Online research in philosophy

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• Faculty, York University
• PhD, Boston University, 2008.

• Normative Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality

• Normative Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality
• Philosophy of Law
• 17th/18th Century Philosophy
• Applied Ethics
• Metaphilosophy

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at York University (Toronto, Canada) and a member of the York Graduate Faculty. I work in ethical theory, focusing especially on feminist ethics, virtue ethics and the role of moral emotions, and in social and political philosophy. My current research topics include forgiveness, reconciliation, reparation and apology, as well as the philosophy of Hannah Arendt. I also have interests in the politics of sexuality. I completed my PhD in the Philosophy Department at Boston University. Previously, I studied at Queen's University (Canada) and Cambridge University (UK).

15 items found. Sort by: publication yearfirst authorviewingsaddition date Alice MacLachlan, Government Apologies to Indigenous Peoples. In this paper, I explore how theorists might navigate a course between the twin dangers of piety and excess cynicism when thinking critically about state apologies, by focusing on two government apologies to indigenous peoples: namely, those made by the Australian and Canadian Prime Ministers in 2008. Both apologies are notable for several reasons: they were both issued by heads of government, and spoken on record within the space of government: the national parliaments of both countries. Furthermore, in each case, (...) the object of the apology – that which was apologized for – comes closer to disrupting the idea both countries have of themselves, and their image in the global political community, than any previous apologies made by either government. Perhaps as a result, both apologies were surrounded by celebration and controversy alike, and tracing their consequences – even in the short term – is a difficult business. We avoid excessive piety or cynicism, I argue, when we take several things into account. First, apologies have multiple functions: they narrate particular histories of wrongdoing, they express disavowal of that wrongdoing, and they commit to appropriate forms of repair or renewal. Second, the significance and the success of each function must be assessed contextually. Third, when turning to official political apologies, in particular, appropriate assessment of their capacity to disavow or to commit requires that consider apologies both as performance and as political action. While there remain significant questions regarding the practice of political apology – in particular, its relationship to practices of reparation, forgiveness and reconciliation – this approach can provide a framework with which to best consider them. (shrink) Government and Democracy in Social and Political Philosophy Human Rights, Misc in Social and Political Philosophy Minorities, Misc in Social and Political Philosophy Political Ethics in Applied Ethics Politics of Recognition in Social and Political Philosophy Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | More options ... Alice MacLachlan, The Philosophical Controversy Over Political Forgiveness. The question of forgiveness in politics has attained a certain cachet. Indeed, in the fifty years since Arendt commented on the notable absence of forgiveness in the political tradition, a vast and multidisciplinary literature on the politics of apology, reparation, and reconciliation has emerged. To a novice scouring the relevant literatures, it might appear that the only discordant note in this new veritable symphony of writings on political forgiveness has been sounded by philosophers. There is a more-than-healthy cynicism directed at (...) what many philosophers see as an uncritical promotion of forgiveness, which – they fear – risks distorting and cheapening forgiveness as a moral ideal, on the one hand, and ignoring the moral and political values of justice, accountability and the cessation of harmful relationships, on the other. Are philosophical fears about the dangers of thinking about forgiveness in political terms warranted – or do they perhaps depend in part on conceptual conservatism regarding what exactly political forgiveness might be? I argue that most, if not all, standard objections to political forgiveness emerge from theoretical reliance on a picture of forgiveness I will call the Emotional Model. Once we make conceptual space for descriptions of forgiveness in performative and social terms, the concept is more easily adapted to a political account without at least some of the risks feared by philosophers. (shrink) Collective Action in Philosophy of Action Collective Responsibility in Meta-Ethics Forgiveness in Normative Ethics Political Ethics in Applied Ethics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | More options ... Alice MacLachlan & C. Allen Speight (forthcoming). Justice, Responsibility, and Reconciliation in the Wake of Conflict. Springer. Social