Este trabajo se enmarca en una investigación en curso sobre la representación de los genocidios en el cine documental. En esta instancia se indagará en torno a las características del testimonio del victimario en el cine documental, efectuando un mapeo por diversas producciones. Se presentará un posible esquema que prestará atención en la matriz narrativa de los testimonios y los modos de responsabilidad que allí se exponen. De este modo, se presentarán dos grandes polos que oscilarán entre la entrevista –más (...) ligada a brindar información “objetiva”– y el trabajo de confesión –ámbito donde el perpetrador medita sobre su subjetividad–. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Commenting on Jean-Paul Sartre's theory of imagination, Paul Ricoeur argues that Sartre fails to address the productive nature of imaginative acts. According to Ricoeur, Sartre's examples show that he thinks of imagination in mimetic terms, neglecting its innovative and creative dimensions. Imagination, Ricoeur continues, manifests itself most clearly in fiction, wherein new meaning is created. By using fiction as the paradigm of imaginative activity, Ricoeur is able to argue against Sartre that the essence of imagination lies not in its ability (...) to reproduce absent objects, but rather in the ability to transform reality through creative acts. Motivated by the intuition that Sartre the writer could not have forgotten to address such crucial dimensions of imagination, I examine Sartre's philosophical and literary work, showing that not only does he develop a notion of productive imagination, he also puts this notion to work by articulating the relationship between imagination, narrative, and identity formation, well before Ricoeur advanced his narrative-identity theory. I argue that Sartre, like Ricoeur and MacIntyre, another representative of narrative-theory whose criticism of Sartre I address in this essay, views imagination and narrativity as necessary conditions for the formation of a coherent and meaningful sense of self. (shrink)

Claiming rights against one another is a perfectly familiar phenomenon. We express the elementary thought you cannot do that to me in a variety of ways. And yet, in spite of the perfect familiarity of this phenomenon, the two standard philosophical theories of rights face notorious difficulties in accounting for it. My aim in this paper is to introduce a distinctive, second-personal account of rights. I will call this the independence theory of rights, the view that rights are specifications of (...) a basic right to independence against another. And I will argue that by taking as basic the second-personal thought you cannot do that to me the independence theory best illuminates the basic phenomenon of having rights against one another. (shrink)

What is the connection between moral rights and the good? While familiar normative theories give justificatory precedence to one notion over the other, this paper explores a neglected alternative: when properly specified, the notion of moral rights and of the good conceptually depend on each other.1.

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 480-495, December 2021.

How should we think about apparent conflicts of moral rights? I defend a non-balancing and holistic specification model: non-balancing because moral rights have absolute deontic stringency regardless of any balance of independent values; holistic because the content of moral rights is limited only by that of other moral rights. Holistic Specification, as I call the model, offers a principled, non-consequentialist explanation of exceptions to moral rights. Moreover, Holistic Specification explains why moral rights matter to practical thought while rendering remedial duties (...) less mysterious. (shrink)

In this paper I explore elements from Kant’s philosophy of right to develop a relational account of the wrong of poverty. Poverty is a relational wrong because it involves relations of problematic dependence, inequality, and humiliation. Such relations infringe the rights to freedom and equality of the poor. And the called-for response is one of public recognition and protection of the rights of the poor. This position means we must radically reconceptualize our individual duties to the poor: not _private beneficence_, (...) but _private remedies for public failures_. (shrink)

This article focuses on human dignity as a moral idea and, in particular, on a single but fundamental question: what conception of human dignity, if any, can generate an egalitarian duty to respect all persons? After surveying two mainstream and two alternative conceptions, the article suggests that explaining how human dignity generates an egalitarian duty of respect may be more difficult than has been appreciated.

