The term “altruism” is used in many ways. In this thesis, I discuss altruism as a motivation, which is an influential notion in philosophy and the social sciences. Questions about the nature and the possibility of altruistic motivation have inspired much debate, both in academia and in everyday conversations. How can we know when we are truly altruistic and when we are merely helping others as a means to some egoistic goal? Are humans even capable of genuine altruistic motivation or (...) are we always egoistic deep down? Before answering questions like these, however, we need to ask a more fundamental question: how should we define altruistic motivation? The standard account of altruistic motivation in the literature defines it as an ultimate desire to increase the welfare of others. The central claim I will argue for in this thesis is that this standard account is intrinsically flawed and should be abandoned. -/- The problem with the standard account of altruistic motivation, in short, is its reliance on the notion of “ultimate desire”, which is a limited and unfruitful way of conceptualizing altruistic motivation. The criticism I propose is based on an interdisciplinary analysis of many aspects of the standard account, discussing its philosophical basis, its use in scientific research, its historical development, and its relation to common sense and morality. -/- This thesis is divided into four parts, each composed of two chapters. Part I presents the many technical accounts of altruism present in the scientific literature, distinguishing the standard account of altruistic motivation from alternative accounts of altruism. I discuss the hypotheses of psychological altruism, which states that some of our ultimate desires aim to increase the welfare of others, and psychological egoism, which states that all of our ultimate desires are egoistic. In this first part, I discuss some of the central philosophical concepts underlying the standard account of altruistic motivation, showing their implications for the debate about psychological altruism. -/- Part II discusses the main arguments for the existence of altruistic motivation. I argue that the main arguments in the scientific literature fail in making a defense of psychological altruism and that the definition of altruistic motivation makes the solution to the debate on psychological altruism virtually impossible. I conclude that the standard account makes altruistic motivation an unverifiable and unfruitful notion for scientific research. -/- Part III discusses the history of altruism and egoism, focusing particularly on early modern philosophy. I argue that the modern accounts of altruism and egoism diverge from the contemporary standard account of altruistic motivation. Reading the debates in modern philosophy through the lens of psychological altruism and psychological egoism oversimplifies and impoverishes the modern debate. I argue that the standard account also fails in representing the original use of “altruism”, proposed by Auguste Comte. In this third part, I show how the use of the standard account of altruistic motivation cannot be based on its historical foundations. -/- Finally, Part IV addresses the normative character of altruism and discusses some alternative ways of conceptualizing altruism. I argue that the standard account of altruistic motivation does not reflect the ordinary use of the term “altruism” and fails in accounting for its normative character. As an alternative, I propose an alternative account of altruism, virtue altruism. I claim that this account better reflects the ordinary intuitions about altruism, accommodates the descriptive and normative dimensions of altruism, is at home with most of the historical accounts of altruism, and may promote the active promotion of altruistic actions. (shrink)

Effective Altruism is a popular social movement that encourages individuals to donate to organizations that effectively address humanity’s most severe poverty. However, because Effective Altruists are committed to doing the most good in the most effective ways, they often argue that it is wrong to help those nearest to you. In this paper, I target a major subset of Effective Altruists who consider it a moral obligation to do the most good possible. Call these Obligation-Oriented Effective Altruists (OOEAs), and their (...) movement Obligation-Oriented Effective Altruism (OOEA). I argue that insofar as this variety of OOEA seems to commit us to refrain from helping the people right in front of us, there is something intuitively wrong about it. In response, I introduce an alternative model that embraces partiality: Mutual Aid. Mutual Aid is a network of community members, usually from the same geographical region, who share a commitment to offer, receive, and exchange material goods, wealth, and social support. I recommend Mutual Aid as a liberatory model, which—through empathy, solidarity, and care—mobilizes community building and provides a catalyst for community advocacy. As such, we should resist the claims of OOEAs that partially distributing our funds to people or causes we care about is morally wrong or even less than ideal. We do not have a moral obligation to use our funds “effectively;” rather, we have a broader obligation to address human suffering, and Mutual Aid is one moral alternative for discharging this duty. (shrink)

The utterance of morals or morality within a communist space is one that may, in the best of cases, raise a few eyebrows or, in the worst of cases, summon calls for condemnation or accusations of being unscientific. The subject of communist morality is one that is often ignored within the broader revolutionary left, while at the same time—especially within our current insurrectionary moment—beckons to be engaged with. As the hydra of neoliberalism begins its inevitable collapse, throwing capitalism once more (...) into a global crisis—and thusly its imperialist head begins to twist fascistically from the periphery back inward toward the United States and Europe—these categories that before seemed abstract and idealistic suddenly become vivid and tangible. Evil is how these injustices are described—in a non-hyperbolic fashion—by those engaged in the frontlines of revolutionary activity. So why is morality eschewed and denounced in left academic discourse? Are morals solely the provenance of the reactionary right or the dreamy idealist? (shrink)

