Sometimes we avoid or minimize criticism for our failings by performing a merely symbolic act aimed at addressing a real or perceived blame allegation. Consider individuals or institutions performing land acknowledgements as a means of box-ticking inclusion without committing to any significant change. Or consider corporations forming advisory committees that lack authoritative power on issues they advise on. Call this performative blame avoidance. How does performatively avoiding blame fall short of appropriately engaging in genuine reparations? And how does this differ (...) from other ways in which we can inadequately engage in reparative work? Drawing on cases from land acknowledgements to governmental reconciliation policies, I show how performative blame avoidance operates as a distinctive mechanism of reparative failure that aims to foreclose accountability by appearing to address it, all the while instrumentalizing the very reparative practices meant to remedy wrongdoing. The framework reveals subtle operations of performative blame avoidance in complex institutional cases and articulates its relations to settler moves to innocence and epistemic exclusion. (shrink)

Effective altruism (EA) has received some of its most vocal criticisms from supporters of care ethics. In this article I take a comparative approach to determine whether a compelling critique of EA can emerge from care ethics at the ethical level, and more generally how much common ground can be found between the two. I will argue that not only are they largely compatible, but they can be seen as complementary or even converging approaches.

I argue that a Zhuangzian approach offers philosophical resources to address normative issues related to physical and sensory disability. In so doing, I roughly endorse Yong Huang's interpretation of the Zhuangzi. This ethical groundwork allows for an exploration of how we can understand disability. I also argue that the Zhuangzi's notions of the equality of things, the challenge of binaries (e.g. useful/useless), transformation and change, and the moral principle imply an ethics of disability that merits consideration vis-à-vis other normative theories (...) of disability. This is because this theory can address certain limitations of the medical and social models of disability. Examples include failing to recognise the impact of social conventions or exaggerating such conventions and emphasising the relevance of physical impairment. (shrink)

Dignity objections to autonomous weapon systems are prominent in contemporary military ethics, yet their theoretical foundations remain underexamined. This article reconstructs those foundations, showing what categorical dignity objections require to function as absolute prohibitions. Five apparently distinct dignity objections (concerning relationship, disrespect, abdication, dehumanisation, and reciprocal risk) each demand that specific constitutive relationships obtain between those who kill and those who are killed. These accounts all depend on an underlying assumption that dignity is constituted through mutual recognition, which imposes three (...) structural requirements on lethal force: mutuality (bilateral accountability), symmetry (equal standing to make claims and demand justifications), and second-personal engagement (actual address between particular individuals). These requirements are systematically violated not by autonomous weapons specifically but by organised armed conflict generally: beyond-line-of-sight engagement forecloses mutuality, ambushing and cross-domain fires foreclose symmetry, and organisationally mediated violence forecloses second-personal structure. Thus, no principled distinction between autonomous weapons and accepted military means has survived scrutiny. Dignity theorists thus face an inescapable dilemma: apply recognition's requirements consistently and embrace functional pacifism, or abandon dignity's categorical stringency. Three alternative pathways (pro tanto weighing, bifurcated wartime dignity, and reformulating dignity along non-recognition lines) are identified for those committed to retaining dignity without collapsing into a pacifist stance. (shrink)

Longtermists assign great moral importance to making the long‐term future as good as possible, especially by ensuring the survival of humanity. We argue, to the contrary, that on assumptions that are plausible, conservative, or shared by leading longtermists, human extinction will likely augment total utility among human and non‐human animals on Earth. The reason for this surprising conclusion is that our extinction would increase the number of sentient non‐human animals, which in turn would dramatically increase total utility. Possible responses by (...) longtermists leave them with a difficult quadrilemma. They must either (a) welcome human extinction; or (b) welcome the extinction of most non‐human animals; or (c) tolerate continued human existence and related animal suffering as mere means to ushering in high‐tech transformations of the animal kingdom, space colonization, or digital sentience – relatively esoteric, unpopular, and speculative parts of longtermism; or (d) reject key tenets of longtermism like anti‐speciesism or the equal evaluation of making beings happy and of making happy beings. Embracing any horn of this quadrilemma would cut deep into longtermists' current commitments and/or dash central longtermists' hopes of popular appeal. (shrink)

