Latest additions
Guenther, Lisa. Solitary Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives
2013, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: 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.
Barnes, Elizabeth. Valuing Disability, Causing Disability
2014, Ethics, 125 (1): 88-113.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: Disability rights activists often claim that disability is not - by itself - something that makes disabled people worse off. A popular objection to such a view of disability is this: were it correct, it would make it permissible to cause disability and impermissible to cause nondisability (or impermissible to 'cure' disability, to use the value-laden term). The aim of this article is to show that these twin objections don't succeed.Comment: This text intervenes in the debate over whether disability, itself, makes someone worse off (the mere-disability/bad-disability debate). It could serve as a clear introduction to the sorts of arguments that support the view that disability is a bad-making feature of someone's life, and contains easily understood counter-examples to that view. It has a place in a course covering disability, impairment, bioethics, autonomy, and social minorities.
Cudd, Ann E.. Sporting Metaphors: Competition and the Ethos of Capitalism
2007, Journal of the Philsophy of Sport 34 (1): 52-67.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract:
Synopsis: This article examines metaphors that illuminate the competitive aspects of capitalism and its focus on winning but also metaphors that emphasize cooperation and ways that capitalism improves the lives not only of the winners but also of all who choose to play the game by its rules. Although sports metaphors invoked to describe capitalist competition may appear to cast an unflattering light on both capitalism and sport, on a deeper analysis those metaphors appeal to many of us because they reveal a closer resemblance to the Latin root of the word 'competition' and its cooperative, pareto-improving implications. Just as healthy competition in sports requires cooperation, healthy capitalism is also,ultimately, a cooperative endeavor. I will argue that metaphors imported from and expanded through our experiences of sport reveal many, while concealing other, aspects of capitalism.Comment: This text would have a place within a course on business ethics that considers whether competition is good or bad within the context of the market. This would make it an interesting addition to a course that covered Satz's Why Some Things Should Not be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets. It is also a good overview of some ideas that are central to the philosophy of sport, such as what constitutes a game, the idea of cooperation, and competitiveness (winning/non-winning).
Darby, Derrick. Adequacy, Inequality, and Cash for Grades
2011, Theory and Research in Eduation 9 (3): 209-232.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: Some political philosophers have recently argued that providing K-12 students with an adequate education suffices for social justice in education provided that the threshold of educational adequacy is properly understood. Others have argued that adequacy is insufficient for social justice. In this article I side with the latter group. I extend this debate to racial inequality in education by considering the controversial practice of paying students cash for grades to close the racial achievement gap. I then argue that framing the demand for racial justice in education solely in terms of educational adequacy leaves us unable to take issue with the cash for grades policy as a matter of principle. While this does not entail that educational adequacy is unimportant, it adds to the general case for why adequacy does not suffice for social justice.Comment: This text is a good rejoinder to Anderson and Satz's arguments concerning the shift from a focus on providing an equal education to an adequate education. Though it could be read in absence of those texts, it requires a familiarity with the idea of sufficientarianism - and so should probably be read after Anderson's "Fair Opportunity in Education: A Democratic Equality Perspective." It would have a place in a course concerning egalitarianism in education, racial justice, or education and democracy.
Brock, Gillian. Contemporary Cosmopolitanism: Some Current Issues
2013, Philosophy Compass, 8 (8): 689-698.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: In this article, we survey some current debates among cosmopolitans and their critics. We begin by surveying some distinctions typically drawn among kinds of cosmopolitanisms, before canvassing some of the diverse varieties of cosmopolitan justice, exploring positions on the content of cosmopolitan duties of justice, and a prominent debate between cosmopolitans and defenders of statist accounts of global justice. We then explore some common concerns about cosmopolitanism - such as whether cosmopolitan commitments are necessarily in tension with other affiliations people typically have and how we should deal with issues concerning a perceived lack of authority in the global domain - and whether these can be addressed. We also look briefly at how the concern with feasibility has led some to take up the challenge of devising public policy that is cosmopolitan in outlook, before offering some concluding remarks on future directions in these debates.Comment: This text is a clear and concise introduction to the contemporary state of debates concerning global justice. It would make an excellent addition to an introductory course in political philosophy, justice, or global ethics.
