The Age of Enlightenment continues the debate with traditional elements from Neo-Platonism and Hermetism, Pythagoreanism, magic, alchemy and Kabbalah which today are subsumed under the heading of early modern age esotericism. The reactions range from the critical or historicising to emphatic acceptance and integration. At the same time, however, the discourse of the age also gives rise to polemic confrontations with the newly emerging esoteric formations. The papers in this volume explore these tense constellations with their progression in the 18th (...) century. (shrink)

The author discusses Claudia Card's life work in that it concerns character development under heteronormative patriarchy as pertaining to the American Girl Just Like You doll. American Girl advertises this doll as a doll that can help little girls feel strong, powerful, unique, and ready to take on the world. The word "feminist" is not used in any of the company's marketing, but the company is clearly trying to market the idea that the Just Like You line is empowering for (...) girls. The author argues that the Just Like You doll discourages learning the skills that are required for world traveling, and that it also implies that such skills are not important. In order to successfully engage in cross‐cultural world traveling, one must leave arrogant perception behind and begin to understand how the other sees himself or herself as a subject in that world. (shrink)

Sex crimes in war can be racist as well as misogynist, insofar as they have or are meant to have the consequence of hindering the reproductive continuation of a people. Both castration and forced impregnation can have this consequence. Historically, martial castration has been not only of men but also predominantly by men. The idea that rape symbolizes domination is, of course, compatible with the idea that castration symbolizes domination. Reports of forced castration also raise questions about the idea that (...) integrating women into the military might effectively eliminate, or substantially reduce, rape as a weapon of war. Previous postwar courts had treated rape as "secondary, tolerated as part of soldiers' abusive behavior". This indictment described the ordeal of fourteen Muslim women and girls, some only twelve years old, most detained in a camp, where they were subjected to "almost constant rape and sexual assaults, torture and other abuses". (shrink)

Confronting evils pulls the minds and hearts in several directions. This chapter focuses on acute cataclysmic events that shock people into awareness, or chronic corrosive evils that damage the agency and dull the attention. It also focuses on those who commit grave wrongs, or those who suffer them. Claudia Card's work has offered a steady focus on the experiences and needs of survivors of atrocities and grave wrongs. The chapter explores what Card's most recent work suggests about perpetrators, that is, (...) about the moral risks of participating in evil. Obvious atrocities include terrorism, torture, forced starvation, slavery, rape, and genocide; these each involve many grave wrongs. Card's concepts of social vitality and social death make sense of such cases, enabling us to see a perpetrator's act as a particular destruction of a survivor's world. Social vitality is important for each of us, in all phases of the lives. (shrink)

A reputation for being a "badass" in this context is a source of self‐esteem and of others' respect. But self‐esteem and respect, unqualified, are thought to be goods. Immanuel Kant analyzes human moral psychology, first, in terms of three predispositions, all basically good, which he calls the predispositions to animality, to humanity, and to personality. Animality is a predisposition to be motivated by "physical or merely mechanical self‐love", for self‐preservation, propagation of the species, and even for "community with other human (...) beings". There is a kind of self‐interest more basic than the prudence that Kant usually has in mind when he refers to self‐interest or self‐love. Christine Korsgaard develops a Kantian view of the sources of normativity that locates their roots in one's self‐conception. Interpersonal psychology lends support and amplification to Korsgaard's view that normativity is rooted in one's self‐concept. (shrink)

This chapter explores Claudia Card's views about victims and victimizers, then to her account of surviving evils. It also explores some thoughts about autonomy and agency that extend her thinking. Atrocities are evils marked by exceptional cruelty or degradation. Evils can be deeds, practices, social structures, or environments. Misogyny is an evil that has everyday forms, such as spousal abuse and sex trafficking, and spasmodic forms, such as outbreaks of mass rape during armed conflict. The concepts of autonomy and agency (...) are a bit slippery partly because of their close relationship and partly because they are terms of art. The chapter focuses on the survival agency of the victims of the surviving trafficking and sexual violence against humanity. Survival agency is the weapon of last resort for victims of evils—people who are as disempowered as possible by an evil deed, evil practices, evil social structures, or evil environments. (shrink)

The work of Claudia Card has received far less attention in the field of genocide studies than it deserves. The atrocity paradigm, first introduced in her book by that title published in 2002, offers rich insights that can serve to enhance the understanding of genocidal violence. Her book Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide, after offering revisions to her secular theory of evil, does speak directly to the evils of genocide, claiming "genocide is social death". This chapter shows that genocide scholarship (...) as well as accounts of genocide by journalists often frame genocide in terms of biological death and body counts. It argues that the atrocity paradigm and especially Card's conception of social death are better able to capture the complex realities of genocidal violence, particularly the experiences of women. The chapter describes that the idea of social death enriches the understanding of genocide but question whether her term has juridical implications. (shrink)

