Our aim in this paper is to present the distinct ways in which Wolff, Baumgarten, and Kant understand the relationship between necessitation, constraint, and reluctant action in an effort to illustrate the subtle ways in which their conceptions of obligation differ from each another. Whereas Wolff conceives of natural or moral obligation as incompatible with constraint, Baumgarten holds that constraint and reluctant action are, in some instances, compatible with natural obligation. Kant departs from Baumgarten by conceiving (...) of obligation as necessarily involving constraint: as Kant’s reply to Schiller’s famous objection reveals, obligation must take on the character of constraint to reluctant action on account of the fact that human beings possess inclinations that always threaten to impel them in directions that oppose morality. (shrink)

The continuing ramifications of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 have forced social scientists to raise fundamental questions about the relationship between capitalism, democracy and inequality. In particular, Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Wolfgang Streeck’s Buying Time focus on, respectively, the economic and the political contradictions of capitalistic societies. Piketty argues that capitalism naturally tends towards the exacerbation of rent-based wealth inequality, whereas Streeck suggests that capitalism and democracy are ultimately incompatible. A striking feature of these two contributions is that their authors (...) are social democrats, not Marxists or radical anti-capitalist thinkers. In this review article, I illustrate how the combination of social democratic convictions and the acknowledgment that capitalism cannot be tamed generates interesting tensions between the diagnosis offered by the two monographs and the solutions that are proposed. I end the piece by raising two remarks on the implications that this tension might have for normative political theory. On the one hand, it is time for theory to do more work on political action and agency. On the other, liberal egalitarian theorists might have to acknowledge that they are in the same predicament as Piketty and Streeck: social democracy is their ideal, yet it is perhaps unattainable. If this is the case, liberal egalitarians might be committed to adopt a more confrontational attitude towards capitalism: they might have to become reluctant radicals. (shrink)

When doctors become aware of a threat to public health, they have a professional duty to try to mitigate the threat. Climate change is a recognized major threat to planetary and public health that...

This paper offers an explanation for subjects’ lack of confidence in vaccines’ safety, which in turn is widely recognized as one of the main determinants of vaccine hesitancy. I argue that among the psychological roots of this lack of confidence there is a kind of intuitive thinking that can be traced back to a specific superstitious belief: the belief that “it is bad luck to tempt fate”. Under certain conditions, subjects perceive the choice to undergo vaccinations as an action (...) that “tempts fate”, and this leads them to overestimate its risks. When an action is perceived as “tempting fate”, indeed, its possible negative outcomes are anticipated as highly aversive, and as such they capture subjects’ imagination, thereby feeling more subjectively probable. This has important consequences for practical pro-vaccine interventions. Part of what makes an action perceived as “tempting fate” is its being free, arbitrary, and departing from one’s typical behavior: insofar as vaccine hesitancy is driven by beliefs about tempting fate, then, we can predict the success of interventions that make vaccinations nearly mandatory, or build vaccination opportunities into health care routines as opt-out, rather than opt-in options, making them closer to something that subjects passively accept rather actively seek. (shrink)

Written for the people shearing the same reality, the same mental world of Modernity, this paper starts from the premise that we, as human beings, are not always consciously aware of the world we live in, of its constantly changing characteristics or attributes. It has already been demonstrated that our knowledge is contextual and limited. Thus, in order to accurately depict at least some of the attributes of Modernity, and consequently, to observe the major paradigm shift towards an age of (...) dialogue, entailed by this expending-modernity, it became necessary to describe the values promoted by Modernity. In this paper we aim at discussing notions such as freedom, critical-thinking, history and the increasing need to be in dialogue with those who think differently from us, values which guide us mentally and determine our actions through Modernity. (shrink)

Surveys of public opinions on climate change found that a majority of American respondents regarded global warming as a critical or an important threat . Given this consensus, one might expect that a majority of Americans are ready to take immediate action to deal with the environmental crisis. However, when they were asked whether we should begin taking steps now, only 43% of American respondents said yes; 54% of them chose either the option “until we are sure that global (...) warming is really a problem, we should not take any steps that would have economic costs,” or the option “global warming should be addressed, but its effects will be gradual, so we can deal with the problem .. (shrink)

O'Regan & Noë run into some difficulty in trying to reconcile their “seeing as acting” proposal with the perception and action account of the functions of the two streams of visual projections in the primate cerebral cortex. I suggest that part of the problem is their reluctance to acknowledge that the mechanisms in the ventral stream may play a more critical role in visual awareness and qualia than mechanisms in the dorsal stream.

Few philosophers would deny that unconscious motives enter into causal explanations of human behavior. But many would be reluctant to say that deeply unconscious motives have anything to do with the intentionality with which we act. I argue to the contrary that deeply unconscious motives can indeed contribute to agent-intentionality on the following condition: If she were self-aware and honest with respect to her unconscious motive, the agent would believe that it constituted her reason for the action of (...) which it was a cause. I conclude that when an agent’s conscious reasons are vague, confused, or self-deceiving, her unconscious reason-grounding motive may fill what would otherwise be a gap in her intentionality. (shrink)

One of the most striking and underexplored points of difference between care ethics and other normative theories is its reluctance to offer a theory of right action. Unlike other normative ethical frameworks, care ethicists typically either neglect right action or explicitly refuse to provide a theory thereof. This paper disputes that stance. It begins with an examination of right action in care ethics, offering reasons for care ethicists not to oppose the development of a care ethical theory (...) thereof. It then considers some potential formulations of a first premise of a theory of right action, both demonstrating the diversity of possible first premises and arguing for a monistic subset of these. It subsequently presents some potential second premises, arguing that a care ethical theory of right action ought to adopt a eudaimonistic approach to care. The paper thereby makes several inroads into a care ethical account of moral evaluation. (shrink)

Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel Brooklyn accompanies Eilis Lacey, a native of Enniscorthy, Ireland of the 1950s on a reluctant voyage across the Atlantic. Her passage reconstructs a common experience of immigration and exile to New York for the Irish working class seeking to escape the lack of prospects in small-town Ireland after the Second World War. Caught as she is between two homes—the traditional Irish culture she emerges from and the new capitalist society of America to which she emigrates—Eilis (...) is placed in a polemical relationship to the public sphere, staked on multiple grounds of in-betweenness: she is a woman, Irish, and an exile. Belonging, for her, is posited on a complex understanding of the tensions between national and transnational identities. Eilis’s parochialism, at first, and cosmopolitanism, later on, are both decisive characteristics that become driving forces behind her social integration and marriage prospects. She is initially barred from promising job and marriage opportunities due to her naivety and lack of sophistication. As an Irish female immigrant, Eilis becomes in the course of the novel a cosmopolitan from the margins, one of the newly uprooted, and ultimately a split self. (shrink)

How should political leaders address the emerging climate crisis if citizens are reluctant to accept costly but necessary climate action? In this article, I address this question by harnessing insights from the realist tradition in political theory. I propose that the realist legitimacy framework provides action guidance by offering two broadly applicable heuristics for political agents: responsibility and responsiveness. These heuristics collide if citizens are unwilling to accept policies designed to secure a nation's long-term stability. Faced with (...) this problem, some authors make the supposedly realist argument that policymakers in liberal democracies should prioritise responsibility over responsiveness and embrace eco-authoritarianism to address the climate emergency. Against this line of argument, I maintain that the realist legitimacy framework entails no such commitment. Instead, realists must emphasise that responsible climate action entails a sufficient degree of responsiveness. I conclude by sketching how this insight may guide democratic leaders and climate activists in the future. (shrink)

This paper will attempt to comment on the tension between politics andphilosophy in the Platonic dialogue Gorgias. The aim is to ground thisdiscussion through an analysis of the character of Callicles who plays therole of sparring partner as it were, testing and challenging Socrates’ positingof philosophy as an end in itself and the best life, and not as a preparationand cultivation for the life of action. The mimetic exchange between Socratesand Callicles stems from their common experience as erotic men. (...) Socrateswill try to elaborate his teaching upon this shared sense of longing. ButCallicles is reluctant. As we will see he grows impatient with Socrates and atsome point refuses to converse, or even listen: his motivation for an activelife animates him, and for this he will need not only courage, but alsophronesis, a political prudence that he aspires to learn from Gorgias, histeacher. (shrink)

