If states are permitted to create and maintain a military force, by what means are they permitted to do so? This paper argues that a theory of just recruitment should incorporate a concern for moral risk. Since the military is a morally risky profession for its members, recruitment policies should be evaluated in terms of how they distribute moral risk within a community. We show how common military recruitment practices exacerbate and concentrate moral risk exposure, using the UK as a (...) case study. We argue that the British state wrongs its citizens by subjecting them to excessively morally risky recruitment practices. Since, we argue, this risk exposure cannot be justified by appealing to the benefits of a military career for recruits, our argument calls for reform of existing practices. Our method of evaluation is generalizable and thus can be used to assess other states’ practices. (shrink)

The conclusion of this paper will be that e-sports are not sports. I begin by offering a stipulation and a definition. I stipulate that what I have in mind, when thinking about the concept of sport, is ‘Olympic’ sport. And I define an Olympic Sport as an institutionalised, rule-governed contest of human physical skill. The justification for the stipulation lies partly in that it is uncontroversial. Whatever else people might think of as sport, no-one denies that Olympic Sport is sport. (...) This seeks to ensure that those who might wish to dispute my conclusion might stay with the argument at least for as long as possible. Secondly, the justification for the stipulation lies partly in its normativity—I have chosen an Olympic conception of sport just because it seems to me to offer some kind of desirable version of what sport is and might become. Thirdly, I give examples which show how prominent promoters of e-sports agree with my stipulation, as evidenced by their strenuous attempts to comply with it i... (shrink)

This paper offers a discussion of the rationale for the creation of sports categorization criteria based on sporting genealogy and the gendered body, as proposed by Torres et al. in their article ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport’. The strength of their ‘phenomenological’ account lies in its complex account of human experience; but this is also what makes it impractical and difficult to operationalize. Categorization rather requires simplicity and practicability, if it (...) is to be applied to all athletes (and not exceptionally to transgender athletes). This discussion helps us to formulate three general principles for the process of categorization of athletes, relating to fairness, verifiability and practicability. (shrink)

Before the pandemic, our life was often described as fast, since in globalised society speed has been generally understood as a marker of efficiency, productivity and diligence; and so many people...

This is a book symposium on Kevin Krein’s Philosophy and Nature Sports. Gunnar Breivik, Jim Parry and Irena Martínková, and Rebekah Humphreys provide critical commentary on the text. The critical comments are followed by a response from Krein. The discussion covers a broad range of topics. These include the definition of “sport,” comparisons between nature sports and friluftsliv, the role of risk in nature sports, the experience of flow and the sublime in nature sports, and the understanding of nature. Krein (...) argues, as he does in the book and elsewhere, that nature sports provide a framework that facilitates intimate and meaningful interactions with nature. He argues further that the discussion included here shows how deeply our understanding of nature, and our understanding of nature sports, influence both our experiences within those sports and our broader experience of the world. (shrink)

Many think that it would be wrong to defend an individual from attack if he competently and explicitly refuses defensive intervention. In this paper, I consider the extent to which the preferences of victims affect the permissibility of defending groups or aggregates. These cases are interesting and difficult because there is no straightforward sense in which a group can univocally consent to or refuse defensive intervention in the same way that an individual can. Among those who have considered this question, (...) the dominant view is that that consent imposes only an extremely weak constraint on defending groups. I argue that this is mistaken and defend a much more robust requirement. Indeed, on the account that I develop there are cases in which the refusal of a single member of a victim is enough to make it impermissible to defend a much larger group. At the heart of my account is the idea that consent functions as an internal component of the broader requirement that defensive harms be proportionate: if a victim validly refuses defensive intervention, the fact that defence will benefit him cannot be used to justify harming innocents as the lesser-evil. An important implication of this view is that what constitutes sufficient consent from the members of a victim group will vary on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