Kirjoituksessa argumentoin, että metafysiikka on ollut valistusta, vaikka se edelleen kaipaa lisää valistumista, kun valistus ymmärretään avoimena prosessina, joka ei ole ajasta ja paikasta riippuvaista. Käsittelen ensin sitä, mitä metafysiikka ja valistus ovat. Sitten lausun länsimaisen metafysiikan historiasta hyvin lyhyesti. Päätän esseen argumentoimalla, että metafysiikka on valistunutta siinä mielessä, että klassisen substanssi-ominaisuus-skeeman sokeasta seuraamisesta on pitkälti päästy eroon. Metafysiikka kaipaa kuitenkin lisää valistusta ja kriittistä tarkastelua, jotta vapaudumme täysin kyseisen skeeman ja modernin predikaatti-logiikan johdatuksen aiheuttamasta kolmesta ongelmallisesta suositusta (tausta)oletuksesta: (1) (...) perustavat partikulaariset yksilöoliot ovat (periaatteessa) laskettavia, (2) ne eivät ole relationaalisia ja (3) ominaisuudet ovat ontologisesti riippuvaisia kantajistaan. (shrink)

Anarchism is by far the least broadly understood ideology and the least studied academically. Though highly influential, both historically and in terms of recent social movements, anarchism is regularly dismissed. Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach is a welcome addition to this growing field, which is widely debated but poorly understood. Occupying a distinctive position in the study of anarchist ideology, this volume, authored by a handpicked group of established and rising scholars, investigates how anarchists often seek to sharpen their message and (...) struggle to determine what ideas and actions are central to their identity. Moving beyond defining anarchism as simply an ideology or political theory, this book examines the meanings of its key concepts, which have been divided into three categories: Core, Adjacent, and Peripheral concepts. Each chapter focuses on one important concept, shows how anarchists have understood the concept, and highlights its relationships to other concepts. Although anarchism is often thought of as a political topic, the interdisciplinary nature of Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach makes it of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, liberal arts, and the humanities. (shrink)

Evolutionary biologists, evolutionary epistemologists, and biosemioticians have demonstrated that organisms not merely adapt to an external world, but that they actively construct their environmental, sociocultural, and cognitive niches. Denis Noble demonstrates that such is no different for those organisms that engage in science, and he lays bare several crucial assumptions that define the scientific dogmas and practices of evolutionary biology.

When central authority fails in socially crucial tasks, mutual aid, solidarity, and grassroots organization frequently arise as people take up slack on the basis of informal networks and civil society organizations. We can learn something important about the possibility of horizontal organization by studying such experiments. In this paper we focus on the rationality, care, and effectiveness of grassroots measures to respond to the pandemic and show how they illustrate core elements of anarchist thought. We do not argue for the (...) correctness of any version of anarchist politics, nor claim that the bulk of this grassroots work was done with anarchist ideas explicitly in mind. Nonetheless, the current pandemic, like many social crises before it, serves as a sort experiment in political implementation. -/- Two things have been striking in the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic: the chaos, incompetence, irrationality, and often cruel misguidedness of the centralized government response; and the rationality, care, and effectiveness of grassroots measures in many parts of the country. In this paper we focus on the latter—especially the case of Washington, DC—to illustrate core features of anarchist politics. We do not argue for the correctness of any version of anarchist politics here, but merely illustrate guiding ideas that have been a part of anarchist theory and practice for well over a century. We also do not claim that the bulk of this grassroots work was done with anarchist ideas in mind, or explicitly out of a commitment to anarchist politics. Some was, and some arises out of related ideological commitments, but most simply functions out of no more than a desire to support one another. -/- The current pandemic, like many social crises before it, rather than providing a stand-alone argument or functioning as an implementation of any political theory, serves as a sort of laboratory experiment. When central authority fails in socially crucial tasks, mutual aid, solidarity, and grassroots organization frequently arise as people take up slack on the basis of informal networks and civil society organizations. We can learn something important about the possibility of horizontal organization by studying such experiments, including how it arises through spontaneous action. If political thought is best illustrated through its implementation in practice, the functioning of grassroots individuals and organizations in a time of crisis is one way to understand the political mechanisms core to anarchist thought. (shrink)

The state of our current world has brought about a very active discussion concerning possible alternatives to our current society. In this article, I wish to consider Marx’s idea of communism as a possible alternative, by understanding it as an undetermined concept that only proposes a society without classes and private property. The thesis I will defend here is that we can meaningfully think about such an alternative through the means of Science Fiction literature. In particular, I will take Ursula (...) Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (2006) as a case study. To clarify this relation between science fiction (SF) literature and communism as a particular case of an alternative society, I will introduce some concepts of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological theory. Thus, I shall argue that in SF we can presentify in bounded phantasy an alternative lifeworld, so furnishing with content the undetermined idea, and in doing so, strengthen the belief in the possibility of such an alternative society. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This paper critiques current arguments advancing the potential for transhumanism and a range of biological and pharmacological enhancements to better human flourishing. It does so from a historical perspective weighing the individualistic and competitive evolutionary theories of Darwin with the cooperative and communal theories of Prince Peter Kropotkin a generation later. In doing so it proposes the transhumanist and enhancement enthusiasts operate within a paradigm similar to Darwin’s, one that is atomist and individualistic. The critique, which considers the status of (...) those with cognitive, sensory and physical limits, advances a vision of society as a cooperative and communal rather than individualistic and competitive. Within this framework the argument is not one of either/or but on the lexicographical superiority of the communal and social over the individualistic and competitive ethos underlying both Darwin and most contemporary transhumanist literature. This reordering of priorities, it is argued, reflects advances in contemporary biology and evolutionary thinking. (shrink)

