The purpose of this essay is to argue that Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott, 2007) has cognitive value which is inseparable from its value as a work of cinema. I introduce the cinematic philosophy debate in §1. §2 sets out my position: that the Final Cut affirms the proposition there is no necessary relation between humanity and human beings. I outline the combination of cinematic depiction with distinctive features of the narrative’s peripeteia in §3. In §4, I explain (...) the cognitive value of the peripeteia. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show that the value interaction debate is deeply flawed and constitutes a superficial analysis of the relationship between morality and art. I introduce the debate, which concerns whether a moral defect in a work of art is an aesthetic defect, in Section 1. Section 2 establishes the vagueness of two key terms in the discussion, _moral defects_ and _aesthetic defects_. In Section 3, I introduce the naive assumption-uninteresting claim disjunction, identifying five of the (...) six approaches as demonstrating a fundamental naivety about the relationship between morality and narrative art. I show, in Section 4, that four of the six are philosophically uninteresting as they offer an incomplete—and ultimately unsatisfactory—explanation of this relationship. In Section 5, I discuss the quantity and quality of examples employed in the debate, many of which are non-canonical, and some of which are entirely inappropriate. I conclude by recommending a reorientation of the debate to focus on the underlying question of whether the characteristically artistic value is finally or instrumentally valuable. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the experience of a poem qua poem is an experience of poetic thickness , i.e. an experience in which poetic form and poetic content are inseparable. I present a critical analysis of A. C. Bradley’s ‘Poetry for Poetry’s Sake’ lecture in Section 1, indicating both the strengths and weaknesses of his conception of resonant meaning. Section 2 draws on subsequent work by I. A. Richards and Peter Lamarque to advance my account (...) of the relationship in question, poetic thickness, understood as a demand made of a poem rather than a property discovered therein. In Sections 3–6 I discuss four objections to form-content unity from Peter Kivy: perfect circularity, ubiquitous unity, the sugar-coated pill tradition, and the defence from tradition. I show that all these objections fail against poetic thickness. I conclude that the experience of a poem qua poem is indeed an experience of thickness, and that poetic thickness is therefore a necessary condition of poetry. (shrink)

Narrative Justice presents an argument for a contemporary theory of aesthetic education, followed by examples of that theory in practice.1 I use aesthetic education in its strict philosophical sense, that is, as a thesis about the relationship between aesthetic or artistic value on the one hand and moral and political value on the other hand. The crux of the thesis is that there is some kind of causal relation between aesthetic experiences and moral development. The term is ambiguous because an (...) aesthetic education is not an education in aesthetics but an education by aesthetics, specifically a moral education by aesthetic means, which is, in turn, a means to the end of political education.The thesis originates with... (shrink)

Does the “free market” foster more freedom for individuals generally and less coercion? Libertarians and other market advocates argue that the unfettered market maximizes freedom and hence has less coercion than any feasible alternative. Welfare liberals, Socialist, and Marxists, in different ways, argue against the claim that the unrestricted market maximizes freedom generally. Both supporters and critics agree that coercion undermines freedom and that that is what is ultimately prima facie wrong with it. Further, they agree that the extent to (...) which an economic system includes coercion provides a serious strike against it. The problem is that there is little consensus on the necessary conditions for coercion. In this paper I will be concerned with the nature of coercive relationships in the market. Market interactions have a particular character and occur within a specific institutional framework. Other accounts of coercion have failed to capture the unique character of coercion in the market because they have failed to take into account certain nontrivial facts about the market which are essential to the analysis of coercive market relations. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Francis Hutcheson’s moral sense theory offers a satisfactory account of moral perception. I introduce Hutcheson’s work in §1 and indicate why the existence of a sixth sense is not implausible. I provide a summary of Robert Cowan and Robert Audi’s respective theories of evaluative perception in §2, identifying three problematic objections: the Directness Objection to Cowan’s ethical perception and the aesthetic and perceptual model objections to Audi’s moral perception. §3 examines Hutcheson’s (...) moral sense theory, focusing on his discussion of benevolence, the desire for the happiness of others. I deal with the unresolved issues in Hutcheson’s account by recourse to Charles Darwin’s evolutionary perspective on the moral sense in §4, arguing for the moral sense as the second-order faculty for judging benevolence. I return, in §5, to the objections, showing that moral sense theory solves all three problems and therefore offers a satisfactory account of moral perception. (shrink)

