Philosophy Commons^™

The Calculus Of Consent, John Thrasher, Gerald Gaus

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy is a groundbreaking work in democratic theory. This chapter argues that it is of continued relevance today, due both to its methodological innovations and its use of those innovative techniques to solve the fundamental problem of democratic justification. In Calculus, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock fuse economic methods, political theory, and the normative project of showing how democratic institutions of a particular sort can be justified contractually, creating a unique form of democratic contractualism that came to be known as “Constitutional Political Economy” and the more general research program of “Public …

Biopower: Foucault And Beyond, Vernon W. Cisney, Nicolae Morar

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Michel Foucault’s notion of “biopower” has been a highly fertile concept in recent theory, influencing thinkers worldwide across a variety of disciplines and concerns. In The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Foucault famously employed the term to describe “a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them.” With this volume, Vernon W. Cisney and Nicolae Morar bring together leading contemporary scholars to explore the many theoretical possibilities that the concept of biopower has enabled while at the same time pinpointing their most important …

Islam Enligt Den Islamiska Staten - En Islamologisk Kommentar, Leif Stenberg

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Legitimacy And The International Trade Regime, Thomas Christiano

San Diego Law Review

Issues of global justice and trade are usually dealt with in terms of what a just system of trade is like and what the distribution of income, opportunities, or welfare ought to be. But the question I address and explore is what a legitimate way of making decisions in the international realm is. This issue has arisen acutely in the case of the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international institutions. In particular, many have complained that developed countries engaged in hard bargaining with developing countries in the conferences that led up to the formation of the …

How To Construct Global Justice, Aaron James

San Diego Law Review

Do social relationships between people give rise to any demands of social justice whatsoever? If they do, are they of any practical significance given the relationships living human beings are actually in? And, might they be so significant as to ground a theory of global justice—if not the whole of anything rightly called justice, then at least of the central range of issues in world politics? Finally, could that perhaps be what a political philosophy of global justice should mainly be about?

Here, in bare outline, is how the answers to all of these questions might be “yes,” at least …

From Theory To Practice I: Passing Judgments Of Exploitation, Mathias Risse, Gabriel Wollner

San Diego Law Review

In an earlier work, we offered a view on how trade should be treated within a theory of global justice. We proposed an account of exploitation to spell out the nature of the obligations that arise from trading. That account greatly benefits from a detailed development for concrete cases. The goal of this study and its close companion is to explore how our philosophical views help formulate judgments on a range of moral problems that arise from trading and to identify responsibilities of various actors and inform policy responses to instances of exploitation in trade.

To that end we use …

Two Conceptions Of Justice And The Dystopia Of Global Justice, Horacio Spector

San Diego Law Review

Political associations raise special questions of justice. Some authors contend that those special questions derive from characteristic features of the modern state. For instance, Thomas Nagel argues that two defining features of the political community justify associative redistributive duties that hold among its members but not among members and nonmembers. Those features are the fact that the political community exercises sovereign power over its members by resorting to the imposition of coercive rules and the fact that it exercises that power in the name of its members. In this paper, I will not challenge this assertion but will nonetheless argue …

Revising International Law: A Liberal Account Of Natural Resources, Fernando R. Tesón

San Diego Law Review

In this Article, I defend the view that natural resources originally belong to individuals who have legitimately established private property claims over them. Natural resources do not belong to a collective entity such as the people or the state. My argument is simple. Relying on the Lockean contractarian tradition, I argue that individuals must delegate any resource controlled by the state. This is because all powers of the state are, morally, delegated powers. A group’s claims over natural resources is entirely derivative of the original claims of its members. Only individuals can originally appropriate natural resources; only they have the …

The Role Of Autonomy In The Physician-Patient Relationship, Rachel N. Wagner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Maintaining the proper physician-patient relationship in health care is vital to the well-being of patients, especially when considering end of life decisions such as euthanasia. Because this topic has been in the forefront of media in recent years, there appears to be a need to understand how the relationship between physician and patient works in these practical situations, as well as understand what the most appropriate model of patient care is in regards to maintaining patient autonomy. However, before this can be done this paper will begin with a brief look at the overall permissibility of euthanasia, using the arguments …

"Persephone's Contemporary Dilemma: Consent, Sexuality, And "Female Empowerment." [2015], Cassandra Elizabeth Cerjanic

Master's Theses

Greek mythology never strays very far from Western imagination. Though every few years literature involving the infamous Gods tapers off into the back of our collective minds, a resurgence soon follows. The late Romantic literary movement (as popularized by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelly, and John Keats) depended heavily upon Greco- Roman mythology to help illustrate characters that existed somewhere between the shadow of imagination and the truth of humanity. Perhaps in an attempt to harken back to Romanticism, contemporary poetry has once again given life to the Greek Gods. Mythological characters can be seen throughout the works of modern …

Foucault And Critique: Guest Editor's Introduction To Foucault Circle Selection, Margaret Mclaren

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Facticity And Transcendence Across The Disciplines: Phenomenology And The Promise, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

This paper begins from one of the most commonly found questions in phenomenology, “What is Phenomenlogy?”, to argue that phenomenology is a trans-disciplinary approach to engaging with the products of human culture. This approach is characterized by paying particular attention to the distinction between facticity and transcendence within “lived experience” so as to help us better articulate and evaluate the promises that animate every human institution. Such a task necessarily requires inter-disciplinary input and helps us engage in our lives—in our shared cultural life—differently.

