A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Category: Public Philosophy

Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / General / Public Philosophy

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An interview with Joseph Chan (Beyond the Ivory Tower series)

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series (you can read previous interviews here).

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Joseph Chan worked for three decades as Professor in the Department of Politics of Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. After Beijing’s crackdown on the 2019 protests in Hong Kong and the imposition of the National Security Law on Hong Kong in July 2020, he left Hong Kong for Taiwan. He now lives and works in Taipei as a distinguished research fellow at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica. Throughout his career, Joseph was a public intellectual well-known to politicians, activists and ordinary citizens in Hong Kong, and played some roles in Hong Kong politics, including as a mediator between the government and student protestors in 2014. We talked about how he got into political theory, his work in integrating Confucian political philosophy with Western liberalism, the tensions and limits of being a public intellectual, and his recent interest in the ethics of violence and protest.

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Academia / General / International / Public Philosophy / War

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Ukraine Benefit Conference: ‘What Good is Philosophy? The Role of the Academy in a Time of Crisis’

Aaron Wentland (Vision Fellow in Public Philosophy at King’s College London) is organizing a major online benefit event for the Ukrainian academy on 17 and 18 March, entitled: ‘What Good Is Philosophy? – The Role of the Academy in a Time of Crisis’.

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General / Public Philosophy

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Do you think you can do politics innocently?

There are many illuminating ways to understand politics, but one is as the practice of attempting to shape and direct the collective life of one’s community. Those who do politics typically seek to influence the collective life of the community with what they regard as morally good objectives in mind. Hence, at least according to this understanding of politics, outcomes matter enormously.

This goes part of the way to explaining why consequentialism is an approach to morality that has such purchase in politics. Simplifying a bit, consequentialism is the view that the moral rightness of an act depends only on its consequences.

Perhaps the most well-known objection to consequentialism is that it seems to permit acts which most people believe are obviously morally wrong. Familiar examples of such acts include lying, breaking promises, failing to show gratitude or loyalty, and imposing harm on others. This implication is typically illustrated via highly unrealistic thought experiments, but let me use three quite different recent examples from British politics instead.

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Climate / Duties / Economics / General / Governance / Public Philosophy

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Fiduciary duties of pension fund managers in the anthropocene

The latest report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that hundreds of billions of dollars will be required for climate mitigation and adaptation investments per year to avoid catastrophic global warming. Yet, some of our financial practices are not only slow to adapt to this requirement, but actually represent an obstacle in achieving the goal.

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Public Philosophy / Teaching Philosophy

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From the Vault: Philosophy in Teaching and Public Life

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2021-22 season. 

 

Justice Everywhere has several special series that explore philosophical issues relating to an important theme. Here are links to those that ran in 2021-22 with a flavour of the topics their posts address:

In our Beyond the Ivory Tower series, organised by Aveek Bhattacharya, which speaks to researchers about their engagement with “real world” politics:

In our Teaching Philosophy series, organised by Sara Van Goozen, which interviews scholars on ethics issues involved designing and delivering university courses in philosophy:

In our series on fatigue, organised by Zsuzsanna Chappell, which explores the political and social consequences of fatigue that have come to the fore in recent years:

Stay tuned for even more in these series in our 2022-23 season!

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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 1st September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series (published on Thursdays). 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.

Governance / Health / International / Public Philosophy

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From the Vault: Philosophy in the Covid-19 Pandemic

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2021-22 season. 

 

A lot has been written about Covid-19 and Justice Everywhere has contributed to this on several fronts. Here are some links from the last year on philosophical  issues raised by the pandemic that you may have missed or be interested to re-read:

Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2022-23 season!

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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 1st September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series (published on Thursdays). 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.

Gender / Public Philosophy / Punishment

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More attention is being paid to formal activism. Informal activism matters too

A common complaint made about contemporary political theory is that it is far too focused on describing what a perfect society looks like, and not focused enough on exploring the means by which we are to move toward the ideal. This criticism seems to me to be basically right. But it would not be correct to say that nothing has been said about the means by which to improve society. Political theorists have had a fair amount to say about ‘civil disobedience’, for instance.

Moreover, in recent years, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to allegedly ‘uncivil’ forms of activism, from hacktivism to hunger strikes, rioting to revolution. What all of these forms of activism have in common is that they typically have laws and policies as their targets. Hence, when political theorists think about activism, they tend to have what you might call ‘formal activism’ in mind.

While formal activism is of course essential, I want to draw attention to forms of activism that have social phenomena other than law or policy as their targets. Let’s call this kind of activism ‘informal activism’. There are at least three reasons why informal activism is important. (more…)

Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / Democracy / Liberty / Public Philosophy / Work

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An interview with Philippe van Parijs (Beyond the Ivory Tower Series)

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series (you can read previous interviews here). For this edition, Diana Popescu spoke to Philippe Van Parijs, Hoover Chair of economic and social ethics at the University of Louvain. Van Parijs is the author of several books, including Real Freedom for All and Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World. He is a founder of the Basic Income Earth Network, and chair of its advisory board. In May 2012, an article he published, ‘Picnic the Streets’, triggered a movement of civil disobedience which led to the decision to make Brussels’ central lanes car-free

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Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / Education / General / Public Philosophy / Teaching Philosophy

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An interview with Ciaran Thapar (Beyond the Ivory Tower series)

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series (you can read previous interviews here). Back in February, Aveek Bhattacharya sat down with Ciaran Thapar, a youth worker, educational consultant and author of the recent book Cut Short, which draws on his experience working with young people in London to analyse violence, inequality and criminal justice among other issues. Through the youth organisation, Roadworks, he delivers PATTERN, a storytelling workshop programme based on the themes of Cut Short. Thapar began mentoring young people as a Master’s student in Political Theory at the London School of Economics, and our interview explored the relevance of academic philosophy and the realities of disadvantaged young people’s lives.

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Moral values / Public Philosophy

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Virtue Signaling and Moral Discourse

*This is a co-written piece by A.K. Flowerree and Mark Satta.

Photo Credit to Volodymyr Hryshchenk

Recently, there has been philosophical debate about the moral significance of virtue signaling (i.e. using moral language to make oneself look good).

Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke—who prefer the term ‘moral grandstanding’—argue that virtue signaling corrodes moral discourse and impairs moral progress. Others, like Neil Levy and Evan Westra, argue that virtue signaling is not only morally benign but also sometimes morally beneficial.

Still, as Levy notes, accusations of virtue signaling are “typically understood as a serious charge.” Implicit in Levy’s comment is the observation that virtue signaling is something that people accuse others of doing. This is the fact that interests us here. We suspect that judging others as virtue signalers causes more harm than virtue signaling itself. And we think this is epistemically and ethically significant. (more…)