and Political Philosophy Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2011). Relating After Wrongdoing: A Review of Forgiveness From a Feminist Perspective. By Kathryn Norlock and Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law and Politics. By Linda Radzik. Hypatia 26 (4):851-857. Forgiveness in Normative Ethics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: dx.doi.org   | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2010). Mirrors to One Another: Emotions and Moral Value in Jane Austen and David Hume, E. M. Dadlez. [REVIEW] Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (2). Aesthetic Emotion in Aesthetics David Hume in 17th/18th Century Philosophy Literature and Emotion in Aesthetics Literature and Ethics in Aesthetics Sentimentalist Virtue Ethics in Normative Ethics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2010). Resentment and Moral Judgment in Smith and Butler. The Adam Smith Review 5:161-177. This paper is a discussion of the ‘moralization’ of resentment in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. By moralization, I do not refer to the complex process by which resentment is transformed by the machinations of sympathy, but a prior change in how the ‘raw material’ of the emotion itself is presented. In just over fifty pages, not only Smith’s attitude toward the passion of resentment, but also his very conception of the term, appears to shift dramatically. What is an (...) unpleasant, unsocial and relatively amoral passion of anger in general metamorphoses into a morally and psychologically rich account of a cognitively sharpened, normatively laden attitude, an attitude that contains both the judgment that the injury done to me was unjust and wrongful, and the demand that the offender acknowledge its wrongfulness. Two very different readings of ‘Smithean resentment’ are thus available from the text. Indeed, the notion of two distinct forms of resentment – an instinctive, amoral version and a rich, rationally appraising attitude – would bring Smith into line with an earlier account of resentment, found in Bishop Joseph Butler’s Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel, first published in 1726. Ultimately, I argue, the differences in their theories are to Smith’s credit. It is precisely because the ‘thin’ or generic retaliatory passion described in Part I can be reconciled with the rich, normative attitude in Part II, that Smith is able to accomplish his meta-ethical goal of grounding moral judgments in naturally occurring emotions. (shrink) 17th/18th Century British Philosophy, Misc in 17th/18th Century Philosophy Adam Smith in 17th/18th Century Philosophy Empathy and Sympathy in Normative Ethics Moral Emotivism and Sentimentalism in Meta-Ethics Resentment in Normative Ethics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2010). The State of 'Sorry': Official Apologies and Their Absence. [REVIEW] Journal of Human Rights 9 (3):373-385. Genocide in Social and Political Philosophy Politics of Recognition in Social and Political Philosophy Social and Political Philosophy, Misc in Social and Political Philosophy States and Nations, Misc in Social and Political Philosophy Varieties of Justice in Social and Political Philosophy Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2010). Unreasonable Resentments. Journal of Social Philosophy 41 (4):422-441. How ought we to evaluate and respond to expressions of anger and resentment? Can philosophical analysis of resentment as the emotional expression of a moral claim help us to distinguish which resentments ought to be taken seriously? Philosophers have tended to focus on what I call ‘reasonable’ resentments, presenting a technical, narrow account that limits resentment to the expression of recognizable moral claims. In the following paper, I defend three claims about the ethics and politics of resentment. First, if we (...) care about socially just processes of reconciliation, we have good reason to pay attention to the logic of resentments. Second, the account philosophers offer of resentment – its distinctive features, aims, rationality, and gratification – will affect the conclusions we draw about which actual resentments to take seriously, which aspects of resentful claims need addressing, and what it means to address and repair them. In contesting definitions of resentment, I argue, we do more than simply perform housekeeping in philosophical taxonomies of emotion. Restricting our understanding to essentially ‘moral’ cases may cause us to lose sight of expressly political resentments. Instead, I argue, a plausible account of resentment must acknowledge that we resent violations and threats that are not necessarily self-pertaining, may not be expressible as individual, discrete injuries, and cannot always be construed as moral threats. Second, given the dependence of moral judgments on a broader horizon of moral possibility, philosophical standards of ‘reasonable’ or ‘appropriate’ resentment cannot avoid being politically charged. Thus, the widely accepted account of ‘reasonable’ resentment cannot make