Thanks to Sara for a thoughtful response to my initial post. Sara’s very reasonable, and I confess a certain deliberate provocativeness in the original post. Nonetheless, I want to push back on a few things.
Last week, Michael Bennett proposed an ‘ad-hominem attack’ on non-consequentialism. He suggested, quite plausibly, that philosophers and political theorists tend to produce work that is complex, at least partially because ‘[p]romotion and prestige requires a constant stream of publications’ and it is ‘difficult to keep that up unless you have complex theories that require a great deal of elaboration’. This provides support for a kind-of debunking argument against contemporary anti-consequentialism:
It does seem awfully suspicious that the normative realm would turn out to be so complicated, given our career incentives to make it look complicated. I think we have reason to be less confident in complex philosophy as a result, and less confident in anti-consequentialism in particular.
I think it’s clear that among academic philosophers there is a tendency to overcomplicate things. This applies to philosophers of all stripes and backgrounds, but is perhaps particularly jarring among philosophers of the ‘analytic’ or ‘Anglo-American’ tradition, given our avowed focus on analysis, logic argument and rigour (this characterization of the analytic tradition can and has been questioned, but let’s go with it for the time being). Indeed, the focus on providing logical arguments for our positions seems to me to contribute significantly to this tendency towards complexity, often at the cost of clarity.
But to get to the point – does this institutional and epistemic bias in favour of complexity provide an argument (debunking or otherwise) against anti-consequentialism? I’m not sure that this is the case.
I think there’s something unintentionally revealing about the title of Frances Kamm’s book Intricate Ethics. Most people, I expect, would find it quite odd for intricacy to be a key selling point for a theory of ethics. Yet this actually makes complete sense, albeit not in the way Kamm intends. Philosophers need ethics to be intricate. If it were simple, they’d be out of a job.
In this post, Suzy Killmister (Monash) discusses her recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy giving an answer to the question, what, if anything, can members of oppressed groups do to counter that oppression?
During the Memphis Sanitation Strike of 1968, protestors marched through the streets carrying signs bearing the slogan ‘I Am a Man’. Today, protesters march through the streets carrying signs declaring ‘Trans Rights are Human Rights’, while others proclaim ‘No Human is Illegal’. What’s going on here? And more importantly, what explains the rhetorical power of such statements?
Justice Everywhere is back for a new season. We continue in our aim to provide a public forum for the exchange of ideas about philosophy and public affairs.
We have lots of exciting content coming your way! This includes:
- Weekly posts from our a wonderful team of house authors, offering analysis of a vast array of moral, ethical, and political issues on Mondays.
- The continuation of our collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy, introducing readers to cutting-edge research being published on justice-related topics in applied and engaged philosophy.
- More from our special series: Beyond the Ivory Tower where we interview those who work at/across the boundary between theory and practice, and Teaching Philosophy.
So please follow us, read and share posts on social media (we’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter), and feel free to comment on posts using the comment box at the bottom of each post. 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.
While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2022-23 season.
Here are a few highlights from this year’s writing on a wide range of issues relating to society and culture:
- Anca Gheaus questions whether we can have Feminism without “woman”?
- A wonderful interview with Thomas Shakespeare for our Beyond the Ivory Tower series, in which he discusses with Diana Popescu the place of lived experience in philosophy, theoretical disagreement among disability activists, the relation between activism and theorising in disability studies, and changing your mind.
- A guest post on Language, justice, and linguistic prejudice in academia by Sergi Morales-Gálvez and Josep Soler.
- Alexandru Volacu discusses Artificial Intelligence and the role of political philosophers.
- Shuk Ying Chan asks What is cultural decolonization?
Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2023-24 season!
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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 4th September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.
While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2022-23 season.
Here are a few highlights from this year’s writing on issues relating to protest:
- A fantastic interview with Joseph Chan as part of our Beyond the Ivory Tower series in which he discusses with Shuk Ying Chan his time as a public intellectual in Hong Kong, his role as mediator between the government and student protestors in 2014, and his recent interest in the ethics of violence and protest..
- A series by Yashar Saghai on the Mahsa Revolution in Iran, discussing visions of desirable futures, tensions between radical monarchists and republicans in the Iranian diaspora, unity for the Iranian opposition, and online deliberative spaces.
- Costanza Porro on Throwing tomato soup at Van Gogh.
- A post from our ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy by Travis Quigley on NIMBYism.
Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2023-24 season!
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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 4th September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.
While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2022-23 season.
Here are a few highlights from this year’s writing on issues relating to education, children, and upbringing:
- An illuminating interview with Stephen Bloch-Schulman on Teaching through experiences, as part of our series on Teaching Philosophy.
- Anca Gheaus writes on A liberal puzzle of childrearing, examining the question of whether neutral states may allow parents to dominate children’s value-formation.
- As part of our ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy, Areti Theofilopoulou discusses her recent article on Why justice requires mandatory parenting lessons and therapy and Christina Easton discusses her recent article on Why schools should teach that it’s okay to be LGBT.
- Polaris Koi takes up the challenge of speaking to the fairness considerations bearing on Student use of ChatGPT.
- Pierre-Etienne Vandamme writes on Taking political education out of families.
Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2023-24 season!
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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 4th September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.
While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2022-23 season.
Here are some highlights from this year’s writing on issues relating to nature, climate, and animals:
- A two-part series by Angie Pepper on the ethics of keeping pets: Why love isn’t enough and Why love is still not enough. And see also The four-legged therapist, in which Zsuzsanna Chappell examines why getting a pet to improve one’s mental health may be unethical.
- Can a ‘war on poaching’ be just? by Sara Van Goozen.
- Why we should ‘environmentalise’ the curriculum, written by Talia Shoval, Grace Garland and Joseph Conrad, of the Environmental Working Group at the University of Edinburgh. This is part of our Teaching Philosophy series.
- Should you be grateful to nature?, in which Max Lewis discusses the kinds of gratitude appropriate to our relationship with nature. This is part of our longstanding collaboration with The Journal of Applied Philosophy, sharing blog posts about recent justice-related articles.
- Fiduciary duties of pension fund managers in the anthropocene, by Peter Dietsch.
Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2023-24 season!
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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 4th September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.
They have been active in Ukraine since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and in Syria as early as 2013 (in the form of predecessor, the Slavonic Corps). They have significant presence in countries including the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali. But it is their involvement in the invasion of Ukraine since early 2022 that has pushed the Wagner Group into headlines across the globe. Now, especially after the abortive mutiny in late June, everyone knows who they are.
However, Wagner Group, though perhaps especially brutal, and especially shadowy, is far from unique. From Aegis to G4S to Blackwater (now Academi), recent conflicts have seen an increasing number private contractors take on logistics, training and even security and combat roles. (Though in the case of Wagner, it’s somewhat questionable how “private” they really were). It’s the latter, often called mercenaries, which are particularly controversial. But what are mercenaries, and how worried should we be about their proliferation?