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Added by: Simon FoktContent: Oshana argues against 'internalist' theories of autonomy that focus exclusively on psychological conditions internal to the agent - what goes on inside her head - and suggests instead that certain social relations must obtain between the agent and those around her for genuine autonomy to be possible.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordSummary: In this article, Palmer provides a clear survey of positions on killing domestic animals (cats and dogs) in animal shelters. She argues that there are three ways of understanding the killing that occurs in animal shelters: consequentialism, rights based, and relation based. She considers the relationship of humans and domesticated animals that leads to their killing in animal shelters as well as providing an ethical assessment of the practice.
Comment: This text is a clear introduction to the ethical issues involved in keeping 'pets' or 'companion animals.' It would serve as a clear introduction to the problem of 'painless killing' in a course on ethics of killing, environmental ethics, or animal ethics.
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
If the focus of interest is democratization, including women’s freedom, a basic income is preferable to stakeholding. Prevailing theoretical approaches and conceptions of individual freedom, free-riding seen as a problem of men’s employment, and neglect of feminist insights obscure the democratic potential of a basic income. An argument in terms of individual freedom as self-government, a basic income as a democratic right, and the importance of the opportunity not to be employed shows how a basic income can help break both the link between income and employment and the mutual reinforcement of the institutions of marriage, employment, and citizenship.
Comment: This paper explores questions as the intersection of feminism and the basic income literature, offering one of the central cases made in support of basic income by feminists: that a basic income, especially with compared with other forms of stakeholding, has the potential to advance democratization more generally, and women's freedom specifically, by breaking the "long-standing link between income and employment, and end(ing) the mutual reinforcement of the institutions of marriage, employment, and citizenship." The author shows why basic income is preferrable to stakeholding with these goals in mind. The paper would therefore be interesting to discuss in relation to feminist politics or a survey of the basic income literature, especially assigned in tandem with some of the literature treated as UBI canon or core, such as Phillipe Van Parijs' work.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Ashwani Kumar PeetushPublisher's Note: The question of how to arrive at a consensus on human rights norm in a diverse, pluralistic, and interconnected global environment is critical. This volume is a contribution to an intercultural understanding of human rights in the context of India and its relationship to the West. The legitimacy of the global legal, economic, and political order is increasingly premised on the discourse of international human rights. Yet the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights developed with little or no consultation from non-Western nations such as India. In response, there has developed an extensive literature and cross-cultural analysis of human rights in the areas of African, East-Asian, and Islamic studies, yet there is a comparative dearth of conceptual research relating to India. As problematically, there is an lacuna in the previous literature; it simply stops short at analyzing how Western understandings of human rights may be supported from within various non-Western cultural self-understandings; yet, surely, there is more to this issue. The chapters in this collection pioneer a distinct approach that takes such deliberation to a further level by examining what it is that the West itself may have to learn from various Indian articulations of human rights as well.
Comment: The subject of human rights in a pluralistic world is critical. Drawing on the vast traditions of India and the West, this volume is unique in providing interdisciplinary essays that range from theoretical, philosophical, normative, social, legal, and olitical issues in the conceptualization and application of a truly global understanding of human rights. While previous literature stops short at asking how Western understandings may be articulated in non-Western cultures, the essays here urthermore examine what the West may have to learn from Indian understandings.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: This paper shows how the mythology surrounding rape enters into a criterion of reasonableness which operates through the legal system to make women vulnerable to unscrupulous victimization. It explores the possibility for changes in legal procedures and presumptions that would better serve women's interests and leave them less vulnerable to sexual violence. This requires that we reformulate the criterion of consent in terms of what is reasonable from a woman's point of view.
Comment: This text provides an overview of the the legal status of "date rape" in the US. It would fit well in a class covering the idea of mens rea and/or actus reus - such as a class on philosophy of law. It would also be of use in a class covering the concept of consent, rape and sexual violence, or the meaning of being 'reasonable.'
