Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Allyship And Affect: Qualitative Investigations Into Social Transformation, Michael Lucinda Jane Greer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Allies have faced several critiques in feminist philosophy. Some have argued that they lack the requisite political interests to be motivated to dismantle the social structures from which they stand to benefit. Others have argued that the epistemic limitations resulting from their social privilege are insurmountable. Yet others have argued that allyship is too individualistic a concept, preferring a more collectivist concept like solidarity. However, there remain privileged individuals who understand themselves as complicit in perpetuating oppressive forms of life, and who wish to transform themselves and work in coalition across difference to dismantle structural oppression. How ought these individuals …

Syllabus: Political Philosophy (Philo 24600 / Polsc 20401), Georgie Malone

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus was created for Political Philosophy (PHILO 24600) (POLSC 20401) at Hunter College. It is an intermediate/advanced introduction to key texts in the history of political philosophy. Course description: In this course, we will journey through the major contributions of those thinkers that have shaped the field we call political philosophy. We will begin with Plato and Aristotle, followed by the social contract theorists of the early modern period—Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau—before turning to the critical perspectives of Fanon and Marx. We will then turn to the vastly influential work of 20th century liberal philosopher John Rawls and …

Gramsci’S ‘Democratic Philosopher’ And The Concept’S Foundations In Marxian Social Ontology, Eli Recht-Appel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis deals with the term ‘democratic philosopher’ from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. In order to lay the groundwork for my distinct interpretation of the ‘democratic philosopher,’ I begin by providing an overview of Gramsci’s theory of the role of intellectuals in civil and political society. I then argue that the ‘democratic philosopher’ emerges from Gramsci’s typology of intellectuals but is a category which is both temporally and ontologically distinct from his more well-known concept of ‘organic intellectuals.’ ‘Organic intellectuals,’ intellectuals who co-develop alongside their fundamental social group or class, occupy a variety of cultural and political roles in …

Beyond The Veil Of Modernity: René Guénon, Prophet Of The Metapolitical Imaginary, Frederic Colier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Heralded by some as one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, French metaphysician René Guénon (1886-1951) is also the controversial father of Primordial Tradition, a metaphysics designed to remedy the decline of Western civilization. Guénon viewed the West in the grip of a prolonged cycle of degeneration. He sought to implement a pseudo-authoritarian spiritual reset that required a total rejection of its Western intellectual heritage and an embrace of Eastern doctrines.

Focusing on his landmark book The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), the dissertation examines how Guénon implemented his controversial reset. After outlining the religious, cultural, and …

Theatrical Agency In The Constitution Of Logical Space, Esther Marveta Neff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes advantage of our current moment of collapse and shifting episteme to move from resistance and critique into modes of position, prefiguration, and praxiocentricism, giving not only a critique of the colonial-modern logical space of Theatrum Mundi, but also aiming to configure the thetic consciousness that grounds “theatrical agency” in the logic of cognitive and social epistemological modelling.  In what ways do we “build our own worlds”? What does “theatricality” tell us about human agency, especially in the domain of “theoretical attitudes,” and “consciousness”? In what ways, and to what extent, are we responsible for constituting …

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems And The Principles Of Distinction And Proportionality, Nicholas Cromie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) challenge the core principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), distinction and proportionality, by delegating life-and-death decisions to algorithms rather than human judgment.  This dissertation examines whether LAWS can conform to these principles and, if so, under what conditions.  Through process tracing, the study traces the historical integration of disruptive weapons technologies, including chemical, biological, nuclear, and armed drones, into IHL-compliant frameworks or their exclusion via prohibition.  Each case reveals distinct pathways: outright bans for indiscriminate or inherently inhumane systems (chemical and biological weapons), normative restraint and limited acceptance despite destructive power (nuclear weapons) and phased …

Imagination And The Self: A Cross-Cultural And Cross-Disciplinary Study, Qianyi Qin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation of the imagination and the self that engages with cognitive science, philosophy of mind, Buddhism, ethical theories, and a variety of perspectives from Asian and Western philosophy. I address the following questions in three interrelated chapters. First, what does it mean for the self to appear in imagination? In Chapter 1, against certain narrow understandings of the self in philosophy of language, I build a multidimensional model of the self in imaginative experiences to capture the rich phenomenology, drawing on empirical findings on memory and imagination. Second, can the self be removed from imagination? …

