A difficult question in the philosophy of sport concerns how winning athletes should perform in uneven contests in which victory has been secured well before the competition is over. Nicholas Dixon, the protagonist in the ongoing debate, argues against critics who urge following an 'anti-blowout' thesis that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with running up the score. We engage this debate, providing much needed distinctions, and draw on Aristotelian resources to explore a framework by which to understand competing claims found (...) within the literature. (shrink)

That an intimate connection exists between the notion of human dignity and the notion of humiliation seems to be a commonplace among philosophers, who tend to assume that humiliation should be explained in terms of (violation of) human dignity. I believe, however, that this assumption leads to an understanding of humiliation that is too "philosophical" and too detached from psychological reality. The purpose of the paper is to modify the above connection and to offer a more "down to earth" account (...) of humiliation that does not depend on metaphysical or axiological questions concerning the unique dignity enjoyed by all human beings qua human beings. The paper argues for a subjective-psychological notion of self-respect in the explication of humiliation, instead of an objective-normative one. To be humiliated means to suffer an actual threat to or fall in one's self-respect. (shrink)

Sometimes victims cannot defend themselves against the threat posed to them, but they can nevertheless harm or even kill their aggressors. Since they cannot defend themselves, it is unclear how such harming can be justified under the title of self-defense. According to the “Honor Solution,” by violently resisting their aggressors, victims do (partially) defend themselves because they protect their honor. Blake Hereth recently argued that this solution is incompatible with the feminist commitment that sexual assault victims ought not to be (...) shamed or dishonored. The purpose of my paper is to reject Hereth's criticism and defend the Honor Solution. (shrink)

Umesh Bagade’s historic critique of the caste blindness of the Subaltern Studies project retraces its emergence as a criticism of the Nationalist and Marxist schools of Indian history. He shows how the subaltern historians borrowed Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “subaltern” in order to retain a broadly Marxist framework without “class” but discarded the crucial Gramscian emphasis on oppression and economic exploitation. They grievously misread, confused, or omitted caste as a “system” when they constructed their model of the subaltern as subordinate (...) but autonomous. The caste system functioned as a graded inequality with close links to patriarchy in which the lower castes were oppressed, exploited, and subordinated rather than autonomous. A homogenized “subaltern” status thus lumped the oppressed lower-caste peasants and the tribal peasantry with upper-caste peasantry. It was not acknowledged that the “solidarity” that expanded the base of subaltern revolt was achieved through coercion of the lower castes and women. The subaltern cultural “consciousness” of caste Panchayats, which was central to the project’s epistemology, was governed by Brahmanical religion and culture. The kinship relations that comprised peasant solidarities were built on endogamous caste practices. Predictably, the Subaltern Studies project found a close affinity with postmodernism and eschewed the question of emancipatory politics. The project therefore excluded anticaste mobilizations from the purview of “subaltern revolts” and simultaneously rejected the need for a comprehensive historical interpretation in which the caste system and patriarchy could be analyzed and opposed. In exposing the biases and lacunae of subaltern historiography, Bagade provides a clinical observation of history with an eye on history’s ability to influence reality. He shows the path that was not taken, which anticaste scholarship is now forging. (shrink)