be understood to include a defence of human …

Russia On The Edge - Edith Clowes, Thoams Ambrosio

International Dialogue

Edith Clowes’ Russia on the Edge is an engaging and accessible examination of three central questions of post-Soviet Russia: What is Russia? Who are the Russians? Where is Russia? The last question might be odd, given that the physical borders of the Russian Federation are not in doubt, since they are the same as those of the Russian republic borders from the Soviet period. However, when it comes to the creation of a post-Soviet Russian identity, the physical borders are secondary to how they are imagined. As stated in the preface: if Soviet identity was defined largely in terms of …

Security And Environmental Change - Simon Dalby, Len Broberg

International Dialogue

In Security and Environmental Change, Simon Dalby seeks to reframe national security in terms of environmental change and its threats to human safety and prosperity. Dalby promises a multifaceted examination of the issue, making clear that environmental change encompasses more than climate change but includes all human modifications of the planet: deforestation, water diversion and species extinction to name a few. In addition, the book seeks to deconstruct and rebuild the notion of security, moving out of classically framed Cold War national security focused on nation states toward a more human centered security. This effort succeeds and, in the process, …

Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, And The Politics Of Dwelling - David J. Gauthier, Joseph Bien

International Dialogue

Books on Heidegger and books on Levinas are plentiful in English, French and German. Books dealing with a comparison of both authors, especially in terms of the politics of dwelling, are not at all common and certainly should demand our attention. This work appears to be a reworked version of a dissertation with all the standard problems that go with such an undertaking. That said, this is a useful introduction to the question of dwelling in the writings of two extremely important philosophers.

Darker Than Blue: On The Moral Economies Of Black Atlantic Culture - Paul Gilroy, Shiera S. El-Malik

International Dialogue

In this work, Paul Gilroy charges academics including scholars of the African and Black Diaspora with inadequately addressing ethical questions of racial hierarchy. He posits that academics apply a uniquely American framework of racial hierarchy to their analyses of places other than the U.S. The result, according to Gilroy, is that American conceptions of blackness (and whiteness) then substitute for social structures regardless of people’s lived experiences. Further, this globalised spectacle of blackness operates in the service of the U.S. imperial war machine. Gilroy argues that the current moment of geo-political restructuring offers opportunities for rethinking the connection between racial …

After Evil: A Politics Of Human Rights - Robert Meister, Debra L. Delaet

International Dialogue

In After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights, Robert Meister puts forth an original, subtle, and provocative critique of mainstream human rights discourse in contemporary global politics. He describes this discourse, which he capitalizes as Human Rights Discourse throughout the text, as “… a new discourse of global power that claims to supersede the cruelties perpetrated by both revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries during the previous two centuries” (3). Meister argues that this discourse creates a false temporal divide between historical periods of “evil” in which gross violations of human rights are committed and post-conflict periods of justice during which parties are …

Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization - Jeffrey S. Juris, Jackie Smith

International Dialogue

Networking Futures represents an important contribution to research on transnational organizing, social networks, and on the effects of technology on social relations. Juris, an anthropologist, draws from several years of field research that is part of his multi-sited, global ethnographic study. His experiences in the field lead him to offer, in addition to insightful analyses of contemporary organization and activism, important insights into the practice of social research in a networked, global age.

Latin American Politics And Development, 7th Ed. - Howard J. Wiarda And Harvey F. Kline (Eds.), Paul C. Sondrol

International Dialogue

The scholarly literature on the government and politics of Latin America continues to flourish, offering interesting research questions and cross-national comparisons touching on a variety of themes that continue trends from the past. Howard J. Wiarda and Harvey Kline’s (eds) Latin American Politics and Development is the most recent edition of the popular text on the government and politics in Latin America, revised and updated on recent developments since 2000. Leading specialists on the region provide an overview of Latin American development, policy processes, and key actors (the military, the Catholic Church, the landed oligarchy, bureaucracies, political parties and elections, …

First As Tragedy, Then As Farce - Slavoj Žižek, Edward Sandowski

International Dialogue

Slavoj Žižek is a prolific, original, and formidable philosopher. His publishing habits are so productive that any discussion of a particular book is bound to be only a very partial consideration of his work and views as a whole. This applies to the present discussion of First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. The title, of course, is taken from Marx. One relevant classical passage is from the Eighteenth Brumaire: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” …

Witness And Testimonies: A Diachronic Perspective On The History Of The Bosnian Muslims, Rusmir Mahmutćehajić

International Dialogue

In his essay, “Witness and Testimonies: A Diachronic Perspective on the History of the Bosnian Muslims,” Rusmir Mahmutćehajić explores and deconstructs ideological abuses of some of the most important terms in the Muslim intellectual tradition. The terms ‘witness’ and ‘witnessing’, ‘opener’ and ‘opening’ are of key significance for understanding and reasoning for Muslim sacred tradition. Distorted, narrowed and reductive forms of these terms have been taken by antimuslim ideologists as material within their own constructions. In deconstructing the ideological abuse of these terms, Mahmutćehajić applies new knowledge from his experience in Scriptural Reasoning. Terms from the cultural history of Bosnia …

