Der vorliegende Text ist der Versuch einer Dekonstruktion der herrschenden ideologischen Annahmen des gegenwärtigen Corona-Diskurses. Er ist der Versuch, diese ideologischen Gedankengänge in ihrer Mangelhaftigkeit darzustellen und ihren ideologischen Charakter zu benennen, sohin der Versuch eines Nachvollzugs des herrschenden Nachdenkens über Corona. Dieses herrschende Nachdenken über Corona und dessen Fortgehen von der einen ideologischen Annahme zur nächsten können als Metamorphosen des pandemischen Bewusstseins bezeichnet werden. Seinen Ausgangspunkt nimmt das pandemische Bewusstsein bei der Diagnose des krisenhaften Charakters der gegenwärtigen Gesellschaft, dem (...) es eine „alte Normalität“ entgegenimaginiert. Hier betreibt es eine Rechtfertigung des alten, in dessen Krisencharakter jedoch nicht durchschauten, Zustandes der Gesellschaft. In Sehnsucht nach der Idylle der präpandemischen Gesellschaft entwirft es eine „solidarische“ Gemeinschaft gegen die Bedrohung durch einen äußeren Feind und konstituiert sich also negativ als homogenes Ganzes. Seine Sehnsucht wird zur Harmoniebedürftigkeit im Hier und Jetzt, die es sich durch seinen Glauben an die gute Herrschaft zu stillen weiß, wenn es sich über die Unverhältnismäßigkeit der staatlich verordneten Corona-Maßnahmen echauffiert. Dabei fühlt es sich durch den staatlichen Appell an den gesunden Menschenverstand im täglichen Umgang mit Corona bestätigt und lauscht in aufklärerischem Ethos seiner ewigen Vernunftfähigkeit. In dialektischer Akrobatik veranstaltet es das pandemische Bewusstsein, in der Isolation eine neue Form der Solidarität, das Glück im Unglück zu entdecken, ohne zu erkennen, dass es damit seine Rückkehr zum „Normalzustand“ der bürgerlichen als einer warenproduzierenden Gesellschaft vollzogen hat. Mit gutem Gewissen enthält es sich eines kritischen Urteils über die Corona-Krise und resigniert staatstreu vor der Einsicht in die Wirklichkeit. So lässt es sich gut regieren. (shrink)

A legal critique that ties up to Pashukanis focuses not on the content of law, but on the specific form in which societal relations are conveyed. In analogy to Marx’s theory of value-form, Pashukanis unfolds a theory and critique that captures the specific way in which people relate to each other within the so called civil society. The concept of legal subjectivity becomes the scene of a dialectics of freedom and domination which unfolds in the interplay between obfuscation and reality. (...) Contrary to the assumption of a legal fetishism in the sense of total delusion the practical potential of an immanent social criticism is to be conceptualized. (shrink)

Doubt is a much-maligned state. We are racked by doubts, tormented by doubts, plagued by them, paralysed. Doubts can be troubling, consuming, agonising. But however ill-regarded is doubt, anxiety is more so. We recognise the significance of doubting in certain contexts, and allow ourselves to be guided by our doubts. For example, the criminal standard of proof operative in the U.K., U.S., as well as in most other anglophone countries, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Israel, requires for conviction to be permissible (...) that the defendant’s guilt is proved beyond reasonable doubt; to feel a doubt about a defendant’s guilt, so long as it is reasonable, is reason to refrain from convicting. But our folk understanding of anxiety ascribes no value to that state. Anxiety is inherently unpleasant and irrational; it prevents us from being able to perform well when it is most important to us that we do; it is an emotion that, if we could, we’d eliminate from our emotional toolbox. Yet in this thesis, I offer a vindication of doubt – a defence of doubt in terms of what it does for us – on which it ultimately turns out to be a kind of anxiety. The basic idea is that the concept of doubt serves a function for us that we couldn’t do without: it signals when we should begin inquiry. I will argue that the concept doubt is able to serve this function because the state it picks out, the state of doubt, is a kind of anxiety: epistemic anxiety. I develop a picture of epistemic anxiety as an emotional response to epistemic risk: potential disvalue in the epistemic realm. Because doubt is a kind of anxiety, it has the right kind of representational and motivational profile to track epistemic risk in our environments, and motivate us to reduce or avoid that risk. This makes it hugely valuable for us, as knowledge-seeking creatures, given the incompatibility of knowledge with high levels of epistemic risk. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an account of epistemic anxiety as an emotional response to epistemic risk: the risk of believing in error. The motivation for this account is threefold. First, it makes epistemic anxiety a species of anxiety, thus rendering psychologically respectable a notion that has heretofore been taken seriously only by epistemologists. Second, it illuminates the relationship between anxiety and risk. It is standard in psychology to conceive of anxiety as a response to risk, but psychologists – very (...) reasonably – have little to say about risk itself, as opposed to risk judgement. In this paper, I specify what risk must be like to be the kind of thing to which anxiety can be a response. Third, my account improves on extant accounts of epistemic anxiety in the literature. It is more fleshed out than Jennifer Nagel’s, which is largely agnostic about the nature of epistemic anxiety, focusing instead on what work it does in our epistemic lives. In offering an account of epistemic anxiety as an emotion, my account explains how it is able to do the epistemological work to which Nagel puts it. My account is also more plausible than Juliette Vazard’s, on which epistemic anxiety is an emotional response to potential threat to one’s practical interests. Vazard’s account cannot distinguish epistemic anxiety from anxiety in general, and also fails to capture all instances of what we want to call epistemic anxiety. My account does better on both counts. (shrink)