Does the “free market” foster more freedom for individuals generally and less coercion? Libertarians and other market advocates argue that the unfettered market maximizes freedom and hence has less coercion than any feasible alternative. Welfare liberals, Socialist, and Marxists, in different ways, argue against the claim that the unrestricted market maximizes freedom generally. Both supporters and critics agree that coercion undermines freedom and that that is what is ultimately prima facie wrong with it. Further, they agree that the extent to (...) which an economic system includes coercion provides a serious strike against it. The problem is that there is little consensus on the necessary conditions for coercion. In this paper I will be concerned with the nature of coercive relationships in the market. Market interactions have a particular character and occur within a specific institutional framework. Other accounts of coercion have failed to capture the unique character of coercion in the market because they have failed to take into account certain nontrivial facts about the market which are essential to the analysis of coercive market relations. (shrink)

This article demonstrates that Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) meets both conditions of Paisley Livingston's bold thesis of cinema as philosophy. I delineate my argument in terms of Aaron Smuts's clarifications of Livingston's conditions. The results condition, which is concerned with the nature of the philosophical content, is developed in relation to Berys Gaut's conception of narrational confirmation, which I designate ‘experiential affirmation.’ Because experiential affirmation is a function of cinematic depiction, it meets Livingston's means condition, which is concerned with the (...) capacities of the medium or art form. I address two objections to my argument and conclude with a brief commentary on the implications for the broader relationship between film and philosophy. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the debate about cinematic motion in terms of the necessity for reception conditions in art. I shall argue that Gregory Currie’s rejection of weak illusionism – the view that cinematic motion is illusory – is sound, because cinematic images really move, albeit in a response-dependent rather than garden-variety manner. In §1 I present Andrew Kania’s rigorous and compelling critique of Currie’s realism. I assess Trevor Ponech’s response to Kania in §2, and show (...) that his focus on the cinematic experience is indicative of the direction the debate should take. §3 demonstrates that the issue is underpinned by the question of the role of reception conditions in the experience of art. In §4 I apply my observations on reception conditions to the problem of cinematic motion and conclude that Kania’s objections are unsuccessful due to his failure to acknowledge the necessary conditions for cinematic experience. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that narrative representations can provide knowledge in virtue of their narrativity, regardless of their truth value. I set out the question in section 1, distinguishing narrative cognitivism from aesthetic cognitivism and narrative representations from non-narrative representations. Sections 2 and 3 argue that exemplary narratives can provide lucid phenomenological knowledge, which appears to meet both the epistemic and narrativity criteria for the narrative cognitivist thesis. In section 4, I turn to non-narrative representation, focusing (...) on lyric poetry as presenting a disjunctive objection: either lucid phenomenological knowledge can be reduced to identification and fails to meet the epistemic criterion, or lucid phenomenological knowledge is provided in virtue of aesthetic properties and fails to meet the narrativity criterion. I address both of these problems in sections 5 and 6, and I close with a tentative suggestion as to how my argument for narrative c.. (shrink)