One of the more debated topics in the recent realist literature concerns the compatibility of realism and utopianism. Perhaps the greatest challenge to utopian political thought comes from Bernard Williams' realism, which argues, among other things, that political values should be subject to what he calls the ‘realism constraint’, which rules out utopian arguments based on values which cannot be offered by the state as unrealistic and therefore inadmissible. This article challenges that conclusion in two ways. First, it argues that (...) the rationale for accepting Williams' original argument for the ‘realism constraint’ fails. Secondly, it argues that there is at least one genuinely political value of liberty available which is both compatible with realism and something that cannot be offered by the state, namely that of the political anarchist. This opens the way for far more ambitious and utopian forms of realist political thought and implies that the arguments of what we call political anarchists must be met by political argumentation, not simply ruled out by methodological stipulation. (shrink)

In this article I develop a big picture of the evolution of human cooperation, and contrast it to an alternative based on group selection. The crucial claim is that hominin history has seen two major transitions in cooperation, and hence poses two deep puzzles about the origins and stability of cooperation. The first is the transition from great ape social lives to the lives of Pleistocene cooperative foragers; the second is the stability of the social contract through the early Holocene (...) transition to complex hierarchical societies. The first of these transitions is driven, at least initially, by individual advantage: cooperation paid off for individual foragers, initially through mutualist interaction, then through reciprocation. This argument leads to a reanalysis of the role of violence and the nature of the freeriding threat to cooperation. But the conditions that select for cooperative individuals in the Pleistocene were eroded in the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. So we need an alternative account of the survival, and indeed the expansion, of cooperation in the Holocene. Group selection driven by intercommunal conflict really may well be central to this second transition. (shrink)

Cruelty is the deliberate infliction of physical or psychological pain on other living creatures, sometimes indifferently, but often with delight. Though cruelty is an overwhelming presence in the world, there is no neurobiological or psychological explanation for its ubiquity and reward value. This target article attempts to provide such explanations by describing three stages in the development of cruelty. Stage 1 is the development of the predatory adaptation from the Palaeozoic to the ethology of predation in canids, felids, and primates. (...) Stage 2, through palaeontological and anthropological evidence, traces the emergence of the hunting adaptation in the Pliocene, its development in early hominids, and its emotional loading in surviving forager societies. This adaptation provides an explanation for the powerful emotions – high arousal and strong affect – evoked by the pain-blood-death complex. Stage 3 is the emergence of cruelty about 1.5 million years ago as a hominid behavioural repertoire that promoted fitness through the maintenance of personal and social power. The resulting cultural elaborations of cruelty in war, in sacrificial rites, and as entertainment are examined to show the historical and cross-cultural stability of the uses of cruelty for punishment, amusement, and social control. Effective violence prevention must begin with perpetrators, not victims. If the upstream approaches to violence prevention advocated by the public-health model are to be effective, psychologists must be able to provide violence prevention workers with a fine-grained understanding of perpetrator gratifications. This is a distasteful task that will compel researchers to interact with torturers and abusers, and to acknowledge that their gratifications are rooted in a common human past. It is nonetheless an essential step in developing effective strategies for the primary prevention of violence. Key Words: compassion; cruelty; entertainment industry; evolutionary psychology; intraspecific killing; pain; predation; punishment; torture; violence prevention. Correspondence:c1 Correspondence to: West Hill House, 6 Swains Lane, Highgate, London N6 6QS, United Kingdom. (shrink)

During the British socialist revival of the 1880s competing theories of evolution were central to disagreements about strategy for social change. In News from Nowhere (1891), William Morris had portrayed socialism as the result of Lamarckian processes, and imagined a non-Malthusian future. H.G. Wells, an enthusiastic admirer of Morris in the early days of the movement, became disillusioned as a result of the Malthusianism he learnt from Huxley and his subsequent rejection of Lamarckism in light of Weismann's experiments on mice. (...) This brought him into conflict with his fellow Fabian, George Bernard Shaw, who rejected neo-Darwinism in favour of a Lamarckian conception of change he called "creative evolution.". (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics, the idea that the evolutionary process contains the basis for a full and adequate understanding of human moral nature, is an old and disreputable notion. It was popularized in the 19th century by the English general man of science, Herbert Spencer, who began advocating an evolutionary approach to ethical understanding, even before Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Speciesin 1859 (Spencer 1857, 1892). Although it was never regarded with much enthusiasm by professional philosophers, thanks to Spencer’s advocacy the evolutionary (...) approach to ethics soon gained wide popularity, both in Britain and towards the end of the century, even more in the United States of America (Ruse 1986; Russett 1976). It became transformed into a whole sociopolitical doctrine, known somewhat inaccurately as ‘Social Darwinism.’ (Scholars have long debated as to whether Darwin himself was truly a Social Darwinian, and the answer seems to depend on which of his works you read. If you look at theOrigin of Species, he certainly is not. On the other hand, if you look at theDescent of Man, there are good reasons for thinking that he was not unsympathetic to the idea. (shrink)

