RESUMEN Un atento repaso por la concepción de la violencia chulhaniana en el contexto de las formas tradicionales que han estudiado este fenómeno social permite exponer con mayor detalle y claridad esta propuesta en cuanto a la relación con el otro se refiere. Cuando lo sucedido durante el colonialismo que azotó al mundo en el transcurso de los siglos XVIII y XIX se asumía como las más peligrosas acciones cometidas en procura de la supresión de las características propias de cada (...) uno, en la medida en que los fenómenos de invasión suprimían materialmente la diferencia que poblaba el mundo, apareció la violencia de la positividad como la disposición sistémica que parte de la libertad y el consentimiento individual para, tácitamente, eliminar cualquier tipo de sentido de otredad presente en su constitución. ABSTRACT A careful review of the conception of Chulhanian violence in the context of the traditional forms that have studied this social phenomenon makes it possible to explain in greater detail and clarity this proposal as to the relationship with the other refers. When what happened during colonialism that hit the world during the 18th and 19th centuries was assumed to be the most dangerous actions committed in seeking the suppression of each other's own characteristics to the extent that invasion phenomena materially suppressed the difference that populated the world, the violence of positivity appeared as the systemic disposition that begins with freedom and individual consent to, tacitly, to eliminate any kind of sense of otherness present in its constitution. (shrink)

Claims concerning the death of the nation-state are often accompanied by postnationalist arguments that emphasize the potential of human rights to contest nation-bounded conceptualizations of membership. Conversely, arguments focusing on the continuing importance of state-bounded social citizenship rights undermine such postnationalist claims. To assess these claims, this article turns to the Irish state and its prohibition of abortion except in cases where the life of the pregnant woman is in danger. The authors focus their analysis on four legal cases (...) that unfolded between 1992 and 2010. These cases reflect how specific women’s social location within interconnected power hierarchies of nationality, gender, class, race/ethnicity positioned them differently vis-a-vis the Irish state, international and supranational bodies. Furthermore, the transnational, in the form of immigration, non-governmental organizations and the Catholic Church, plays an important role in structuring the context within which these cases unfold. Rather than showing that the international, supranational and transnational are conduits for the declining power of the nation-state, this article finds that in the increasingly dense legal-political field there is room for all of these forces. (shrink)

We focus here on some familiar kinds of cases of conflict between friendship and morality, and, on the basis of our account of the nature of friendship, argue for the following two claims: first, that in some cases where we are led morally astray by virtue of a relationship that makes its own demands on us, the relationship in question is properly called a friendship; second, that relationships of this kind are valuable in their own right.

While it isn't clear that we are right to value integrity — or so I shall argue — most of us do. Persons of integrity merit respect. Compromising one's integrity — or failing completely to exhibit it — seems a serious flaw. Two influential accounts suggest why. For Bernard Williams, integrity is ‘a person's sticking by what [she] regards as ethically necessary or worthwhile.’ To this Cheshire Calhoun adds a helpful negative gloss:To lack integrity is to underrate both formulating and (...) exemplifying one's own views. People without integrity trade action on their own views too cheaply for gain, status, reward, approval or for escape from penalties, loss of status, disapproval. Or they trade their own views too readily for the views of others who are more authoritative, more in step with public opinion, less demanding of themselves, and so on. (shrink)

While it isn't clear that we are right to value integrity — or so I shall argue — most of us do. Persons of integrity merit respect. Compromising one's integrity — or failing completely to exhibit it — seems a serious flaw. Two influential accounts suggest why. For Bernard Williams, integrity is 'a person's sticking by what [she] regards as ethically necessary or worthwhile.'2 To this Cheshire Calhoun adds a helpful negative gloss:To lack integrity is to underrate both formulating and (...) exemplifying one's own views. People without integrity trade action on their own views too cheaply for gain, status, reward, approval or for escape from penalties, loss of status, disapproval. Or they trade their own views too .. (shrink)

