Diversity Reading List

Abstract:

One of the most striking contributions of particularism to moral philosophy has been its emphasis on the relative opacity of the moral scene to the tools of rational analysis traditionally used by philosophers. Particularism changes the place of the philosopher in relation to the moral life, pointing up the limits to what philosophy can do here. The modern moral philosopher who takes particularism seriously no longer has the luxury, endemic in our tradition, of imagining that moral philosophy can be done with only passing illustrative reference to experience, or that the truth about the whole of our moral life may be read of a list of a priori moral principles, whose rationality is underwritten by the mechanistic account of what it is to follow a rule that pre-Wittgensteinian philosophers took for granted.

Abstract:

Aristotle’s account of human needs is valuable because it describes the connections between logical, metaphysical, physical, human and ethical necessities. But Aristotle does not fully draw out the implications of the account of necessity for needs and virtue. The proper Aristotelian conclusion is that, far from being an inferior activity fit only for slaves, meeting needs is the first part of Aristotelian virtue.

Abstract:

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.

Abstract:

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.

Abstract:

Our aims in this paper are: (1) to indicate some of the many ways in which needs are an important part of the moral landscape, (2) to show that the dominant contemporary moral theories cannot adequately capture the moral significance of needs, indeed, that the dominant theories are inadequate to the extent that they cannot accommodate the insights which attention to needs yield, (3) to offer some sketches that should be helpful to future cartographers charting the domain of morally significant needs, and (4) to consider some anticipated objections to our project and offer some replies.

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.

Abstract: The use of the character wang 忘 (forgetting) in the Zhuangzi 莊子 has been widely recognized in traditional and contemporary Chinese scholarship, but its meaning remains unclear. This article reviews some notable studies in Sinophone academia concerning the notion of wang in the Zhuangzi. The studies, though not necessarily focused on wang, shed light on different aspects of the concept, including its relation to self-cultivation, aesthetics, ethics, and ontology. While some scholars see wang as a form of elimination, others stress its relation to other concepts such as shi 適 (fitting). The relation of these two concepts, however, is not yet clear. There are also debates over what makes wang possible, with some linking it to dao 道 and some directing our attention to our daily experience. Despite the limited attention paid to wang to date, the studies reviewed show that it is a crucial aspect of Zhuangzian philosophy and deserves further study.

Abstract: Contemporary discussions of xing are often inspired by the Confucian tradition, but recent studies have brought the Zhuangzi 莊子 to the table as a viable alternative. In this essay, I present three different accounts of xing 性 in the Outer Chapters: (1) the primitivists who emphasize body vitality and simple life, (2) the Huang-Lao 黃老 school that emphasizes the balance among different things and the overall cosmological order, and (3) skill stories that look at individual skill masters rather than people in general or the role of the human species in the cosmos, entertain only the descriptive dimension of xing, and cast doubt on the normative status of xing. These three accounts can be read as responding to each other, and each shares certain themes with the Inner Chapters in different ways. Together, they demonstrate the complexity of the Zhuangzi’s view on xing and complicate attempts of cross-textual comparison.

Abstract: The issue of human nature or xing 性 was a major philosophical topic of the mid- and late-Warring States period of ancient China. It was famously discussed, for example, in the Mencius. Zhuangzi 莊子 lived around the same time as Mencius and one might expect that he, too, would have discussed it. Surprisingly, the term xing is absent from the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi. There have been different responses to this, namely, that Zhuangzi: used different terms equivalent to xing; believed that human nature is bad (despite not mentioning xing); was deliberately silent on xing as an oblique way of criticizing others such as Mencius. I review these claims and pro- vide an analysis of how xing was mainly conceptualized during the Warring States period in essentialist terms. I shall read Zhuangzi’s philosophy as transcending this conceptual framework. Instead of a theory of human nature, Zhuangzi provides sto- ries and descriptions of the different facets of human behavior and their psychologi- cal and other complexities. These often have an epistemic focus that stand indepen- dently of any theory of human nature.

Abstract:

How can we justify partiality to those near to us, such as our own families, friends, neighbours and colleagues, when we could act in much more morally valuable ways by helping others who are merely distant from us? In 1972 Peter Singer used two now-famous examples, Pond and Overseas, to challenge our complacent partiality. The charge of neglect of an obvious moral duty to meet distant grave needs is refined and developed by Peter Unger(1996).

Although Singer is a consequentialist, he intends the problem of distance to challenge all moral thinkers irrespective of their theoretical commitments. Singer's challenge has somehow to be met, and this is what discussions of the problem of distance in contemporary analytic philosophy attempt to do. To solve the problem, we have to reject
or modify impartialism or partialism.