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10Do All Interesting Experiences Add to the Quality of Life?Journal of Philosophical Research 48 247-251. 2023.In “ReImagining the Quality of Life,” Lorraine Besser challenges the frameworks typically used for evaluating the quality of people’s lives, especially those with Alzheimer’s disease or those in minimally conscious states (MCS). These frameworks rely on two standards: agency and sentience. The first assumes that the absence of agency makes a life prudentially worthless (worthless to the individual whose life it is), because cognitive activity is prudentially valuable “only when it reflects agenc…Read more
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17Review of Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover: Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities. (review)Ethics 107 (4): 725-729. 1997.
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61Superson, Anita M. The Moral Skeptic . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 . Pp. 250. $24.95 (paper)Ethics 120 (3): 635-639. 2010.
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The Ethical Significance of FriendshipDissertation, University of Toronto (Canada). 1986.Friendship is a cardinal human value, and requires both the "other-regarding" and the "self-regarding" virtues. Thus an analysis of friendship can illuminate the nature of morality, and provide a test of adequacy of rival moral theories. But even when it is recognized that friendship involves virtue, the role of justice is usually ignored, thanks to the idea that justice is an impersonal, "public" virtue. But justice is crucially important in friendship, and is connected as well with benevolence…Read more
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201Friends as ends in themselvesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 48 (1): 1-23. 1987.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is currently published by International Phenomenological Society
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12Autonomy, Liberty, and UtilityDialogue 28 (3): 487-. 1989.Lawrence Haworth's book, Autonomy, discusses “Autonomy as a Psychological Idea”, and “Autonomy as a Normative Idea”. Part 1 discusses autonomy in relation to rationality, agency, and responsibility, defends it against Skinnerian sceptics, and outlines a theory of autonomous decision-making and the autonomous task environment. Haworth's conception of autonomy integrates and builds on the concepts of S. I. Benn, G. Dworkin, H. Frankfurt, and R. W. White. Part 2 centres on social/political theory, …Read more
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350Why it is wrong to be always guided by the best: Consequentialism and friendshipEthics 101 (3): 483-504. 1991.I take friendship to be a practical and emotional relationship marked by mutual and (more-or-less) equal goodwill, liking, and pleasure. Friendship can exist between siblings, lovers, parent and adult child, as well as between otherwise unrelated people. Some friendships are valued chiefly for their usefulness. Such friendships are instrumental or means friendships. Other friendships are valued chiefly for their own sakes. Such friendships are noninstrumental or end friendships. In this paper I …Read more
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35Altruism versus self-interest: Sometimes a false dichotomy*: Neera Kapur BadhwarSocial Philosophy and Policy 10 (1): 90-117. 1993.In the moral philosophy of the last two centuries, altruism of one kind or another has typically been regarded as identical with moral concern. When self-regarding duties have been recognized, motivation by duty has been sharply distinguished from motivation by self-interest . Accordingly, from Kant, Mill, and Sidgwick to Rawls, Nagel, and Gauthier, concern for our own interests, whether long-term or short-term, has typically been regarded as intrinsically nonmoral. So, for example, although Tho…Read more
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97The circumstances of justice: Pluralism, community, and friendshipJournal of Political Philosophy 1 (3). 1993.Liberal political theory sees justice as the "first virtue" of a good society, the virtue that guides individuals' conceptions of their own good, and protects the equal liberty of all to pursue their ends, so long as these ends and pursuits are just. But ever since Marx's declaration that "liberty as a right of man is not founded upon the relations between man and man, but rather upon the separation of man from man...,"i liberal society has been frequently criticized for falling seriously short …Read more
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4The nature and significance of friendshipIn Friendship: a philosophical reader, Cornell University Press. 1993.
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152Friendship: a philosophical reader (edited book)Cornell University Press. 1993.Introduction: The Nature and Signif1cance of Friendship Neera Kapur Badhwar Philosophers have long recognized that friendship plays a central role in a ...
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422Moral Agency, Commitment, and ImpartialitySocial Philosophy and Policy 13 (1): 1-26. 1996.Communitarians reject the impartial and universal viewpoint of liberal morality in favor of the "situated" viewpoint of the agent's community, and elevate political community into the moral community. I show that the preeminence of political community in communitarian morality is incompatible with concern for people's lives in the partial communities of family, friends, or others. Ironically, it is also incompatible with the communitarian thesis about the situated nature of moral agency. Politic…Read more
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101Is Realism Really Bad for You? A Realistic ResponseJournal of Philosophy 105 (2): 85-107. 2008.
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51Dignity and Vulnerability (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (1): 246-248. 2001.In this significant new addition to moral theory, George Harris challenges a view of the dignity and worth of persons that goes back through Kant and Christianity to the Stoics. He argues that we do not, in fact, believe this view, which traces any breakdowns of character to failures of strength. When it comes to what we actually value in ourselves and others, he says, we are far more Greek than Christian. At the most profound level, we value ourselves as natural organisms, as animals, rather th…Read more
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19Review of William S. Hamrick, Kindness and the Good Society: Connections of the Heart (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (9). 2002.
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98Friendship and commercial societiesPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (3): 301-326. 2008.Critics of commercial societies complain that the free-market system of property rights and freedom of contract tends to commodify relationships, thus eroding the bonds of personal and civic friendship. I argue that this thesis rests on a misunderstanding of both markets and friendship. As voluntary, reciprocal relationships, market relationships and friendship share important properties. Like all relations and activities that exercise important human capacities and play an important role in a m…Read more
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265The Milgram Experiments, Learned Helplessness, and Character TraitsThe Journal of Ethics 13 (2): 257-289. 2009.The Milgram and other situationist experiments support the real-life evidence that most of us are highly akratic and heteronomous, and that Aristototelian virtue is not global. Indeed, like global theoretical knowledge, global virtue is psychologically impossible because it requires too much of finite human beings with finite powers in a finite life; virtue can only be domain-specific. But unlike local, situation-specific virtues, domain-specific virtues entail some general understanding of what…Read more
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37Precis of Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile LifeJournal of Value Inquiry 50 (1): 185-193. 2016.
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663LoveIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The Oxford handbook of practical ethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 42. 2003."[L]ove is not merely a contributor - one among others - to meaningful life. In its own way it may underlie all other forms of meaning....by its very nature love is the principal means by which creatures like us seek affective relations to persons, things, or ideals that have value and importance for us. I. The Look of Love.
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70Moral Agency, Commitment, and ImpartialitySocial Philosophy and Policy 13 (1): 1-26. 1996.Liberal political philosophy presupposes a moral theory according to which the ability to assess and choose conceptions of the good from a universal and impartial moral standpoint is central to the individual's moral identity. This viewpoint is standardly understood by liberals as that of a rationalhuman(nottranscendental) agent. Such an agent is able to reflect on her ends and pursuits, including those she strongly identifies with, and to understand and take into account the basic interests of …Read more
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188International aid: When giving becomes a viceSocial Philosophy and Policy 23 (1): 69-101. 2006.Peter Singer and Peter Unger argue that moral decency requires giving away all one's “surplus” for the relief or prevention of “absolute poverty,” because not doing so is analogous to refusing to save a drowning child to avoid making one's clothes muddy. I argue that there is a crucial disanalogy between the two cases and, moreover, that there are four independent moral objections to their thesis: it is monomaniacal in ignoring the variety of morally worthy ideals and elevating self-sacrificial …Read more
Neera K. Badhwar
University of Oklahoma
George Mason University
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George Mason UniversityMercatus CenterProfessor (Part-time)
Norman, Oklahoma, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy, Misc |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy, Misc |
Value Theory |