Conceptual knowledge inspires imagination. On the other hand, it is a claim to power as well. Multiple knowledge claims often, therefore, are engaged in a contest. This contest can take the form of several discourses. Extant power structures play a significant role in lending (or not lending) a voice to one or several such discourses. To one with the power to govern, knowledge claims flowing from abstract concepts generated in an elite discourse not only inspires imagination but also often leads (...) to ‘norms’ and ‘rules’ that drive governance in the system which leads to action. Norms and rules define actionability of the conceptual knowledge claim. However, for the one weighed by powerlessness in being governed, knowledge claims often get generated only in action, since an autonomous discourse is often lacking. Yet the sheer powerlessness of the authors of such knowledge claims generated in action leads to its non-celebration. It fails to get elevated. It might also wither away. Such actionable knowledge claims of the powerless often then gets manifested as something like an ‘unvoiced’ or an ‘unvoicable’ discourse, in macabre forms of subversion of ‘norms’ and ‘rules’ of the system that leads to a sense of failure in governance among those with power as well. Power, thus, brings actionable knowledge to the fore, but in two different forms. For the power-holder, it takes the form of a ‘deviation’ from norms and rules in the actionable domain through subversion by the powerless, revealing a gap between knowledge in the conceptual and actionable domain that is reluctantly (often tacitly) tolerated. For the powerless, on the other hand, actionable knowledge is living; negotiating on the ‘deviation’ is an existential requirement. This paper is an attempt to explore these dichotomies, how power (and the lack of it) alters the significance and implications of actionable knowledge. (shrink)

One of the things that makes Hegel hard to understand is the difficulty of identifying the problems and questions to which he was responding, at least in a form in which we can appreciate them. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, he was involved in the intellectual life of his time, and many of the themes which engaged him have now lost their urgency. Secondly, because he wanted to connect every topic into a single, coherent system, and because the (...) transition from one topic to the next usually depends on some problem which cannot be solved unless the transition is made, some of the problems he unearths seem fairly insubstantial. Finally, his desire to philosophize without making any presuppositions means that he is reluctant to state the problems which he is trying to solve in advance. Any problem involves presuppositions, both of facts and about the meaning and coherence of the words or concepts used in stating it. Problems arise within Hegel's system, therefore, and they do so in a guise appropriate to their context. To some extent, the appreciation of the problems presupposes an understanding of the system. (shrink)

The reluctance to eradicate poverty shown by citizens and governments of many modern constitutional democracies is puzzling. If poverty threatens societies in various ways, why would many countries with a strongly agreed upon system of democratic governance fail so painfully to find the commitment and appropriate action to eradicate poverty? In this essay I want to investigate the discordance between poverty and democracy. I will first briefly articulate the broad underlying values of modern constitutional democracies. Then I will analyze (...) the ways in which poverty violates the underlying values of democracy. Next I will try to explain why poverty is still widespread in democracies, despite the multiple ways it violates democratic values. Finally I will look at the implications of my findings in terms of the functions of democratic values in contemporary democracies. (shrink)

Despite the general applicability of philosophical concepts of the subject and subjectivity among philosophers, there is no unanimity in their understanding, even if we are talking about representatives of one philosophical trend. The subject of this article is the different understandings of subjectivity by two well-known French authors of analytical inspiration, V. Descombes and S. Laugier, which are united by the critique of the reflexive subject of the philosophy of mind, defending the idea of social mental nature, as well as (...) appeal to the methodological resources of later Wittgenstein’s philosophy to develop the idea of a social subject. Despite their common attitudes, Descombes and Laugier are inspired by different traditions — Descombes, in general, develops the ideas of the French School of Sociology, while Laugier works in line of linguistic phenomenology, defined by the ordinary language philosophy and skeptical interpretations of Wittgenstein’s thought. Descombes builds the conception of the subject as an actor, formed not by his inside world, but by his action, the model of which is the institution of social life. Descombes’s practical subjectivity grows out of his critique of the reflexive paradigm of the philosophy of mind (consciousness) and is the actor’s ability to take the responsibility for his own actions. Instead, Laugier’s concept of «depsychologized subjectivity » focuses on the other side of the actor’s ability to act following some rule within the institutional paradigm of practice, namely the fragility and vulnerability of any human action, its defeats and difficulties, and the subject’s reluctance to be an actor and take the responsibility for his actions. Laugier defends the skeptical understanding of subjectivity as a property of the action of the delocalized subject of language and knowledge, his ability even by his inability to express the social naturalness of the human way of life. (shrink)

One of the most profound interactions that can occur between people, apologies have the power to heal humiliations, free the mind from deep-seated guilt, remove the desire for vengeance, and ultimately restore broken relationships. With On Apology, Aaron Lazare offers an eye-opening analysis of this vital interaction, illuminating an often hidden corner of the human heart. He discusses the importance of shame, guilt, and humiliation, the initial reluctance to apologize, the simplicity of the act of apologizing, the spontaneous generosity and (...) forgiveness on the part of the offended, the transfer of power and respect between two parties, and much more. Readers will not only find a wealth of insight that they can apply to their own lives, but also a deeper understanding of national and international conflicts and how we might resolve them. The act of apologizing is quite simply immensely fulfilling. On Apology opens a window onto this common occurrence to reveal the feelings and actions at the heart of this profound interaction. (shrink)

Amongst the Arendtian scholars, there is almost a consensus on Arendt’s supposedly reluctance to the question of the body. The Arendtian body is said to belong to the unpolitical realm of necessity, in other words, the body is a private matter that should not appear in public. It is antipolitical. However, in this paper, I want to suggest that there is a possibility to outline a phenomenology of embodied political action in what I think to be Arendt’s hidden phenomenology (...) of the body. To make my point, I will first show that what the scholars call the Arendtian body is in fact an Arendtian Body. Secondly, in the German version of The Human Condition, Arendt surprisingly used the Heideggerian term Befindlichkeit that, I will argue, outline the basis of a political phenomenology of the body in Arendt’s work. More precisely, I will try to show that political action is embodied, that there is a hexis, a pathos and an ethos of action. (shrink)

Although climate change jeopardizes the fundamental human rights of current as well as future people, current actions and ambitions to tackle it are inadequate. There are two prominent explanations for this motivational gap in the climate ethics literature. The first maintains that our conventional moral judgement system is not well equipped to identify a complex problem such as climate change as an important moral problem. The second explanation refers to people’s reluctance to change their behaviour and the temptation to shirk (...) responsibility. We argue that both factors are at play in the motivational gap and that they are complemented by crucial moral psychological insights regarding moral disengagement, which enables emitters to dissociate self-condemnation from harmful conduct. In this way, emitters are able to maintain their profligate, consumptive lifestyle, even though this conflicts with their moral standards with respect to climate change. We provide some illustrations of how strategies of moral disengagement are deployed in climate change and discuss the relationship between the explanations for the motivational gap and moral disengagement. On the basis of this explanatory framework, we submit that there are three pathways to tackle the motivational gap and moral disengagement in climate change: making climate change more salient to emitters and affirming their self-efficacy; reconsidering the self-interested motives that necessitate moral disengagement; and tackling moral disengagement directly. (shrink)