This article discusses prize‐creation and prize‐allocation. Such activities may seem morally neutral, or perhaps even beneficial. A central thesis of this article is that such practices have significant moral implications and should be brought under the remit of moral reasoning. I suggest that in many cases, the harmful effects of prizes are overlooked, and that they stand in need of scrutiny, revision, and possibly abolition. This conclusion is reached via an examination of the nature of prizes, their functions, benefits, and (...) harms, which generates guidelines that prize‐giving institutions should consider before instituting prizes and should use to periodically review them. This article advances philosophical theorising about prizes and has significant practical upshots. (shrink)

There is a philosophical debate about whether the use of biomedical enhancements to promote or sustain love in romantic relationships is compatible with the desirability of such love. We argue that enhancements are problematic in this respect only if they substantially replace the causal role of the beloved's identity in generating the lover's disposition to care. When enhancements remove psychological impediments to seeing the beloved ‘as they really are’ without introducing new (significant or overriding) inauthentic causes of love, they do (...) not reduce the value of the love between the lover and the beloved. In this article, we discuss three conditions for love to be an intrinsically valuable good and the causal role of the beloved's identity for each of them. We show that the fundamental desirability of love understood in terms of these three conditions does not depend on whether enhancements are used, but on whether the identity of the beloved continues to play the right causal role. Enhancements can help us preserve valuable relationships and support the causes of love that are already in place. Finally, even if relatively less desirable than unenhanced love, enhanced love can still remain valuable and desirable in absolute terms. (shrink)

Data companies such as Facebook use machine learning algorithms to analyze users' personal data, revealing fine‐grained patterns about when individuals are most vulnerable. These practices, widely described as manipulative, have generated a growing literature on how data companies wrong users through their influence. In this article, I argue that existing accounts overlook a significant wrong. I show that these data companies engaged in a distinctive form of deception at the point of data collection: users were led to believe that recommendation (...) systems existed to personalize their experience, when in fact the primary purpose was to discover their vulnerabilities. I consider several candidate accounts of what makes this deception wrong, including appeals to inauthenticity, informed consent, deception about commercial intent, and domination, and argue that none adequately captures the core wrong. I then argue that this deception constitutes a form of treachery: a deception whose purpose is to acquire power over the victim by co‐opting their agency. Drawing on cases from other contexts, I show that treachery is a pro tanto wrong that is independent of whether the acquired power is ever exercised. The concept of treachery thus identifies a prior wrong that existing accounts had not previously identified. (shrink)

This research note aims to motivate philosophical examination of the ethical tensions surrounding ‘dark tourism’ and monuments to injustice. While such monuments function to acknowledge past wrongs, educate the public, and serve reparative functions, their presentation as tourist destinations can undermine these purposes. I identify four common concerns: voyeurism, violations of privacy and re-traumatization, the commercialization of suffering, and inappropriate or exploitative visitor conduct. These challenges of dark tourism complicate the standard justifications for commemorating injustices in the form of physical (...) memorials. I suggest that philosophical attention to dark tourism will both refine our understanding of monumental ethics and provide guidelines for the ethical design of monuments. (shrink)

Many existing states, including the US and the UK, promote a particular housing tenure, owner-occupation. Yet liberalism is commonly associated with commitment to a principle of state neutrality which holds that states ought to be neutral regarding different ideas of the good life. This raises important questions, and ones that have received little philosophical attention. Does a commitment to liberal state neutrality rule out the promotion of owner-occupation? More broadly, what follows from a commitment to the neutrality principle for state (...) action around housing tenure? In this article, I argue that a weaker neutrality principle, neutrality of justification, allows states wide latitude to promote particular housing tenures, including owner-occupation. However, on a stronger and, I argue, more tenable reading of the neutrality principle, state promotion of owner-occupation is plausibly ruled out. What is not ruled out, however, is state promotion of a different tenure: renting. Before making these arguments, I defend the application of the neutrality principle to state action around housing tenure. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es poner en relación dos temas: la ornitología literaria y la biodiversidad. Con ello se pretende mostrar la diversidad de voces que existe en este tipo de literatura, un rasgo que se ha incrementado desde que el estudio de las aves se inició, como un terreno predominantemente masculino, en el siglo XVIII en Inglaterra. En primer lugar, se hará un repaso de escritores importantes en este ámbito pertenecientes a las últimas décadas y relevantes por la (...) diversidad de experiencias que muestran: desde la perspectiva de género, de raza o etnia, hasta la neurodivergencia. En segundo lugar, se demostrará que este tipo de textos nos ayudan a entender el rol que juega la biodiversidad en el sostenimiento saludable de los ecosistemas y en la defensa de las especies. Para ello el artículo se ocupará de dos obras: la novela El loco de los pájaros (2023) de Care Santos, que aborda el interesante tema de la aclimatación, aunque de modo acrítico, y el ensayo Birdgirl (2022) de la activista británica Mya-Rose Craig, que tiene como hilo conductor de su narración la pasión por las listas de aves, dejando al lector con algunas cuestiones abiertas sobre el impacto de este tipo de prácticas sobre el medio ambiente, pero demostrando su validez desde otros. Por último, se abordará el papel de la autobiografía para reflejar la diversidad humana y alterhumana, así como su función como brújula en el último libro, estructurado a partir del viaje de la autora por el mundo con el objetivo de avistar el mayor número posible de aves en un año. Con todo ello se pretende motivar la reflexión sobre el tema de la diversidad en sentido amplio, como instrumento promotor de formas de vida más sostenibles. (shrink)