DEFINING THE LIMITS OF THE FIELD. Because 'consciousness and the body' is central to so many philosophical endeavors, I cannot provide a comprehensive survey of recent work. So we must begin by limiting the scope of our inquiry. First, we will concentrate on work done in English or translated into English, simply to ensure ease of access to the texts under examination. Second, we will concentrate on work done in the last 15 years or so, since the early 1990s. Third, (...) we will concentrate on those philosophers who treat both consciousness and the body together. Thus we will not treat philosophers who look at body representations in culture, nor philosophers who examine socio-political bodily practices with minimal or no reference to consciousness. Finally, even with the philosophers we choose to treat, we cannot be comprehensive and will instead make representative choices among their works. With that being said, we will have a fairly liberal definition of continental philosophy, operationally defined as that which makes (non-exclusive) reference to the classic phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Thus we will include the radical.. (shrink)

This essay identifies two different methodological strategies used by the proponents of anarchism. In what is termed the "ontological" approach, the rationale for anarchism depends on a particular representation of human nature. That characterization of "being" determines the relation between the individual and the structures of social life. In the alternative approach, the epistemological status of "representation" is challenged, leaving human subjects without stable identities. Without the possibility of stable human representations, the foundations underlying the exercise of institutional power can (...) be challenged. This epistemological discussion is traced from Max Stirner to the twentieth-century movement known as poststructuralism. (shrink)

In this commentary, I review diverse lines of research conducted at both the macrosocial and microbehavioral level that dispute the view that cruelty is inherently gratifying. Expressions of pain and suffering typically inhibit rather than reinforce cruel conduct in humans. With regard to functional value, cruelty has diverse personal and social effects, not just the alluring benefits attributed to it.

The dualist / materialist debates about the nature of consciousness are based on the assumption that an entirely physical universe must ultimately be observable by humans (with infinitely advanced tools). Thus the dualists claim that anything unobservable must be non-physical, while the materialists argue that in theory nothing is unobservable. However, there may be fundamental limitations in the power of human observation, no matter how well aided, that greatly curtail our ability to know and observe even a fully physical universe. (...) This paper presents arguments to support the model of an inherently limited observer and explores the consequences of this view. (shrink)

The paper characterizes Darwin's theory, providing a synthesis of recent historical investigations in this area. Darwin's reading of Malthus led him to appreciate the importance of population pressures, and subsequently of natural selection, with the help of the wedge metaphor. But, in itself, natural selection did not furnish an adequate account of the origin of species, for which a principle of divergence was needed. Initially, Darwin attributed this to geographical isolation, but later, following his work on barnacles which underscored the (...) significance of variation, and arising from his work on botanical arithmetic, he supposed that diversity allowed more places to be occupied in a given region. So isolation was not regarded as essential. Large regions with intense competition, and with ample variation spread by blending, would facilitate speciation. The notion of place was different from niche, and it is questioned whether Darwin's views on ecology were as modern as is commonly supposed. Two notions of struggle are found in Darwin's theory; and three notions of variation. Criticisms of his theory led him to emphasize the importance of variation over a range of forms. Hence the theory was populational rather than typological. The theory required a Lamarckian notion of inheritable changes initiated by the environment as a source of variation. Also, Darwin deployed a use/habit theory; and the notion of sexual selection. Selection normally acted at the level of the individual, though kin selection was possible. Group selection was hinted at for man. Darwin's thinking (and also the exposition of his theory) was generally guided by the domestic-organism analogy, which satisfied his methodological requirement of a vera causa principle. (shrink)

Philosophical inquiries into morality are as old as philosophy, but it may turn out that morality itself is much, much older than that. At least, that is the main thesis of prima- tologist Frans De Waal, who in this short book based on his Tanner Lectures at Princeton, elaborates on what biologists have been hinting at since Darwin’s (1871) book The Descent of Man and Hamilton’s (1963) studies on the evolution of altruism: morality is yet another allegedly human characteristic that (...) turns out to be built over evolutionary time by natural. (shrink)