Mass media campaigns are widely and successfully used to change health decisions and behaviors for better or for worse in society. In the United States, media campaigns have been launched at local offices of the states’ department of motor vehicles to promote citizens’ willingness to organ donation and donor registration. We analyze interventional studies of multimedia communication campaigns to encourage organ-donor registration at local offices of states’ department of motor vehicles. The media campaigns include the use of multifaceted communication tools (...) and provide training to desk clerks in the use of scripted messages for the purpose of optimizing enrollment in organ-donor registries. Scripted messages are communicated to customers through mass audiovisual entertainment media, print materials and interpersonal interaction at the offices of departments of motor vehicles. These campaigns give rise to three serious concerns: (1) bias in communicating information with scripted messages without verification of the scientific accuracy of information, (2) the provision of misinformation to future donors that may result in them suffering unintended consequences from consenting to medical procedures before death (e.g, organ preservation and suitability for transplantation), and (3) the unmanaged conflict of interests for organizations charged with implementing these campaigns, (i.e, dual advocacy for transplant recipients and donors). We conclude the following: (1) media campaigns about healthcare should communicate accurate information to the general public and disclose factual materials with the least amount of bias; (2) conflicting interests in media campaigns should be managed with full public transparency; (3) media campaigns should disclose the practical implications of procurement as well as acknowledge the medical, legal, and religious controversies of determining death in organ donation; (4) organ-donor registration must satisfy the criteria of informed consent; (5) media campaigns should serve as a means of public education about organ donation and should not be a form of propaganda. (shrink)

Abstract:Frantz Fanon is best known as the author of two monographs: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), a literary and psychological account of Black experience and anti-Black racism, and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), a political manifesto arguing for the need to respond to colonial oppression with revolutionary violence. His critics contend that the disciplinary division evinces a failure to successfully integrate the psychological with the political, which detracts from his intellectual legacy. In this article, I employ criminologist Jon Frauley’s (...) theory of the analytic value of fictional film to demonstrate that Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) not only provides an empirical referent for Fanon’s psychological and political theories but also reveals an underlying coherence that is not always obvious. I begin with a summary of Frauley’s theory and then alternate between Fanon’s theories and the way in which the film provides those theories with empirical referents. My conclusion, which highlights an essential continuity between individual transcendence and collective action in Fanon, draws on both Blade Runner 2049 and the military tactic of pseudo operations, which was employed to devastating effect against anti-colonial struggles in Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

I am both grateful and flattered that colleagues whom I hold in such high regard have taken the time to engage so closely and so thoughtfully with my work. I am particularly pleased that those colleagues have approached Narrative Justice from such distinct perspectives as the intellectual impulse behind its writing was to create a work that was genuinely interdisciplinary and whose insights, such as they are, could be applied to a range of issues across the humanities and social sciences. (...) I cannot hope to respond fully to these engagements in what follows, but I hope that my responses are sufficient to demonstrate the extent of my indebtedness to and respect for the symposiasts.Lewis's perspective on Narrative... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ontological effects of digital technology, and determine whether digital films, traditional films, and pre-traditional motion pictures belong to the same category. I begin by defining the parameters of my inquiry, and then consider the two most significant consequences of the new technology. §2 proposes a decisive refutation of the causal relationship between reality and photography. §3 identifies an end to the dominance of photorealistic film over animation, and argues for an inversion (...) of that relationship, whereby animation is paramount. Finally, I consider the implications of these consequences for film ontology, compare theories, and conclude in favour of Berys Gaut, for whom digital film is the latest incarnation of a history of moving pictures that stretches back for centuries. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall demonstrate the value of the concept of literary thickness – i.e. form-content inseparability – as a tool of literary appreciation. I set out the relationships between non-fiction, fiction, literature, and poetry in Section 1 and sketch a preliminary definition of literary thickness in Section 2. I argue that a convincing account of reference in literary fictions can be provided by means of literary thickness in Sections 3 and 4. I argue that the match between authorial (...) intention and reader response characteristic of the experience of literary works is explained by literary thickness in Section 5. In Section 6, I test the usefulness of the concept of literary thickness against Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang. (shrink)

