In a well-known paper, Nick Bostrom presents a confrontation between a fictionalised Blaise Pascal and a mysterious mugger. The mugger persuades Pascal to hand over his wallet by exploiting Pascal's commitment to expected utility maximisation. He does so by offering Pascal an astronomically high reward such that, despite Pascal's low credence in the mugger's truthfulness, the expected utility of accepting the mugging is higher than rejecting it. In this article, I present another sort of high value, low credence mugging. This (...) time, the mugger utilises research on existential risk and the long-term potential of humanity to exploit Pascal's expected-utility-maximising descendant. This mugging is more insidious than Bostrom's original as it relies on plausible facts about the long-term future, as well as realistic credences about how our everyday actions could, albeit with infinitesimally low likelihood, affect the future of humanity. (shrink)

This essay considers W. E. B. Du Bois’s Darkwater as a window onto Du Bois’s political theory at an underexamined stage of his career and onto a challenge at the heart of black political thought: how to formulate a conception of collective life that regards the humanity of black women and men as a central concern. Exploring Du Bois’s attempt to articulate what can be seen through the lens of an avowedly “black” perspective and his creative juxtaposition of different modes (...) of writing, the author suggests why Darkwater remains a valuable resource for democratic theory in an age misleadingly described as “post-racial.”. (shrink)

The end of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of demands for reparations for slavery and segregation in the United States. At the same time, a chorus of prominent political theorists warned against the threat "identity politics" poses for democratic politics. This essay considers whether it is possible to construct an argument for reparations that responds to these concerns, particularly as they are articulated by Wendy Brown. To do so, I explore how Brown's analysis of the dangers of political organizing (...) around "wounded identities" and of appealing to the state for redress might inform and be informed by arguments for black reparations. (shrink)

The popularity of theodicy over the past several decades has given rise to a countermovement, “anti-theodicy”, which admonishes attempts at theodicy for various reasons. This paper examines one prominent anti-theodical objection: that it is hubristic, and attempts to form an approach to theodicy which evades this objection. To do so I draw from the work of Eleonore Stump, who provides a framework by which we can glean second-personal knowledge of God. From this knowledge, I argue that we can derive a (...) theodicy which does not utilise the kind of analytic theorising anti-theodicists accuse of intellectual hubris. (shrink)

Excerpt from A Defence of Philosophic Doubt: Being an Essay on the Foundations of Belief What is meant by Ethics I have Shown at length in the Appendix which will be found at the end of the volume. Here it is only necessary to say that it includes, not only what are commonly called moral systems, but also some analogous systems not usually so described. Multitudes of propositions, all professing to em body knowledge belonging to one or other of these (...) departments, are being continually put forward for our acceptance. And as no one believes all of them, so those who profess to act rationally must hold that there are grounds for rejecting the propositions they disbelieve, and for accepting those they believe. The systematic account of. These grounds of belief and disbelief makes up the fourth of the Classes into which possible knowledge is divided, and is here always called Philosophy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Damnation of Women," which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.

Balfour replies to criticisms by Watson regarding Balfour's earlier book, A Defense of Philosophical Doubt.

Balfour on Green's Prolegomena to Ethics.

While most of Political Theory’s 50th anniversary issue looks forward to imagining political theory in the future, the Book Review section looks backward to consider those books and schools of political theory not reviewed on the pages of the journal—but which went on to shape the field nonetheless. The aim of this section is not to constitute a new and newly virtuous canon, but rather to goad readers to reflect anew on knowledge production and the institutional and circulatory practices that (...) compose it, reaching from journal readers, to classrooms and conferences, and on to late night conversations and confabulations. (shrink)

Massimiliano Tomba's Insurgent Universality is a stunning book. Conceptually, historically, and rhetorically innovative, it shows how popular challenges to conservative and liberal forms of state-centered politics outlive attempts to contain and repress them. Tomba's reading of revolutionary declarations and manifestos in France, Saint-Domingue, Russia, Mexico, and elsewhere recalls experimental democratic practices that can animate contemporary political thinking. After surveying some of Insurgent Universality's key contributions, I ask how Tomba's argument could be extended in relation to recent debates about the politics (...) of memory and consider what possibilities its anti-statism forecloses. Finally, I explore what gets lost in formulations of modernity that do not come to terms with racialized forms of bondage and dispossession and invite Tomba to speculate about how radical theories of politics might navigate between romantic figurations of democratic excess, on one hand, and a tragic preoccupation with aftermaths, on the other. (shrink)

: In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Damnation of Women," which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.