Rich Eva

This exploratory study investigated the impact of brief restful activities—primarily guided mindfulness exercises—on students’ experiences during in-class medical ethics debates. Implemented in two semesters of an undergraduate course at a private R1 university, the intervention aimed to foster constructive dialogue around sensitive topics. Survey data from 40 students revealed minimal quantitative differences and uniformly positive qualitative feedback. Given the exploratory design and small sample size, the quantitative findings are best interpreted descriptively. Students reported reduced anxiety, improved focus, and a more grounded classroom ethos during sessions with restful activities. Even brief mindfulness practices appeared to enhance students’ emotional readiness for challenging discussions. This study suggests promising directions for integrating mindfulness into college teaching to promote constructive dialogue.

Use of the term “politicize” and its variants has surged in the American lexicon over the past half-century. Typically, the term “politicize” carries a tone of condemnation. Yet it is unclear if politicizing is always bad. In this article, I give an account of what it means to politicize by first describing paradigmatic cases of politicizing in popular media, then I survey various definitions of politicizing and explain the concept. Politicizing typically occurs when an agent instrumentalizes some activity or institution for the sake of their partisan political agenda. To politicize is to use a nonpartisan good as a means to a partisan end.

Social and political polarization is rising without signs of reprieve. One prescription for depolarization is that citizens engage in nonpolitical cooperative activities, like sports, music, or community service. Such activities would put us in contact with opposed partisans, provide superordinate goals, and help us see others in a new, nonpartisan light. Consequently, we could reduce polarization and even increase our effectiveness at pursuing our own partisan aims. But this prescription presents a tension: on the one hand, partisans will be motivated to participate in nonpolitical activities for political reasons and with some level of political awareness. On the other hand, they must put politics aside and fully engage in the activity for its own sake. The prescription asks partisans to engage in nonpolitical activities politically. Is this possible? Recent scholarship on the philosophy of games can help resolve this tension. In games, we take on disposable ends and wall off our enduring ends. For instance, we desire to have fun, but to have fun we first must wall off that aim and take on the disposable aim of winning. I recommend that we approach nonpolitical activities with the same agential fluidity we exercise in games. In this way, we can play political games to sustain democracy.

This article provides an account of what it means to moralize. I claim that to moralize is to use a shared good as a means to a contested moral cause. Moralizing can be thought of as a three‐place predicate involving an agent, a shared good (like a conference, vacation, meal, or concert), and a contested moral cause. Key criteria for an act to count as moralizing include: that the good be shared with others, that the moral cause be controversial, that the moral cause be unrelated to the shared good by social convention, and that the agent is motivated to act on behalf of their moral cause. I distinguish moralizing from related concepts like moralism, moral hyperactivity, moral grandstanding, and politicizing. This article provides a conceptual analysis of moralizing that can ground a moral evaluation of moralizing. I conclude with a brief moral evaluation of moralizing.

If AI can write an excellent philosophy paper, we argue that philosophy journals should strongly consider publishing that paper. After all, AI stands to make significant contributions to ongoing projects in some subfields, and it benefits the world of philosophy for those contributions to be published in journals, the primary purpose of which is to disseminate significant contributions to philosophy. We also propose the Sponsorship Model of AI journal refereeing to mitigate any costs associated with our view. This model requires at least one human to sponsor any AI manuscript submitted to a journal. After making this case, we evaluate a variety of objections—that our proposal will crash the academic job market, disincentivize humans from doing philosophy, and violate a variety of justified publishing norms—and conclude that they are all wanting.

A cursory reading of Thomas Aquinas’s work can give the impression he condones a despotic or exploitative relationship between humans and the environment. Many philosophers and theologians have sought to dispel this impression and draw out a more robust Thomistic environmental ethic. In this paper, I support this endeavor by describing how, in Thomas’s work, the environment is God’s artistic property and how this notion qualifies our use of the environment. Next, I consider two concepts related to artistic property: vandalism and showcasing. I explore these concepts as they relate to the environment and find they give us reasons not to deface or destroy creatures and to look to creation for guidance in problem-solving.

In this paper I argue for a theory of punishment I call Multilateral Retributivism. Typically retributive notions of justice are unilateral: focused on one person’s desert. I argue that our notions of desert are multilateral: multiple people are owed when a moral crime is committed. I argue that the purpose of punishment is communication with the end-goal of reconciling the offender to society. This leads me to conclude that the death penalty and life without parole are unjustified because they necessarily cut communication short.

It is common for religiously motivated actions to be specially protected by law. Many legal theorists have asked why: what makes religion special? What makes it worthy of toleration over and above other non-religious deeply held convictions? The answer I put forward is that religions’ alleged afterlife consequences call for a principle of toleration that warrants special legal treatment. Under a Rawlsian principle of toleration, it is reasonable for those in the original position to opt for principles of justice that accommodate actions with alleged afterlife consequences. And, under a utilitarian principle of toleration, a greater psychological harm is eased by such accommodations. Additionally, this alleged afterlife consequence is found in most of the religions that are thought to warrant some level of special toleration—not only do the Abrahamic religions have alleged afterlife consequences, but many eastern religions do as well, e.g. reincarnation.

In this paper we compare Kierkegaard’s and Marx’s views on social reform. Then we argue that Kierkegaard’s own reasoning is consistent with the expression of neighbor-love through collective action, i.e. social reform. However, Kierkegaard’s approach to social reform would be vastly different than Marx’s. We end by reviewing several questions that Kierkegaardian social reformers would ask themselves. Our hope is that this exploration will provide helpful insights into how those who genuinely love their neighbors ought to seek the common good through collective action.