In a contribution to a symposium on xenophilia, this essay — a study of Brian Friel’s 1980 play Translations — raises the question of whether all xenophilia is by nature doomed to fail. Set in Ireland in 1833, the drama centers on the tension arising from a young British lieutenant’s falling in love with an Irish-speaker while he is in her country to translate Irish place-names into English for an imperial cartographic survey. While the lieutenant is referred to in the (...) play as a Hibernophile, the essay interprets his love as xenophilic: love for the foreignness rather than the Irishness of what he encounters. The lieutenant’s love of foreign places and their names impedes his effort to systematize Ireland for imperial ends, and his love for an Irish woman brings about his own undoing. Applying Simone de Beauvoir’s view of alterity to the lieutenant’s xenophilia, the essay questions whether the English written over the Irish in this play and the lieutenant’s desire written over the objects of his love obscure enough of the other’s otherness to render his xenophilia no longer viable. (shrink)

These books will prove valuable to philosophy teachers and their students as well as to other readers who share a general interest in philosophy.

In this book, Linda Wetzel examines the distinction between types and tokens and argues that types exist (as abstract objects, since they lack a unique ...

Almost all religions contain a code of morality, and in spite of the factthat there are moral codes and philosophies that do not rely upon anyreligion, it has been traditionally argued that there are at least threeimportant ways in which morality needs religion: the goal of the morallife is unreachable without religious practice, religion is necessary toprovide moral motivation, and religion provides morality with itsfoundation and justification. These three ways in which morality may needreligion are independent, but I argue that (...) there are conceptual connectionsamong the standard arguments for them. I identify reasons for resistance tothe idea that morality needs religion and then turn to arguments for each ofthe three ways in which morality may need religion. All three are related toclassic forms of the moral argument for the existence of God. I conclude bycomparing classic Divine Command Theory with my Divine Motivation Theory andargue that the latter has advantages over the former in the way it providesa theological foundation for ethics. (shrink)

The anthology makes an important contribution to the research topic Literature and Knowledge and picks up on the current narratological discussion on literary characters. The key question addressed in this volume is the function of knowledge in the production and reception of literary texts. Literary studies on works from different national literatures and periods are supplemented by insightful contributions from history, linguistics and philosophy, illuminating the discussion for the first time from a multilayered perspective.".

"First Published in 1992, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.".