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Added by: Carl FoxIntroduction: One might suppose that if political theorists are by now clear about anything at all, they should be clear about the problem of political obligation and the solution to it most commonly offered, the doctrine of consent. The greatest modern political theorists took up this problem and formulated this answer. The resulting theories are deeply imbedded in our American political tradition; as a consequence we are al- ready taught a sort of rudimentary consent theory in high school. And yet I want to suggest that we are not even now clear on what "the problem of political obligation" is, what sorts of "answers" are appropriate to it, what the con- sent answer really says, or whether it is a satis- factory answer. This essay is designed to point up the extent of our confusion, to explore some of the ground anew as best it can, and to invite further effort by others. That such effort is worthwhile, that such political theory is still worth considering and that it can be made genuinely relevant to our world, are the assump- tions on which this essay rests and the larger message it is meant to convey
Comment: Still a good introduction to the topic of political obligation and does a nice job of distinguishing some of the main questions within that topic. Very thorough discussion of Locke. The third section on Tussman is a bit dated, but does discuss some of the issues surrounding political obligation and children and adults who are not fully competent.
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Added by: Carl FoxIntroduction: [The doctrine of "hypothetical consent"] teaches that your obligation depends not on any actual act of consenting, past or present, by yourself or your fellow-citizens, but on the character of the government. If it is a good, just government doing what a government should, then you must obey it; if it is a tyrannical, unjust government trying to do what no government may, then you have no such obligation. Or to put it another way, your obligation depends not on whether you have consented but on whether the government is such that you ought to consent to it, whether its actions are in accord with the authority a hypothetical group of rational men in a hypothetical state of nature would have (had) to give to any government they were founding. Having shown how this formulation emerges from Locke's and Tussman's ideas, I want now to defend it as a valid response to what troubles us about political obligation, and as a response more consonant than most with the moral realities of human decisions about obedience and resistance. At the same time the discussion should also demonstrate how many different or even conflicting things that one might want to call "consent" continue to be relevant - a fact which may help to explain the tenacity of traditional consent theory in the face of its manifest difficulties. Such a defense and demonstration, with detailed attention to such decisions, are difficult; the discussion from here on will be more speculative, and will raise more questions than it answers.
Comment: Largely superseded by later work (see, for instance, Stark's 'Hypothetical Consent and Justification'), but still an interesting exploration of hypothetical consent and legitimate authority, as well as offering further critique of actual consent theories of political obligation. Would make for good further reading or an option for anyone attracted to more of a history of philosophy approach.
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Added by: Chris Blake-TurnerAbstract: In this article, I argue that (1) transgender adolescents should have the legal right to access puberty-blocking treatment (PBT) without parental approval, and (2) the state has a role to play in publicizing information about gender dysphoria. Not only are transgender children harmed psychologically and physically via lack of access to PBT, but PBT is the established standard of care. Given that we generally think that parental authority should not go so far as to (1) severally and permanently harm a child and (2) prevent a child from access to standard physical care, then it follows that parental authority should not encompass denying gender-dysphoric children access to PBT. Moreover, transgender children without supportive parents cannot be helped without access to health care clinics and counseling to facilitate the transition. Hence there is an additional duty of the state to help facilitate sharing this information with vulnerable teens.
Comment (from this Blueprint): Priest argues that the state should provide puberty-blocking treatment (PBT) for trans youth, even if their parents are not supportive. Priest’s argument is important partly because it avoids the issue of whether adolescents and children can give properly informed consent. This is a point that some of Priest’s critics seem to have missed (see, for example, Laidlaw et al. 2019. “The Right to Best Care for Children Does Not Include the Right to Medical Transition”, and Harris et al. 2019. “Decision Making and the Long-Term Impact of Puberty Blockade in Transgender Children”). Priest’s conclusion is founded instead on a principle of harm avoidance.
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Added by: Adriana Clavel-VázquezAbstract: The globalization of the world is, in the first place, the culmination of a process that began with the constitution of America and world capitalism as a Euro-centered colonial/modern world power. One of the foundations of that pattern of power was the social classification of the world population upon the base of the idea of race, a mental construct that expresses colonial experience and that pervades the most important dimensions of world power, including its specific rationality: Eurocentrism. This article discusses some implications of that coloniality of power in Latin American history.