When writing on forgiveness, most authors focus on when it is appropriate to forgive and the role that the offender’s attitudes play in determining the appropriateness of forgiveness. In this paper I will take a different approach. Instead of examining when forgiveness may or may not be appropriate, I discuss the moral attitude displayed by being unforgiving. I argue that we have reason to strive for forgiveness based on the kind of moral outlook we deplore in those who (...) wrong us, and that we strive to remove from our own moral worldview. Believing someone to be unforgivable can result in the adoption of aspects of the wrongdoer’s moral outlook and so forgiveness is worth attempting for reasons unconnected to the wrongdoer’s attitudes: reasons that arise from the kinds of moral agents we strive to be. (shrink)

Integrity looks dangerous. Passionate willpower, focused devotion and driving self-belief nestle all-too-closely to extremism, narcissism and intolerant hubris. How can integrity skirt such perils? This question opens the perennial issue of whether devout, driven devotees can guard themselves from antisocial extremes. Current proposals to inoculate integrity from moral danger hone in on integrity’s reflective side. I argue that this epistemic approach disarms integrity’s dangers only by stripping it of everything that initially made it worthwhile. Instead, I argue that (...) integrity contains substantive moral principles serving to surgically target the dangers the trait would otherwise pose. The person of integrity avoids extremism not by questioning whether her values are right, but by recognizing that in a social world whether her values are right is not the only factor that bears on how she should act. Normatively, the proposed account allows integrity to retain its intuitive allures of willpower, direction and unified character. Descriptively, it explains the surprising capacity for principled compromise displayed by canonical figures of integrity. Ultimately, integrity empowers us to be fit for society, even as we are true to ourselves. (shrink)

In this paper, I first consider three possible explanations for why celebrities typically apologise publicly and sometimes also include their fans among the targets of their apology. I then identify three moral dangers of celebrity apologies, the third of which arises specifically for fan-targeted apologies, and each of which teaches us important lessons about the practice of celebrity apologies. From these individual lessons, I draw more general lessons about apologies from those with elevated social positions and the powers they (...) are associated with. (shrink)

This book examines the threat that climate change poses to the projects of poverty eradication, sustainable development, and biodiversity preservation. It offers a careful discussion of the values that support these projects and a critical evaluation of the normative bases of climate change policy. This book regards climate change policy as a public problem that normative philosophy can shed light on. It assumes that the development of policy should be based on values regarding what is important to respect, preserve, and (...) protect. What sort of climate change policy do we owe the poor of the world who are particularly vulnerable to climate change? Why should our generation take on the burden of mitigating climate change that is caused, in no small part, by emissions from people now dead? What value is lost when natural species go extinct, as they may well do en masse because of climate change? This book presents a broad and inclusive discussion of climate change policy, relevant to those with interests in public policy, development studies, environmental studies, political theory, and moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

I argue for two propositions. First, contrary to the common wisdom, we may justly punish individuals who are not morally responsible for their crimes. Psychopaths – individuals who lack the capacity to feel sympathy – help to prove this point. Scholars are increasingly arguing that psychopaths are not morally responsible for their behavior because they suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for them to understand, and therefore be motivated by, moral reasons. These same scholars then infer (...) from this conclusion that they must also lack criminal responsibility and therefore that our continuing to punish psychopaths for their crimes is unjust. My response is that this inference is entirely fallacious. -/- Criminal responsibility turns out to be quite distinct from moral responsibility. The two kinds of responsibility require very different conditions to be satisfied. In particular, criminal responsibility, unlike moral responsibility, does not require an agent be able to grasp and follow moral reasons; it requires only that the individual be able to grasp and follow criminal laws. Once this point is recognized, it becomes much easier to accept my thesis: while the subset of psychopaths who commit crimes are not morally responsible for their criminal behavior because they cannot understand moral reasons, they are still criminally responsible because they can understand what the consequences will be if they get caught. For this reason, even though I concede that psychopaths are not morally responsible for the crimes that they commit, our practice of punishing them for these crimes is still just. -/- Second, I argue that psychopathy is a mental illness and should be recognized as such. One reason that it should be recognized as a mental illness is simply because it is; it satisfies the main criteria for inclusion in the DSM-IV, the “bible” of mental disorders. The other reason is more practical than conceptual. It starts with two facts: the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the preventive detention of any individual who is not a criminal suspect is not constitutional unless the individual is not only dangerous but also mentally ill; and psychopathy is not currently considered to be a mental illness. So, as things now stand, we cannot preventively commit dangerous psychopaths – that is, psychopaths who have clearly indicated that they will be committing serious crimes. Instead, we must wait for them to commit the crimes before we can lock them up. Unfortunately, this incarceration always comes too late for the victims. It would therefore be better if we could lock them up before they actually inflict any harm. Once again, then, I propose that the legal and psychological communities classify psychopathy as a mental illness. (shrink)

