Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

The Fate Of Greenland— Lessons From Abrupt Climate Change, Ólafur Ingólfsson

International Dialogue

In times of chronic lack of resources for academic research and ever increasing competition for grants it was every scientists dream coming true: a billionaire patron comes along and hands you unlimited resources to pursue the research that lies closest to your heart. In this case, the late Gary Comer (1927–2006), who had in 2001 taken his yacht through the notorious Northwest Passage then free of sea ice, engaged a team of outstanding climate scientists to lead a search for causal links controlling abrupt global climate change: Wallace (Wally) S. Broecker of Columbia University, George H. Denton of the University …

Laws, Outlaws And Terrorists: Lessons From The War On Terrorism, Malin Isaksson

International Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Sayyid Qutb And The Origins Of Radical Islamism, Ramazan Kılınç

International Dialogue

In August 2013, the Egyptian military, which deposed the elected president Mohammed Mursi a month earlier, harshly cracked down on the protestors. The protestors, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, aimed to restore the Mursi government through their sit-ins. The military crackdown left hundreds, if not thousands, died and several thousand arrests behind. While scholars are trying to account for what is happening in Egypt and states are searching for relevant policies to respond to these developments, only a few books can offer as nuanced insights as John Calvert’s Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism offers. Based on diligent …

International Human Rights, 4th Ed., Eric A. Heinze

International Dialogue

Jack Donnelly’s most recent edition of his well-known text, International Human Rights, provides an updated discussion of the evolution of international human rights since the end of World War II. Like previous editions, this book provides an accessible, relatively comprehensive, and self-consciously analytical treatment of the broad subject of international human rights. While the book is clearly intended for classroom use, and is indeed accessible enough to be understood by most upper-division undergraduates, it is not a “textbook” in the traditional sense, in that Donnelly is not shy about offering his own arguments and interpretations about a variety of controversial …

Kicking Away The Ladder: Development Strategy In Historical Perspective, Seb Bytyçi

International Dialogue

Although it has been a decade since this book’s publication, it is worth bringing attention to it due to its significance. Many important events have taken place in the world since Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective was published; most notably the global financial crisis, the Eurocrisis, the continued economic growth of the BRICS, the enlargement of the European Union in ex-communist Eastern Europe, and the raw materials-based growth of many developing countries fueled mainly by Chinese demand. All these developments in the global arena make it worthwhile reviewing and rereading this book. Another key reason for …

Queer Activism In India: A Story In The Anthropology Of Ethics, Rahul Rao

International Dialogue

The queer movement in India has been adept at documenting itself. A succession of anthologies compiled by leading voices from within the movement has made available to a wider reading public the lives and longings of many of its diverse participants (Sukthankar 1999; Bhattacharyya and Bose 2005; Narrain and Bhan 2006; Narrain and Gupta 2011). Naisargi Dave’s book on queer activism in India offers something new and valuable. A book-length account of the queer political landscape with a focus on lesbian activism, this study is distinctive both for its longer temporal view and for the productively ambivalent positionality of its …

Michael Oakeshott: Religion, Politics And The Moral Life, Noël K. O'Sullivan

International Dialogue

Although students of Michael Oakeshott have special reason to be grateful to Timothy Fuller for this carefully selected volume of ten of Oakeshott’s early and mid-career essays, as well as for the scholarly introduction Fuller has provided, his book will also appeal to general readers concerned to grapple with the central issues of modern life and thought with which Oakeshott constantly wrestled. Four of the essays have never been previously published and six are now made available in a more accessible form.