This paper mobilises the psychoanalytic concepts of desire and enjoyment to better understand how processes of education aimed at extending and defending democratic life might respond to and engage with populist politics. I approach this task by engaging with a particular vector of Mouffe and Laclau’s political philosophy, moving from a critique of liberal democracy’s rationalist pretensions to their insistence that left populism and its passionate construction of a ‘people’ is the central task facing radical politics. This attention to the (...) libidinal basis of political identification locates them in a community of Left Lacanian thinkers who reframe the problems of democratic politics in terms of desire and enjoyment rather than miseducation or its lack. Whilst this position might suggest a binary choice between different analytical frames, I inquire into what insights are generated by theorising left populism as an ‘education of desire’. The paper is organised into four main parts: the opening discussion clarifies my understanding of education by engaging with the literature on educational agonism. The second section lays the groundwork for a critique of the way in which education is fetishized, in different ways, by liberals and radicals as a panacea for populist politics. The third section reframes democratic crisis as an enjoyment problem in order to better grasp the relationship between the liberal democratic disavowal of its own irrationality and the structure of right-wing populist enjoyment. The fourth section applies these insights to develop a critical analysis of what is at stake when we explicitly consider the left populist construction of a ‘people’ as an educational task. I conclude by drawing together and summarising the main features and considerations of left populism understood as an education of desire. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to defend a particular kind of cinematic realism, anti-illusionism, which is the thesis that cinematic motion is real. Following a brief introduction to realism and cinema in Section 1, I analyse Berys Gaut’s taxonomy of cinematic realism and define anti-illusionism in Section 2. Section 3 contrasts the anti-illusionist theories of Gregory Currie and Trevor Ponech with the illusionist theories of Andrew Kania and Gaut. I reconceptualize the debate in terms of Tom Gunning’s cinematic animation (...) in Section 4, focusing on the question of cinematic singletons. In Section 5 I argue that cinematic singletons both exist and undergo objective displacement—and thus for anti-illusionism. I conclude, in Sections 6–7, with responses to potential objections to my argument from Kania and Gaut. (shrink)

Thomas Reid’s positive account of justice as a natural virtue must be extracted from his polemic on Hume’s theory that justice is an artificial virtue. For Hume, the conceptual analysis of justice is in terms of agreement and hence, it is absurd to suppose that any act is unjust prior to Humean agreement. Hume maintains that no man is obliged to obey the rules of justice unless others agree to do likewise; by implication, there can be no injustices in the (...) state of nature. Reid categorically denies this, and presents sharp criticism of Hume’s account. To refute Hume’s account, Reid must show that there is a conceptual priority of the notion of justice—prior to any convention or artifice of society. In other words, he must show that we have a conception of justice which is not dependent on the conventions of society. Reid, I will show, is successful in showing this. His success in showing that justice is a natural virtue depends not only on his conceptual analysis, but on his arguments from human nature as well. The argument of Reid’s that is the central focus of this paper rests upon the following claim: “As soon as men have any rational conception of a favour and an injury, they must have the conception of justice and perceive its obligation.”. (shrink)

Abstract:The purpose of this introduction is to set out the scope and content of this special issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, which takes Aesthetic Education through Narrative Art as its subject. I begin by delineating the “aesthetic” itself and then identifying the denotation of “aesthetic education” with which the issue’s authors are concerned. This is followed by a characterization of “narrative art” that belies my preference for representation rather than art and draws attention to the multiple modes of (...) representation that constitute complex narratives. I next turn to the title of the special issue, an abridged version of Aesthetic Education through Narrative Art and its Relevance for the Humanities, which is an installation research project funded by the Croatian Science Foundation to investigate the relationship between aesthetic and artistic values on the one hand and ethical, political, and social values on the other. The project is multidisciplinary among philosophy, criminology, film studies, and cognitive science, and three of the authors are members of the project team. I conclude by introducing each of the six articles, which employ two approaches, one from philosophical aesthetics and the other from critical criminology. (shrink)

