Lotte Spreeuwenberg

What are the moral implications of cancel culture? If it is viewed as a means to achieve social justice, we might be more inclined to say that cancel culture is morally good. However, one could argue that cancel culture has too harsh consequences or involves immoral – even hateful – behaviour. We propose that cancel culture is used as an umbrella term for (at least) two different kinds of ‘cancelling’. Cancelling is often seen in public debate as punishment. Following Radzik’s objections to social punishment we argue that this kind of cancelling is morally reprehensible. However, cancel culture as an umbrella term also includes other kinds of cancelling. Many also refer to cancel culture as a phenomenon when someone is being called out or held accountable for their supposedly problematic behaviour. Such cancelling does not need to be punishment, but is often rather an attempt to remove privileged access to the public sphere. In this way, cancelling is used as a tool for redistributing attention: it can (re)claim attention and recognition for marginalized perspectives, by a radical attempt to deny a privileged person access to the public sphere. We conclude that cancel culture as a whole cannot be seen as either morally good or bad, because ‘cancelling’ can be used as a tool for both punishment and redistribution. Each have their own moral implications: cancelling as punishment is reprehensible, but cancelling to redistribute attention might be less of a problem.

This ameliorative project of love investigates how we can improve how we use the concept ‘love’, formulating better and worse forms of loving. It compares two contemporary analytic philosophers who have argued for different but related accounts of love as looking. By comparing David Velleman’s and Iris Murdoch’s account of love, I argue that Velleman’s account is not suitable for this ameliorative project, while Murdoch’s account enables us to be better lovers. We would all love better if we think of love as a practice of attending to one another—a process that requires continuous work. Murdoch is able to talk about love as an activity, instead of the passive evaluation that Velleman describes. ‘Love’ as a practice is able to look at the reality of people as opposed to the self-serving fantasies we might have. Such a practice will not only make us better lovers, it could also be used politically: a moral practice of ‘loving attention’ could actively combat privileged blindness.

In recent discussions about whether the use of a love pill to enhance love in our romantic relationships is desirable, one argument centres on the question whether this love pill would secure the final value we attribute to love. Sven Nyholm argues that it would not, because one thing we desire for its own sake is to be at the origin of the love others feel for us. In a reply, Hichem Naar argues against Nyholm that a love pill does not need to be incompatible with the final value we attribute to love and that a love pill can have a facilitating role in the creation and sustainment of loving attachment. I think Naar is right but does not address Nyholm's worry completely. I will argue that Naar and Nyholm are speaking of different ends for which the love pill is used as a means, and that whether the love pill would fail or not fail to secure the final value we attribute to love, depends on this particular end.