In this paper, I use an example from the history of philosophy to show how independently defining each side of a pair of contrary predicates is apt to lead to contradiction. In the Euthyphro, piety is defined as that which is loved by some of the gods while impiety is defined as that which is hated by some of the gods. Socrates points out that since the gods harbor contrary sentiments, some things are both pious and impious. But “pious” and (...) “impious” are contrary predicates; they cannot simultaneously characterize the same thing. Euthyphro changes his definition, but the problem of recognizing emotional ambivalence is only side-stepped. I go on to show how contemporary philosophers run into a similar problem. According to Prinz, something is good if and only if we harbor positive sentiments towards it and bad if and only if we harbor negative sentiments towards it. Thus, if we are ambivalent towards something (if we harbor both positive and negative sentiments towards it), then it is both good and bad. Like “pious” and “impious”, “good” and “bad” are contraries. Next, according to the fitting-attitude theory first elaborated by Brentano and favored by contemporary meta-ethicists like Blackburn, Brandt, Ewing, Garcia, Gibbard, McDowell, and Wiggins, something is good if and only if it is a fitting (appropriate) object of approbation, and something is bad if and only if it is a fitting (appropriate) object of disapprobation. I argue that moral ambivalence is sometimes appropriate, i.e., that the correct response to some things is to both love and hate them. Hence, according to the fitting-attitudes theory, some things are both good and bad. I conclude by discussing a variety of ways in which the problem of ambivalence may be solved, suggesting that attitudes of approbation and disapprobation be further individuated by the reasons for them. (shrink)

This article tries to discuss the potential dangers of proposing a world order in the form of the morally based idea of perpetual peace as it is developed by Kant and further propagated by Habermas and Derrida. Drawing on a distinction between the Kantian idea of morality (Moralität) attributed to the internality of man via its theological connection with god and an idea of ethics akin to Aristotelian and/or Hegelian notions (ethos or ethical life – Sittlichkeit), the article posits the (...) question of the role of morality in the formation of the idea of perpetual peace. While doing this, it will also discuss some of the dangers of imposing a moral law under the pretext of moral necessity onto a humanity who may not will to adhere to the same principles. Thus, even though it does not discuss human rights directly, all the argument revolves around the question of the status of universal human rights as the law of the cosmopoli- tan world and the institutions imposing that law on today’s nations. (shrink)

What grounds a judgment that a work of art is immoral? This book argues that we cannot judge artworks morally in the same way that we judge people. What>'s more, there is no direct influence from moral judgments to aesthetic judgments: it is possible for artworks to be both immoral and beautiful.