The theme of this issue of Ethical Perspectives is the French tradition in liberal thought, and the unique contribution that this tradition can make to debates in contemporary liberalism. It is inspired by a colloquium held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in December of 2008 entitled “In Search of a Lost Liberalism: Constant, Tocqueville, and the singularity of French Liberalism.” This colloquium was held in conjunction with the retirement of Leuven professor and former Dean of the Institute of Philosophy, André (...) Van de Putte, who found much inspiration in this tradition. A revised version of his valedictory lecture from the conference serves as the final contribution to this issue. Much contemporary liberal political philosophy is currently done in conversation with a line of liberal thinkers starting with John Locke, running through Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and culminating in the work of John Rawls and his followers. The reasons for the enormous appeal of this philosophical tradition are, among other things, the combination of the central role of the intuitively appealing value of individual liberty with a strong rationalistic, universalistic, and normative character. The thread running through most of these liberal theories is a commitment to what the French liberal Benjamin Constant referred to as “the liberty of the moderns,” that is, liberty in a negative sense, as a lack of interference in one’s activity from others and from government. This focus has expanded over time to include a richer body of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, for instance, in the work of liberal thinkers who have tried to integrate the insights of communitarian thought and discourse ethics in their work. However, the emphasis on individual liberty in the negative sense continues to be the normative and theoretical touchstone and default position for many contemporary liberal theories. The limitation of the canon of liberal thought to the aforementioned authors and themes deprives the contemporary debate of a rich source of ideas: the French liberal tradition. Montesquieu, considered to be the father of this tradition, provides a good example of how it can enrich current debates in liberal theory. Montesquieu’s work evinces a keen eye for the dynamics of power relations and the limitations of the power of the better rational argument. His insight that power can sometimes only be checked by an equal and opposing power, so that a system of separation and balance of powers is necessary in order to preserve liberty, is reflected in the foundations of most modern democracies. Montesquieu also argues that contingent environmental, historical, social and economic conditions play a dramatic role in determining what kind of government is appropriate for a particular society. On his view, ignoring these facts when framing a government can inadvertently end in despotism. Montesquieu’s observations challenge us to reexamine some of contemporary liberalism’s universalist and rationalist claims. Benjamin Constant is most famous for his distinction between two kinds of liberty: the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns. The ancient form of liberty manifested itself in the active political participation of citizens in the ancient republic. While this form of government and decision-making was suitable for small, homogeneous city-states, Constant argues that it is impracticable for large modern nation-states. Hence, the concept of modern liberty shifts to an emphasis on the rule of law and the non-interference of the state in private matters. This form of liberty is familiar to us from contemporary liberalism – and Constant cherishes this form of freedom as much as any liberal does today. However, his position is complex: he also argues that the liberty of the ancients should not be neglected. Active political participation is needed to ensure that the government is executing its duty of preserving the modern form of liberty by publicly pointing out violations. The contemporary relevance of Constant’s work is clear when we consider the alleged “democratic deficit” that plagues the EU and international institutions such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank. Not only does this democratic deficit threaten the modern form of liberty by placing decision-making processes out of sight of the people, it also threatens citizens’ sense of self-respect derived from self-governance. Constant’s argument for the necessity of combining the liberty of the ancients with that of the moderns provides a fruitful resource for confronting these contemporary issues. Tocqueville’s work on liberalism benefits from his opportunity to observe a society founded on liberal democratic principles – the United States of America – in action. In his Democracy in America, he examines the social consequences, both intended and unintended, of building a society on ‘the equality of conditions’, as he defines ‘democracy’. Tocqueville sees a tension between the democratic value of equality and the aristocratic value of the rule of the best. He observes that democratic societies do not necessarily choose the best leaders and instead promote mediocrity instead of virtue, talent, and excellence. Democracy also confronts citizens with the threat of ‘soft despotism’, where a government that preserves the outer signs of the liberty of the moderns nevertheless controls the behavior of its citizens in minute detail through a system of detailed rules ostensibly aimed at their welfare. This paternalism is an even more insidious threat to liberal values than the hard variety of despotism, since it is so difficult to detect and done in the name of liberal values themselves. Taking Tocqueville’s observations seriously would add complexity to attempts to theorize about the modern social-democratic welfare state. The contributions to this issue supplement and critique mainstream liberal thought and its relation to contemporary issues through a serious engagement with the French liberal tradition. Annelien De Dijn’s contribution discusses Bertrand de Jouvenel, a lesser-known 20th Century representative of the French political tradition she terms ‘aristocratic liberalism’. This tradition has its roots in the work of Montesquieu, and emphasizes the importance of intermediary bodies, most importantly the aristocracy, in providing a check to the top-down power of despotic state authorities and the bottom-up power of revolutionary leveling tendencies, both of which threaten liberty. De Dijn situates Jouvenel in this tradition, but then indicates an important difference between his thought and that of his predecessors: his most significant work, On Power, is not only on French history, but on European history. Pointing to the enthusiastic reception of this work in the Anglophone world, she suggests that the rise of totalitarianism in Europe gave the anti-totalitarian features of aristocratic liberalism a broader appeal. Valentino Lumowa’s paper concerns Constant’s classic text, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. Lumowa argues that in order to understand Constant’s piece, we must be aware that its two parts were written under different historical circumstances and decipher the argumentative thrust inherent in the text. Following Stephen Holmes, he argues that to understand the shift Constant made in the second part of the text, we should read it within the context of the increasing influence of the ultra-Royalists in the legislature during the Bourbon Restoration. However, in contrast to Holmes, he contends that the spirit of both civic and individual freedom, which enlivens representative system, is the backbone of the text in its unity. Demin Duan’s essay investigates an apparent ambivalence between liberal and imperialist tendencies in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, which has already drawn some attention from Tocquevillian scholars. These interpretations of Tocqueville and his writings on empire generally agree that Tocqueville stands in a recognized tradition of liberalism, which is characterized by respect for human rights, individual freedom and a sense of universal humanism. On this standard view, Tocqueville’s support of imperialism represents nothing but an unfortunate breach of his own otherwise consistent liberal thinking. Duan’s article questions this standard position. By questioning the assumption of Tocqueville’s liberalism in the first place, he tries to gauge the influence of both the old republican tradition and the new liberal perspective on his thinking. In conclusion, he argues that Tocqueville’s overall thought, especially his notion of freedom, is very much informed by an old republican tradition. His support of French imperialism could be better understood from this perspective rather than be rendered simply as a deviation from liberal norms. Pawel Marczewski’s contribution is an attempt to show that Tocqueville’s conception of liberty transcends the divisions between negative and positive aspects of freedom. He begins by juxtaposing this conception with the opposition drawn by Constant between liberty of the ancients and liberty of the moderns. While Tocqueville and Constant shared a concern for the preservation of individual rights, Tocqueville was much more reluctant to accept the modern loss of the communal dimension of liberty. He did not accept the view that jouissances privées, private pleasures, are the main compensation that the modern world has to offer for the lost ancient treasure of political participation. The essay then looks into the relevance of Tocqueville’s standpoint for current debates between liberal defenders of negative freedom and republican advocates of freedom as non-domination. Participants on both sides of the debate seem to be so devoted to showing that their particular approach provides the best guarantees against actual and possible threats to liberty that they overlook the fact that their definitions of freedom remain significantly similar. By arguing that ‘to be free is to be guided by one’s own will’, contemporary republicans, as well as their liberal counterparts, move along the lines drawn by Constant towards private pleasures. By questioning the inevitability of this turn, Tocqueville provides us with a valuable contribution to these discussions in contemporary political philosophy. Finally, André Van de Putte’s contribution, an adaptation of his emeritus speech that closed the conference on French Liberalism, appeals to Tocqueville in order to draw attention to the importance of intermediary, dialogical bodies in mitigating the implicit despotic tendencies of the democratic drive to equality. In Tocqueville’s view, the transition from the feudal corporate inequality to democratic individual equality was not a clean break. Rather, this transition is a continual process of democratization that is driven by a desire for equality, or egalité des conditions. This dissolution of distinctions of estate, class and status has the unintended consequence of concentrating the diffuse power of these entities into a centralized state, which is responsible for ensuring the equality of all under the law. This process leaves increasingly isolated and atomized individuals to face the power of a monolithic state in defense of their freedom, and moves toward a soft, paternalistic despotism. Constant’s freedom of the moderns is not sufficient to protect individuals from this centralized power. Democracy also requires the political freedom of the ancients. Van de Putte argues for a system in which atomized individuals organize themselves into intermediary bodies that, in a Montesquieuian balance of powers, can enter into dialogue with each other and the state on more equitable terms. Van de Putte’s contribution closes with a plea for a conception of democracy as a regime of dialogue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru and Andrei TerianLaura Elena Savu WalkerMatei, Alexandru, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, editors. Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Bloomsbury, 2021. 376pp.Far from “mourning” the demise of theory, this timely and thoughtfully curated essay collection testifies to its “renewed vitality,” its compelling presence “across (...) fields, domains of life, and geocultural boundaries,” and its power to build an ever-expanding world community of practioners who are forming what has come to be known as a “theory commons” (ix). As the collection’s editors point out, theory’s new lease on life hinges on ensuring both the democratic workings of this “world discourse formation” (1) and on the responsible theorizing of the very notion of community in “a world threatened by all kinds of anti-communal actions and reactions, from runaway globalization to exacerbated tribalism and tunnel-vision politics” (x). Working on the margins, specifically, out of a Romanian “lab” called The Critical Theory Institute (CTI), which opened its doors in early 2000, the contributors seek to revise the “standard history of theory,” one whose “Western origins, authority, and cultural compass ” strike them as “exceedingly reductive” (3). This project of geotheoretical repositioning and recalibration aims to recast theory as a “quintessentially cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, trans- and intercontinental undertaking” (4). As such, it carries on the project, launched in a previous volume, Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), of fashioning an alternative to the nation-state paradigm that has long shaped literary and intellectual histories. In both of these works, Romanian critics and theorists have tuned into a wide range of voices, and tapped into a shared conceptual and methodological apparatus—itself the product of “an ethno-linguistic medley of traditions” (8). This approach informs what editors see as the “epoch-making” (17) discursive paradigm that has taken shape in globally networked post-Cold War societies (17), a viral model of cultural influence that fosters an ontology of “contact, contagion, of infection, dissemination, and horizontal accumulation” (15).To give us a sense of theory’s complex genealogy and evolution, the editors reference the Bulgarian critic Galin Tihanov, who has attributed [End Page 122] important developments in contemporary theory to the achievements of theorists (Nikolai Trubetskoi, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, and Georg Lukács) and schools of thought (Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle). In “Traveling Theory” (1983) and “Traveling Theory Reconsidered” (2000), Edward Said called attention to the migratory nature of contributions made, for instance, by Georg Lukács, whose theories moved across different European locales in this period. Since then, contemporary theory has branched out to integrate the travels and travails of scholars affiliated with theory labs located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and last, but not least, Romania (10).Theory in the “Post” Era highlights five characteristics that distinguish theory in the “post” era from earlier forms: 1) It has a “reluctantly epoch-alist” thrust (19; original italics), which assumes that the “post” lexicon entails “rupture, discontinuity, and opposition” (19), radical departures, tentative claims, provisional conclusions, and ex-centric perspectives; 2) it adopts a “self-reflexive and experimental” (20; original italics) stance in which theorists invoke inherited approaches or invent new ones; 3) it introduces a “transdisciplinary” (21; original italics) scope that allows authors to interrogate the foundations, aims, and methods of theoretical discourse and practice across several knowledge domains, from which they “borrow whole vocabularies and toolkits” (21); 4) it is “nationally, transnationally, and ecologically affiliative” (20) in ways that allow theorists to “think with others at a distance” (21) about global issues; and 5) it is programmatic, placing critical and theoretical concerns in the service of “the ethical, the political, and the communal” (22). Organized around three main themes (“Aesthetics,” “Temporalities,” and “Critical Modes”), the essays juxtapose discussions of pivotal historical events and cultural phenomena with literary analyses of Romantic era “classics,” modernist experiments, and postmodern works of the post-Communist era, a corpus that includes, but is not limited to, landmark works of national culture that are now part of a fast-expanding planetary... (shrink)

