Philosophy Commons^™

Resistance To Unjust Immigration Restrictions, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

State employees use force or the threat of force to restrict immigration.Border guards forcibly detain and incarcerate foreigners who immigrate without state approval. When migrants evade or resist immigration restrictions, border agents sometimes deploy tasers to incapacitate migrants, pepper spray them, shoot them with rubber bullets, and, less frequently, beat migrants with batons, and even fire live ammunition at them. Thousands of migrants perish annually in attempts to evade border agents. 2 State officials also capture and deport migrants who reside in their borders without official authorization. Affluent states have deported millions of unauthorized migrants in recent decades.

Justice Without Solidarity? Collective Identity And The Fate Of The "Ethical" In Habermas' Recent Political Theory, Andrew J. Pierce

Presidential Seminar on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition

No abstract provided.

Ayn Rand’S Rejection Of Environmentalism: Toward Challenging Right-Wing Inaction On Environmental Issues In The United States, Taylor M. Bailey

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

Environmental protection has become a volatile political issue in the United States, especially within the past decade. This toxicity must be remedied to facilitate substantive reform. Anti-environmentalism on the part of the American Right can be partially traced back to the writings of the conservative philosopher Ayn Rand. In this paper, I aim to show that Rand fundamentally misunderstood the mainstream environmental movement in the U.S., and similarly her environmental philosophy, as well as her answers to solving environmental damages, are inadequate in providing answers to collective environmental problems (i.e. climate change). I argue that even in a framework as …

Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

This essay examines translations of the Kurdish epic poem Mem û Zîn into Turkish, tracing the logics behind these state-sponsored translations and examining how acts of translation are also efforts to regulate, translate, and erase Kurdish subjectivities. I argue that the state instrumentalizes Mem û Zîn’s potent nationalist currency in order to disarm present and future claims of Kurdish national autonomy. Using translation as a counterinsurgent governmental tool, the state attempts to domesticate Kurdish nationalist discourses even as it reproduces them, thereby transforming Kurdish nationalism into a specter of itself. Attending to this specter, however, allows us to see how …

Armed With An Easel: Understanding Artistic Political Praxis Through The Works Of Theodor Adorno And Chantal Mouffe, Evelyn Yu Yu Swe

Senior Independent Study Theses

This Independent Study is divided into four chapters. The first chapter examines the role of capitalism in the formation of our culture. The argument presented here is that culture plays an important role in reinforcing modern neoliberal capitalism and that neoliberal capitalism has massive control over the dissemination of culture and the arts. The chapter concludes that it is necessary to utilize socio-cultural means in combating the influence of capitalism, and there does indeed exist emancipatory potential in artistic political praxis.

The second chapter focuses on Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory in articulating his conception of the emancipatory potential of art. …

Esquisse D’Un Projet Épistémologique Pour La Science Politique Dans Une Afrique Post-Génocide, Mame-Penda Ba

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article attempts to answer two main questions: “What does it mean to teach political science in an African university when oneself is African?” and “what social realities are we documenting (or should we document)?” As a political scientist, I came to ask myself these questions based on my encounter with the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, and based on the questions that this major event had kindled in me. My encounter with the subject of “genocide” was in all respects an upheaval because I understood suddenly a large weakness in the way political science was taught at Université …

From Topos To Utopia: Critical Buddhism, Globalization, And Ideology Criticism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 4.

Žižek’S Hegel: Less Than Nothing: Hegel And The Shadow Of Dialectical Materialism, Gavin Hyman

International Dialogue

Followers of Slavoj Žižek’s work had long been awaiting his “big book on Hegel.” In interviews and other appearances, he made no secret of the fact that this work was in progress and, furthermore, that he considered it to be a labour of love, his magnum opus, and, in a sense, a culmination. Big the book certainly is—1010 pages of text to be precise. If such a book were to be written by any other author, readers would doubtless have waited considerably longer to receive it. But so prolific is this author that the waiting has been minimal, and many …

Martin Heidegger And The First World War, David A. White

International Dialogue

The subtitle of this work is “Being and Time as Funeral Oration.” This addition helps a reader to appreciate that the book functions on various levels: scholarly, to the extent that it offers a reading of selected details in Heidegger’s first major work; historical, in that Altman asserts with great vigor that Being and Time should be seen as a “funeral oration” for those who died in World War One; biographical, in that we read much about Heidegger’s personal actions in political and academic contexts leading to and during both WWI and a decade after the conclusion of the “Great …

A World Of Becoming, Stanimir Panayotov

International Dialogue

It is difficult to respond in a genre other than philosophical prose when writing about one. Philosophical prose is a very demanding and small club: it is almost like the poetry club of philosophy recognized in and by itself. Few are the specimens of the genre and plenty are those raising hands from within. This is largely because genre-determined writing such as this one is both about style and Zeitgeist. And to rise up to the standards of styling the spirit(s) of time is an ordeal of both the heart and the mind even trained thinkers fail to do. With …

