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Dōgen. Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253)
2011, In James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis and John C. Maraldo (eds.) Japanese Philosophy. A Sourcebook. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 141-162

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Added by: Björn Freter
Abstract:
In Japanese religious history, Dōgen (1200–1253) is revered as the founder of the Japanese school of Sōtō Zen Buddhism. Tradition says he was born of an aristocratic family, orphaned, and at the age of twelve joined the Tendai Buddhist monastic community on Mt Hiei in northeastern Kyoto. In search of an ideal teacher, he soon wandered off from the central community on the mountain and ended up in a small temple in eastern Kyoto, Kennin-ji.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Excerpts from Shōbōgenzō (Repository of the Eye for the Truth), the major philosophical work of Dōgen (1200–1253), founder of the Japanese school of Sōtō Zen Buddhism allowing to deepen his philosophical understanding of nature.

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Donaldson, Sue, Kymlicka, Will. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights
2011, Oxford University Press

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Added by: Björn Freter
Publisher’s Note:
Zoopolis offers a new agenda for the theory and practice of animal rights. Most animal rights theory focuses on the intrinsic capacities or interests of animals, and the moral status and moral rights that these intrinsic characteristics give rise to. Zoopolis shifts the debate from the realm of moral theory and applied ethics to the realm of political theory, focusing on the relational obligations that arise from the varied ways that animals relate to human societies and institutions. Building on recent developments in the political theory of group-differentiated citizenship, Zoopolis introduces us to the genuine "political animal". It argues that different types of animals stand in different relationships to human political communities. Domesticated animals should be seen as full members of human-animal mixed communities, participating in the cooperative project of shared citizenship. Wilderness animals, by contrast, form their own sovereign communities entitled to protection against colonization, invasion, domination and other threats to self-determination. `Liminal' animals who are wild but live in the midst of human settlement (such as crows or raccoons) should be seen as "denizens", resident of our societies, but not fully included in rights and responsibilities of citizenship. To all of these animals we owe respect for their basic inviolable rights. But we inevitably and appropriately have very different relations with them, with different types of obligations. Humans and animals are inextricably bound in a complex web of relationships, and Zoopolis offers an original and profoundly affirmative vision of how to ground this complex web of relations on principles of justice and compassion.

Comment (from this Blueprint): An introduction to the groundbreaking theory of Zoopolis focussing on developing a political vision of human aninmals and non-human animals living together.

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Dotson, Kristie. A Cautionary Tale: On Limiting Epistemic Oppression
2012, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33 (1):24-47.

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington

Abstract: In this paper, first and foremost, I aim to issue a caution. Specifically, I caution that when addressing and identifying forms of epistemic oppression one needs to endeavor not to perpetuate epistemic oppression. Epistemic oppression, here, refers to epistemic exclusions afforded positions and communities that produce de? ciencies in social knowledge. An epistemic exclusion, in this analysis, is an infringement on the epistemic agency of knowers that reduces her or his ability to participate in a given epistemic community.2 Epistemic agency will concern the ability to utilize persuasively shared epistemic resources within a given epistemic community in order to participate in knowledge production and, if required, the revision of those same resources.3 A compromise to epistemic agency, when unwarranted, damages not only individual knowers but also the state of social knowledge and shared epistemic resources.

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Dotson, Kristie. Accumulating Epistemic Power
2018, Philosophical Topics 46 (1):129-154.

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington

Abstract: On December 3, 2014, in a piece entitled 'White America's Scary Delusion: Why Its Sense of Black Humanity Is So Skewed,' Brittney Cooper criticizes attempts to deem Black rage at state-sanctioned violence against Black people 'unreasonable.' In this paper, I outline a problem with epistemology that Cooper highlights in order to explore whether beliefs can wrong. My overall claim is there are difficult-to-defeat arguments concerning the 'legitimacy' of police slayings against Black people that are indicative of problems with epistemology because of the epistemic power they accumulate toward resilient oblivion, which can have the effect of normalizing oppressive conditions. That is to say, if one takes the value of lessening oppression as a key feature of normative, epistemological conduct, then it can generate demands on epistemological orientations that, in turn, generate wrongs for beliefs and, more specifically, beliefs as wrongs.

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Dotson, Kristie. Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression
2014, Social Epistemology 28 (2):115-138.

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington

Abstract: Epistemic oppression refers to persistent epistemic exclusion that hinders one's contribution to knowledge production. The tendency to shy away from using the term 'epistemic oppression' may follow from an assumption that epistemic forms of oppression are generally reducible to social and political forms of oppression. While I agree that many exclusions that compromise one's ability to contribute to the production of knowledge can be reducible to social and political forms of oppression, there still exists distinctly irreducible forms of epistemic oppression. In this paper, I claim that a major point of distinction between reducible and irreducible epistemic oppression is the major source of difficulty one faces in addressing each kind of oppression, i.e. epistemic power or features of epistemological systems. Distinguishing between reducible and irreducible forms of epistemic oppression can offer a better understanding of what is at stake in deploying the term and when such deployment is apt.

