In this author-meets-critics discussion, Sanjay Lal presents the main ideas of his book Violence, Nonviolence, and Moral Worth, arguing that nonviolence meets violence along a continuum where there are degrees of greater and lesser examples, including a wide range of examples that combine both tendencies. Lal defines nonviolence in terms of three components that emphasize attitudes over actions: (1) a willingness to not harm others, (2) wanting to facilitate the well-being of others, (3) and not sacrificing one’s own moral worth. Three critics share their praises and concerns: Predrag Cicovacki challenges Lal to be more specific on the definition of moral worth, on the relationship between violence and nonviolence, and on the account that he gives for value theory and value conflict. Jennifer Kling asks if beliefs can serve as pre-existing grounds for action, if reconceptualizations of pop culture are bound to any limits, and if there are good reasons for assuming that all people are approachable. Danielle Poe asks what it means to reconceptualize popular culture as an approachable resource of nonviolent insight. Answering these questions, Lal reflects on what it means to be inspired by Gandhi’s example.
This article offers a supportive but critical engagement with Nicole Hassoun’s method for determining the content of the minimally good life. Against the dangers of both homogenising, paternalistic objectivism and capricious, uncritical subjectivism, Hassoun develops an account grounded in the second-person perspective of a free, reasonable, caring agent. While this framework marks a considerable advance, we argue that it systematically and problematically sidelines the politics of need: the contested, power-structured, and institutionally embedded processes through which needs are generated, interpreted, contested, claimed, legitimised, and met. Analysing each of Hassoun’s triad of freedom, reasonableness, and care, we show how her attempt to locate normative authority in well-placed individual agents generates both conceptual difficulties and a troubling detachment from the real-world challenges her theory is designed to address. Emphasising the risk of adaptation in affluent societies, the persistence of reasonable disagreement and pluralism, and the relational and political dimensions of caring practices, we argue that assessments of the minimally good life cannot plausibly be treated as matters of individual judgement. Instead, they require collective processes capable of coordinating and legitimating our choices, judgements, and actions under conditions of persistent disagreement and asymmetrical power. We conclude by proposing a shift from individual standpoints to political relationships as the proper locus for determining the content and demands of a minimally good life.
George Boss, Sophie Harbour· Res Publica· 0 citations
The article takes as its starting point a recent book by the Flemish philosopher Farah Focquaert, in which she questions the idea that agents can be blamed for their unlawful actions. In line with other free will skeptics, Focquaert argues that a scientific (deterministic) worldview implies that individuals lack the kind of control over their actions required to be genuinely ‘guilty’ or ‘blameworthy’. She seeks to draw out the far-reaching implications of this view for the organization of criminal justice systems, and maintains that her position is compatible with, and even supportive of, restorative justice. This article challenges that claim. It argues that free will–skeptical attempts to eliminate blame from public responses to crime risk undermining the moral dimension of wrongdoing – and of our responses to it – which restorative justice seeks to rehabilitate. First, the article shows that, although there is some convergence between free will skeptics and the restorative justice movement in their critique of the destructive aspects of current criminal justice systems, the one-sided emphasis of free will skeptics on abandoning retribution may erode important safeguards against excessive state control. Second, it argues that free will skeptics fail to articulate a meaningful concept of human responsibility that aligns with the central concerns of restorative justice. Third, it contends that the anti-retributive rhetoric of free will skepticism is at odds with the participatory nature of restorative justice and the cultural diversity it aims to respect.
P. D. de Witte· Tijdschrift voor Omgevingsre...· 0 citations
Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe gave a public speech that is filled with errors, misrepresentations, and fallacies. He takes on several main subjects: monarchism, Israel, the Frankfurt School, Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Javier Milei. This author views all three through the eyeglasses of libertarianism and misunderstands them all. Is he an anti-Semite? He makes many statements that can be construed as such. Read what he has to say and decide for yourself. It cannot be denied Hoppe is regarded by some as a world class libertarian theoretician. His work in democracy and monarchism; in defense of private property rights; his contribution to argumentation ethics; his arguments in behalf of anarcho-capitalism, are usually presented to sustain this stance. Those who support him do so on the grounds of his views on Austrian economics in general, and praxeology in particular. However, when many of this author’s premises are analyzed, they do not pass rigorous tests. The subjects treated in the present work are an example of this phenomenon.
Walter E. Block, Allen Gindler, Alan G. Futerman· MEST Journal· 0 citations
AbstractThis article argues that the ethical principle of nonmaleficence, to "do no harm," has become conceptually thin. Harm in medical settings is ubiquitous and typically in balance with beneficent intent, making nonmaleficence subsidiary to beneficence. Other independent applications of nonmaleficence have lost some of their original force. We propose to expand the conventional concept of nonmaleficence to add the obligation and the goal to avoid harm to the medical relationship. We offer scenarios demonstrating how connecting nonmaleficence to the ethics of care and relational autonomy helps to address key weaknesses in conventional principlism. We pose these relational obligations in prohibitory form because optimal clinical relationships remain context dependent, varying by setting and condition. In addition, this reframing of nonmaleficence foregrounds the risk of relational harm posed by an increasingly fragmented and compartmentalized medical realm that still relies heavily on trust, open communication, and confidentiality between clinicians and patients.
C. Crenner, S. Bird· Journal of Clinical Ethics· 0 citations
Entanglements of power and individual and collective commitments remain persistent issues for evaluation's potential impact. Dominant approaches have long operated hegemonically, privileging singular ways of knowing. Thus, concentrating epistemic authority in ways that silence community knowledge traditions and reproduce the very inequities evaluation is charged with examining. The need to confront internalized oppression and reevaluate power dynamics to shift them is a persistent blockage in the potential impact of evaluation. Though the shortcomings of positionality statements as performative gestures have received scholarly attention, the material conditions that prevent evaluators from enacting positionality in practice, and what they might do differently, remain underexplored. In this article, I call for culturally responsive and community-engaged approaches that resist extractive and constricting traditions. To operationalize this call, I offer a stage-specific framework that situates positionality as praxis across the stages of evaluation, providing evaluators with concrete and actionable guidance for enacting relational accountability at every phase of their work. When evaluators move beyond identity statements toward sustained, community-accountable praxis, positionality becomes a tool for dismantling the very systems of power that evaluation has too often upheld.
R. Acevedo· American Journal of Evaluati...· 0 citations
The study is a critical survey that analyzes the theatrical interventions of Yousif Al-Ani and Wole Soyinka in terms of the public intellectuals in The Key- المفتاح (1968) and A Play of Giants (1984), respectively, which has looked at each author separately but hardly in relation to one another, by applying a qualitative comparative textual reflection grounded in Edward Said's “intellectual” as one who confronts dogma and incites public reasoning. The satirical language by Soyinka and mythopoeic critique by Al-Ani supports the analysis, which considers language, symbolism, structure, and performance. Though Al-Ani uses reflective realism and moral dialogue to expose cultural exhaustion, he also works grotesque exaggeration to dissipate the potency of the authoritarian spectacle–as does Soyinka. Both ask their audience not to let the systems of oppression continue. The stage is like a place of moral struggle, where the audience is hoped to be alert and socially reborn.
Asmaa Mukaram Saeed· مجلة واسط للعلوم الانسانية· 0 citations
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