•  2385
    Online Shaming
    Social Philosophy Today 33 187-197. 2017.
    Online shaming is a subject of import for social philosophy in the Internet age, and not simply because shaming seems generally bad. I argue that social philosophers are well-placed to address the imaginal relationships we entertain when we engage in social media; activity in cyberspace results in more relationships than one previously had, entailing new and more responsibilities, and our relational behaviors admit of ethical assessment. I consider the stresses of social media, including the ind…Read more
  •  2251
    Can’t Complain
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 15 (2): 117-135. 2018.
    Philosophers generally prescribe against complaining, or endorse only complaints directed to rectification of the circumstances. Notably, Aristotle and Kant aver that the importuning of others with one’s pains is effeminate and should never be done. In this paper, I reject the prohibition of complaint. The gendered aspects of Aristotle’s and Kant’s criticisms of complaint include their deploring a self-indulgent "softness" with respect to pain, yielding to feelings at the expense of remembering …Read more
  •  985
    Building Receptivity: Leopold's Land Ethic and Critical Feminist Interpretation
    Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 5 (4): 493-512. 2011.
    Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac emphasizes values of receptivity and perceptivity that appear to be mutually reinforcing, critical to an ecological conscience, and cultivatable through concrete and embodied experience. His priorities bear striking similarities to elements of the ethics of care elaborated by feminist philosophers, especially Nel Noddings, who notably recommended receptivity, direct and personal experience, and even shared Leopold’s attentiveness to joy and play as sources of…Read more
  •  567
    The inclusion of attendance and participation in course grade calculations is ubiquitous in postsecondary syllabi, but can penalize the silent or anxious student unfairly. I outline the obstacles posed by social anxiety, then describe an assignment developed with the twin goals of assisting students with obstacles to participating in spoken class discussions, and rewarding methods of participation other than oral interaction. When homework assignments habituating practices of writing well-justif…Read more
  •  558
    Forgivingness, pessimism, and environmental citizenship
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (1-2): 29-42. 2010.
    Our attitudes toward human culpability for environmental problems have moral and emotional import, influencing our basic capacities for believing cooperative action and environmental repair are even possible. In this paper, I suggest that having the virtue of forgivingness as a response to environmental harm is generally good for moral character, preserving us from morally risky varieties of pessimism and despair. I define forgivingness as a forward-looking disposition based on Robin Dillon’s co…Read more
  •  522
    Perpetual Struggle
    Hypatia 34 (1): 6-19. 2018.
    Open Access: What if it doesn’t get better? Against more hopeful and optimistic views that it is not just ideal but possible to put an end to what John Rawls calls “the great evils of human history,” I aver that when it comes to evils caused by human beings, the situation is hopeless. We are better off with the heavy knowledge that evils recur than we are with idealizations of progress, perfection, and completeness; an appropriate ethic for living with such heavy knowledge, which I call an ‘Impe…Read more
  •  520
    Evil and Forgiveness
    In Thomas Nys & Stephen De Wijze (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil, . pp. 282-293. 2019.
    Our experiences with many sorts of evils yield debates about the role of forgiveness as a possible moral response. These debates include (1) the preliminary question whether evils are, by definition, unforgivable, (2) the contention that evils may be forgivable but that forgiveness cannot entail reconciliation with one’s evildoer, (3) the concern that only direct victims of evils are in a position to decide if forgiveness is appropriate, (4) the conceptual worry that forgiveness of evil may not …Read more
  •  489
    Misanthropy and Misanthropes
    Journal of Philosophical Research 46. 2021.
    With David Cooper and others, I argue that it is conceptually and ethically good to broaden the conception of misanthropy beyond that of hatred of humans. However, I hold that not everyone with misanthropic thoughts is a misanthrope. I propose thinking of a misanthrope as one who appraises the moral perception of misanthropy to be appropriate, weighty, and governing of other aspects of one’s moral outlook or character. I conclude that pessimism without misanthropy may be more ethically appropria…Read more
  •  470
    The Moral Psychology of Forgiveness (edited book)
    Rowman & Littlefield International. 2017.
    This volume considers challenges to forgiveness in the most difficult circumstances, such as in criminal justice contexts, when the victim is dead or when bystanders disagree, and when anger and resentment seem preferable and important. Contributing philosophers include Myisha Cherry, Jonathan Jacobs, Barrett Emerick, Alice MacLachlan, David McNaughton and Eve Garrard. Contributing psychologists include Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Robert D. Enright and Mary Jacqueline Song, C. Ward Struthers, Joshu…Read more
  •  411
    Doctor's Orders: Menopause, Weight Change, and Feminism
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 9 (2): 190-197. 2016.
