Worthy Lives,
2010
University of Massachusetts Boston
Worthy Lives, Lisa Rivera
Philosophy Faculty Publication Series
Susan Wolf's paper "Meaning and Morality" draws our attention to the fact that Williams's objection to Kantian morality is primarily a concern about a possible conflict between morality and that which gives our lives meaning. I argue that the force of Williams's objection requires a more precise understanding of meaning as dependent on our intention to make our lives themselves worthwhile. It is not meaning simpliciter that makes Williams's objective persuasive but rather meaning as arising out of our positive evaluation of the value of our lives as a whole. This type of meaning has a normative element: it involves …
The Biopolitical Unconscious: Not-All Persons Are Political,
2010
Macalester College
The Biopolitical Unconscious: Not-All Persons Are Political, Ross G. Shields
Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects
It is a tenet of post-structuralist theory that discursive series fail in their attempts to constitute themselves as totalities. A system can fail in two distinct ways—from Kant’s dynamic and mathematic failures of reason, to Jacques Lacan’s equation of the two failures of language with the two failures (male and female) of sex. Biopolitical theory offers the most recent account of failure and collapse, now on the geopolitical scale. Given that the biopolitical subject too is sexed, this thesis asks the question: How does biopolitics fail? Franz Kafka’s aborted novels offer a premonition to a possible answer.
Book Review Of, Nietzsche And The Transcendental Tradition,
2010
Portland State University
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,
2010
Portland State University
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 …
Moral Limits Of Dworkin's Theory Of Law And Legal Interpretation,
2010
Boston Univeristy School of Law
Moral Limits Of Dworkin's Theory Of Law And Legal Interpretation, David B. Lyons
Faculty Scholarship
At the foundation of Justice for Hedgehogs is a commitment to moral objectivity – the doctrine that there are right answers to moral questions. This nicely complements Dworkin’s legal theory, which holds that right answers to legal questions depend on right answers to moral questions. Without the doctrine of moral objectivity, Dworkin could not reasonably maintain, as he does, that law provides determinate answers to legal questions.
Background Environmental Justice: An Extension Of Rawls's Political Liberalism,
2010
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Background Environmental Justice: An Extension Of Rawls's Political Liberalism, Edward Abplanalp
Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This dissertation extends John Rawls’s mature theory of justice out to address the environmental challenges that citizens of liberal democracies now face. Specifically, using Rawls’s framework of political liberalism, I piece together a theory of procedural justice to be applied to a constitutional democracy. I show how citizens of pluralistic democracies should apply this theory to environmental matters in a four stage contracting procedure. I argue that, if implemented, this extension to Rawls’s theory would secure background environmental justice. I explain why the theory can be viewed as a partially specified political conception of environmental pragmatism, and how it relates …
Why Terrorism? Whose Terror?,
2010
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Why Terrorism? Whose Terror?, Ibpp Editor
International Bulletin of Political Psychology
The author considers terrorism as a competitor for the legally constituted authority and power of governments.
Effort And Moral Worth,
2010
Ursinus College
Effort And Moral Worth, Kelly Sorensen
Philosophy and Religious Studies Faculty Publications
One of the factors that contributes to an agent’s praiseworthiness and blameworthiness — his or her moral worth — is effort. On the one hand, agents who act effortlessly seem to have high moral worth. On the other hand, agents who act effortfully seem to have high moral worth as well. I explore and explain this pair of intuitions and the contour of our views about associated cases.
Book Review Of, Friedrich Nietzsche And The Politics Of History,
2010
Portland State University
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.
Forgiveness As New Creation: Christ And The Moral Life Revisited,
2010
Luther Seminary
Forgiveness As New Creation: Christ And The Moral Life Revisited, Lois E. Malcolm
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Deciphering Dignity,
2010
University of Maryland School of Law
Deciphering Dignity, Leslie Meltzer Henry
Faculty Scholarship
This commentary draws on dignity’s usage in law, ethics, and public policy to contemplate a narrow question about what the concept of dignity means in debates about human enhancement technologies. In particular, it considers arguments made by Fabrice Jotterand and other bioethicists who aim to repudiate the transhumanist claim that individuals can enhance their dignity through technological modification. The trouble with the positions on both sides of this debate is that it is extremely difficult to make normative comparisons about human and post-human dignity without first infusing dignity with particular metaphysical assumptions. To that end, the commentary offers a brief …
Of Ethics And Ecosystems: A Bifocal Perspective On Biodiversity Conservation,
2010
Connecticut College
Of Ethics And Ecosystems: A Bifocal Perspective On Biodiversity Conservation, Charles Van Rees
Environmental Studies Honors Papers
No abstract provided.