This chapter develops the hypothesis that social death is utterly central to the evil of genocide, not just when a genocide is primarily cultural but even when it is homicidal on a massive scale. It is social death that enables us to distinguish the peculiar evil of genocide from the evils of other mass murders. The evil of genocide falls not only on men and boys but also on women and girls, typically unarmed, untrained in defense against violence, and often (...) also responsible for care of the wounded, the sick, the disabled, babies, children, and the elderly. The damage of war and terrorism is commonly assessed in terms of its ruin of individual careers, body counts, statistics on casualties, and material costs of rebuilding. An injustice becomes an evil when it inflicts harms that make victims' lives unbearable, indecent, or impossible, or that make victims' deaths indecent. (shrink)

The author develops her account of Claudia Card's ethical work as nonideal ethical theory (NET). She clarifies Card's role in ethical theorizing of the recent past, partly in order to brief the unfamiliar reader on Card's ethics and nonideal theory, and partly to enter Card's contributions into the story of nonideal theory's emergence in philosophy. She then recommends, to other NET philosophers, the prioritization of (i) Card's rejection of the "administrative point of view", and (ii) Card's focus on "intolerable harms" (...) as critical to excellent ethical theorizing. She ends with the observation that NET may helpfully point toward reasons to take a pessimistic stance toward moral progress as elaborated in some classic texts in political philosophy; her appreciation of Card's insights yields a variety of pessimism that Card herself did not share. (shrink)

During the First World War, Bertrand Russell was political commentator for The Tribunal , the official weekly publication of the No-Conscription Fellowship, of which Russell was Action Chairman. This volume contains many short papers from that period, which reflect Russell's immediate reponses to developments in the conflict. These documents bear witness to Russell's growing commitment to pacifism, and reveal the development of the patterns of political argument, rhetoric and activism which were to characterise his work throughout his life.

Ziel dieser Kölner Habilitationsschrift ist es (S. 10), „einen Beitrag zur wissenschaftlichen Aufarbeitung der byzantinischen Adversus-Judaeos-Literatur zu leisten, wir wollen dabei das gesamte byzantinische Jahrtausend berücksichtigen …“ – „Als wichtigster Vertreter antijüdischen Gedankenguts in der byzantinischen Welt“ wurde „zwangsläufig“ (S. 11) der Dialog gewählt.

This chapter expresses that radical feminist perspectives on marriage and motherhood are in danger of being lost in the quest for equal rights. For more than a decade, feminist philosophers and lesbian/gay activists have been optimistic about the potentialities of legal marriage and legitimated motherhood. Feminist philosophers are taking as valuable theoretical paradigms for ethics many kinds of caring relationships that have been salient in women's lives. "Family" is itself a family resemblance concept. Apart from the institution of marriage and (...) historical ideals of the family, it is uncertain what characteristics mother‐child relationships would have, for many alternatives are possible. Historically, motherhood has been a core element of patriarchy. Moral philosophy might also be transformed by greater attention to the fact that adult experience and its potentialities are significantly conditioned by the childhoods of adults and of those children's relationships to adults. (shrink)

The paper describes that period of the Hungarian philosophy, in which it became professionalized, namely the Kant argument, which was the first step the Hungarian philosophy took towards its being public. The question has to be answered whether Kant’s thought could become a part of it. Due to political developments as well as the pressure of the church the turn of the century witnessed the shift from epistemology to the issues of moral philosophy and theology. Thus the conditions for the (...) reception of Kantianism and post-Kantian philosophy in the 19th century have been created. The fundaments for the development of axiology were laid as well. The paper covers the main phases of the debate with their leading representatives. (shrink)

A three-cornered dispute about God and nature Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9481-5 Authors Andrew Pyle, Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Rd, Bristol, BS8 1TB UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

ABSTRACTWhat use does the jurist have for rules and principles? What relation does he or she have to the articulation of facts? This paper considers the position of facts and rules in the casuistry...

Martin Rees is a renowned astronomer who has written a number of thought-provoking books. On the Future tackles the question of humanity’s future and the challenges facing it. Unlike many other aut...

Ethics of scientific research in the field of sociology; proceedings of 1995 conference in Cairo.