While there are urgent health-related demands surrounding dementia, there are sociopolitical dimensions to this issue that ought not to be neglected, concerning the ways in which institutions and individuals treat people living with dementia. Key among these concerns, for dementia self-advocate Christine Bryden, is the dominant narrative of dementia as a process that irreversibly sets those that live with it on a path to the destruction of their personal identities and personhood. In this paper, I bolster Bryden’s arguments against the (...) loss narrative and develop a novel conception of personhood as a first step towards challenging it. (shrink)

By emphasising the role of concepts like social status, power and respect, all relational egalitarians seek to demonstrate that there is more to the political concept of equality than the distribution of goods. While there is a broad consensus on the nature of equality, however, the nature of justice is a matter of internal dispute. The aim of this paper is to disentangle these argumentative threads, building on work in early relational egalitarian scholarship to develop a relational approach to justice, (...) both distinct from the distributive approach to justice and isolated from the relational approach to equality. In doing so, I reveal possible and sometimes surprising alliances between relational egalitarians and other scholars on the nature of justice. (shrink)

The dispute between the transgender-rights movement and “gender-critical” activists represents a stark division in British public discourse. Although the issues of contention are numerous and require their own philosophical treatment, a core metaphysical concern underlies them. Gender-critical activists, such as Kathleen Stock, tend to argue that recognizing trans women as women requires erasing the category of biological sex. This implies that all trans women are male, and thus recognizing them as women rips female biology from the root of the category (...) “woman.” In this article, I argue that this view is mistaken. As exogenously produced sex characteristics should count toward a person's sex classification, all trans women are female. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 32-41, January/February 2022.

At the intersection of literature and history, three “antique romances” initiated a new genre in the mid-twelfth century by transposing into French the great stories of Greek and Latin epic: the fratricidal war of Oedipus's sons in the Roman de Thèbes, the founding of Rome in the Eneas, and the Roman de Troie's Trojan War based on Dares and Dictys. Rejecting Homer's version for these “eyewitness” accounts, Benoît de Sainte-Maure translated the full history of the Trojan War from its beginning (...) in the tale of Jason and the Argonauts to the annihilation of Troy and the victors’ unhappy homecomings. The myth of Trojan descent claimed by many European rulers, including the British and Normans, gives Benoît's translation more than entertainment value for his first public, the Plantagenêt court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Indeed, while repeatedly assuring his readers that this great estoire, story and history, will provide pleasurable enjoyment, Benoît also signals a more serious intent by invoking Solomon and the seven liberal arts: we would be like beasts if not for learning from the past that allows us to distinguish between wisdom and folly. The author/narrator's school training is on full display as he highlights the importance of remembering and the dangers of forgetting. Obliged to share his knowledge, Benoît will put into romanz matter that is at once old and new, lost and refound, so that lay readers without access to his Latin sources can “remember” their past as he shapes it in romance. The success of his enterprise can be gauged by the number of extant manuscripts as well as the romance's subsequent influence on multiple versions of Trojan history, from the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. But can we pinpoint more specifically what and how Benoît's public might remember? (shrink)

Matilda Mroz argues that cinema provides an ideal opportunity to engage with ideas of temporal flow and change. Temporality, however, remains an underexplored area of film analysis, which frequently discusses images as though they were still rather than moving. This book traces the operation of duration in cinema, and argues that temporality should be a central concern of film scholarship. In close readings of Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror, and the ten short films that make up Krzysztof Kielowski’s (...) Decalogue series, Mroz highlights how film analysis must consider both particular moments in cinema which are critically significant, and the way in which such moments interrelate in temporal flux. She explores the concepts of duration and rhythm, resonance and uncertainty, affect, sense and texture, to bring a fresh perspective to film analysis and criticism. Essential reading for students and scholars in Film Studies, this engaging study will also be a valuable resource for critical theorists. (shrink)