A Philosopher In The Locker Room: Sportsmanship And The Honorary Coach Program At St. John Fisher College, Tim Madigan

Verbum

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.

In a recent ad for Under Armour sneakers, the actor Jamie Foxx intones the following: “You know, the Greek philosopher Aristotle said ‘You are what you repeatedly do.’ Huh – but in our book, we take it a little deeper. We say, ‘You are what you repeatedly do when things get hard’” (Under Armour 2015). Foxx goes on to say, “My apologies to Aristotle, but excellence doesn’t become a habit by running the same path over and over. No, No, No! You know what the excellent ones do? They …

Racism At Home And Abroad: Thoughts From A Christian Ethicist, Michael Jones

Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article Christian ethicist Michael S. Jones introduces the work of Princeton University ethicist Thomas Pogge on the areas of global poverty and global justice. He then applies Pogge’s ideas to an ethical issue of continuing importance: racism. He discusses the history of racism in the United States and Romania, pointing out numerous parallels both historical and contemporary. He then discusses the appropriate attitude for Christians to adopt on the issue, arguing that while Christian sources are not univocal on the subject, there is an egalitarianism at the heart of Christianity that rules out racism as a Christian attitude. …

The Lawrentian Woman: Monsters In The Margins Of 20th-Century British Literature, Dusty A. Brice

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite his own conservative values, D.H. Lawrence writes sexually liberated female characters. The most subversive female characters in Lawrence’s oeuvre are the Brangwens of The Rainbow. The Brangwens are prototypical models of a form of femininity that connects women to Nature while distancing them from society; his women are cast as monsters, but are strengthened from their link with Nature. They represent what I am calling the Lawrentian-Woman.

The Lawrentian-Woman has proven influential for contemporary British authors. I examine the Lawrentian-Woman’s adoption by later writers and her evolution from modernist frame to postmodern appropriation. First, I look at the …

Towards A Framework For Reproductive Violence”, Caitlyn Kelty-Huber

All Student Scholarship

Since the inception of ecofeminist discourse in the 1970’s, ecofeminists and feminists alike have been divided on their stances toward the ethics of consuming the bodies and by-products of other animals. A powerful cohort of ecofeminists, in part comprised by such scholars as Marti Kheel, Lori Gruen, Greta Gaard, and Carol J. Adams, have done a tremendous amount of work to situate a concern for more-than-human animals within ecofeminism and beyond. Unfortunately, as Cusack highlights, feminism’s failure to both recognize the parallel oppression of “dairy” cows and female farmed animals, and to thoughtfully incorporate that knowledge into feminist praxis has …

A Para-Clerical Approach To The Galileo Affair And To Science Vs. Religion, Maurice A. Finocchiaro

Philosophy Faculty Research

In 1633, the Inquisition condemned Galileo for defending Copernicus’s hypothesis of the earth’s motion and denying the scientific authority of Scripture. This ended the original controversy, but generated a new one that continues today, for example, about whether the condemnation proves the incompatibility between science and religion. Recently the Galileo affair has been studied by several scholars whom I label “Berkeley para-clericals,” chiefly philosopher Paul Feyerabend and historian John Heilbron. Their approach is distinctive: it views controversial topics involving the relationship between science and religion from a perspective that is secular-minded, but appreciative of religion, and yet conducted in the …

Impartialist Ethics And Psychic Disintegration: A Talking Cure, Roman Nakia Briggs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation deals with integrity understood as a state of the psyche. Its primary interlocutor is Professor Bernard Williams, and its point of departure is my interpretation of his Objection from Integrity to impartialist moral theories. Against Williams, I hope to show that the active adherent of impartialist ethical systems (e.g., act utilitarianism) may retain both moral integrity and integrity. In demonstrating this, I make use of a variant of Roy Schafer’s action language approach to psychoanalysis, and what I call practical aestheticism.