Los animales no humanos y nuestra relación con ellos han sido temas de exploración constante para la escritora estadounidense Ursula K. Le Guin, pero es en Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (1987) donde se encuentra la mayor recopilación de sus escritos sobre el mundo más que humano. Esta recopilación de relatos de fantasía y ciencia ficción incluye el cuento de 1979 «La versión de la esposa», en el que Le Guin utiliza la licantropía inversa para difuminar las fronteras entre (...) animales humanos y no humanos. El cuento, una narración fantástica disfrazada de realista, narra una historia llena de amor y ternura, la típica historia de una pareja enamorada. Sin embargo, a medida que avanza la trama, la historia se convierte en un relato de terror, el terror al que nos podemos enfrentar si un ser querido se transforma en un monstruo. En el análisis de esta obra se explorarán los paralelismos que la autora establece entre el horror atávico que un animal como el lobo causa a los humanos y el terror que la loba protagonista muestra cuando su compañero se convierte en humano. Estos paralelismos paradójicos y estos contrastes, muy presentes en la obra de Le Guin, tienen como objetivo acercarnos a la experiencia emocional del animal y favorecer, por lo tanto, una actitud más empática hacia ellos. Utilizando el marco teórico del ecofeminismo, así como el de la ecocrítica empírica, que estudia mediante medios empíricos el impacto de las narrativas de temática ambiental en el público lector, se estudiará cómo estas estrategias literarias pueden conseguir sus propósitos. Asimismo, con el relato como punto de partida, se hará un repaso de los servicios ecosistémicos que proporcionan los llamados superdepredadores, como el lobo, que son fundamentales para el equilibrio de los ecosistemas y garantizan el mantenimiento de la biodiversidad. (shrink)

This article introduces a special edition of Archive for the Psychology of Religion dedicated to the 2025 International Association for the Psychology of Religion (IAPR) conference, hosted at the University of Birmingham from August 19 to 22, 2025. Centered on the theme “Highlighting the Cross-Disciplinarity of the Psychology of Religion,” the event fostered meaningful dialogue across psychology, theology, and related disciplines. The programme featured a preconference workshop titled “Widening the Methods Toolbox in the Psychology of Religion” and four keynote addresses (...) covering the intersection of psychology and theology, as well as perspectives from the cognitive science of religion, developmental psychology, and health and ageing research. Attracting 245 registered participants from at least 33 countries, the 2025 IAPR conference showcased panels, oral papers, poster sessions, and lightning talks by researchers at all career stages. The Birmingham team also hosted the Psychology-Engaged Theology conference on August 18–19, 2025. This sister conference brought together 30 theologians who had completed an 18-month cross-training programme in psychology and their psychologist mentors. Post-conference survey respondents rated the overall experience, communication, and academic programming in the excellent range, highlighting IAPR 2025 as a vibrant and dynamic gathering for the global psychology of religion community. (shrink)