Should facts about motivation play a role in the justification of political ideals? Many theorists argue that political ideals should be tailored to the limitations of human nature—‘taking people as they are’—while others maintain that facts about motivation should be excluded. This article offers a critical intervention in this debate: the important question is not so much whether people can motivate themselves, or whether they are capable of being motivated, but what social mechanisms would be required to motivate them, and (...) whether these mechanisms are legitimate. Reframing the question of motivation as a political question of legitimacy, I argue that if people could only be motivated to act through illegitimate use of power, the ideal in question cannot be fully justified. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article argues that received accounts of the concept of human dignity face more difficulties than has been appreciated, when explaining the connection between human dignity and the duty of respect that dignity is supposed to generate. It also argues that a novel, relational, account has the adequate structure to explain such connection.

In spite of the burgeoning philosophical literature on human dignity, Stephen Darwall's second-personal account of the dignity of persons has not received the attention it deserves. This article investigates Darwall's account and argues that it faces a dilemma, for it succumbs either to a problem of antecedence or to the wrong kind of reasons problem. But this need not mean one should reject a second-personal account. Instead, I argue that an alternative second-personal conception, one I will call relational, promises to (...) solve the dilemma by avoiding both the problem of antecedence and the wrong kind of reasons problem. More generally, distinguishing these two second-personal conceptions of the dignity of persons is important to enrich the available philosophical accounts of human dignity. (shrink)

States’ right to exclude prospective members is the subject of a fierce debate in political theory, but the right to include has received relatively little scholarly attention. To address this lacuna, we examine the puzzle of permissible inclusion: when may states confer citizenship on individuals they have no prior obligation to include? We first clarify why permissible inclusion is a puzzle, then proceed to a normative evaluation of this practice and its limits. We investigate self-determination – a dominant principle in (...) theories of the right to exclude – as a normative ground for limits on the right to include. We argue that states’ duties to respect one another’s self-determination yield limits on permissible inclusion. When inclusive policies for citizenship undermine the permissible scope of self-determination of other states, they are impermissible; they should either be prohibited, or require compensation. (shrink)

In the last few decades, residency in some of the world’s desired destination cities has become a privilege, as housing supply has not kept pace with population growth. This has led to a significant rise in housing prices and consequently to the exclusion of middle- and low-income populations on a large scale. These developments have received only scant attention in political theory despite their prominence in local policymaking and their contribution to processes of redrawing the boundaries of inclusion into local (...) political communities. My focus in this article is on the question ‘is it morally permissible for cities to sort members by economic means, and grant the better-off privileged access to residency?’ I explore this question by examining the main arguments used to support the city’s right to selectively admit would-be members. This allows me to delineate the limitations of the city’s general duty to be accessible to all segments of society and to present particular cases where the city has special obligations to incorporate nonmembers. (shrink)

The past two decades have seen a growing interest in evolutionary and scientific approaches to religion. The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting and emerging field. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the handbook pulls together scholarship in the following areas: evolutionary psychology and the cognitive science of religion (CSR), cultural evolution and the complementarity of evolutionary psychology, cognitive science and (...) cultural evolution. Within these sections central issues, debates and problems are examined, including: Cliodynamics, cultural group selection, costly signalling, dual inheritance theory, literacy, transmitting narratives, prosociality, supernatural punishment, cognition and ritual, meme theory, fusion theory, sexual selection, agency detection, evoked culture, social brain hypothesis, theory of mind, developmental psychology, emergence theory, social learning, cultural cybernetics, cultural epidemiology, evolutionary and cultural psychology, memetics, by-product and adaptationist theories of religion, systems and information theory, and computer modelling. This is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies and anthropology, the Handbook will also be very useful to those in related fields, such as psychology, sociology of religion, cognitive biology, and evolutionary biology. (shrink)

