Bioethics needs an expanded moral vision. It is now time for bioethics to take full account of the problems of health disparities and structural injustice that are made newly urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of climate change. Nancy M. P. King, Gail E. Henderson, and Larry R. Churchill make the case for a more social understanding and application of justice, a deeper humility in assessing expertise in bioethics consulting, a broader and more relevant research agenda, and (...) greater appreciation of the profound health implications of global warming. (shrink)

How the new conspiracists are undermining democracy—and what can be done about it Conspiracy theories are as old as politics. But conspiracists today have introduced something new—conspiracy without theory. And the new conspiracism has moved from the fringes to the heart of government with the election of Donald Trump. In A Lot of People Are Saying, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum show how the new conspiracism differs from classic conspiracy theory, how it undermines democracy, and what needs to be (...) done to resist it. (shrink)

One of the strongest strands in Nancy's philosophy is an attempt to rethink community and the very idea of the social in a way that does not ground these ideas in some individual subject or subjectivity. The fundamental argument of this book is that being is always 'being with', that 'I' is not prior to 'we', that existence is essentially co-existence. He thinks this being together, not as a comfortable enclosure in a pre-existing group, but as a mutual abandonment (...) and exposure to each other, one that would preserve the 'I' and its freedom in a mode of imagining community as neither a 'society of spectacle' nor via some form of 'authenticity'. (shrink)

Targeting injustices that cut across borders, they are making the scale of justice an object of explicit struggle.Inspired by these efforts, Nancy Fraser asks: ...

Most traditional accounts of Aristotle's theory of ethical education neglect its cognitive aspects. This book asserts that, in Aristotle's view, excellence of character comprises both the sentiments and practical reason. Sherman focuses particularly on four aspects of practical reason as they relate to character: moral perception, choicemaking, collaboration, and the development of those capacities in moral education. Throughout the book, she is sensitive to contemporary moral debates, and indicates the extent to which Aristotle's account of practical reason provides an alternative (...) to theories of impartial reason. (shrink)

The last and most poignant of these essays is The Intruder, Nancys philosophical meditation on his heart transplant.

This collection of writings by Jean-Luc Nancy, the renowned French critic and poet, delves into the history of philosophy to locate a fundamentally poetic modus operandi there. The book represents a daring mixture of Nancy’s philosophical essays, writings about artworks, and artwork of his own. With theoretical rigor, Nancy elaborates on the intrinsic multiplicity of art as a concept of “making,” and outlines the tensions inherent in the faire, the “making” that characterizes the very process of production (...) and thereby the structure of poetry in all its forms. Nancy shows that this multiplication that belongs to the notion of art makes every single work communicate with every other, all material in the artwork appeal to some other material, and art the singular plural of a praxis of the finite imparting of an infinity which is actually there in every utterance. In the collection, Nancy engages with the work of, among others, François Martin, Maurice Blanchot, and On Kawara. (shrink)

If anything marks the image, it is a deep ambivalence. Denounced as superficial, illusory, and groundless, images are at the same time attributed with exorbitant power and assigned a privileged relation to truth. In this collection of writings on images and visual art, the author explores this through an extraordinary range of references.

This work examines the concept of trust in the light of virtue theory, and takes our responsibility to be trustworthy as central. Rather than thinking of trust as risk-taking, Potter views it as equally a matter of responsibility-taking. Her work illustrates that relations of trust are never independent from considerations of power, and that asking ourselves what we can do to be trustworthy allows us to move beyond adversarial trust relationships and toward a more democratic, just, and peaceful society.

What does it mean to think critically about politics at a time when inequality is increasing worldwide, when struggles for the recognition of difference are eclipsing struggles for social equality, and when we lack any credible vision of an alternative to the present order? Philosopher Nancy Fraser claims that the key is to overcome the false oppositions of "postsocialist" commonsense. Refuting the view that we must choose between "the politics of recognition" and the "politics of redistribution," Fraser argues for (...) an integrative approach that encompasses the best aspects of both. (shrink)

Engages and extends the feminist philosopher Lorraine Code's groundbreaking work on epistemology and ethics.

