-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Eline Gerritsen
Abstract: The decline of civility has increasingly become the subject of lament both in popular media and in daily conversation. Civility forestalls the potential unpleasantness of a life with other people. Without it, daily social exchanges can turn nasty and sometimes hazardous. Civility thus seems to be a basic virtue of social life. Moral philosophers, however, do not typically mention civility in their catalogues or examples of virtue. In what follows, I want to suggest that civility is a particularly interesting virtue for moral philosophers because giving an adequate account of the virtue of civility requires us to rethink the relationship between moral virtue and compliance with social norms.
Comment: This paper has a clear argumentative structure, gives many examples and does not require prior knowledge of the topic. It can be used on its own in a discussion of virtue ethics, e.g. to illustrate how you can argue that something is a virtue and how to differentiate virtues. It can also be used in a discussion of the relation between morality and social norms.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: This paper addresses the progressive, feminist critique of same-sex marriage as articulated by Claudia Card. Although agreeing with Card that the institution of marriageas we know it is profoundly morally flawed in its origins and effects, Callahan disagrees with Card's suggestion that queer activists in the United States should not be working for the inclusion of same-sex couples in the institution.Comment: This article is an excellent rejoinder to Card's "Gay Divorce: Thoughts on the Legal Regulation of Marriage." (She directly addresses the Card text, so it should not be read without first reading the Card.) It would be a good addition to a course that covers same-sex marriage, social justice, or contemporary ethical problems.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Thomas HodgsonIntroduction: Slurs are among the most rhetorically powerful and insidious expressions in a language. One key reason for this, I will argue, is that they present contents from a certain perspective, which is dif?cult to dislodge despite the fact that it is precisely what a nonbigoted hearer most wants to resist.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Hans MaesSummary: Considers philosophical problems with representation, particularly in regard to the loss of particularity and individuality in instances when an identity takes on symbolic proportions. Hindley, the woman, has been totally merged with Hindley, the monster. Her particularity has been subsumed as a two-dimensional stereotype by having her photo treated with obsessive media attention by being repetitively linked to that same hated stereotype.Comment: Useful in classes focused on depiction and representation.
Artworks to use with this text:
Marcus Harvey, Myra (1995)
Despite Harvey's attack on reflex reactions to Hindley and his verbal protest to the contrary, his portrait has further incited public outrage and denied her a chance of fair treatment. There's a clear discrepancy between what the artist has said in interviews and what the painting appears to express. Useful in classes focused on depiction and representation.
Artworks to use with this text:
Marcus Harvey, Myra (1995)
Despite Harvey's attack on reflex reactions to Hindley and his verbal protest to the contrary, his portrait has further incited public outrage and denied her a chance of fair treatment. There's a clear discrepancy between what the artist has said in interviews and what the painting appears to express.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: Although the exclusion of LGBTs from the rites and rights of marriage is arbitrary and unjust, the legal institution of marriage is itself so riddled with injustice that it would be better to create alternative forms of durable intimate partnership that do not invoke the power of the state. Card's essay develops a case for this position, taking up an injustice sufficiently serious to constitute an evil: the sheltering of domestic violence.Comment: This text is very accessible and poses a unique problem for the legal regulation of romantic relationships. This text would fit well in a class that discusses sexual relations, violence, marriage, love, or justice (as Card directly discusses Rawls' Theory of Justice). Further, it would make a nice addition to a course that discusses justice for LGBT persons, as Card argues that there are more pressing legal and political issues that LGBT communities ought to agitate in favor of.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Carla RodriguezAbstract: This essay argues that current advocacy of lesbian and gay rights to legal marriage and parenthood insufficiently criticizes both marriage and motherhood as they are currently practiced and structured by Northern legal institutions. Instead we would do better not to let the State define our intimate unions and parenting would be improved if the power presently concentrated in the hands of one or two guardians were diluted and distributed through an appropriately concerned community.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Adriana Clavel-VázquezAbstract:
