In this paper, I argue that Plato’s conversance with art is insubstantial and exclusionary. Art warrants not only subjects in virtue of utility, morality, and pleasure, but also subjects in virtue of feeling, impression, spirituality, and art itself. I will begin by providing Plato’s view and then provide my threefold objection, utilizing examples from art history and the history of aesthetic theory.

In his book Making Globalization Work, Joseph Stiglitz proposes reforms to address problems arising from the global spread of capitalism, problems that he asserts are not inherent to globalization or capitalism but are due to the way those systems have been “managed.” Conversely, postcolonial feminist theorist Chanda Talpade Mohanty’s analysis of those same systems demonstrates that capitalism is not compatible with global justice. In this essay I use Mohanty’s analysis to argue that Stiglitz’s proposed reforms would not achieve his stated goals and that the global capitalist system must be dismantled if global justice is to be achieved.

In his book Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust, Daniel Kelly synthesizes a growing body of research on disgust and briefly explores the philosophical role of the emotion. This paper presents arguments for the position that disgust should not be considered a source of moral knowledge, a position that Kelly suggests but fails to illustrate. The paper also explores implications of this view, specifically concerning the ways we should seek to manipulate our disgust reactions in order to improve moral reasoning.

The “American Dream” and “Working Class Promise” ideologies are ubiquitously dispersed in American society. These ideologies posit values of equality and opportunity. In this paper, I deconstruct these two ideologies in order to examine the effects these ideologies have on income inequality, social inequality, and social immobility. I argue these ideologies create a paradox in society whereby the more these ideologies are believed, the more the ideologies exacerbate income inequality, social inequality, and social immobility.

In this paper, I argue that the contemporary relationship between children and advertising can be seen as illustrative of Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power and docile body production. I contend that, within the context of a consumption-based economy, an individual’s prime utility is her rate of personal consumption. Therefore, the subjection of children to ubiquitous advertising can be seen as the discipline through which the utility of personal consumption is maximized.

In this paper, I analyze Simone de Beauvoir’s goals for women expressed in The Second Sex and compare these goals to the opportunities created by the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. Though the contraceptive mandate advances Beauvoir’s goal of concrete equality by supporting economic independence and recognizing women’s sexual freedom, there are social and political limitations to these advancements.

The main character of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot is a devout Orthodox Christian named Prince Myshkin. Friedrich Nietzsche, who is intensely critical of Christianity, and Myshkin share the same views on shame and pity despite their apparent ideological differences. They condemn the damaging effects of shame and praise the redeeming quality of pity for people who are put to shame. Nietzsche and Myshkin criticize the moral aspect of Christianity, but Nietzsche generalizes it for all of Christianity and Myshkin limits it to the Catholic Church. In the end, they both advocate a philosophy of love for humanity.

This paper examines cases when compensation follows from necessary actions that cause harm. I posit that we can determine when compensation is due in instances of necessity by referring to the distribution of benefits and losses that result from the action.

I argue that there are no genuine disagreements about whether something is funny. My argument rests largely on the premise that something is funny only if someone experiences it as funny. The bulk of this paper is spent supporting this premise, primarily through an analysis of the meaning of “funniness.” The rest of the paper is spent demonstrating how my conclusion follows from this premise.

By using Sharon Street’s Darwinian Dilemma, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer attempt to show that Sidgwick’s duality of practical reason, whereby an agent has equal reason to act in their own interests or act impartially for the benefit of all, is not actually a duality; rather, reasons for action are solely impartial due to the unreliability of intuitions favoring self-interested behavior. I argue that Lazari-Radek and Singer fail to accomplish their goal. I argue that Singer has previously provided an account of impartiality that makes it just as unreliable on the same grounds as self-interested tendencies. Sidgwick’s duality remains unresolved.

In this paper I argue for a theory of punishment I call Multilateral Retributivism. Typically retributive notions of justice are unilateral: focused on one person’s desert. I argue that our notions of desert are multilateral: multiple people are owed when a moral crime is committed. I argue that the purpose of punishment is communication with the end-goal of reconciling the offender to society. This leads me to conclude that the death penalty and life without parole are unjustified because they necessarily cut communication short.

The relationship between the concepts of bad faith, coined by Jean-Paul Sartre, and cognitive dissonance, developed by Leon Festinger, is often misunderstood. Frequently, the terms are over-generalized and equivocated as synonymous ideas. This paper attempts to clarify the intricacies of these two concepts, outlining their similarities and differences.

The Stance team spoke with Charles Mills, noted philosopher and John Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy at Northwestern University whose work focuses on issues of social class, gender, and race, on December 1, 2014. Dr. Mills reviewed Stance’s transcription of the interview and made slight corrections for grammar, style, and reduction of repetition. He also inserted a sentence or two to add clarity. We hope readers find the result illuminating.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights lists what have come to be called “first” and “second” generation rights. First generation rights are civil and political; second generation rights are social, economic, and cultural. Western and Asian nations are in disagreement about whether each of these rights is universal. While Western nations strongly believe that first generation rights should be universal, many “Confucian” nations insist that second generation rights precede first generation rights. After analyzing the Confucian values in detail, I conclude that Confucianism supports both generations of rights.

This paper argues for retaining the concept of “wilderness” as a significant ethical category and considers arguments by J. Baird Callicott and William Cronon for abandoning it. Counters by Paul M. Keeling and Scott Friskics are evaluated and defended. Lastly, the paper recommends thinking of the term “wilderness” as belonging to a certain range of meanings on a spectrum of naturalness.

In this paper I examine the merits of a “division of moral labor” regulatory system for dual-use research. I borrow an argument from Thomas Douglas against scientific isolationism to show that researchers must be morally responsible for resolving at least some dual-use problems. I then argue that there are key benefits of scientific isolationism that are preserved in a position I call scientific minimalism. I then demonstrate that scientific minimalism, in a division of moral labor system, succeeds in maximizing both scientific freedom and moral efficiency, which I hold to be an essential aim for any proposed alternative regulatory model.

I argue that the “But Everyone Does That” (BEDT) defense can have significant exculpatory force in a legal sense, but not a moral sense. I consider whether legal realism is a better theory of the law than the more orthodox view of respecting the law as it is written. I next examine what the purpose of the law is, especially attending to how widespread disobedience is treated. Finally, I attempt to fit BEDT within Paul Robinson’s framework for categorizing defenses. I conclude that, first, BEDT can have significant exculpatory force; second, a BEDT plea does not comport with either Robinson’s definition of an excuse or other commonly held conceptions and so needs its own classification; and finally, BEDT does not exonerate the offender in a moral sense—only in a legal context.