This paper examines the points of disagreement between Neo-Darwinian and recent Neo-Aristotelian discussions of the status of purposive language in biology. I discuss recent Neo-Darwinian “evolutionary” treatments and distinguish three ways to deal with the philosophical status of teleological language of purpose: teleological error theory, methodological teleology, and Darwinian teleological realism. I then show how “non-evolutionary” Neo-Aristotelian approaches in the work of Michael Thompson and Philippa Foot differ from these by offering a view of purposiveness grounded in life-cycle patterns, rather (...) than in long-term evolutionary processes or natural selection. Finally, I argue that the crucial difference between Neo-Darwinian and Neo-Aristotelian approaches regards the question of whether or not reproduction deserves the status of an “ultimate” aim of organisms. I offer reasons to reject the concept of an “ultimate” aim in evolutionary biology and to reject the notion that reproduction serves a purpose. I argue that evolutionary biology is not in the position to determine what the “ultimate” explanation of natural purpose is. (shrink)

I attempt a reconstruction of Adam Smith's view of human nature as explicated in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith's view of human conduct is neither functionalist nor reductionist, but interactionist. The moral autonomy of the individual, conscience, is neither made a function of public approval nor reduced to self-contained impulses of altruism and egoism. Smith does not see human conduct as a blend of independently defined impulses. Rather, conduct is unified, by the underpinning sentiment of sympathy.

In March 1742, British naval officer John Byron witnessed a murder on the western coast of South America. Both Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy seized upon Byron's story a century later, and it continues to play an important role in Darwin scholarship today. This essay investigates the veracity of the murder, its appropriation by various authors, and its false association with the Yahgan people encountered during the second voyage of theBeagle(1831–1836). Darwin's use of the story is examined in multiple contexts, (...) focusing on his relationship with the history of European expansion and cross-cultural interaction and related assumptions about slavery and race. The continuing fascination with Byron's story highlights the key role of historical memory in the development and interpretation of evolutionary theory. (shrink)

Despite the harsh scientific basis of Social Darwinism, its followers strove to unify nature with humane feelings—for world views necessarily attempt such reconciliations. To answer the difficult “problem of evil” posed by natural selection and survival of the fittest, Social Darwinists such as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Herbert Spencer resorted to three kinds of theodicy: sentimental denial of the problem, belief in progress, and belief in perfection. Spencer's writings particulary display at different times both a rigid individualism and (...) a softer organicism. Eventually, however, T. H. Huxley would abandon the attempt, acknowledging in effect that no complete world view was possible. (shrink)

Future developments in artificial intelligence (AI) will likely allow for a greater degree of human‐machine convergence, with machines becoming more humanlike and intelligent machinery becoming more integrated into human brain function. This will pose many ethical challenges, and the necessity for a moral framework for evaluating these challenges will grow. This paper argues that community concern constitutes a central factor in both the evolution of religion and the human brain, and as such it should be used as the organizing principle (...) for moral evaluations of AI technologies. (shrink)

Explicitly fictional armchair reconstructions of the past are sometimes taken to be informative about philosophical issues. What appeal a counterfactual genealogy has depends on its speculative accuracy, that is, its accuracy in identifying relevant causal, functional, or explanatory particulars. However, even when speculatively accurate, counterfactual genealogies rarely secure more than proofs of possibility. For more ambitious deployments of genealogy – for example, efforts to show what properties the target concept in fact predicates – genealogies are hamstrung by the possibility of (...) predicative drift, or changes over time in what the concept predicates. Still, even when counterfactual genealogies fail to tell us about our current practices or concepts, they may identify appealing successors. Pettit's (2018 Pettit, Philip. 2018. The Birth of Ethics: Reconstructing the Role and Nature of Morality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]) innovative defense of moral realism and his employment of a counterfactual genealogy provides an illuminating instance of the promise and challenges facing accounts employing counterfactual genealogies. (shrink)

Darwin thought that the moral sense was among the most challenging aspects of human life to account for through evolutionary explanations. This article seeks to probe the question about human uniqueness primarily from a theological perspective by focusing in depth on one distinctive moral sentiment, gratitude, particularly in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. It uses that example as a case study about how to consider the validity of arguments for human uniqueness within the broader compass of the cultural evolution of (...) sociality and morality within the human sciences, including evolutionary anthropology. Further questions about the evolution of religion surface in this discussion since gratitude, from a theological perspective, necessarily includes gratitude to God as a fundamental aspect of religious faith and practice. (shrink)

The article analyzes the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian war in terms of a colonial seizure undertaken by a fading but aggressive Russian empire. This highly political adventure is translated into more abstract terms, that is, an irresolvable conflict between existence, which is always the experience of coexistence devoid of any essence whatsoever, and imperial expansion, which is an infinite conquest of space indifferent to all forms of life. The dualism in question is backed up by the writings of two important scholars, namely, (...) the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and the Russian scientist and revolutionary Peter Kropotkin. Nancy’s philosophy of being-in-common is the development of Heidegger’s concept of Mitsein, where the meaning of Mit- (co-, with) is existential and not categorical. Nancy’s philosophy challenges all forms of communal essence, of which empire is one blatant example. For Kropotkin, existence is even more all-embracing, implying a continuity of different life forms. His doctrine of mutual aid is a law that governs both society and nature, as well as evolution itself. Even morality springs from “solidarity” and the joys of social life, while sympathy or love are too narrow a basis for human ethics. Viewed from this perspective, a colonial war would not only be the greatest waste of human lives and natural resources—it would contradict the very order of things. (shrink)

