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Center For Professional Ethics, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2003, Case Western Reserve University

Center for Professional Ethics

Table of Contents:

• America's Role in The World: Understanding Muslims and Islam
• One Year Later: Remembering September 11, 2001
• Conversations in Bioethics: CWRU President, Dr. Edard Hundert
• A Different Kind of Close Up: Looking at Cinematic Justice
• Winter 2003 News, Notes, and Future Events
• Director's Corner: What Are We Going To Do About It? by Robert P. Lawry

(2003) Power, Manipulation, And Control In A Community Of Inquiry, Pavel Lushyn, David K. Kennedy

Collected Papers of David Kennedy

In a previous paper, we introduced the notion of pedagogical imposition, and argued for its importance in understanding the psychodynamics of community of inquiry (CI). Practitioners of Cl usually define themselves as engaged in a liberatory pedagogy - that is, a form of teaching which avoids imposition on or manipulation of students. This paper will argue that, if we view the classroom as a system, this is a naive assumption. This argument is based, in turn, on our assumption that, first, any interactive system involves relations of power; and second, that any specifically pedagogical system involves unequal relations of power. …

(2003) Notes From The Field: Card Games, Roughhousing, Traffic Jams & Thunderstorms, David K. Kennedy

Collected Papers of David Kennedy

The following discussion was recorded in April 2003 in a second grade classroom at Edgemont School, Montclair, New Jersey. it was one of a series of 16 conversations on the topic of "conflict," conducted in two second grades and two fifth grades, and led by three separate facilitators. This conversation was facilitated by David Kennedy, a faculty member at Montclair State University and staff member of the IAPC.

Three Stories You Can Read To Your Cat (1997) By Sara Swan Miller, Gareth B. Matthews

Picture Books

When a cat's human friend leaves the house and tells it to be good, the cat does many things it considers good, like shredding the curtains, eating a house plant, and digging into the garbage. In this review, originally published in Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 16(4), 2003, Gareth B. Matthews demonstrates that young children can understand and enjoy the irony of sarcasm. They also enjoy grappling with the story's philosophical irony: the problem of clarifying the difficult question of what makes an action good or bad.

Review Of Ronald M. Green, The Human Embryo Research Debates, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Art Of Deception, Edward N. Martin

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Subjecting Dasein, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

"Das 'Subjekt' ist eine Fiktion," Nietzsche declares in aphorism 370 of Der Wille zur Macht. There is no such thing as an ego, a unitary center of personhood that can be appraised and approved for its virtue and wisdom or blamed for its premeditated transgressions and irresponsible beliefs. Subjectivity does not exist. Despite Nietzsche's pervasive influence, however, the question of subjectivity - the ontological nature, the ethical status, and the epistemological significance of the human subject - has been a preeminent theme in Continental philosophy for the entirety of the twentieth century. Virtually all Conti­nental philosophers have found it …

Foucault's Political Spirituality, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Recently, while rereading some material in The Essential Works of Foucault, I came upon a passage that pulled me up short and then sent me flying from my English translation to the French original. The passage, from an interview in May, 1978, contains one of Foucault’s infamous attempts to sum up his life’s work. It starts with the assertion that “since the beginning,” Foucault has been asking himself a certain question: “What is history, given that there is continually being produced within it a separation of true and false?” He elaborates, then, expanding that question into four sub-questions: (1) …

Against The "Ordinary Summing" Test For Convergence, G. C. Goddu

Philosophy Faculty Publications

One popular test for distinguishing linked and convergent argument structures is Robert Yanal's Ordinary Summing Test. Douglas Walton, in his comprehensive survey of possible candidates for the linked/convergent distinction, advocates a particular version of Yanal's test. In a recent article, Alexander Tyaglo proposes to generalize and verify Yanal's algorithm for convergent arguments, the basis for Yanal's Ordinary Summing Test. In this paper I will argue that Yanal's ordinary summing equation does not demarcate convergence and so his Ordinary Summing Test fails. Hence, despite Walton's recommendation or Tyaglo's generalization, the Ordinary Summing Test should not be used for distinguishing linked argument …

Ariadne's Thread: Walter Benjamin's Hashish Passages, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In a letter of 1932 to Gershom Scholem, Benjamin outlines his literary ambitions; he plans four major books, one of which would have been on hashish. The others were to include the Passagenwerk, his essays on literature, and his letters. It could be said that we now have those three books, if only in the form of sprawling and gigantic ruins. The Passagenwerk has been the object of many inspired and yet hopeless projects of reconstruction; the literary essays are available in German and other languages; and letters from throughout his life have been collected and published. All can be …

The Moral Emotions Of The Criminal Law, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Imagine you have committed a crime. You might experience any number of emotional responses to what you've done, ranging from self-satisfaction to self-disgust. But however you do feel, how should you feel? The question seems especially appropriate for a conference honoring Professor Herbert Morris and celebrating his work, for no one has shed light more on the moral emotions of the criminal law. The line of thought that follows owes Professor Morris a large and obvious debt.

