Category: Children

From Armchair to Engaged Philosophy

On 7 December, 2020

by Leslie Herman.

Philosophy as a method of study is perceived as detached from reality. When we think of a philosopher, we tend to imagine him (unfortunately, we usually imagine a man) with his books, locked in a room, roaming in a field alone with his thoughts. Traditionally, philosophy is considered as a detached exercise: it is a research process between me, my books and my thoughts; at best, it is considered as an exercise of Socratic dialogue with peers and colleagues. Even in more “engaged” philosophical subdisciplines (political, social, moral philosophy, or ethics), philosophers have tended to work in a vacuum; unencumbered by the contingencies and general messiness of everyday reality, they attempt to find absolute truths about justice, inequality, the good, or society, without looking out the window to see what justice, inequality, the good or society are in real life.

While there are, indeed, benefits to armchair philosophising, I want here to briefly explore its limitations, and to encourage the use of an alternative philosophical method, especially when working on topics or issues that are relevant to our society, our political system, and our understanding of justice. Namely, I want to encourage direct engagement with our subjects of research, not only as sources of information, but as structural contributors to the development of our research projects and its priorities.

From the Vault: Journal of Applied Philosophy

By admin

On 17 August, 2020

In Animals, Children, Climate, Democracy, Economics, Gender, International, Migration, Punishment, War

While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2019-2020 season. This post focuses on the launch of our collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

In 2019-20, Justice Everywhere began a collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy. The journal is a unique forum that publishes philosophical analysis of problems of practical concern, and several of its authors post accessible summaries of their work on Justice Everywhere. These posts draw on diverse theoretical viewpoints and bring them to bear on a broad spectrum of issues, ranging from the environment and immigration to economics, parenting, and punishment.

For a full list of these posts, visit the journal’s author page. For a flavour of the range, you might read:

How environmental consultation processes can silence communities, by Dina Lupin Townsend and Leo Townsend.
A special series on causation in war, with posts from Carolina Sartorio, Helen Beebee & Alex Kaiserman, and Lars Christie.
On the role of care in punishments and prison, by Helen Brown Coverdale.
About the problem with studying non-human primates in laboratories, by Parker Crutchfield.
How values should feed into behavioural economics, by C. Tyler DesRoches.
A special series on the role of biases in oppression and injustice, with posts Lacey Davidson & Daniel Kelly and Alex Madva.
On epistemic injustices experienced by indigenous immigrant communities, by Amy Reed-Sandoval.
About what is the right number of parents for a child, by Kalle Grill.

Stay tuned for even more from this collaboration in our 2020-21 season!

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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 7th September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to contribute a guest post on a topical subject in political philosophy (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

What (if anything) is wrong with child labour?

By Nicolás Brando

On 9 March, 2020

In Children, General, International, Rights, Work

Looking at Lewis Hine’s photographic chronicles of working children in the United States (see video above) gives me a particularly conflicting feeling. While his pictures provide a surprisingly sensitive, personal, and even sweet approximation to the life and plights of the children he snapped, I cannot help but feel discomforted by the reality he is portraying. Personally, I think that my discomfort when looking at these pictures lies in the tension between, on the one hand, the moral reflexes that inevitably pop-up, telling me how wrong the condition of these children is; and, on the other hand, the sensation that many of these children seem absolutely comfortable and at ease (maybe even happy?) with their working life.

Climate Change, Family Size, and Upbringing

By Fay Niker

On 10 February, 2020

In Children, Climate, Duties

In this post, Fay Niker interviews Dr Elizabeth Cripps (University of Edinburgh) about her recent work at the intersection of two themes we write about a lot on Justice Everywhere, namely, climate justice and the ethics and politic of children and upbringing.

Fay Niker [FN]: Recently, you’ve been thinking about a particular dimension of the question about the duties to reduce carbon emissions in the era of (impending) “climate crisis”. Can you tell us about this dimension, and how you came to be interested in it?

Elizabeth Cripps [EC]: Having kids is the biggest contribution most of us make to increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, so the question naturally arises of whether, as individuals and couples, we should be having small families, or no children at all. I’ve written on individual climate justice duties and on population and global justice – plus I’m a parent myself – so it was natural for me to be drawn to this area.