Until recently, struggles for justice proceeded against the background of a taken-for-granted frame: the bounded territorial state. With that "Westphalian" picture of political space assumed by default, the scope of justice was rarely subject to open dispute. Today, however, human-rights activists and international feminists join critics of structural adjustment and the World Trade Organization in challenging the view that justice can only be a domestic relation among fellow citizens. Targeting injustices that cut across borders, they are making the scale of (...) justice an object of explicit struggle. Inspired by these efforts, Nancy Fraser asks: What is the proper frame for theorizing justice? Faced with a plurality of competing scales, how do we know which one is truly just? In exploring these questions, Fraser revises her widely discussed theory of redistribution and recognition. She introduces a third, "political" dimension of justice—representation—and elaborates a new, reflexive type of critical theory that foregrounds injustices of "misframing." Engaging with thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, Michel Foucault, and Hannah Arendt, she envisions a "postwestphalian" mapping of political space that accommodates transnational solidarity, transborder publicity, and democratic frame-setting, as well as emancipatory projects that cross borders. The result is a sustained reflection on who should count with respect to what in a globalizing world. (shrink)

The fifteen “Messenger Leaves” poems Whitman assembled as part of the third (1860) edition of Leaves of Grass exhibit a tension between the prophetic and the sacramental that would become more significant as the United States entered the decade of the Civil War. Comprised of poems that provide warnings and admonitions (the prophetic) and poems that offer consolation and healing (the sacramental), in “Messenger Leaves” Whitman uses biblical models and texts to appeal to the religious sensibilities of the American people. (...) Although “Messenger Leaves” as a cluster was dissembled in the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass, its religious themes draw attention to Whitman’s envisioning of the third edition as the “new Bible.”. (shrink)

El concepto de justicia aparece en la obra Spinoza de manera enigmática, bajo la forma de una aparente definición clásica o escolástica en una filosofía que no lo es: “justicia es el ánimo constante de dar a cada uno lo suyo”. A juzgar por esta definición que parece importada, el problema de la justicia podría leerse como uno de poco interés para Spinoza. En Contra las mujeres Justicia en Spinoza, Cecilia Abdo Ferez considera y argumenta que la justicia representa en (...) la obra de Spinoza un problema de primer orden, que permite apreciar su radicalidad. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have been remaking the landscape in political theory, and in this important book some of the most important feminist political theorists provide reconstructions of those concepts most central to the tradition of political philosophy. The goal is nothing less than the construction of a blueprint for a positive feminist theory.Many of these papers are completely new; others are extensions of important earlier work; two are reprints of classic papers. The result is a progress report on the continuing feminist (...) project to re-envision traditional political theory. As such, it constitutes essential reading not only for feminist thinkers but also for traditional philosophers and political theorists, who will need to come to terms with these contemporary critiques and re-readings. (shrink)

This book is a rich collection of philosophical essays radically interrogating key notions and preoccupations of the phenomenological tradition. While using Heidegger’s Being and Time as its permanent point of reference and dispute, this collection also confronts other important philosophers, such as Kant, Nietzsche, and Derrida. The projects of these pivotal thinkers of finitude are relentlessly pushed to their extreme, with respect both to their unexpected horizons and to their as yet unexplored analytical potential. A Finite Thinking shows that, paradoxically, (...) where the thought of finitude comes into its own it frees itself, not only to reaffirm a certain transformed and transformative presence, but also for a non-religious reconsideration and reaffirmation of certain theologemes, as well as of the body, heart, and love. This book shows the literary dimension of philosophical discourse, providing important enabling ideas for scholars of literature, cultural theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

This is the most systematic, the most radical, and the most lucid treatise on freedom that has been written in contemporary Continental philosophy. Finding its guiding motives in Kant's second Critique and working its way up to and beyond Heidegger and Adorno, this book marks the most advanced position in the thinking of freedom that has been proposed after Sartre and Levinas. If we do not think being itself as a freedom, we are condemned to think of freedom as a (...) pure 'idea' or 'right', and being-in-the-world, in turn, as a blind and obtuse necessity. Since Kant, philosophy and our world have relentlessly confronted this schism. To combat this renunciation of freedom, one must think the experience of freedom in thought itself: what it is that, simply in order for there to be thinking, must partake of freedom. (shrink)

From the earliest photographic attempts to represent tropical hybrid races to depictions of disease in new tropical medicines, Picturing Tropical Nature offers ...