Francis Hutcheson is generally accepted as producing the first systematic study of aesthetics, in the first treatise of An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, initially published in 1725. His theory reflected the eighteenth century concern with beauty rather than art, and has drawn accusations of vagueness since the first critical response, by Charles Louis DeVillete in 1750. The most serious critique concerns the idea of beauty itself: whether it was simple or complex, and the (...) idea of a primary or secondary quality. It is the latter question I shall answer, attempting to clarify the problematic passage that appears at the end of the first section of Hutcheson’s first treatise. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a new argument for moderate autonomism. I call this the ‘critical argument’ to distinguish it from the empirical argument of James C. Anderson and Jeffrey T. Dean, and the no-error argument of James Harold. My strategy is to first employ the criticism of Matthew Arnold and F.R. Leavis to demonstrate the moralist failure to account for the complexity of the relationship between literature and morality, and then offer a more promising alternative. I set out the (...) autonomist, moralist, and immoralist positions in the value interaction debate in §1, and identify problems with classifying the two critics in contemporary terms. In §2 I discuss Arnold’s cultural criticism as both a part of – and a reaction to – the public moralist tradition that dominated Britain in the nineteenth century, drawing attention to his criterion of ‘seriousness’. §3 examines Leavis’ literary criticism, focusing on his conception of the relationship between composition and life, and his criterion of ‘maturity’. Drawing on the similarities between Arnold and Leavis, I demonstrate that their concern with morality differs from that of the contemporary moralists in §4. In §5 I employ John Gibson’s distinction between normative and informative values to complete the argument for moderate autonomism. I test my argument against an extreme case, a hypothetical literary equivalent to The Birth of a Nation, in §6, and conclude that moderate autonomism provides the most compelling solution to the value interaction debate. (shrink)