Despite negative effects on their health and social lives, many informal carers of people living with dementia claim to be acting in accordance with a moral obligation. Indeed, feelings of failure and shame are commonly reported by those who later give up their caring responsibilities, suggesting a widespread belief that professional dementia care, whether delivered in the person's own home or in an institutional setting, ought always to be a last resort. In this paper, however, I suggest that this common (...) intuition gets things the wrong way around. Adopting a relational egalitarian framework, I argue that the most serious injustices engendered by present‐day dementia care services are contingent on broader societal structures—they can thus be ameliorated relatively easily (if resource intensively) by changing those structures. Informal dementia care, on the other hand, carries similar risks of injustice and is much more resistant to structural reform. While there may be moral obligations to provide informal dementia care in present‐day societies, then, they arise because of the deficiencies of professional care, not the virtues of its informal counterpart. Though we may be far from achieving just care arrangements in most of our societies, we must never lose sight of the fact that, when we engage in morally permitted informal dementia care, we are exercising our last resort. (shrink)

Not least among the many enigmas attending the origins and development of the first vernacular lyric in the European Middle Ages is the existence of at least twenty women poets who lived in southern France from about the mid-twelfth to the mid-thirteenth century and who participated in the highly conventionalized poetic system created by the troubadours, those humble poetlovers who sang to their beloved as domna, the superior lady. In periods when the tides of feminism are high these women's voices (...) have insistently claimed our attention, as we try to understand their songs and puzzle over their very existence. Their poetic inventions require us in particular to pay close attention to the subtle, even elusive, concept of voice—its relation to the identity of the poet and the poem's speaker, the elements that characterize its expression, the multiplicity of images created by different voices, and so on. If we are willing to listen and analyze carefully, the trobairitz have much to teach us about the way women poets enter into and find their place in a traditional poetic system created by male poets. Their songs demonstrate with intricate complexity the way poetic fictions play with cultural, literary, and social definitions of man and woman, masculine and feminine; their poems offer valuable warnings about the pitfalls involved in generalizing women into woman. (shrink)

Across care settings, the practice of lying to or withholding the truth from people living with dementia is common, yet it is objected to by many. Contrary to this common discomfort, I have argued in previous work that respecting members of this group as moral equals sometimes requires deceiving them. In this paper, I test my proposed practice against complex, controversial cases, demonstrating both its theoretical strength and its practical value for those working in social care.

Carers often interfere with the choices of people living with dementia. On neorepublican and (most) relational egalitarian views, interference can be justified if it tracks a person's interests: if it does not lead to a relationship of domination. However, the kind of environment-shaping interventions carers often pursue would be considered infantilising or objectionably paternalistic in other cases. In this paper, I defend this indirect approach and argue that it offers the best prospects of dementia care without domination.

Assembling a series of voices from across the field, this book demonstrates how posthuman theory can be employed to better understand and tackle some of the challenges faced by contemporary international law. With the vast environmental devastation being caused by climate change, the increasing use of artificial intelligence by international legal actors, and the need for international law to face up to its colonial past, international law needs to change. But in regulating and preserving a stable global order in which (...) states act as its main subjects, the traditional sources of international law - international legal statutes, customary international law, historical precedents and general principles of law - create a framework that slows down its capacity to act on contemporary challenges, and to imagine futures yet to come. In response, this collection maintains that posthuman theory can be used to better address the challenges faced by contemporary international law. Covering a wide array of contemporary topics - including environmental law, the law of the sea, colonialism, human rights, conflict, and the impact of science and technology - it is the first book to bring new and emerging research on posthuman theory and international law together into one volume. This book's posthuman engagement with central international legal debates, prefaced by the leading scholar in the field of posthuman theory, provides a perfect resource for students and scholars in international law, as well as critical and socio-legal theorists, and others with interests in posthuman thought, technology, colonialism and ecology. (shrink)

Elizabeth Barnes has recently developed an account of disability that is sensitive to the role of self-evaluation. To have a physical disability is, according to Barnes, to have a body that is merely different from the norm. Yet, as Barnes notes, some disabilities will genuinely frustrate some life plans. It may be the case, therefore, that a disability is instrumentally bad for a person and that acquiring one may be a genuine loss. Equally, however, a person may genuinely value a (...) disability such that it is instrumentally good for them and that they experience the acquiring of it as a gain. Notably, Barnes explicitly restricts this analysis to physical disabilities, leaving open the status of mental disabilities. Nevertheless, Barnes does not rule out the extension of her model to this category, and she expresses a desire to see future work on other disabilities built upon it. This article takes up this challenge, making the case that to possess a mental disability is merely to possess a minority mind. (shrink)

