Social Philosophy Today

The mantra of the Western philosopher is “know thyself.” However, many of us in the discipline of philosophy don’t seem to practice what we preach—or even preach this mantra. This is true in the conduct of our profession. The practices and norms of the members of an institution constitute that institution. If we are not rigorously self-examining ourselves, especially in the conduct of our professional lives, then the discipline of philosophy, the institution of philosophy as it exists in the West, is not consistent with this defining imperative.

This paper begins to develop a conception of ecological subjectivity and hence of social-political practice that can promote social justice across diverse populations and situations. It urges a provocative posing of the question “who do we think we are?” to direct attention to often unspoken assumptions about subjectivity and agency that tend silently to inform current philosophical inquiry. Drawing attention to the often-unconscious processes of “we-saying.” it aims to highlight and to prompt contestation of the silent assumptions that tend to inform that “we.” In so doing, it appeals to humility as an epistemic and moral virtue.

In this dialogue, Sir Isaac Newton and the Priestess Diotima of Mantinea (who have met previously in “Two Cheers for Reductionism”) engage current debates in the politics of education and their conceptual underpinnings. Diotima challenges the assumption that the acquisition of educational content or skills should dominate our concept of learning. She develops an alternative conception of education as fundamentally moral, interpersonal, and emotional, and thus prone to destruction in the face of the objectifying forces of high-stakes testing and a reductive audit culture. Lord Newton is skeptical of this conception, and of its pedagogical, rhetorical, and political implications.

The liberal perspective entrusts to civic education the roles of combating declining numbers in national public participation and of closing the civic empowerment gap between privileged and under-privileged groups. Citizens equipped with rationality, on this view, will be able to see that participating in the public arena is a benefit to themselves and to the country. This paper critically examines this position, and finds that liberal forms of education suffer from three failings. First, people’s rationality is more likely to persuade them that public participation is too costly in comparison with the advantages found in private life. Second, cognitive states developed in learning-based education may not provide sufficient motivation for action. Third, the liberal take on education may have exaggerated people’s capacity for making rational choices. These three failings come together to suggest that liberal style civic education is unlikely to increase public participation or diminish the civic empowerment gap.

Using Michel Foucault’s framework of technologies (the goods and services provided to encourage particular practices or behaviors) can be a guide to understand how teachers become technological components that receive governance. Through this governance, pedagogical practices are perceived as similar yet may be vastly different. I utilize three of Foucault’s technologies to understand the differences in teacher practices. The first being governmental technologies, which are the rules and regulations that confine pedagogical practices. Second, the consumer technologies or the goods and services needed to sustain the rules that regulate pedagogy. Third is organizational technology, or ways in which one might police and govern the use of the pedagogical practices.

This paper focuses on epistemic practices within biomedical ethics that are related to disability. These practices are one of the reasons that there is tension between biomedical ethicists and disability advocates. I argue that appeals to conceptual neutrality regarding disability, which Anita Silvers recommends, are counterproductive. Objectivity as neutrality serves to obscure the social values and interests that inform epistemic practices. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory and epistemologies of ignorance, I examine ways that appeals to objectivity as neutrality serve to maintain the status quo and ignorance regarding disability. I adapt Charles Mills’s notion of “white ignorance” in order to consider the systematic social ignorance regarding disability that is treated as knowledge. Bioethicists commonly dismiss the reports of disabled people regarding their quality of life as biased, while claiming that their own judgments are objective. Sandra Harding’s notion of strong objectivity is useful for thinking about ways that examination of values and interests informing epistemic practices related to disability in biomedical ethics could create better knowledge practices by taking the standpoint of disabled people seriously.

Respect for autonomy grounds common ethical judgments about why people should be allowed to make decisions for themselves. Under this assumption, it is concerning that a number of feminist conceptions of autonomy present challenges for people with intellectual disabilities. This paper explores some of the most philosophically influential feminist accounts of autonomy and demonstrates how these accounts exclude persons with intellectual disabilities. As a possible solution to these accounts, Laura Davy’s inclusive design approach is presented, which is a revised conception of autonomy that accommodates intellectual disabilities. While Davy’s approach to autonomy views people with intellectual disabilities as autonomous, it encounters limitations in regard to sexual autonomy, which incorporates certain judgments that are intuitively at odds with her recommendations. The remainder of this paper describes some complexities of sexual autonomy and determines why these are problematic for Davy’s account. After analyzing some of the challenges that sexual autonomy presents, I suggest a potential modification for consideration. This modification will allow Davy’s account to address the topic of sexual autonomy for persons with intellectual disabilities. My proposal is a matter of theory following practice.