U.S. Cultural Diplomacy And Archeology: Soft Power, Hard Heritage, Nicholas J. Cull

International Dialogue

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 generated a maelstrom of images. There were cities lit by the “shock and awe” bombardment, the falling statues, the traumatized civilians and scene after scene of coalition forces vainly searching for weapons of mass destruction. But among the most peculiarly troubling were the images of the looting of Iraq’s national museum. The human suffering was sadly familiar to the TV audience around the world but the looting broke new ground. The images of looting spoke of the depth of the anarchy into which Iraq was tumbling. They represented the destruction of something greater …

Cutting The Fuse: The Explosion Of Global Suicide Terrorism And How To Stop It, Sunil K. Sahu

International Dialogue

Since 9/11 there has been a burgeoning literature on terrorism written by journalists, scholars, policy makers, diplomats, and military professionals. The last decade has also witnessed a dramatic increase in suicide terrorist attacks—violent attacks designed to kill others where the death of the attacker is a necessary part of the action—especially against American interests. There were twenty suicide terrorist attacks worldwide in 2000, one of which was anti-American inspired; the number of such attacks increased ten-fold by 2010, 90% of which were anti-American inspired. Although suicide bombing was used by imperial Japan at the end of World War II, the …

The Power Of Religion In The Public Sphere, Robin Alice Roth

International Dialogue

Of the numerous topics current philosophy is attentive to certainly the issue of religion is central. This anthology starts with Jürgen Habermas’ notion of “the public sphere” and works to connect this notion to the issue of religion. Of course, religion has long been part of the public sphere. For much of human history, people established their various formations of society and state in a manner continuous with religion. Their discourses were compact. Habermas’ early works argue for a differentiation of the religious and political spheres from the public sphere that eventually overcame “representational” culture, with its authoritarianism, particularly with …

Genocide And The Europeans, Kate Ferguson

International Dialogue

Next year the world will commemorate twenty years since the Rwandan genocide and the following year will mark twenty years since the genocide at Srebrenica. As the International Community prepares to honor these grim milestones, somber deliberation of the mistakes of the past must inform the development of a more committed future. Karen Smith’s book, Genocide and the Europeans, provides just such a reflection for Europe, tracing the continent’s policy responses to incidents of genocide since the Holocaust. It is an important text that draws a detailed history of the past sixty years, pairing the careful analysis of an international …

The Foundations Of Deliberative Democracy: Empirical Research And Normative Implications, Lauren Johnston

International Dialogue

As the theory of deliberative democracy developed in the late-1980s and 1990s much of the focus was on its normative foundations. However, for the last decade there has been a greater focus on practice and institutionalization, accompanied by a wealth of empirical evidence on deliberative democracy. Therefore, there is now a need to return to these normative debates in light of this empirical evidence. Jürg Steiner’s book aims to contribute to this endeavour by concentrating on the “interplay between normative and empirical aspects of deliberation” (1). In undertaking this goal he acknowledges that he is not a professional philosopher, but …

Respect For Nature: A Theory Of Environmental Ethics, Edward Abplanalp

International Dialogue

Paul Taylor’s Respect for Nature was first published 1986 when environmental ethics was a relatively new field. In it he defended a deontological biocentric environmental ethic predicated on the idea that all living beings have inherent value. It was a groundbreaking work in non-anthropocentric ethics, and since then it has been frequently anthologized and used in ethics and environmental philosophy courses taught around the world. The Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition of Respect for Nature (2011) contains a two-page forward by Dale Jamieson, who notes the continued urgency for intellectuals to consider the meaning of “respect for nature.” When Respect for Nature …

Just Democracy: The Rawls-Machiavelli Programme, Joseph Bien

International Dialogue

Professor Philippe Van Parijs is attempting nothing less than to examine and resolve the age old question of how one might have a just democracy in a modern state, especially when one is referring to those member states of the European Union. This is at the very least difficult but admirable task.