Democracy, Islam, And Secularism In Turkey, Renat Shaykhutdinov

International Dialogue

This book edited by Ahmet Kuru and Alfred Stepan provides an important contribution to the understanding of the nexus between democracy and democratization, religion and secularism in the context of Turkey, arguably the most stable Muslim-majority democracy in the greater Middle East. The volume features a select group of scholars and policy makers and is a product of two conferences held at Columbia University with the subsequent meetings and a thorough review and revision process. Among the contributors to the volume is Ergun Özbudun, the head of the academic commission for the new constitutional draft, whose chapters problematize the conflict …

Leviathans At The Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous And Corporate Actors In Papua New Guinea, Jerry K. Jacka

International Dialogue

Social analysis in anthropology today “oscillates uneasily” between a concern with Foucauldian global regimes of governance on the one hand and Deleuzian assemblages of agentive actors on the other. In Leviathans at the Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous and Corporate Actors in Papua New Guinea, Alex Golub asks if there is “a better way to do justice to a contemporary scene characterized by both spontaneity and regime” (2). Golub’s book seeks to find this middle road through the analysis of the development of a world-class gold mine on the homelands of a group of indigenous people—the Ipili— living in the highlands …

Kindly Inquisitors, The New Attack On Free Thought, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz

International Dialogue

George F. Will’s forward to the 2013 edition of this book provides important focus to the problems arising when even one person is “offended” by free speech (xiii). From campus speech codes to legal and social theory aimed at balancing the First Amendment against other rights, Will flatly rejects the liberal movement toward “sensitivity,” “inclusiveness,” “multiculturalism” and other values that attempt to limit expression: What is needed is a book explaining why the usual, and intended, result of this practice is a finding that those objectives… are more worthy than the objective of maintaining a liberal regime of protected expression. …

What Is A Palestinian State Worth?, Paul Kriese

International Dialogue

Sari Nusseibeh begins his study of the “Palestinian problem” with the comment “this is not an academic study” (18). Maybe that is why this particular study is so good. When asked to write this review my first response was not very positive. Most studies of this region lack clarity or are so ideological as to not be very useful. Many of these studies often also claim to be “academic.” Nusseibeh’s study is, unlike many reviews, a masterful academic study. His study succinctly and accurately portrays the tangled and tortured history of the region from a view that is both sympathetic …

The Words And The Land: Israeli Intellectuals And The Nationalist Myth, Abdelwahab Hiba Hechiche

International Dialogue

Shlomo Sand opens this book with a significant sentence: “Every book is part autobiography” and, consequently, “autobiographical confession” (7). Although he was born in 1946, his early recollection has been marked by a certain residue of the consequences of the Shoa, because as a child he was an eyewitness of the living conditions of people “like his Polish parents moving from one “displaced persons camp to another” (8). But during that same period of his early childhood, his memory resonated with his father’s reminding him that “we had taken someone else’s home” (8).The reader begins to witness an existential ethical …

Essential Chan Buddhism: The Character And Spirit Of Chinese Zen, Owen G. Mordaunt

International Dialogue

This book embraces the essence of talks Guo Jun gave at a fourteen-day retreat at Chan Forest in the hills of Jakarta in 2010 as well as subsequent conversations the editor and his wife had with him. It is highly readable and accessible to the reader. It has poetic, spontaneous and witty qualities, providing deep insight into Chan (also spelled Cha’n) Buddhism. Chan is the Chinese form of Zen and is not well-known in the West as Zen is, but it derives from the traditions of India. It has flourished and continued to develop through many masters and its teachings …

Letters To Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals, Russell Jacoby

International Dialogue

“Some of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don’t matter in today’s great debates.” So opens a recent New York Times column headlined, “Professors, We Need You!” (February 2014) Nicholas Kristof’s thoughts on the disappearance of the professoriate elicited heated responses, both irate and enthusiastic. The flap illustrates that the place of intellectuals in American life continues to generate controversy. Samuel McCormick, as assistant professor of communications at Purdue University, joins this on-going dispute with Letters to Power, a wide-ranging and historically informed study of intellectual dissent. …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 4

The Sports Gene: Inside The Science Of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, Dave Ogden

International Dialogue

David Epstein is another author chasing the elusive answer to one of the basic and ageless issues of social and natural sciences: Nature versus nurture. His discoveries and conclusions in The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance are not necessarily new, but he provides ample and interesting evidence that leans more heavily on the side of nature. In doing so, he takes on stock believers in Karl Anders Ericsson’s theoretical set called “deliberate practice.” Ericsson and his colleagues have studied elite “performers” in a variety of fields, including typing, chess playing, musicianship, and athletic skills. Ericsson found …

Human Rights & Gender Violence: Translating International Law Into Local Justice, Pattaka Sa-Ngimnet

