Nietzsche famously discusses a psychological condition he calls ressentiment, a condition involving toxic, vengeful anger. I offer a free-standing theory in philosophical psychology of the familiar...

In Emile, Rousseau claims that the value of women ought to be determined by the opinion that men have of them. Women, contrary to commodities and men, escape what I call Rousseau's “dual theory of value.” According to the latter, the apparent value of commodities and men is determined by opinion and either unrelated or inverse to “real value,” which is assessed through objective criteria. The dual theory of value is the basis of Rousseau's critique of commercial society. However, women (...) warrant an exception to this theory. As women's apparent worth is their real worth, women are the unique object in the world that ought to be subjected to the rule of opinion, which is the rule of commercial market that Rousseau so violently rejects. This article investigates why this is the case and locates three functions to the unique position of women in Rousseau's theory of value. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with the widespread claim that positional competitions are zero-sum games. It shows how the notions of ‘positional good’ and ‘positional competition’ have changed in meaning and how this has resulted in conceptual confusion in discussions amongst economists and philosophers. I argue that the Zero-Sum Claim is hardly ever true when it comes to the novel understanding of positionality that currently dominates the philosophical literature. I propose dropping the Zero-Sum Claim and construing positional competitions as win-lose. This (...) is conceptually clearer and deepens our understanding and ethical evaluation of these important competitions in contemporary societies. (shrink)

In this dissertation I explore the conceptual relationship between equality and resistance in political philosophy. Through examination of the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Dewey, and Jacques Rancière, I formulate a position called Fractured Social Holism. This is a problematic that attempts to articulate core issues at stake in the debates surrounding the purposes, meanings, and possibilities for politics. Through Fractured Social Holism I articulate a theory of equality that emphasizes the communities upon which societys institutions intend to (...) distribute equality, arguing that resistance on the part of a populationgroup opposition, formal or informal, to some element of the societal status quoconceptually grounds equality and its distribution by articulating its very possibilities. My central questionHow is equality constituted?focuses on the community itself in order to shift agency from institutions that distribute equality to those who demand it. It emphasizes the active role of the people in the constitution of a community of equals, as well as the fact that the very notion of the people is what is at stake in that constitution; popular resistance challenges the very meaning and content of any given people. I understand equality in the broadest possible sense, in terms of the opportunity of each and all within society to participate in dictating the terms of their public engagement with that society and with others within it. I argue for the possibility of resistance within egalitarian community in Rousseau, the limits of what that resistance in egalitarian society looks like in Marx, how egalitarian communities can organize themselves in Dewey, and how subjectivity relates to mechanisms of resistance and political action within society in Rancière. These historical interpretations and the conceptual framework they engender provide a novel means of thinking about issues of paramount importance in contemporary political philosophy, including pluralism, oppression and domination, and the purposes and meaning of politics, remaining true to a normative vision of equality while insisting on the necessity of the peoples resistance to the status quo in the name of a re-imagined vision of social harmony. (shrink)