Hopi Oral Tradition And The Archaeology Of Identity, Brady Desanti

International Dialogue

Native American activists of the civil rights era leveled heavy critiques at archaeology and anthropology for their prior support of colonial legislation and lack of sensitivity towards Native viewpoints. Archaeology in particular was taken to task for the destruction of numerous burial sites and the theft of thousands of Native American bodily remains and cultural items for over a century. The decades-long efforts by Native Americans and their non-Indian allies (which included some archaeologists) to secure the return of these remains and objects paid off in 1990. The passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) mandates …

Kant's Political Theory: Interpretations And Applications, Alice Pinheiro Walla

International Dialogue

For a long time in Anglo-American political philosophy “Kant’s political philosophy” meant not Kant’s own developed political thought, but an application of his moral theory to political issues. Thankfully, Kant’s legal and political thought is experiencing a renaissance in the English-speaking world after a long period of neglect. Not only Kant’s short political writings such as Toward Perpetual Peace, “On The Common Saying: This May be True in Theory but it Does Not Hold in Practice,” and “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment” are being rediscovered; also the Doctrine of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 3

Insurgent Encounters: Transnational Activism, Ethnography, And The Political, Julie A. Pelton

International Dialogue

nsurgent Encounters: Transnational Activism, Ethnography, and the Political, edited by Jeffrey Juris and Alex Khasnabish, opens with a vignette describing an encounter between international activists and Zapatista base communities in 2006–7. The moment, and the thick description of it in the introduction, serves as an exemplar of the ethnographic approach to studying social movements advocated in this book: at once romantic, mysterious, and radical, while also rife with contradictions, struggles, and tensions. Juris and Khasnabish have gathered together a diverse collection of work on transnational activism that highlights the importance of ethnography as a set of methods largely neglected in …

Coalitions Of Convenience: United States Military Interventions After The Cold War, Jeffrey A. Griffin

International Dialogue

Sarah Kreps’ Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold War provides a timely comparative analysis of military intervention in the context of a continuously globalizing world. Kreps endeavors to shed light on an important facet of international society today—military intervention. The study explores the question of why states, when they have the capacity to act unilaterally, often choose to take a multilateral approach. More specifically, Kreps questions why coercive and powerful states, particularly the United States, intervene multilaterally when the capacity exists for unilateral action. As the sole superpower in the international system, the way in which …

Balkan Genocides: Holocaust And Ethnic Cleansing In The Twentieth Century, Marko A. Hoare

International Dialogue

The sudden explosion of interest in genocide as a topic of academic study over the past decade or so has involved academics rushing to produce “big” general theories in their efforts to have their voices heard. But more often than not, their haste has produced books that are insufficiently researched and theses that strain to be profound. In Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century, Paul Mojzes has attempted something more moderately ambitious: an overview of the Balkan genocides of the twentieth century, focusing principally on the territory of the former Yugoslavia but involving forays into other …

Islam In Denmark: The Challenge Of Diversity, Aje Carlbom

International Dialogue

In public debates contemporary Denmark stands out as an extraordinary nationalist and racist country. This is particularly so on issues concerned with Islam and Muslim immigration. The growth of the nationalist political party Dansk folkeparti, the Muhammad caricatures and harsh laws regulating family reunion are often used as examples by outside observers trying to describe political transformations in the country. These, and some other themes, are discussed in the anthology Islam in Denmark: The Challenge of Diversity (2012), edited by Jørgen S. Nielsen, professor and director of The Centre for European Islamic Thought at the University of Copenhagen. What kind …

Reading Addams’S 'Democracy And Social Ethics' As A Social Gospel, Evolutionary Idealist Text, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

There is a Disciplinary divide between philosophers and historians in how they read Addams’s first book, Democracy and Social Ethics. Philosophers identify Addams primarily as a pragmatist. They often compare and contrast her thinking with that of James and Dewey, and find her a fruitful resource for contemporary discussions about gender, social justice, and peace. Much of this scholarship gives central place to Addams’s Democracy and Social Ethics. Except for nods to her 1892 essay “The Subjective Necessity of Settlements,” philosophers rarely discuss whether her religious sensibilities influenced her theorizing.¹ While historians debate Addams’s religious identity, many …

The Social Role Theory Of Unethical Leadership, Crystal L. Hoyt, Terry L. Price, Laura Poatsy