philosophical sense of the most interesting and perplexing cases. Ironically, a theoretical measure designed to revalue emotional expressions of moral protest may result in the exclusion and silencing of those with the most reasons to protest. (shrink) Moral Emotion, Misc in Normative Ethics Moral Emotivism and Sentimentalism in Meta-Ethics Political Ethics in Applied Ethics Resentment in Normative Ethics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: dx.doi.org doi.wiley.com   | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2009). Moral Powers and Forgivable Evils. In Kathryn Norlock & Andrea Veltman (eds.), Evil, Political Violence and Forgiveness: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card. Lexington. In The Atrocity Paradigm, Claudia Card suggests we forgiveness as a potentially valuable exercise of a victim's moral powers. Yet Card never makes explicit just what 'moral powers' are, or how to understand their grounding or scope. I draw out unacknowledged implications of her framework: namely, that others than the primary victim may forgive, and -- conversely -- that some victims may find themselves morally dis-empowered. Furthermore, talk of "moral powers" allows us to appropriately acknowledge the value of refusals to (...) forgive and the issue of "forgivable" evils, in ways that talk of forgiveness as a duty or virtue cannot. (shrink) Feminist Ethics in Normative Ethics Forgiveness in Normative Ethics Moral Evil in Philosophy of Religion Moral Responsibility, Misc in Meta-Ethics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2009). Practicing Imperfect Forgiveness. In Lisa Tessman (ed.), Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal. Springer. Forgiveness is typically regarded as a good thing - even a virtue - but acts of forgiveness can vary widely in value, depending on their context and motivation. Faced with this variation, philosophers have tended to reinforce everyday concepts of forgiveness with strict sets of conditions, creating ideals or paradigms of forgiveness. These are meant to distinguish good or praiseworthy instances of forgiveness from problematic instances and, in particular, to protect the self-respect of would-be forgivers. But paradigmatic forgiveness is problematic (...) for a number of reasons, including its inattention to forgiveness as a gendered trait. We can account for the values and the risks associated with forgiving far better if we treat it as a moral practice and not an ideal. (shrink) Feminist Ethics in Normative Ethics Forgiveness in Normative Ethics Gender and Equality, Misc in Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality Virtue Ethics, Misc in Normative Ethics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2008). Forgiveness and Moral Solidarity. In Stephen Bloch-Shulman & David White (eds.), Forgiveness: Probing the Boundaries. Inter-Disciplinary Press. The categorical denial of third-party forgiveness represents an overly individualistic approach to moral repair. Such an approach fails to acknowledge the important roles played by witnesses, bystanders, beneficiaries, and others who stand in solidarity to the primary victim and perpetrator. In this paper, I argue that the prerogative to forgive or withhold forgiveness is not universal, but neither is it restricted to victims alone. Not only can we make moral sense of some third-party acts and utterances of the form, “I (...) can or cannot forgive…” but also, we ought to recognize them as legitimate instances of third party forgiveness. Concern for the primary victim’s autonomy tends to exaggerate a need for moral deference, while ignoring how others are called upon to support and mediate for victims of violence and oppression. I advocate a cautious extension of the victim’s prerogative to forgive, one that grounds forgiveness in a double relation of sympathetic identification and attentive care. Following Jean Harvey’s recent work, I call this relationship moral solidarity. Furthermore, I argue, there are important moral and political reasons to acknowledge third party forgiveness; these reasons are particularly evident in contexts of oppression. In fact, third party refusals to forgive may have particular moral significance. In situations of abuse, oppression and damaged self-respect, third party refusals may protect the agency of victims who too easily forgive. (shrink) Autonomy in Applied Ethics in Applied Ethics Forgiveness in Normative Ethics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2008). The Nature and Limits of Forgiveness. Dissertation, Boston University This dissertation is a philosophical investigation of forgiveness, in both interpersonal and political contexts. The aim of the dissertation is to demonstrate the merits of a broad, multidimensional account that remains faithful to the moral phenomenology of forgiving and being forgiven. Previous philosophical work has tended to see forgiveness primarily in terms of reactive attitudes: specifically, the struggle to overcome resentment. Yet defining forgiveness along these lines fails to do justice to common