International Dialogue

This book explains how international human rights laws are created by consensus through representatives of local and national governments and then become translated into content acceptable to local communities. In an introductory chapter the author presents the overall arguments of the entire work. She also gives examples that support the arguments and lays out the pattern of human rights legislation by using the specific example of gender violence. Emphasizing language, she explains how it is understood in diverse ways. The rest of the book is concerned with more specific examples. Chapter two deals with creating human rights law (36–71). Chapter …

Avatar And Nature Spirituality, Martin Schönfeld

International Dialogue

“To put it mildly, the world is a mess.” Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State, 27 July 2014 James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) was the first film to combine stereoscopic imagining and motion-capture animation for a flawless 3-D presentation. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, and won three, for Cinematography, Art Direction, and Visual Effects. It was also the first box-office hit to gross more than $2 billion, and it remains the highest-grossing film to date. It made cinematic history. But it was more than an aesthetic triumph. Avatar is also a cultural …

Comrade Jesus: An Epistolic Manifesto, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Set against the backdrop of the contemporary crisis of capitalism and world-historical events, this article examines the advance of globalized imperialism from the perspective of a Marxist-humanist approach to pedagogy known as “revolutionary critical pedagogy” enriched by liberation theology. It is written as an epistolic manifesto to the transnational capitalist class, demanding that those who willingly serve its interests reconsider their allegiance and calling for a planetary revolution in the way that we both think about capitalism and how education and religion serves to reproduce it at the peril of both students and humanity as a whole.

After Fukushima: The Equivalence Of Catastrophes, Jean-Luc Nancy

Philosophy & Theory

In this book, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy examines the nature of catastrophes in the era of globalization and technology. Can a catastrophe be an isolated occurrence? Is there such a thing as a “natural” catastrophe when all of our technologies—nuclear energy, power supply, water supply—are necessarily implicated, drawing together the biological, social, economic, and political? Nancy examines these questions and more. Exclusive to this English edition are two interviews with Nancy conducted by Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Yuji Nishiyama and Yotetsu Tonaki.

How Secular Should Democracy Be? A Cross-Disciplinary Study Of Catholicism And Islam In Promoting Public Reason, David Ingram, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

I argue that the same factors (strategic and principled) that motivated Catholicism to champion liberal democracy are the same that motivate 21^st Century Islam to do the same. I defend this claim by linking political liberalism to democratic secularism. Distinguishing institutional, political, and epistemic dimensions of democratic secularism, I show that moderate forms of political and epistemic secularism are most conducive to fostering the kind of public reasoning essential to democratic legitimacy. This demonstration draws upon the ambivalent impact of Indonesia’s Islamic parties in advancing universal social justice aims as against more sectarian policies.

Civilization Of The Living Dead: Canonical Monstrosity, The Romero Zombie, And The Political Subject, Nicholas Walter Robbins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the canonical monsters of Western political theory, including Plato's wolf-man, Hobbes's Leviathan and Tocqueville's mechanical mass. It argues that monster theorists - including horror film director George A. Romero, creator of the zombie and its apocalyptic narrative - utilize the horror genre in order to reveal the hidden dysfunctions and unrealized potentials of self and society. The canon features several prison-like heuristics - including Plato's cave, Hobbes's sate of nature, Tocqueville's prison, and Romero's zombie apocalypse - that bring to light the mass enslavement, intellectual dysfunction, appetitive tyranny, and cannibalism of the political subject. Theorists consistently depict …

Moral Inscriptions: Politics And The Rhetoric Of Responsibility, Steven Pludwin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation advances two interrelated claims. First, I examine the concept of responsibility and show how it operates as a rhetorical form that mediates a large segment of political life. Framing responsibility as a distinctly political problem, I argue that it functions to produce, discipline and govern subjects as well as legislate forms of identity, difference and community. Second, I argue that the definitional space of responsibility is not sacred, but contested. It is within this contested space that political battles regarding how we ought to understand the world and what it means to live in common with others plays …

Theologies Of Word And State: Some Reflections On The Ottawa Shooting, Justin Kh Tse, Matt Sheedy

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The shooting in Ottawa on 22 October 2014 has uncovered the remarkable way that the Canadian state remains theologically constituted. In some ways, this is a relatively uncontroversial argument. The White House press conference immediately following the attacks made a link between the Canadian support for military action against the Islamic State and the deaths of both Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent on October 20 in Quebec and Cpl. Nathan Cirillo of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders on the October 22. When one says that Ottawa shootings have a religious dimension, the gut response is that my argument will be about …

Seno'o Giro: Life And Thought Of A Radical Buddhist, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Implicit Prejudice And Its Implications For How Communities Should Respond To Racial Injustices, Harry Kainen

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

In the spring of 2013, a racially controversial incident occurred on the Washington University Campus. The incident raised questions about the racial tolerance of the university community as well as exactly who should be held responsible for the injustice. Most importantly, the community’s response to the incident exemplified how a community with the potential for substantial collective action can fail to mobilize and improve when they are called upon to do so. This paper examines recent psychological research that studies the existence of subconscious racial prejudices in order to examine its implications in community responses to racial injustices. Results show …