Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Review Of Johanna Oksala's Foucault On Freedom, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Review Of Johanna Oksala's Foucault On Freedom, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Johanna Oksala has produced a provocative reading of Michel Foucault's work on the issues of freedom and resistance to normalizing oppression. Although many commentators have contended that Foucault's historicization of subjectivity leads to metaphysical determinism and eliminates the very possibility of freedom in human life, Oksala argues that his radical rethinking of both bodies and freedom largely escapes the simplistic criticisms routinely put forward since the early 1980s. She does subject Foucault's work to criticisms of her own, however. While the title of her book leads the reader to expect a tight focus on the question of freedom, much of …
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 …
The Technology Of Biopower: A Response To Todd May's "Foucault Now?", Ladelle Mcwhorter
The Technology Of Biopower: A Response To Todd May's "Foucault Now?", Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Because the occasion for his essay was the inaugural conference of the newly formed Foucault Society in New York City in the spring of 2005, Todd May takes as his point of departure the question of whether Foucault’s work is valuable to the sort of people who have come together to form that society: philosophers, artists, political activists, and in general to concerned citizens today, twenty years after Michel Foucault’s death. As might be expected given the Society’s raison d’être, May answers this question in the affirmative. But exactly how is Foucault’s work still relevant? It is his answer …