The idea of heroism has become thoroughly muddled today. In contemporary society, any behavior that seems distinctly difficult or unusually impressive is classified as heroic: everyone from firefighters to foster fathers to freedom fighters are our heroes. But what motivates these people to act heroically and what prevents other people from being heroes? In our culture today, what makes one sort of hero appear more heroic than another sort? In order to answer these questions, Ari Kohen turns to classical (...) conceptions of the hero to explain the confusion and to highlight the ways in which distinct heroic categories can be useful at different times. Untangling Heroism argues for the existence of three categories of heroism that can be traced back to the earliest Western literature – the epic poetry of Homer and the dialogues of Plato – and that are complex enough to resonate with us and assist us in thinking about heroism today. Kohen carefully examines the Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus and Plato's Socrates, and then compares the three to each other. He makes clear how and why it is that the other-regarding hero, Socrates, supplanted the battlefield hero, Achilles, and the suffering hero, Odysseus. Finally, he explores in detail four cases of contemporary heroism that highlight Plato's success. Kohen states that in a post-Socratic world, we have chosen to place a premium on heroes who make other-regarding choices over self-interested ones. He argues that when humans face the fact of their mortality, they are able to think most clearly about the sort of life they want to have lived, and only in doing that does heroic action become a possibility. Kohen's careful analysis and rethinking of the heroism concept will be relevant to scholars across the disciplines of political science, philosophy, literature, and classics. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to present an explanation that integrates the five features needed for the cognitive (knowledge‐yielding) linking of philosophy and literature. These features are, first, explaining how a literary work can support a general claim. Second, explaining what is uniquely gained through concentrating on such support patterns as they appear in aesthetic contexts in particular. Third, explaining how features of aesthetic response are connected with knowledge. Four, maintaining a distinction between manipulation and adequate persuasion. Five, achieving all (...) this without invoking what David Novitz has called “a shamelessly functional and didactic view of literature.”. (shrink)

Pharmacological substances used to improve cognition and brain function range from dietary supplements and caffeine to drugs targeted at altering particular neurochemical concentrations in the brain. This article considers current scientific research into pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement and likely future directions. Then it discusses the trends in the use of PCEs within patients groups for whom they were intended, as well as in those for whom they were not originally intended, including healthy adults and children. Finally, it provides an overview of (...) current and future ethical considerations and concludes that the use of PCE will likely continue both within patient and healthy individuals in the foreseeable future. Information regarding actual use, benefits, and harms in various populations is severely lacking. Therefore, more emphasis should be placed on obtaining the relevant empirical data, for example, by the long-term monitoring of effectiveness and side effects, and by accurate large-scale surveys to assess actual usage. (shrink)

“Speciesism” accords greater value to human beings and their interests. It is supposed to be opposed to a liberationist stance, since it is precisely the numerous forms of discounting of animal interests which liberationists oppose. This association is mistaken. In this paper I claim that many forms of speciesism are consistent with upholding a robust liberationist agenda. Accordingly, several hotly disputed topics in animal ethics can be set aside. The significance of such clarification is that synthesizing liberationism with speciesism substantially (...) modifies some of the coordinates of the debates over animal ethics. Secondly, defusing some counterintuitive implications of liberationism may make liberationism more popular than it currently is. Liberationism would no longer demand the eradication of ingrained speciesist intuitions. The paper finally presents a form of speciesism that does oppose liberationism, but is too strong and (fortunately) shared by few. (shrink)

Law, Economics, and Morality examines the possibility of combining economic methodology and deontological morality through explicit and direct incorporation of moral constraints into economic models. Economic analysis of law is a powerful analytical methodology. However, as a purely consequentialist approach, which determines the desirability of acts and rules solely by assessing the goodness of their outcomes, standard cost-benefit analysis is normatively objectionable. Moderate deontology prioritizes such values as autonomy, basic liberties, truth-telling, and promise-keeping over the promotion of good outcomes. It (...) holds that there are constraints on promoting the good. Such constraints may be overridden only if enough good is at stake. While moderate deontology conforms to prevailing moral intuitions and legal doctrines, it is arguably lacking in methodological rigor and precision. Eyal Zamir and Barak Medina argue that the normative flaws of economic analysis can be rectified without relinquishing its methodological advantages and that moral constraints can be formalized so as to make their analysis more rigorous. They discuss various substantive and methodological choices involved in modeling deontological constraints. Zamir and Medina propose to determine the permissibility of any act or rule infringing a deontological constraint by means of mathematical threshold functions. Law, Economics, and Morality presents the general structure of threshold functions, analyzes their elements and addresses possible objections to this proposal. It then illustrates the implementation of constrained CBA in several legal fields, including contract law, freedom of speech, antidiscrimination law, the fight against terrorism, and legal paternalism. (shrink)

In his essay The Dynamic Analytics of Property Law, Professor Michael Heller describes and criticizes the familiar, current analytical tools of property theory and calls for the adoption of a more dynamic approach. In this comment, I shall address briefly two issues discussed in Heller's paper: his suggestion that we add a fourth type of property – "anticommons property" – to the well-known "property trilogy" of private property, commons property, and state property; and his critique of the "bundle of rights" (...) approach of the courts to the takings problem, which leads to excessive fragmentation of private property. The former issue nicely demonstrates the current tendency of scholars to argue against "too much private property." The latter illustrates the familiar, futile search of property scholars for an all-encompassing metaphor to describe and identify private property. (shrink)

Many people think that animal liberation would require a fundamental transformation of basic beliefs. We would have to give up "speciesism" and start viewing animals as our equals, with rights and moral status. And we would have to apply these beliefs in an all-or-nothing way. But in Ethics and the Beast, Tzachi Zamir makes the radical argument that animal liberation doesn't require such radical arguments--and that liberation could be accomplished in a flexible and pragmatic way. By making a case (...) for liberation that is based primarily on common moral intuitions and beliefs, and that therefore could attract wide understanding and support, Zamir attempts to change the terms of the liberation debate. Without defending it, Ethics and the Beast claims that speciesism is fully compatible with liberation. Even if we believe that we should favor humans when there is a pressing human need at stake, Zamir argues, that does not mean that we should allow marginal human interests to trump the life-or-death interests of animals. As minimalist as it sounds, this position generates a robust liberation program, including commitments not to eat animals, subject them to factory farming, or use them in medical research. Zamir also applies his arguments to some questions that tend to be overlooked in the liberation debate, such as whether using animals can be distinguished from exploiting them, whether liberationists should be moral vegetarians or vegans, and whether using animals for therapeutic purposes is morally blameless. (shrink)

Hamlet tells Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy. In Double Vision, philosopher and literary critic Tzachi Zamir argues that there are more things in Hamlet than are dreamt of--or at least conceded--by most philosophers. Making an original and persuasive case for the philosophical value of literature, Zamir suggests that certain important philosophical insights can be gained only through literature. But such insights cannot be reached if literature is (...) deployed merely as an aesthetic sugaring of a conceptual pill. Philosophical knowledge is not opposed to, but is consonant with, the literariness of literature. By focusing on the experience of reading literature as literature and not philosophy, Zamir sets a theoretical framework for a philosophically oriented literary criticism that will appeal both to philosophers and literary critics. Double Vision is concerned with the philosophical understanding induced by the aesthetic experience of literature. Literary works can function as credible philosophical arguments--not ones in which claims are conclusively demonstrated, but in which claims are made plausible. Such claims, Zamir argues, are embedded within an experiential structure that is itself a crucial dimension of knowing. Developing an account of literature's relation to knowledge, morality, and rhetoric, and advancing philosophical-literary readings of Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and King Lear, Zamir shows how his approach can open up familiar texts in surprising and rewarding ways. (shrink)

Faced with charges of impiety and corruption of the youth, Socrates attempts a defence designed to vindicate the philosophic way of life. In this he seems to be successful, as Socrates is today highly regarded for his description of the good life and for his unwillingness to live any other sort of life, a position that is most obviously exemplified by his defence in the Apology. After his sentencing, Socrates' arguments and actions -- in the Crito and the Phaedo -- (...) also lend considerable support to the idea that the philosopher is committed to living a particularly good sort of life. While the sequence of dialogues that culminates in Socrates' execution might seem to be the most obviously critical of the life of the philosopher, these dialogues actually serve to enshrine the character of Socrates as the quintessential moral hero. (shrink)

At the center of this paper are three questions: in the absence of a religious worldview, can one gain access to the concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation, can reconciliation be achieved in the absence of forgiveness or does the former depend in some way upon the latter, and can we make sense of a restorative approach to justice in the absence of either forgiveness or reconciliation? To answer these questions, I look closely at the concept of forgiveness in the first (...) section of this article with the goals of disentangling it from its religious undertones and emphasizing its importance to the very concept of restorative justice. Drawing on both theoretical work and practical examples, I argue that forgiveness is not necessarily a religious concept ? contrary to common perception ? and that, contra Zehr, it is a foundational component of restorative justice. Having considered this first problem, I turn ? in the second section ? to a discussion of the concept of reconciliation, arguing that personal and political reconciliation must be separated from one another and from the concept of forgiveness. Ultimately, I conclude that forgiveness and reconciliation are quite different concepts, that the latter relies on the former, and that the latter is a goal rather than a necessary component of restorative justice. Drawing largely on the work of Hannah Arendt, Susan Dwyer, Trudy Govier, and Howard Zehr, as well as discussions with members of Murder Victims? Families for Reconciliation, I argue that political reconciliation between groups can be achieved in the absence of personal reconciliation between individual victims and perpetrators in those groups. Further, I demonstrate that restorative practices open up the possibility of both types of reconciliation, but that they are ultimately founded only on the principle of forgiveness. (shrink)

Is nonhuman animal-assisted therapy a form of exploitation? After exploring possible moral vindications of AAT and after establishing a distinction between "use" and "exploitation," the essay distinguishes between forms of animal-assisted therapy that are morally unobjectionable and those modes of it that ought to be abolished.

A "welfare-based defense" of a practice involving nonhuman animals presents the examined practice as promoting the animal's own interests. Such justifications surface in relation to various interactions between human and nonhuman animals. Sometimes such arguments appear persuasive. Sometimes they form self-serving rationalizations. This paper attempts to clarify and specify the distinction between plausible and dubious applications of such arguments. It then examines a detailed welfare-based defense of zoos.

I will argue that vegetarianism is a better regulative ideal and a better form of pro-animal strategic protest compared to veganism. I begin by arguing against veganism. I shall then turn to tentative veganism.

abstract I distinguish between four arguments commonly used to justify experimentation on animals (I). After delineating the autonomy of the question of experiments from other topics within animal ethics (II), I examine and reject each of these justifications (III–VI). I then explore two arguments according to which animal‐dependent experimentation should continue even if it is immoral (VII). I close with the way in which liberationists’ strategic considerations modify the moral conclusions of my analysis.

By way of attempting to explain comic pleasure, this paper proposes an outline for an inclusive theory of comedy — ‘inclusive’ in the sense of amalgamating various past contributions that tend to be thought of as mutually exclusive. More specifically, this essay will (a) propose a teleological definition of comedy, (b) integrate seemingly competing accounts of laughter into a relatively unified explanation, (c) clarify the connection between laughter and comedy, (d) defend a flexible ontology of comic response that enables the (...) coexistence of genuinely competing paradigms of the mind (which, in turn, underlie seemingly competing theories of comic reception), and (e) will suggest how comic pleasure forms an indispensable addition to a theory of comedy. (shrink)

This response to “Morality or Moralism?” by Emilie Hache and Bruno Latour takes issue with their distinction between two kinds of morality. Hache and Latour see a difference between morality as sensitivity and morality as principled claims regarding moral considerability. They then argue for form-content contradiction/harmony between these purportedly opposing senses. In responding, Zamir argues that these operations can be construed as distinct kinds of sensitivity. Arguments that advocate bringing nonhuman animals into moral consideration can be abstract and general. (...) But this does not mean that such arguments or those who make them are insensitive. Some kinds of sensitivity are attuned to general facts rather than to particulars. Hache and Latour thus err by reducing moral sensitivity to a response to particulars, which leads them to perceive form-content tensions where these do not exist. Zamir's response also argues against a tendency in posthumanist animal ethics—a tendency shared by Hache and Latour's article—to refuse descending to discuss the actual practical questions regarding animals that Anglo-American animal ethics explores. Zamir examines (and rejects) some possible posthumanist arguments that might support remaining philosophically uninvolved in these discussions. (shrink)

This book establishes a defence of human rights that can be shared by both non-religious and religious people.

I attempt to explain Plato's choice of dialogue through an analysis of what he regarded as the conditions of knowledge acquisition. I see the main contribution of the paper in exposing the way in which time and pain are, for Plato, conditions of knowledge acquisition. Plato endorsed the “learning through suffering,” or pathei mathos, convention, central to Greek drama, and did so not through theory but through the praxis some of the dialogues employ. This addition of experiential components to the (...) more cognitively oriented definitions of knowledge that Socrates uses complicates what these works may say about human knowledge. I analyze these tensions and the bearing they may have on the question of Plato's choice of dialogue, that is, on his rhetoric in practice. The requirements for actual persuasion, as Plato specifies them in the Seventh Letter,, are only partially met by the fictional scenes of argumentation and knowledge conveying that Plato presents. However, such scenes permit transcending some of the limitations of written, systematic, nonpersonal discourse. The presentation of such interactions to a real reader through dialogue turns into a mode of writing that is closer to meeting the demands of actual communication of knowledge – at least knowledge regarding what Plato envisaged as being the highest sort of epistemic communication. (shrink)

Cognitive‐enhancing drugs are prescribed to patients with psychiatric disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Alzheimer's disease, to treat cognitive deficits. This chapter discusses the use of pharmacological agents to improve the cognition of both those with cognitive impairments and of the general population, as well as some of the benefits, risks, and ethical issues associated with the use of cognitive‐enhancing drugs. The chapter also talks about a survey run by the journal Nature, which was prompted by a (...) commentary by the authors of this chapter, that asked readers for their views on the issues surrounding cognitive enhancement. It can be seen that the ethical issues surrounding the use of cognitive‐enhancing drugs are complex and require discussion among different groups. With the development of new drugs and methods of enhancing cognition, such as brain stimulation, the need for further research and discussion is likely to become more pressing. (shrink)