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Freedom of Speech and Expression: Its History, Its Value, Its Good Use, and Its Misuse

Richard Sorabji

This book on freedom of speech and expression starts (chapter 1) with an inter-cultural history of this valued right through the ages and then recalls (chapter 2) the benefits for which we rightly ... More

This book on freedom of speech and expression starts (chapter 1) with an inter-cultural history of this valued right through the ages and then recalls (chapter 2) the benefits for which we rightly value it. But what about speech that frustrates these benefits? Supporters of the benefits of free speech have reason to exercise voluntary self-restraint on speech which frustrates the benefits. They should also cultivate a second remedy: the art, illustrated in chapter 1, and called by Gandhi the art of ‘opening ears’, by other kinds of speech and conduct. Such voluntary methods are to be preferred to legal constraints. But (chapter 3) legal constraint is sometimes necessary. In the twenty-first century, social media funding based on manipulation of personal speech data requires skilful legislation and enforcement in favour of social media that protect freedoms.Less

Political Corruption: The Internal Enemy of Public Institutions

Emanuela Ceva and Maria Paola Ferretti

This book discusses political corruption and anticorruption as a matter of a public ethics of office. It shows how political corruption is the Trojan horse that undermines public institutions from ... More

This book discusses political corruption and anticorruption as a matter of a public ethics of office. It shows how political corruption is the Trojan horse that undermines public institutions from within via the interrelated action of the officeholders. Even well-designed institutions may go off track if the officeholders fail to uphold by their conduct a public ethics of office accountability. Most current discussions of political corruption and of why it is wrong have concentrated either on explaining and assessing it in terms of an individual’s corrupt character and motives or a dysfunction of institutional procedures. This book brings out the common normative root of these two manifestations of political corruption. It discusses them as instances of the same relationally wrongful practice that consists in an unaccountable use of the power of office by officeholders in public institutions. From this perspective, political corruption is an internal enemy of public institutions that can only be opposed by mobilizing officeholders to engage in answerability practices. In this way, officeholders are responsible for working together to maintain an interactively just institutional system.Less

Duty to Self: Moral, Political, and Legal Self-Relation

Paul Schofield

Duty to self has not been taken seriously by contemporary moral and political philosophers, with many even denying the coherence of the notion. Morality and politics concern treatment of others, ... More

Duty to self has not been taken seriously by contemporary moral and political philosophers, with many even denying the coherence of the notion. Morality and politics concern treatment of others, according to common understanding, and so the very idea of a duty to oneself is thought to be mistaken. Against this, this book aims to vindicate the idea of duties owed by a person to herself, within both the moral and the political domains. Temporal divisions within a life, as well as between practical identities, enable an individual to relate to herself second-personally as she would to another, and thus to owe herself obligations. This book argues that such duties have implications for ethics, practical reasoning, and moral psychology. It also advances a new justification for paternalistic laws, which appeals to the notion of political self-duty.Less

Illuminating the Mind: An Introduction to Buddhist Epistemology

Jonathan Stoltz

This book provides readers with an introduction to epistemology within the Buddhist intellectual tradition. It is designed to be accessible to those whose primary background is in the “Western” ... More

This book provides readers with an introduction to epistemology within the Buddhist intellectual tradition. It is designed to be accessible to those whose primary background is in the “Western” tradition of philosophy and who have little or no previous exposure to Buddhist philosophical writings. The book examines many of the most important topics in the field of epistemology, topics that are central both to contemporary discussions of epistemology and to the classical Buddhist tradition of epistemology in India and Tibet. Among the topics discussed are Buddhist accounts of the nature of knowledge episodes, the defining conditions of perceptual knowledge and of inferential knowledge, the status of testimonial knowledge, and skeptical criticisms of the entire project of epistemology. The book seeks to put the field of Buddhist epistemology in conversation with contemporary debates in philosophy. It shows that many of the arguments and debates occurring within classical Buddhist epistemological treatises coincide with the arguments and disagreements found in contemporary epistemology. The book shows, for example, how Buddhist epistemologists developed an anti-luck epistemology—one that is linked to a sensitivity requirement for knowledge. Likewise, the book explores the question of how the study of Buddhist epistemology can be of relevance to contemporary debates about the value of contributions from experimental epistemology, and to broader debates concerning the use of philosophical intuitions about knowledge.Less