This paper evaluates whether and to what extent modal constraints on knowledge or the semantics of ‘knows’, which make essential reference to what goes on in other possible worlds, can be considered non-epistemic factors with epistemic significance. This is best understood as the question whether modal factors are non-truth-relevant factors that make the difference between true belief and knowledge, or to whether a true belief falls under the extension of ‘knowledge’ in a context, where a factor is truth-relevant with respect (...) to S’s belief that P iff it bears on the probability that P is true. To the extent that these factors are non-epistemic, epistemologies that endorse them—modal epistemologies—stand in conflict with intellectualism. I focus on three modal epistemologies: safety, sensitivity, and David Lewis’s epistemic contextualism. I argue that prima facie, safety and sensitivity allow that non-epistemic changes in a context can shift the closeness ordering on worlds, and in so doing make a difference to whether S knows P, while Lewis’s contextualism allows that non-epistemic changes in a context can shift the relevant domain of not-P possibilities that must be eliminated for ‘S knows P’ to be true in that context. Then to make her theory compatible with intellectualism, the modal epistemologist must say much more about the notion of probability at play in the definition of ‘truth-relevant’. I suggest that either accepting or rejecting that modal epistemologies are intellectualist has significance consequences for debates between pragmatists and purists, which radiate into wider contemporary epistemology. (shrink)

Citizenship presents two faces. Within a political community it stands for inclusion and universalism, but to outsiders, citizenship means exclusion. Because these aspects of citizenship appear spatially and jurisdictionally separate, they are usually regarded as complementary. In fact, the inclusionary and exclusionary dimensions of citizenship dramatically collide within the territory of the nation-state, creating multiple contradictions when it comes to the class of people the law calls aliens--transnational migrants with a status short of full citizenship. Examining alienage and alienage law (...) in all of its complexities, The Citizen and the Alien explores the dilemmas of inclusion and exclusion inherent in the practices and institutions of citizenship in liberal democratic societies, especially the United States. In doing so, it offers an important new perspective on the changing meaning of citizenship in a world of highly porous borders and increasing transmigration. As a particular form of noncitizenship, alienage represents a powerful lens through which to examine the meaning of citizenship itself, argues Linda Bosniak. She uses alienage to examine the promises and limits of the "equal citizenship" ideal that animates many constitutional democracies. In the process, she shows how core features of globalization serve to shape the structure of legal and social relationships at the very heart of national societies. (shrink)

Effects of globalization have amplified the magnitude and frequency of corporate abuses, particularly in developing economies where weak or absent rules undermine social norms and principles. Improving multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) ethical conduct is a factor of both the ability of firms to change behaviors in the direction of the moral good, and their willingness to do so. Constraints and enablers of a firm’s ability to act ethically emanate from the external environment, including the industry environment of which the firm is (...) a resident, and the host country environment in which it operates. A firm’s willingness to engage in ethical conduct is determined by the effective bundling of internal resources and the commitment of those resources to social ends. The interaction of external and internal conditions carves out categories of expected firm behaviors and suggests interventions that would push these behaviors in a more positive ethical direction. With reference to integrative social contracts theory (ISCT), these categories of firms are examined, and a conceptual model for analysis is developed to explain the drivers of corporate choices in the adoption and implementation of codes of conduct, and the relative power of relevant communities to the process. (shrink)

"First Published in 1992, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.".

Examines the women's movement, discusses feminist theories, and considers the writings of Locke and Marx concerning the separation of family and state.

In provocative readings of major figures in the continental tradition, Alcoff shows that the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Michel Foucault can help rectify key ...

Effects of globalization have amplified the magnitude and frequency of corporate abuses, particularly in developing economies where weak or absent rules undermine social norms and principles. Improving multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) ethical conduct is a factor of both the ability of firms to change behaviors in the direction of the moral good, and their willingness to do so. Constraints and enablers of a firm’s ability to act ethically emanate from the external environment, including the industry environment of which the firm is (...) a resident, and the host country environment in which it operates. A firm’s willingness to engage in ethical conduct is determined by the effective bundling of internal resources and the commitment of those resources to social ends. The interaction of external and internal conditions carves out categories of expected firm behaviors and suggests interventions that would push these behaviors in a more positive ethical direction. With reference to integrative social contracts theory (ISCT), these categories of firms are examined, and a conceptual model for analysis is developed to explain the drivers of corporate choices in the adoption and implementation of codes of conduct, and the relative power of relevant communities to the process. (shrink)

