Mehrzad Ali Moin

Progress—its meaning, possibility, and the means of achieving it—is of fundamental concern in the philosophy of race. This essay examines how progress—via apology, forgiveness, and disassociation—has been possible after certain historical tragedies, while demonstrating the special problems that make Du Bois’s ‘problem of the color line’ a disanalogous situation to previous cases. Section one offers a characterization of the nature of genuine apologies. Section two illustrates this characterization by analyzing the atrocities committed by Nazis during WWII. Special attention is given to an examination of how a hermeneutic shift became possible, i.e., how we today can share with contemporary Germans a ‘shared memory’ in which we are located equally. Section three addresses the unique problematic of racial progress in the USA that makes disassociation especially difficult, before attempting to sketch a way forward in section four.

This dissertation addresses fundamental questions surrounding mortality and does so existentially. Of central concern is what it means to be mortal, the value of mortality, how we ought to relate to it, whether immortality is preferable to mortality, and what moral obligations can be derived from our mortality. By engaging thinkers such as Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Jonas, Epicurus, and contemporary anglophone philosophers, this project seeks to challenge prevailing attitudes towards death. Through a meta-philosophical lens, I argue for the value of mortality as a shaper of the meaningfulness of existence, and for the cultivation of what I call ‘genuine mortality consciousness’ (GMC), which serves as the framework against which competing views of mortality and human flourishing are measured. The project begins with a dissection of Heidegger’s phenomenology of death in Being and Time, paying special attention to death’s role as a condition for the possibility of authenticity and its equiprimordial relation to care. Subsequently, Kierkegaard’s notion of ‘becoming subjective’ and his dictum to ‘think death into every moment’ is examined, which reveals how holding onto death in the present moment serves to structure a purposeful life. Together, the work of these two thinkers underpins my concept of GMC, which allows for the introduction of focus and urgency into life. Also addressed is technology’s obfuscation of GMC. Having provided a framework from which to approach mortality, I transition to a critical analysis of diverse attitudes towards death, including Epicurus’s claim that death is nothing to us, Nagel’s claim that death is bad, and Fischer’s defense of the desirability of immortality, each of which is ultimately rejected. Against Epicurus and Nagel, I argue that GMC provides a model for relating to mortality that is more conducive to human flourishing. Against the desirability of immortality, I utilize the work of Williams to show that an immortal life would lack meaning. Finally, the project culminates with a moral argument against the transhumanist pursuit of life-extension technology. Utilizing Jonas’s ethics of responsibility, I argue that altering our lifespans is not only imprudent, but immoral because of our responsibility to conserve genuine human life.

Economic sanctions are often portrayed as peaceful alternatives to traditional warfare and have been distinguished from uses of force. This has the unfortunate effect of distracting us from the impact and nature of so-called maximum pressure sanction campaigns. This paper argues against this distinction by examining maximum pressure sanctions under several definitions of terrorism. Using the sanctions program against Iran as a case study, I begin with a consideration of the impact that sanctions have on ordinary citizens. Next, I weigh the nature of these sanctions against several accounts of terrorism, considering definitions of terrorism from Michael Walzer, Tamar Meisels, David Rodin, Eric Reitan, Joshua Glasgow, and Samuel Scheffler in order to show that sanctions can in fact escalate to terrorism—specifically, economic terrorism—under multiple definitions. In uncovering the terroristic aspects of sanctions that intentionally threaten the welfare, livelihoods, and lives of ordinary citizens, I call for a shift in our moral evaluations of this widely accepted practice.

Contemporary philosophers have largely neglected Richard Taylor’s design argument. Given that the initial responses to the argument were largely negative, one might be tempted to conclude that the argument is simply philosophically inadequate. This paper rejects that conclusion by showing how Taylor’s argument has been misunderstood by his critics. In defending Taylor, it is shown that the two types of objections levied against him fail to even blemish his design argument, let alone refute it. Consideration is also given to the argument’s historical lineage, along with a proposal for future considerations of the connection between epistemological realism and design.

The Heideggerian theme of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) proves crucial to the task of fundamental ontology that Heidegger pursues in Being and Time. Unfortunately, clear and textually based commentary on this notion of authenticity has been sparse. Many prominent readings of authenticity fail to stay true to its purpose in the text, opting instead to render a stronger existentialist reading than is warranted. While such readings of authenticity are truly fascinating as independent conceptions worthy of philosophical attention, they cannot be properly ascribed to Heidegger or the project of Being and Time. The present essay serves as an attempt to correct this course in the scholarship, offering a textually supported account of authenticity that recognizes its role as that which makes manifest the transparency that everyday Dasein lacks—a transparency that can do away with self-concealments and assist Heidegger in his pursuit of an answer to the question of Being qua Being.

A significant portion of the secondary literature on Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time has focused on interpreting his formal conceptions of death and anxiety. Unlike these previous works, this essay will serve to fill a gap in the Heideggerian portrayal of death. Although he argues that Dasein is anxious about death at a fundamental level and that it proximally and for the most part covers up such anxiety, Heidegger does not provide ontic evidence in support of his claim, instead opting to uncharacteristically take it as something self-evident. I attempt to supplement Heidegger’s framework by introducing Stephen Cave’s immortality narratives and the emerging field of Terror Management Theory as the aforementioned ontic evidence that rounds out Heidegger’s notion of death, before ultimately transitioning from Heidegger’s work into the larger philosophical discourse on death and demonstrating the potential joy that can manifest when one gains a lucid understanding of the ownness of their death and the narratives to which it gives rise.