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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
This chapter explores a so-far neglected way of avoiding the bads of loneliness: by learning to value solitude, where that is understood as a state of ‘keeping oneself company’, as J. David Velleman puts it. Unlike loneliness, solitude need not involve any deprivation, whether subjective or objective. This chapter considers the various goods to which solitude is constitutive or instrumental, with a focus on the promise that proper valuing of solitude holds for combating loneliness. The overall argument is this: If loneliness significantly detracts from individual wellbeing, and if the ability to value solitude protects against loneliness, then such an ability is obviously valuable to human flourishing. If, further, loneliness raises concerns of justice, then supporting people’s ability to value solitude is a way to implement a desideratum of justice. Individuals can cultivate their ability to value solitude, an ability that others can promote or hinder.
Gilbert, Margaret. A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment and the Bonds of Society2008, Oxford: Oxford University Press.-
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Added by: Carl FoxPublisher’s Note:
Publisher: Does one have special obligations to support the political institutions of one’s own country precisely because it is one’s own? In short, does one have political obligations? This book argues for an affirmative answer, construing one’s country as a political society of which one is a member, and a political society as a special type of social group. The obligations in question are not moral requirements derived from general moral principles. They come, rather, from one’s participation in a special kind of commitment: a joint commitment. This theory is referred to as the plural subject theory of political obligation since, by the author’s definition, those who are party to any joint commitment constitute a plural subject of some action in a broad sense of the term. Several alternative theories are compared and contrasted with plural subject theory, with a particular focus on the most famous — actual contract theory — according to which membership in a political society is a matter of participation in an agreement. The book offers plural subject accounts of both social rules and everyday agreements, and includes discussion of political authority and punishment.Comment: Some chapters in Part 1 would work very nicely as introductory reading to the problem of political obligation. As the book progresses it homes in on the theory of social groups and Gilbert's theory of political obligation as joint commitment. As such, the later chapters are more suited to specialised readings.
Glaude, Eddie S.. In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America2007, University of Chicago Press.-
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Bart Schultz
Publisher's Note: In this timely book, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., one of our nation's rising young African American intellectuals, makes an impassioned plea for black America to address its social problems by recourse to experience and with an eye set on the promise and potential of the future, rather than the fixed ideas and categories of the past. Central to Glaude's mission is a rehabilitation of philosopher John Dewey, whose ideas, he argues, can be fruitfully applied to a renewal of African American politics. According to Glaude, Dewey's pragmatism, when attentive to the darker dimensions of life - or what we often speak of as the blues - can address many of the conceptual problems that plague contemporary African American discourse. How blacks think about themselves, how they imagine their own history, and how they conceive of their own actions can be rendered in ways that escape bad ways of thinking that assume a tendentious political unity among African Americans simply because they are black, or that short-circuit imaginative responses to problems confronting actual black people. Drawing deeply on black religious thought and literature, In a Shade of Blue seeks to dislodge such crude and simplistic thinking, and replace it with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for black life in all its variety and intricacy. Only when black political leaders acknowledge such complexity, Glaude argues, can the real-life sufferings of many African Americans be remedied. Heady, inspirational, and brimming with practical wisdom, In a Shade of Blue is a remarkable work of political commentary on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how African Americans arrived at this critical moment in their history and to envision where they might head in the twenty-first centuryComment: A really terrific, historically sophisticated work that highlights how philosophical pragmatism can be developed in connection with critical race theory.
Goldberg, RoseLee. The Art of Ideas and the Media Generation2001, in: Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. New York: Thames & Hudson. 152-155.-
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Added by: Rossen Ventzislavov
Summary: In this brief historical note, Goldberg outlines the artistic response to the political upheavals of the 1960's. The general spirit of civic disillusionment offered the best conditions for the re-evaluation of art and its supporting social institutions. Not surprisingly, a new animosity emerged towards the objects of art and their claim to aesthetic pleasure. The farthest possible opposite, which many artists readily embraced, was found in conceptual art, which prioritized ideas, relations and experiences over traditional aesthetic categories. Goldberg sees performance art as a potent embodied application of these new artistic concerns, and thus as a rightful heir to conceptual art. Furthermore, each sub-genre of performance art - from body art to live sculpture to discussions and performative scripts - retains a conceptual core that finds its roots in that decade of strife and controversy.Comment: This text offers a historical note on the relationship between conceptual art and performance art, and could be used in aesthetics classes focusing on either of those arts
Goldberg, RoseLee. The Body: Ritual, Living Sculpture, Performed Photography2004, In: Performance: Live Art Since the 60's. New York: Thames & Hudson. 94-127.-
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Added by: Rossen Ventzislavov
Summary: Goldberg sees the human body in performance art as a transmitter of erotics, gender tensions, cultural norms and political deviations. While two of the notable early works of performance art featured fully clothed male artists using naked female bodies (Yves Klein's Anthropometries of the Blue Period from 1960 and Piero Manzoni's Living Scupture from 1961), the work of female artists like Shigeko Kubota and Yoko Ono addressed the gender imbalance soon after. Goldberg sees the recognition of the body as "prime, raw material" as one of the central accomplishments of performance art. Through numerous examples she demonstrates how this notion enabled a spectrum of physical signification - from regarding the human body as a mere lump of undifferentiated flesh to capitalizing on its biological intricacies. Because of the irreducible intimacy of shared bodily experience, all creative choices along this spectrum - from the disquietingly erotic, to the anachronistically ritualistic, to the viscerally sacrificial - have affected the way we see art and the world around us.Comment: This historical overview of the use of the human body in early performance art can be in any class on body aesthetics or performance art, and can offer an interesting background reading on erotic art.
