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21. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Joe Frank Jones, III Moral Growth in Children’s Literature: A Primer with Examples
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This essay applies a plausible model for moral growth to examples of secular and religious children’s literature. The point is that moral maturation, given this model, requires imaginary worlds on both secular and religious presuppositions. Trying to guide a child’s reading toward either religious or secular books rather than toward good literature is shown therefore to miss the mark of good parenting.
22. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Laura Duhan Kaplan Speaking for Myself in Philosophy
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The conventions of positivism, still the standard model for academic discourse, require philosophers to take knowledge out of the context of personal experience. In this essay, I argue that such a decontextualization impoverished the development of moral and epistemological knowledge. I propose to contextualize such knowledge by using the personal essay as a style of philosophical writing. As literary style shapes what can be thought and said, adoption of a different literary style calls for a reinterpretation of philosophy’s understanding of the self, the quest for truth, and the nature of universality.
23. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
William O. Stephens Five Arguments for Vegetarianism
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Five different arguments for vegetarianism are discussed: the system of meat production deprives poor people of food to provide meat for the wealthy, thus violating the principle of distributive justice; the world livestock industry causes great and manifold ecological destruction; meat-eating cultures and societal oppression of women are intimately linked and so feminism and vegetarianism must both be embraced to transform our patriarchal culture; both utilitarian and rights-based reasoning lead to the conclusion that raising and slaughtering animals is immoral, and so we ought to boycott meat; meat consumption causes many serious diseases and lowers life expectancy, and so is unhealthy. Objections to each argument are examined. The conclusion reached is that the cumulative case successfully establishes vegetarianism as a virtuous goal.
24. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
William Aiken Is Deep Ecology Too Radical?
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The theory of Deep Ecology is characterized as having two essential features: the belief that nature is inherently valuable, and the belief that one’s self is truly realized by identification with nature. Four common but different meanings of the term “radical” are presented. Whether the theory of Deep Ecology is “too radical” depends upon which of these meanings one is using.
25. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Henny Wenkart Feminist Revaluation of the Mythical Triad, Lilith, Adam, Eve: A Contribution to Role Model Theory
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This essay inquires into the need for and power of role models, and suggests some answers. The example it employs to study the issue is the contemporary Jewish feminist “role model,” Lilith, first wife of Adam. Various and opposite forms of the Lilith-and-Adam myth through the ages are given, including new contributions from a Lilith anthology in preparation by the author and others. Those needs of women and men that the mythical “role model” is constructed to satisfy are suggested.
26. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Joe Frank Jones III Being There: Theatre and Existentialist Ethics
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A complete sense of the world is an alternative normative ethical standard utilizing aesthetic integration. The temporary nature of aesthetic integration renders it a more useful tool for understanding human experience than does any philosophical or religious system containing allegedly permanent truths. The aesthetic integration of theatre provides a basis for discussion of the cognitive content of choice in action. I show that theatre reflects ethics. Then I turn to Jean-Paul Sartre's and Karl Marx's notions of "reciprocal freedom" as an example ethic. A consequence of reciprocal freedom is that the needs of others must be taken into account. I contend that a life lived in pursuit of aesthetic integration can indeed be an ethical life—and even serve as a model for an ethical life. This is not an idea generally embraced in Western culture, particularly when it is contrasted with military meaning-visions
27. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Joshua M. Hall Apposite Bodies: Dancing with Danto
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Though Arthur Danto has long been engaged with issues of embodiment in art and beyond, neither he nor most of his interlocutors have devoted significant attention to die art form in which art and embodiment most vividly intersect, namely dance. This article, first, considers Danto's brief references to dance in his early magnum opus. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Second, it tracks the changes in Danto's philosophy of art as evidenced in his later After the End of Art and The Abuse of Beauty. And finally, it utilizes Danto's most recent work on the philosophy of action to suggest a new Danto-inspired definition of art, namely "apposite bodies."
28. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Stephen Snyder Danto's Narrative Philosophy of History and the End of Art: Does Inexplicability Mean Freedom
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This paper investigates Danto's claim that the narrative of art is over. In this state, which Danto sees as ideal, art is free from any master narrative, and its direction cannot be predicted. The claim that art ought to remain in its current state—pluralistic, free and with no further historical development—is problematic. Danto is correct that late 20th c. art could not be explained through a single narrative, and the myriad forms art takes demonstrate its pluralism. But Danto's assertions that freedom is the outcome of inexplicability and that progress is measured according to amenability to narrative do not necessarily follow. Based on Gombrich's theory of pictorial representation, I provide an alternative explanation of Danto's claim that art no longer manifests the narrative of the era of art, arguing that the shift in art's preferred form of presentation, though no longer supporting narrative explanation, is developing as a language of disclosure
29. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Raymond Kolcaba Finding Art in the World
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The task of finding art in the world is presented as a tale of three dynamic forces that have shaped art in recent times. The first is expansion of the domain of art. This is reflected in linguistic change. The term "art" has grown enormously in sense and extension. The second force is the public's subjective response to art writ large. Our commercial culture compels reaction. The third force is the art world's active promotion of the expansion of art's domain and the contextualization of the public's subjective response to it. The aspiration of the paper is to bring some clarity to how we presently identify art, respond to it, understand it, and institutionalize it. The tale concludes with discussion of the fiiture of art m the world today.
30. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Spencer Bradley The Face of Modern Art: The Creation of Fascist Art
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Despite common perspectives, art has become less about creativity and more about cultural worth and service to the state. Using Deleuze, Guattari and Žižek, I argue the appropriation creates subjectivity subordinate to the state. This stifles the creative power of art and creates subjectivity by division. The state carries out this appropriation through the creation of propaganda. This ultimately leads to a negation of the subject. I then propose several methods to disassemble instituted subjectivity and shift art's creative powers back to the viewer and the artist. However, there are stdl possibilities of slipping back into this false art of the state. Thus, to free aesthetics and art from hierarchy and binaries, we must reexamine art's role and creative processes in order to return the creation of subjectivity to come from within, as opposed to from without
31. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Travis T. Anderson Artistic Freedom in Kant and Hegel: Prolegomena to a Critique of Artistic Judgment
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Current controversies manifest an inherent tension between artistic freedom and moral constraint—a tension exacerbated by our reluctance or inability to define modem art. This paper maintains that Kant and Hegel are two of the pivotal figures with which any reflections on the ground, nature, and limits of artistic freedom must begin. Both phdosophers, for example, explicitly argue that artist and audience alike require a certain kind and a certain degree of freedom in order to carry out their respective projects, be they creative, cognitive, or aesthetic. While Kant's interest in art is limited mostly to its aesthetic affects, i.e., the faculty-driven feelings associated with beauty and the sublime, Hegel rejects feelings of any kind as constituting a proper subject-matter for philosophy, and so reaffirms the classical conception of art as essentially an expression of truth. Despite these fundamental differences, the two phdosophers' respective explanations of art and artistic autonomy must both be considered if we are to understand properly modem and post-historical forms of art, which for all their novelty and differences (both real and apparent) draw heavily on both the Kantian and Hegelian traditions for theh justification. So, while Kant and Hegel may not supply us with direct or decisive ways to think through contemporary issues involving artistic freedom or questions concerning the moral legitimacy of art, they can help us map out the historical landscape of philosophical thought on art and artistic autonomy and thereby provide us with the prolegomena to such an effort
32. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Christian Matlieis Hegel's Reproduction Issues: On Identity Politics, International Relations, and the Desire for Recognition of Oneself in the Other
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What if popular discourses of recognition and identity tend to rely, in whole or in part, on underlying conceptions of reproduction -- specifically, the desire to reproduce one's own self-consciousness in the beliefs and behaviors of others? I argue for the importance of diagnosing a recognition/reproduction paradigm in which foreground discourses of recognition obfuscate an underlying evangelical desire for reproduction of one's own self-image. To do so, I revisit G.W.F. Hegel's allegory of the lord/bondsman (master/slave), arguably the decisive source of modem and contemporary conceptions of recognition. I show that scholars typically mislabel and misunderstand the logic behind Hegel's descriptions of recognition, and I then argue that what theorists typically interpret as recognition we should instead interpret as a paradigm of recognition co-valent with reproduction. More relevant to contemporary activists and scholars, I then illustrate how the desire for reproduction likely remains the dominant, normative paradigm in problematic forms of liberal identity politics and international relations in an era of neoliberal globalization. As a hermeneutical intervention, treating the desire for recognition as co-valent with a desire reproduction may help to distinguish hegemonic uses of identity from liberatory, perhaps even dignifying, forms of mutualism and regard.
33. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Burcu Gurkan, Taine Duncan Doing Philosophy in the Contemporary World: An Interview with Philosopher Burcu Gurkan
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As a recent addition to the editorial board for the journal of Philosophy in the Contemporary World, I wanted to revisit a practice from past editions of the journal—interviewing philosophers who engage philosophical practice that reflects the mission of PCW. In this interview, a model for what I hope will continue to be a regular feature, I have a dialogue with the philosopher Burcu Gurkan. Professor Gurkan currently lives and works in Turkey while I live in work in the central US, so what follows is edited from an email exchange.—Taine Duncan
34. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Landon W. Schurtz The Business of Complaining Ethically
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Beginning from an analysis of what factors disqualify a person from complaining about a given moral breach, I show that the prima facie presumption that a complaint is justified in the face of non-moral offense in the context of a business transaction must be balanced against the potential consequences to the object of the complaint, especially given the particular realities of popular employment practices. In particular, I will identify three cases in which complamts are justified, presuming unjust employment arrangements, as a way of showing that complaints in other situations should be, contrary to naive intuition, considered inappropriate.
35. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Robin Byerly Eudaemonia, Well-Beings and the Pursuit of Sustainability
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Human well-being is a core global issue and a challenge for individual citizens, governments, and intemational organizations world-wide. It is a future-oriented concept that cannot be narrowly defined. In this paper, it is argued that retrieving the wisdom of Aristotle provides a thmking way forward. His is a philosophy that can be meaningfully directed and usefully applied across multiple dimensions to our current world, its state of being, and the pursuit of human, psychological, and ecological well-bemg.
36. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Sanjay Lal On Widening The Moral Sphere
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Considerations of justice and rights are assumed to present problems for the idea that we should do that which we take to be supererogatory. I argue that careful consideration of how we think of justice and rights lead to the conclusion that "supererogatory" actions are actually better grouped within the class of acts we identify as moral requirements. My argument is based on our common understanding of justice as being incompatible with free-riding. Additionally, I focus attention on our implicit assumption that we possess the right to benefit by that which, we agree, is made possible from the willingness of others to go beyond perceived moral requirements. Thus, I conclude we should re-tihink where we draw the line demarcating the required from the saintly.
37. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Kelly Agra The World as "Is" and the World as "Ought": Contemporary Philosophy and the Crisis of Subjectivity
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Within this working context, this paper exammes how philosophy is situated within the horizon of circulated knowledge. Using Alain Badiou's discussion about the fate of philosophy after Hegel, this paper highlights three distinct phenomena: the end of philosophy, the linguistic turn, and the suture of philosophy to other disciplines. This paper argues that these three signal a paradigm shift in philosophizing, namely, the shift of orientation from the metaphysical to the finite. After the discussion about contemporary philosophy, this paper argues in the spirit of Badiou that philosophy's current form is incapable of addressing one of the most alarmmg crises in the world today, the crisis of subjectivity.
38. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Sergia Hay, Greg Hibbard Why Ignorance Fails to Excuse Climate Debt: An Aristotelian Critique
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The United States has rejected climate reparations requests from other nations by claiming historical ignorance of the global effects of anthropogenic climate change. This objection to climate reparations, called the epistemic objection in this paper, appeals to a concept of fairness concerning moral responsibility which can be traced back to Aristotle's distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions. However, on closer examination, the epistemic objection fails to fulfill Aristotle's criteria for excusable involuntary actions, and therefore the authors of this paper conclude that claims of ignorance concerning climate change do not provide a substantial objection to climate reparation requests.
39. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Charles Harvey Sex Robots and Solipsism: Towards a Culture of Empty Contact
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"Sex Robots and Solipsism" presents and reflects upon rapidly evolving developments in human-robot relations. It argues that psychological, phenomenological and neuro-physiological evidence suggests that our new media-saturated environment is eroding the human capacity for deep and prolonged concentration, empathy and attachment. As machines become more human-like, humans become more machine-like. This sets the stage for diminished relations between humans - shallow relations that are increasingly capable of being replaced by relations with artificially intelligent (and sexy) machines.
40. Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Joan Woolfrey The Infectiousness of Hope
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Perhaps not wholly unrelatedly to the message of the first Obama presidential campaign, the concept of hope has been receiving increased philosophical attention in recent years. A good bit has been written on honing a definition of hope, and investigating the morally relevant territory. After a brief summary of that literature, I situate myself amongst those who advocate for hope—at its best—as a virtue, and I then suggest that hope seems to have a unique status amongst the virtues insofar as it appears to be foundational for moral progress. I want to suggest that virtue generally can be seen as having an infectious quality, and that along with hope's foundational status, this infectiousness is particularly crucial as regards the development of hope for working on solutions to structural injustice.