This article offers a philosophical reinterpretation of the classical rhetorical principle of _decorum_ in the context of contemporary public communication. It examines how linguistic forms traditionally regarded as inappropriate, particularly taboo language, may participate in the construction of rhetorical credibility. Although taboo language has been studied extensively from linguistic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and psychological perspectives, its relationship to rhetorical _ethos_, political proximity, and the strategic negotiation of communicative norms merits further consideration within argumentation theory. The article proposes a distinction between authority-based (...) and similarity-based _ethos_ as two analytical modes of credibility construction that may coexist within the same rhetorical performance. Drawing on relational accounts of _ethos_, Burke’s concept of identification, and the pragma-dialectical notion of strategic maneuvering, it argues that taboo language may, in particular contexts, function as a resource for reducing perceived distance between a speaker and an audience. This possibility does not imply that such language is inherently persuasive or that its use necessarily enhances credibility. Its rhetorical significance depends on contextual interpretation, audience expectations, and the communicative function it performs. Three examples from contemporary public discourse serve as heuristic illustrations of possible mechanisms of identification rather than as empirical evidence of audience reception or persuasive effects. The article thus develops an account of _decorum_ as context-sensitive rhetorical appropriateness while acknowledging the limitations of the proposed conceptual model. (shrink)

A murder is an intentional killing, but some killings happen by mistake or accident. Although mistakes and accidents are unintended parts of an action, some jurisdictions prosecute unintended homicides as murder crimes in at least three patterns of cases. Together, these propositions present a puzzle that undermines a fundamental principle of criminal responsibility: An agent must unify the elements of a crime as a matter of their agency for criminal responsibility to attach. I examine five insightful ways to interpret this (...) principle in the literature, and I argue that none can account for all three case patterns. Primarily, I offer a solution to the puzzle based on the intentional causation relation. According to this solution, although intentionally acting does not involve the intent to cause every change one makes as part of the action, it does involve intentionally causing all such changes, including the mistakes or accidents. (shrink)

This paper addresses a question that has been overlooked by the growing body of literature on private law formalism: how are formalist private law categories constructed? I read Ernest Weinrib’s treatment of unjust enrichment in chapter 6 of his Corrective Justice not as a substantive theory of that doctrine but rather as an instance in which a formalist jurist appears to be constructing a private law category. I argue that in developing his account of unjust enrichment, Weinrib follows three consecutive (...) methodological steps: compilation, characterization and determination. The article first distils these steps from Weinrib’s work and subsequently examines them in depth, proposing them as the building blocks of a preliminary theory of category construction within formalist private law theory. (shrink)

This article focuses on the question of how to understand the role and use of ethical theories in bioethics. Work in bioethics often involves uses of ethical theory, but methodological developments such as the empirical turn and the growing insights into the plurality and contextuality of moral considerations challenge a traditional view of ethical theories as providing moral input into the value‐neutral descriptions offered by empirical studies. Nevertheless, bioethics is characterised by a relative neglect of questions related to the use (...) of ethical theories. The article develops a number of desiderata that any understanding of the role of ethical theories should be able to address; to accommodate moral plurality and contextuality, to motivate choices and uses of specific theories, to minimise risks of theory‐driven attention and blindness, to allow for theoretical plurality, to address relations between theories and theoretical integrity. It then presents some challenges for existing accounts of theory‐use in bioethics, thus paving the way for an alternative understanding of the role of ethical theories in bioethics. The suggestion presented here is that ethical theories should be understood as descriptions or representations of moral grammars, implicit normative structures of thinking and action that constitute moral considerations. Furthermore, in relation to problems in bioethics, it is suggested that ethical theories are used as heuristic tools to illuminate and clarify moral grammars as they appear in specific bioethical poblems or studies. (shrink)

Background The integration of monitoring and surveillance technologies including CCTV, biometric sensors and smart wearable technologies to support mental health care is developing at rapid speed and attracting significant investment internationally. Keeping pace with new technology developments and their implementation within health settings presents significant opportunities but also creates ethical challenges that necessitate robust safeguards to protect individuals’ rights. The Mental Health Commission in Ireland commissioned a scoping review to help inform the development of a new code of practice for (...) the use of wearable surveillance and monitoring technology in mental health services. Methods We searched ten databases for peer-reviewed and grey literature published between January 2018 and January 2025 on the use of surveillance and monitoring technology in mental health settings. Results Of the 2,262 retrieved articles, 147 articles reported on wearable device technology or addressed some of the key ethical, legal and policy considerations for its design, development and implementation. Conclusions This review of the literature highlights some of the benefits of using technology but underlines that the evidence base remains limited. Exploring perspectives from service users, carers/family members and professionals, it is clear that there is a fine balance between providing safety, and protecting privacy and autonomy. There are complex ethical and legal issues to be considered and it is important to apply a rights-based, trauma-informed, person-centred approach to the use of wearable technologies for monitoring and one which should be based on the most relevant, highest quality evidence available. The recommended approach seeks to inform decision-making that protects individuals’ rights, improves care and addresses the needs and concerns relating to the increasing use of surveillance technologies from the perspectives of service users, families/carers and professionals/service providers. This paper aims to inform stakeholders to help navigate the ethical tensions and recognise rights-based values associated with digital mental health technologies. This also extends to staff and the negative impact technology may have on organisational culture and morale. Devices that are co-designed, affordable, comfortable, non-stigmatising and easy to use, may help protect safety, autonomy, promote early intervention and, when applied within the appropriate legal and ethical frameworks, create the potential to transform care but greater research evidence is required. (shrink)

