Philosophical Topics

In 1914, Francis E. Leupp, former commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, presented an answer to the so-called Indian Problem that some have called pluralist. This paper examines the development of Leupp’s pluralism as part of the policies and practices of the genocide of American Indians as it was carried out in the years following the US Civil War. Rather than being a singular event in the history of US-Indian relations, I argue that Leupp’s pluralism is part of the settler colonial system that persists and finds present expression in contemporary liberal pluralism. I consider two examples of recent pluralist theory, those of Charles Taylor and William Galston. I conclude by arguing that what both forms of pluralism—Leupp’s and recent liberal varieties—have in common is a conception of agency that rejects the American Indian conception and conserves structural genocide as a central part of present-day society.

Because pluralism at its heart is an epistemic problem in philosophy, what is at issue in discussions of philosophical pluralism are the definitions of who counts as a knower and what counts as knowledge. In this philopoetic article, in which philosophic claims are interwoven with poetic and narrative recountings of my own experiences with racist patriarchal violence in the discipline, I argue for an epistemic approach to creating pluralism in philosophy through the satisfaction of seven conditions. These conditions require, at minimum, that we consider the importance of hiring multiply-positioned persons; that we critique patriarchy and white hegemonic discourses; that we rethink assumptions about epistemic credibility; and that we dispense with “perverse dialogues.” Finally, we must encourage “true dialogue” and create a “new dialogic” in philosophy.

In a morally diverse society, moral agents inevitably run up against intractable disagreements. Civility functions as a valuable constraint on the sort of behaviors that moral agents might deploy in defense of their deeply held moral convictions and generally requires tolerance of other views and political liberalism, as does pluralism. However, most visions of civility are exceptionless: they require civil behavior regardless of how strong the disagreement is between two members of the same society. This seems an excellent idea when those required to do the tolerating might otherwise smash us. However, the demands of civility areuniversal and fall upon everyone, including ourselves. They may seem to require us to tolerate the intolerable, leading us not into pluralism but rather into functional relativism, and also require the powerless to moderate their demands for redress. They also place moral agents in a very difficult position with respect to realizing our deeply held moral values. Isaiah Berlin’s pluralism, by contrast, allows us to violate tolerance when we come up against values that, put into practice, are incompatible with a form of life we can tolerate. Despite the many fronts on which civility and pluralism align, they are also pitted against each other. Only a qualified (not exceptionless) civility based in respect for persons can cohere with pluralism and thus resolve the double bind in which the moral agentseemed to be placed by exceptionless civility. I develop a rule for Accepted Exceptions that helps to explain how moral agents can be civil, value pluralism, demand redress, and maintain their own deeply held moral commitments.

Since the 1980s, feminist epistemologists have traced the cultural biases that have denied epistemic value to certain epistemic styles and agents while they have explored ways to reclaim the devalued epistemic modes—including more practical, emotionally invested, and community-situated modes of knowing—that many of us have found to be meaningful ways of engaging the world. At the same time, feminist critics have sought not merely to reverse received epistemic hierarchies but to explore more pluralistic epistemologies that appreciate as well as examine critically the diverse ways that humans engage the world. This paper examines how Simone Weil’s concept of paying attention can contribute to such a critical and pluralist epistemology. By reading Weil’s account of “a certain kind of attention” together with feminist and decolonial critiques of modern epistemic norms, I show how Weil points toward an epistemic framework that would open our intellectual communities to a greater plurality of epistemic styles and agents and, ultimately, would make possible richer knowledge practices that are more responsive to world problems.

This essay discusses the interaction of struggles for gender equality with a plurality of conceptions of freedom in Islamic feminist scholarship and activism. I discuss Islamic feminist critiques of feminism and rights, the concept of Islamic secularism, and the problematization of freedom in relation to women’s piety movements. Finally I take up Islamic feminist interpretations of the Qur’an to identify conceptions of freedom in this work. I argue, first, that there are diverse conceptions of freedom at play in Islamic feminist scholarship, and second, that a plurality of conceptions of freedom can support feminist practice and goals.

In recent years, Islamic feminism has become a prevalent and controversial topic among scholars from Muslim countries and Western feminists. While respecting the efforts of Muslim activists, this paper argues that because Islamic perspective is inherently anti-pluralist, it is not conducive to feminism and even at odds with it. Since it is impossible to make any generalizations about Muslim countries, this paper focuses on the debate of Islam and feminism as it relates to Iran. Islamic laws that are the ground for constitutions in many Muslim countries treat men and women unequally. In countries with a theocracy, Islam becomes a political system where the power of the ruling elite, which are the clerics, becomes an important obstacle on the way of reforms. As a worldview, Islam provides a fixed identity of women and men that is irreconcilable with any liberating theory. The significance of this discussion lies in the potential of celebration of “Islamic feminism” for reinforcing the fusion of religion and politics in a country such as Iran, which has a religious state.