Many caregivers feel that they need to lie or withhold the truth from people living with dementia, but worry that, in doing so, they are violating a duty to tell the truth. In this article, I argue that withholding the truth from and, in limited circumstances, lying to people living with dementia is not only morally permissible, but morally required by a more general requirement that we treat each other as persons worthy of respect. I do so through an analysis (...) of the groundings of the duty to tell the truth, and a critical reflection on its cognitively ableist construction. (shrink)

This paper explores Spinoza’s relationship to poetry by considering two prominent allusions to classical literature in Spinoza’s political treatises. Susan James illuminates Spinoza’s worries about the dangers of poetic address. At the same time, Spinoza relies on poetic language and citation to press some central claims. References to Seneca and Tacitus, I suggest, aim to transform the popular imagination with respect to the relationship between government, violence, and domination. Poetic language reinforces his challenge to false solutions to the problems of (...) violence, rebellion, and the precarity of political authority, which preoccupied early-modern political thinkers. (shrink)

This article discusses the key existential stakes of implementing biometrics in human lifeworlds. In this pursuit, we offer a problematization and reinvention of central values often taken for granted within the “ethical turn” of AI development and discourse, such as autonomy, agency, privacy and integrity, as we revisit basic questions about what it means to be human and embodied. Within a framework of existential media studies, we introduce an existential ethics of care—through a conversation between existentialism, virtue ethics, a feminist (...) ethics of care and post-humanist ethics—aiming to deepen and nuance our understanding of the human behind “human-centered” AI directives. The key argument is that biometrics implicates humans through unprecedented forms of objectification, through which the existential body—the relational, intimate and frail human being—is at risk. We interrogate these risks as they become visible at three sites where embodied humans are challenged by biometrics, and thus where the existential body is challenged by the biometric body. This occurs through reductionism (biometric passports nailing bodies to identities, removing human judgment and compromising agency at the AI border), enforced transparency (smart home assistants surveying human intimacies and invading intimate spaces in the bedroom) and the breaching of bodily integrity (chipping bodies to capture sensory data, challenging the very concept of bodily integrity through self-invasive biohacking). Our existential ethics of care is importantly not a solutionist list of principles or suggestions, but a manifesto for a way of thinking about the ethical challenges of living with biometrics in today’s world, by raising the right questions. We argue that a revitalized discussion of the basic existential stakes within human lived experience is needed and should serve as the foundation on which comprehensive frameworks can be built to address the complexities and prospects for ethical machines, responsible biometrics and AI. (shrink)

In close collaboration with the late Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp pioneered the theory and practice of 'the community of philosophical inquiry' (CPI) as a way of practicing 'Philosophy for Children' and prepared thousands of philosophers and teachers throughout the world in this practice. In Community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp represents a long-awaited and much-needed anthology of Sharp's insightful and influential scholarship, bringing her enduring legacy to new generations of academics, postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of (...) education, philosophy, philosophy of education, Philosophy for Children and philosophy of childhood. Sharp developed a unique perspective on the interdependence of education, philosophy, personhood and community that remains influential in many parts of the world. This perspective was shaped not only by Sharp's work in philosophy and education, but also by her avid studies in literature, feminism, aesthetic theory and ecumenical spirituality. Containing valuable contributions from senior figures in the fields in which Sharp produced her most focused scholarship, the chapters in this book present a critical overview of how Sharp's ideas relate to education, philosophy of education, and the Philosophy for Children movement as a whole. The historical and philosophical nature of this collection means that it will be a vital resource for philosophers and educators. It should also be of great interest to teacher educators and those involved in the study of pragmatism and feminism, as well as the history of education across the globe, particularly in the United States of America. (shrink)