Business Ethics And (Or As) Political Philosophy,
2010
Bentley University
Business Ethics And (Or As) Political Philosophy, Jeffrey Moriarty, Wayne Norman, Joseph Heath
Philosophy Faculty Publications
There is considerable overlap between the interests of business ethicists and those of political philosophers. Questions about the moral justifiability of the capitalist system, the basis of property rights, and the problem of inequality in the distribution of income have been of central importance in both fields. However, political philosophers have developed, especially over the past four decades, a set of tools and concepts for addressing these questions that are in many ways quite distinctive. Most business ethicists, on the other hand, consider their field to be primarily a domain of applied ethics, and so adopt methods and conceptual frameworks …
What About The Children? Benjamin And Arendt: On Education, Work, And The Political,
2010
University of Texas at El Paso
What About The Children? Benjamin And Arendt: On Education, Work, And The Political, Jules Simon
Selected Works Temporary Series
This article is a rough draft of an article that I contributed to an edited volume of articles dealing with progressive education theory. I reflect on articles that Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin wrote that deal with educational reform and innovation, both political in nature.
Quantum Mechanics And Ethical Antirealism: A Counter-Analogy To Boyd,
2010
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Quantum Mechanics And Ethical Antirealism: A Counter-Analogy To Boyd, Justin Lawson
Philosophy
In his paper How to Be a Moral Realist Boyd attempts to show how cases of ethical indeterminacy can be accounted for from an ethical realist’s standpoint. Boyd describes cases of extensional vagueness in the life-sciences which arise from knowable and definite underlying structures and draws an analogy to ethics to argue his case. This paper argues that an equally compelling analogy can be drawn between another type of scientific indeterminacy – that in quantum mechanics – and the related ethical cases. Because quantum mechanical uncertainty (on the Copenhagen interpretation) is a real and not merely epistemic limitation on physical …
A Moral Investigation Of Torture In The Post 9.11 World,
2010
Bridgewater State University
A Moral Investigation Of Torture In The Post 9.11 World, Joe Moloney
Undergraduate Review
The field of philosophy is unique, as it allows one to logically examine issues in all disciplines, from science to politics to art. One further important discipline that philosophy examines is criminal justice. In this respect, one approach philosophy can take when examining criminal justice is to assess each issue by questioning its morality—that is, whether an action within the issue is right or wrong based upon a system of ethics. This approach concerns the subfield of philosophy known as ethics, a subfield that includes questions concerning what is morally good and morally bad. When one is faced with an …
Late Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, And Their Aftermath,
2010
Loyola University Chicago
Late Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, And Their Aftermath, David Ingram
Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Developments in Anglo-American philosophy during the first half of the 20th Century closely tracked developments that were occurring in continental philosophy during this period. This should not surprise us. Aside from the fertile communication between these ostensibly separate traditions, both were responding to problems associated with the rise of mass society. Rabid nationalism, corporate statism, and totalitarianism (Left and Right) posed a profound challenge to the idealistic rationalism of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian philosophies. The decline of the individual – classically conceived by the 18th-century Enlightenment as a self-determining agent – provoked strong reactions. While some philosophical tendencies sought to …
What About The Children? Benjamin And Arendt: On Education, Work, And The Political,
2010
University of Texas at El Paso
What About The Children? Benjamin And Arendt: On Education, Work, And The Political, Jules Simon
Departmental Papers (Philosophy)
This article is a rough draft of an article that I contributed to an edited volume of articles dealing with progressive education theory. I reflect on articles that Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin wrote that deal with educational reform and innovation, both political in nature.
Just Military Preparedness, U.S. Military Hegemony, And Contingency Planning For Intervention In Sudan: A Reply To Lango And Patterson,
2010
Butler University
Just Military Preparedness, U.S. Military Hegemony, And Contingency Planning For Intervention In Sudan: A Reply To Lango And Patterson, Harry Van Der Linden
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
This paper rejects most aspects of John W. Lango and Eric Patterson’s proposal that the United States should plan for a possible intervention in Sudan on secessionist and humanitarian grounds and announce this planning as a deterrent to the central government of Sudan attacking the people of South Sudan if they would opt in a January 2011 referendum for independence. I argue that secession is not a just cause for armed intervention and that, rightfully, neither the American people nor many of its men and women in uniform would be prepared to engage in an intervention that might easily escalate. …
From Combat Boots To Civilian Shoes: Reflections On The Chickenhawk Syndrome,
2010
Butler University
From Combat Boots To Civilian Shoes: Reflections On The Chickenhawk Syndrome, Harry Van Der Linden
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
This essay is part of a symposium on Cheyney Ryan’s The Chickenhawk Syndrome: War, Sacrifice, and Personal Responsibility (2009). Ryan’s reply to his critics can be found on pp. 181-89 in Radical Philosophy Review, Volume 13, Issue 2, 2010.
