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41. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
Kacey Warren Does Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach Support Political Surrogacy?
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Martha Nussbaum offers a robust vision of justice in terms of capability that she contends is capable of handing the most difficult cases. In recent work, she suggests that her capabilities approach supports a range of accommodations to make voting accessible and feasible for citizens with cognitive disabilities, including surrogate voting in the instance of profound cognitive impairment. Although Nussbaum’s call for political surrogacy is noble, I argue that it conflicts with at least three of five commitments that together characterize her capabilities approach to justice. The commitments that characterize her capabilities approach to justice include the commitment to justice in terms of capability, the commitment to an Aristotelian conception of human dignity, the commitment to a universal standard of justice, and the commitment to liberal individualism. In addition, Nussbaum’s approach is a “social minimum” approach to justice. Thus my critique is methodological. I do not contend that political surrogacy is either undesirable or unjustifiable, only that it is incompatible with Nussbaum’s capabilities approach.
42. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
Sally J. Scholz Orcid-ID Engaged Respect: A Tribute to Jean Harvey
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In this tribute to Jean Harvey, I take up a project that she left unfinished: the articulation of an account of engaged respect. Building on her discussion of facets of the moral community—namely self-respect, the irreducibly individual nature of civilized oppression and interactional justice, education and empathetic understanding, and moral solidarity—I suggest we can discern a Harveyian conception of engaged respect. Harvey acknowledges the fallibility of human beings, including well-meaning moral actors responding to their moral obligation to ameliorate relations of oppression. This, together with her accounts of “involvement and accountability” and gratitude, guides the development of a concept of engaged respect that captures the attentiveness and support she envisioned for the moral community.
43. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
Karin R. Howe Is There a Rawlsian Duty to Engage in Civil Disobedience?
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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.
44. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
David A. Borman Protest, Parasitism, and Community: Reflections on the Boycott
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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.
45. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
Crista Lebens “Sacredly Cultivated Ignorance”: Attacks on Anti-Racist Instructors as a Form of Academic Repression
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A pattern of attacks against instructors of color, often untenured and female, has emerged in recent years. A democratic society depends, for healthy functioning, on an educated citizenry. The attacks on education, especially on race and ethnic studies programs, are a part of a systemic movement to suppress radical thought within the university. I argue that this pattern of repression is a form of white ignorance and fits into Charles Mills’s analysis of the epistemology of ignorance. Moreover, this ignorance of systemic racism on the part of white people is as James Baldwin called it, ‘sacred and sacredly cultivated.’ To counter this pattern of repression, those of us with a measure of protection under the principles of academic freedom must be attentive to the ways in which efforts to address racial injustice in the university, such as work on diversity committees, can be turned to support institutional goals that conflict with the goal of racial and other forms of social justice.
46. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
Larry Busk Sleepwalker: Arendt, Thoughtlessness, and the Question of Little Eichmanns
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Academia is still feeling the echoes of a controversy that emerged in 2005 over an essay by Ward Churchill, former professor at the University of Colorado, in which he refers to (certain) victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks as “little Eichmanns.” While there have been many (violent) condemnations and (limited) defenses of the piece, there has been little discussion of what the term “little Eichmann” actually means. This paper analyzes the incendiary remark in the context of its reference, the work of Hannah Arendt. Read in this light, it ceases to be a simple defamation and becomes a momentous intellectual challenge.
47. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
Krista K. Thomason Civic Education and the Ideal of Public Reason
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Meira Levinson argues for a robust civics education that models the practices of good citizenship. One of the elements of that civics education is teaching students how to take up the perspectives of others. The question arises: how do we teach students and citizens alike to take up the perspectives of others? Here I argue that we can make sense of perspective-taking by appealing to Rawls’s notion of public reason as an ideal. I conclude by arguing that a commitment to the ideal of public reason can help identify and resist oppression and marginalization.
48. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
Jeff Gauthier Introduction
49. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
Notes on Contributors
50. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 31
David J. Leichter The Politics of Civic Education: Commentary on Meira Levinson’s No Citizen Left Behind
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Meira Levinson’s No Citizen Left Behind addresses how the unequal distribution of economic, cultural, and political power along socioeconomic and racial lines affects civic engagement and democratic participation. In order to address this gap, Levinson develops a critical pedagogy that encourages teachers and students to recognize the ways that identity and ideology are intertwined. After briefly reviewing some of the considerations that frame her book, I suggest that her account of an engaged civic pedagogy could be further strengthened by considering how non-traditional forms of protest make possible new forms of solidarity.
51. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
Jeffrey Gauthier Introduction
52. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
Margaret Crouch Why Can’t We Behave? Justice and Ethical Conduct in the Academy
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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.
53. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
Lorraine Code Who Do We Think We Are?
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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.
54. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
Matt Silliman Learning as Learning How to Feel
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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.
55. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
Gordon B. Mower Doubts about Liberal Forms of Civic Education
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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.
56. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
DeeDee Mower Deviance to Diminish Educational Disparity
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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.
57. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
Christine Wieseler Objectivity as Neutrality, Nondisabled Ignorance, and Strong Objectivity in Biomedical Ethics
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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.
58. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
Andria Bianchi Autonomy, Sexuality, and Intellectual Disability
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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.
59. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
Joan Woolfrey The Primacy of Hope
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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.
60. Social Philosophy Today: Volume > 32
Matt Waldschlagel Orcid-ID How Not to Think about Forgiveness
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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.