Kittay, Eva Feder. Forever Small: The Strange Case of Ashley X
2011, Hypatia, 26 (3): 610-631.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: I explore the ethics of altering the body of a child with severe cognitive disabilities in such a way that keeps the child 'forever small.' The parents of Ashley, a girl of six with severe cognitive and developmental disabilities, in collaboration with her physicians and the Hospital Ethics Committee, chose to administer growth hormones that would inhibit her growth. They also decided to remove her uterus and breast buds, assuring that she would not go through the discomfort of menstruation and would not grow breasts. In this way she would stay 'forever small' and be able to be carried and handled by family members. They claimed that doing this would ensure that she would be able to be part of the family and of family activities and to have familial care. But the procedure has raised thorny ethical questions. I wish to explore these questions philosophically by bringing to bear my own experiences as a mother of a grown daughter with severe cognitive impairments.Comment: This reading both introduces the controversial case of Ashley X and also provides a set of ethical considerations concerning altering the bodies of persons with severe cognitive disabilities. It would serve as an excellent introduction to a unit on disability, a unit on the ethics of care, or concerning the limits of parental paternalism.
Lawson, Bill E.. The Value of Environmental Justice
2008, Environmental Justice 1 (3): 155-158.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: Environmental justice, at least, entails preserving the environment as a global entity, but also making those persons who feel, have felt, have been, or are victims of environmental crimes and atrocities feel as if they are part of the solution as full members of the human community and not just the environmental dumping ground for the well-off.Comment: This text is a quick introduction to the problem of responsibility for environmental injustices. It makes a good conversation starter for why some individuals do not feel responsible for environmental atrocities, specifically in the context of environmental racism. It would fit well in a class that discussed justice, environmental justice (racism or NIMBY more generally), or collective responsibility.
Pineau, Lois. Date Rape: A Feminist Analysis
1989, Law and Philosophy 8 (2): 217-243.
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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.'
O'Neill, Onora. Medical and Scientific Uses of Human Tissue
1996, Journal of Medical Ethics 22: 5-7.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: Inevitably a policy-oriented report on issues as complex and as rapidly changing as the medical and scientific uses of human tissue can achieve neither philosophical purity nor regulatory completeness. The council's strategy has been to begin with robust ethical principles, for which sound philosophical arguments can be given, which will (it is hoped) command widespread support. The council went on to argue for guidelines of sufficient, but not vapid, generality which could be of practical use to the various medical intermediaries, professional and regulatory bodies and research ethics committees which will carry out the tasks of detailed regulation and of making decisions that affect uses of human tissue. The council's hope is that the recommendations of the report can be absorbed into regulatory and professional practice, and where needed into government policy. If they can, the increasing diversity of uses of human tissues need lead neither to overt nor to covert 'commercialisation of the human body', but will also not put unnecessary restrictions on advances in research and medical practice.Comment: This text provides a quick introduction to, and overview of, ethical positions concerning the use of human tissue in scientific and medical research (including utilitarianism, rights, property rights, and dignity). It would be an excellent reading for introducing a unit on research concerning human tissue in a bioethics or medical ethics course. It would make sense to teach it as a framework for understanding moral and policy issues involved in the case of Henrietta Lacks or HeLa cells.
Young, Iris Marion. Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model
2006, Social Philosophy and Policy 23 (1): 102-130.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: The essay theorizes the responsibilities moral agents may be said to have in relation to global structural social processes that have unjust consequences. How ought moral agents, whether individual or institutional, conceptualize their responsibilities in relation to global injustice? I propose a model of responsibility from social connection as an interpretation of obligations of justice arising from structural social processes. I use the example of justice in transnational processes of production, distribution and marketing of clothing to illustrate operations of structural social processes that extend widely across regions of the world. The social connection model of responsibility says that all agents who contribute by their actions to the structural processes that produce injustice have responsibilities to work to remedy these injustices. I distinguish this model from a more standard model of responsibility, which I call a liability model. I specify five features of the social connection model of responsibility that distinguish it from the liability model: it does not isolate perpetrators; it judges background conditions of action; it is more forward looking than backward looking; its responsibility is essentially shared; and it can be discharged only through collective action. The final section of the essay begins to articulate parameters of reasoning that agents can use for thinking about their own action in relation to structural injusticeComment: This text responds to theories of individual responsibility for global distributive justice proposed by John Rawls, David Miller, and Onora O'Neill. It would work well as a response to them, but also contains overviews of their positions (i.e. it isn't strictly necessary to be familiar with their body of work). The text contains illustrative examples of understanding collective responsibilities for injustice, such as goods produced in sweatshops. The text would work well in a course that covered distributive justice, social responsibility, or global justice.