When our nearest and dearest experience medical crises, we may need to step into caregiving roles. But in doing so, we may find that our new caregiving relationship is actually in tension with the loving relationship that motivated us towards care. What we owe and are entitled to as friends, spouses, and family members, can be different from what we owe and are entitled to as caregivers. For this reason, caregiving carries with it the risk of a type of moral (...) distress that I call “role conflict distress.” Rather than view role conflict distress as a sign that we are falling short, I suggest that it actually speaks to the commitment that we have to the loving relationship that grounds our duty of care. (shrink)

Agent-regret seems to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. If we grant that we are not morally responsible for consequences outside our control (the ‘Standard View’), then agent-regret—which involves self-reproach and a desire to make amends for consequences outside one’s control—appears rationally indefensible. But despite its apparent indefensibility, agent-regret still seems like a reasonable response to bad moral luck. I argue here that the puzzle can be resolved if we appreciate the role that agent-regret plays in a larger social practice (...) that helps us deal with bad moral luck. That agent-regret is a component in a social practice limits the questions that we can reasonably ask about it. While we can ask whether an experience of agent-regret is rational given the norms of this practice, we cannot ask the question that motivates the puzzle of agent-regret, viz. whether agent-regret is rationally defensible according to the Standard View. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that self-deception is a moral failure. Instead of saying that self-deception is bad because it undermines our moral character or leads to morally deleterious consequences, as has been argued by Butler, Kant, Smith, and others, I argue the distinctive badness of self-deception lies in the tragic relationship that it bears to our own values. On the one hand, self-deception is motivated by what we value. On the other hand, it prevents us from valuing (...) those things properly. I argue that we owe it ourselves to take seriously our own values, by striving to properly value them. This gives us both prudential and moral reasons to avoid self-deception. (shrink)

Philosophers have often understood self-knowledge's value in instrumentalist terms. Self-knowledge may be valuable as a means to moral self-improvement and self-satisfaction, while its absence can lead to viciousness and frustration. These explanations, while compelling, do not fully explain the value that many of us place in self-knowledge. Rather, we have a tendency to treat self-knowledge as its own end. In this article, I vindicate this tendency by identifying a moral reason that we have to value and seek self-knowledge that is (...) independent of the reason that we have to value the beneficial ends that it helps us achieve. I argue that we are in an inescapable relationship with ourselves that requires both self-love and self-respect. Self-love gives us a noninstrumental reason to know ourselves, while self-respect demands that we take this reason seriously. To pursue a project of self-discovery carefully and for its own sake, then, is part of what it is to stand in a loving and respectful relationship with ourselves. -/- . (shrink)

Philip Reed argues that laws that grant people access to euthanasia on the basis of terminal illness are discriminatory. In support of this claim, he offers an argument by analogy: it would be discriminatory to offer a person access to euthanasia because they are women or because they are disabled, as such restricted access would send the message ‘that life as a woman or as a disabled person is (very often) not worth living’.1 And so it must also be discriminatory (...) to offer people access to euthanasia because they are terminally ill. Arguments by analogies are only as good as the analogies on which they are built. Having a terminal illness, I’m going to suggest, is not relevantly similar enough to either being disabled or being a member of an oppressed social group to make Reed’s claim compelling. Let’s explore each branch of the analogy in turn. Why think that terminal illness is relevantly unlike disability, in a way that makes offering access to euthanasia in the latter case discriminatory, but not the former? For one thing, terminal illness is necessarily time-limited. When my father was dying, he found himself in constant …. (shrink)

We often feel survivor guilt when the very circumstances that harm others leave us unscathed. Although survivor guilt is both commonplace and intelligible, it raises a puzzle for the standard philosophical account of guilt, according to which people feel guilt only when they take themselves to be morally blameworthy. The standard account implies that survivor guilt is uniformly unfitting, as people are not blameworthy simply for having fared better than others. In this paper, we offer a rival account of guilt, (...) the relational account of guilt, which makes sense of survivor guilt and other forms of guilt without self-blame while preserving the intelligibility of guilt about culpable wrongdoing. According to this account, guilt involves the feeling of being unable to justify ourselves to others, and we lack self-justification when we (however blamelessly) stand on the positive side of an undesirable asymmetry with them. When someone survives something that those around her do not, the disparity in outcome constitutes an asymmetry that is often undesirable, because it arises from luck or violates a requirement of solidarity. Thus, survivor guilt is often fitting. (shrink)

-/- Caring for loved ones with dementia can sometimes necessitate a loose relationship with the truth. Some might view such deception as categorically immoral, and a violation of our general truth-telling obligations. I argue that this view is mistaken. This is because truth-telling obligations may be limited by the particular relationships in which they feature. Specifically, within caregiving relationships, we are often permitted (and sometimes obligated) to deceive the people with whom we share them. Our standing to deceive follows from (...) certain features of caregiving relationships. Specifically, they are relationships that involve obligations to promote a person's interests and values (and not simply their autonomy), that often permit us to assume the hypothetical consent of the person with whom we share them, and in which we are often entitled to act out of self-interest. Once we appreciate these features, we will be able to recognize that the truth-telling norms governing our relationships with loved ones with dementia do not represent a radical departure from our general truth-telling obligations, but are instead consistent with truth-telling norms that feature in other caregiving relationships. In addition, we will be able to understand why we may feel conflicted about lying to loved ones with dementia, even when lying is permissible. (shrink)

Typical philosophical discussions of physician-assisted death have focused on whether the practice can be permissible. We address a different question: assuming that pad can be morally permissible, how far does that permission extend? We will argue that granting requests for pad may be permissible even when the pad recipient can no longer speak for themselves. In particular, we argue against the ‘competency requirement’ that constrains pad-eligibility to presently-competent patients in most countries that have legalized pad. We think pad on terminally (...) ill, incapacitated patients can be morally permissible in cases where advance directives or suitable surrogate decision-makers are available, and should be legally permissible in such cases as well. We argue that this view should be accepted on pain of inconsistency: by allowing surrogate decision-makers to request withdrawal of life-sustaining care on behalf of patients and by allowing patients to request pad, we rule out any plausible justification for imposing a competency requirement on pad. (shrink)

In “Genetic Privacy, Disease Prevention, and the Principle of Rescue,” Madison Kilbride argues that patients have a duty to warn biological family members about clinically actionable adverse genetic findings. The duty does not stem from the special obligations that we may have to family members, she argues, but rather follows from the principle of rescue, which she understands as the idea that one ought to prevent, reduce, or mitigate the risk of harm to another person when the expected harm is (...) serious and the cost or risk to oneself is sufficiently moderate. We doubt, however, whether the principle of rescue can ground a duty to warn in the cases Kilbride envisages, and we suggest that Kilbride may have underappreciated the role that special obligations could play in generating a duty to warn family members. (shrink)

The modern biological definition of a chimera is a single organism composed of cells with multiple distinct genotypes. Chimeras combining human and nonhuman cells are invaluable for various kinds of research, providing a platform for the study of human cell development while avoiding the ethical issues involved in conducting this research on human subjects. There is also the possibility that human/nonhuman chimeras could one day be used to produce human organs for transplant. Yet human/nonhuman chimeras raise a number of unique (...) ethical challenges as well. Critics worry that they are ‘unnatural’, or will cause a kind of ‘moral confusion’, or pose a threat to human dignity. There are also concerns about the kinds of treatment we might owe to human/nonhuman chimeras. For example, introducing human pluripotent stem cells into a gorilla blastocyst could result in the animal developing a ‘humanlike’ brain, or developing human behaviours or characteristics. Would we need to treat such a being as we do our fellow humans? This chapter examines various arguments concerning research involving human/nonhuman chimeras, and the implications of these arguments for research policy. I conclude that research involving human/nonhuman chimeras is not intrinsically morally wrong, though it may be morally impermissible in some cases. However, I criticize the standard approach to evaluating the treatment of nonhumans in research, arguing that the moral treatment of nonhuman animals, including human/nonhuman chimeras, depends on contextual factors, rather than their moral status. (shrink)

Technological change is often seen as something that follows its own logic -- something we may welcome, or about which we may protest, but which we are unable to alter fundamentally. This reader challenges that assumption and its distinguished contributors demonstrate that technology is affected at a fundamental level by the social context in which it develops. General arguments are introduced about the relation of technology to society and different types of technology are examined: the technology of production: domestic and (...) reproductive technology; and military technology. The book draws on authors from Karl Marx to Cynthia Cockburn to show that production technology is shaped by social relations in the workplace. It moves on to the technologies of the household and biological reproduction, which are topics that male-dominated social science has tended to ignore or trivialise -- though these are actually of crucial significance where powerful shaping factors are at work, normally unnoticed. The final section asks what shapes the most frightening technology of all -- the technology of weaponry, especially nuclear weapons. The editors argue that social scientists have devoted disproportionate attention to the effects of technology on society, and tended to ignore the more fundamental question of what shapes technology in the first place. They have drawn both on established work in the history and sociology of technology and on newer feminist perspectives to show just how important and fruitful it is to try to answer that deeper question. The first edition of this reader, published in 1985, had a considerable influence on thinking about the relationship between technology andsociety. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded to take into account new research and the emergence of new theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

This volume breaks new ground by investigating the ethics of vulnerability. Drawing on various ethical traditions, the contributors explore the nature of vulnerability, the responsibilities owed to the vulnerable, and by whom.

Four studies tested the hypothesis that a weaker belief in free will would be related to feeling less gratitude. In Studies 1a and 1b, a trait measure of free will belief was positively correlated with a measure of dispositional gratitude. In Study 2, participants whose free will belief was weakened (vs. unchanged or bolstered) reported feeling less grateful for events in their past. Study 3 used a laboratory induction of gratitude. Participants with an experimentally reduced (vs. increased) belief in free (...) will reported feeling less grateful for the favor. In Study 4, a reduced (vs. increased) belief in free will led to less gratitude in a hypothetical favor scenario. This effect was serially mediated by perceiving the benefactor as having less free will and therefore as being less sincerely motivated. These findings suggest that belief in free will is an important part of being able to feel gratitude. (shrink)

On the basis of neuroiinaging studies, Posner & Raichle summarily report that the prefrontal cortex is involved in executive functioning and attention. In contrast to that superficial view, we briefly describe a testable model of the kinds of representations that are stored in prefrontal cortex, which, when activated, are expressed via plans, actions, thematic knowledge, and schemas.

In this paper, I discuss rape myths and mythologies, their negative effects on rape and sexual assault complainants, and how they prejudicially construct women qua women. The backdrop for the analysis is the Belfast Rugby Rape Trial, which took place in 2018. Four men, two of whom were well-known rugby players, were acquitted of rape and sexual assault in a nine-week criminal trial that dominated local, national and international attention. The acquittal resulted in ‘I Believe Her’ rallies and protests across (...) Northern Ireland. Of concern were the deeply sexist and misogynistic text exchanges among the acquitted about the complainant and women more generally. One month after the trial, the Criminal Justice Board of Northern Ireland commissioned an independent review of the arrangements to deliver justice in cases of serious sexual offences. The Gillen Review proposed 16 key recommendations, among them measures to dispel rape myths and the role that Relationship and Sex Education in schools could play in combatting these myths. I will explore these issues using Miranda Fricker's construction of epistemic injustice. I argue that there is little appreciation of the profound impact that routine testimonial injustice—where the credibility of a speaker is deflated or undermined on account of her social identity—can have on the wellbeing of speakers and how it ramifies with other forms of injustice. To illustrate, I draw on neurological explanations to show why attributions of sexual consent are unjustly sustained in cases of rape and sexual assault. (shrink)