In a recent response to Persson & Savulescu’s Unfit for the Future, Nicholas Agar argues that moral bioenhancement is dangerous. His grounds for this are that normal moral judgement should be privileged because it involves a balance of moral subcapacities; moral bioenhancement, Agar argues, involves the enhancement of only particular moral subcapacities, and thus upsets the balance inherent in normal moral judgement. Mistaken moral judgements, he says, are likely to result. I argue that (...) Agar’s argument fails for two reasons. Firstly, having strength in a particular moral subcapacity does not necessarily entail a worsening of moral judgement; it can involve strength in a particular aspect of morality. Secondly, normal moral judgement is not sufficiently likely to be correct to be the standard by which moral judgements are measured. (shrink)

From the perspective of at least some of our valuing practices, the advance of the sciences can seem to constitute a threat. The question I take up in this dissertation is whether or not naturalism--understood as the picture of the world and of ourselves bequeathed to us by the sciences--should be understood as a threat to our moral practices, to moral living. On the account I defend, the knowledge we gain from empirical inquiry need not undermine moral (...) living in toto, although a naturalistic mindset does raise some possibly dangerous questions for particular inherited moral norms and ideals. In defense of my claim that the examined life need not destroy the moral life, I develop a social view of morality. On this view, both moral authority and moral justification are viewed as fundamentally social phenomena, and morality itself as a tool for social living. With a case study on the development of the ethics of care, I illustrate ways in which a concern for empirically truthful representations of humanity can also dovetail with liberatory political concerns. That is, I defend not only the claim that moral living can survive critical scrutiny, but also the claim that it can be enriched by this scrutiny--that the truth can be transformative. Expansive moral ideals, such as those humanist views that see progress in the expansion of our moral vocabularies and institutions, are compatible with a naturalistic outlook, I argue. However, a strong defense of humanist views, according to which such ideals flow unproblematically from the nature of reason or from the history of ethical practice, does not seem possible. A weak defense of humanism, which connects the ideals of humanists to more widely held values, seems more promising. In working socially and politically for their cause, I contend that humanists in some sense have the truth on their side: sexist, racist, classist, or otherwise inegalitarian views regularly trade in falsehoods and obfuscation. Empirically truthful accounts of particular inherited norms and ideals thus continue to be dangerous, at least for those invested in the continued existence of the corresponding institutions. (shrink)

Plato is usually credited as the source of the "ancient quarrel" between reason and rhetoric—and, for him, the arts fall mostly on the less favorable side of rhetoric.1 To be sure, Plato's harsh verdict on the arts rests on an idealist metaphysics and epistemology (or realism about universals)—enshrining a general pessimism about the epistemic prospects of sense experience—which few, nowadays, would consider persuasive. For Plato, since what is presented to us by the senses is no more than an inaccurate copy (...) of truth as revealed by the intellect, and since the artist merely reproduces such copies, the productions of artists are not once but twice removed from any genuine knowledge of reality. To be sure, Plato is .. (shrink)

Kathryn Morgan has introduced us to a typology of ‘the ways in which women’s moral voice and her sense of moral integrity are twisted and destroyed by patriarchal ideology and lived experience.’ She claims that this experience can induce in women ‘a sense of confusion and genuine moral madness.’I am in agreement with much of what Morgan says. However, I suspect that some others might find her case less convincing than I for the reason that she supports (...) her claims by an appeal to classical philosophical literature and what we might loosely call ‘sociological observations.’ One can imagine the easy retort—‘Yes, well, it’s true that Aristotle, Aquinas, Rousseau and Kant did say those silly things about women, but their remarks were mere asides and no one takes them seriously in this matter any more anyway. (shrink)

Kathryn Morgan has introduced us to a typology of ‘the ways in which women’s moral voice and her sense of moral integrity are twisted and destroyed by patriarchal ideology and lived experience.’ She claims that this experience can induce in women ‘a sense of confusion and genuine moral madness.’I am in agreement with much of what Morgan says. However, I suspect that some others might find her case less convincing than I for the reason that she supports (...) her claims by an appeal to classical philosophical literature and what we might loosely call ‘sociological observations.’ One can imagine the easy retort—‘Yes, well, it’s true that Aristotle, Aquinas, Rousseau and Kant did say those silly things about women, but their remarks were mere asides and no one takes them seriously in this matter any more anyway. (shrink)

