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23Victims' Stories and the Advancement of Human RightsOxford University Press USA. 2016.Victim's Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights takes on a set of questions suggested by the worldwide persistence of human rights abuse and the prevalence of victims' stories in human rights campaigns, truth commissions, and international criminal tribunals: What conceptions of victims are presumed in contemporary human rights discourse? How do conventional narrative templates fail victims of human rights abuse and resist raising novel human rights issues? What is empathy, and how can vict…Read more
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33Commentary on Entangled Empathy by Lori GruenHypatia 32 (2): 415-427. 2017.This essay explores four aspects of Gruen's theory. The first section considers her analysis of the concepts of sympathy, pity, and emotional contagion. The second section outlines the main features of her conception of empathy and highlights some worries about empathy that her theory addresses. The third section examines empathy's contributions to moral epistemology. The fourth section queries Gruen's contention that empathy is morally motivating.
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Paul BloomfieldIn Paul Bloomfield (ed.), Morality and Self-Interest, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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55The Politics of Self‐Respect: A Feminist PerspectiveHypatia 1 (1). 1986.Recent liberal moral and political philosophy has placed great emphasis on the good of self-respect. But it is not always evident what is involved in self-respect, nor is it evident how societies can promote it. Assuming that self-respect is highly desirable, I begin by considering how people can live in a self-respecting fashion, and I argue that autonomous envisaging and fulfillment of one's own life plans is necessary for self-respect. I next turn to the question of how societal implementatio…Read more
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17Economic Justice: Private Rights and Public Responsibilities : An Amintaphil Volume (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1985.Twenty distinguished philosophers and social theorists have contributed original papers to this stimulating investigation into the nature of the economically just society. Collectively, and in a remarkably coherent fashion, these papers set out the problems of contemporary social theory within the context of the distributive justice vs. property rights debate initiated by the works of John Rawls and Robert Nozick
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265Personal Autonomy and the Paradox of Feminine SocializationJournal of Philosophy 84 (11): 619-628. 1987.
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19Kindred Matters: Rethinking the Philosophy of the FamilyPhilosophical Quarterly 45 (180): 405. 1995.
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25No safe passage: ‘the mapping journey project’Journal of Global Ethics 12 (3): 252-259. 2016.This essay examines ‘The Mapping Journey Project’, an installation artwork by Bouchra Khalili. It consists of eight large video screens and headsets. In each video, a migrant draws a map of her/his journey to and in Europe and narrates her/his route. In collaboration with Khalili, I argue, these storyteller/draftspersons create a dissident cartography that superimposes their lived geography on the background of legal geography. Thus, ‘The Mapping Journey Project’ is a work of art that is also a …Read more
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79Part IV. Section 1. The Personal and the Political Value of Autonomy: Disparities in autonomy competency number among the many ways in which women and men in western societies are unequal. Meyers holds that although personal autonomy is not the sole or paramount value, medial autonomy is not only a personal good, but is also a political good.
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379Who's there? Selfhood, self-regard, and social relationsHypatia 20 (4): 200-215. 2000.: J. David Velleman develops a canny, albeit mentalistic, theory of selfhood that furnishes some insights feminist philosophers should heed but that does not adequately heed some of the insights feminist philosophers have developed about the embodiment and relationality of the self. In my view, reflexivity cannot do the whole job of accounting for selfhood, for it rests on an unduly sharp distinction between reflexive loci of understanding and value, on the one hand, and embodiment and relationa…Read more
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51Part II. Section 5. Interests, Self-Interest and Autonomy: Two questions drive this chapter: 1) What kinds of things can be objects of autonomous choices? and 2) How are these related to an individual's authentic self? If self-interest is construed as securing a set of basic goods for oneself, personal autonomy and self-interest can collide. Still, Meyers holds that autonomy based on exercising autonomy competency is compatible with the dominance principle, which counsels opting for a course of …Read more
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77Authenticity for Real PeopleThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 9 195-202. 2000.In this paper I shall offer an account of the authentic self that is compatible with human intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social experience. I begin by examiningHarry Frankfurt’s influential treatment of authenticity as a form of personal integration, and argue that his conception of the integrated self is too restrictive. I then offer an alternative processual account that views integration as the intelligibility of the self that emerges when a person exercises autonomy skills.
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11The Family Romance: A Fin-de-siecle TragedyIn Hilde Lindemann (ed.), Feminism and Families, Routledge. 1997.
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63Part III. Section 3. Autonomy and Feminine Socialization: Having agreed with Beauvoir that narcissism and altruism contribute to women's lack of autonomy, Meyers examines Beauvoir's account of autonomy in light of her own conception of autonomy competency and argues that Beauvoir's conception of autonomy is too stringent. Autonomy competency, in contrast, allows for degrees of autonomy and variations in degree as viewed over a life-time, as well as for a distinction between programmatic and epis…Read more
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54Moral Reflection: Beyond Impartial ReasonHypatia 8 (3). 1993.This paper considers two accounts of the self that have gained prominence in contemporary feminist psychoanalytic theory and draws out the implications of these views with respect to the problem of moral reflection. I argue that our account of moral reflection will be impoverished unless it mobilizes the capacity to empathize with others and the rhetoric of figurative language. To make my case for this claim, I argue that John Rawls's account of reflective equilibrium suffers from his exclusive …Read more
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45Rights-based rightsLaw and Philosophy 3 (3). 1984.Ronald Dworkin maintains that particular rights, like the right to free speech and the right to own personal property, can be derived from a foundational right, the right to equal concern and respect. This paper questions the tenability of this program for rights-based rights. A right is an individuated moral or political guarantee which confers a specified benefit on each right-holder and which resists conduct that would derogate it. For there to be rights-based rights, both the foundational ri…Read more
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107Part IV. Section 2. Self-Respect and Autonomy: Meyers's discussion of self-respect takes into account work by Stephen Darwall, Thomas Hill, Jr., and Stephen Massey and proposes a unified triadic account that undermines the distinction between self-respect and self-esteem. After distinguishing compromised respect from unqualified respect, she shows why self-respect is both required for and a product of exercising autonomy competency.
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128Women and Moral Theory (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1987.To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
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1266Corporeal selfhood, self-interpretation, and narrative selfhoodPhilosophical Explorations 17 (2): 141-153. 2014.Ever since Freud pioneered the “talking cure,” psychologists of various stripes have explored how autobiographical narrative bears on self-understanding and psychic wellbeing. Recently, there has been a wave of philosophical speculation as to whether autobiographical narrative plays an essential or important role in the constitution of agentic selves. However, embodiment has received little attention from philosophers who defend some version of the narrative self. Catriona Mackenzie is an imp…Read more
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26The Rationale for Inalienable Rights in Moral SystemsSocial Theory and Practice 7 (2): 127-143. 1981.
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The justice position and the care perspectiveIn Eva Feder Kittay & Diana T. Meyers (eds.), Women and Moral Theory, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 4--10. 1987.
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100Part I. The book begins with literary, cinematic, and historical scenarios that exemplify personal autonomy. Meyers uses these vignettes to distinguish personal autonomy from other, variously related types of autonomy and to show that other kinds of autonomy cannot adequately address the concern people have with their own personal decisions. Noting how profoundly social experience impinges on self-discovery, self-definition, and self-direction, Meyers characterizes autonomous individuals as pers…Read more
Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |