Philosophy Commons^™

Sagp Fordham Program 2017, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Draft (91117) Program of the 2017 SAGP Annual Meeting at Fordham University Lincoln Center, October 21-22, 2017.

Course Syllabus (Su17) Coli 331: “‘World-Traveling’: Alterity And Liminality In Spike Lee’S Do The Right Thing And Amiri Baraka’S Dutchman”, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

This semester, we’ll view Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing and Shirley Knight’s 1966 cinematic production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman through the critical lenses of Maria Lugones’ notions of ‘worlds’ and ‘world-traveling,’[1] which she develops in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Our task is to analyze a number of the problematics addressed in these visual works as discernible ‘world(s)’ of meaning and experience constituted by the libidinous investments, concrete practices, and ideological convictions of the human subjects who bear and circulate them.

[1] Maria Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, …

Sagp Newsletter 2016/17.4 Pacific, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 2016/17.3 Central, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

What's So Private About Private Property?, Matthew Blake Wilson

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This work attempts to determine what kinds of institutions—if any—the state should implement to protect private property, and investigates how individuals and communities operating within those institutions ought to behave. Because the laws produced by such institutions may conflict with community rights, social welfare, and justice, the political authorities—including judges and legislators—who operate the institutions must determine whether, and under what conditions, individual property rights ought to prevail over conflicting rights. I argue that considerations of privacy are necessary for making these determinations. Privacy—the condition that requires limitations upon the ability of others to access one’s physical spaces—has normative significance …

Sagp Newsletter 2016/17.1 East Scs, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Course Syllabus (W17 Online) Coli 211m: "Superhero Film And Contemporary Culture", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

What might the current popularity and ubiquity of superhero film say about contemporary culture? This course will explore three possible implications of this question: (1) that the superhero genre reflects a moment in our species’ history of reconciling the human being-technology relation, which we shall view as a complex system constituted by our productive relations to material and ideological tools and their ensembles, the needs and aspirations that determine how we conceptualize and activate these relations, and the technically rationalized social reality that is their result, (2) that this ongoing process of reconciliation evinces, at once, the …

Sagp Ssips 2016 Program, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Ssips 2016 Abstracts, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 2015/16.3 Pacific, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 2015.16.2 Central, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Libertarian Welfare Rights? An Inquiry Into The Coherence Of Some Common Libertarian Commitments, Nicole Hassoun

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

This paper argues that libertarians should endorse some welfare rights understood as rights that all states must guarantee to their subjects as a condition of legitimacy. For, it argues that libertarians, because they should be actual consent theorists, must agree to the following condition for state legitimacy: States must do what they can to ensure that their rights-respecting subjects secure the basic reasoning and planning capacities they need to consent to their rules.

How People Think About Distributing Aid, Nicole Hassoun, Emir Malikov, Nathan Lubchenco

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines how people think about aiding others in a way that can inform both theory and practice. It uses data gathered from Kiva, an online, non-profit organization that allows individuals to aid other individuals around the world, to isolate intuitions that people find broadly compelling. The central result of the paper is that people seem to give more priority to aiding those in greater need at least below some threshold. That is, the data strongly suggest incorporating both a threshold and a prioritarian principle into the analysis of what principles for aid distribution people accept. This conclusion should …

Conserving Nature; Preserving Identity, Nicole Hassoun, D. Wong

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Fundamental approaches to environmental ethics currently seem polarized between two broad varieties: the “conservationist” approach on which we should conserve the environment when it is in our interest to do so and the “preservationist” approach on which we should preserve the environment even when it is not in our interest to do so. The first approach obviously has a broader potential audience and is invoked even by preservationists when they seek to marshal the broadest possible support for environmental protection. For preservationists, however, the conservationist approach has obvious limitations. It permits damage to the environment whenever required by the balance …

Wilderness, The Wild, And Aesthetic Appreciation, Nicole Hassoun

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Wild nature is a source of wonder and inspiration in part because of its aesthetic value. This paper gives an account of the aesthetic value of wilderness and argues that wild nature is especially likely to give rise to what it will call the transformative aesthetic experience. This account satisfies three criteria John Fisher suggests for a good account of nature’s aesthetic value that might provide reasons for preservation. First, it retains a credible connection with canonical aesthetic theory. Second, it allows us to make a general distinction between our appreciation of nature and art. Third, it avoids the ‘the …

Course Syllabus (W16 Online) Coli 331: "Pulp Fiction And Quentin Tarantino", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Objectives and Expected Learning Outcomes:

Rejecting the standpoint of the passively entertained consumer, our shared objectives in this course will be (1) to bring our selected cinematic and written texts into interaction in such ways as to produce high-quality scholarly writing. It is hoped that, by the end of the semester, each student’s active engagement with our course material should have enabled him/her, (2) to deepen and broaden his/her knowledge base concerning the social problematics we will have treated in such ways as to inform and encourage constructive social action.

We will view Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Reservoir …

The Global Health Impact Index: Promoting Global Health, Nicole Hassoun

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Millions of people cannot access essential medicines they need for deadly diseases like malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS. There is good information on the need for drugs for these diseases but until now, no global estimate of the impact drugs are having on this burden. This paper presents a model measuring companies' key malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS drugs' consequences for global health (global-health-impact.org). It aggregates drugs' impacts in several ways-by disease, country and originator-company. The methodology can be extended across diseases as well as drugs to provide a more extensive picture of the impact companies' drugs are having on the …

Sagp Newsletter 2015/16.1 East Scs, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Ssips 2015 Program, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Ssips Abstracts 2015, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Course Syllabus (Fa15) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "Material Aesthetics", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

An examination of questions concerning aesthetic experience from the standpoint of the structural and functional logics of the capitalist mode of production

Course Syllabus (Sp15) Coli 214 Literature & Society: "Societies Of Discipline And Control", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course description:

Optics is central to the arts of producing human subjects and governing our spatiotemporal deployment of vital forces. Yet, in the transition of societies from industrial to post-industrial modes of production, there seems to have occurred a parallel shift in governmental focus from merely producing and disciplining subjects at the material level to controlling them at the ideological. In this discussion-driven course, we will turn to works of theory and fiction in order to examine the basic tenets of discipline and control and consider the extent to which these social practices diverge and converge in our present era.

Sagp Newsletter 2014/15.3 Pacific, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 2014/15.2 Central, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Nonconsequentialist Precaution, Christopher Morgan-Knapp

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

How cautious should regulators be? A standard answer is consequentialist: regulators should be just cautious enough to maximize expected social value. This paper charts the prospects of a nonconsequentialist - and more precautionary - alternative. More specifically, it argues that a contractualism focused on ex ante consent can motivate the following regulatory criterion: regulators should permit a socially beneficial risky activity only if no one can be expected to be made worse off by it. Broadly speaking, there are two strategies regulators can use to help risky activities satisfy this criterion: regulators can mandate strict safety standards that protect those …

Consequentialism, Climate Harm And Individual Obligations, Christopher Morgan-Knapp, Charles Goodman

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Does the decision to relax by taking a drive rather than by taking a walk cause harm? In particular, do the additional carbon emissions caused by such a decision make anyone worse off? Recently several philosophers have argued that the answer is no, and on this basis have gone on to claim that act-consequentialism cannot provide a moral reason for individuals to voluntarily reduce their emissions. The reasoning typically consists of two steps. First, the effect of individual emissions on the weather is miniscule: the planet’s meteorological system is so large, and the size of individual emissions so tiny, that …

Sagp Newsletter 2014/15.1 East Scs, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Ssips 2014 Program, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 2013/14.3 Pacific, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 2013/14.2 Central, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.