Comment (from this Blueprint): The coloniality of power at the centre of Latin American societies as analysed by Quijano is key to understanding why a notion like mestizaje is problematic when building national identities in multicultural States. Quijano’s notion of the coloniality of power helps explain why even when Latin American identities are purported to include Indigenous and Black culture, mestizaje often involves the “civilizing” force of European rationality. Quijano, therefore, helps in bringing forward the dangers of mestizophilia: the pseudo-integrative spirit of mestizaje into multiethnic, multicultural, multiracial society risks becoming a homogenization under whiteness.
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
This essay argues that Simone Weil appropriates Marx's notion of labor as life activity in order to reposition work as the site of spirituality. Rather than locating spirituality in a religious tradition, doctrine, profession of faith, or in personal piety, Weil places it in the capacity to work. Spirit arises in the activity of living, and more specifically in laboring—in one's engagement with materiality. Utilizing Marx's distinction between living and dead labor, I show how Weil develops a critique of capital as a “force” that disrupts the individual's relation to her own work by reducing it to the mere activity of calculable “production.” Capital reduces labor to an abstraction and thereby uproots human subjectivity, on a systemic scale, from its connection to living praxis, or what Weil calls spirituality. Life itself is exchanged for a simulacrum of life. In positioning living labor as spiritual, Weil's work offers a corrective to these deadening practices.
Comment: This text provides an in-depth analysis of Simone Weil's account of and philosophy on work and labor, through the theological lens of spirituality. It therefore offers a unique take on Weil's attempt to situate work and labor as activities of central import in human life. The text might be an interesting supplement to any upper-level undergraduate or graduate level courses explore the concept and value of work, or the historical treatment of the concept in western philosophy. It would also be useful as a companion or supplemental text in courses focused on exploring Simone Weil's philosophy and thought.
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Abstract:
In this article I consider criticisms of the basic needs approach (BNA) made by capability theorists, and argue that BNA can meet them all. I conclude that BNA has been unfairlycriticised and too hastily displaced by the capability approach (CA). This raises a further question: whatshould be done? My hope is that defenders of BNA will be encouraged to revivetheir approach by these arguments, and that defenders of CA will be encouragedto reconsider and modify or withdraw their criticisms.
Comment: This essay engages critically with the capabilities approach to social justice and development, advocated for by thinkers such as Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, Sabina Alkire and others. Reader challenges the shift away from a basic needs approach, which instead focuses on identifying a set of (somewhat) universal basic needs, and then designing political systems to deliver those needs. The text would therefore provide a interesting counter reading to works by Sen, Nussbuam, Alkire, et. al., as the more mainstream cannon on international development, and would be useful in the context of a class on the social justice philosophy and cosmopolitanism, as well as in classes on political philosophy more generally. Alternately, it could, on its own, provide an introduction to both the capabilities and basic needs approaches, as it offers a brief exploration of what each view entails and considers both the merits and drawbacks of each.
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
In this paper I introduce my work in ethics, inviting others to draw on my approach to address the ethical issues that concern them. I set up the Centre for Ethical Philosophy at Durham University in 2007 to plug a puzzling gap in philosophical work to help us help the world. In 1. I set out ethical philosophy. In 2. I consider some implications, for example, that to do good we must pay much more attention to the beings around us, less to ourselves. In 3. I consider the implications for how we should think about war and peace. In 4. I draw out some implications for good political practice. In 5. I consider objections and conclude.
Comment: In this paper, Reader outlines her work in ethics conducted at the Centre for Ethical Philosophy at Durham in the late 2010s. While one should look to some of her other papers (also available on the DRL) for the in-depth, detailed working out of her need-based ethical theory, this paper discusses some of the implications of that theory for pacificism, political action, and the rest of academic philosophy.