Health technology innovations (HTIs) represent a distinct group of technologies that stem from and further shape a particular socio-historical context. As citizens represent moral subjects, exploring their perspectives on the ethics of HTIs is pivotal in recognizing HTIs as a societally embedded phenomenon. A qualitative focus group study with citizens from Flanders, Belgium was performed. A total of 10 focus group discussions with 66 participants were conducted. Constructivist grounded theory and the Qualitative Analysis Guide of Leuven (QUAGOL) guided the study (...) design and process of data analysis respectively. One fundamental reflection marked participants’ perspectives on the ethics of HTIs: Where will these HTIs take us? The societal potential related to HTIs was perceived in parallel with their risk of exacerbating societal vulnerabilities. This ambivalence characterized the discussions and took shape in four distinct ethical dimensions: (1) care as inherently human, (2) innovations to support individual autonomy and quality of life, (3) equitable access to technological care, and (4) health data to ensure continuity and quality of care. Citizens’ ethical perspectives on HTIs go beyond particular individual technologies and demonstrate HTIs as a generic phenomenon interwoven with and within society. Participants’ experiential accounts introduce a ‘normativity in place’, as their moral intuitions shed light on the ethical design, development and use of HTIs as a societal construct. The increasing possibilities related to HTIs are then evaluated through the lens of humanness, autonomy, equity and integrity. Not applicable. (shrink)

Volume 34, Issue 6, December 2026, Page 1441-1449.

Why do some firms engage in bribery while others do not? We unpack how top manager gender shapes firm involvement in bribery by examining the roles of bribe demand, firm location, and investment in security. Based on a sample of 57,758 firms from 94 countries, we find that having a female top manager is negatively associated with a firm’s likelihood of engaging in bribery, and that bribe demand mediates this relationship. Moreover, we find that the location of the firm moderates (...) the relationship between top manager gender and a firm’s likelihood of receiving a bribe demand. Interestingly, the findings also show that investment in security positively moderates the relationship between having a female top manager and a firm’s likelihood of receiving a bribe demand. Our findings contribute to the business ethics literature, particularly on bribery, and offer relevant managerial and policy implications. (shrink)

Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative case study of FIFA (2016–2024), this study examines the retrenchment of anti-corruption governance reforms in organizations characterized by entrenched institutional logics that enable corruption. Building on institutional theory, we analyze how changing external pressure interacts with an institutionalized clientelist governance logic to shape reform trajectories over time. We identify a three-phase process in which initially adopted reforms suppress but do not dismantle clientelism, rendering them structurally fragile. As external pressure wanes, clientelist practices re-emerge, first through (...) policy–practice decoupling in which reforms are maintained symbolically, and later through regressive recoupling in which reform policies themselves are partially reversed or reinterpreted to realign with restored practices. We contribute to research on organizational corruption and institutional change by theorizing retrenchment as a temporally unfolding, politically embedded process and by extending decoupling theory to account for downward realignments of formal governance standards. (shrink)

In Sexual Orientation and Identity, Matt Andler opposes the trans-exclusionary view that trans women ought to be excluded from lesbian spaces, contending that sexual orientation is sociopolitical. His arguments prompt the trans-exclusionary charge that he is “changing the subject.” This paper examines the dialectical significance of that charge and Andler’s response. I argue that, if the subject matter of this exchange is indeterminate, as the evidence suggests, the dialectic is defective. To address this defectiveness I propose, drawing on Kevin Richardson’s (...) The End of Binaries, that the exchange be regarded as a negotiation of its own subject matter. (shrink)