So, once again, how should you feel when you have committed a criminal wrong? "Guilty" comes immediately to mind. But guilt is not …

Waging War For Human Rights: Toward A Moral-Legal Theory Of Humanitarian Intervention, Eric A. Heinze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention edited by Jonathan Moore. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. 322pp.

Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas edited by J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert O. Keohane. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 350pp.

Poiesis And Art-Making: A Way Of Letting-Be, Derek H. Whitehead Ph.D.

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article is both philosophical and practical in its intent. It endeavors to bring into focus an idea with an Ancient Greek lineage, poiesis, and determine whether it may revitalize our thinking about the 'making' of art. The art-making considered in this paper will concentrate exclusively on Western art and its historical and contemporary manifestations. I suggest that poiesis - that which "pro-duces or leads (a thing) into being'" - may enable practitioners in the varying art forms, and aestheticians who reflect upon them, to come to a deeper sense of how artworks work: that they realize themselves inter-dependently …

Recent Publications

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Between Battlefield And Play: Art And Aesthetics In Visual Culture, Renée Van De Vall

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Mona Hatoum's video installation Corps étranger is an example of an artwork that critically comments on particular aspects of contemporary visual culture, such as the colonization of the body's interior by medical image technologies. It has indeed been interpreted in those terms by several authors from within the new academic field of Visual Culture. Here it is argued that the critical cultural impact of the installation might be more fully described when one grants art a relative autonomy within the cultural field and, moreover, draws on concepts from more traditional academic disciplines and approaches, such as aesthetics and phenomenology. Art …

Melancholy As An Aesthetic Emotion, Emily Brady, Arto Haapala

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this article, we want to show the relevance and importance of melancholy as an aesthetic emotion. Melancholy often plays a role in our encounters with art works, and it is also present in some of our aesthetic responses to the natural environment. Melancholy invites aesthetic considerations to come into play not only in well-defined aesthetic contexts but also in everyday situations that give reason for melancholy to arise. But the complexity of melancholy, the fact that it is fascinating in itself, suggests the further thought that it may be considered as an aesthetic emotion per se. To this end, …

An Exchange On Disinterestedness, Ronald Hepburn

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The idea of aesthetic disinterestedness has been a central concept in aesthetics since the late eighteenth century. This exchange offers a contemporary reconsideration of disinterestedness from different sides of the question.

Multiple Inheritance And Film Identity: A Reply To Dilworth, Aaron Smuts

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

I argue that Dilworth has not shown the type / token theory of film identity to be non-viable, since there is no reason to think that a single object cannot be a token of two types. Even if we assume a single inheritance view of types, Dilworth's argument runs into other problems. Dilworth does not provide any convincing argument for why intentions are necessary for identifying film and why production history alone will not suffice for identifying hardly conceivable forgeries. Intention is not necessary for distinguishing between fakes and the real thing, nor is it necessary to differentiate between two …

Ariadne Revisited, John Dilworth

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

My article, "Ariadne at the Movies," provided a detailed, double film counter-example to the claim that films are types. Here I defend my views against various criticisms provided by Aaron Smuts. The defense includes some necessary clarification of the Ariadne article's broader theoretical structure and background, as well as some additional anti-type arguments to further withstand his criticisms.

Two Monsters In Search Of A Concept, Robert Yanal

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

What is a monster? At least three concepts have been proposed: Aristotle thinks a monster to be a "mistake of purpose" in nature; Noël Carroll thinks a monster to be a scientifically impossible being that arouses disgust and fear; Cynthia Freeland thinks a monster to be an evil being. Thus a two-headed calf is an Aristotelian monster; a werewolf a monster on Carroll's definition; and Norman Bates of Hitchcock's Psycho a monster on Freeland's concept. These have no interesting overlaps. My project is to discuss Norman Bates and Mark Lewis (of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom). Bates and Lewis are monsters, …

Hundred Dresses (1944) By Eleanor Estes, Peter Shea

Chapter Books

Wanda Petronski was a poor Polish girl who lived with her father and brother. She had only one dress to wear to school but told the other girls in her class that she had a hundred dresses at home. Disbelieving her, those girls teased Wanda continually, until she and her family eventually moved out of town. When the class learned that Wanda had won an art award in absentia, they regretted their teasing and sent her a letter of apology, which resulted in an intriguing gesture of reconciliation. Moral development involves the moral imagination, which requires thinking oneself into the …

Identifying The First Person, Roblin Roy Meeks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Wide agreement exists that self-ascriptions that one would express with the first-person pronoun differ in kind from those one would express with other self-designating expressions such as proper names and definite descriptions. At least some first-person self-ascriptions, many argue, are nonaccidental—that is, they involve no self-identification, and hence in making them one cannot accidentally misidentify the subject of the ascription. I examine the support for this claim throughout the literature, paying particular attention to Sydney Shoemaker's proposal that self-ascriptions are nonaccidental in virtue of being immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun. According to Shoemaker, such immunity …