הייתכן לדבר על השתיקה כשפה? במסע ארוך המשתרע על שבעה עשר פרקים מנסה המחבר להתמודד עם התפיסה המקובלת בימינו, לפיה השתיקה האנושית היא שפה פרטית, פנימית ואינטימית, כזו הנגישה רק לאדם כיחיד. תחילת המסע להתגברות על תפיסה זו מצוי בבחינה מחודשת של הרציונאליזם ואידיאל האינדיבידואליות המודרני בזיקה עם הגישה שלנו אל השתיקה האנושית. בעוד ששפת המילים מוגדרת כשפה המשקפת את העולם, המהווה תמונה של המציאות, שפת השתיקה מתוארת כשיקוף של הפרטי שרק היחיד ככזה יכול לגשת אליו. האומנם השתיקה היא שפה (...) פרטית? רגעים של שתיקה נחשפים במהלך הספר כחלק מהדיאלוג של האדם עם עצמו, עם הזולת ועם מכלול המציאות שמסביבו. ניתוח היחסים בין התחזקות האמונה המודרנית בפוטנציאל הרציונאליזם ו/או מדע האדם לבין תהליך הגדרת השתיקה כשפה פרטית עומד במרכז הדיון. האמונה בכוחן של המילים לשקף ולשלוט על המציאות כמו גם האמונה בכוחו של מדע האדם לתאר באופן אובייקטיבי/מדעי את האדם כסובייקט אנושי ניצבים למבחן מחודש. מטרת הדיון לאפשר לשפת השתיקה לחשוף עצמה כשפה שאיננה פרטית, כשפה של דיאלוג של האדם עם עולם החיים ו/או המציאות האנושית שהוא חלק בלתי נפרד ממנו. היחס של החברה לשפת השתיקה כמו גם יחסה לשפת המילים הוא שיקוף של יחסה לתפקידו של האדם החי בה. הגדרת השתיקה כשפה פרטית מהווה חלק מתהליך ההתעצמות ההיסטורי של ניכור האדם מעצמו ומעולם החיים שהוא חלק ממנו. שתי סוגיות מרכזיות השזורות זו בזו ושמופיעות לאורך כל פרקי הספר: סוגיית הניכור החברתי ובחינה מחדש של החלק של הרציונאליזם בהתעצמות תחושת הניכור של האדם המודרני. (shrink)

This book examines the unique views of philosopher Jacob Sigismund Beck, a student of Immanuel Kant who devoted himself to an exploration of his teacher's doctrine and to showing that Kant's transcendental idealism is, contra to the common view, both internally consistent and is not a form of subjective idealism. In his attempt to explain away certain apparent contradictions found in Kant's system, Beck put forward a new reading of Kant's critical theory, a view, which came to be known as (...) the Standpunctslehre, the Doctrine of the Standpoint. Author Lior Nitzan reconstructs, step by step, the historical development of Beck's doctrine. He shows how Beck's unique view is drastically different from that of his contemporaries and presents the relevance of Beck to contemporary debates about the proper interpretation of Kant's notion of objectivity, the refutation of idealism and the role of the thing in itself in Kant's transcendental idealism. In doing so, Nitzan presents a defense of Beck's radical perspective of Kant's theory and claims that some of Kant's negative responses to it may in fact be due more to the adversary academic environment at the time than to Kant's true, well considered, opinion. Jacob Sigismund Beck's Standpunctslehre challenges the two dominant schools in the interpretation of Kant's transcendental idealism-the "two world" and the "two aspect" view. It presents a new way of understanding Kant's transcendental idealism, according to which the thing in itself plays no positive role in relation to the possibility of experience. Moreover, it claims that eliminating the thing in itself as the ultimate object of knowledge is not to admit idealism but in fact is the only way to consistently uphold realism. In addition, the book also addresses the question why, assuming that the proposed interpretation is correct, Kant had chosen not to make his true intentions clear. (shrink)

The two standard interpretations of Kant’s view of the relationship between external freedom and public law make one of the terms a means for the production of the other: either public law is justified as a means to external freedom, or external freedom is justified as a means for producing a system of public law. This article defends an alternative, constitutive interpretation: public law is justified because it is partly constitutive of external freedom. The constitutive view requires conceiving of external (...) freedom in a novel, second-personal way, that is, as an irreducibly relational norm. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the political motivation argument against cosmopolitanism, according to which the extension of social justice beyond bounded communities would be motivationally unstable, and thus unjustified. It does so through an analysis of the stability problem, and a reconstruction of the three most prominent anti-cosmopolitan arguments—Rawlsian statism, liberal nationalism, and civic republicanism—as solutions to this problem. It then examines, and rejects, three prominent objections, each denying a different level of the argument. The article concludes that the civic republican version (...) of the argument is the most plausible, and implications for cosmopolitanism are considered. (shrink)