War Photography & The Limits Of Empathy, Andrea Shi

Student Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of photography, particularly war and poverty photography, has had massive implications for the level of vividness with which Americans are able to picture suffering beyond their doors. The mass atrocities that have occurred since the advent of photography – that is to say, the last 200 years – are so relentlessly circulated that they feel, sometimes, as an inevitable byproduct of human nature. It’s not surprising, then, that a lot of media theory and analysis reduce the dilemma of atrocity photographs to a psychological level. Do they numb us, or do they incite empathy? Are they a call …

Place: Dwelling Within The Built And Natural Environments, Christine Gratia

Publications and Research

This study argues that “place” is not simply physical, it is actualized by the relationship between human beings and the environments they inhabit. This research will spotlight various philosophical theories that pertain to where humans do human activities, the ever evolving containers of socialization and how the external environment informs self-concept. This research narrows in on Edward Relph’s phenomenology of “place” and Martin Heidegger's concept of dwelling. Both concepts are defined as foundational structures of human existence which create an interdependent relationship between humans and the places we inhabit. From that relationship stems a responsibility of caretaking. Through a conceptual …

Disaster Resilience And Normalization: Facing Facts, Naomi Zack Phd

Publications and Research

Disaster resilience requires acknowledgment and preparation to be normalized or integrated into normal life. But denial without preparation normalizes disaster by  leaving it out of normal life. In Disaster Resilience and Normalization: Facing Facts, Naomi Zack explores the normative and factual dimensions of a Climate Change Paradigm, through a global scope. Apart from the normative issues of who is responsible and who should pay for mitigation, the facts of Rising Average Earth Temperatures and more Intense and Frequent Disasters must still be faced.

But facing those facts has always been voluntary for powerful signatories to the 2015 Paris Climate …

Re-Envisioning Digital Agency: From Representationalism To Interpretant-Driven Epistemology, Michael C. Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the epistemological and ethical foundations of digital technologies, particularly code and algorithmic systems, by considering their entanglement with representationalism. Arguing that code now functions as a dominant social agent and epistemic subject, through the concept of the Code’s-eye view, I explore how automated datafication reduces human experience to quantifiable inputs, reinforcing epistemic closure and social fragmentation. Drawing on pragmatist philosophy, including Peirce’s semiotics, Dewey’s democratic ethics, and Rorty’s conversational inquiry, I propose an interpretant-driven epistemology grounded in communal inquiry and interpretive openness. This alternative framework resists the binary logic of algorithmic rationality by emphasizing conflict and the …

Querying The Ecological Sublime: Colonial Aesthetics, Anticolonial Thought, And The ‘Double Fracture’, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

This article examines the ecological sublime in its relationship to the history of colonial aesthetics, anticolonial thought, and contemporary colonialism. It argues that, while Edmund Burke utilized the sublime in support of colonialism (including settler colonialism) in North America and colonial slavery, Samson Occom and Ottobah Cugoano developed versions of the sublime to contest British colonialism in the Americas. The history of this aesthetic contestation has not been represented in scholarship on the ecological sublime, which, this article shows, has a vexed relationship with historical and contemporary colonialism. The article argues that the ecological sublime exhibits the “double fracture” of …

What's The Art In Artificial Intelligence?, Emily Verla Bovino

Open Educational Resources

This workbook learns from Black and Indigenous artists working with Artificial Intelligence to confront issues of ethics and aesthetics in its technologies. It features guided learning activities with links to publicly available video lectures and online articles, and includes options for experiential learning through both a tutorial in Midjourney and a visit to the public art collection at York College in Jamaica, Queens. Featured artists include: American Artist, Rizvana Bradley, Beth Coleman, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Suzanne Kite, Sondra Perry, Mimi Onuoha and Alisha B. Wormsley. Works by Martin Puryear and Maren Hassinger are explored in the Midjourney exercise.

About …

Engaging Ethics In Technology And Artificial Intelligence, Elizabeth Edenberg

Open Educational Resources

This project seeks to help students apply philosophical questions about the ethics of technology and artificial intelligence to contemporary debates about AI’s impact on society and students’ own lives. It includes a set of in-class active learning exercises and reflection assignments, along with instructions for moderating class discussion of these topics. This is designed to pair with three units in a course on the ethics of technology: privacy, consent, and algorithmic fairness. Each exercise aims to help students connect the philosophical theories studied in class to their own lived experiences with technology.

Introducing Justice And Rights To Students Of Economics, Mark D. White

Publications and Research

Most economics instruction is focused on outcomes, whether evaluated in terms of individual or collective welfare or well-being. This is consistent with economics’ roots in classical utilitarianism, and no consideration is usually given to the process by which these results obtain, which is a deontological concern of right and wrong. This can seem odd to economics students, especially in the context of trade-offs in which one party is benefited at the expense of another, or aggregate welfare is maximized while some individuals are harmed, with no consideration in either of rights, desert, or justice. This chapter argues for the importance …

“Hattak Vpi Homma” Mvt Miha Nanta Fehna? What Does “Native American” Really Mean?, Alex R. Steers-Mccrum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indigenous identities in North America are much more complex than generally assumed. No single definition of “Native (American),” “(American) Indian,” or related terms provides a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that accurately or usefully describe all and only the right individuals and communities. I argue that understanding Native identities in the contemporary context requires examining multiple interconnected dimensions of Nativeness, articulated here as Enrollment and Recognition, Tribal Ethnicities, Native Race, Indian Panethnicity, and Indigenous Nationhood.

In the U.S., Indigenous identities are usually oversimplified as either Enrollment in a Recognized Tribe or as Native Race. While both of these aspects …

The Intellectual Roots Of Hindutva: Influences From Early German Romantics And Mahatma Gandhi, Johannes Scheuer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The economic and political ascent under the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Narendra Modi has not only increased interest in Indian politics but also highlighted the dominance of Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) as a political ideology in contemporary India. Many scholars and journalists have drawn parallels between European fascist movements of the past and reactionary movements in today's political landscape to understand the rise and dominance of Hindutva. However, this paper takes a different approach by tracing the intellectual roots of Hindutva through the political philosophy of the Early German Romantics, particularly Johann Gottfried Herder, and the philosophy …

Black Horror Film And The Role Of Mood In Race Perception, Nicholas P. Whittaker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Contemporary discussions of black or antiracist art are often haunted by an air of pessimism. This pessimism rests on the intuition that art cannot change the political realities of antiblackness and/or our relationships with blackness. In this dissertation, I resist this hegemonic view by arguing that black horror films generate a particular, politically-valuable aesthetic experience. Specifically, they allow us to experience blackness and black people as unintelligible. This, I argue, runs counter to everyday experience of blackness; when blackness appears unintelligible, we lose the sense of satisfied comprehension that characterizes our everyday experiences of it. I argue that these films …

Language, Legitimacy, And The Law: The Social Roots Of Legal Obligation, Joshua Keton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a recent turn, both legal scholarship and judicial practice in the United States have converged on the idea that the content of the law is grounded on moral facts—especially facts about democracy. Leveraging insights from the philosophy of language, especially the underdetermination of meaning by syntax and semantics, I argue that textualism can only be reconstructed as a small part of a complete theory of legal interpretation. I then consider a more serious claim to the necessity of moral facts in metaphysically grounding the content of the law. As Mark Greenberg’s anti-positivist theory would have it, the content of …

Wuwei Praxis, Zachary L. Gelnaw-Rubin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The question of how to change the world is answered in the concept of praxis. For structural change to occur a “revolution in motivation or feeling,” - a paradigm shift - is needed. I argue that this requires the adoption of feminist liberation praxis, which involves a negativistic political stance, nonideal theorizing, and an openness to self-transformation. This entails a transformation of the concept of praxis itself within the Leftist idiom, a transformation which could be the linchpin of the needed paradigm shift in the larger culture.

The three parts of this thesis elaborate upon the different aspects of this …

Extractivism And The Defense Of Life And Territories: An Account Of Latin American Environmental Thought, Pedro Monque

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We are living today through an environmental crisis of planetary proportions. Recent decades have seen the proliferation of distinct environmentalisms around the world. In Latin America, a unique environmental vocabulary is being born out of resistance to northern framings of the environmental crisis whose proposed solutions often deepen environmental injustice vis-à-vis the global south.In this dissertation, I provide an account of the key themes in this lively but undertheorized tradition that I call Latin American environmental thought.

The conceptual core of Latin American environmental thought, I argue, are the concepts of extractivism, the defense of life and territories, and alternatives. …

Equality, Solidarity, And Exploitation: An Essay On The Philosophical Foundations Of Socialism, Callum Zavos Macrae

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In popular consciousness and culture, equality is often considered to be the preeminent socialist value. Equality, on this view, sits at the heart of the socialist ideal, and those who ascribe great value to equality will, other things being equal, find themselves more predisposed towards socialism than those who do not. However, in recent years egalitarian accounts of the socialist ideal have increasingly come under criticism from defenders of an alternative, freedom-based approach to understanding the values that underpin socialist commitment. This dissertation proposes to defend the egalitarian account of the socialist ideal. By reconceptualizing equality, we can reconstruct a …

