Relational egalitarians claim that a situation is just only if everyone it involves relates to one another as equals. It implies that relational egalitarians believe the ideal of "living as equals" (for short) is desirable, and furthermore, necessary for justice. In this paper, I distinguish three accounts of the desirability of the ideal: the instrumental value account, the non-instrumental value account, and the non-consequentialist account. I argue that the former two accounts cannot provide satisfying reasons for being a relational egalitarian. Instead, the ideal of "living as equals" ought to be understood as fundamentally a moral requirement in a non-consequentialist sense. In addition, a pluralist (though fundamentally non-consequentialist) approach is welcome.
The right to self-defense has played a major role in objections to gun regulation. Many contend that gun regulations threaten this right. While much philosophical discussion has focused on the relation between guns and this right, less attention has been paid to the argument for the right of self-defense itself. In this article, I examine this argument. Gunrights defenders contend that the right of self-defense is needed to explain why interferences in self-defense are wrong. I propose an alternative explanation for such wrongs, one which does not posit the existence of a self-defense right, and then show how it undermines their claim that there exists a strong presumption against gun regulation. I conclude by articulating the implications of this alternative explanatory account for other rights.
In this paper, I explore a number of issues related to a life lived with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Primarily, I am interested in discussing how one unwillingly changes their personal identity by forced medicating-demanded by others implicitly and explicitly. My motivation is something deep and invasive in me. I want to know, I have always wanted to know, why others want me to not be Me so badly. I have thought about this question for years, and though others may simply chalk it up to just one of the standard paranoid or narcissistic traits of borderline personality disorder, there is something more to this question that many of us agonize over most of our lives. There is a deeply normative component to this question that extends beyond the mere fear of abandonment; it is tied to a desire by others to erase-literally-who we are for their own comfort. In this sense, then, I invite you to travel along a path of what it can mean to be a BPDer, from a narrative, phenomenological, and cognitive lived, embodied perspective. My purpose is to show that the treatments for us that others desire cannot avoid (and usually do not want to avoid) the unraveling of who we really are. Whether we want to or not, we give up our self to keep other people with us. And for many, this is too much to ask, and can be one, though not the only, reason suicide and self-harm seem to be necessary recourses. One in 10 people with BPD commit suicide. So this is a serious matter, indeed.
Benatar argues that the absence of cosmic meaning is part of the reason why our lives are so bad that we had better not procreate. The goal of this paper is to argue against this claim from a Kantian point of view. For this goal, I argue first that the fact that human life is a product of blind evolution is not a reason for justifying that our lives are overall bad, mainly on the grounds that the concepts of good and bad make sense only within the logical space of reasons. I also argue that the fact that we can hardly make a significant difference to the universe is not a reason for justifying that our lives are overall bad, either, mainly on the grounds that whether one's life is good or bad can be evaluated primarily in terms of whether one's permissible ends are achieved to a satisfactory extent, and so one's good life does not depend on making a significant difference to the universe.
There is ongoing debate on whether Juche (??/(sic)(sic)), the North Korean state ideology, is indigenous, Marxist-Leninist, or Confucian-or if its a real philosophy at all. In this article, I introduce Juche and show how characteristics that philosophers identify to be unique or pronounced in premodern Korean philosophy can be found in Juche as well. Intellectual adaptation, pragmaticism, and an emphasis on continual improvement are prominent in both premodern Korean thought and Juche. Juche should be understood as a politically inflected outgrowth that is embedded within the larger context of Korean philosophy.