In this symposium contribution, I argue that the literature on sexual orientation has focused almost exclusively on questions about the nature of orientation, and under-theorized the role of sex and sexual desire. I identify two common assumptions in the literature which explain why this happens. I then argue that we would be better served by an approach to sexual orientation which shifts the focus away from questions about who we desire, and toward questions about what sorts of sexual interactions we (...) want to have. (shrink)

I address what Heidegger understands by metaphysics and the God of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the philosophy prior to Heidegger, and the God of metaphysics is the God of causa sui. We are invited to think in the divine God, different from the God of metaphysics. I consider what the philosopher alludes to when he speaks of the divinities, the gods, and God. I refer to Being as the Fourfold (das Geviert), a key notion within the author’s thinking. I distinguish between (...) Being and God, with reference to the destinal history of Being (Seinsgeschichte). I compare calculative thinking (das rechnende Denken) and meditative thinking (das besinnliche Nachdenken). The latter is directed toward the, and it is the thinking that Heidegger brings into play. I seek to clarify what he understands by essence (Wesen), following François Fédier. I draw attention to the fact that one of the defining features of our time –the age of the dominance of the essence of modern technology– consists in what the philosopher calls the flight of the gods; in the face of this, there stands the task of poetizing –understood in a broad sense, which includes thinking: to prepare a dwelling for the absent gods. I endeavor to elucidate the phrase only a God can save us. (shrink)

Este artículo examina la interpretación que Heidegger hace de la concepción de Schelling en torno a la esencia del mal. La primera parte expone los rasgos fundamentales de la comprensión del mal en Schelling, mientras que la segunda analiza los puntos de convergencia y divergencia entre ambos pensadores. Tanto Schelling como Heidegger conciben el mal como un problema ontológico y metafísico, antes que como uno meramente moral o antropológico; asimismo, rechazan la doctrina clásica del malum qua privatio boni y entienden (...) el mal como una fuerza espiritual positiva. Sin embargo, Heidegger se distancia de Schelling al dejar de lado el trasfondo teológico, enfatizar la tensión permanente entre el bien y el mal y abandonar la idea de su reconciliación final. Además, el filósofo de Meßkirch sustituye la noción de “mal” por conceptos tales como “olvido del ser”, “abandono del ser”, “metafísica”, “nihilismo” y “técnica”. Finalmente, el artículo concluye que la comprensión heideggeriana del mal permanece, en sus rasgos esenciales, más cercana a la de Schelling de lo que el propio Heidegger reconoce. (shrink)

If, in What is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1994 [1991]) claim that ‘The nonphilosophical is perhaps closer to the heart of philosophy than philosophy itself’ (p. 41), and that philosophy ‘needs a nonphilosophical comprehension just as art needs nonart and science needs nonscience’ (p. 218), can the same be said of economics? This article explores this sense of the non-economic at the heart of the economic, in Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of capitalism, by tracing the relation, as they (...) see it, between the capitalist axiomatic and the revolutionary war machine within post-war twentieth-century capitalism. The aim of such an analysis is to highlight the continuities, but also and especially the discontinuities, between the political analysis found in A Thousand Plateaus (1980) and their work on neoliberalism and ‘control’ from the mid-1980s onwards, as well as the shifting relation between the economic/noneconomic in both sets of analysis. (shrink)

Considerable attention has been paid to the relationship between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault's respective concepts of control and discipline. Opinion has ranged from treating the two concepts as entirely distinct to arguing that they are essentially identical. One dimension of this debate that has received far less attention, however, is Foucault's own commentary on control. His commentary is, admittedly, sparse. Foucault frequently uses the term ‘control’ in a non-reflective manner and offers only a brief development of the concept in (...) several lectures he gave in the early 1970s. Nonetheless, his thoughts are instructive, as they position control as something that is both distinct from and yet interrelated with discipline. Foucault clarifies that discipline was formed from two elements – reclusion and moral control. Reclusion clearly relates to disciplinary enclosure, but Foucault's argument is that the modern disciplinary institution also absorbed the more diffuse task of ethical control that worked via forms of personal responsibility and moral conduct. Although his comments are brief and somewhat opaque, we might conclude that control represents a form of regulation or government that works at a distance, and which enables discipline to extend beyond enclosures into more diffusely organised populations. Given Deleuze's concerns with the failure or breakdown of the carceral element of disciplinary institutions, control might be understood as the element of earlier disciplinary societies that has best survived into our contemporary era. Following Foucault more closely, control appears less as a wholly new mode of regulation than as a remnant of a more integrated disciplinary system. (shrink)