While many argue investment-based criteria for immigration are wrong or at least problematic, skill-based criteria remain relatively uncontroversial. This is normatively inconsistent. This article assesses three prominent normative objections to investment-based selection criteria for immigrants: that they wrongfully discriminate between prospective immigrants that they are unfair, and that they undermine political equality among citizens. It argues that either skill-based criteria are equally susceptible to these objections, or that investment-based criteria are equally shielded from them. Indeed, in some ways investment-based criteria (...) are less normatively problematic than skill-based criteria. Given this analysis, the resistance to investment-based migration criteria, but not to skill-based criteria, is inconsistent. (shrink)

What is the relationship between human rights and the rights of states? Roughly, while cosmopolitans insist that international morality must regard as basic the interests of individuals, statists maintain that the state is of fundamental moral significance. This article defends a relational version of statism. Human rights are ultimately grounded in a relational norm of reciprocal independence and set limits to the exercise of public authority, but, contra the cosmopolitan, the state is of fundamental moral significance. A relational account promises (...) to justify a limited conception of state sovereignty while avoiding the familiar cosmopolitan criticisms of statist accounts. (shrink)

In the conclusion to The Imaginary Jean-Paul Sartre draws attention to the centrality of imagination in human life, describing it as a constitutive structure of consciousness. Imagination, according to him, is not a contingent feature of consciousness, but one of its essential features. This essay re-examines Sartre’s notion of imagination, arguing that current interpretations do not exhaust its meaning. Beginning with a consideration of dichotomies that dominate his theory of imagination—such as those between present, material objects and absent images, or (...) real entities and fictional creations, as well as interpretative responses to them—the essay moves on to explore the possibility of locating a different sense of imagination in his work, one which is irreducible to such oppositions. Focusing on Sartre’s example of the work of an impersonator, this essay advances the idea that the playful activity of impersonators and actors enables the spectators who are watching them to explore novel and often unfamiliar connections between objects in the world. Imagination, according to this interpretation, enriches and augments perception, rather than suspends or replaces it with mental images. This new interpretation of Sartre’s notion of imagination places him in proximity to Wittgenstein’s discussion of ‘aspect-seeing’ in Philosophical Investigations. However, whereas Wittgenstein’s discussion of ‘aspect-seeing’ can lead to the conclusion that it is impossible to draw a line between perceiving and imagining, the notion of imagination operative in Sartre’s example enables us to maintain and explain the differences between ordinary and ‘imaginative’ perception. (shrink)

The essay proposes that children should not participate in custody proceedings because they lack a place in the public world, a concept which was developed by Arendt and which I elaborate on the basis of her writings. Arendt’s concepts of place in the world and of childhood are correlated, polar ethical concepts. ‘Place in the world’ as described by Arendt combines commitment to worldbuilding as a collaborative enterprise, relations of mutual-recognition among equal co-builders of the public world, an inviolable place (...) in public and private realms, and self-disclosure through the staging of public appearances. We should recognize children as rightful participants in divorce proceedings when we are ready to treat them as occupants of place in the world, split between public and private realms and corresponding public and private voices. Recent practices of children’s participation undermine the intimate realm of childhood as well as the public world. (shrink)

This essay concerns Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of blame and punishment in “Œil pour œil” and the irreconcilable tensions that haunt it. I study these tensions—between the desire to blame and punish and the inability to provide moral justification for these practices—and locate their source in Beauvoir's conception of ethics in Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté. According to my reading, her ethics implies that violence violates freedom, the grounding principle of ethical life. Retaliatory and retributive judgments and the punishment they (...) uphold, regardless of whether they are exerted by individuals or by official state powers, are forms of violence and are therefore unjustifiable. The aporias of blame and punishment in “Œil pour œil” suggest that Beauvoir's ideal of ethics necessitates an abolitionist position regarding punishment. The essay ends with a reflection on the affinity between the position constructed from Beauvoir's work and feminist abolitionist theories that seek to undermine the legal, social, and political institutions that perpetuate, rather than resolve, economic, racial, gender, sex, and class inequality. (shrink)