This paper raises the question of whether there is anything foundational to hopefulness when considering it as a virtue, and uses the Aristotelian distinction between virtue in the “natural sense” and virtue in the “strict sense” to make the claim that hopefulness has a primacy to it. While that primacy rests on the existence of care and responsiveness of community, those caretakers must themselves be possessed of hopefulness, which, at its best will be virtuous.

It is commonly held that the reason we ought to forgive those who wrong or harm us is to overcome the stranglehold that the vindictive passions or negative emotions have over us. On this common account, the driving reason to forgive someone else for the harm they have caused or the wrong they have done to us is to heal oneself. I find this account wrongheaded, as it runs the risk of treating forgiveness as a facile panacea which fails to reliably achieve the emotional benefits for the forgiver that it is meant to. Instead I offer what I call the Threefold View of Forgiveness. In proffering forgiveness, the forgiver must first “soften her heart” by overcoming hostile feelings toward the wrongdoer. But the forgiver must also actively and patiently work toward reconciliation with the wrongdoer. Finally, the forgiver must “wipe clean the slate” of the repentant wrongdoer by removing or suspending the wrong. I argue that the Threefold View of Forgiveness is superior because it is better suited to reliably achieving the psychological benefits we want from forgiveness on account of the social practice of reconciliation that underwrites it.

This essay represents an attempt to determine, first, whether or not the neoliberal principles and policies that have largely shaped the global economy over the past several decades in fact have their basis, as they are often thought to have, in classical political economy, particularly that of Adam Smith as it is developed in his Wealth of Nations, and, second, whether or not they in fact serve to promote, as they are often argued to do, the prosperity of individuals, particularly those living in developing nations. In both cases, this attempt depends heavily upon and benefits greatly from the work of Cambridge institutional economist Ha-Joon Chang. Ultimately, the essay presents a case, first, for the proposition that these neoliberal principles and polices depart significantly from those advocated by Adam Smith and, second, for the proposition that neither of these alternatives is best suited to promote the prosperity of individuals living in developing nations. In addition, it presents a brief account of why neoliberal policies have been so widely adopted by developing nations today as well as a brief account of how they might come to be replaced by better ones in the future.

T. M. Scanlon defines intolerance as the “enforcement of morals,” particularly of controversial moral norms, and especially (though not exclusively) through the law. If this is correct, then the “boycott” is a form of “intolerant” protest: indeed, it is part of a long social tradition of intolerant protest practices, often aiming at the exclusion of norm-violators from the community, which developed in the course of the still unresolved historical struggle over the boundaries of the moral domain. Drawing on Marcuse’s account of “repressive tolerance,” I argue that the fact that the boycott is indeed intolerant in this sense is in no way a reason for condemning it, and that such condemnation in fact reflects an implausibly ideal view of politics and the law in our actually existing societies. On the contrary, such “intolerant” tactics should be seen by progressive movements today as attractive tools, especially for those which, like Occupy, the environmental and anti-globalization movements, attempt to exert pressure on purportedly norm-free or norm-excluding economic practices.

Debates concerning Rawls’s definition of civil disobedience have been the focus of much of the discussion on civil disobedience since the publication of A Theory of Justice. However, in this paper I will be focusing on a question about Rawls’s view of civil disobedience that has been largely ignored in the literature. Throughout the section on the justification of civil disobedience, Rawls clearly and explicitly says that people have a right to engage in civil disobedience, provided that all of the conditions for civil disobedience are met. My question is: Can we say something stronger than people have a right to engage in civil disobedience? In other words, is it possible that people have either a duty or an obligation to engage in civil disobedience under certain circumstances? If so, who has these duties or obligations—would everyone in the state have these duties and/or obligations, or just some people? In this paper I propose to carefully examine what Rawls has to say about political obligations and the natural duty of justice, and see what light I can shed on the question of an obligation or duty to engage in civil disobedience from a Rawlsian perspective.

An argument can be constructed from Kantian resources to the effect that we not only can, but must resist our own oppression according to the second formulation of the categorical imperative. This derivation of the duty from the Humanity formulation presents it as a fully moral categorical duty. Such a portrayal of our obligations in even the harshest of circumstances suggests that no circumstances can take our humanity away. On this Kantian view, it is possible to maintain a self worthy of respect no matter what. Such a view is saddled with difficulties, however. This paper addresses the ways that these difficulties can be successfully addressed and discusses the limitations of a more modest version of a Kantian account of the duty to resist oppression, advanced by Carol Hay. This paper will conclude that the more modest account cannot provide the hope for retaining our worth and the explanation of the injustice of oppression the way that a more straightforward reading of a fully moral obligation can and that the apparent difficulties of the more extreme view are surmountable.