One of the most striking features of the Covid-19 pandemic was the surge in reactionary activism, from early anti-lockdown protests to the January 6 insurrection. We situate social movements and protest in the context of disaster, drawing on social epistemology to show why disasters lead to well-documented collective perceptual shifts and an urge towards solidarity that can surge both progressive and reactionary social movements. We explore the epistemic practices that shape reactionary social movements and right-wing radicalization, and argue that disasters are critical sites for studying the rise and attraction of reactionary social and political movements.
This article challenges conventional political imagination by exploring the possibility of a politics where children are equal to adults. My aim in this article is to identify the root cause of children’s political exclusion and propose a way to overcome it. I argue that this exclusion stems from a particular temporal structure—a teleological conception of progress that makes children a paradigmatic case of political exclusion. I connect this temporal issue to what Jacques Rancière calls “the method of inequality,” namely the infinite cycle generated by a promise of future equality that never materializes. Following Rancière, I argue that the only way to break this cycle is to take equality as a starting point to be realized in the present, rather than as a future goal.
The policy of earmarked paternity leave aims to promote mothers’ position in the labor market and fathers’ relationship with their child. Critics argue that the policy prevents parents from pursuing their own ideas about what is best for them. This provides reason to consider whether the policy is paternalistic or, in other ways, disrespectful of parental autonomy. I argue that the state implicates itself in the gender inequalities that result from parents’ unequal parental leave agreements when the state financially facilitates such agreements. This argument for earmarked paternity leave is not disrespectful of parental autonomy.
Statist (or functionalist) theories of territorial rights have often been thought to rule out the permissibility of unilateral secession from a legitimate, non-usurping state—if states have rights over their territory, the thought goes, then it is impermissible to unilaterally take any portion of this territory. In this article, I argue that the most plausible versions of statist theories of territorial rights do not have the theoretical resources to rule out unilateral secession. I show that proponents of these revised statist views cannot explain why unilateral secession from a legitimate, non-usurping state, is always impermissible, because they cannot explain why other types of entity—such as sub-state nations, for example, cannot have rights to territory. This opens the door for so-called “primary right” theories of secession—theories that do not make suffering from serious injustice a necessary condition for having a right to unilaterally secede. I conclude with a discussion of how to settle questions about the assignation of territorial rights in the event of secession.
In this paper, I begin by identifying the threat that political polarization poses for democracy as a decisively moral, not epistemic, issue. I argue that existing attempts to address it presuppose a climate of trust and, therefore, fail to recognize that their solutions are likely to backfire in a climate of distrust. I begin by elucidating the concept of a “climate of trust,” and then explore the relationship between trust, moral respect, and democracy. Given the backfiring risk, I suggest that indirect approaches to fostering trust are the best candidates for cultivating a climate of trust.
The idea that women qua women can be dehumanized has been dismissed by feminist philosophers, like Kate Manne, and by philosophers of dehumanization, like David Livingstone Smith. Against these skeptics, I argue that we can and should use dehumanization to explain an important strand of misogyny. When they are dehumanized, women are represented simultaneously as human and as inhuman embodiments of the natural world. They therefore appear as magical, contaminating, sexualized threats towards whom violence is acceptable or even necessary. Misogynistic dehumanization is important to understanding atrocities like the early modern European witch-hunts, but also contemporary phenomena like incel violence.
Many liberal political philosophers hold that the state should not impose or even promote any particular conception of the good life or human flourishing. Instead, the state should restrict itself to maintaining a fair framework of rights and opportunities within which all citizens can pursue their own ideas about the good life. Against this backdrop, this book defends a perfectionist political philosophy. Whereas previous perfectionists have argued that the promotion of flourishing ways of life is permissible or legitimate, the author casts perfectionism as a doctrine of justice. On this view, the implementation of laws and policies designed to promote sound ideals of the good life — ideals such as moral, intellectual and artistic excellence — is not merely a legitimate complement to justice but an essential constituent of justice. Over the years, liberals have criticized perfectionism on various fronts: that it relies on value judgements that are controversial within modern pluralistic societies; that it is unduly restrictive of freedom and autonomy; that it treats citizens as if they are unable to run their own lives; that it expresses the meddlesome mentality of a village busybody; that it mistakenly assumes that there are objective truths about human flourishing; and that it risks the abuse of power by incompetent, overzealous or corrupt state officials. These ideas represent some of the deepest, most vibrant and most powerful strains in liberal thought. In defending perfectionism against these charges, the author’s arguments make a novel contribution to longstanding debates about the philosophical foundations of liberalism.
Metz’s Moral Relational Theory says that an action is right if it respects our capacity to be party to friendly relationships. Friendliness involves exhibiting solidarity and identification with others. Though Metz’s theory often issues intuitively correct moral judgments, I argue that it fails to do so in the cases of female genital mutilation, religious offense, and homosexual romantic relationships. I conclude by exploring whether there are possible replies that can be made on behalf of Metz by examining African conceptions of well-being and flourishing, before turning to ask questions about the role that intuitions play in justifying his theory.
I respond to Metz’s A Relational Moral Theory by raising some concerns with his account of ‘rightness as friendliness’ both as a moral theory and in relation to its supposed Africanness, as well as by suggesting some places where it could be clarified. I argue that his account of moral status as based on the capacity for friendship is more individualist than the accounts with which he compares it. Distinguishing between an account of what grounds value and an account of how we ought to act, I question whether a capacity-based ground of moral status can be equated with an account of rightness as friendliness. I argue further, that Metz builds values into his account of true friendliness, rather than showing that they are grounded in it. I then question the role of the sixteen intuitions he appeals to both in supporting his theory and in establishing its Africanness, and argue that it is based on simplified, homogenized and romanticized accounts of both Africa and the so-called west, as well as not treating like with like in the comparison.
This paper remarks on the dominance of an emphasis on unconscious desire within psychoanalytic theories of ideology and argues for the insufficiency of such an exclusive approach. As a counterbalance, the paper shows how an incorporation of unconscious defense may be vital for any psychoanalytically informed theory of ideology. The argument in support of this claim develops along two paths: one historical, and one conceptual or systematic. The first examines previous work by major canonical figures to disclose a latent historical basis for understanding ideology as a form of unconscious defense. The second makes a conceptual argument about defense being the best fit concept for the analysis and critique of ideology.
I confront the ‘accountability problem’ of Iris Marion Young’s theory of forward-looking responsibility, which arises when we seek to hold others accountable for failing to act on shared forward-looking responsibilities to intervene upon structural injustice. I reconstruct four strategies for circumventing the accountability problem, and ultimately endorse the view that we can understand negligence of forward-looking responsibilities in terms of moral laxity for imperfect duties. Judgments of moral laxity provide a coherent way to hold serial shirkers accountable without overlooking the cumulative demandingness of forward-looking responsibilities.