The article advances an interpretation of the self as an imaginary object. Focusing on the relationship between selfhood and memory in Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego , I argue that Sartre offers useful resources for thinking about the self in terms of narratives. Against interpretations that hold that the ego misrepresents consciousness or distorts it, I argue that the constitution of the ego marks a radical transformation of the conscious field. To prove this point, I turn to the role (...) of reflection and memory in the creation of the self. Reflection and memory weave past, present and future into a consistent and meaningful life story. This story is no other than the self. I propose to understand the self as a fictional or imaginary entity, albeit one that has real presence in human life. (shrink)

Departing from Durkheim’s assertion of the primacy of public time, I argue that time is manufactured through the legal organization of society in the form of a corporate body. As a corporation, society enjoys fictive immortality, and it is this legal fiction that allows the flow of historical time. The institution of time, and of the corporate structure in general, is made possible through the political triumph over communal aspirations for timelessness, oneness and death: aspirations for an eternal present, to (...) which I refer as the communal body. The passage from a founding, pre-historical experience of timelessness into historical time is accomplished through the construction of a perpetual corporate body in place of a communal body that lacks a temporal dimension. I will argue that the establishment of historical time and of the corporate organization of society necessitates the normative regulation of sexuality. Thus, the relaxation of the traditional structure of historical time and of sexual morality in contemporary society are closely intertwined. (shrink)

Yizkor books are memorial books commemorating Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust, which are also the result of communal activity. The books have been published since 1943, mostly in Israel. Based on a qualitative and quantitative survey of 613 books, the largest survey of Yizkor books done to date, this article repositions the books linguistically and geographically. It demonstrates that contrary to previous research, Yizkor books are a significantly more heterogeneous phenomenon that began in the Yiddish­-speaking world but quickly changed (...) into an Israeli­- and Hebrew­-based phenomenon, which also included Jews from non­-Yiddish­-speaking Ashkenazi, and even Sephardic, communities. Especially since the 1980s, the phenomenon further evolved to include more English­-language books, published in the USA. Against this geographical and linguistic backdrop, I also show that the producers of the books were a diverse array of groups and individuals from varying backgrounds. The publishers were not only Yiddish­-speaking landsmanschaftn (Jewish mutual­-aid societies consisting of individuals originating from a particular place and their descendants) but a variety of organizations of different kinds, individuals, and even schoolchildren. Finally, I present examples of Yizkor books that were presented in previous research as landsmanschaft literature produced by Holocaust survivors and show that these assumptions regarding the authors are partially or wholly erroneous and that those books were, in fact, produced by a different set of actors. (shrink)

In this paper I take issue with Allison's ‘two aspect’ view of Kant's transcendental distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves. Unlike those of Allison's critics, who criticize him, and by implication Kant, based on some form of the ‘two world’ view, I argue that, even Allison's methodological, more moderate interpretation, nevertheless includes an excessive commitment to the role of things-in-themselves in Kant's theoretical philosophy, a commitment which is both unnecessary and incompatible with Kant's text. I offer an alternative interpretation which, in (...) my view, is at once more accurate, and more defensible against the familiar claim that Kant's philosophy is either incompatible with itself or it inevitably leads to idealism. (shrink)

This article provides a new interpretation of Richard Rorty’s notion of the private-public distinction. The first section of the article provides a short theoretical overview of the origins of the public-private distinction in Rorty’s political thought and clarifies the Rortian terminology. The main portion of the article is dedicated to the critique of Rorty’s private-public distinction, divided into two thematic sections: (i) the private-public distinction as undesirable and (ii) the private-public distinction as unattainable. I argue that Rorty’s formulation provides plausible (...) answers to the first kind of criticism, but not to the second. Finally, a reformulation of the private-public distinction will be suggested, which both mitigates the second line of criticism and better coheres with Rorty’s general theory. (shrink)