    “I am still in despair over losing my identity,” said a blog comment in a discussion about post-menopause weight gain. Instead of recovering an identity, for some of us, as women age, our attitudes toward fitness may require forging new identities. But the challenge in coming to desire fitness, post-menopause, is a project of actually changing my desires. Habituating a good practice can lead to a change in our appetites, so that instead of losing our identities, we may become the characters that…Read more
  •  348
    Free and Always Will Be? On Social Media Participation as it Undermines Individual Autonomy
    Canadian Journal of Practical Philosophy 5 (1): 52-65. 2021.
    Open Access: Social media participation undermines individual autonomy in ways that ought to concern ethicists. Discussions in the philosophical literature are concerned primarily with egregious conduct online such as harassment and shaming, keeping the focus on obvious ills to which no one could consent; this prevents a wider understanding of the risks and harms of quotidian social media participation. Two particular concerns occupy me: social media participation carries the risks of (1) negati…Read more
  •  347
    The Case for our Widespread Dependency
    Social Theory and Practice 30 (2): 247-257. 2004.
    In this review essay, I consider the challenge advanced by editors Eva Kittay and Ellen Feder in their collection, The Subject of Care, that “we must take account of the fact of dependency in our very conceptions of the self,” as well as Kittay’s own statements in her contribution that independence is a fiction and that we are all, ultimately, dependents of a sort. I distinguish broader and narrower senses of dependency as used by different contributors, to develop a conception of what I refer t…Read more
  •  344
    I argue that humans have moral relationships with dogs and cats that they could adopt, but do not. The obligations of those of us who refrain from incurring particular relationships with dogs and cats are correlative with the power of persons with what Jean Harvey calls “interactive power,” the power to take the initiative in and direct the course of a relationship. I connect Harvey’s points about interactive power to my application of Eva Kittay’s “dependency critique,” to show that those of us…Read more
  •  337
    Open Access: This essay argues that Claudia Card numbers among important contributors to nonideal ethical theory, and it advocates for the worth of NET. Following philosophers including Lisa Tessman and Charles Mills, the essay contends that it is important for ethical theory, and for feminist purposes, to carry forward the interrelationship that Mills identifies between nonideal theory and feminist ethics. Card's ethical theorizing assists in understanding that interrelationship. Card's philoso…Read more
  •  307
    The atrocity paradigm applied to environmental evils
    Ethics and the Environment 9 (1): 85-93. 2004.
    I am persuaded both by the theory of evil advanced by Claudia Card in The Atrocity Paradigm and by the idea that there are evils done to the environment; however, I argue that the theory of evil she describes has difficulty living up to her claim that it "can make sense of ecological evils the victims of which include trees and even ecosystems" (2002, 16). In this paper, I argue that Card's account of evil does not accommodate the kinds of harms inflicted on ecosystems and such nonhuman individu…Read more
  •  303
    Forgiveness as a Volitional Commitment
    In Glen Pettigrove & Robert Enright (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Pyschology of Forgiveness, Routledge. pp. 230-242. 2023.
    (In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Psychology of Forgiveness, edited by Glen Pettigrove and Robert Enright) This chapter discusses forgiveness conceived as primarily a volitional commitment, rather than an emotional transformation. As a commitment, forgiveness is distal, involving moral agency over time, and can take the form of a speech act or a chosen attitude. The purpose can be a commitment to repair or restore relationships with wrongdoers for their sake or the sake of the relatio…Read more
  •  299
    Teaching “Against Marriage," or, "But, Professor, marriage isn't a contract!"
    In Stephen Scales, Adam Potthast & Linda Oravecz (eds.), The Ethics of the Family, Cambridge Scholars Press. pp. 121-132. 2010.
    In this contribution, I advocate diminishing the vision of marriage as an isolated and perfectly free choice between two individuals in love, in order to unseat the extent to which students resist the view that marriage is, among other things, a social contract. I summarize views of Immanuel Kant and Claudia Card, then describe my class presentation of the social significance of marriage. I conclude that students at an individualistic and self-creating point in their lives can be under-appreciat…Read more
  •  297
    Forgiveness and Moral Repair
    In Manuel Vargas & John Doris (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, Oxford University Press. 2022.
    Forgiveness has enjoyed intense scholarly interest since the 1980s. I provide a historical overview, then identify themes in the literature, with an emphasis on those relevant to the moral psychology of forgiveness in the twenty-first century. I conclude with some attention to dual-process theories of moral reasoning in order to suggest that key debates in forgiveness are not at odds so much as they may be aligned with the different moral aims of moral and mental processes that differ in kind. I…Read more
  •  225
    Giving Up, Expecting Hope, and Moral Transformation
    Reasonable Responses: The Thought of Trudy Govier. 2017.