Feminist approaches within the social sciences have expanded enormously since the 1960s. In addition, in recent years, geographic perspectives have become increasingly significant as feminist recognition of the differences between women, their diverse experiences in different parts of the world and the importance of location in the social construction of knowledge has placed varied geographies at the centre of contemporary feminist and postmodern debates. Gender, Identity and Place is an accessible and clearly written introduction to the wide field of issues (...) that have been addressed by geographers and feminist scholars. It combines the careful definition and discussion of key concepts and theoretical approaches with a wealth of empirical detail from a wide-ranging selection of case studies and other empirical research. It is organized on the basis of spatial scale, examining the relationships between gender and place from the body to the nation, although the links between different spatial scales are also emphasized. The conceptual division and spatial separation between the public and private spheres and their association with men and women respectively has been a crucial part of the social construction of gendered differences and its establishment, maintenance and reshaping from industrial urbanization to the end of the millennium is a central linking theme in the eight substantive chapters. The book concludes with an assessment of the possibilities of doing feminist research. It will be essential reading for students in geography, feminist theory, women's studies, anthropology and sociology. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 35-37.

While most business ethics texts focus exclusively on individual decision making--what should an individual do--this resource presents the whole business ethics story. Highly realistic, readable, and down-to-earth, it moves from the individual to the managerial to the organizational level, focusing on business ethics in an organizational context to promote an understanding of complex influences on behavior. The new Fifth Edition is the perfect text for students entering the workplace, those seeking to become professionals in training, communications, compliance, in addition to (...) chief ethics officers, corporate counsel, heads of human resources, and senior executives. (shrink)

An ethic for wrongdoers -- Repaying moral debts : self-punishment and restitution -- Changing one's heart, changing the past : repentance and moral transformation -- Reforming relationships : the reconciliation theory of atonement -- Forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and redemption -- Making amends for crime : an evaluation of restorative justice -- Collective atonement : making amends to the Magdalen penitents.

Visible Identities critiques the critiques of identity and of identity politics and argues that identities are real but not necessarily a political problem. Moreover, the book explores the material infrastructure of gendered identity, the experimental aspects of racial subjectivity for both whites and non-whites, and in several chapters looks specifically at Latio identity.

White identity is in ferment. White, European Americans living in the United States will soon share an unprecedented experience of slipping below 50% of the population. The impending demographic shifts are already felt in most urban centers and the effect is a national backlash of hyper-mobilized political, and sometimes violent, activism with a stated aim that is simultaneously vague and deadly clear: 'to take our country back.' Meanwhile the spectre of 'minority status' draws closer, and the material advantages of being (...) born white are eroding. This is the political and cultural reality tackled by Linda Martín Alcoff in The Future of Whiteness. She argues that whiteness is here to stay, at least for a while, but that half of whites have given up on ideas of white supremacy, and the shared public, material culture is more integrated than ever. More and more, whites are becoming aware of how they appear to non-whites, both at home and abroad, and this is having profound effects on white identity in North America. The young generation of whites today, as well as all those who follow, will have never known a country in which they could take white identity as the unchallenged default that dominates the political, economic and cultural leadership. Change is on the horizon, and the most important battleground is among white people themselves. The Future of Whiteness makes no predictions but astutely analyzes the present reaction and evaluates the current signs of turmoil. Beautifully written and cogently argued, the book looks set to spark debate in the field and to illuminate an important area of racial politics. (shrink)

Three philosophical accounts of risk dominate the contemporary literature. On the probabilistic account, risk has to do with the probability of a disvaluable event obtaining; on the modal account, it has to do with the modal closeness of that event obtaining; on the normic account, it has to do with the normalcy of that event obtaining. The debate between these accounts has proceeded via counterexample-trading, with each account having some cases it explains better than others, and some cases that it (...) cannot explain at all. In this article, we attempt to break the impasse between the three accounts of risk through a shift in methodology. We investigate the concept of risk via the method of conceptual reverse-engineering, whereby a theorist reconstructs the need that a concept serves for a group of agents in order to illuminate the shape of the concept: its intension and extension. We suggest that risk functions to meet our need to make decisions that reduce disvalue under conditions of uncertainty. Our project makes plausible that risk is a pluralist concept: meeting this need requires that risk takes different forms in different contexts. But our pluralism is principled: each of these different forms are part of one and the same concept, that has a ‘core-to-periphery’ structure, where the form the concept takes in typical cases (at its ‘core’) explains the form it takes in less typical cases (at its ‘periphery’). We then apply our findings to epistemic risk, to resolve an ambiguity in how ‘epistemic risk’ is standardly understood. (shrink)

