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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Governmentality, Biopower, And The Debate Over Genetic Enhancement, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Governmentality, Biopower, And The Debate Over Genetic Enhancement, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Although Foucault adamantly refused to make moral pronouncements or dictate moral principles or political programs to his readers, his work offers a number of tools and concepts that can help us develop our own ethical views and practices. One of these tools is genealogical analysis, and one of these concepts is “biopower.” Specifically, this essay seeks to demonstrate that Foucault’s concept of biopower and his genealogical method are valuable as we consider moral questions raised by genetic enhancement technologies. First, it examines contemporary debate over the development, marketing, and application of such technologies, suggesting that what passes for ethical deliberation …
Aristotelian Privacy: Perfectionism, Pornography, And The Virtues Of The Polis, G. Scott Davis
Aristotelian Privacy: Perfectionism, Pornography, And The Virtues Of The Polis, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
In the United States privacy is a hot topic, not least because of the current administration's desire to have unbridled access to its citizens' overseas conversations. But in what follows I do not plan to deal directly with any legal or policy concerns. Instead, I am interested in the philosophical foundations,- if any there be, of privacy as something to which individuals and other groups may be entitled. Because much of the discussion of "privacy rights" has revolved around matters sexual, I shall key the discussion to individual access to sexually explicit publications and what limits, if any, moral reflection …
Introduction To John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, G. Scott Davis
Introduction To John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, which first appeared in three installments of Fraser's Magazine in 1861, was intended as a defense of the notorious doctrine identified with the liberal reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and with the author's father, James Mill (1773-1836). The defense was successful. While "the principle of utility, or as Bentham has latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle," may have scandalized Victorian England, Mill's Utilitarianism became one of the defining documents of modern British and American liberalism. It is impossible to appreciate contemporary social and political life without coming to grips with utilitarianism.
Introduction To G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, G. Scott Davis
Introduction To G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
When Principia Ethica appeared, in 1903, it became something of a sacred text for the Cambridge-educated elites-Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes-who, along with Virginia Woolf, would form the core of the Bloomsbury Group. In a letter of October 11, 1903, Strachey confesses to Moore that he is "carried away" by Principia, which inaugurates, for him, "the beginning of the Age of Reason." Moore's critique of convention, his caustic dismissal of his philosophical predecessors, and the relentless rigor of his method promised a revolution in morality commensurate with the modernist transformation of art and literature. Principia Ethica shifted …
Asceticism/Askēsis: Foucault's Thinking Historical Subjectivity, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Asceticism/Askēsis: Foucault's Thinking Historical Subjectivity, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
In the Introduction to The Use of Pleasure Foucault calls his work an askēsis, "an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought." The "living substance of philosophy," Foucault writes, is the essay, "which should be understood as the assay or test by which, in the game of truth, one undergoes changes, and not as the simplistic appropriation of others for the purpose of communication." Foucault's work, then, does not simply report to us his conclusions or theories. Foucault is not primarily interested in imparting information. What he offers instead is a kind of exercise book.