Disentangling Embodied Cognition: An Examination Of The State, Problems, And Possibilities Of Embodied Cognition, Cody Cash

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Embodied cognition has received a fair amount of attention in philosophical, neuroscientific, and robotic research during the past several decades, yet the precise nature of its goals, methods, and claims are unclear. This dissertation will ascertain and examine the primary themes in the field of embodied cognition as well as why, and if, they offer significant challenges to traditional cognitive science models. Though many theories believe they are providing accounts that should replace traditional models, to do so they will have to overcome the very difficult challenge of arguing that mental content and capabilities derived from sensorimotor activity can continue …

If God Didn’T Satisfice, We Could Still Exist, Rick Repetti

Publications and Research

Theodicies of satisficing – defenses of God’s goodness that justify creating minimally satisfactory beings/worlds – originate with Robert Merrihew Adams (1972, 1979). Adams (1972) argued that in creating imperfect beings God was graceful in giving the undeserved gift of life. There have been many objections to Adams’s argument; e.g., Jerome A. Weinstock (1975) objected that God still would have been graceful in granting undeserved life to superior beings, and, among others, E. Wielenberg (2004) objected that grace doesn’t erase the imperfection of creating imperfection. However, Adams’s theodicy arguably maintains two points: (a) non-existing superior beings cannot be harmed by not …

Rights, Solidarity, And The Animal Welfare State, Jes L. Harfeld

Between the Species

This article argues that aspects of the animal rights view can be constructively modulated through a communitarian approach and come to promote animal welfare through the social contexts of expanded caring communities. The Nordic welfare state is presented as a conceivable caring community within which animals could be viewed and treated appropriately as co-citizens with solidarity based rights and duties.

East Asian Buddhism, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

No abstract provided.

Getting It Wrong, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"We need to remember our sinfulness so we don't get too proud of our own accomplishments or too sure of our ability to save ourselves."

Posting about differing perceptions of history from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/getting-it-wrong/

Topic 6: Aristotelian Ethics: The Virtue Of Success, Lee Eysturlid

Considerations in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Sugar For Sale: Constructions Of Intimacy In The Sugar Bowl, Emily Zimmermann

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

A Gadamerian Analysis Of Roman Catholic Hermeneutics: A Diachronic Analysis Of Interpretations Of Romans 1:17-2:17, Steven Floyd Surrency

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Catholic exegesis of scriptural and dogmatic statements has become rigid in the period following the Enlightenment. Gadamer’s account of philosophical hermeneutics, when applied to the Catholic situation, elaborates how Catholic exegesis might return to its premodern, freer form. Following Gadamer, I hold that to understand is to fuse the horizon of the old with today’s horizon using the preunderstandings that have been provided by the tradition while at the same time bringing the questions of today into dialogue with the text.

Examples of how Romans 1 and 2 have been interpreted historically serve to support this thesis. Origen reads Romans …

Thinking Nature, "Pierre Maupertuis And The Charge Of Error Against Fermat And Leibniz", Richard Samuel Lamborn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to defend Pierre Fermat and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz against the charge of error made against them by Pierre Maupertuis that they errantly applied final causes to physics. This charge came in Maupertuis’ 1744 speech to the Paris Academy of Sciences, later published in different versions, entitled Accord Between Different Laws Which at First Seemed Incompatible. It is in this speech that Maupertuis lays claim to one of the most important discoveries in the history of physics and science, The Principle of Least Action. From the date of this speech up until the end …

Ethics And Business, Patrick Mc Garty

The ITB Journal

To many, the old adage that business and ethics never mix, has been reinforced by the constant revelations of the various tribunals set up since the early 1990’s. Laura Nash, Associate Professor at Boston University Graduate School of Management has stated “Many an executive today voices cynicism at the relevance of moral inquiry to managerial practice. For many reasons from the external fact of greed to the very different ways in which we tend to think about managing and morality, ethics and business have often seemed if not downright contradictory, at least several worlds apart” Commentators on Irish business practice …

John Duns Scotus’S Metaphysics Of Goodness: Adventures In 13th-Century Metaethics, Jeffrey W. Steele

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At the center of all medieval Christian accounts of both metaphysics and ethics stands the claim that being and goodness are necessarily connected, and that grasping the nature of this connection is fundamental to explaining the nature of goodness itself. In that vein, medievals offered two distinct ways of conceiving this necessary connection: the nature approach and the creation approach. The nature approach explains the goodness of an entity by an appeal to the entity’s nature as the type of thing it is, and the extent to which it fulfills or perfects the potentialities in its nature. In contrast, the …

Classical Liberalism, John P. Heaphy

The Kabod

Classical Liberalism is a political philosophy that has stood the test of time. Developed by the English philosopher John Locke, classical liberalism is rooted in the ideals of individual rights and social contract. It is ultimately a Christian philosophy, as it admits the inherent sinfulness of man and the sovereignty of God. The United States of America is the greatest application of this philosophy as it prioritizes the protection of individual liberties and derives its power from the consent of the governed.