Anchored in the diverse ecological practices of communities in southern Italy and Aotearoa/New Zealand, this book devises a unique and considered theoretical response to the shortcomings of global politics in the Ecocene—a new temporal epoch characterised by the increasingly frequent intrusion of ecological processes into political life. -/- Dismantling the use of the term ‘Anthropocene’ as a descriptor for our current ecological and political paradigm, this bold and resolutely original contribution proposes a restorative ethics of mutualism. An emancipatory theory intended (...) to re-invigorate human agency in the face of contemporary ecological challenges, it posits an effective means to combat the environmental destruction engendered by modernity. -/- Using ecology alongside European moral and Māori philosophies to re-conceptualise the ecological remit of politics, this book’s granular approach questions the role played by contemporary political ontologies in the separation of humans and environments, offering an in-depth view of their renewed interrelation under mutualism. -/- Ecocene Politics will be essential to researchers and students in the fields of politics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and geography. It will be of further interest to those working in the fields of political ecology, environmental humanities, and Anthropocene studies, as well as to general readers seeking a theoretical approach to the political issues posed by current ecological crises. (shrink)

In the crucible of the pandemic, it has never before been clearer that, to ensure the relevance and even the survival of the discipline, nursing must cultivate a radical imagination. In the paper that follows, I trace the imperative for conjuring a radical imagination for nursing. In this fever dream for nursing futures, built on speculative visions of what could be, I draw on anarchist, abolitionist, posthuman, Black feminist, new materialist and other big ideas to plant seeds of generative insurrection (...) and creative resistance. In thinking through a radical imagination, I unpack the significance of reparatory history for nursing, a discipline founded on normative whiteness. From there, I consider what it would take to shift the capitalist frame of healthcare to one of mutual aid, which requires the deep work of abolition. With a radical imagination that breaks down the enclosures that contain us through reparatory history, mutual aid and abolition, kinship becomes urgently possible. (shrink)

This paper argues that children as members of a perennial psychoclass represent one potential vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult–child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. I argue from Herbert Marcuse’s prophetic invocation of a “new sensibility,” which is characterized by an increase in instinctual revulsion towards violence, domination and exploitation and, correspondingly, a greater sensitivity to all forms of life. As the embodiment of (...) a form of philosophical “post-animism” or hylozoism, it represents the evolutionary shift that, it could be argued, our species requires for survival at this historical moment. I suggest that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny—the long formative period of human childhood and the pedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle—makes of the adult-collective of school a primary site for the reconstruction of belief. After exploring child–adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what John Dewey called “impulse” and “habit,” I argue for a form, or archetype of schooling first articulated in ancient Greece called skholé, a space that functions, according to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, as a “meeting place,” a “form of gathering and action” dedicated to inquiry, and not to the production of calculated, preordained outcomes—a space removed from the world of production, and characterized by a form of temporality associated with childhood: aion, or “timeless time,” as opposed to kronos, or linear time. Skholé is dedicated to emergence and cultural reconstruction, which follows from an educative relationship between adults and children based on understanding the latter as bearers of the “novel,” and on a faith in the “reorganizing potentialities” of childhood impulse, or interest—that is, on natality as a fundamental principle of cultural evolution. (shrink)

This paper explores the issue of democracy and the role of the democratic classroom in the development of society in general, and the way in which educators understand and deal with diversity in particular. The first part of the paper explores different meanings of democracy and how they can be manifested in the classroom. We argue that the idea of a ‘democratic classroom’ is far too broad a category; democracy is defined in action and can have realist or pragmatic characteristics, (...) elitist or pluralist roots. The realist form of social education was championed by political scientist Charles Merriam, while a social educative process more dependent on pragmatic problem solving was pursued by educational philosopher John Dewey and those who followed in his theoretical wake. The history of democracy in the United States, and the battles of how to import different meanings of democracy into the classroom over the course of the 20th century is explored, suggesting that the educational establishment has a tendency to adopt more realist/elitist forms of civic education. We present five ‘democratic’ classrooms with different characteristics to illustrate the different characteristics social education can exhibit. In the second part of the paper we discuss the relationship between different types of democratic classrooms and issues of race/ethnicity/culture. (shrink)

While a growing body of scholarship identifies urban agriculture’s broad suite of benefits and drivers, it remains unclear how motivations to engage in urban agriculture (UA) interrelate or how they differ across cities and types of organizations. In this paper, we draw on survey responses collected from more than 250 UA organizations and businesses from 84 cities across the United States and Canada. Synthesizing the results of our quantitative analysis of responses (including principal components analysis), qualitative analysis of textual data (...) excerpted from open-ended responses, and a review of existing literature, we describe six motivational frames that appear to guide organizations and businesses in their UA practice: Entrepreneurial, Sustainable Development, Educational, Eco-Centric, DIY Secessionist, and Radical. Identifying how practitioners stack functions and frame their work is a first step in helping to differentiate the diverse and often contradictory efforts transforming urban food environments. We demonstrate that a wide range of objectives drive UA and that political orientations and discourses differ by geography, organizational type and size, and funding regime. These six paradigms provide a basic framework for understanding UA that can guide more in-depth studies of the gap between intentions and outcomes, while helping link historically and geographically specific insights to wider social and political economic processes. (shrink)