Kathryn Morgan has introduced us to a typology of ‘the ways in which women’s moral voice and her sense of moral integrity are twisted and destroyed by patriarchal ideology and lived experience.’ She claims that this experience can induce in women ‘a sense of confusion and genuine moral madness.’I am in agreement with much of what Morgan says. However, I suspect that some others might find her case less convincing than I for the reason that she supports (...) her claims by an appeal to classical philosophical literature and what we might loosely call ‘sociological observations.’ One can imagine the easy retort—‘Yes, well, it’s true that Aristotle, Aquinas, Rousseau and Kant did say those silly things about women, but their remarks were mere asides and no one takes them seriously in this matter any more anyway. (shrink)

The age-old maxim of scientists whose work has resulted in deadly or dangerous technologies is: scientists are not to blame, but rather technologists and politicians must be morally culpable for the uses of science. As new technologies threaten not just populations but species and biospheres, scientists should reassess their moral culpability when researching fields whose impact may be catastrophic. Looking at real-world examples such as smallpox research and the Australian “mousepox trick”, and considering fictional or future technologies like Kurt (...) Vonnegut’s “ice-nine” from Cat’s Cradle, and the “grey goo” scenario in nanotechnology, this paper suggests how ethical principles developed in biomedicine can be adjusted for science in general. An “extended moral horizon” may require looking not just to the effects of research on individual human subjects, but also to effects on humanity as a whole. Moreover, a crude utilitarian calculus can help scientists make moral decisions about which technologies to pursue and disseminate when catastrophes may result. Finally, institutions should be devised to teach these moral principles to scientists, and require moral education for future funding. (shrink)

James Harold’s Dangerous Art (2020) is a provocative and stimulating contribution to contemporary debates about the relationship between art and ethics—one that, I am sure, will redirect philosophical discussion in productive and important ways. In my view, the first half of Harold’s book will prove especially useful in advancing stalled debates by shifting our focus from the ethical features of artworks themselves to how those works affect us and the role they play in our communities (p. 96). Much of what (...) Harold says strikes me as plausible and persuasive—particularly in the book’s first half, in which he focuses on the question of the ethically relevant effects of art. Therefore, in my role as critic, I will offer one suggestion for a way that Harold might refine his view on this topic—namely, by allowing that there are some cases in which what artists do in their artworks is both the proper object of ethical appraisal and closely connected to the effects their art has on us. I will then critically explore an aspect of the book that I found less convincing: Harold’s case for expressivism in Chapters 6 and 7. (shrink)

Tell us what you think This essay was first posted at Edge (www.edge.org) and is reprinted with permission. It is the Preface to the book 'What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable,' published by HarperCollins. Write to [email protected]..

What is the appropriate degree of abstraction from existing social facts when engaging in normative political theory? Through a focus on American Indian and other indigenous claims over historically expropriated lands, this essay argues that highly abstracted forms of normative analysis can often misunderstand the core moral problems at stake in real cases, and that they can pose moral dangers when they do so. As argued, the hard moral issues involved in indigenous land claims within countries such (...) as Canada and the United States often have far more to do with questions about competing uses for public lands than with abstract property theory as such. The essay argues that normative theorists will often do more social good, and pose fewer dangers, when they pay close attention to the real moral challenges that social actors face on the ground than when they become captured by abstract questions with ambiguous practical importance. (shrink)

Through arresting narratives we meet a woman aiding refugees in sub-Saharan Africa, facing the chaos of a meaningless society and a doctor trying to stay alive during Mao's cultural revolution - individuals challenged by their societies and in existential moral experiences that define what it means to be human.