Carter examines the anti-Black sentiment in Latin American culture and pays particular attention to how, even in negrista poetry aimed at contributing to the fight against oppression of Black people, Black women are used as a symbol of sensuality and primitiveness. The paper argues that when Black women feature in poetry in the figure of la mulata, they are associated with nature and portrayed as inherently evil, sensual and primitive. Moreover, while representations of Black men evolved to focus on their inner consciousness, rather than on their physical attributes, and to combat oppressive imagery and symbolism, la mulata continued being used as a satire aimed at inviting Afro-Latin communities to take positive steps towards improving their social conditions. They were used to advance a criticism for how the anti-Black sentiment at the heart of popular conceptions of mestizaje ends up being internalized by members of Afro-Latin communities, so that Black women are represented as renouncing Blackness and engaging in a “whitening” process.Comment (from this Blueprint): Carter’s discussion of Afro-Latin women offers a good opportunity to reflect on what an intersectional approach to race in Latin American needs to involve. As evidenced by the analysis of Rosario Castellanos’ Balún Canán, mestizas in Latin American societies face a double displacement: first as being in-between cultures, and second, as not quite part of the mestizo nation. In addition to this condition of mestiza womanhood, Afro-Latin women face another dimension of displacement. They are part of mestizo nations, but, as Black, they are not fully recognised as such; they are part of mestizo nations, but, as women, they are not fully recognised as such; they are part of Afro-Latin communities, but, as women, they are not fully recognised as such.
-
Expand entry
-
Publisher's Note: This is a much-needed new introduction to a field that has been transformed in recent years by exciting new subjects, ideas, and methods. It is designed for students in both philosophy and the social sciences. Topics include ontology, objectivity, method, measurement, and causal inference, and such issues as well-being and climate change.Comment: An excellent anthology covering major topics in philosophy of social science in an accessible and up-to-date way, all chapters are well written and expertly edited.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: The current state of global poverty presents citizens in the Global North with a moral crisis: Do we care? In this essay, I examine two competing moral accounts of why those in the North should or should not give care (in the form of charity) to impoverished peoples in the Global South. Nineteen years ago feminist philosopher Nel Noddings wrote in Caring that 'we are not obliged to care for starving children in Africa' (1986, p. 86). Noddings's work belongs to the arena of care ethics - the feminist philosophical view that morality is about responding to, caring for, and preventing harm to those particular people to whom one has emotional attachments. By contrast, Peter Singer's recent work, One World, advances an impartialist view of morality, which demands that we dispassionately dispense aid to the most needy (2002, p.154). Thus this question needs answering: am I obliged to give care to desperately poor strangers, and if so, which moral framework (Singer's impartialism, or feminism's care ethics) gives the best account of that obligation? I argue that as an American feminist I should care for Africans with whom I will never have a personal relationship. However, this obligation can be generated without relying on the impartialist understanding of morality.Comment: This text responds to Peter Singer and Ned Noddings on the question of global poverty (though, one need not have read either previously as she provides an overview). It would be useful in a course that focused on questions of economic justice, poverty, care ethics, or charity.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Suddha Guharoy, Andreas Sorger
Publisher's Note: This classic work, first published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced the generation of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Nearly twenty years later, when published for the first time in English, Discourse on Colonialism inspired a new generation engaged in the Civil Rights, Black Power, and anti-war movements and has sold more than 75,000 copies to date.
Aimé Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of capitalism and colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized, exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of "progress" and "civilization" upon encountering the "savage," "uncultured," or "primitive." Here, Césaire reaffirms African values, identity, and culture, and their relevance, reminding us that "the relationship between consciousness and reality are extremely complex. . . . It is equally necessary to decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize society."
Comment (from this Blueprint): Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism is a foundational text in postcolonial theory, which provides an excoriating critique of not only European practices of colonialism, but also the underlying theories and logics used to justify them. Specifically, Césaire takes aim at the view of colonialism as a ‘civilising mission’, where benevolent Europeans would provide non-white non- Europeans with the tools necessary for modernisation. Instead, he argued that colonialism wrought destruction everywhere it went, killing people, eradicating civilisations, and obliterating any alternative cultural ideas that contrasted European values. Crucially, Césaire explores the psychological effects of colonialism on both the colonised and the coloniser – a theme that would be taken further by Frantz Fanon (a student of Césaire’s) in his writings.