Jeff Gauthier

Two important and perplexing questions confronting movements of political liberation concern the extent to which group critiques of oppression can or should be expressed in universalist terms, and that to which the agency of unwitting oppressors is impugned in these critiques. These questions are related in that the justification for agent-criticism turns, in large part, on the universal accessibility of an act's wrongness. Hegel criticized Kant's moral theory both for its assertion that intention is the key issue for ethical justification, and for its argument that a universal or impartial point of view is procedurally accessible. Though Hegel maintained a commitment to universalism, he focused on the social and historical conditions for moral action that Kant's approach ignored. ;In my dissertation, I argue that Hegel's criticisms of Kantian formalism can yield important insights into the nature of oppressive agency and the limitations of universalist approaches in criticizing it. In Part I, I describe certain key themes in Hegel's critique of "formalism," linking it both to Schiller's criticisms of Kant's moral psychology, and to his own innovative conception of action and agency. Against Kantians such as Onora O'Neil and Christine Korsgaard, I argue that even if Hegel's charge does not exclude universality as an abstract ground of justification, it shows how gaining access to it may involve eschewing an attitude of impartiality. In Part II, I argue that Hegel's qualified critique of Kantian universalism is of use in understanding issues of agency and impartiality in feminist social criticism. First, I argue that "consciousness-raising," with its focus on the collective development of a previously unarticulated and decidedly partial perspective, serves to transform key moral categories even as it appeals to them. I then employ that argument in showing why some sexist agents may rightly be subject to reproach, even if they lack reflective access to the descriptions under which their actions are oppressive. Finally, I use my discussion of Hegel to reevaluate certain elements of Simone de Beauvoir's quasi-Hegelianism in The Second Sex

This volume of Social Philosophy Today contains a selection of papers presented at the 30th International Social Philosophy Conference (2013), an annual event sponsored by the North American Society for Social Philosophy. The theme of the conference was "Food". This volume invites wider discussion of the issues explored at the conference, including food production, distribution, and consumption. Contributors include Susan Dielman, Erinn Gilson, Joan McGregor, José Medina, Andrew Pierce, and Sally Scholz.

In her highly influential 1984 study Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Kristin Luker speculates that opposition to legal abortion among women was likely to be strongest among those who were full-time homemakers without a college education. But despite a marked decline in that demographic group and a well-documented rise in public support for gender equality since then, the rate of support for legal abortion has remained stubbornly fixed at between fifty and fifty-five percent. This tepid support has coincided with a steep decline in abortion services in rural states, and ever more sweeping restrictions on abortion being tested in the courts. Karissa Haugeberg's Women against Abortion and Katie Watson's Scarlet A both seek to address this state of affairs, albeit in markedly different ways. Haugeberg provides a historical chronicle of the motives and strategies of certain key women activists in the fight against legal abortion, with an eye toward how their concerns “came to serve as blueprints to legislators and judges who continue to craft policies and laws that erode women's right to abortion”. Katie Watson draws upon her experience as an attorney and bioethicist to write a guide “intended to encourage and equip you to engage in respectful, productive, private conversation about your experience with, and opinion of, abortion”. Though both authors reveal their support for legal abortion, both are concerned to understand the motives and goals of those who fight against it.

Mention of the name of Friedrich Schiller among both critics and defenders of Kant's moral philosophy has most often been with reference to the well known quip:“Gladly I serve my friends, but alas I do it with pleasure.Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not a virtuous person.““Sure, your only resource is to try to despise them entirely,And then with aversion to do what your duty enjoins you.''This attention, however, has served to obscure the fact that Schiller truly intended his remark as a joke, representing a serious, if understandable, misinterpretation of Kantian morality. Though Schiller's various attempts to articulate a theory of moral motivation include important divergences from Kant's account, they represent a response to a set of problems that arise in the context of Kantian moral theory. As such, they may be of greatest interest to moralists who are working within the Kantian tradition. In this paper, I clarify certain points of Schiller's critique of Kant's account of moral motivation and place them in the context of his broader project of reconciling Kantianism and an ethics of virtue.

Both liberals and feminists have long criticized the paternalistic approach to prostitution found in most jurisdictions in the U.S. In his recent book Prostitution and Liberalism, Peter de Marneffe defends just such an intervention, arguing that the demonstrated harmfulness of a life of prostitution justifies paternalistic policies aimed at reducing the number of women who are involved in it. Although de Marneffe does not endorse the prohibitionist approach typical in the U.S., he argues that the best reasons for alternative approaches to the practice (including some forms of regulated legalization) are necessarily paternalistic. In my paper, I question de Marneffe’s contention that the strongest reasons for state intervention with regard to prostitution are paternalistic in nature. I argue that reasonable state action toward prostitution is best understood not as a paternalistic intervention to remedy some moral or epistemological failure on the part of prostitutes, but rather as an attempt to advance the interests of vulnerable parties more generally concerning what they reasonably desire but could not otherwise ensure. I further argue that such an approach might favor abolitionist over regulatory policies, depending upon how the vulnerable class is defined.