In Drosophila, a Bcd protein gradient orchestrates patterning along the anteroposterior embryonic axis. However, studies of basal flies and other insects have revealed that bcd is a derived Hox3 gene found only in higher dipterans. To understand how bcd acquired its role in flies and how anteroposterior patterning mechanisms have evolved, I first review key features of bcd function in Drosophila: anterior localization and transcriptional and translation control of gene expression. I then discuss investigations of bcd in other higher dipterans (...) that have provided insight into the evolution of regulatory interactions and the Bcd gradient. Finally, I review studies of Drosophila and other insects that address the evolution of bcd function and integration of bcd into ancestral regulatory mechanisms. I suggest further comparative studies may allow us to identify the intermediate steps in bcd evolution. This will make bcd a paradigm for the origin and evolution of genes and regulatory networks. BioEssays 27:904–913, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Gregory Currie is one of the world’s preeminent philosophers of art and a highly-respected philosopher of mind. Imagining and Knowing: the Shape of Fiction is his seventh book, with his conspicuous contributions to the analytic tradition of philosophy including the first systematic philosophical aesthetics in no less than two fields, film (Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, 1995) and narrative (Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories, 2010). Currie’s trademark approach is the seamless integration of art criticism and (...) aesthetic theory on the one hand with empirical psychology and evolutionary biology on the other and Imagining and Knowing follows suit. His stated aim is twofold: to make a convincing case for the significance of the imagination to the understanding of and engagement with fiction and to make an equally convincing case against the significance of fiction as a source of knowledge. The monograph consists of an introduction, eleven chapters divided into three parts, and a coda. Part I is concerned with making a case for imagining fiction, defending fiction as an utterance over fiction as a genre (Chapter 1) and the role of the imagination in the engagement with fiction (Chapter 2). This role is fleshed out by means of Currie’s conceptions of ‘desires in imagination, or i-desires’ (Chapter 3) and i-emotions (Chapter 4), which also provide neat solutions to both the paradox of fiction and the imaginative resistance debates (56). Part II sets the scene for the case against fictional knowledge, establishing an epistemic taxonomy (Chapter 5), arguing that claims about the cognitive value of fiction should cohere with the findings of experimental psychology (Chapter 6), and debunking evolutionary claims for the significance of fiction (Chapter 7). Part III presents Currie’s deflationary account, tackling each of what he considers to be the four most convincing arguments for learning from fiction in turn: fictional thought experiments (Chapter 8), truth in literature (Chapter 9), the psychology of authors (Chapter 10), and the relationship between fiction and empathy (Chapter 11). (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the experience of a literary narrative qua literary narrative is an experience of narrative thickness, that is, an experience in which narrative form and narrative content are inseparable. I explain my thesis of poetic thickness in § 1, showing why it does not admit of extension from poetry to literary narratives. §§ 2–3 synthesize the work of Derek Attridge and Peter Lamarque, advancing narrative thickness as a necessary condition of literary narratives. (...) I propose a work of didactic literature – J. M. Coetzee’s ‘The Lives of Animals’ – as a paradigmatic counterexample to narrative thickness in § 4. I show, in § 5, that narrative thickness holds for this work in particular and didactic works which are literary in general, concluding that narrative thickness is indeed a necessary condition of literary narratives. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the experience of a literary narrative qua literary narrative is an experience of narrative thickness, i.e. an experience in which narrative form and narrative content are inseparable. I explain my thesis of poetic thickness in §1, showing why it does not admit of extension from poetry to literary narratives. §§2-3 synthesise the work of Derek Attridge and Peter Lamarque, advancing narrative thickness as a necessary condition of literary narratives. I propose a (...) work of didactic literature – J.M. Coetzee’s “The Lives of Animals” – as a paradigmatic counter-example to narrative thickness in §4. I show, in §5, that narrative thickness holds for this work in particular and didactic works which are literary in general, concluding that narrative thickness is indeed a necessary condition of literary narratives. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to defend a deflationary account of the ethical value of narrative representation. In sections 1 and 2 I demonstrate that there is a necessary relation between narrative representation and ethical value, but not between narrative representation and moral value. Ethical is conceived in terms of moral as opposed to amoral and moral in terms of moral as opposed to immoral and the essential value of narrative representation is restricted to the former. Recently, both theorists (...) involved in the ethical turn in criticism and analytic philosophers have erred in conflating these two distinct kinds of value. In sections 3 to 5 I defend my deflationary view against three attempts to elevate the ethical value of narrative representation to moral value: Martha Nussbaum’s theory of realist novels, Noël Carroll’s virtue wheels, and Geoffrey Galt Harpham’s closural moral order. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to twofold: to identify the problem of cinematic imagination, and then to propose a satisfactory solution. In §1 I analyse the respective claims of Dominic McIver Lopes and Roger Scruton, both of whom question the scope for imagination in film – when compared to other art forms – on the basis of its perceptual character. In order to address these concerns I develop a hybrid of Gregory Currie’s model of cinematic imagination and Kendall Walton’s (...) theory of make-believe in §2. §3 offers a reply to Lopes and Scruton, examining the problem in terms of the tension between the normativity of films as props and the employment of the creative imagination by audiences. I conclude with a solution that admits of two incompatible conceptions of cinematic imagination. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to define the problem of thick representation and to show that the problem is a puzzle for representation rather than a puzzle for a specific art form or art, in general, as has previously been suggested. In the course of identifying and formulating the problem, I shall demonstrate why the solution proposed thus far fails to solve either the artistic problem at which it is aimed or the representational problem I define. I conclude (...) by indicating two promising directions in which a solution might be found and by explaining the philosophical and critical significance of finding a solution. (shrink)