This article examines the belief among the cultural elites that ‘people’ should be protected from dangerous knowledge, ‘dangerous’ in the sense that there are factual statements which may have negative moral and political consequences to society. Such a belief in the negative consequences of dangerous – that is, politically suspicious – knowledge represents an intellectual tradition that goes back to Plato and his famous state‐utopian work Republic. This article analyses moral interpretations of statements regarding matters of fact (so‐called (...) moral reading), and draws conclusions about the reasons why knowledge can be considered dangerous to ‘the people’ or to some specific groups in the population, such as children, mothers, students, the sick and dying and the working class. The so‐called sociobiology debate, a controversy that started with the publication of the zoologist E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology in 1975, is discussed in this article as a ‘case study’ of dangerous knowledge. (shrink)

Whilst care imperatives have arisen across the breadth of Western societies, within the education sector they appear both prolific and urgent. This paper explores the deployment of care discourses within education generally and draws upon the case of Australian Health and Physical Education (HPE) more specifically, to undertake a Foucauldian interrogation of care. In so doing I demonstrate the usefulness of Foucault's pastoral power lens and its capacity to provide insight into the moral and ethical work conducted by caring (...) teachers on behalf of the state (Acker, 1995). Following a brief overview of the advocacy, challenges and debates surrounding the issue of caring teaching within education, I draw on the work of Hunter (1994) and three case studies from a genealogical interrogation of HPE that employed Foucualt's ethical fourfold as a heuristic device to reveal the ethical practices and objectives of the good HPE teacher. Drawing on this genealogical work, I argue that HPE teachers and their colleagues have been purposefully incited to constitute themselves as agents of pastoral power. From this Foucauldian perspective, I conclude with an exploration of the unintended and possibly ‘dangerous’ practices of caring teaching that may emerge within the complex and messy nexus of contemporary self‐constitution. (shrink)

AbstractWhat explains followers’ attraction to tyrannical leaders? They systematically coerce, belittle, and manipulate, often at the expense of subordinates’ mental and physical well-being and their organization’s long-term interests. To help address the question, we examine the tendencies of people who view the tyrannical leader prototype (characterized by domineering, pushy, manipulative, loud, conceited, and selfish traits) as a component of effective leadership (Epitropaki and Martin in J Appl Psychol 89:293–310, 2004; Foti et al. in Leadersh Q 23:702–717, 2012). Specifically, we apply (...) moral and evolutionary psychology to propose and empirically test a mediation model in which belief in a dangerous world (Altemeyer in Enemies of freedom: understanding right-wing authoritarianism. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1988) links positively with endorsement of the tyrannical leader traits, as mediated through the binding components (loyalty, authority, and sanctity) of moral foundations theory (Graham et al. J Pers Soc Psychol 101:366–385, 2011). Regarding gender, our model proposes that the link between the binding foundations and tyrannical leadership endorsement is stronger among males than females. Our overall model was supported across two independent samples of working adults; we also anticipated and found a direct negative association between the individualizing moral foundations (care and harm) and endorsement of the tyrannical prototype. These findings provide insights into the circumstances under which tyrannical traits are viewed as part of effective leadership. (shrink)

In this book, Claire Horisk argues that the real problem with so-called offensive jokes-such as racist, sexist, and ethnic jokes-is not that they are offensive but that they are harmful, because they transmit and reinforce stereotypes and ideas that contribute to a network of unjust disadvantage for the derogated group. She distinguishes between belittling jokes, which shore up unjust disadvantage for social groups, and disparaging jokes, which derogate powerful groups such as doctors but do not contribute to unjust disadvantage. She (...) uses philosophy of language and linguistics to argue that both belittling and disparaging jokes communicate ideas by generalized conversational implicature, and to argue that defenses of derogatory remarks as 'just a joke' are inadequate, because jokes can be used to convey what people believe to be true. She focuses on jokes in ordinary conversation, showing that canonical accounts of cooperative conversation need to be enriched: Some people have greater power to shift the common ground of a conversation, and to introduce new presuppositions, than others, and there are alliances that exclude some parties to the conversation, and yet are powerful in setting the future course of the conversation. She also gives a new account of the morality of listening, arguing that sometimes people who listen to derogatory speech may be culpable for doing so. Throughout, she draws on a wealth of interdisciplinary evidence to support the book's claims and to explain why humor is an especially effective means of unjust discrimination. (shrink)