Secular nationalism and Islamism constitute a major political polarization in current day Turkey. The proponents of both political orientations use the trope of the veiled woman, in order to advance their respective ideologies. However, the instrumentalization of women’s bodies in this way not only proves inefficient in adequately addressing many of the problems that women face today, but it is also linked to the relentless state control and regulation over our bodies. The following essay gives an account of the ways in which both secular nationalists and Islamists are not hesitant about policing our bodies at the service of theirideology. This is a call for solidarity and a true feminist pluralism outside the confines of this divide within which women’s interests always take the back seat to nationalist projects.

In this paper I consider recent feminist critiques of the whiteness of philosophy’s secularism. Building on the distinction in disability studies between accommodation and access, I argue that, in order to effectively address philosophy’s whiteness and heteronormativity, critiques of philosophy’s secularism must be accountable to religion’s historical and contemporary role in perpetuating harm against queer people. While it is absolutely crucial to critique and work to undo the whiteness of mainstream philosophy, it is equally important to do so in a way that does not further marginalize queer people. I build on Gloria Anzaldùa’sdistinction between spirituality and religion, Sara Ahmed’s discussion of willfulness, and the distinction between accommodation and accessin disability studies to suggest a nonadditive concept of pluralism that moves toward the transformation of philosophy.

A constructivist approach to ethics must include some process—such as John Rawls’s reflective equilibrium—for moving from initial evaluative judgments to those that one can affirm. Margaret Urban Walker’s feminist version of reflective equilibrium incorporates what she calls “transparency testing” to weed out pernicious, ideologically shaped intuitions. However, in light of empirical work on the plurality of values and on the cognitive processes through which people arrive at moral judgments (i.e., an automatic, intuitive process and/or a controlled reasoning process), I raise one concern: some moral requirements can only be grasped intuitively and should not have to be affirmed from the perspective of other confidently held values. For Harry Frankfurt, the “requirements of love” are one such example; failing to fulfill these requirements is, for someone who loves, unthinkable; one transgresses the associated values merely by considering sacrificing them. I suggest—citing empirical work on “sacred values” (such as the work of Philip Tetlock)—that to subject these requirements to transparency testing would be to transgress them by having “one thought too many” (as in the work of Bernard Williams). One’s confidence in these values and the authority of these valuesdepend on an automatic process. I consider the risks, and the necessity, of embracing both intuitive and reasoning processes for affirming the authority of a plurality of moral values.

For the purpose of advancing the feminist commitment to inclusion and nonliberal articulations of pluralism, in this essay I conceptualize the Native account of individual autonomy that itself evolves from a commitment to pluralism. I demonstrate that Native individual autonomy is concurrently strong and feminist in nature—what I call “radical-cum-relational.” That is, Native autonomy is more radical than the traditional liberal conception and is simultaneously grounded in relationality, which is the basis of much of feminist ethics. I demonstrate that the Native conception of autonomy is radical and promotes the highest degree of individual self-determination and independence qua individuality and particularity. Yet this radical self-determination depends on intense social interdependency. The grounding metaphysics and epistemology of the Native framework are conceived entirely in terms of ethical relationships between and responsibilities to other individuals, animals, and the Earth. That is, no part of the Native paradigm can be understood outside of the ethical connections persons have by virtue of their primary position as community members. It is by situating radical autonomy against a background of ethical social interdependence, together with thebackground condition of gender equality of Native practices, that the radical construal of Native individual freedom is feminist. To shore up and illustrate the connection between Native autonomy and feminism, I argue that an identification between the Native social practice of gifting and feminist reciprocity can be made, specifically Iris Marion Young’s notion of asymmetrical reciprocity. Finally, I argue that this connection avoids the problem of incommensurability and so is theoretically possible, responsible, and fits the criterion of respectfulness also at the foundation of the Native framework. Broadly speaking, the problem of incommensurability is concerned with theorists’ inability to recognize foundational incompatibilities between paradigms and their forced attempts to mergethem, often at the price of ignoring inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and contradictions that result from impossible translations and conversions. Historically and to the present day, Western philosophy has been egregiously guilty of distorting Native theories and practices. In this essay I argue that since translation takes place at the level of praxis rather than at the level of language, my argument circumvents problems that arise from failed attempts to map cultural concepts onto others that do not share similar foundations.