ABSTRACT History of science and history of medicine are today largely organized as distinct disciplines, though ones widely recognized as interrelated. Attempts to evaluate the extent and nature of their relation have reached varying conclusions, depending in part on the historical period under consideration. This essay examines some characteristics of European medicine from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century and considers their relevance for the history of science. Attention is given to the range of interests and activities of individuals (...) trained in or practicing medicine, to the impact of changes in natural philosophy, to the role of observation, description, and accumulation of information, and to the exchange of knowledge among the medical community. (shrink)

This collection, by one of the most challenging of contemporary thinkers, asks the question: why are there several arts and not just one? This question focuses on the point of maximal tension between the philosophical tradition and contemporary thinking about the arts: the relation between the plurality of the human senses and sense or meaning in general. Throughout the five essays, Nancy's argument hinges on the culminating formulation of this relation in Hegel's Aesthetics and The Phenomenology of Spirit - (...) art as the sensible presentation of the Idea. He considers the emergence of art as presentation rather than representation and looks at the contemporary situation of art, and the question of whether art today is still art. Other essays provide intricate and compelling readings of Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin and an analysis of a traced hand in the grotto of Lascaux as the essential mimetic gesture. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy has had a powerful impact not just on philosophy but on other disciplines as well. This imaginatively edited anthology enables readers to sample this literature widely and to trace the breadth and the depth of its influence.

This chapter sets out several views of empathy that draw not only on psychology's literature but on philosophical and psychiatric writings. Empathy is a set of complex concepts involving perception, emotion, attitudinal orientation, and other cognitive processes as well as an activity that expresses character traits and, hence, one of the virtues. In other words, an examination of the philosophical and clinical literature reveals empathy to be not one unified concept but instead a set of related characteristics and qualities needed (...) to be an ethical and therapeutically effective clinician. To this end, the chapter offers reasons as to why empathy is important to clinical work: empathy is both epistemically and ethically necessary to good social relations and, in particular, clinical relations. It then distinguishes empathy from a related concept called "world"-traveling and situates its relevance to therapeutic relations. Finally it brings these ideas together by highlighting Iris Murdoch's ideas of "just vision" and "loving attention.". (shrink)

There has never been a greater need for reliable, truthful news to help citizens navigate and assess the veracity of what they are reading and viewing, especially on social media. Widespread concerns around ‘fake’ news demonstrate an enduring requirement for curated and trustworthy children’s news that addresses children as young citizens with certain rights. Drawing on recent UK events, we discuss the case for children’s news provision by public service broadcasting from a communication rights perspective by analyzing the BBC’s 2019 (...) plans to reduce the broadcast presence and originated hours of its flagship news service, Newsround, in favor of online distribution. (shrink)

Debates about the ethical and social implications of research that aims to extend human longevity by intervening in the ageing process have paid little attention to the attitudes of members of the general public. In the absence of empirical evidence, conflicting assumptions have been made about likely public attitudes towards life-extension. In light of recent calls for greater public involvement in such discussions, this target article presents findings from focus groups and individual interviews which investigated whether members of the general (...) public identify ethical issues surrounding life-extension, and if so, what these ethical issues are? In this study, while some participants were concerned primarily with the likely personal consequences of life-extension, for others the question of whether or not to pursue interventions to extend longevity, and how they should be implemented, clearly raised important ethical issues, many of which have been prominent in debates among bioethicists. (shrink)

This book does several things, and it does them all well. Yolton firmly contextualizes the debates about perception within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while showing how these debates are often repeated in contemporary philosophy of mind. Along the way, he provides novel interpretations of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant that are clearly and convincingly presented. Perhaps the most important feature of his treatment is that it so vividly shows the Moderns grappling with issues about perception that continue to (...) plague us. The uniting theme of the work is Yolton’s insistence that direct realism and representationalism are compatible. Yolton’s defense of direct realism is largely motivated by the thesis that many philosophers incorrectly take a representational theory of mind to necessitate indirect realism. This mistake arises, according to Yolton, because they suppose that the representations themselves become the objects of perception and therefore stand between the perceiver and the world of objects. Yolton’s argument that the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were struggling to establish two interactive relations between perceivers and the physical world underlies his compatibility thesis: There is a physical and causal relationship and, more importantly, there is what Yolton calls a “cognitive” or “semantic” relationship. The latter relationship holds the key to the compatibility of representationalism with direct realism. (shrink)