The transition from university to working life appears a critical period impacting human service workers’ long-term health. More research is needed on how psychological factors affect the risk. We aimed to investigate how subgroups, based on self-efficacy, psychological flexibility, and basic psychological needs satisfaction ratings, differed on self-rated health, wellbeing, and intention to leave. A postal survey was sent to 1,077 recently graduated psychologists in Sweden, response rate 57.5%, and final sample 532. A hierarchical cluster analysis resulted in a satisfactory (...) eight-cluster solution. We identified two at-risk subgroups, displaying the lowest scores on health and wellbeing, and one potential low-risk subgroup with the highest ratings on said variables. The “Low risk?” group rated high on all three psychological constructs, a positive transition to working life, a work environment where resources balanced relatively high emotional demands, good health, and wellbeing. Almost the complete opposite ratings characterized the potential risk groups. “Quitting?” scored significantly higher than “Getting sick?” on self-efficacy and psychological flexibility as well as actively seeking new employment and reporting daily thoughts on leaving the profession. We suggest that a combination of low self-efficacy and psychological flexibility could increase the risk of individuals staying despite suboptimal working conditions. With combined higher self-efficacy and psychological flexibility, individuals in similar circumstances appear more inclined to quit. We conclude that the ways recently graduated psychologists rate their self-efficacy, psychological flexibility, and basic needs satisfaction appear to be reflected in their self-rated health and wellbeing. (shrink)

R. A. Sharpe; VIII*—Art and Expertise, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 85, Issue 1, 1 June 1985, Pages 133–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.

ABSTRACTThis paper looks at the state of the literature surrounding Heidegger and Nazism today. Part 1 focusses on Hassan Givsan’s remarkable work, Une histoire consternante: pourquoi les philosophes se laissent corrompre par le “cas Heidegger”, which looks at the different, mutually inconsistent forms of “apologetics” denying that Heidegger had been a Nazi, or that this commitment could have been shaped by his philosophy. Part 2 looks at five themes that emerge from the 2014 French-language collection Heidegger, le sol, la communauté, (...) la race, edited by Emmanuel Faye: Heidegger’s anti-semitism, before and in the Black Notebooks; Sein und Zeit and “the political”; Heidegger and his estate’s post-war “rewriting” of his Nazi-era texts; Heidegger’s esotericism; and his intellectual proximities to other Nazi thinkers. Closing reflections touch on the state of the debate, calling for increased scholarly awareness of the evidence, and debate of its significance. (shrink)

In Zizek and Politics, Geoff Boucher and Matthew Sharpe go beyond standard introductions to spell out a new approach to reading Zizek, one that can be highly critical as well as deeply appreciative. They show that Zizek has a raft of fundamental positions that enable his theoretical positions to be put to work on practical problems. Explaining these positions with clear examples, they outline why Zizek's confrontation with thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze has so radically changed how (...) we think about society. They then go on to track Zizek's own intellectual development during the last twenty years, as he has grappled with theoretical problems and the political climate of the War on Terror. This book is a major addition to the literature on Zizek and a crucial critical introduction to his thought. (shrink)

Egalitarians often claim that well-off states’ immigration restrictions create or reinforce objectionable inequality. Standard defenses of this claim appeal to the distributive consequences of exclusion. This article offers a relational egalitarian defense of more open borders. On this view, well-off states’ immigration restrictions are problematic because they accord the citizens of well-off states a troubling form of asymmetric power over the disadvantaged. This creates an objectionably unequal relationship between affluent states’ citizens and disadvantaged immigrants. I show that this argument offers (...) a compelling diagnosis of a central problem with border control, defend the argument against objections, and explore its implications. (shrink)

Reconfiguring the human -- Lines, planes, and bodies: redefining human action -- Action as affect -- The transindividuality of affect -- The tongue -- Renaturalizing ideology: Spinoza's ecosystem of ideas -- The matrix -- Ideology critique today? -- The fly in the coach -- "I am in ideology," or the attribute of thought -- What is to be done? -- Man's utility to man: reason and its place in nature -- The politics of human nature -- Reason and the human (...) essence -- Man's utility to man -- Nonhuman utility -- Beyond the image of man -- Desire for recognition? Butler, Hegel, and Spinoza -- Spinoza in Hegel -- Desire in Hegel -- Conatus and cupiditas in Spinoza -- From interpersonal recognition to impersonal glory -- Judith Butler's post-Hegelian politics of recognition -- The impersonal is political: Spinoza and a feminist politics of imperceptibility -- The politics of recognition -- Elizabeth Grosz's critique of the politics of recognition -- Thinking beyond the (hu)man -- A politics of imperceptibility -- Nature, norms, and beasts -- The beast within -- Animal affects (and) the first man -- Ethics as ethology? (shrink)