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
The ethics of war is a minefield. It is a morass of conceptual unclarity, contentious assumptions, impassioned arguments, unexploded myths, and the injured defenders of indistinct positions. My aim is to help to make the minefield (conceptually) safe, and to assist that most vulnerable party to the dispute, the pacifist. In this paper I explore the possibility that, farfrom being naive or outlandish, pacifism might follow from a widely-held and fundamental intuition about the moral status of persons [hereafter MSP]. In Section 1 I describe MSP, and suggest how we might draw implications from it about the ethics of war. In Section 2, I argue that a ‘presumption of war-ism’ has distorted debate in the ethics of war: to arrive at a balanced view, we need distinguish two sets of moral questions. First, can the development and maintenance of the means to make war be justified? Second, can the use of those means ever be justified? I sketch some strategies which might be developed in addressing the first question, concentrating on what MSP suggests might be wrong with setting up a war-machine, and with being or employing a soldier. In Section 3, I argue that even if considerations from Section 2 are insufficient to establish that we must dismantle our war-machines, facts about war which conflict with MSP do establish that we must never use them.
Comment: In the essay, Reader engages with a broad range of contemporary philosophical literature on the nature and justifications for pacifism. As a result, the paper (and her arguments) offer a useful survey of the literature at the time of publication, and therefore may offer an interesting addition to courses on the philosophy and justification of war more generally. Given that this paper was published in 2000, it may also enhance discussions in political theory courses studying the early 2000s war on terror and conflicts in the Middle East.
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasPublisher’s Note:
Needs and Moral Necessity analyses ethics as a practice, explains why we have three moral theory-types, consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics, and argues for a fourth needs-based theory.
Comment: In this book, Reader defends a needs-based ethical theory and places it in the context of existing ethical theories. Her style of philosophy is straightforward and for the most part, absent of jargon, making it a very good resource for introductory teaching contexts. At the same time, her arguments are nuanced and developed, and it could just as easily be useful in the context of more advanced students. This book offers a critique of the dominant ethical theories existing in contemporary philosophical literature, and for this reason, could be useful in introductions to western social and political philosophy to teach alongside the traditional approaches to moral theory and to get students to challenge the hegemony of those approaches. It might also be useful as a way to discuss methodology and writing style in philosophy: Reader's approach and style of writing is very accessible to non-philosophers, but she still advances a fairly complex argument. Therefore, it could serve as an illustration of how written philosophy need not be technical or opaque in order to advance interesting claims.
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
In this article we argue that the concept of need is as vital for moral theory as it is for moral life. In II we analyse need and its normativity in public and private moral practice. In III we describe simple cases which exemplify the moral demandingness of needs, and argue that the significance of simple cases for moral theory is obscured by the emphasis in moral philosophy on unusual cases. In IV we argue that moral theories are inadequate if they cannot describe simple needs-meeting cases. We argue that the elimination or reduction of need to other concepts such as value, duty, virtue or care is unsatisfactory, in which case moral theories that make those concepts fundamental will have to be revised. In conclusion, we suggest that if moral theories cannot be revised to accommodate needs, they may have to be replaced with a fully needs-based theory.
Comment: In this paper, Brock and Reader present a novel argument for the moral saliency of the concept of need. In doing so, they challenge the reduction of need to other concepts in existing moral theory. The text would be well paired with Reader's "Needs and Moral Necessity" (or used instead) as a way to discuss alternative perspectives on moral theory which depart from traditional ethical accounts (i.e. consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics). The text might also be well paired with Reader's "The Other Side of Agency" to discuss the virtues of patient-centred (rather than agent-centred) moral theory.
Comment: Oshana argues that personal autonomy is a socio-relational phenomenon partially constructed by external, social relations. She also offers an interesting and detailed critique of internalist accounts, which makes the text very useful in teaching on autonomy and free will in general. The text is best used as a further reading in undergraduate and a more central required reading in postgraduate teaching. It offers a good synopsis of Gerald Dworkin's influential conception of autonomy.