How We Fight: Ethics in War

Output Type: Book Revie

Kermit and Leadership: Believing in the Dream

First pararaph: Imagine a community of individuals who don’t share a common geographic history, ancestry, or even the same language. They have a broad range of talents and interests, incredibly diverse ideological views, and a wide range of individual needs. Moreover, most are, shall we say, “unresponsive,” to authority, unmotivated by power, uninterested in rules, and unstructured by any hierarchy. In many ways, this group represents both the anarchist ideal and the liberal challenge. Since at least the writings of John Stuart Mill (1806-73), liberal political theory has sought a way to accommodate diverse ideological views while avoiding enforcing any particular way of life. Conversely, anarchists have struggled to find a way to achieve solidarity and accomplish collective goals without resorting to problematic hierarchies or power structures. 1 Organizing and directing pluralistic actors under such conditions is definitely a challenge, to say the least

The Ethics of Armed Humanitarian Intervention

Output Type: Book Revie

Are Feminism and Competition Compatible?

Contemporary feminist interest in the persistent underrepresentation of women in top professions suggests an implicit approval of the competition required to achieve these posts. Competition, however, seems to be in tension with feminist opposition to domination and oppression. This paper outlines the dimensions of this tension and examines three attempts to resolve the incompatibility. The first two try to separate the undesirable elements of competition from the positive by way of the competitiveness/competition and the challenge/scarcity distinctions. I argue that these distinctions fail to alleviate worries about competition, particularly in the context of the professions. Meanwhile the third reconciliatory attempt offers a pragmatic argument for compatibilism based on the value of women’s participation in the professions (and their associated competitions). While this pragmatic argument has some merit, I argue it significantly overestimates the amount of competition acceptable for feminist participation. The end result is that, within the context of the professions, competition remains fundamentally in tension with feminism

What is Violence?

The aim of this chapter is to uncover a specifically political conception of violence which will capture our interest in violence as it relates to a fundamental problem for society. The chapter will first analyze (and reject) several existing definitions of violence in terms of whether they successfully describe a fundamental problem, then propose a new conception of violence that directs our attention towards problematic attitudes rather than types of actions. This new conception allows us to consider the relationship between women, violence and agency from a new perspective, drawing our attention to forms of violence that are generally overlooked on the standard, narrow conception, and redefining the ways in which women may be both subject to, and participants in, violence. Secondly, the chapter will explore how adopting this definition allows us to reconceive the relationship between women and violence, via two test cases. Specifically, it will demonstrate how the conception of violence as an attitude allows us to describe pornography as violence, followed by some exploratory remarks on the implications of this view for feminist philosophy more generally

Celebrity, Democracy, and Epistemic Power

What, if anything, is problematic about the involvement of celebrities in democratic politics? While a number of theorists have criticized celebrity involvement in politics (Meyer 2002; Mills 1957; Postman 1987) none so far have examined this issue using the tools of social epistemology, the study of the effects of social interactions, practices and institutions on knowledge and belief acquisition. This paper will draw on these resources to investigate the issue of celebrity involvement in politics, specifically as this involvement relates to democratic theory and its implications for democratic practice. We will argue that an important and underexplored form of power, which we will call epistemic power, can explain one important way in which celebrity involvement in politics is problematic. This is because unchecked uses and unwarranted allocations of epistemic power, which celebrities tend to enjoy, threaten the legitimacy of existing democracies and raise important questions regarding core commitments of deliberative, epistemic, and plebiscitary models of democratic theory. We will finish by suggesting directions that democratic theorists could pursue when attempting to address some of these problems

L'investissement formation : un mythe utile

International audienceLa notion d’investissement formation est séduisante par la valorisation qu’elle offre tant aux formateurs auxquels elle permet de situer leur pratique dans le champ de l’économique, qu’aux dirigeants à qui elle donne le moyen d’afficher la dimension humaine de leur engagement dans la préparation de l’avenir. La métaphore de l’investissement joue un rôle utile et positif en dynamisant les partenaires de la formation, mais il faut être vigilant sur les conditions du passage de la métaphore à la réalité

Political Disagreement and Conceptions of Violence

Reflecting on peace is intimately connected to how one conceptualizes violence. Moreover, thinking about violence is closely tied to how one conceives of socio-political life and the fundamental problems or threats that it faces. Political disagreement then, translates into disparate notions of violence and of peace. In light of this, some theorists, including Johan Galtung, advocate adoption of a singular, extended definition of violence that can accommodate this divide, paired with a corresponding two-part understanding of peace. In this paper, I argue there are reasons to be wary of this strategy, and to doubt the success of Galtung’s efforts. Specifically, I problematize the methods that obscure substantive disagreement concerning violence and that ultimately limit our ability to conceptualize forms of peace. I then demonstrate the depths such disagreement can reach and thus illustrate both the limitations of existing extended notions of violence (such as Galtung’s) as well as the correspondingly divergent ideals of peace. I end by sketching an alternative account of violence that aims to avoid these flaws and thus offer grounds for a novel understanding of peace

Pacifism and Re-appropriated Violence

In this chapter, I introduce a novel conception of pacifism. This conception arises out of considering two key insights drawn from Cheyney Ryan’s work, specifically his characterization of the ‘pacifist impulse’ as a felt rejection of killing and his analysis of contemporary Western attitudes to war and methods of fighting, as reflecting a condition of alienated war. I expand on these claims and argue that considering them together reveals an important problem for pacifism. Specifically, the alienated condition of contemporary violence renders the pacifist impulse impotent with respect to its usual function, i.e. to inhibit violence. In response, I propose re-conceiving of pacifism: Building on the Marxist-Hegelian notion of alienation and re-appropriation, I describe this proposed alternative view of pacifism as re-appropriated violence