•  3
    A Taste for Fashion
    In Fritz Allhoff, Jessica Wolfendale & Jeanette Kennett (eds.), Fashion - Philosophy for Everyone: Thinking with Style, Wiley. 2011.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Philosophers' Denigration of Fashion Taste and Style Genius Love of Beauty as A Moral (Or Proto‐moral) Motive Conclusion.
  •  40
    On Orientation in Thought
    International Studies in Philosophy 39 (4): 77-102. 2007.
    Immanuel Kant, in ‘What is Orientation in Thinking?’ focuses on reason as the touchstone for speculative thought. The question of how to orient ourselves in thinking is still pressing, particularly if one does not take reason as providing principles for judgment. Hannah Arendt and Michèle Le Dœuff focus on this problem of orientation from a practical point of view and build up a compelling picture of how we can orient our thought. Both take imagination to be central to good judgment, in addition…Read more
  •  56
    This is a review of Margaret Simons's book, Beauvoir and the Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism.
  • In this chapter, I interpret Vladimir Jankélévitch’s work on the bad conscience and on forgiveness in relation to the film Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016). This film is a striking meditation on remorse and the difficulty of self-forgiveness for Lee Chandler, a man who lives a monastic life as a janitor in Boston after the tragic death of his three children in a house fire. Many discussions of the film so far have focused on its depictions of despair and grief (with brief reference…Read more
  •  13
    This book investigates the interrelations between aesthetics, ethics and politics in a variety of visual media forms, ranging across art installations, film and television, interactive documentaries, painting, photography, social media and videogames. An international mix of emerging and established authors, with interdisciplinary expertise, explores how different ethical questions, political implications and aesthetic pleasures arise and shape one another in distinct visual media. Investigatin…Read more
  •  9
    Hannah Arendt and the History of Thought (edited book)
    with Daniel Brennan
    Lexington Books. 2022.
    This edited collection enriches scholarship on Arendt by considering her contributions to and reflections on the history of thought. The chapters bring Arendt into new conversations with her contemporaries, as well as examining the themes of Arendt's writing in light of her engagement with philosophical and literary history.
  •  11
    Becoming a Victim
    Philosophy Today 65 (4): 899-916. 2021.
    Euzhan Palcy’s film A Dry White Season, set in apartheid South Africa, portrays a resistance not intended to lead to victimhood, yet leads to the death of the Afrikaans protagonist, Benjamin Du Toit. The narrative follows Ben as they are educated about Black South Africans’ suffering under apartheid, their growing activism and simultaneous increasing victimization beside that of their Black friends. I first examine how early political critics of the film thought it stressed the victimization of …Read more
  •  13
    Chile 1988: Trauma and Resistance in Pablo Larrain's No (2012)
    In Amy L. Hubbell, Natsuko Akagawa, Sol Rojas-Lizana & Annie Pohlman (eds.), Places of Traumatic Memory: A Global Context, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 285-307. 2020.
    No presents the television campaign for the 1988 plebiscite on whether the Pinochet regime should stay as the government for eight more years (‘Yes’) or hold democratic elections (‘No’). The ‘No’ campaign uses the Aristotelian idea that happiness is an intrinsic value and thus the best concept to galvanise a traumatised nation in favour of change. My paper examines the film’s presentation of how a response to the trauma of the regime becomes transformed into resistance through the idea of a poss…Read more
  •  19
    Realism as resistance
    Angelaki 25 (5): 156-170. 2020.
    This paper explores the potential of realist cinema to portray resistance to oppression and restrictions on people’s lives. Wadjda presents a special case in world cinema in being made in Sa...
  •  17
    Realism as Resistance: The Case of Wadjda (2013)
    Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 25 (5): 156-70. 2020.
    This paper explores the potential of realist cinema to portray resistance to oppression and restrictions on people’s lives. Wadjda presents a special case in world cinema in being made in Saudi Arabia, which until recently had no film industry or distribution system. The director, Hafaa Al Mansour, has been praised for making the film there at all. Yet this ignores the film’s power in taking a slice of time in the life of a young Riyadh girl, Wadjda, and focussing on her desire to own a bicycle.…Read more
  •  37
    ‘Hopeless Love: Camus and Le Premier Homme.’
    In Matthew Sharpe, Maciej Kałuża & Peter Francev (eds.), Brill's Companion to Camus: Camus Among the Philosophers, Brill. 2020.
    What does Le Premier Homme bring specifically to our understanding of Camus’s view of love? The novel allows us to understand love as love of specific human individuals, as well as love of life and the world, and a sense of the frailties of love. While many commentaries have touched on the idea of the importance of love in this work, they have tended to focus more on the disguised autobiographical elements concerning the people in Camus’s life. They have also centred on the descriptive aspects o…Read more
  •  21
    The tension between the absence of identity and the feeling of presence theorised in Jacques Derrida’s philosophy is revealed in D’ailleurs Derrida, a film by Safaa Fathy (1999). Fathy’s film has had limited scholarly attention, yet it makes a distinctive contribution both to understanding and questioning Derridean thought. I argue that the not-meness of identity is revealed by Fathy through the theme of ‘elsewhere’ (ailleurs) in the film and yet it allows the audience to experience the tone and…Read more
  •  13
    The tension between the absence of identity and the feeling of presence theorised in Jacques Derrida's philosophy is revealed in D'ailleurs Derrida, a film by Safaa Fathy (1999). Fathy's film has had limited scholarly attention, yet it makes a distinctive contribution both to understanding and questioning Derridean thought. I argue that the not-meness of identity is revealed by Fathy through the theme of ‘elsewhere’ (ailleurs) in the film and yet it allows the audience to experience the tone and…Read more
  •  8
    This cross-disciplinary collection explores Vladimir Jankélévitch’s thought on love, forgiveness, humility, virtue, bad conscience, remorse, death, reconciliation, music, and religion. It examines his relations with philosophers such as Henri Bergson and Plotinus. The chapters are linked by the theme of intangibility, or what cannot be touched.