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Challenging the standard reasoning regarding leaders’ ethical failures, we argue that a potent contributor to these failures is the social role expectations of leaders. We maintain that leaders’ central role expectation of goal achievement contributes to the over-valuing of group goals and greater moral permissibility of the means used to achieve these goals. In studies 1 and 2 we demonstrated that the role of leader, relative to group member, is associated with an increased appraisal of group goals which is predicted by the leaders’ role expectations and not driven by the psychological effects of power. Next, we experimentally demonstrated the …

Ethical Decision Making And Leadership: Merging Social Role And Self-Construal Perspectives, Crystal L. Hoyt, Terry L. Price

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This research extends our understanding of ethical decision making on the part of leaders by merging social role and self-construal perspectives. Interdependent self-construal is generally seen as enhancing concern for justice and moral values. Across two studies we tested the prediction that non-leading group members’ interdependent self-construal would be associated with lower levels of unethical decision making on behalf of their group but that, in contrast, this relationship would be weaker for leaders, given their social role. These predictions were experimentally tested by assigning participants to the role of leader or non-leading group member and assessing the association between their …

Homophonic Translation, Appositional Writing, And The Monster, Ryan Landry Clark

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation features a combination of critical and creative work

exploring the ethics of appropriative writing and the reparative potential of homophonic translation. The opening essay examines the ethics of appropriation- based poetry and introduces the concept of what I call "appositional writing," a term to describe ethically-minded works of poetry that make use of appropriative writing methods. The next three parts of this dissertation are each appositional writing projects that make use of homophonic translation as the primary method of composition. "Arizona State Bill 1070: An Act" is a homophonic translation of the anti-immigration bill of the same name. …

Review Of The Book "Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays In Political Philosophy", Kelly Sorensen

Philosophy and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

[Excerpt] Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that public reason liberalism is a dead end, and defends instead what he takes to be a more defensible form of liberalism ("equal political voice liberalism"). His book is fresh and compelling, and an important contribution to political philosophy.

Liberation As Revolutionary Praxis: Rethinking Buddhism Materialism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

While it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “freedom” and “agency,” the thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for many centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation”—along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical implications. With the development of Marxist thought in the mid to late nineteenth century, a new paradigm for thinking about freedom in relation to history, identity and social change found its way to Asia, and confronted traditional religious interpretations of freedom as well as competing Western ones. In the past century, several attempts …

Methodological Nationalism, Migration, And Political Theory, Alexander Sager

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Political theorists of migration have largely operated within a conceptual scheme that treats the nation-state as the natural political unit for analysis at the expense of transnational, regional, and local analyses. Migration is discussed in the contexts of nation-building or in an international framework of autonomous, sovereign states. I show that this paradigm of “methodological nationalism” ignores transnational networks, associations, and organizations and global social and economic structures. This in turn, blinds political theorists to questions of agency and structure and to causal relations that entail moral responsibilities. My aim is to show how debates on migration and distributive justice …

Philosophy And Catholic Theology, Jack E. Mulder Jr.

Faculty Presentations

My current projects are all knit together by the overlap between philosophy and Catholic theology. I have recently published work on Mary’s Immaculate Conception, the abortion debate, and sexual ethics. I currently have a manuscript under review titled Conversational Catholicism: An Invitation to Dialogue.

Ethics Readiness: An Analysis Of Community College Students' Moral Sensitivity Scores, Julie Wallace

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

In this retrospective causal-comparative study, the readiness of Virginia community college students to receive an accounting ethics curriculum was analyzed by measuring and comparing their moral sensitivity scores to the moral sensitivity scores of a group of four year university students. A sample of college students attending community college principles of accounting courses and a sample of college students attending four year university principles of accounting courses were administered a nationally recognized moral sensitivity survey instrument, the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2). The survey results were analyzed using a t-test for differences between means. It was found that there was …