    Open Access: Trudy Govier (FR) argues for “conditional unforgivability,” yet avers that we should never give up on a human being. She not only says it is justifiable to take a “hopeful and respectful attitude” toward one’s wrongdoers, she indicates that it is wrong not to; she says it is objectionable to adopt an attitude that any individual is “finally irredeemable” or “could never change,” because such an attitude “anticipates and communicates the worst” (137). Govier’s recommendation to hold …Read more
  •  210
    I offer a brief survey of thematic elements in contemporary literature on forgiveness and then an overview of the responses to that literature comprising the contents of this volume. I concentrate on the extent to which work in moral psychology provides a needed corrective to some excesses in philosophical aversion to empirically informed theorizing. I aim to complicate what has been referred to at times as the standard or classic view, by which philosophers often mean the predominant view of fo…Read more
  •  204
    Non-ideal Theory and Gender Voluntarism in Against Purity
    Apa Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy 18 (1): 1-5. 2018.
    In Against Purity, Alexis Shotwell takes up a multiplicity of tasks with respect to what I think of as non-ideal ethical theory. In what follows, I trace the relationship of her work to that of non-ideal theorists whose work influences mine. Then, more critically, I probe her analysis of gender voluntarism in Chapter 5, “Practicing Freedom: Disability and Gender Transformation,” partly to better understand what she takes it to be, and partly to advance a cautious defense of some of the moral fun…Read more
  •  178
    Feminist Ethics (introductory)
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Living ethics: an introduction with readings, Oxford University Press. 2018.
    In this introductory essay, I describe feminist ethics as a kind of approach to morality that says we ought to pay attention to the facts on the ground and empirical information in order to know whether and how a moral problem is a gendered problem. One of the best accounts of feminist ethics is by Hilde Lindemann, who wrote that feminist ethics aims “to understand, criticize, and correct how gender operates within our moral and social beliefs and practices.” She doesn’t define feminism as a th…Read more
  •  176
    Glen Pettigrove's work enlarges my own thinking on forgiveness. In this review, I argue for even more attention to some philosophical connections that I suggest he neglects. But it is undeniably the case that Pettigrove advances a new view of forgiveness, taking the results of his analysis of the utterance, “I forgive you,” to inform a “broader definition that encompasses a wider range of experiences” than are accommodated by predominant conceptions of forgiveness as an emotional state (151). P…Read more
  •  150
    Real (and) Imaginal Relationships with the Dead
    Journal of Value Inquiry 51 (2): 341-356. 2017.
    Open Access: Appreciating the relationship of the living to our dead is an aspect of human life that seems to be neglected in philosophy. I argue that living individuals can have ongoing, non-imaginary, valuable relationships with deceased loved ones. This is important to establish because arguments for such relationships better generate claims in applied ethics about our conduct with respect to our dead. In the first half of the paper I advance the narrower claim that psychological literature a…Read more
  •  75
    Holmgren’s position is that the attitudes of forgiveness and compassion, when achieved by requisite moral and emotional work through other feelings, are always appropriate responses to wrongdoing, regardless of any conditions a wrongdoer may meet or fail to meet. In this review I disagree with her arguments for unconditional forgiveness. But one need not agree with her to appreciate Holmgren’s attentive reasoning as she maps the architecture of the field of forgiveness and her place in with luci…Read more
  •  71
    Evil, Political Violence and Forgiveness: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card is a collection of new philosophical essays written in tribute to Claudia Card, exploring her leading theory of evil and other theories of evil. The collection brings together an international cohort of distinguished moral and political philosophers who mediate with Card upon an array of twentieth-century atrocities and on the nature of evil actions, persons and institutions.
  •  69
    In this monograph, I offer feminist reasons to develop a multidimensional account of forgiveness as a moral, and therefore at least partially deliberative, action or set of actions, which functions as a remedy in responding to blame or condemnation, releasing offenders from the fullness of their blameworthiness, in relational contexts which therefore require considerations of power between relata. I rely on feminist philosophical account of the relational self in order to contextualise these pow…Read more
  •  66
    The inclusion of more women’s works on introductory syllabi in philosophy has been suggested as one possible strategy to increase the proportion of philosophers that are female. Objections to this strategy often reflect the assumption that attention to the identity of authors is irrelevant to philosophy and detrimental to other pedagogical goals such as fairly and accurately representing the canon, and offering selections on the basis of their philosophical quality rather than the identities of…Read more
  •  58
    The Limits of Forgiveness
    with Jean Rumsey
    Hypatia 24 (1). 2009.
    In this paper, we contextualize Claudia Card's work on forgiveness within wider literatures on forgiveness. With Card, we emphasize the costs of forgiveness and the sufferings of victims, and suggest alternatives to forgiving evils. Women who live in particularly unsafe contexts require recognition more than reconciliation. We conclude that those who forgive evil also require recognition that respects the choices of forgiving agents, seeing their decisions as relevant to conceptual analysis abou…Read more
  •  49
    A moral imperative: Retaining women of color in science education
    with Angela Johnson and Sybol Cook Anderson
    Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice 33 (2): 72-82. 2009.
    This article considers the experiences of a group of women science students of color who reported encountering moral injustices, including misrecognition, lack of peer support, and disregard for their altruistic motives. We contend that university science departments face a moral imperative to cultivate equal relationships and the altruistic power of science.