This paper side-steps the question of whether ‘the’ concept of sport exists, or can be usefully analysed. Instead, I try to explain the much more modest aim of exhibition-analysis, which is to seek a description of an actually existing example of some concept of sport internal to a normative position. My example is that of Olympic-sport. I try to set out its logically necessary conditions, which of course are conditioned by its context within a theory that emphasises the values of (...) formal competition, citius-altius-fortius, and excellence in contest, as well as rule-based procedural values related to fairness, justice and equality. In so doing, I readily accept that other kinds of sport can be similarly analysed, and I do not press the value claims of Olympic-sport. Instead, I try to show how Olympic-sport, properly construed, can accommodate the concerns of my critics with regard to sport’s play and game-like characteristics. (shrink)

This paper offers a discussion of the rationale for the creation of sports categorization criteria based on sporting genealogy and the gendered body, as proposed by Torres et al. in their article ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport’. The strength of their ‘phenomenological’ account lies in its complex account of human experience; but this is also what makes it impractical and difficult to operationalize. Categorization rather requires simplicity and practicability, if it (...) is to be applied to all athletes (and not exceptionally to transgender athletes). This discussion helps us to formulate three general principles for the process of categorization of athletes, relating to fairness, verifiability and practicability. (shrink)

Since its earliest incarnations, just war theory has included the requirement that war must be initiated and waged by a legitimate authority. However, while recent years have witnessed a remarkable resurgence in interest in just war theory, the authority criterion is largely absent from contemporary discussions. In this paper I aim to show that this is an oversight worth rectifying, by arguing that the authority criterion plays a much more important role within just war theorising than is commonly supposed. As (...) standardly understood, the authority criterion provides a necessary condition for the justification of the resort to war, but has no bearing on the question of permissible conduct in war. In opposition, I argue for an alternative interpretation of the criterion, which attributes to it a fundamental role in assessing this latter question. With this revised interpretation in place, I then demonstrate its advantages by applying it to the practical issue of armed conflicts that are initiated and fought by non-traditional belligerents. While several theorists have recognised that this common feature of modern armed conflict poses a challenge to mainstream just war theory in general—and to the authority criterion in particular—I argue that existing discussions frequently misconstrue the nature of the challenge, since they assume the standard interpretation of the authority requirement and its role within the theory. I then show that the revised interpretation provides a clearer account of both the challenge posed by non-traditional belligerency and the kind of response that it requires. (shrink)

It is difficult to develop good arguments when the central terms of the discussion are unclear – as with the current confused state of sex and gender terminology. Sports organisations and sports re...

According to common-sense morality, agents can become morally connected to the wrongdoing of others, such that they incur special obligations to prevent or rectify the wrongs committed by the primary wrongdoer. We argue that, under certain conditions, voluntary and unjustified observation of another agent’s degrading wrongdoing, or of the ‘product’ of their wrongdoing, can render an agent morally liable to bear costs for the sake of the victim of the primary wrong. We develop our account with particular reference to widespread (...) modern phenomena such as so-called ‘revenge porn’, ‘up-skirting’, and the online observation of sexual assault and murder. On our account, observation is not a sui generis basis of liability. Instead, observation grounds liability in virtue of manifesting three, more general, grounds of liability. First, observation can compound a primary wrong, making that wrong more harmful for the victim. Second, observation can constitute degrading treatment of the victim. Third, in certain cases observation can enable primary wrongdoing. We conclude by discussing the conditions under which observing degrading wrongs might be morally justified. (shrink)