The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis: Identity, Violence And Power - Jean-Pierre Chretién And Richard Banégas (Eds), Catherine Bolten

International Dialogue

The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis is an edited volume comprising individual case studies that examine aspects of historical and on-going violence in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Congo-Kinshasa. The purpose of the volume is to “lead to a better understanding of the changes in the perceptions of violence which constitute one of the most serious obstacles to lasting peace” (1). The case studies encompass a diverse array of aspects of each of the conflicts, from the role of the Catholic Church in Rwanda since 1957, to the political and social problems created by the label “disaster victims” in Burundi after the …

The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Pursuit Of A New International Politics - Mark Malloch-Brown, Robert Weiner

International Dialogue

Several themes run throughout this book, in which Mark Malloch-Brown melds his personal experience as a British civil servant with his career as an international civil servant, working at various times at the World Bank, as the head of the United Nations Development Program, and UN Secretary-General’s Kofi Annan’s assistant. The central theme of the book revolves around the need for an effective system of global governance to cope with the major challenges which the international community faces in the age of globalization in the 21st century. Some of the problems involve the darker side of globalization, such as terrorism …

Determinants Of Democratization: Explaining Regime Change In The World, 1972-2006 - Jan Teorell, Joseph Derdzinski

International Dialogue

Just as the Color Revolutions of the last decade did, the Arab Spring once again brings the concept of democratization to the forefront of public discourse. They remind us yet once again how few countries have made at least the initial transition from authoritarianism, and how many more there are to democratize. Yet, having said this, the pool of countries that have liberalized politically and socially has grown tremendously in the past 40 years, yielding a fertile universe of cases for study and analysis. Jan Teorell at Sweden’s Lund University, in his compact but rich Determinants of Democratization: Explaining Regime …

Archaeologists As Activists - M. Jay Stottman, Curtis Hutt

International Dialogue

Archaeologists as Activists: Can Archaeologists Change the World? is comprised of papers edited by M. Jay Stottman—many of which were initially prepared for a session at the 2004 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology in St. Louis. The focus of this volume is “activist archaeology” as theorized and performed by archaeologists working in the last few decades in the United States. While the specific topics addressed are quite local, the questions raised and practices deployed are highly significant for archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians engaged in international settings. First, I must make a few disclaimers. This reviewer is neither …

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 …

Tele-Visioning Terror, Caroline Zekri

Re-visioning Terrorism

This paper is devoted to the relationship between terrorism and media, with a special focus on the theoretical notions of “icon”, “mass” and “distance”. It aims to show how the phenomenon of modern terrorism calls into question the essence of modern democracies and their systems of information, based on the distance between vision and event.

Symbolic Violence As Subtle Virulence: The Philosophy Of Terrorism, Jonathan Beever

Re-visioning Terrorism

Jean Baudrillard’s semiotic analysis of violence leads us to understand the form of violence as three-fold: aggressive, historical, and semiotically virulent. Violence of the third form is the violence endemic to terrorism. If violence has been typically understood as of the first two types, terrorism should be understood as the virulence of simulacra. The conflation of these types of violence explains the failure of militaristic responses to terrorism. This paper will explore Baudrillard’s conception of symbolic violence as the virulence of signs and help us come to terms with the semiotic foundation of terrorism.

Courageous Peace, Ann Abdoo

Citizens for Peace

Is peace a sign of courage or weakness? This essay addresses the issue. It was published in the Michigan Department of Peace Campaign, Political Action Guide 2009-2010.

The Political Action Guide is published by Citizens for Peace, a grassroots organization from Michigan's 11th Congressional District. The Guide inclues information on the Department of Peace Legislation, historical and current as well as information on ways to become politically active.

Within the Guide, there is also a directory of many Michigan organizations working for a more peaceful world and the websites of national organizations.

To acquire a current edition, contact Colleen …

Doing Without Desiring, Steven E. Swartzer

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation defends a cognitivist alternative to the Humean belief-desire theory of motivation against standard philosophical arguments.

Moral judgments influence our action. For instance, someone might donate to charity because she believes she has a duty to give back to her community. According to the Humean orthodoxy, some additional state—some passion or desire—is needed to explain her action. She may want to donate the money, to give back to her community, or to fulfill her duty. Yet there must be something she wants, the Humean insists, because only desires are capable of moving us. Even moral judgment is no more …

Assessing Law’S Claim To Authority, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

The idea that law claims authority (LCA) has recently been forcefully criticized by a number of authors. These authors present a new and intriguing objection, arguing that law cannot be said to claim authority if such a claim is not justified. That is, these authors argue that the view that law does not have authority viciously conflicts with the view that law claims authority. I will call this the normative critique of LCA. In this article, I assess the normative critique of LCA, focusing predominantly on the arguments presented by its most incisive proponent Philip Soper. I defend a …