Tzachi Zamir is Professor of English and General & Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he directs the Amirim Interdisciplinary Honors Programme in the Humanities. Just Literature: Philosophical Criticism and Justice is his fifth book, continuing the exploration of the relationship between philosophy and literature begun in Double Vision: Moral Philosophy and Shakespearean Drama (2007) and developed in Ascent: Philosophy and Paradise Lost (2017). Aside from his complex and innovative work in this field, he is best-known for (...) establishing the first systematic philosophical aesthetics of the art form of acting in Acts: Theater, Philosophy, and the Performing Self (2014). Just Literature is part of Routledge’s New Literary Theory series, published in the Routledge Focus format. Routledge Focus, like Palgrave Pivot and Emerald Points, is a fairly recent development in academic publishing, featuring short monographs whose publication is expedited in order to be able to provide commentary on or analysis of current events or topical issues. I am not sure about the value of the expedition for academic work, but I am in favour of the format, which is about half the length of a standard monograph and encourages clear, concise, and focused writing. Zamir introduces his unique approach to the overlap of literary studies and philosophy as being a response to the codependence of the aesthetic and epistemic values of literature, expressed in the following three claims: (1) exemplary literature enables insights by means of experiential pathways; (2) aesthetic value and epistemic or cognitive value are often interlinked; and (3) criticism becomes philosophical when it bridges the gap between emotion and insight. The purpose of Just Literature is twofold, to introduce philosophical criticism and to employ philosophical criticism to achieve a better understanding of the concept of justice. The monograph consists of an introduction, five chapters divided into two parts, a coda, and an appendix. The parts are divided by theory and practice, with the first sketching philosophical criticism in more detail than the introduction (Chapter 1) and introducing justice as a concept (Chapter 2). Part II applies this theory to practice, extrapolating the relationships between justice on the one hand and attachment (Chapter 3), pity (Chapter 4), and mercy (Chapter 5) on the other. The coda presents a pithy and memorable conclusion by means of a personal anecdote, recalling the author’s use of the same device in his second monograph, Ethics and the Beast: A Speciesist Argument for Animal Liberation (2007). (shrink)

Understanding the nature of terrorism is extremely important given the role it currently plays in national and international rhetoric and politics. Nathanson’s book Terrorism and the Ethics of War is a fascinating and extremely timely detailed account of terrorism. He explores what terrorism is, what makes it morally wrong, and whether there are conditions that might ever justify its use. Though terrorism is widely and universally condemned, what count as specific instances of terrorism are often in dispute. One person’s “freedom (...) fighter” is another person’s terrorist. In this commentary, I raise some questions about Nathanson’s account and offer a friendly suggestion about an additional condition for terrorism. Beyond that I question how the term ‘terrorism’ is currently used by law enforcement in this country and suggest that law enforcement would be wise to utilize Nathanson’s analysis of terrorism. (shrink)

Understanding the nature of terrorism is extremely important given the role it currently plays in national and international rhetoric and politics. Nathanson’s book Terrorism and the Ethics of War is a fascinating and extremely timely detailed account of terrorism. He explores what terrorism is, what makes it morally wrong, and whether there are conditions that might ever justify its use. Though terrorism is widely and universally condemned, what count as specific instances of terrorism are often in dispute. One person’s “freedom (...) fighter” is another person’s terrorist. In this commentary, I raise some questions about Nathanson’s account and offer a friendly suggestion about an additional condition for terrorism. Beyond that I question how the term ‘terrorism’ is currently used by law enforcement in this country and suggest that law enforcement would be wise to utilize Nathanson’s analysis of terrorism. (shrink)

Michael Philips in his paper 'Are Coerced Agreements Involuntary?' argues against the widely accepted claim that agreements secured by coercion are involuntary and hence the law should not enforce coerced agreements. Philips's argument relies, I argue, upon an indefensible account of voluntariness. His account of voluntariness does not provide a justification for the system of voluntary exchanges, nor does it link up with our entrenched views about moral and legal responsibility. After arguing for the inadequacy of Philips's analysis of voluntary, (...) I show that Philips has not established the conclusions he thinks he has; specifically, he does not show that agreements made in response to coercion are not involuntary, that coercion does not invalidate agreements, and that the distinction between illegal and legal means which he is so eager to make cannot do the work he wants it to do. (shrink)