In the field of art history, the white Western male viewpoint, unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian, may—and does—prove to be inadequate not merely on moral and ethical grounds, or because it is elitist, but on purely intellectual ones. In revealing the failure of much academic art history, and a great deal of history in general, to take account of the unacknowledged value system, the very presence of an intruding subject in historical investigation, the feminist critique at (...) the same time lays bare its conceptual smugness, its meta-historical naïveté. At a moment when all disciplines are becoming more self-conscious, more aware of the nature of their presuppositions as exhibited in the very languages and structures of the various fields of scholarship, such uncritical acceptance of “what is” as “natural” may be intellectually fatal. Just as Mill saw male domination as one of a long series of social injustices that had to be overcome if a truly just social order were to be created, so we may see the unstated domination of white male subjectivity as one in a series of intellectual distortions which must be corrected in order to achieve a more adequate and accurate view of historical situations. (shrink)

This was published in Cultural Critique (Winter 1991-92), pp. 5-32; revised and reprinted in Who Can Speak? Authority and Critical Identity edited by Judith Roof and Robyn Wiegman, University of Illinois Press, 1996; and in Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds edited by Susan Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner, (New York: New York University Press, 1994); and also in Racism and Sexism: Differences and Connections eds. David Blumenfeld and Linda Bell, Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.

The attention for Moral case deliberation has increased over the past years. Previous research on MCD is often written from the perspective of MCD experts or MCD participants and we lack a more distant view to the role of MCD in Dutch health care institutions in general. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the state of the art concerning MCD in the Netherlands. As part of a larger national study on clinical ethics support in the (...) Netherlands, we will focus on the prevalence and characteristics of MCD in Dutch health. A mixed methods design was used in which we combined two survey questionnaires, two focus groups and 17 individual interviews with top managers or ethics support staff. The findings demonstrate that the prevalence of MCD is relatively high in Dutch health care, especially in mental health care. Institutions with MCD differ from institutions without MCD concerning size, kind of problems and importance of ideological background. Characteristic of MCD is that it often exists for 3 years or more, has a high participation of health professionals and middle managers and is both organized scheduled as unscheduled. As well integration in existing policy as key persons emerge as important issues in relation to the positioning of MCD. We conclude that MCD is a part of an integrated ethics policy and serves as a catalyst for such an integrated ethics policy. (shrink)

The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy is a definitive introduction to the field, consisting of 15 newly-contributed essays that apply philosophical methods and approaches to feminist concerns. Offers a key view of the project of centering women’s experience. Includes topics such as feminism and pragmatism, lesbian philosophy, feminist epistemology, and women in the history of philosophy.

The distinction between a type and its tokens is auseful metaphysical distinction. In §1 it is explained what itis, and what it is not. Its importance and wide applicability inlinguistics, philosophy, science and everyday life are brieflysurveyed in §2. Whether types are universals is discussed in§3. §4 discusses some other suggestions for what types are,both generally and specifically. Is a type the sets of its tokens?What exactly is a word, a symphony, a species? §5 asks what atoken is. §6 considers (...) the relation between types and theirtokens. Do the type and all its tokens share the same properties? Mustall the tokens be alike in some or all respects? §7 explains someproblems for the view that types exist, and some problems for the viewthat they don’t. §8 elucidates a distinction often confused withthe type-token distinction, that between a type and anoccurrence of it. It also discusses some problems thatoccurrences might be thought to give rise to, and one way to resolvethem. (shrink)

Philosophers and bioethicists are typically sceptical about invocations of dignity in ethical debates. Many believe that dignity is essentially devoid of meaning: either a mere rhetorical gesture used in the absence of good argument or a faddish term for existing values like autonomy and respect. On the other hand, the patient experience of dignity is a substantial area of research in healthcare fields like nursing and palliative care. In this paper, it is argued that philosophers have much to learn from (...) the concrete patient experiences described in healthcare literature. Dignity is conferred on people when they are treated as having equal status, something the sick and frail are often denied in healthcare settings. The importance of equal status as a unique value has been forcefully argued and widely recognised in political philosophy in the last 15 years. This paper brings medical ethics up to date with philosophical discussion about the value of equal status by developing an equal status conception of dignity. (shrink)

Acknowledgements This volume brings together contributions by Norwegian, German, and French scholars initially presented at the annual "Politics and ...