Punishment And Resources, Mark D. White

Publications and Research

Philosophers of punishment have paid little attention to resource constraints, which have an undeniable impact on how various approaches to punishment work in the real world. It has fallen on economists, with their central focus on scarcity and opportunity cost, to analyze the resource demands of different philosophies of punishment. However, the utilitarian nature of mainstream economics limits the scope of economic theories of punishment to deterrence, which fits naturally into mathematical economic techniques, as opposed to retributivism, the principled nature of which resists quantification. This chapter explores the resource implications of punishment. It starts by identifying shortcomings of the …

Green Is The New Black: Exploring How A Philosophical Approach To The Fashion Industry Will Reduce Its Environmental Impact, Darion A. Gibbs

Student Theses and Dissertations

The fashion industry is the third largest contributor to pollution globally, behind only oil and agriculture. It also accounts for one-fifth of the plastic produced annually. Despite its impact, it is hard to trace accountability. For example, mega-retailers often outsource production to developing countries, without strong structures of accountability for their environmental impact. In addition, companies often claim to be environmentally sustainable, but it is easy to inflate the truth, and entities designed to protect consumers have limited enforcement. In this context, who should be held responsible for the fashion industry’s contribution to climate change?

In response, this thesis delves …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Phi 1700 (Global Ethics), Yingshihan Zhu

Open Educational Resources

Knowing how to think and act ethically is essential for living as moral agents. The aim of this course is to introduce you to major ethical theories, both in the West and the East, as well as moral issues that affect people globally. After completing this course, you should be able to: 

• Understand a variety of moral theories
• Identify and articulate a number of moral wrongs in everyday life
• Evaluate ways to respond to moral wrongs
• Present your thoughts verbally and textually in a logical manner
• Predict and handle potential objections to your view

On The Sublime And Beautiful: Edmund Burke, Ottobah Cugoano, And Reverberations Of Eighteenth-Century Racial Aesthetics, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

This article examines Edmund Burke and Ottobah Cugoano’s aesthetic thought in relation to eighteenth-century racial slavery. It interrogates their ideas of the sublime and beautiful which contribute to their different political positions on the abolition of slavery: whereas the former advocated the gradual abolition of the slave trade and distant emancipation, the latter sought the immediate abolition of the trade and rapid emancipation. It contends that Burke’s discussions of the sublime and beautiful were racialized, his advocacy of white authority on plantation slavery was rooted in his aesthetics, and his evocation of the Black sublime throughout his long career fit …

Epistemic Priors, Social Justice, And The Ethics Of Humor, Paul Butterfield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I set out a theory of humor ethics and, in particular, I establish what difference humorousness makes to an instance of speech’s moral value. I set out by making the case for this approach to the topic, demonstrating that focusing on how humorous speech differs, morally, from non-humorous speech allows us to avoid getting caught up in prior ethical debates that are not strictly about humor itself – a shortcoming that is common to many treatments of humor ethics in the existing literature. I show that, in cases of humorous speech, we typically do not assert the …

Recovering Authenticity: Care, Conversation And Value, Shannon M. Brick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Suppose you learn that your steak-loving friend has just adopted a vegan diet. You ask her what prompted the change, and she tells you that someone she trusts recently tweeted “Eating meat is immoral.” Your friend’s response is a little disappointing and shallow, but why? Most of our knowledge comes from trusting what other people tell us, so why, when it comes to moral matters, does deference seem inappropriate? Some philosophers think it’s because moral testimony cannot transmit important epistemic goods, like knowledge or understanding. Others think that when people defer to moral testimony, their actions or characters will be …

Marx, Race, Black Radicalism, And Racial Justice, Gregory Slack

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I defend the claim that not only was Marx not an anti-black racist, he was an anti-anti-black racist, despite sometimes employing racist language and epithets. I prove this claim by adducing massive amounts of textual evidence from Marx and Engels’ writings, spanning their entire careers as writers and revolutionaries, where time and again they condemn black slavery and the slave-trade, look forward to and call for their abolition, and aim at a future of racial justice and equality for black people, as a component part of communist justice for all working people, under a communist mode …

The Storytelling Cure: Medicine And Narrative From Galen To Shahrazad And Rousseau, Ryan A. Milov-Cordoba

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Are stories healing? This dissertation introduces and explores an idea that I call “the storytelling cure.” With this term I capture a set of related notions about the healing power of stories that span literary studies, intellectual history, philosophy, and medical practice. Through a comparative study I make the case for “the storytelling cure” as a cross-cultural, multiconfessional, and multilingual phenomenon of great age, complexity, and power, worthy of the most sustained attention by the contemporary field of Comparative Literature. Concretely, this dissertation presents three extended case studies of “storytelling cures” from three different kinds of texts (case history, frame …