Nurses and other medical practitioners often experience moral distress: they feel an anguished sense of responsibility for what they take to be their own moral failures, even when those failures were unavoidable. However, in such cases other people do not tend to think it is right to hold them responsible. This is an interesting mismatch of reactions. It might seem that the mismatch should be remedied by assuring the practitioner that they are not responsible, but I argue that this denies (...) something important that the phenomenon of moral distress tells us. In fact, both the practitioners’ tendencies to hold themselves responsible and other people’s reluctance to hold the practitioners responsible get something right. The practitioners may be right that they are responsible in the sense of having failed to meet a binding moral requirement, even when the requirement was impossible to meet. This makes moral distress a fitting response because it correctly represents their own action as a wrongdoing. However, others may meanwhile be right that the practitioners are not responsible in the sense of being culpable and blameworthy. To blame others, or oneself, for certain failures, including those that are unavoidable, would be unfair. My claim depends on distinguishing between the fittingness and the fairness of holding someone (including oneself) responsible for moral failure. Having drawn the distinction, I suggest that moral distress should be addressed in a way that both recognizes it as a fitting response and avoids the unfairness of blame. (shrink)

We have no interest whatever in minimizing the continuing history of racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise abusive biologisms, or the urgency of their exposure, that has made the gravamen of so many contemporary projects of critique. At the same time, we fear — with installation of an automatic antibiologism as the unshifting tenet of `theory' — the loss of conceptual access to an entire thought-realm. I was left wondering what danger had been averted by the exclusion of biology. What does (...) the nominative `biological or anatomical body' actually refer to? And what secures the separation of its inadmissible matter from the proper purview of Irigaray's textual interventions? When I asked a question to this effect it was met with a certain nervous comprehension. Deciding, perhaps, that I must still be immersed in a precritical understanding of the body, the speaker dismissed me with a revealing theatrical gesture. As if to emphasize the sheer absurdity of my question she pinched herself and commented `Well I don't mean this body'. And so it seemed with a gesture so matter of fact that it required no further comment, the fact of matter was both decided and dispatched. Feminism has been as deeply implicated in routinized antiessentialism as any of our critical procedures. Even though questions of `the body' have become increasingly fashionable in all manner of feminist projects, the schedule of feminism's antibiologism has been little altered. In most of these projects on `the body', the body in question is pursued in its socially, experientially, or psychically constituted forms, but rarely in its physiologically, biochemically, or microbiologically constituted form, the idea of biological construction having been rendered either unintelligible or naive. Despite an avowed interest in the body, there is a persistent distaste for biological detail. These feminist theories have usually been reluctant to engage with biological data: they retain, and encourage, the fierce antibiologism that marked the emergence of second wave feminism. That feminist scholars are particularly prone to a `knee jerk constructivism' helps explain the reluctance of those in the humanities to engage seriously with the claims of science. This book functions primarily as a reminder to social, political, and cultural theorists, particularly those interested in feminism, antiracism and questions of the politics of globalisation, that they have forgotten a crucial dimension of research, if not necessary to, then certainly useful for more incisively formulating the concepts on which they so heavily, if implicitly rely. It is written as a remembrance of what we have forgotten — not just the body, but that which makes it possible and which limits its actions: the precarious, accidental, contingent, expedient, striving, dynamic status of life in a messy, complicated, resistant, brute world of materiality, a world regulated by the exigencies, the forces, of space and time. We have forgotten the nature, the ontology, of the body, the conditions under which bodies are encultured, psychologized, given identity, historical location, and agency. We have forgotten where we come from. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Videogames and Interactive FictionGrant TavinorIIn the third-person crime simulator Grand Theft Auto 3, the fictional performing of all sorts of criminal nuisance is a possibility. (Squeamish readers, or those that are adamant videogames are playing a decisive role in the moral degeneration of modern society might want to turn away now!) Here is one possibility for players of the game: while driving around in the rundown red-light district of (...) Portland Island, try stopping beside one of the women dressed in leather dresses and knee-high stockings who say things like "Have you ever been down south?" The fictional woman will bend down to the car window and eventually hop in. Now drive to a secluded area, stop the car, and wait. What happens? The car begins to rock up and down, slowly at first, and then more quickly, squeaking all the while. As it does, your health meter increases and the cash meter decreases. Eventually, after the car has stopped rocking, the prostitute exits and walks away. This is all obviously of questionable taste. But the really horrible part is that it is possible to mug the prostitute and take back your money!Though I am reluctant to tell you this, the first time I discovered the trick, I felt a sort of sadistic joy at my reprehensible behavior. Friends in the room at the time thought the whole incident hilarious; except for one who thought it extremely revolting. Perhaps now though, I feel guilty for what I did to the prostitute. (Hence my reluctance to let you know of my sinister fictional activities!) Of course, this episode raises a host of ethical questions; I will not attempt to answer them here. What I am interested in is the possibility of fictional interaction itself. The important point is that this fictive episode seems to show that it is possible in the case of videogames to feel guilty or ashamed for what one [End Page 24] does in a fictional world. But how is this possible? What does interacting with a videogame amount to that it allows for this intimate (and dubious) emotional connection?There is a wide and impressive literature in the analytic philosophy of the arts concerning the nature of fiction and the practice that surrounds it; this literature gives us an ideal theoretical basis from which to explore the topic of videogames. But also, videogames will allow us to return our attention to the theory, perhaps perceiving areas in which it can be improved, so as to become more generally applicable. I begin this paper by setting out some initial descriptive examples of the ways in which videogames are interactive fictions. After discussing an ambiguity in the notion of what it is to interact with a fiction, I deal with two prominent aspects of that interaction; that focused on fictive props, and the apparent interaction players have with fictional worlds. Next, I argue that the interactive nature of videogames alters the character of our interest in them. Rather than a focus on interpretive and sympathetic engagement with narratives, videogames involve their appreciators in an active engagement with the problem spaces or kinetic narratives of gameplay. Finally, I argue that because action and emotion are close cognitive bedfellows, and because emotion plays an important role in the psychology of fictive practice, that the emotions experienced by videogame players will be distinctive to that fictive form.IIVideogames provide their players with a variety of opportunities for interactive engagement. The last ten years have seen significant development in the extent of the fictive interactivity of videogames, especially with the advent of the "next generation" consoles such as Playstation 2 and X-Box, and the burgeoning genre of PC gaming. With the intention of providing some descriptive substance for the following theoretical discussions, in this section I present some examples of the ways in which modern videogames are interactive fictions, and how they differ to more traditional fictive forms in this respect.Many videogames involve exploring an environment. In Grand Theft Auto 3, the player, in the guise of a criminal protagonist, is able to explore the streets of Liberty City. Completing the objectives of the... (shrink)