Metaphysical Exile: On J.M. Coetzee's Jesus Fictions

Robert Pippin

This is the first detailed interpretation of J. M. Coetzee’s “Jesus” trilogy as a whole. Robert Pippin treats the three “fictions” as a philosophical fable, in the tradition of Plato’s Republic, ... More

This is the first detailed interpretation of J. M. Coetzee’s “Jesus” trilogy as a whole. Robert Pippin treats the three “fictions” as a philosophical fable, in the tradition of Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Rousseau’s Emile, or Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Everyone in the mythical land explored by Coetzee is an exile, removed from their homeland and transported to a strange new place, and they have all had most of the memories of their homeland “erased.” While also discussing the social and psychological dimensions of the fable, Pippin treats the literary aspects of the fictions as philosophical explorations of the implications of a deeper kind of spiritual homelessness, a version that characterizes late modern life itself, and he treats the theme of forgetting as a figure for modern historical amnesia and indifference to reflection and self-knowledge. So, the state of exile is interpreted as “metaphysical” as well as geographical. In the course of an interpretation of the central narrative about a young boy’s education, Pippin shows how a number of issues arise, are discussed and lived out by the characters, all in ways that also suggest the limitations of traditional philosophical treatments of themes like eros, beauty, social order, art, family, non-discursive forms of intelligibility, self-deception, and death. Pippin also offers an interpretation of the references to Jesus in the titles, and he traces and interprets the extensive inter-textuality of the fictions, the many references to the Christian Bible, Plato, Cervantes, Goethe, Kleist, Wittgenstein, and others. Throughout, the attempt is to show how the literary form of Coetzee’s fictions ought to be considered, just as literary—a form of philosophical reflection.Less

God, Suffering, and the Value of Free Will

Laura W. Ekstrom

This book focuses on arguments from suffering against the existence of God and on a variety of issues concerning agency and value that they bring out. The central aim is to show the extent and power ... More

This book focuses on arguments from suffering against the existence of God and on a variety of issues concerning agency and value that they bring out. The central aim is to show the extent and power of arguments from evil. The book provides a close investigation of an under-defended claim at the heart of the major free-will-based responses to such arguments, namely that free will is sufficiently valuable to serve as the good, or to serve prominently among the goods, that provides a God-justifying reason for permitting evil in our world. Offering a fresh examination of traditional theodicies, it also develops an alternative line the author calls a divine intimacy theodicy. It makes an extended case for rejection of the position of skeptical theism. The book expands upon an argument from evil concerning a traditional doctrine of hell, which reveals a number of interesting issues concerning fault, agency, and blameworthiness. In response to recent work contending that the problem of evil is defanged since God’s baseline attitude toward human beings is indifference, the book defends the essential perfect moral goodness of God. Finally it takes up the question of whether or not it makes sense to live a religious life as an agnostic or as an atheist.Less

Justice and Egalitarian Relations

Christian Schemmel

Why does equality matter, as a social and political value, and what does it require? Relational egalitarians argue that it does not primarily require that people receive equal distributive shares of ... More

Why does equality matter, as a social and political value, and what does it require? Relational egalitarians argue that it does not primarily require that people receive equal distributive shares of some good, but that they relate as equals. This book develops a liberal conception of relational equality, which understands relations of non-domination and egalitarian norms of social status as stringent demands of social justice. First, it argues that expressing respect for the freedom and equality of individuals in social cooperation requires stringent protections against domination; develops a substantive, liberal conception of non-domination; and argues that non-domination is a particularly important, but not the only, concern of social justice. These features set it apart from, and provide it with crucial advantages over, neo-republican accounts of non-domination. Second, the book develops an account of the wrongness of inegalitarian norms of social status, which shows how status-induced foreclosure of important social opportunities is a social injustice in its own right, over and above the role of status inequality in enabling domination, and the threats it poses to individuals’ self-respect. Finally, it works out the implications of liberal relational egalitarianism for political, economic, and health justice, showing that it demands, in practice, far-reaching forms of equality in all three domains. In so doing, the book draws on, and brings together, several different literatures: on social justice and liberalism, distributive and relational equality, the distinct value of social equality, and neo-republicanism and non-domination.Less

Rules for Wrongdoers: Law, Morality, War

Arthur Ripstein

Saira Mohamed (ed.)