intuitions that, for example, forgiveness may be a (...) gift offered to another, that it may be the remission of a debt or burden, or that it may 'wipe clean' a stain. Against standard philosophical models that limit its nature to a single dimension, the multidimensional model acknowledges its affective, cognitive and socially performative aspects. -/- My investigation begins by considering characteristic features of forgiveness, the reasons we have to forgive, and its potential moral value. In my preliminary chapters, I present my case against narrow theories of forgiveness, particularly those that define it in terms of attitude alone. In Chapter Three, I situate forgiveness in the context of moral considerations, by analyzing its relationship to other important moral values (trust, compassion, and moral sensitivity) and by defending an account of elective forgiveness. My fourth chapter turns from the act of forgiving to the limits of forgiveness. I discuss forgiveness of hostile or absent wrongdoers, forgiveness of injuries to other people ('third party forgiveness'), and the 'unforgivable.' Some philosophical discussions of the unforgivable have confused what is conceptually unforgivable with what is morally or even empirically unforgivable. By disentangling these threads, I argue that there are, in principle at least, no moral limits on what we may forgive. My concluding chapter applies the multidimensional model of forgiveness to recent discussions of the topic in political philosophy. I argue that the multidimensional model can meaningfully connect a range of forgiving practices in a political context, from transitional justice to interpersonal reconciliation. (shrink) Forgiveness in Normative Ethics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan (2007). The Object of Repair: Commentary on Margaret Urban Walker’s ‘Restorative Justice and Reparations'. Symposium on Race, Gender and Philosophy 3 (2). Reparations in African/Africana Philosophy The Scope of Justice in Social and Political Philosophy Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Alice MacLachlan, An Ethic of Plurality: Reconciling Politics and Morality in Hannah Arendt. History and Judgment: IWM JVF Conference Vol. 21. My concern in this paper is how to reconcile a central tension in Hannah Arendt’s thinking, one that – if left unresolved – may make us reluctant to endorse her political theory. Arendt was profoundly and painfully aware of the horrors of political evil; in fact, she is almost unparalleled in 20 th century thought in her concern for the consequences of mass political violence, the victims of political atrocities, and the most vulnerable in political society – the stateless, the (...) pariahs, the outcasts. At least, this is the case in her discussions of concrete, historical political situations. Yet in her philosophical writings, she continues to argue that the political realm ultimately redeems human existence, and furthermore, that politics should remain distinct and autonomous from moral evaluation. Political action must be evaluated according to “greatness,” not goodness or any other explicitly moral or even ethical standard. She goes so far as to suggest that politics and morality may be deeply hostile to one another, and can only be reconciled in situations of extreme emergency. This can leave many feeling both perplexed and deeply uncomfortable with the theory of human action that Arendt proposes. Drawing on her notions of political conscience, judgment and - in particular - her account of forgiveness, in this paper I argue that Arendt offers an ethics of plurality, in which what is good is developed from what is most politically important: amor mundi, or love of our shared political world. (shrink) Hannah Arendt in 20th Century Philosophy Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Steven Burns & Alice MacLachlan (2004). Getting It: On Jokes and Art. AE: Journal of the Canadian Society of Aesthetics 10. “What is appreciation?” is a basic question in the philosophy of art, and the analogy between appreciating a work of art and getting a joke can help us answer it. We first propose a subjective account of aesthetic appreciation (I). Then we consider jokes (II). The difference between getting a joke and not, or what it is to get it right, can often be objectively articulated. Such explanations cannot substitute for the joke itself, and indeed may undermine the very power (...) of the joke to evoke an appropriate response. Sometimes the discourse of art critics can have a similar effect. We therefore explore the analogy between getting jokes and appreciating works of art (III), and find it unexpectedly strong. Finally (IV), we consider Wittgensteinian grounds for thinking as we do, considering the language game of joke-telling, the relevance of seeing aspects, and giving reasons. (shrink) Aesthetic Emotion in Aesthetics Aesthetic Experience in Aesthetics Humour in Aesthetics Ludwig Wittgenstein in 20th Century Philosophy Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...

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