The article reconstructs a shift from Gilles Deleuze's conception of the syntheses of the unconscious in Difference and Repetition to the one appearing in Anti-Oedipus. Félix Guattari's conception of a power sign as presented in his The Anti-Oedipus Papers is understood as a key in this shift, as a radicalisation of immanence and materialism eliminating any residual idealism. This entails an inversion of Spinozist substance that, instead of a preceding animating principle of genesis, is produced as an effect of material (...) forces with their semiotic and political dimension. Such a model of the syntheses is then used to specify Deleuze's critique of control societies, in line with the need to conceptualise the syntheses of the unconscious according to their internal organisation, analysed through the historical organisation of productive forces rather than within the ahistorical vacuum of transcendental logic. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in Michel Foucault's work, primarily in his conceptualisations of resistance and the relation between scholarly work and political activism. In this article we will deal with these topics by trying to reconstruct Foucault's understanding of resistance and how scholarly practices contribute to it through the theoretical framework of Gilles Deleuze. In the first segment we will elaborate some of Foucault's basic terms, focusing on the notion of the apparatus. We will rely (...) on Deleuze's reading of Foucault and show how the apparatus bears a strong resemblance to Deleuze's notion of the assemblage. In the second segment we will move on to Foucault's development of the genealogical method in the early 1970s. By relying on Deleuze's notion of ‘nomadic thought’ we will interpret genealogy as a discursive practice which deterritorialises knowledge codes thereby desubjecting individuals and opening up spaces for articulating resistance practices. In the third segment we will rely on Deleuze's and Félix Guattari's notion of the ‘war machine’ to interpret Foucault's understanding of the collective subject of resistance which he develops in the late 1970s. We will conclude with a claim that, by using Deleuze's conceptual apparatus to interpret Foucault's notion of resistance and its relation to scholarly work, we would have drawn an outline for a theory of agency and a model of engaged scholarship related to it. (shrink)

The historicisation of Gilles Deleuze’s ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’ often rests upon a particular reading of the 1990s and the turn of the twenty-first century as a period of unfettered globalisation and the collapsing of boundaries, with Michel Hardt claiming, for instance, that societies of control entailed the end of ‘insides’ and ‘outsides’. This article re-historicises Deleuze’s ‘Postscript’ by situating it within an alternative history that was simultaneously emerging in the 1990s, one in which new insides and outsides (...) were continually being created. New countries and territories sprung out of crumbling mega-states, border walls were erected across the Global North, and the rise of special economic zones equipped capital with extra-territorial and extra-legal spaces of accumulation. The article argues that societies of control never dispensed with insides and outsides, but, instead, insides and outsides have taken on different guises from older forms of sovereign power. Since the 2008 financial crisis, and especially in the last decade, insides and outsides have returned to dominate the political imagination, especially with the rise of anti-immigrant populisms and the return of competitive geopolitics. The article finishes by arguing that the right has been much more effective than the left in reacting to this alternative historical trajectory, and, in doing so, has enabled insides to take revenge on outsides. (shrink)

In A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari associate schizoanalysis and the rhizome with pragmatics, which is a field of linguistics introduced by Austin, among others. This article examines the role Deleuze and Guattari ascribe to pragmatics, in contrast to the role that other linguistic philosophers ascribe to it. Deleuze and Guattari are critical of any definition of language as a tool for communication and information, which is centred around signification and competence. According to them, the main function of (...) language is the transmission of order-words, so that language is inherently social and political – the prevalent definitions of language miss this dimension. The article discusses why Deleuze and Guattari call pragmatics the intensive and heterogeneous rhizome of language, and how both in theory and in practice this is often subjugated to or overshadowed by meaning and grammar, which are controlling and potentially suffocating aspects of language. It also discusses the significance of Deleuze and Guattari's notions of pragmatics as the rhizome of language, and of continuous variation as its abstract machine. In its concluding section, the article relates these concepts to Guattari's notion of transversality, in order to explain why Deleuze and Guattari equate schizoanalysis or rhizomatics with pragmatics. (shrink)