The Potential Mediating Role of the Artificial Womb

By Julia Hermann

On 9 December, 2019

In Children, Gender, Technology

On May 6th, I published a post about the artificial womb and its potential role for promoting gender justice. I keep thinking about this technology, and since there is more and more ethical discussion about it, I want to address it again, this time from the point of view of mediation theory and in an attempt to anticipate the potential mediating role of this technology. According to mediation theory, technology mediates how humans perceive and act in the world. The Dutch philosopher Peter-Paul Verbeek has extended this post-phenomenological approach, which has been developed by Don Ihde, to the realm of ethics. Verbeek sees technology as being intrinsically involved in moral decision-making. Technology mediates our moral perceptions and actions. Moral agency is not something exclusively human, but a “hybrid affair”. Moral actions and decisions “take place in complex and intricate connections between humans and things”. Verbeek illustrates technology’s mediating role by means of the example of obstetric ultrasound. I shall apply the idea of the technological mediation of morality to the artificial womb and discuss some ways in which that technology could play a mediating role in morality.

Why Two Parents Rather than One or Five?

By Journal of Applied Philosophy

On 21 November, 2019

In Children, Moral values

In this post, Kalle Grill discusses his recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on how many parents there should be in a family.

Engaged parenting is hard work. That is one reason most of us prefer to have a co-parent. But why stop at one? As I argue in a recent article, I don’t think there is a good and general answer to that question. Some people are committed to an existing two-parent family, or to starting one, but there is no reason why society should endorse that family form as a norm.

Multi-parenting: what would it take for it to work?

By Anca Gheaus

On 4 November, 2019

In Children, Climate, Economics, Moral values

Earlier this year I published a short article arguing that multi-parenting can provide a solution to a contemporary conundrum: on the one hand, many people are increasingly worried about climate change and environmental destruction. They know that having fewer children is, for a majority of people, the most effective individual action they can take to reduce their carbon footprint. Some women go on “birth strikes” – they decide not to bring children into the world. On the other hand, life without children can be terribly impoverished. Parenting may be the most important – and creative! – act one can engage in, a non-substitutable occasion for personal growth and, for many, the central source of meaning in life. (Which is not to deny that, for many other people, a childless life is perfectly fine.)

Child Poverty through Philosophers’ Eyes

By admin

On 3 October, 2019

In Children, Distribution, Economics

In this post, Justice Everywhere’s Nicolás Brando and his co-editor Gottfried Schweiger introduce their recently-published collection on philosophy and child poverty.

Philosophy and Child Poverty: Reflections on the Ethics and Politics of Poor Children and their Families (2019) is the first full volume to address child poverty from a philosophical perspective. It brings together contributions from a plurality of philosophical approaches, providing an ample exploration into the conceptual, ontological, normative and applied questions that arise when looking at child poverty as a philosophical subject.

From the Vault: Good Reads on Children and Politics

By admin

On 26 August, 2019

In Children, Democracy

While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall from our archives some memorable posts from our 2018-2019 season.

Here are three good reads on issues relating to children and democracy that you may have missed or be interested to re-read:

Nicolas Brando’s post, which addresses the question: Why should children have the right to vote?
Aveek Bhattacharya on Votes for children: going back to first principles, which discusses a set of criteria or reasons why democratic participation is important, and argues that these apply to children as well.
The guest contribution of Nikolas Mattheis, In defence of children’s civil disobedience, in which he analyses and defends the recent school strikes for the climate.

Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 2nd September with fresh weekly posts by our regular authors. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to contribute a guest post on a topical subject in political philosophy (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Why Should Children Have the Right to Vote?

By Nicolás Brando

On 15 April, 2019

In Children, Democracy, Rights

Photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. (C) www.kremlin.ru

The debate on lowering the age of enfranchisement has become a hot topic during the last couple of decades. Countries like Argentina, Austria, Brazil or Scotland, for example, have lowered their voting age to 16. Many others, such as Estonia, Malta or some German Landen, have lowered it for local elections. Arguing for the need to enfranchise 16- and 17-years old seems like a very reasonable claim. Recent research on adolescent brain development has shown that a 16-year-old has the same abilities for cold cognition as any adult. Thus, adolescents are equally equipped to make an informed choice when voting. Why, then, would it be justified to limit their rights as political citizens just because of their age?

I think few would disagree with the arguments in favour of a 16-year-old’s right to vote. But what if we go a bit further, and were to abolish age-thresholds for enfranchisement altogether? Is it such an absurd idea to claim that a 6-year-old should be allowed to vote, as David Runciman argues? What reasons do we have to justify her exclusion? And, what are the reasons for claiming that she should have this right ensured?