This paper seeks to address the question of schooling for democracy by, first, identifying at least one form of social character, dependent, after Marcuse, on the historical emergence of a “new sensibility.” It then explores one pedagogical thread related to the emergence of this form of subjectivity over the course of the last two centuries in the west, and traces its influence in the educational counter-tradition associated with philosophical anarchism, which is based on principles of dialogue and social reconstruction as (...) opposed to monologue and reproduction. The idea of a dialogical school has been made possible by a historical shift in adult views of child as interlocutor rather than “othered” object of adult formation—a shift that can be observed in an historical process of “closer approaches” between adult and child and a recognition of childhood and adulthood as forms of subjectivity that lie on a synchronous rather than a diachronic lifespan continuum. Finally the author identifies an archetype of “school” understood as a specific type of intentional community—an experimental zone in which participants are allowed and encouraged, through explicitly dialogical practice, to develop the personal and relational habits that make authentic democracy possible—a communal form that gives practical meaning to Dewey’s notion of school as “embryonic society”: a utopian space where natality is recognized as a fundamental cultural force, and where the evolutionary possibilities inherent in neoteny are taken as normative. (shrink)

The needs principle—that certain goods should be distributed according to need—has been central to much socialist and egalitarian thought. It is the principle which Marx famously takes to be that which is to govern the distribution of goods in the higher phase of communism. The principle is one that Marx himself took from the Blanquists. It had wider currency in the radical traditions of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century it remained central to the mutualist form of socialism defended (...) by Tawney and Titmuss. The principle underlay the development and justification of the modern welfare state—thus the National Health Service is still founded upon the idea that the distribution of medical resources should be determined by medical need, not by ability to pay. One source of the power of the needs principle lies in the fact that it appears to be both a principle of justice and a principle of community or social solidarity. As a principle of justice it is offered as a corrective to the particular forms of unequal distributions of goods that can result from market transactions, and as a principle of community or social solidarity as a corrective to the possessive individualism taken to be the corollary of a market order. (shrink)

This e-special issue of Theory, Culture & Society presents works published by and about US philosopher and activist Judith Butler (b. 1956), Distinguished Scholar at the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley. They have contributed to Theory, Culture & Society and inspired key debates and scholarship around their work. Gender Trouble transformed our understanding of gender, influencing generations of academics, activists, and cultural producers. Butler is an exceptional thinker who aims to build more inclusive and sustainable societies through their writing, (...) which has influenced numerous fields, e.g. sociology, gender studies, politics, and the arts. The editorial introduction juxtaposes earlier and subsequent writings by Butler in order to encourage a wider reading of their work. Drawing upon the full catalogue of Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, the collection includes articles published by Butler, interviews with them, a book review, and articles about their work. (shrink)

Recovery is a model of care in (forensic) mental health settings across Western nations that aims to move past the paternalistic and punitive models of institutional care of the 20th century and toward more patient‐centered approaches. But as we argue in this paper, the recovery‐oriented services that evolved out of the early stages of this liberating movement signaled a shift in nursing practices that cannot be viewed only as improvements. In effect, as “recovery” nursing practices became more established, more codified, (...) and more institutional(ized), a stasis developed. Recovery had been reterritorialized. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the threads of recovery, from its early days of antipsychiatry activism to its codification into mental health—including forensic mental health—institutions through the lens of poststructuralist philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. We believe that Deleuze and Guattari's scholarship provides the necessary, albeit uncomfortable, framework for this critical examination. From a conceptualization of recovery as an assemblage, we critically examine how we can go about creating something new, caught in a tension between stasis and change. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, the social sciences and the humanities—especially sociology and psychology—have adopted a “negativistic” approach, i.e., a modus operandi that tends to bring out only negative or pathological phenomena. These disciplines often chase the operationalization of the social and human being losing sight not only of their peculiar objects of study but also of their aim of serving humanity. To describe this, we decided to do a journey through the Sorokin’s concept of altruistic creative love retracing the intellectual (...) genesis of it. Sorokin had an “intuition” synthesizable in the following statement: the future of humanity and its development lies in the hands of humanity itself. (shrink)