We are unlikely to stop seeking pleasure, as this would prejudice our health and well-being. Yet many psychoactive substances providing pleasure are outlawed as illicit recreational drugs, despite the fact that only some of them are addictive to some people. Efforts to redress their prohibition, or to reform legislation so that penalties are proportionate to harm have largely failed. Yet, if choices over seeking pleasure are ethical insofar as they avoid harm to oneself or others, public health strategies should foster (...) ethical choice by moving beyond current risk management practices embodied in the harm reduction movement. The neuroscience of pleasure has much to offer neuroethics and public health strategies. Distinguishing between ‘wanting’ and ‘liking’ fosters new understandings of addiction. These hold promise for directing the search for pharmacotherapies which prevent addiction and relapse or disrupt associated neuromechanisms. They could inform new research into creating lawful psychoactive substances which give us pleasure without provoking addiction. As the health and well being of human and other animals rests upon the experience of pleasure, this would be an ethical objective within public health strategy. Were ethical and neurobiological obstacles to ending addiction to be overcome, problems associated with excessive consumption, the lure of unlawful psychoactive substances and the paucity of lawful means to achieve pleasurable altered states would remain. Non-addictive designer drugs, which reliably provided lawful access to pleasures and altered states, would ameliorate these public health concerns insofar as they fostered citizens’ informed, ethical choices according to a neurobiological taxonomy of pleasures. (shrink)

While some trust theorists have adverted to the vulnerabilities involved in trust, especially vulnerability to betrayal, the literature on trust has not engaged with recent work on the ethics of vulnerability. This paper initiates a dialogue between these literatures, and in doing so begins to explore the complex interrelations between vulnerability and trust. More specifically, it aims to show how trust can both mitigate and compound vulnerability. Through a discussion of two examples drawn from literary sources, the paper also investigates (...) the effects of pathogenic vulnerability on the psychic economies of trust and distrust. (shrink)

On initial analysis, Indian Buddhist philosophers seem to have an inconsistent set of commitments with regard to the nature of action. First, they are committed to the reality of karman (Skt: action), which concerns the moral quality of actions and the short- and long-term effects of those actions on the agent. Second, they are committed to an understanding of karma as deeply connected with intention or volition (cetanā). Third, they are committed to the idea that, through Buddhist practice, one may (...) become liberated from the afflictions of craving, aversion, and ignorance and achieve nirvāṇa. Yet, fourth, while Buddhist philosophers are committed to the reality of action and its results, they are also committed to the unreality of any substantial self or agent of actions. How can one affirm the reality of volition, action, efficacious practice, and liberation, while denying the existence of agents, practitioners, or liberated beings? Reconciling the doctrine of no-self (anātman) with an account of agency and karma was a central task of great Buddhist philosophers such as Vasubandhu (fl. 4th to 5th century CE). This chapter will discuss Buddhist philosophy of action in the context of their views of the self, general ontology, ethics, and soteriology. (shrink)

In its restless metamorphosis, the environmental movement captures ideas and transforms them into principles, guidelines and points of leverage. Sustainability is one such idea, now being reinterpreted in the aftermath of the 1992 Rio Conference. So too is the precautionary principle. Like sustainability, the precautionary principle is neither a well defined principle nor a stable concept. It has become the repository for a jumble of adventurous beliefs that challenge the status quo of political power, ideology and civil rights. Neither concept (...) has much coherence other than it is captured by the spirit that is challenging the authority of science, the hegemony of cost-benefit analysis, the powerlessness of victims of environmental abuse, and the unimplemented ethics of intrinsic natural rights and inter-generational equity. It is because the mood of the times needs an organising idea that the precautionary principle is getting a fair wind. However, unless its advocates sharpen up their understanding of the term, the precautionary principle may not establish the influence it deserves. Its future looks promising but it is not assured. (shrink)

In his recent book Reflective Democracy, Robert Goodin argues that 'external-collaborative' models of democratic deliberation procedures need to be supplemented by 'internal-reflective' deliberation. The exercise of the moral imagination plays a central role in Goodin's account of 'democratic deliberation within'. By imaginatively putting ourselves in the place of a range of others, he argues, including those who maybe not be able to represent their own interests, we can make their points of view 'communicatively present' in deliberation. Goodin's argument emphasizes the (...) role of art and other forms of cultural representation in helping to bring about this expansion of moral imagination. Drawing on debates in philosophy of mind concerning the scope and limits of our capacities to simulate other minds, I argue that Goodin's analysis of 'democratic deliberation within' conflates different kinds of imaginative project. In doing so, it underestimates both the difficulties of imaginatively putting ourselves in the place of others and the political risks in doing so. I argue, alternatively, that moral engagement with others involves the capacity for sympathy and that art and other forms of cultural representation can enlarge the scope of our sympathies, by assisting us to overcome imaginative resistance to alien points of view. In developing this argument, I provide a qualified defense of Iris Young's claim that respect for others involves 'asymmetrical reciprocity'. (shrink)