In the literature related to the study of sport, the idea of phenomenology appears with various meanings. The aim of this paper is to sketch the nature, methods and central concepts of phenomenology, and thereby to distinguish philosophical phenomenology from its empirical applications. We shall begin by providing an overview of what we think phenomenology is and is not, by introducing the following points: we distinguish phenomenology from phenomenalism; the ontological from the ontic; transcendental subjectivity from subjectivity; phenomenology from phenomenography; (...) and phenomenology from other kinds of empirical qualitative methodology. Next, we examine the two most important British studies to include overviews of phenomenological work in relation to sociology of sport. We then take a critical view of the work of one research paper that gives a particularly clear description of the method of ?empirical phenomenology?. Throughout, we insist on the simple basics: that phenomenology is not simply the study of empirical phenomena, is not a form of subjectivism, is not about someone's personal experience or personal perspective, and that it is not to be confused with ?qualitative research methods?. We further insist that, if a researcher wishes to use the name ?phenomenology? for his or her research, he or she should explain just what it is (about the method or the concepts, or the outcomes) that informs or results from the research programme, in order to justify the name. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the presence and value of danger in outdoor and adventurous activities and sports in safety-conscious societies, especially in relation to the education of children and youth. Based on an original analysis of the relation between the concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘danger’, we offer an account of the relation between challenge, adventure, risk and danger, and emphasise the importance of teaching risk recognition, risk assessment, risk management and risk avoidance to children and youth, without the necessity of exposing (...) them to jeopardy in dangerous situations. Our conclusion is that ‘Safe Danger’ describes what educators should seek, namely: the educational benefits of the challenges set by risk-taking and the demands of risk-facing, including those in adventurous situations, which are obtainable in the absence of significant danger, and which contribute to risk education. The educational value of adventurous and outdoor pursuits lies elsewhere than in the opportunities that they present for danger-facing, for example in their promotion of self-reliance, confidence, ability to team-work, and especially in their promotion of risk education, as an integral aspect of everyday life planning, as preparation for the day’s adventurous challenges, and as an instrument of task completion. (shrink)

The gradual appearance and relative stabilisation of the names of different kinds of martial activities in different cultures and contexts has led to confusion and to an unhelpful and unjustifiable elision of meanings, which merges different modes of combat and other martial activities. To gain a clearer perspective on this area, we must enquire into the criteria according to which the various kinds of martial activities are classified. Our assessment of the literature suggests that there is no satisfactory and well-justified (...) overall cross-cultural account of the classification of martial activities. This paper provides a revisionary classification and offers an explanation and a justification of the five main categories identified: close combat, warrior arts, martial paths, martial arts and martial sports; as well as some minor ones, such as martial training, martial therapy, martial display, martial games and martial dance. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between two central topics in moral and political philosophy: the moral legitimacy of authority and the ethics of causing harm. Each of these has been extensively discussed in isolation, but relatively little work has considered the implications of certain views about authority for theories of permissible harming, and vice versa. As I aim to show, reflection on the relationship between these two topics reveals that certain common views about, respectively, the justification of harm and the (...) moral limits of authority require revision. The paper proceeds as follows. Sections 1 and 2 clarify the question to be addressed and set out two main claims that I will defend. Sections 3-5 argue for the first claim. Sections 6-9 defend the second. Section 10 concludes. (shrink)

Chater & Loewenstein argue that i-frame research has been coopted by private interests opposed to system-level reform, leading to ineffective interventions. They recommend that behavioural scientists refocus on system-level interventions. We suggest that the influence of private interests on research is problematic for wider normative and epistemic reasons. A system-level intervention to shield research from private influence is needed.

The recent alleged doping case of the figure skater Kamila Valieva at the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing 2022 dramatically raised the issue of the protection of minors in anti-doping policy. We firstly present the literature on doping in relation to minors. Secondly, we present WADA’s Protected Person (PP) concept and its implications. Thirdly, we analyse the WADA Code’s purpose and the vulnerability of minors under the Code, and fourthly, we identify the real threats from which minors should be protected (...) by analysing the ineffective PP concept, and showing how it cannot be a real protection. We explain how preventing one threat can generate another, thus converting minor athletes from victims into suspects. We conclude by stressing the necessity for further research, and we indicate our future research direction, towards the development of a much wider concept of protection, and its application into sporting contexts. (shrink)

The vast majority of work on the ethics of war focuses on traditional wars between states. In this chapter, I aim to show that this is an oversight worth rectifying. My strategy will be largely comparative, assessing whether certain claims often defended in discussions of interstate wars stand up in the context of civil conflicts, and whether there are principled moral differences between the two types of case. Firstly, I argue that thinking about intrastate wars can help us make progress (...) on important theoretical debates in recent just war theory. Secondly, I consider whether certain kinds of civil wars are subject to a more demanding standard of just cause, compared to interstate wars of national-defence. Finally, I assess the extent to which having popular support is an independent requirement of permissible war, and whether this renders insurgencies harder to justify than wars fought by functioning states. (shrink)