Happiness is a much-debated topic in both ancient and contemporary philosophy. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to establish what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of eudaimonia for Aristotle in Book I of Nicomachean Ethics; and second, to show how Aristotle’s theory is also a good answer to the questions of the contemporary common sense about what happiness is and how to achieve it. In this way, I would suggest new arguments to give a new voice to Aristotle in the contemporary philosophical debate on this issue. My paper is therefore only tangentially a contribution to this debate and remains essentially anessay on the philosophy of Aristotle.

In this paper I argue for five theses. The first thesis is that ethicists should think about happiness and unhappiness together, with as much detail and particularity as possible. Thinking about unhappiness will help us get clear about happiness, and distinguish the different things that come under that name. The second is that happiness and unhappiness can both be important positively valuable features of a worthwhile life. The third thesis is that Modern Eudaimonism (ME), the claim that every reason to act is a reason either to promote or facilitate happiness, or to decrease or prevent unhappiness, is false. The fourth thesis is thatAristotle is not a Modern Eudaimonist. Aristotelian Eudaimonism (AE) says that every reason to act is a reason that derives from what Aristotle calls eudaimonia. But “derives from” is a different connective from “either to promote or facilitate X, or to decrease or prevent not-X”; and eudaimonia is not happiness. So AE ≠ ME. Finally, the fifth thesis is that AE is false too.

This essay contributes to comparative inquiry concerning happiness through a case study of Xúnzǐ, a major Confucian thinker. Xúnzǐ’s ethical theory presents values and norms that fill the role of happiness indirectly, through the ideal figure of the gentleman. However, his working conception of psychological happiness and individual well-being turns on aesthetic values that go beyond the universal prudential values to which his ethical theory appeals. Hence I argue that his implicit conception of happiness actually revolves around a way of life grounded in what Susan Wolf has called “reasons of love.”

I explore conceptions of happiness in classical Chinese philosophers Mengzi and Zhuangzi. In choosing to frame my question with the word ‘happiness’, I am guided by the desire to draw some comparative lessons for Western philosophy. ‘Happiness’ has been a central concept in Western ethics, and especially in Aristotelian and utilitarian ethics. The early Chinese concept most relevant to discussion of Mengzi and Zhuangzi concerns a specific form of happiness designated by the word le, which is best rendered as ‘contentment’. For both Mengzi and Zhuangzi, there is a reflective dimension of happiness that consists in acceptance of the inevitable transformations of life and death, though these two thinkers chart very different paths to such acceptance. Mengzi holds that it liesin identification with a moral cause much larger than the self. Zhuangzi is profoundly skeptical about the viability of such a path to contentment. He instead offers identification with a world that transcends human good and evil, and a way to live in the present that can be deeply satisfying. One interesting outcome of both their discussions of achieving happiness is that both come to question the importance of happiness as a personal goal.

This paper challenges the idea that happiness—taken to be a subjective mental state marked by positive affect—is something that depends upon and arises from the satisfaction of interests. While this understanding of happiness seems to follow from reflection on the paradox of happiness, empirical research concerning the production of happiness tells us a different story, and suggests that whether or not we are happy is largely independent of whether or not we satisfy our interests. Following analysis of this research, I argue that whether or not we are happy depends instead mostly on how are minds are doing.

In this article, we ask whether and in what way emotions are in themselves good for the well-being of the individuals who experience them. Our overall argument aims at showing that an objectivist list theory of well-being suitably anchored within a value-based theory of the emotions provides the best framework for answering these questions. Emotions so conceived, we claim, provide for the sort of first-person perspective understanding of values that is required in order to pursue them. This conclusion we reach only after having brought to light in the first part of the article the limitations of rival hedonist and desire-based theories of well-being. We conclude that at least part of the insights fueling these theories, i.e., good feelings and getting what one wants are a measure of how well our lives go, can happily be accounted for within the approach we recommend.

What is the relationship between meaning in life and happiness? In psychological research, subjective meaning and happiness are often contrasted with each other. I argue that while the objective meaningfulness of a life is distinct from happiness, subjective or felt meaning is a key constituent of happiness, which is best understood as a multidimensional affective condition. Measures of felt meaning should consequently be included in empirical studies of the causes and correlates of happiness.

The values-based approach to welfare holds that it is good for one to realize goals, activities, and relationships with which one strongly (and stably) identifies. This approach preserves the subjectivity of welfare while affirming that a life well lived must be active, engaged, and subjectively meaningful. As opposed to more objective theories, it is unified, naturalistic, and ontologically parsimonious. However, it faces objections concerning the possibility of self-sacrifice, disinterested and paradoxical values, and values that are out of sync with physical and emotional needs. This paper revises the values-based approach, emphasizingthe important—but limited—role consciously held values play in human agency. The additional components of human agency in turn explain why it is important for one’s values to cohere with one’s fixed drives, hardwired emotional responses, and nonvolitionally guided cognitive processes. This affords promising responses to the objections above.