Knowledge hiding is known to have negative consequences on organizational performance. The existing literature mainly focuses on the identification of antecedents and consequences of knowledge hiding. The studies pertaining to the top management role in creating a culture that stops concealing knowledge within an organization are limited. To fill that gap, the paper empirically address the knowledge sharing culture and to explore the management support to avoid knowledge hiding culture in an organization. This study based on an empirical study carried (...) out in a United Kingdom-based laboratory within a high-tech global corporation, in which the atmosphere appeared conducive to knowledge sharing, and knowledge transfer appeared voluntary and spontaneous. The paper seeks to address why members of the case organization is reluctant about knowledge hiding among themselves. The study reveals that the management role is important in creating a culture that help discourage employees to withhold knowledge. The paper identifies the actions that top management takes to stop concealing knowledge within an organization. This study has provided several contributions. The findings of the study may be useful to managers and practitioners. For managers, this paper presents some important organizational factors that can be nurtured to avoid a knowledge-hiding culture in the organization. They can also take the management actions of the case organization as lessons to create a culture that encourage their employees to avoid knowledge hiding behavior. (shrink)

Locke’s theory of personal identity was philosophically groundbreaking for its attempt to establish a non-substantial identity condition. Locke states, “For the same consciousness being preserv’d, whether in the same or different Substances, the personal Identity is preserv’d” (II.xxvii.13). Many have interpreted Locke to think that consciousness identifies a self both synchronically and diachronically by attributing thoughts and actions to a self. Thus, many have attributed to Locke either a memory theory or an appropriation theory of personal identity. But the former (...) stumble on circularity and the latter is insufficient for Locke’s moral theory insofar as he is committed to a theory of divine rectification. The common problem is that Locke’s theory seems to demand an objective, or metaphysical, fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to a traditional notion of substance for the continuity. I’m suggesting something new. In II.xxvii of the Essay, we see an ambiguity in Locke’s use of the term ‘consciousness’. Locke seems to see consciousness as both a mental state by means of which we are aware of ourselves as perceiving and as the ongoing self we are aware of in these conscious states. First, I make the textual argument why we should read Locke as having a conception of a metaphysical fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to thinking or bodily substance to establish its continuity. I then argue that the metaphysical fact of an enduring consciousness is revealed to us as a phenomenological fact of experience. Due to the nature of certain kinds of perceptual situations we have an experience of ourselves as temporally extended. Although the text bears out that Locke seemed to think there is a fact of an ongoing consciousness, I argue that it is consistent with his reluctance elsewhere that he makes no further epistemological or ontological claims about it. Finally, I provide an account of Locke’s understanding of memory and its relation to consciousness that supports the claim that consciousness is something ontologically distinct from either thinking or bodily substance. (shrink)

The EU Collective Redress Recommendation has invited Member States to introduce collective redress mechanisms by July 26, 2015. The claim of the well-known reservations concerns the potentially abusive litigation and potential settlement of not well-founded claims resulting from controversial funding of cases by means of contingency fees and from “opt-out” class action procedures. The Article posits that apart from that claim, at bottom there may be some danger that the European Commission and private interest-groups may try to pursue the (...) enforcement of their regulatory agendas in this way at the expense of individual claimants’ interests. However, in contrast to the situation in the United States, the need to complement regulatory enforcement by collective action may not appear as strong because of the relatively strict regulatory control and enforcement, which may explain EU Member States’ longstanding reluctance to adopt collective proceedings due to their concern for plaintiffs’ individual rights. Therefore, a comparative analysis is carried out to see to what extent individual rights as opposed to regulatory goals are taken into account in the different newly revised systems in place across Europe. As an interim result, the Dutch settlement procedure for mass damage claims, the English Group Litigation Order and the German test case procedure turn out to be relatively well-suited to dealing with mass damage claims. At the same time, none of them can quite reach an optimal balance between individual rights and regulatory goals and therefore each of them is subject to criticism. That is why the further question is raised as to how far these procedures could complement each other, thus contributing to the enforcement of individual rights without overregulating markets in Europe. (shrink)

The tapestry of Wilfrid Sellars’s writings is dauntingly rich in stimulus and suggestion. I shall take up here an intriguing strand of thought that was woven into one of his early papers ‘Language, Rules and Behavior’, and I shall discuss some of the issues to which it gives rise. Sellars was concerned in that paper with the procedures by which people evaluate actions as right or wrong, arguments as valid or invalid, and cognitive claims as well or ill grounded. He (...) sought to map out a true vïa media, in his treatment of such procedures, between rationalistic apriorism and what, for want of a better term then, he called ‘descriptivism’, by which he understood the claim that all meaningful concepts and problems belong to the empirical or descriptive sciences, including the sciences of human behaviour. Sellars was thus led to ask not only ‘What sort of a thing is justification?’ but also ‘How do we come to accept the rules or laws that license justifications?’ And he saw these questions as arising in relation to any dialogue in which one party seeks to justify something to another. With regard to the justification of actions he held that the intuitionism of Ross, Prichard and Ewing was reasonably faithful to the phenomenology of moral thought and experience, though he did not agree with their belief in a nonnatural quality or relation that may belong to actions over and above their empirical characteristics. With regard to the justification of predictions he held that the relevant covering laws are ultimately rendered acceptable by an appeal to instances of their application. But he was reluctant to conceive this kind of appeal as an inductive procedure. Instead he called it an application of Socratic method, since the purpose of this method is to make explicit the rules that we have implicitly adopted for thought and action, and Sellars interpreted our judgments to the effect that A causally necessitates B as the expression of a rule governing our use of the terms ‘A’ and ‘B’: science consists in the attempt, by remodeling human language, to develop a system of rule-governed behaviour which will adjust the human organism to the environment. (shrink)