Lewis’ analysis of modality faces a problem in that it appears to confer unintended truth values to certain modal claims about the pluriverse: e.g. ‘It is possible that there are many worlds’ is false when we expect truth. This is the problem of advanced modalizing. Divers presents a principled solution to this problem by treating modal modifiers as semantically redundant in some such cases. However, this semantic move does not deal adequately with advanced de re modal claims. Here, we motivate (...) and detail a comprehensive semantics for advanced modalizing de dicto and de re. The generalized semantic feature of the initial solution is not redundancy but absence from counterpart-theoretic translations of world-constrictions. (shrink)

Despite reservations over the status of esports as sports, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has, for policy reasons, encouraged International Federations to pursue links with providers of ‘virtual and simulated’ sports, in part by the introduction of an event, the Olympic Virtual Series, first held in 2021. In providing an account of ‘virtuality’ and ‘simulation’, we query the theoretical basis of the Olympic Virtual Series. In particular, we query the IOC’s use of the term ‘virtual’ in the description of two (...) very different activities: what it calls ‘physical virtual sports’ (which we argue are simply Olympic-type sports – real sports! – and should just be called ‘sports’) and ‘non-physical virtual sports’ (which we argue are not sports at all, and should be recognized for what they are – computer games). (shrink)

Most academic papers on ethics in pandemics concentrate on the duties of healthcare professionals. This paper will consider non-professional healthcare workers: do they have a moral obligation to work during an influenza pandemic? If so, is this an obligation that outweighs others they might have, e.g., as parents, and should such an obligation be backed up by the coercive power of law? This paper considers whether non-professional healthcare workers—porters, domestic service workers, catering staff, clerks, IT support workers, etc.—have an obligation (...) to work during an influenza pandemic. It uses data collected as part of a study looking at the attitudes of healthcare workers to working during a pandemic to suggest the philosophical arguments explored. These include: being in a position to do good, the ethics of work, competing obligations to family members and in particular to children and the obligations of citizens in a state of national emergency. We also look at whether compulsory measures are justified to support a national health service during a health emergency. We conclude that even if they are, compulsion should not be restricted to non-professionals who happen to be working in the health service at the time. Rather, compulsion involving a larger pool of people with the relevant skills and abilities is more equitable. (shrink)

Despite a recent explosion of interest in the ethics of armed conflict, the traditional just war criterion that war be waged by a “legitimate authority” has received less attention than other components of the theory. Moreover, of those theorists who have addressed the criterion, many are deeply skeptical about its moral significance. This article aims to add some clarity and precision to the authority criterion and to debates surrounding it, and to suggest that this skepticism may be too quick. First, (...) it provides an analysis of the authority criterion, and argues there are (at least) two distinct moral claims associated with the criterion, requiring separate evaluation. Second, it outlines an increasingly influential “reductivist” approach to just war theory, and explains how it grounds powerful objections to the authority criterion. Third, and in response, it sketches the most promising strategies for providing a (qualified) defense of authority, and the further questions and complications they raise. Importantly, these strategies aim to rehabilitate the authority criterion from within a broadly reductivist view. (shrink)

This paper defends philosophical phenomenology against a hostile review in the previous issue of this journal. It tries to explain what philosophical phenomenology is, and the possibilities for its empirical application; whilst also showing that Eichberg’s method is idiosyncratic, problematic and not interested in philosophical phenomenology at all. It presents the phenomenological concept of phenomenon, which is neither concrete nor abstract, and contrasts it to Eichberg’s understanding of empirical concrete phenomena. Finally, the paper scrutinises Eichberg’s empirical method, which has deep (...) problems of its own, and in any case, finds unsuitable its characterisation as ‘phenomenology’. (shrink)

c.4,000 word critical discussion of Fabre's book. Provides an overview of the book plus comments on the themes of (i) loyalty and treason and (ii) the ethics of spying and sex.

So the Uruguayan footballer Luis Suárez has confessed, apologised and given assurances as to future good behaviour, after his 2014 World Cup assault on the Italian defender Chiellini. There were three immediate excuses and mitigations offered, which we dismiss: that it was inconsequential; that it was no different from many other ‘assaults’; and that it was not particularly serious. Our central question has a different focus: what makes biting in sport such a bad thing, especially since it does not seem (...) always to threaten as much harm to opponents as some other practices? We examine the place of biting in sports rules, especially in combat and contact sports, and the role of consent and criminal liability, before considering when and why biting is seen as unacceptable. We consider arguments from harm, skin penetration, ‘dirty fighting’ and animalism. Finally, we consider the topical case of Luis Suárez, distinguishing reactive from proactive bitin.. (shrink)

This paper presents some of the background to the development of the Youth Olympic Games, the principles underlying them, and some of the practical challenges in implementing them. Regarding the sports programme, modifications from the Olympic Games programme are noted, and innovations examined in terms of underlying values, such as immaturity and harm, talent identification and early specialisation, and the exploitation of young athletes. Issues arising from the first edition of the YOG include participation and equality of opportunity, selection of (...) sports and nations for the programme, age and fairness, age falsification and cheating, victory and defeat, participation and excellence, and political discrimination, peace and international understanding. The paper concludes that, although many of the above issues present already-existing challenges for the Olympic movement, albeit in a novel form, there were also some novel issues thrown up by a ?youth? edition of the Olympic Games, and many of the ethical and other value questions raised have much wider applications and consequences. It is to be hoped that ethical issues arising out of the YOG will provide a fresh impetus towards discussions as to the nature and promotion of ethical sport. (shrink)

Freeride skiing is the fastest-growing sector of the skiing industry, but there are no studies analyzing its nature and values. First, we provide descriptions of freeride skiing and competitive freeride skiing, trying to analyzing the nature of these activities in comparison and contrast with conceptions of traditional sport and nature sport. Whilst freeride skiing must be seen in some sense as a nature sport, competitive freeride skiing is best seen within the category of traditional sport. However, these ‘new’ sports raise (...) questions about the adequacy of our current categories, leading us to our second task, which was to identify and discuss the values of freeride skiing. We identify freedom and creativity as primary values, which lead to a greater rapport with nature, and a greater attention to risk, danger and safety, as concomitant values. Finally, we briefly indicate further values of the activity, such as responsibility, community and preservation of the practice. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Quong’s account of the scope of the means principle (the range of actions over which the special constraint on using a person applies). One the key ideas underpinning Quong’s approach is that the means principle is downstream from an independent and morally prior account of our rights over the world and against one another. I raise three challenges to this ‘rights first’ approach. First, I consider Quong’s treatment of harmful omissions and argue that Quong’s view generates (...) counter-intuitive results. Second, I argue that cases of harmful omissions raise problems for Quong’s claim that intentions are irrelevant to permissibility. Third, I consider Quong’s extension of the means principle to include uses of persons’ rightfully-owned property. I suggest that, contra Quong, the morality of defensive harm is not based on a prior account of distributive justice. Instead the two normative domains mutually inform one another. (shrink)

Whilst hermeneutics had been traditionally associated with the interpretation of texts, Martin Heidegger gave it a new meaning, associating it with the interpretation of the existence of Dasein. This paper will explain the Heideggerian understanding of hermeneutics, based on the early work of Heidegger which focuses on the analysis of the being of Dasein. His main contribution was a shift of focus from the interpretation of an unknown object to the interpretation of the human being, which Heidegger sees as primary, (...) since it is on the basis of Dasein’s understanding that other things and beings are interpreted. Firstly, the paper discusses hermeneutics in relation to human being, with a brief introduction to the main characteristics of Dasein, showing the place of hermeneutics within Dasein’s existence, together with Heidegger’s re-interpretation of the hermeneutic circle. Secondly, this understanding is applied to sport, focusing on the experience of athletes and on the possibilities for interpretations towards authentic existence, including its ethical aspect. (shrink)

Recent years have seen the development of a new trend in gastronomic discourse toward acknowledging and even valorizing the role of animal slaughter in meat production. This development problematizes some of the ideas of influential theorists of meat such as Fiddes and Adams : namely, that the animal in modernity has been rendered invisible in the process of meat production and consumption , and that meat itself is a commodity with a declining reputation . This paper analyzes the role of (...) nostalgia in this trend toward do-it-yourself slaughter, and takes these developments in cultural tastes and feelings as a context within which to analyze the special significance of meat in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. In identifying this burgeoning nostalgia for meat and contextualizing it within a risk-reflexive, consumer-driven, dystopian near-future society of the author's own devising, Oryx and Crake foregrounds and illuminates these real-world developments in the meanings of meat. (shrink)

Provides an opinionated overview of some recent debates within the ethics of war.

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Volume 6, Issue 2, Page 103-107, May 2012.

Those of us who are not pacifists face an obvious challenge. Common-sense morality contains a stringent constraint on intentional killing, yet war involves homicide on a grand scale. If wars are to be morally justified, it needs be shown how this conflict can be reconciled. A major fault line running throughout the contemporary just war literature divides two approaches to attempting this reconciliation. On a ‘reductivist’ view, defended most prominently by Jeff McMahan, the conflict is largely illusory, since such killing (...) can be justified by aggregating individuals’ ordinary permissions to use force in self- and other-defence. In opposition, a rival ‘nonreductivist’ approach holds that these considerations are insufficient for the task. One prominent version of non-reductivism grounds the permission to kill in combatants’ membership in certain kinds of group or association. The key claim is that participation in certain morally important relationships can provide an independent source of permission for killing in war. This paper argues that non-reductivism should be rejected. It does so by pushing a dilemma onto non-reductivists: if they are successful in showing that the relevant relationships can generate permissions to kill in war, they must also jettison the most intuitive restrictions on conduct in war—the constraint on intentionally killing morally innocent non-combatants most saliently. Since this conclusion is unacceptable, non-reductivism should be rejected. (shrink)

Law and Morality at War offers a broadly instrumentalist defense of the authority of the laws of war: these laws serve combatants by helping them come closer to doing what they have independent moral reason to do. We argue that this form of justification sets too low a bar. An authority’s directives are not binding, on instrumental grounds, if the subject could, within certain limits, adopt an alternative, and superior, means of conforming to morality’s demands. It emerges that Haque’s argument (...) fails to vindicate the law’s authority over all combatants. (shrink)

Each essay in this book starts with a question posed by individual ethnographic experience and then goes on to frame this question in a broader, comparative context. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Questions of Anthropology presents an introduction to the purpose and value of Anthropology today."--BOOK JACKET.

Despite the fact that six years have passed since 9/11, the Pentagon's recent decision to try six Guantanamo detainees for capital crimes such as terrorism and support of terrorism made national headlines. William Glaberson, "U.S. Charges 6 With Key Roles in 9/11 Attacks", N.Y. Times, Feb. 11, 2008, at A1. In this Debate, Professors Amos N. Guiora, of the University of Utah, and John T. Parry, of Lewis & Clark Law School, attempt to settle the question of what sort of (...) forum is most appropriate to try the thousands of individuals in U.S. custody who are suspected of terrorism. Professor Guiora considers three forum options: treaty-based international terror courts, traditional Article III courts, and a hybrid option he calls domestic terror courts. Ultimately, Professor Guiora argues in favor of domestic terror courts, which he describes as being able to balance the legitimate rights of the individual with the equally legitimate national security rights of the state. He considers this option to be the most practical and expedient policy solution, necessitated by an untenable tension between the understanding that some of the detainees present a genuine threat to American national security, and an awareness that indefinite detention violates constitutional principles and fundamental concepts of morality. Professor Parry agrees that current U.S. policy toward detainees has been misguided, but does not believe that innovations of the sort proposed by Professor Guiora are necessary. Rather, he suggests that policymakers should choose Article III courts rather than hybrid courts for trials of suspected terrorists, with military courts as a fallback option. Professor Parry points to research that shows that the federal government is often able to prosecute suspected terrorists in federal court, and therefore considers alternative proposals to Article III courts to be solution[s] in search of a problem. Professor Parry realizes that trial in federal court will not be possible for every suspected terrorist, and concludes that, [f]or people who pose a risk but whose conduct may not violate federal criminal law, prolonged preventive detention is the best choice. (shrink)

Our paper explores how the affective energies and cultural expectations set in motion by best-selling American sentimental novels like Hannah Foster's The Coquette and Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple informed the notorious mid-nineteenth-century American trial of Amelia Norman, who attempted to kill the man who seduced her. Once newspapers, defense lawyers, and reformers such as Lydia Maria Child recast the defendant as a sentimental heroine, the trial became about seduction, and Norman was acquitted against the weight of the evidence. Sentimental novels (...) turn on the contrast between the passive victim status of the heroine and the active libidinal quest of the rake-villain. As Cathy Davidson points out, this fiction is "about silence, subservience, stasis (the accepted attributes of women as traditionally defined) in contradistinction to conflicting impulses toward independence, action, and self expression (the ideals of the new American nation)." The seduction plot diverts attention from this disparity by establishing an affective solidarity between heroine and reader and elevating the ruined woman to a tragic status. The sentimental emplotment of Norman's life marshaled a powerful set of emotional responses and moral judgements on her behalf. Norman claimed insanity. And since sentimental heroines are supposed to go mad when they are seduced and abandoned, the jury was prepared to interpret her symptoms according to her lawyers' very strategy for establishing her innocence. Ultimately, however, Norman embodied the plight of the sentimental heroine at the same time that she contested her fictional counterpart's fate. In this way, her trial spectacularized the disparity which the sentimental novel conjures up and displaces but never resolves. The common law theory of coverture, which severely limited the legal personhood of married women, has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Cases like Norman's remind us that unmarried women were also subject to draconian constraints on their legal personhood. The tort of seduction is a key example. Legal historians trace the development of the seduction tort from its common-law origins, when men's property interest in women's bodies formed the basis of the cause of action, to 1851, when Field Code authors (including Norman's lawyer David Graham) persuaded several states to grant seduced women standing to bring their own cause of action. Consequently, courts were forced to reckon with the seduced woman as a moral agent capable of consenting to sex. As trials like Norman's demonstrate, sentimental novels helped lay the groundwork for this shift in the law by elucidating a subjectivity for the seduced woman. Yet the doctrinal implications of Norman's precedent-setting trial had a second, more ambiguous strain. Norman's sentimental strategy proved so powerful that men on trial for killing their wive's seducers appropriated it to bring their own stories before juries and to reinforce male sexual norms. In the end, then, Norman's trial fostered legal reform, but it also suggested - as Child's fictionalization of the case in "Rosenglory" recognized - that only sustained and multifaceted efforts to change cultural as well as legal norms could improve the sexual status of women. Scholars such as Wai Chee Dimock have argued for a focus "on the historical and historically shifting relations between law and literature" - a view we endorse. Where we differ from Dimock is in our diversion of attention away from abstract ideas of law laid out by treatise writers and philosophers in favor of law experienced and manipulated by individuals. So, too, we are interested less in representations of concepts such as justice in legal and literary texts than we are in the ways in which literature (broadly conceived) can create provisional and fragile opportunities for concrete instantiations of justice and even generate legal change (for good or ill). Going further, we would argue that to the extent legal change motivates rather than simply mirrors cultural change, it needs literature to be effective. Thus, we see no need to characterize - and indeed reject the depiction of - law as "a limited arena" in which ideas of morality have little place. This project, then, responds to Gregg Crane's call for attention to "the complex and slippery historical interactions of law and literature that shape and are shaped by an ever changing cultural idiom of justice." The extended story of Amelia Norman not only constitutes a case study in the inescapable interaction between the overlapping and interdependent discourses of law and literature, but also reveals the literary and legal consequences of that interaction. (shrink)

Philosophy of art is traditionally concerned with the definition, appreciation and value of art. Through a close examination of art from recent centuries, _Art and Phenomenology_ is one of the first books to explore visual art as a mode of experiencing the world itself, showing how in the words of Merleau-Ponty ‘Painting does not imitate the world, but is a world of its own’. An outstanding series of chapters by an international group of contributors examine the following questions: Paul Klee (...) and the body in art colour and background in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of art self-consciousness and seventeenth-century painting Vermeer and Heidegger philosophy and the painting of Rothko embodiment in Renaissance art sculpture, dance and phenomenology. _Art and Phenomenology_ is essential reading for anyone interested in phenomenology, aesthetics, and visual culture. (shrink)