Goldberg, RoseLee. Identities: Feminism, Multiculturalism, Sexuality2004, In: Performance: Live Art Since the 60's. New York: Thames & Hudson. 128-145.-
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Added by: Rossen Ventzislavov
Summary: Goldberg provides a richly illustrated historical account of the intimate connection between identity and performance art. Starting from the feminist art of the 1960's, the recognition and assertion of identity was a fundamental bid for social visibility. The next frontier was social recognition, which concerned ethnic and sexual minorities as much as it did women. The final frontier - political equality - is one that is still out of reach. Still, according to Goldberg, performance art continues to chart new territories of identification. In fact, while at the outset performance art used early feminist writing as inspiration, Goldberg recognizes a gradual reversal - today's feminists are as likely to chart new philosophical directions as they are to follow the exploratory charge of their performance art counterparts.Comment: This text provides a historical background on the relationship between identity politics and art. It would be useful in classes on performance art, on the social context of art, as well as classes focusing on philosophy or race, gender and sexuality and ways to achieve social visibility.
Gover, K. E.. Artistic Freedom and Moral Rights in Contemporary Art: The Mass MoCA Controversy2011, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69 (4):355-365.-
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Introduction: The concept of artistic freedom, like that of academic freedom, is as potent as it is slippery. Its indeterminacy may in fact lend the concept some power, since it can be uncritically applied to many different kinds of situations involving artists and their creations. Philosopher Paul Crowther has observed that the prevailing conception of artistic freedom is essentially negative in character: it is based 'purely on the absence of ideological or conceptual restraint.' There is a widespread art-world intuition that the creative freedom of the artist should be given virtually absolute precedence in decisions about the creation, exhibition, and treatment of artworks. As a recent controversy involving Swiss artist Christoph Buchel and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) shows, the dominant conception of artistic freedom also entails freedom from financial and logistical constraints such as museum budgets and exhibition deadlines. In this particular case, the artist and his supporters argued that the museum violated his artistic freedom by attempting to display his unfinished and abandoned artwork against his wishes. As with the Tilted Arc controversy in the 1980s, this case raises provocative questions about the nature of artistic freedom as 'artistic' as it comes into conflict with the needs and interests of the institutions that pay for, exhibit, and, in Mass MoCA's case, construct the work.Comment:
2006, Journal of Mass Media Ethics 21 (2 & 3): 177-195.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: Some photographs, more than mere representations, are ethical commands, calling us to respond to human suffering. Photos of Abu Graib, like iconic photos of Vietnam, called us to a posture of care, and confronted us with ourselves, with our national domination, and with how we represent ourselves to the world. This article, drawing on Kittay (1999), Butler (2004), and Levinas (1961, 1974, 1985), attempts to untangle the relation among care, domination, and representation. Implications for philosophers and journalists are suggested.Comment: This article would be of most use in a course on media or journalistic ethics--no previous knowledge of the philosophers covered is needed for comprehension. This article would also make an interesting addition to a course on contemporary ethical problems or philosophy of war.
Griffioen, Amber, Mohammad Sadegh Zahedi. Medieval Christian and Islamic Mysticism and the Problem of a “Mystical Ethics”2019, In: T. Williams, ed. 2019. Cambridge Companion to Medieval Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 13.-
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Added by: Francesca Bruno
Abstract: In this chapter, we examine a few potential problems when inquiring into the ethics of medieval Christian and Islamic mystical traditions: First, there are terminological and methodological worries about defining mysticism and doing comparative philosophy in general. Second, assuming that the Divine represents the highest Good in such traditions, and given the apophaticism on the part of many mystics in both religions, there is a question of whether or not such traditions can provide a coherent theory of value. Finally, the antinomian tendencies and emphasis on passivity of some mystics might lead one to wonder whether their prescriptive exhortations can constitute a coherent theory of right action. We tackle each of these concerns in turn and discuss how they might be addressed, in an attempt to show how medieval mysticism, as a fundamentally practical enterprise, deserves more attention from practical and moral philosophy than it has thus far received.Comment: This paper would work well as a secondary/overview reading in a course on medieval ethics, with a section on mysticism, focusing on mystic women or comparing different religious traditions (such as Christian and Islamic). For example, the course could focus on the topics of virtue and happiness, including the views of St. Augustine, Aquinas, Avicenna, Maimonides, and women mystics (such as Mechthild of Magderburg).
Guenther, Lisa. Solitary Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives2013, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons - even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today's supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners' sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. -/- Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused - when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being.Comment: This text serves as both a clear introduction to the history of punishment and imprisonment in the United States, as well as a clear introduction to phenomenological method. Portions of the text on the experience of social death in solitary confinement would make excellent additions to introductory courses on prisons and punishment. Some chapters would also be fitting on classes concerning race and mass incarceration.
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Gheaus, Anca. The Role of Solitude in the Politics of Sociability
2022, In Kimberley Brownlee, David Jenkins & Adam Neal (eds.), Being Social: The Philosophy of Social Human Rights. Oxford University Press. pp. 234–251
Comment: This chapter explores philosophical questions concerning the nature and value of solitude, and the various goods related to 'keeping oneself company'. As a somewhat neglected topic in contemporary analytic philosophy, it provides an unique and novel discussion of the relationships between solitude, loneliness, and isolation and their relation to justice and well-being. Might be useful as a replacement for a foundational text in basic social and political philosophy, especially if studied in concert with other texts exploring our basic social requirements and the demands that these place on social and political institutions. See work on social rights and ethics of sociability by Kimberley Brownlee.