  •  1
    Judging in Times of Crisis: Wonder, Admiration, and Emulation
    In Alfred Archer & Andre Grahle (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Admiration, Rowman & Littlefield. 2019.
    My paper considers the role of wonder and admiration in times of crisis. I argue that wonder should be understood in René Descartes’ (1649/1989) sense, as a response to something unfamiliar that is based on the object, rather than our judgements about it. In contrast, in admiration, we must judge the objects as admirable, that they have some valuable traits. In ordinary times, it may be immoral acts that stand out as unfamiliar and so provoke wonder. However, I will focus on the importance of wo…Read more
  •  19
    This book provides an account of ethical restoration in situations that bring ethical and political questions together. It shows how punishment as well as forgiveness and reconciliation are necessary to properly restore peace and justice in both transitional and democratic societies.
  •  14
    Phenomenology and Forgiveness (edited book)
    Rowman & Littlefield International. 2018.
    This book develops and demonstrates in depth and breadth the contribution of phenomenologists to understanding forgiveness. Featuring all new material from a diverse mix of philosophical authors, the book will be of interest to students and scholars in both phenomenology and moral psychology.
  •  18
    Analytic Imaginary
    In Max Deutscher (ed.), Michèle Le Doeuff: Operative Philosophy and Imaginary Practice, Amherst. pp. 61-80. 2000.
    Le Dœuff investigated the philosophical imaginary primarily of classical philosophy, but her discussion about the philosophical image is open enough to allow an extension into the contrasting area of contemporary analytic philosophy. The flexibility of her method will be demonstrated first by attention to the function of specific images in analytic philosophy. Further possibilities of her method will be displayed by a reading of the general ‘imaginary’ of analytic philosophy —a system that I sha…Read more
  •  2
    If You Say So: Feminist Philosophy and Antiracism
    In M. P. Levine & T. Pataki (eds.), Racism in Mind, Cornell University. pp. 261-298. 2004.
  •  74
    In this paper, I show how a politics of difference, in particular that of Iris Marion Young, can give a much more robust justification for feminist goals and a more cogent diagnosis of and response to oppression than other political philosophies, such as liberalism, communitarianism, and post-socialism,. Nancy Fraser has nonetheless made several compelling criticisms of Young’s conception of the politics of difference, and I address these criticisms by demonstrating how the politics of differenc…Read more
  •  50
    Iris Marion Young's work spans phenomenology and political philosophy. Her best‐known work in feminist phenomenology “Throwing like a girl,” drawing on the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, established the importance of gendered forms of bodily comportment and motility and has inspired articles both criticizing and extending her view to other fields. She has also articulated the phenomenological experience of chosen pregnancy, homemaking, the need for private space, the exper…Read more
  •  19
    Kant suggests in The Metaphysics of Morals that we may sometimes say something untrue or insincere since others are free to interpret our statements as they wish. (1996, 6:238) Yet he also argues that even in conflict situations we should be truthful so as to not eliminate trust and to make it possible for a rightful condition to arise. My paper considers the conditions Kant believes essential to maintain basic trust so that in better times peace is possible. It also considers their relation to …Read more
  •  33
    Michele Le Doeuff and the work of philosophy
    Australian Journal of French Studies (3): 244-56. 2003.
    In this paper I show how Michèle Le Dœuff’s conception of philosophy as work is central to her articulation of a fresh conception of women’s role in philosophy and philosophy’s relation to other work. In Hipparchia’s Choice (1991, 168) she writes that ‘There is at least a third way of conceiving of philosophy and the history of philosophy: we can regard both as work, and thus as a dynamic, which can lead to and from each other.’ My objective is to clarify this concept of philosophy as work and…Read more
  •  13
    Is evil an absolute difference that we must respond to with horror? Or is evil an aspect of humanity that we must approach with understanding? How we answer these questions partly determines how we should answer the question of whether we should forgive evil, particularly radical evil. Radical evil, as it is used it here, can be understood as evil that is not motivated by understandable human motives. Hannah Arendt argues that one cannot forgive radical evil because such acts completely transcen…Read more
  •  196
    Iris Marion Young argues we cannot understand others' experiences by imagining ourselves in their place or in terms of symmetrical reciprocity (1997a). For Young, reciprocity expresses moral respect and asymmetry arises from people's greatly varying life histories and social positions. La Caze argues there are problems with Young's articulation of asymmetrical reciprocity in terms of wonder and the gift. By discussing friendship and political representation, she shows how taking self-respect int…Read more