Abstracts
03/02/2010 17:17
Intervention and Transparency: the Case of Human Rights
Daniel Diederich Farmer
Marquette University
Title:
Intervention and Transparency: the Case of Human Rights
In this paper, I critique constructivist accounts of universal human rights (Jack Donnelly’s in particular) by deploying a criterion of transparency. A ‘transparent’ moral vocabulary is one...
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03/02/2010 17:15
Foucault: Politics of the Police
Andrew Johnson
Louisiana State University
Title:
Foucault: Politics of the Police
This is a shorter version of a project I have been working on in relation to Foucault and his College de France lectures. It is my argument that Michel Foucault addresses the institution and practice of the police,...
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03/02/2010 17:14
Nussbaum's Capabilities, Jaggar's Critique, What's Next?
Chad Kleist
Marquette University
Title:
Nussbaum's Capabilities, Jaggar's Critique, What's Next?
There have been two philosophical approaches to addressing cross-cultural moral disagreement and conflict. The dominant approach aims to develop a theory that is in some sense both ‘thick’ (i.e., it...
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03/02/2010 17:13
Heidegger’s (Unspoken) Justice: the Ordering of the World
Shane Ewegen
Boston College
Title:
Heidegger’s (Unspoken) Justice: the Ordering of the World
In his 1942 lectures on Parmenides, Heidegger offers one of his few sustained meditations on the character of the political. More precisely, through an analysis of certain sections of Plato’s Politeia,...
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03/02/2010 17:12
“Common Sympathies”: the Civic Duty Argument
Hsin-wen Lee
University of Southern California
Title:
“Common Sympathies”: the Civic Duty Argument
Miller believes that, in a multi-national society, a government will have difficulty enforcing the demands of civic duties--- due to the lack of trust and reciprocity, the rich national communities...
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03/02/2010 17:12
Negativity and Normativity: Art and Justice in the 20th Century
Aline M. Ramos
Fordham University
Title:
Negativity and Normativity: Art and Justice in the 20th Century
Ever since Greek Antiquity, we have been revising our idea of justice and all of its normative components. The Presocratic philosophers and Plato mentioned many ways in which beauty, art and...
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03/02/2010 17:11
Crisis of Antiquity: Arendt, Foucault, Agamben, and the Roots of Our Modern Crisis
Kyle Thomsen
Loyola University Chicago
Title:
Crisis of Antiquity: Arendt, Foucault, Agamben, and the Roots of Our Modern Crisis
A great deal has been said regarding the modern political sphere, and how we currently live in a time of peril. Two great thinkers, Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault,...
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03/02/2010 17:10
Towards a Human Language: An Alternative Approach to Global Poverty
Timothy Weidel
Loyola University Chicago
Title:
Towards a Human Language: An Alternative Approach to Global Poverty
In this paper, I offer an alternative approach to global poverty by challenging the current language of human rights (in terms of the work of Peter Singer and Thomas Pogge). This...
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03/02/2010 17:08
On Tolerance of the Ways of Life
Adalberto de Hoyos Bermea
National Autonomous University of Mexico
Title:
On Tolerance of the Ways of Life
Liberal tolerance pretends to be neutral to diverse ways of life, but its principles often conflict with the values of non liberal cultures, and supposes that it is necessary to disencourage...
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03/02/2010 17:06
Crises Undeniable, Ideological: Jürgen Habermas and the Legitimacy of Critical Theory
Miles Hentrup
University of Oregon
Title:
Crises Undeniable, Ideological: Jürgen Habermas and the Legitimacy of Critical Theory
In his 1968 essay “Technology and Science as ‘Ideology,’” Jürgen Habermas develops in outline the ways in which, in advanced capitalism, an effective critical social...
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03/02/2010 17:05
Constitutional Patriotism and the Cosmopolitan Project
Seth Mayer
Northwestern University
Title:
Constitutional Patriotism and the Cosmopolitan Project
Many have argued that justice among both co-nationals and citizens of different countries must be founded on solidarity. Recently, constitutional patriotism has emerged as a promising form of such...
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03/02/2010 17:04
Islamism as a Bourgeois Ideological Problematic: Towards a Marxist Critique
Hamad Mohamed
Duquesne University
Title:
Islamism as a Bourgeois Ideological Problematic: Towards a Marxist Critique
This paper attempts to situate the phenomenon of Islamism in its historical context, and present it as representative of a general, pervasive “civilizational paradigm”, to invoke...
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03/02/2010 17:03
Religion How? Deliberative Democracy and Proposition 8
Daniel Susser
SUNY – Stony Brook
Title:
Religion How? Deliberative Democracy and Proposition 8
Deliberative democratic theorists—Habermas chiefly among them—have lately been calling for a new openness to the influence of religious opinions on public political debate. And while I find many of their...
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03/02/2010 17:02
Rousseau’s Two Concepts of Obligation
Rafeeq Hasan
University of Chicago
Title:
Rousseau’s Two Concepts of Obligation
In this paper I argue that Rousseau has two concepts of obligation. The first, which locates the ground of obligation in the agent’s rational commitment, looks like the beginning of the Kantian road. But in the second...
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03/02/2010 17:01
Epistemic Injustice: The Occupation of Rigoberta Menchú
Mindi Torrey
Michigan State University
Title:
Epistemic Injustice: The Occupation of Rigoberta Menchú
Rigoberta Menchú's testimonio, I, Rigoberta Menchu, an Indian Woman in Guatemala has generated a great deal of political discussion in the academy. Anthropologist David Stoll has ignited a...
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03/02/2010 17:00
Immigration and Globalization: The Stakes of Open Borders in a Globalizing World
Everett C. Fulmer
Georgia State University
Title:
Immigration and Globalization: The Stakes of Open Borders in a Globalizing World
The arguments for absolute open borders across the globe generally appeal, in a libertarian fashion, to a human right to movement while arguing that there are no...
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03/02/2010 16:59
Is the Ticking Time Bomb a Dud?
Joseph Spino
Western Michigan University
Title:
Is the Ticking Time Bomb a Dud?
Some thought experiments lead us to surprising conclusions like the now famous ticking time bomb case. If any action seems a likely candidate for absolute moral prohibition, it is the intentional torture of another...
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03/02/2010 16:58
On the Significance of Disagreement in Politics
Marianne LeNabat
The New School for Social Research
Title:
On the Significance of Disagreement in Politics
The significance of disagreement is both over- and underestimated in theorizations of politics. It is underestimated by Karl Marx, for example, for whom the universal class will simply carry...
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03/02/2010 16:12
Capitalizing on Women: Globalization and the International Sex Trade
Matt Lovett
Duquesne University
Title:
Capitalizing on Women: Globalization and the International Sex Trade
This paper examines the phenomena of international trafficking of women and sex tourism in light of an increasingly globalizing world. Globalization, while an amorphous concept, has been...
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