Bioethicists who seek to defend commercial transactions that intuitively seem exploitative, such as organ sales and commercial surrogacy, typically pair a liberal analysis of exploitation with a libertarian analysis of autonomy. In this paper, I argue that the liberal analysis of exploitation, which focuses primarily on two party transactions between individuals, occludes the structural dimensions of exploitation. This occlusion then paves the way for the transaction to be understood in terms of libertarian autonomy. I propose that a vulnerability analysis paired (...) with a multidimensional and relational theory of autonomy highlights the structural dimensions of exploitation and exposes the myth-making that underlies claims that these forms of exploitation are autonomy-enhancing. (shrink)

Plato's Socrates denies that he knows. Yet he frequently claims that he does have certainty and knowledge. How can he avoid contradiction between his general stance about knowledge (that he lacks it) and his particular claims to have it?Socrates' disavowal of knowledge is central to his defence in theApology. For here he rebuts the accusation that he teaches – and thus corrupts – the young by telling the jury that he cannot teach just because he knows nothing. Hence his disavowal (...) of knowledge is important to Socrates. Why does he make this claim? And how then can he justify engaging in any philosophical activity at all? (shrink)

This paper takes issue with Derek Sankey's: ‘Minds, Brains, and Differences in Personal Understanding’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 39 (2007), pp. 543–558 on the questions of the post-pedagogical classroom and the forms of knowledge. I then try to show that a theory of meaning framed in terms of normative pragmatics is better able than the brain science Sankey relies on to account for the concept of a person or self; the central educational concept of personal understanding; the relation between being (...) a person and membership of the species Homo sapiens; the role of mental images in meaningfulness; the functioning of figurative language; and the Gadamerian notion of understanding as constitutive of the self. It is necessary on the way to answer Sankey's criticisms of correctness, a concept on which any normative theory must rely. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mary Margaret Mackenzie THE TEARS OF CHRYSES: RETALIATION IN THE ILIAD1 ATHEORY of punishment is a systematic justification of the practice of punishment. Before the emergence of true penology in classical Greece—in Plato's Laws for example—penal transactions are associated only with pre-philosophic rationalizations. But such rationalizations must, nevertheless, be regarded as the antecedents of a formalized theory of punishment. In order to understand the classical approach to punishment, (...) therefore, we should look to the early literature for evidence, descriptive or evaluative, of the penological antecedents. To begin at the beginning, this article will consider the Iliad. Yet this procedure begs questions. First of all, a critic might deny the propriety of the use of literary evidence in a study of a philosophical problem. The objection is twofold—both against the treatment of literature as philosophy and against the assumption of continuity in the transition from non-philosophical to explicitly philosophical sources. To this the answer lies partly in the nature of Greek culture. Until the sophistic age there existed no moral philosophy as such—and yet the Greeks were capable of considering and solving moral problems, such as the questions surrounding the practice of punishment. Thus while we should distinguish between this unphilosophical approach and the systematic analyses of the philosopher, the problems with which they deal remain the same. Second, Homer depicts a fictional society: it is a common contention that we therefore have no grounds for attributing consistency or historical reality to any of the institutions described in the poems. Thus the proposition is that, not content with inventing a story to tell, Homer imagined all the trappings of the fiction as well—the conventions and the sentiments bear no relation to conventions or values of his own or any other time. The same argument might be applied to other literary works which make no claim to historicity. But its plausibility depends upon an inflated notion of fiction in which nothing of the 4 Philosophy and Literature story approaches the familiar experiences of its hearers. It is, of course, more reasonable to suppose that fiction generally derives its impact from familiarity, and that Homer's popularity was founded in his appeal to the audience's imagination in the context of their own lives. Thus while the story itself is fiction, it is associated with fact in its detail—the commonplaces of social life and human reaction among which the heroes move. Our task is to look to the commonplaces, for here will be found the social practices and the assumptions which Homer's audience would take for granted. Finally, we may generally suppose that the context of a particular source is determined chiefly by its antecedents. If, however, we are to treat the Homeric poems as the earliest Greek literary sources available to us, there is a major difficulty in this establishment of context: the absence of antecedent. The discussion of Homeric society has been severely hampered by the lack of contemporary referents and by the consequent temptation to import our own values as yardsticks for the measuring of the idiosyncracies of Homeric thought. To a large extent this is a useful enterprise; it is possible, for instance, to point out the differences between Homeric military structure and our own, or between the kingship system and the political structures of later Greek societies. On the other hand, as soon as the discussion turns to values, the issue becomes complicated; to compare two values, in our own society and in the Homeric poems, tends to presuppose some common ground where there need be none, to assume that the way we might translate a word reflects significantly upon its original use. This third difficulty gives rise to an eristic dilemma, common in the history of ideas: how do we know that a transaction is a punishment unless we already know that it is a punishment? Or if we are uncertain whether punishment occurs (and if we have no common language to help in the identification), where should we look for it? Further, having established the area in which punishment should occur, what criteria are to be employed to determine whether in fact it does? The first... (shrink)