Several times each month, usually on a Thursday morning, I join one or more of my physician colleagues on teaching rounds. Most weeks these are traditional rounds, where an attending physician leads a group of medical students, residents, and clinical fellows from bed to bed reviewing charts, examining patients, and planning daily procedures. As a medical ethicist, my role is to discuss some of the ethical issues that are embedded in these decisions about medical care and help students to hone (...) the skills required to manage these issues successfully in the context of ongoing care.Although the clinical setting varies, questions of patient management are always at the center of teaching rounds. Since my training is in philosophy, and not in medicine or nursing, there have been occasions when this focus on patient care has prompted me to reflect upon my role as a medical ethicist in these contexts. Lacking even the most basic medical training, and having been remarkably fortunate in having had limited personal experiences as a patient, what can I possibly contribute to the training of physicians?I suspect that at some time or another most teachers, but perhaps especially those trained in the humanities, have moments when they question the usefulness of their teaching. In my case, by introducing perspectives from the humanities on teaching rounds, my hope is to add some balance to the often narrow focus on the ordering of diagnostic tests, scheduling of procedures, obtaining of patient consent, and other practical matters. I often stress, for example, how the patients with whom students and residents interact are not mere patients, but persons with lives outside the hospital that can be made profoundly better or worse as a result of the brief time they are seen in the hospital. I draw attention to the …. (shrink)

Bioethics and feminist scholarship has explored various justice implications of nonmedical sex selection and family balancing. However, prospective users’ viewpoints have been absent from the debate over the socially acceptable bounds of nonmedical sex selection. This qualitative study provides a set of empirically grounded perspectives on the moral values that underpin prospective users’ conceptualizations of justice in the context of a family balancing program in the United States. The results indicate that couples pursuing family balancing understand justice primarily in individualist (...) and familial terms rather than in terms of social justice for women and girls or for children resulting from sex selection. Study participants indicated that an individual’s desire for gender balance in their family is ethically complex and may not be inherently sexist, immoral, or socially consequential, particularly given the social context in which they live. Our findings suggest that the social conditions that contribute to prospective users’ desires for gender balance in their families may direct them away from recognizing or engaging broader social justice concerns relating to sexism and stratified reproduction. (shrink)

Carol Gilligan has identified two orientations to moral understanding; the dominant justice orientation and the under-valued care orientation. Based on her discernment of a voice of care, Gilligan challenges the adequacy of a deontological liberal framework for moral development and moral theory. This paper examines how the orientations of justice and care are played out in medical ethical theory. Specifically, I question whether the medical moral domain is adequately described by the norms of impartiality, universality, and equality that characterize the (...) liberal ideal. My analysis of justice -oriented medical ethics, focuses on the libertarian theory of H.T. Engelhardt and the contractarian theory of R.M. Veatch. I suggest that in the work of E.D. Pellegrino and D.C. Thomasma we find not only a more authentic representation of medical morality but also a project that is compatible with the care orientation's emphasis on human need and responsiveness to particular others. (shrink)

Recent work in political philosophy and the history of ideas presents Spinoza and Hegel as the most powerful living alternatives to mainstream Enlightenment thought. Yet, for many philosophers and political theorists today, one must choose between Hegel or Spinoza. As Deleuze's influential interpretation maintains, Hegel exemplifies and promotes the modern "cults of death," while Spinoza embodies an irrepressible "appetite for living." Hegel is the figure of negation, while Spinoza is the thinker of "pure affirmation". Yet, between Hegel and Spinoza there (...) is not only opposition. This collection of essays seeks to find the suppressed kinship between Hegel and Spinoza. Both philosophers offer vigorous and profound alternatives to the methodological individualism of classical liberalism. Likewise, they sketch portraits of reason that are context-responsive and emotionally contoured, offering an especially rich appreciation of our embodied and historical existence. The authors of this collection carefully lay the groundwork for a complex and delicate alliance between these two great iconoclasts, both within and against the Enlightenment tradition. (shrink)

In _Camus, Philosophe: To Return to our Beginnings_ Matthew Sharpe reads Camus as a _philosophe_ in the classical and enlightenment lineages, arguing that his defense of _mesure_ singles him out amidst 20th century French thought and makes him of renewed relevance today.