I have three main aims in writing this thesis on the social thought of Henri Bergson: to establish what society is in his view, to work out the implications of this for individuality, and to demonstrate the contemporary value of his philosophy as a whole, thus construed. It will be the task of the first two chapters to establish that society is a biological and cultural reality for Bergson. This will involve the demonstration that Bergson’s understanding of living systems can (...) be applied to groups as well as to single organisms, and that while the biological evolution of society underlies both individual actions and cultural evolution they nevertheless remain irreducible to it. In chapter three, I will consider the implications of his account of society for our understanding of the individual. These implications will be quite serious, as Bergson attributes an irreducible agency to society that immediately demands a re-assessment of the agency of the individual in terms of a participation in wider natural and cultural processes, and specifically a re-assessment of the central Bergsonian notion of individual freedom in the context of this natural and cultural evolution. In the conclusion, I will make a case that the value of Bergson’s philosophy today is that it can help us to move beyond the mechanistic paradigm that has dominated western thought since the scientific revolution by providing a powerful image of our relation to each other and to nature that is based on participation rather than control. In addition, there are two themes running through the thesis. One concerns Bergson’s critique of dogmatism both in philosophy and in the sciences, and his insistence that new ways of thinking be developed in response to new experience that cannot be integrated into existing interpretive models. In order to remain true to the spirit of his thought it has in many places been necessary to re-think his conclusions in relation to a new scientific context, rather than merely repeat what he says. The other concerns Bergson’s strong commitment to the role that philosophy can play in overcoming the natural tendency to control our environment, a tendency that he saw gaining a dangerous hold over the human spirit in the age of industrial capitalism. The essence of philosophy in this context is revealed to be a shift in attitude from control to participation. (shrink)

Although volunteering is the most organized and formal manner of altruism, the two subjects are rarely connected in literature. In this article reviewed is the egocentric approach that is found in four social disciplines: psychology, sociology, economics and socio-biology , and the way that studies on altruism are based on Utilitarian philosophy and on the homo economicus perception of man. All of the above have influenced the study of volunteerism: the research questions, the study areas, and the conclusions on the (...) essence of volunteering. We then review a different approach based on Deontological philosophy: the alter-centric approach, already influencing the study of altruism. New directions of approaching and studying volunteerism are suggested. (shrink)

Recent debates over evolutionary ethics have often circled around T. H. Huxley's late claim that “Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step.” In writing “Evolution and Ethics” and its long Prolegomena, however, Huxley may instead be wrestling with the nature and origin of human agency. Early in his career he saw evolution and social progress as converging, but as he came to find cosmic process alien to human welfare, he found moral agency more essential but (...) more problematic. Within “Evolution and Ethics,” evolution retreats into a cyclical stasis while ethical challenges end up submitting to it. Huxley implies, however, that in acknowledging these cycles as “natural,” ancient sages begged the question of whether resistance to them were possible. And when evolutionary ethicists delimit humanity's potential by its simian origins, Huxley invokes Hume's “naturalistic fallacy,” asking them how factual evidence can support their prescriptive conclusions. Both his naturalist and idealist reviewers then drove him to turn his Prolegomena into a rebuttal to the original essay. Here, advocating a balance between altruism and selfishness, Huxley works to relegate agency to a question of degree. In both essays, Huxley's epigrammatic prose demarcates the dead ends of much Victorian thought and points toward alternate paths not explored until the twentieth century. (shrink)

This article investigates whether the doctrine of social Darwinism had any bearing on the Labour Party’s decision to support Britain’s participation in the First World War. Many socialist intellect...

Michel Foucault famously analysed orders of knowledge, ‘epistemes’, in past European ages. In this study, his analytical method is fruitfully applied to gaining a better understanding of business sustainability within and beyond the Modern episteme. After an introduction to the contextual background for the study, this article provides (i) a justification for the use of a Foucauldian epistemic analytical method, (ii) an outline of the method, (iii) an application of the method to identify four sets of questions (morality, specialisation, anthropologization (...) and mathematicization) that are both direct derivatives of the Modern episteme and problematic for sustainable development, and finally (iv) an application of the method to consider evidence for the emergence of a new episteme. Conclusions are also provided. (shrink)

Healthcare under the auspices of late‐stage capitalism is a total institution that mortifies nurses and patients alike, demanding conformity, obedience, perfection. This capture, which resembles Deleuze's enclosure, entangles nurses in carceral systems and gives way to a postenclosure society, an institution without walls. These societies of control constitute another sort of total institution, more covert and insidious for their invisibility (Deleuze, 1992). While Delezue (1992) named physical technologies like electronic identification badges as key to understanding these societies of control, the (...) political economy of late‐stage capitalism functions as a total institution with no cohesive, centralized, connected material apparatus required. In this manuscript, we outline the ways in which the healthcare industrial complex demands nurse conformity and how that, in turn, operationalizes nurses in service to the institution. This foundation leads to the assertion that nursing must foster a radical imagination for itself, unbound by reality as it presently exists, in order that we might conjure more just, equitable futures for caregivers and care receivers alike. To tease out what a radical imagination might look like, we dwell in paradox: getting folks the care they need in capitalist healthcare systems; engaging nursing's deep history to inspire alternative understandings for the future of the discipline; and how nursing might divest from extractive institutional structures. This paper is a jumping‐off place to interrogate the ways institutions telescope and where nursing fits into the arrangement. (shrink)