Phenomenology of practice is a useful, rigorous way of deeply understanding human phenomena. Therefore, it allows research to be conducted into nursing's most sensitive and decisive aspects. While it is a widely used research approach and methodology in nursing, it is seldom addressed and made use of in its practical and applied value. This article aimed to approach the global outlook of van Manen's hermeneutic‐phenomenological method to better understand its theoretical background and to address and support the contribution this method (...) can make to nursing, if rigorously applied. For a professional discipline like nursing, van Manen's approach is especially interesting because, in addition to contributing to the body of knowledge of nursing, it provides a special kind of knowledge that allows nurses to act in a more reflective manner, and with tact and skill, in certain situations and relationships that arise in their daily practice. A more in‐depth understanding of this research methodology may help nurse‐researchers make good use of it and also harness knowledge derived from this type of research. This comes as a result of assuming that phenomenological texts, the final product of the research, have tremendous educational potential for people who read them carefully. (shrink)

We argue that limiting the theory of extreme self-sacrifice to two determinants, namely, identity fusion and group threats, results in logical and conceptual difficulties. To strengthen Whitehouse's theory, we encourage a more holistic approach. In particular, we suggest that the theory include exogenous sociopolitical factors and constituents of the religious system as additional predictors of extreme self-sacrifice.

This article examines representations of Mermaids, a charity that supports trans young people and their families, in the British press. Using corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, we identify and chart patterns in reporting between Mermaids’ inception as a charity in 2015, and 2022, a turbulent year for both the charity and trans people in the UK more generally. The findings show that, in the early years, there is relatively little attention to Mermaids in the press. Where they are mentioned, the charity (...) is represented as a useful source of advice and support, and their service users as happy and united. However, 2018 represents a turning point, with increasingly negative and misleading portrayals of Mermaids coinciding with a rise in public interest and funding. By 2019, media interest in the charity has surged and the impression of Mermaids as a support group for families is supplanted by the image of a powerful, dangerous and controversial organisation. We argue that the increasingly excessive, negative and polarised reporting around Mermaids is a strategy for indirectly delegitimising and attacking the lives of trans young people themselves. In a burgeoning culture war, Mermaids is used as a weapon against the very people they seek to support. (shrink)

John Rawls' Difference Principle has been well known since his early papers on distributive justice, and has taken on renewed interest with the publication ofA Theory of Justice. The principle is one I find attractive, but I am skeptical of the arguments heretofore put forward in its defence. Here I will outline an entirely different defence which, while it may yield Rawls' desired conclusion, leaves one with a rather different picture from his of the place of the Difference Principle in (...) the theory of distributive justice. (shrink)

Jim Mackenzie; Authority, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 57–65, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1988.tb00177.x.

Foucault’s History of Sexuality 1 cannot be understood without sustained attention to its ironies, which are written into every level from diction to structure. The little book does not intend to deliver a theory, queer or otherwise. It means rather to display and then to frustrate the desire for theory—especially when it comes to sexuality.