Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …

Commentary: Critical Analysis Of Chiropractic At The Crossroads Or Are We Just Going Around In Circles., Dennis M. Richards

Dennis M Richards

This commentary presents critical analysis of a paper published by Dr John Reggars, and based, as he admitted, on his perceptions and opinions. Many of those are wrong. Others raise important questions. Sourced from a lecture presented by him at the 2010 annual conference of the Chiropractic and Osteopathic College of Australia (‘COCA’), this polemic is best understood in its historical and political contexts. COCA’s objects include political activity and Reggars is its vice president, which he failed to declare.

Estética Da Existência Como Política Da Vida Em Comum: Foucault E O Conceito De Comunidades Plurais., Andre De Macedo Duarte, Maria Rita De Assis César

Andre de Macedo Duarte

No abstract provided.

Beyond Anti-Semitism, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

Focusing on internal contradictions within the Israeli left, this essay considers the impact of the historical legacy of anti-Semitism on everyday thinking about Israel and the Palestinian territories. Contesting the view that to criticize Israel is to engage in anti-Semitic defamation, it offers an historical account of how Israel's actions in the West Bank have come to be immunized from conscientious criticism. It also documents how progressive media outlets in contemporary Israel have silenced or otherwise marginalized Israel's most active critics.

Pobreza De Espírito? Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe E A Crítica Ao Nacional-Espiritualismo De Heidegger., Andre De Macedo Duarte

Andre de Macedo Duarte

No abstract provided.

Children's Oppression, Rights And Liberation, Samantha Godwin

Samantha Godwin

This paper advances a radical and controversial analysis of the legal status of children. I argue that the denial of equal rights and equal protection to children under the law is inconsistent with liberal and progressive beliefs about social justice and fairness. In order to do this I first situate children’s legal and social status in its historical context, examining popular assumptions about children and their rights, and expose the false necessity of children’s current legal status. I then offer a philosophical analysis for why children’s present subordination is unjust, and an explanation of how society could be sensibly and …

Responsibility Of And Trust In Isps, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

This discussion is about the neglected concepts of trust and social responsibility on the Internet. I will discuss and explain the concepts and their implications to people and society. I then address the issue of moral and social responsibilities of ISPs and web-hosting companies. I argue that ISPs and web-hosting companies should aspire to take responsibility for content and that they should respect and abide by their own terms of conduct.

Sacrifice In A Post-Moral Society, Eric Bain-Selbo

Eric Bain-Selbo

No abstract provided.

Heidegger E O Caráter Historial-Político Da Obra De Arte, Andre De Macedo Duarte

Andre de Macedo Duarte

The text discusses the historial-political character attributed by Heidegger to the artwork in his 1936 essay “The origin of the work of art”. The main argument is that Heidegger’s analysis of the artwork is simultaneously an inquiry into the possibility of a new beginning in history by means of a genuine appropriation of history, a subject-matter that was altogether absent during the project of fundamental ontology. The essay on the artwork is considered as a first step in Heidegger’s formulation of his later thesis concerning Western history as the history of Being. Incidentally, this shift in Heidegger’s understanding of history …

Hannah Arendt's Radical Politics: Beyond Actually Existing Democracies, Andre De Macedo Duarte

Andre de Macedo Duarte

The present text investigates Arendt’s conception of the political underlying her theoretical reconstruction of the Greek polis. My main argument is that Arendt’s return to the past aims at questioning the political alternatives offered by many contemporary currents of political liberalism, which tend to reduce the political to the domain of the juridical. Distinctively, I think that Arendt outlines a radical conception of democracy that is to be situated beyond the model of our actually existing democracies. In order to show that Arendt’s aim was not that of elaborating a theoretical normative and utopian conception of the political, far away …

Heidegger And The Historical-Political Character Of The Artwork, Andre De Macedo Duarte

Andre de Macedo Duarte

The text discusses the historial-political character attributed by Heidegger to the artwork in his 1936 essay “The origin of the work of art”. The main argument is that Heidegger’s analysis of the artwork is simultaneously an inquiry into the possibility of a new beginning in history by means of a genuine appropriation of history, a subject-matter that was altogether absent during the project of fundamental ontology. The essay on the artwork is considered as a first step in Heidegger’s formulation of his later thesis concerning Western history as the history of Being. Incidentally, this shift in Heidegger’s understanding of history …

The Scope Of Tolerance And Its Moral Reasoning, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

This essay aims to consider the scope of tolerance and its moral reasoning. I first discuss the reluctance of prominent philosophers to prescribe boundaries to liberty and tolerance. I then focus attention on Rawls’ discussion on tolerance, which I find quite disappointing, yet argue that his line of reasoning on the question of tolerating the intolerant contributed to the very fashionable consequentialist approach. After criticizing the consequentialist reasoning I introduce an alternative approach: the principled reasoning. I explain that much of the liberal reasoning is inspired by the fear of sliding down the slippery slope, and finally turn to discuss …

Rights Of Inequality: Rawlsian Justice, Equal Opportunity, And The Status Of The Family, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Is the family subject to principles of justice? In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls includes the (monogamous) family along with the market and the government as among the "basic institutions of society" to which principles of justice apply. Justice, he famously insists, is primary in politics as truth is in science: the only excuse for tolerating injustice is that no lesser injustice is possible. The point of the present paper is that Rawls doesn't actually mean this. When it comes to the family, and in particular its impact on fair equal opportunity (the first part of the the Difference …

Hannah Arendt E A Modernidade: Esquecimento E Redescoberta Da Política, Andre De Macedo Duarte

Andre de Macedo Duarte

Hannah Arendt views Modernity as the epoch of the forgetfulness of politics in its democratic determinations, since the political and the public sphere were either totally reduced to the specter of violence and terror, as it happened in the case of totalitarian regimes, or totally absorbed by the bureaucratic administration of society’s economic interests. In this article I intend to discuss the main arguments that constitute her critical diagnosis of Modernity, retracing them to their inspirational origins, that is, Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s critical assessments of Modernity. Finally, I try to demonstrate that Arendt has balanced her critical understanding of politics …

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

What's Wrong With Exploitation?, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Abstract: Marx thinks that capitalism is exploitative, and that is a major basis for his objections to it. But what's wrong with exploitation, as Marx sees it? (The paper is exegetical in character: my object is to understand what Marx believed,) The received view, held by Norman Geras, G.A. Cohen, and others, is that Marx thought that capitalism was unjust, because in the crudest sense, capitalists robbed labor of property that was rightfully the workers' because the workers and not the capitalists produced it. This view depends on a Labor Theory of Property (LTP), that property rights are based ultimately …

In Defence Of Exploitation, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

The concept of exploitation is thought to be central to Marx's Critique of capitalism. John Roemer, an analytical (then-) Marxist economist now at Yale, attacked this idea in a series of papers and books in the 1970s-1990s, arguing that Marxists should be concerned with inequality rather than exploitation -- with distribution rather than production, precisely the opposite of what Marx urged in The Critique of the Gotha Progam.

This paper expounds and criticizes Roemer's objections and his alternative inequality based theory of exploitation, while accepting some of his criticisms. It may be viewed as a companion paper to my What's …

The Paradox Of Ideology, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a …

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …