Joel Marks

This dissertation considers some normative and meta-ethical implications of a theory of emotion. In Chapter 2 emotion is argued to be belief plus strong desire. The 'strong desire' qualifier is defended against the more exclusively cognitive theories of William Lyons and Robert Solomon. Chapter 3 provides an explication of the 'dispassion thesis', which is the main thesis to be defended in this dissertation. The dispassion thesis states that dispassion, or the absence of emotion, is good; put differently, that emotion has no place in the ethical life. Various similar-sounding theses are shown to have significantly different content in light of the theory of emotion presented in Chapter 2; for example, the dispassion thesis is not the thesis that it is good to be unfeeling. Chapter 4 then gives the defense of the dispassion thesis. Dispassion is argued to be good on such grounds as that emotion inhibits desire-satisfaction, autonomy, adaptability, and rationality--in short, that emotion inhibits prudential and moral effectualness; thus, note, this defense of dispassion is largely non-quietist. A special section takes as a case in point the life of the Buddha Gautama Siddhartha, showing how it is possible to understand the compassion of a bodhisattva as an outgrowth of his dispassion. Chapter 5 asks whether dispassion, if desirable, is yet a practicable attainment for human beings. An affirmative response is supported by consideration of a possible cognitive method for inducing desire-transformation. Chapter 6 then carries on the discussion of desire-transformation by cognitive means in order to elaborate and defend a theory of the good recently put forward by Richard Brandt. This theory, while significant in its own right, also serves three important functions in this dissertation: it makes possible a more precise formulation of the dispassion thesis; it provides an acid test of the thesis that emotion has no place in ethical theory ; and it serves as a bridge between the dispassion thesis and the conclusion that dispassion is appropriate to the very nature of good and evil

Despite the apparently universal recognition of a pervasive "success at any cost" amorality in the professional and business world, and the need to do something about it, attempts to establish a campus-wide professional ethics curriculum continue to encounter resistance at many colleges and universities. The main stumbling block seems to be a purely practical one: How do you fit a course on professional ethics into academic worksheets that are already over-crowded with essential technical courses in every professional discipline? I maintain, to the contrary, that the real problem is one of attitude and will, and these in turn rest upon a set of mistaken notions about the nature of professional ethics. In this essay I highlight what I take to be a number of fallacies about professional ethics and then suggest a better way to think about its place in the formal education of professionals

In On Their Own Terms (Darien, CT: Nectar Bat Press, 2010), Lee Hall articulates a theory that wild animals, due to their autonomous nature, are endowed with rights, but domesticated animals lack rights because they are not autonomous. Hall then argues that the rights of wild animals require that humans let them alone, and that, despite the fact that domestic animals lack rights, humans are required to take care of them because it is humans who brought them into existence. While sympathetic to Hall's aims, this review concludes that Hall’s theory denies rights to domestic animals only by employing theoretical means that are uncomfortably analogous to how others have denied rights to all nonhuman animals.

This book challenges the widespread assumption that the ethical life and society must be moral in any objective sense. In his previous works, Marks has rejected both the existence of such a morality and the need to maintain verbal, attitudinal, practical, and institutional remnants of belief in it. This book develops these ideas further, with emphasis on constructing a positive alternative. Calling it “desirism”, Marks illustrates what life and the world would be like if we lived in accordance with our rational desires rather than the dictates of any actual or pretend morality, neither overlaying our desires with moral sanction nor attempting to override them with moral strictures. Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire also argues that atheism thereby becomes more plausible than the so-called New Atheism that attempts to give up God and yet retain morality.