The Rationality of Love addresses the question whether love belongs, paradoxically enough, to the realm of reason, whether love belongs to the class of responses, such as belief and action, that admit of norms of justification and rationality. Are there normative reasons to love someone? Can love be an appropriate or fitting response to an individual? Or is love, like perceptual experiences, sensations, and urges, the sort of thing we just have and for which we cannot be normatively criticizable? (...) Ordinary thinking about love seems to pull us in different directions. On the one hand, love—involving as it does lots of non-rational elements—seems to be a good example of a response we shouldn’t assess in terms of rationality. On the other hand, we find it appropriate or fitting to love certain things and not others, and we are not reluctant to ask ourselves why we love certain people. This book defends the view that love is subject to normative standards by carefully assessing the various answers to the normative question about love and by providing its own solution. An extensive critical discussion of the so-called ‘no-reasons’ view of love is given, which helps uncover important issues to be tackled by any advocate of the rationality of love. In addition, the discussion is informed by the philosophy of normativity, an area often neglected in the debate. All in all, this book provides a systematic and up-to-date discussion of a central issue in the philosophy of love. (shrink)

I explore three points about the relationship between C.I. Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism and W.V. Quine’s naturalized epistemology inspired by Robert Sinclair’s Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction. First, I highlight Lewis’s long-standing commitment to Platonism about meaning and its connection to his reflective philosophical method and rejection of a linguistic account of analyticity. Second, I consider Sinclair’s claim that “Lewis’s epistemology provides no indication concerning how, despite different sensory experiences, we still come to agree on what we are talking (...) about and what counts as evidence” (2022, 113). I find more hints, especially in Lewis’s account of how we verify that two people share meaning in common. However, some of the pragmatic and broadly empirical factors Lewis appeals to are not part of Quine’s naturalized epistemology. Finally, I relate these points to Quine’s (1953/1980) claim to advance a more “thorough pragmatism” than Lewis. Quine does not say much about action, value, and ethics, but these are central parts of Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism and a source of his reluctance to abandon those parts of his epistemology that Sinclair argues Quine found dispensable. (shrink)

During the COVIDicine, many nurses awoke to the ways that the Healthcare‐Industrial Complex (HIC) dictates the care we are able to provide. Using the Foucauldian concepts of pastoral power and governmentality, we explore the ways that nurses participate in upholding power structures within the HIC and reproducing them in our work, contributing to a carceral culture based on hierarchy and power dynamics. We also explore the ways nurses are both agentic in this system and subject to it, reluctant to (...) make waves and lose our place within a system that can offer nurses safety and security in, and most importantly, a paycheck. This paper articulates a prefigurative anarchist approach to nursing praxis. Through the writing of Emma Goldman, we locate a historically founded philosophical basis for practical tactics that nurses can use to actualise this praxis. Both individually and as a collective, nurses can assert their own ethic and power through direct action, micro‐insurgency and solidarity to build the world we know can be. Our only limitation is our imagination. (shrink)

Originally published in 1979, this book shows that a recognition of the rationality of moral judgment and moral action in no way involves us in diminishing our respect for liberty, authenticity, sincerity or integrity. It maintains that the resolution of these issues lies in recognising that the necessary involvement of the emotions in moral judgments and moral choices need not give rise to any hesitation or reluctance to treat moral questions as needing and permitting the use of the resources (...) of human understanding. (shrink)

The article discusses the relevance of ontology, the metaphysical study of being, in social sciences through a comparison of three distinct outlooks: Roy Bhaskar's version of critical realism, a pragmatic realist approach the most renowned representatives of which are Rom Harré and Hilary Putnam, and the authors’ own synthesis of the pragmatist John Dewey's and the neopragmatist Richard Rorty's ideas, here called methodological relationalism. The Bhaskarian critical realism is committed to the heavy ontological furniture of metaphysical transcendentalism, resting on essentialist (...) presumptions of causality and social structures, tacitly creating a dualism between individuals and society. Pragmatic realists, for their part, carry much lighter metaphysical baggage than critical realists and, much in a pragmatist vein, accept the idea that social scientists should study society by studying social life—the interwoven activities of individuals. Nevertheless, pragmatic realists only reluctantly, if at all, renounce the subject–object dualism and its ontological implications. Drawing on the ideas of Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty, the writers outline their own antirepresentationalist, antiessentialist approach to social sciences. The proposed methodological relationalism is a pragmatist approach of Deweyan origin. Based on a Darwinian understanding of human beings as organisms trying to cope with their environment, it emphasises the insight that one can neither step outside one's own action, nor withdraw from the actor's point of view, just as one cannot cognitively step outside language. (shrink)

My concern in this paper is how to reconcile a central tension in Hannah Arendt’s thinking, one that – if left unresolved – may make us reluctant to endorse her political theory. Arendt was profoundly and painfully aware of the horrors of political evil; in fact, she is almost unparalleled in 20 th century thought in her concern for the consequences of mass political violence, the victims of political atrocities, and the most vulnerable in political society – the stateless, (...) the pariahs, the outcasts. At least, this is the case in her discussions of concrete, historical political situations. Yet in her philosophical writings, she continues to argue that the political realm ultimately redeems human existence, and furthermore, that politics should remain distinct and autonomous from moral evaluation. Political action must be evaluated according to “greatness,” not goodness or any other explicitly moral or even ethical standard. She goes so far as to suggest that politics and morality may be deeply hostile to one another, and can only be reconciled in situations of extreme emergency. This can leave many feeling both perplexed and deeply uncomfortable with the theory of human action that Arendt proposes. Drawing on her notions of political conscience, judgment and - in particular - her account of forgiveness, in this paper I argue that Arendt offers an ethics of plurality, in which what is good is developed from what is most politically important: amor mundi, or love of our shared political world. (shrink)

Victor Eremita proposes that the reader understand parts I and II of Either/Or as parties in a dialogue; most readers in fact view II as a devastating reply to I. I suggest that part I be read as a reaction or follow-up to Kierkegaard’s dissertation. Much of part I presents reflective characters who are aware of their freedom but reluctant or unable to adopt the ethical life. The modern Antigone and the Silhouettes are sisters of Alcibiades—failed students of Socrates. (...) I articulate and defend their modes of loving, which are significantly different from Don Giovanni’s and Johannes the Seducer’s purely aesthetic approaches to love. Such feminine love, I argue, dwells in the disputed territory between passion and action, substance and freedom, the aesthetic and the ethical. Antigone’s love is a passion she both suffers and tries to appropriate. The Silhouettes’ devotion to their beloved makes them dependent on him. I defend this dependence even though it is undoubtedly a form of despair. By appealing to Sartre’s account of love, I argue moreover that this love involves a recognition and appraisal of the beloved absent in the love exemplified by Fear and Trembling’s knight of infinite resignation. (shrink)

While early studies of populism, usually dated from the 1960s, were highly interdisciplinary, contemporary research in this field is dominated by political science and political theory. This current phase of research is narrowly focused on certain forms of political action and remarkably reluctant to pathologize the US case. Social theory plays at most a marginal role. Recent historicizations of this field have failed to recognize the significance of the prior ‘missing first phase’ of populism studies (1940–65) led by (...) key sociological figures among the New York Intellectuals and the Frankfurt School. Social theorization was prominent then and US populism’s contingent vulnerability to demagogic exploitation was a major research focus. This article provides an immanent critical reconstruction of these thinkers’ key social-theoretical insights, building to a schematization of ‘modern demagogy’. (shrink)

Despite attempts to encourage whistleblowing, lingering reluctance to report questionable acts remains frustratingly apparent. Our objective is to examine the regret a professional anticipates when evaluating the action of reporting or not reporting, and whether the framing of the action influences regret. Responses from 263 professionals indicate that regret depends on the moral intensity of the situation and how the action is framed. Regret for whistleblowing is not comparable to regret for not remaining silent, despite the fact (...) that these two descriptions result in the same action. This important implication may inform the way we educate and encourage whistleblowing. (shrink)

The mortality salience (MS) hypothesis postulates that anxiety elicited by mortality awareness leads people to develop negative emotions toward those who hold values inconsistent with their worldview faith. We explored this hypothesis in a sample of 76 Israeli combat soldiers, who were asked to reflect on either their mortality or dental pain. Subsequently, participants reported their motivation to help a father in need who was either an Arab (outgroup) or a Jewish Israeli (ingroup), as well as their perceptions of threat (...) by Arab Israelis. Regression analysis indicated that mortality reminders intensified soldiers’ perception of threat by the outgroup, leading to an increased desire to assist a Jewish-Israeli father, and a decreased motivation to help an Arab-Israeli one. The findings demonstrate the pronounced effects of MS on soldiers involved in frequent combat actions in terms of evoking negative emotions leading to reluctance to help unarmed civilian outgroup members. Recommendations for soldiers’ pre-deployment psychoeducation sessions are provided. (shrink)

Ethics teachers are regularly confronted with disturbing cases brought in by medical students in class. These classes are considered confidential, so that everyone can speak freely about their experiences. But what should ethics teachers do when they hear about a situation they consider to be outright alarming, for example where patients/students’ safety is at stake or where systematic power abuse seems to be at hand? Should they remain neutral or should they step in and intervene? In the Netherlands, as in (...) many other countries, there are no clear guidelines for ethics teachers on how to respond. To get more insight into what teachers themselves think a proper response would be, we interviewed 18 Dutch medical ethics teachers. We found that Dutch ethics teachers will address the issue in class, but that they are overall reluctant to intervene; take action outside the scope of class. This reluctance is partly rooted in the conviction that ethicists should stay neutral and facilitate reflection, instead of telling students or physicians what to do. At the same time, this neutral position seems a difficult place to leave for those teachers who would want to or feel they need to. This has to do with various organizational and institutional constraints tied up with their position. The study invites medical ethics teachers to reflect on these constraints together and think about how to proceed from there. This study seeks to contribute to research on cultural change in medicine and medical students’ experiences of moral distress. (shrink)

The European Union is strategically committed to the development of nanotechnology and its industrial exploitation. However, nanotechnology also has the potential to disrupt human health and the environment. The EU claims to be committed to the safe and responsible development of nanotechnology. In this sense, the EU has become the first governing body in the world to develop nanospecific regulations, largely due to legislative action taken by the European Parliament, which has compensated for the European Commission’s reluctance to develop (...) special regulations for nanomaterials. Nevertheless, divergences aside, political bodies in the EU assume that nanotechnology development is controllable and take for granted that both the massive industrial use of nanomaterials and a high level of environmental and health protection are compatible. However, experiences such as the European controversy over agri-food biotechnology, which somewhat delegitimized the regulatory authority of the EU over technological safety and acceptability, arguably show that controllability assumptions are contestable on the grounds of alternative socio-economic and cultural preferences and values. Recently developed inclusive governance models on safety and innovation, such as “Responsible Research and Innovation”, widely claim that a diversity of considerations and issues are integrated into R&D processes. Even so, the possibility of more radically alternative constitutions of socio-technical safety seems to be seriously limited by the current ideology of innovation and economic imperatives of the global, knowledge-based, capitalist economy. (shrink)

There is a tendency to prune the record of restrictions on the freedom of thought and expression in fifth-century Athens. K. J. Dover has demonstrated that many of the stories of attacks on intellectuals rest on little more than flimsy speculation. Similarly there has been a reluctance to accept the historicity of the several restrictions on comedy recorded by scholiasts. Thus, for example, H. B. Mattingly has expressed doubts about Morychides' decree, and S. Halliwell has rejected Antimachus' decree as a (...) fiction and has adopted an agnostic attitude towards Syracosius' decree. But one cannot sweep all the references aside as fallacious inferences. This short paper looks first at the evidence that Cleon initiated a legal action against Aristophanes after the production of the The Babylonians, in the light of what the Old Oligarch wrote about curbs on comedians. Secondly, the historicity of Syracosius' decree will be tested by an attempt to define its nature and purpose in its political context. This exercise will show that circumstantial evidence adduced against the historicity of the decree has no compelling force. (shrink)

Human rights arguments have been successful before several domestic courts across Europe in imposing more ambitious action in cutting greenhouse gas emissions upon governments. Yet, the integration of climate justice concerns in those judicial decisions have been insufficiently studied. This paper seeks to contribute to such endeavor by analyzing the cases of Urgenda v. The Netherlands, Klimaatzaak v. Belgium and Neuebauer v. Germany against the climate justice framework. In Part One we set out our analytical framework. A climate justice (...) approach acknowledges that climate mitigation, like the effects of climate change itself, is distributional in nature. In particular, climate justice highlights the unequal distribution of burdens and benefits across three dimensions: international (justice between states); intergenerational (justice between generations); and intragenerational (justice between social groups along socio-economic, racial and gender determinants). In Part Two, we offer a close reading of three key rights-based mitigation decisions to evaluate how judges have accounted for the various dimensions of climate justice. Detailing the contrasted approaches of climate justice in those decisions, we also point to a common reluctance to engage in intragenerational justice reflected in the failure to fashion rights-based obligations which take into account the inequalities across communities and social groups. (shrink)

Abstract‘Assisted dying’ (an umbrella term for euthanasia and/or assisted suicide) is frequently defended as an act of autonomous self-determination in death but, given a choice, between 93.3% and 100% of patients are reluctant to self-administer (median 99.5%). If required to self-administer, fewer patients request assisted death and, of these, a sizable proportion do not self-administer but die of natural causes. This manifest avoidance runs counter to the concept of autonomous self-determination, even on the supposition that suicide could truly be (...) autonomous. The avoidance of self-administration does not show that self-administration, when it occurs, is necessarily autonomous. It suggests, rather, that there are other frames by which assisted dying is being understood. One such is desire for medical control, a desire shared by patients and doctors. Such a frame is not directed towards an exacting autonomy (self-directed action by the patient) but towards a comforting heteronomy (letting the doctor take control). (shrink)

Early in his career, Karl Marx complained that “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Philosophers Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle have recently issued this same complaint against their contemporaries, arguing that philosophy has become an isolated, “purified” discipline, detached from its historical commitments to virtue and to public engagement. In this paper I argue that they are wrong about contemporary philosophy and about its history. Philosophy hitherto has always been characterized (...) both by a concern with practical engagement and by serious misgivings about such engagement. I show that reluctance to engage with practical affairs was a feature of philosophy long before the advent of the modern university and that a wide range of contemporary philosophers are concerned with virtue and public engagement. Finally, I argue that Frodeman and Briggle’s own account of contemporary philosophy makes it unsuitable both as the subject of their title (“When Philosophy Lost Its Way”) and as the object of their call to action. (shrink)

Using video recordings of draft meetings conducted as part of an intramural basketball program as data, this conversation analytic study examines the use of an incomplete utterance in a joint evaluative activity. In particular, we focus on how the participants, volunteer coaches, who meet to draft players for their respective teams, produce a syntactically incomplete utterance as a means to critically assess a player, a non-present third party to the interaction. Analysis reveals that the participants use an incomplete utterance as (...) part of dispreferred design; it allows them to withhold articulating overt criticism of others. By trailing off where the criticism is due, the participants display reluctance to verbalize what is to be said and treat its articulation as delicate. The syntactic structure of the utterance that includes a contrastive conjunction and accompanying embodied actions such as head shakes help them convey a critical stance. We examine the use of incomplete utterances in both agreement and disagreement sequences; the recipients display their unproblematic understanding of the critical assessment and respond by providing their own assessments that either affiliate or disaffiliate with the conveyed critical stance. (shrink)