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Eaton, A. W.. Feminist philosophy of art
2008, Philosophy Compass 3 (5):873-893.

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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir

Abstract: This article outlines the issues addressed by feminist philosophy of art, critically surveys major developments in the field, and concludes by considering directions in which the field is moving.

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Estlund, Cynthia. Working Together: Crossing Color Lines at Work
2005, Labor History. 46 (1):79-98

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Added by: Deryn Mair Thomas
Abstract:
Amidst signs of declining social capital, the typical workplace is a hotbed of sociability and cooperation. And in a still-segregated society, the workplace is where adults are most likely to interact across color lines. The convergence of close interaction and some racial diversity makes the workplace a crucial institution within a diverse democratic society. Paradoxically, the involuntariness of workplace associations—the compulsion of economic necessity, of managerial authority, and of law—helps to facilitate constructive interaction among diverse co-workers. Where racial diversity is a fact of organizational life (and the law can help to make it so), then employers and workers have their own powerful reasons—psychological and economic—to make those relationships constructive, even amicable. I contend here that it is where we are compelled to get along, and not where we choose to do so, that we can best advance the project of racial integration.

Comment (from this Blueprint): This text raises interesting questions about the relationship between diverse workplaces and democratic practices, and in particular, makes an interesting argument about the implications for racial integration. It can therefore be used to prompt students to think generally about democratic political structures, citizenship, and equality, while also encouraging discussion in particular about the role that work plays in promoting good civic practices.

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Feagin, Susan. Feminist Art History and De Facto Significance
2010, In Peg Zeglin Brand & Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.), Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Penn State Press.

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir

Abstract: In her excellent "Feminist Art History and De Facto Significance," for example, aesthetician Susan L. Feagin explains how her initial skepticism about Continental approaches-especially those drawing on Foucault, Marx, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, and "even Derrida and poststructuralist literary theory" - gave way to an appreciation of how these approaches encourage, in a way analytic aesthetics does not, "the trenchant analyses and acute observations that have emerged from feminist art historians" (305). And, indeed, although she goes on to suggest how traditional aesthetics might accommodate feminist and other politically informed analyses, she cautions that "it is too easy to miss the most innovative aspects of another's view if one tries to understand it only in terms of one's own theoretical perspective" (305).(from review by Sally Markowitz, Hypatia Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), pp. 169-172)

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Feigenbaum, Erika Faith. Heterosexual Privilege: The Political and the Personal
2007, Hypatia 22 (1): 1-9.

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Added by: Rochelle DuFord

Abstract: In this essay, Feigenbaum examines heterosexism as it functions politically and interpersonally in her own experience. She loosely traces her analysis along the current political climate of the bans on same-sex marriages, using this discussion to introduce and illustrate how heterosexual dominance functions. The author aims throughout to clarify what heterosexism looks like "in action," and she moves toward providing steps to recognize, name, interrupt, and counter heterosexist privilege.

Comment: This article is a very accessible introduction to the concept of privilege via the debate over the legality of same-sex marriage. It would make a good addition to a course that covers questions about domination, LGBT rights, or same-sex marriage.

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Finlayson, Lorna. The Political is Political: Conformity and the Illusion of Dissent in Contemporary Political Philosophy
2015, London: Rowman and Littlefield International

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Added by: Carl Fox, Contributed by: Emily Dyson

Publisher's Note: Nobody should really have to point out that political philosophy is political. Yet in this highly original and provocative book Lorna Finlayson argues that in fact it is necessary to do so. Offering a critique of mainstream liberal political philosophy through close, critical engagement with a series of specific debates and arguments, Finlayson analyzes the way in which apparently neutral methodological devices such as 'charitable interpretation' and 'constructive criticism' function so as to protect against challenges to the status quo. At each stage, Finlayson demonstrates that political philosophy is suffering from a complex process of 'depoliticization.' Even in cases where it appears that the dominant framework of liberal political philosophy is being strongly challenged - as, for example, in the case of the 'realist' critique of 'ideal theory' - this book argues that the debate is set up in such a way as to impose strict limits on the kind of dissent that is possible. Only by dragging these hidden presuppositions into the foreground can we arrive at a clear-eyed appreciation of such debates, and perhaps look beyond the artificially constricted landscape in which they seek to confine us.

Comment: Good further or advanced reading on the methodology of political philosophy, and an incredibly illuminating critical complement to a Rawls-heavy syllabus. Finlayson provides an interesting and challenging critique of liberal presuppositions that are widespread in political philosophy. Individual chapters would also make very good further or advanced reading in their own right, especially the chapters on Rawls, the norm of philosophical charity, speech acts and silencing, and political realism.

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