As even those who endorse it concede, cosmopolitanism has a motivational problem. There is a need for strategies to generate support of global norms conducive to cosmopolitanism, but which do not rely primarily on the motivating force of the moral argument. This article makes the case for civic vigilance as an answer to this problem. It argues that support for cosmopolitan norms could be advanced by encouraging a recognition of the ‘boomerang effect’: the ways in which global injustice undermines the (...) freedom of one’s own political community. The article offers evaluative criteria for different motivational strategies, assesses prominent alternatives to moral motivation, and finally defends the appeal to civic vigilance. (shrink)

Summary The article deals with the political thought of the young Spanish philosopher and intellectual, José Ortega y Gasset (1883?1955). The main aim is to examine to what extent his political thought was articulated in a systematic manner, and to understand if it was meant to be practically implemented. Ortega's political thought has been described as liberal on the one hand, and anti-democratic and conservative on the other. The disparities regarding Ortega's politics usually arise from his declarations, which aimed to (...) confront the changing social and political situation in Spain. To many researchers, these declarations seem incoherent, evolutionary, or ideas that can be directly deduced from the evolution of his philosophical theory. The extent to which Ortega's political theory was systematic will be understood through focusing on the role designed for the Spanish intellectuals in Ortega's declarations and works. Instead of considering his political thought in relation to either his philosophy or the political events and changing circumstances in Spain, I will attempt to examine how, during the years of his youth, his political declarations were always guided by a consistent feature with a practical political purpose: to challenge the Spanish intellectuals to promote social awareness of and reflection on the country's problems, and to consider potential solutions to these problems. (shrink)

David Axelsen has recently introduced a novel critique of the motivational argument against cosmopolitanism : even if it were the case that lack of motivation could serve as a normative constraint, people’s anti-cosmopolitan motivations cannot be seen as constraints on cosmopolitan duties as they are generated and reinforced by the state. This article argues that Axelsen 's argument misrepresents the nationalist motivational argument against cosmopolitanism : the nationalist motivational argument is best interpreted as an argument about normative feasibility rather than (...) as an argument about the technical feasibility. Nationalists ' objection to cosmopolitanism arises not from the impossibility of cosmopolitan motivation, but from the moral costs of achieving and sustaining it. Given this interpretation, this article argues that Axelsen fails to demonstrate that nationalists would have to accept cosmopolitan conclusions from their own premises. (shrink)

It is argued that ideals emerge in the course of the individuation‐separation process, preserving the narcissism of primary Thingness. Ideals form an essential part of social structure, as opposed to communitas, where individuation is suspended. The anthropological distinction between social structure and communitas is reformulated in psychoanalytic terms. Structure and communitas are shown to correspond to two alternative organizations of narcissism. Ideals and myths figure among the manifestations of the narcissism of structure. In the last section, certain explanations of the (...) discourse of ideals are drawn from the preceding account. While the premises of the following reflections are broadly Kleinian, Lacanian concepts are supplemented, not on the basis of any definite synthesis but towards a piecemeal reconciliation. (shrink)

Contemporary theorists tend to think that the basic justification of human rights is instrumental, as efficient means for producing the theorist's preferred ultimate value or values. Contemporary theorists also tend to think that human rights have a distinctive normative force, correlating with categorical duties. This article shows that instrumentalist accounts of human rights face a dilemma. The very structure of any instrumentalist account means that such an account faces extraordinary difficulties accommodating categorical duties to respect the human rights of others. (...) If so, one should either reject instrumentalism about human rights or do away with categorical duties. But doing away with categorical duties comes at a high cost. The dilemma, then, should question the prevalent assumption that instrumentalist accounts of human rights can accommodate categorical duties. The dilemma should serve either to sharpen instrumentalist theories or to motivate non-instrumentalism about human rights. (shrink)