What Reflections Of Eden Do We Find In A Garden?: An Analysis Of Illusionary Constructs That Seek To Establish Identity With The 'Ideal' Garden, Olga Kirov

Theses : Honours

Gardens are retreats that offer sanctuary from the tensions of modern life, Spiritual needs have stirred the Western psyche the most to embellish myths that account for the inconsistency of life. The original myth of the Garden of Eden has represented the ideal paradigm between imperfect nature and human nature, accounting for human frailty and anxious yearnings for a utopian perspective. In attempt to improve human nature, throughout time humans have aspired to transform or improve the natural environment, thus making every garden an image. As an art form, that draws on the past as it looks to the future, …

[Introduction To] Archaeologies Of Vision: Foucault And Nietzche On Seeing And Saying, Gary Shapiro

Bookshelf

While many acknowledge that Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault have redefined our notions of time and history, few recognize the crucial role that "the infinite relation" between seeing and saying (as Foucault put it) plays in their work. Gary Shapiro reveals, for the first time, the full extent of Nietzsche and Foucault's concern with the visual.

Shapiro explores the whole range of Foucault's writings on visual art, including the theory of visual resistance, the concept of the phantasm or simulacrum, and his interrogation of the relation of painting, language, and power in artists from Bosch to Warhol. Shapiro also shows …

A Future Foretold: Neo-Aristotelian Praise Of Postmodern Legal Theory, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Postmodern thinking puts severe stress on the project of legal theory. The philosophical critique of grand narratives, coupled with the radically pragmatic return to localized practices, has rendered theorizing suspect. Theory appears to be a quaint vestige of previous "bad faith" refusals to accept the finitude of human existence. But the postmodern position is even more complex, because postmodern anti-theorists tend to employ perplexing jargon and wield sophisticated and obscure concepts in their work. The postmodern puzzle is whether one can challenge theory without theorizing. Is theory defined by its practical effects, or by its refusal to become complicit in …

Nietzschean Critique And Philosophical Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This article appears as part of a Symposium on "Nietzsche and Legal Theory" published by the Cardozo Law Review. It addresses connections between philosophical hermeneutics and Nietzschean critique, and the relevance that these connections might have for legal theory.

Legal practice inevitably is hermeneutical, with lawyers and judges interpreting governing legal texts and the social situations in which they must be applied. Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics describes this practice well, but he treats the question of the possibility of a critical hermeneutics in an ambiguous and under-developed manner. Consequently, Gadamer is frequently (and unfairly) accused of conventionalism and quietism. At …

[Introduction To] The Ethics Of Leadership, Joanne B. Ciulla

Bookshelf

The focus of The Ethics of Leadership is the ethical challenges that are distinctive to leaders and leadership. Organized around themes such as power and the public and private morality of leaders, the book explores the ethical issues of leadership in a variety of contexts including, business, NGOs, and government. It integrates material on ethics and leadership from the great Eastern and Western philosophers with leadership literature and case studies. This multi-disciplinary approach helps philosophers and leadership scholars present a fully integrated view of the subject.

Applying The Categorical Imperative In Kant's Rechtslehre, Nelson T. Potter Jr.

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

During the last forty years there has been considerable discussion of the application of the categorical imperative to derive conclusions concerning particular moral duties and rights in Kant's moral philosophy. Much attention was focused on the four examples of such applications that occur in Chapter Two of the Groundwork, especially the first presentation of those examples, in relation to the "universal law" formulation of the categorical imperative, as opposed to their second run through in the same chapter, in relation to the second formulation of the categorical imperative, on respect for persons. In more recent years the often fuller …

Zhong Hui’S Laozi Commentary And The Debate On Capacity And Nature In Third-Century China, Alan Kam Leung Chan

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Zhong Hui (a.d. 225-264) was a major, albeit neglected figure in third-century Chinese intellectual history. Author of a Laozi com mentary, a work on the relationship between "capacity" (cai yf) and "nature" (xing f-fe), two treatises on the Yijing HH, and other writings, Zhong Hui played a significant role in the development of xuanxue -P (learning of the mysterious Dao), which, as is well known, came into prominence during the Zhengshi JEin reign (240-249) of the Wei H dy nasty (220-265) and dominated the Chinese intellectual scene well into the sixth century Zhong Hui was highly regarded by his contemporaries …

Virtue Jurisprudence: A Virtue-Centered Theory Of Judging, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

"Virtue jurisprudence" is a normative and explanatory theory of law that utilizes the resources of virtue ethics to answer the central questions of legal theory. The main focus of the essay is the development of a virtue-centered theory of judging. The exposition of the theory begins with exploration of defects in judicial character such as corruption and incompetence. Next, an account of judicial virtue is introduced. This includes judicial wisdom, a form of phronesis, or sound practical judgment. A virtue-centered account of justice is defended against the argument that theories of fairness are prior to theories of justice. The …