Learn all about animal rights activism, from ending animal testing to veganism. Get a global look at the history of the movement, meet the activists involved, and celebrate some of the legal victories! Each chapters end with a call to action, so kids can feel inspired to get involved in their own communities. This high-interest book is written at a lower reading level for struggling readers. Considerate text and engaging art and photographs are sure to grab even the most (...) reluctant readers. Series includes a table of contents, sidebars, bibliography, glossary, index, and author biography. (shrink)

Robert F. is an eighty-five-year-old who suffered a heart attack at home in a rural location some thirty minutes from any major hospital. By the time the paramedics arrived, he was unconscious and nonresponsive. After spontaneous return of circulation, they began their standard procedure of therapeutic hypothermia. Robert's core temperature was lowered using ice packs, and cold intravenous fluids were initiated. Soon afterward, Robert started to shiver when his body temperature reached 35.6° Celsius. He was then given a bolus of (...) vecuronium as a neuromuscular blockade, sedated, and intubated. He was also given a low-dose vasopressin for blood-pressure control. Shortly after Robert arrived in the emergency room, his daughter, his medical decision-maker, produced an advance directive documenting that her father has a do-not-resuscitate order, and she demanded that the breathing tube and any other life-sustaining treatments be withdrawn immediately. The medical staff is very reluctant to comply with this demand for immediate action. Until the neuromuscular blockade wears off, removing the ventilator will prevent Robert from breathing. Furthermore, it may take some time to reverse the therapeutic hypothermia procedure to the point that the patient is at normal temperature. In addition, therapeutic hypothermia itself often causes arrest, so the patient may need to be resuscitated again. Should the staff wait until the patient is warm or honor the decision of his daughter, who holds his medical power of attorney? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Collective Regret and Guilt and Heroic Agency:A Pro-Existential ApproachIonut UnteaIntroductory Discussion: Challenging the Supposedly "Rationally Refutable" Character of GuiltStudies in social psychology point out that feelings of guilt are more likely than feelings of regret to occur in an interpersonal context (Wagner et al. 1) marked by "interpersonal harm," or harm done to others (Berndsen et al. 55, 66). In keeping with these studies, in social ontology, regret seems (...) to involve an evaluation of the kind of wrongdoing that is out of someone's control (Konzelmann Ziv 488), while the feeling of guilt implies the self-attribution of blame over something that is connected, even in a loose manner, to a blameworthy action (Gilbert, "Group Wrongs" 65, 66n3).In order to advance the argument of the reasonableness of a person's feeling of guilt if that person is part of a group that has acted wrongfully, Margaret Gilbert distinguishes between feelings of personal guilt and feelings of collective guilt ("Group Wrongs" 76), with the latter still impacting on the individual feelings of guilt. From this point of view, a person may be "personally guiltless," but can still reasonably feel guilt if that person's group behaves in a morally unacceptable way ("Group Wrongs" 66). By distinguishing between personal and collective guilt, Gilbert intends to give an "intelligible" dimension to what she calls Jaspers's "dilemma" ("Collective Guilt" 135, 136). She emphasizes Karl Jaspers's hesitation in categorizing his own feeling of guilt for what his people have done: "There is a way that he 'cannot help feeling' which is 'rationally refutable'" (Gilbert "Collective Guilt" 135; Jaspers 74). As a philosopher, Gilbert argues, Jaspers finds this existential dilemma "extremely problematic" ("Collective Guilt" 135). Nonetheless, Gilbert also concedes that these two types of guilt may be difficult to distinguish in regard to their "phenomenological conditions" at the level of [End Page 59] the "pangs and twinges" experienced by each person, but rather on the basis of the "judgment or thought" involved with that feeling ("Collective Guilt" 135).Gilbert argues that "it is indeed intelligible for group members to feel guilt over the action in question" by virtue of what she calls a "foundational joint commitment," which brings together a number of people to "intend as a body" to carry out certain actions ("Collective Guilt" 136). Although not committed to the goal of showing the intelligibility of the feeling of membership guilt as is Gilbert, I favor the acceptance of a kind of reasonableness of such a feeling, even when it conserves its "rationally refutable" character. This even applies when membership guilt may not so easily be distinguished from personal guilt. Gilbert sees joint commitment as "authority-creating," in the sense that "a person or body" may become "authorized" to apply the collective intention to the concrete settings. This is realized by making decisions for the entire group, thus bringing the collective intention into effect ("Collective Guilt" 136). This joint commitment becomes binding for individual members of the group since once they commit themselves to the group's intention, "they are not in a position unilaterally to change the collective's mind." This does not apply in situations when "they may do so by mutual consent" ("Collective Guilt" 127). What I find concerning about Gilbert's involvement of the argument of the "authority-creating" ("Collective Guilt" 136) joint commitment within the dimension of membership guilt is precisely that it discourages any contestation of the authority that decides the content of the collective intention, unless this is done by "mutual consent" ("Collective Guilt" 127). This makes the members of the collective rather passive, and unwilling to challenge the authority generated through their participation in the joint commitment.This reluctance of the members of a collective body to challenge the authority that gives content to their collective intention can easily be identified in history and in the contemporary landscapes of political authority, especially in countries led continuously for decades by authoritarian leaders. In spite of the oppressive character of their leadership, these are very rarely contested, and then only by sporadic voices who fail to generate a coherent long-term commitment from other group members. In this sense, Gilbert's... (shrink)

Many legal disputes turn on scientific, especially statistical, evidence. Traditionally scientists have accepted only that statistical evidence which satisfies a 95 percent (or 99 percent) rule — that is, only evidence which has less than five percent (or one percent) probability of resulting from chance.The rationale for this rule is the reluctance of scientists to accept anything less than the best-supported new knowledge. The rule reflects the internal needs of scientific practice. However, when uncritically adopted as a rule for admitting (...) legal evidence, the seemingly innocuous 95 percent rule distorts the balance of interests historically protected by the legal system. In particular, plaintiffs in toxic tort and employment discrimination suits are effectively held to a heavier burden of proof in showing that their injuries were more probably than not caused by the defendant's actions. The result is that too many victims of toxic torts or employment discrimination cannot win legal redress for their injuries. (shrink)

Food irradiation is a physical method of processing food (e.g. freezing, canning). It has been thoroughly researched over the last four decades and is recognized as a safe and wholesome method. It has the potential both of disinfesting dried food to reduce storage losses and disinfesting fruits and vegetables to meet quarantine requirements for export trade. Low doses of irradiation inhibit spoilage losses due to sprouting of root and tuber crops. Food- borne diseases due to contamination by pathogenic microorganisms and (...) parasites of meat, poultry, fish, fishery products and spices are on the increase. Irradiation of these solid foods can decontaminate them of pathogenic organisms and thus provide safe food to the consumer. Irradiation can successfully replace the fumigation treatment of cocoa beans and coffee beans and disinfest dried fish, dates, dried fruits, etc. One of the most important advantages of food irradiation processing is that it is a coldprocess which does not significantly alter physico-chemical characters of the treated product. It can be applied to food after its final packaging. Similar to other physical processes of food processing, (e.g. canning, freezing), irradiation is a capital intensive process. Thus, adequate product volume must be made available in order to maximize the use of the facility and minimize the unit cost of treatment. Lack of harmonization of regulations among the countries which have approved irradiated foods hampers the introduction of this technique for international trade. Action at the international level has to be taken in order to remedy this situation. One of the important limitations of food irradiation processing is its slow acceptance by consumers, due inter alia to a perceived association with radioactivity. The food industry tends to be reluctant to use the technology in view of uncertainties regarding consumer acceptance of treated foods. Several market testing and consumer acceptance studies have been carried out on food irradiation in recent years. These studies showed that, if the safety and the benefits of food irradiation were properly explained, the consumers were willing to accept irradiated foods. Considering its potential role in the reduction of post-harvest losses, providing safe supply of food and overcoming quarantine barriers, food irradiation has received wider government approvals during the last decade. There is also a trend towards increased commercialization of irradiated food. Currently, there are 47 irradiation facilities in some 23 countries being used for treating foods for commercial purposes. (shrink)