Ripstein’s lectures, which constitute the central texts of this book, focus on the two bodies of rules governing war: the ius ad bellum, which regulates resort to armed force, and the ius in bello, ... More

Ripstein’s lectures, which constitute the central texts of this book, focus on the two bodies of rules governing war: the ius ad bellum, which regulates resort to armed force, and the ius in bello, which sets forth rules governing the conduct of armed force and applies equally to all parties. The lectures argue that both sets of rules constitute prohibitions rather than permissions, and that recognizing them as distinctive prohibitions can reconcile the seeming tension between them. By understanding that the central wrong of war is that war is the condition which force decides, Ripstein contends that the law and morality of war are in fact aligned; the rules governing the conduct of hostilities must apply equally to parties in the right and parties in the wrong in an armed conflict, because the prohibitions outlined in the rules governing war are prohibitions that restrain war. Ripstein’s method of analysis and the substantive argument he puts forward offer an opportunity for rigorous critical engagement in subsequent essays by commentators Hathaway, Kutz, and McMahan, followed by a response from Ripstein.Less

Prejudice: A Study in Non-Ideal Epistemology

Endre Begby

Prejudiced beliefs may certainly seem like defective beliefs. But in what sense defective? No doubt, many of them will be false. Some will also be harmful. But many philosophers further argue that ... More

Prejudiced beliefs may certainly seem like defective beliefs. But in what sense defective? No doubt, many of them will be false. Some will also be harmful. But many philosophers further argue that prejudiced belief is defective also in the sense that it could only arise from distinctive kinds of epistemic irrationality: we could acquire or retain our prejudiced beliefs only by culpably violating our epistemic responsibilities. Moreover, it is assumed that we are morally responsible for the harms that our prejudiced beliefs cause only because, in forming these beliefs in the first place, we are violating our epistemic responsibilities. This book argues that these common convictions are false and misguided. It shows in detail that there can be plenty of epistemically justified pathways to prejudiced belief. Moreover, it argues that it is a mistake to lean on the concept of epistemic responsibility to give content to ethical responsibilities. In particular, this would unreasonably burden victims of prejudice with having to show that their victimizers were in a position to know better. Accordingly, this book develops an account of moral responsibility for harm which does not depend on finding grounds for epistemic blame. In support of this view, the book offers a number of examples and case studies at individual, collective, and institutional levels of decision making. Additionally, it develops a systematic platform for “non-ideal epistemology” which would apply also to a wide range of other socio-epistemic phenomena of current concern, such as fake news, conspiracy theories, science scepticism, and more.Less

Reasons, Justification, and Defeat

Jessica Brown and Mona Simion (eds)

Traditionally, the notion of defeat has been central to epistemology, practical reasoning, and ethics. Within epistemology, it is standardly assumed that a subject who knows that p, or justifiably ... More

Traditionally, the notion of defeat has been central to epistemology, practical reasoning, and ethics. Within epistemology, it is standardly assumed that a subject who knows that p, or justifiably believes that p, can lose this knowledge or justified belief by acquiring a so-called ‘defeater’, whether evidence that not-p, evidence that the process which produced her belief is unreliable, or evidence that she has likely misevaluated her evidence. Within ethics and practical reasoning, it is widely accepted that a subject may initially have a reason to do something although this reason is later defeated by her acquisition of further information. However, the traditional conception of defeat has recently come under attack. Some have argued that the notion of defeat is problematically motivated; others that defeat is hard to accommodate within externalist or naturalistic accounts of knowledge or justification; others that the intuitions which support defeat can be explained in other ways. This volume brings together recent work to re-examine the very notion of defeat, and its place in epistemology, and in normativity theory at large.Less