This article examines George Santayana’s philosophical naturalism and the criticisms directed against it by John Dewey and Roy Wood Sellars. It argues that Santayana cannot be reduced either to a strict materialist or to an idealist thinker, because his system is built on the coexistence of matter, essence, truth, and spirit within a single natural order. The study first explains Santayana’s concept of animal faith as the primordial, non-rational basis of all knowledge and action. On this account, belief is not (...) grounded in proof but in the biological conditions of life, practical need, and instinctive adaptation to the world. The article then shows how Santayana’s four realms structure his ontology: matter as the ground of existence, essence as the field of intelligible forms, truth as the factual description of what has occurred, and spirit as the light of consciousness emerging from organic life. Within this framework, spirit remains dependent on matter while still making possible meaning, value, and reflective awareness. The second part of the article focuses on the major objections raised by Dewey and Sellars. Dewey accuses Santayana of introducing a dualism between material nature and timeless essences, thereby weakening naturalism. Sellars, by contrast, criticizes Santayana’s epiphenomenalism and the claim that consciousness is merely passive. The article argues, however, that these criticisms overlook the consistency of Santayana’s own naturalism, which refuses both crude reductionism and supernatural explanation. Santayana’s use of idealist vocabulary does not abandon nature; rather, it seeks to account for the emergence of meaning, consciousness, and value within nature itself. In this sense, Santayana’s philosophy offers a distinctive alternative to both materialist reduction and transcendental idealism. Ultimately, the article suggests that Santayana’s naturalism is best understood as a middle path: fully rooted in matter, yet broad enough to preserve human meaning, aesthetic experience, and crucial philosophical reflection. (shrink)

The Gettier problem suggests that the core challenge for theories of knowledge lies in eliminating knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. In response, two major approaches have emerged in contemporary epistemology: modalism and explanationism. However, both approaches have limitations and exhibit an interesting theoretical symmetry: while modalism effectively handles environmental luck, it struggles with certain cases of intervening luck; explanationism faces the reverse difficulty. This symmetrical limitation suggests that any theory of knowledge relying on a single dimension is likely to be inadequate. To (...) address this, this paper presents a new, integrated approach – Modal Explanationism (ME). ME requires that a belief counts as knowledge just in case it is explained by the truth of the believed proposition in the actual world, and that this explanatory connection is preserved across a range of nearby possible worlds. It is argued that ME offers a more successful solution to the Gettier problem than either modalism or explanationism alone. (shrink)

Humanitarian action is commonly defined by the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence. In spite of the prevalence of these principles, disagreements on their justification and practical application persist. While this is a source of great frustration among policy-makers and practitioners, it expresses familiar tensions between fundamental positions in the ethics of global politics. In this article, we explore these tensions by analysing a controversy over humanitarian compromises with the Assad regime in Syria during the recent civil war. The (...) regime ruthlessly instrumentalised humanitarian assistance to mop up after its atrocities, suppress political opposition, and prop up its war economy. This was reflected in continuous humanitarian negotiations with the regime where humanitarian actors either had to compromise on their principles or leave the victims behind. In spite of public criticism, major agencies consistently compromised, entailing debates on whether they thereby violated their principles and whether such violation would be justified. In this article, we start out by sorting the ethical premises of this debate with a basic distinction between deontology and consequentialism, and between pluralism and solidarism. We then demonstrate that rather than falling neatly into these categories all actual positions in the debate involved combinations of all four types. This is illustrated by placing the positions along two intersecting continuums. In this way, we nuance standard accounts of the ethics of global politics while introducing a new theoretical framework to the ethics of humanitarian action. (shrink)

In _Oryx and Crake_, Atwood conducts a reasonable deduction based on cutting-edge gene editing technology, systematically presenting the multiple risks posed by technology: cognitive risks arising from human cognitive limitations regarding natural laws, practical risks of trampling on rights in technological research and development activities, and ontological risks of technological abuse eroding human physical, mental, and even species integrity. On this basis, Atwood further explores issues related to technological determinism, revealing the decisive role of economic and military interests in shaping (...) the direction of gene editing technology, and criticizing the extreme technological determinist idea that technology determines social change. Atwood critiques the industrial society's denigration of the humanities and social sciences. She then attempts to outline a possible path to avoid a crisis of technological ethics. By revitalizing the value guidance of the humanistic spirit, supplemented by fostering virtues in scientific researchers and establishing institutional norms for technological ethics, high technology can be guided to truly serve a more just and dignified mode of existence for humanity. (shrink)