Sally J. Scholz

We criticize a view of maternity that equates the natural with the genetic and biological and show how such a practice overdetermines the maternal body and the maternal experience for women who are mothers through adoption and ART . As an alternative, we propose a new framework designed to rethink maternal bodies through the lens of feminist embodiment. Feminist embodied maternity, as we call it, stresses the particularity of experience through subjective embodiment. A feminist embodied maternity emphasizes the physical relations of the subjective lived-body rather than the genetic or biological connections. Instead of universalizing claims about the maternal body, embodied maternity looks to communicable experiences and empathetic understanding

This article examines the particular moral obligations of solidarity focusing on the solidary commitment against injustice or oppression. I argue that political solidarity entails three relationships—to other participants in action, to a cause or goal, and to those outside the unity of political solidarity. These relationships inform certain obligations. Activism is one of those obligations and I argue that violent activism is incompatible with the other relations and duties of solidarity. Activists may find themselves confronted with a difficult choice between respecting the relationships of political solidarity or employing physical violence in resistant self-defense against oppressive practices.

This paper looks at some prominent discussions of rape in war as a violation of human rights within Radical Feminism. I begin with a brief overview of United Nations declarations and actions on the subject of rape in war. I then look at some radical feminist accounts of rape in war as a violation of human rights with particular emphasis on the discussions of Susan Brownmiller and Catharine MacKinnon. I conclude the paper with a critical analysis of these radical feminist accounts and show how our human rights talk must distinguish between types of rape in war situations or risk silencing the individual victims.

Experiences of solidarity have figured prominently in the politics of the modern era, from the rallying cry of liberation theology for solidarity with the poor and oppressed, through feminist calls for sisterhood, to such political movements as Solidarity in Poland. Yet very little academic writing has focused on solidarity in conceptual rather than empirical terms. Sally Scholz takes on this critical task here. She lays the groundwork for a theory of political solidarity, asking what solidarity means and how it differs fundamentally from other social and political concepts like camaraderie, association, or community. Scholz distinguishes a variety of types and levels of solidarity by their social ontologies, moral relations, and corresponding obligations. Political solidarity, in contrast to social solidarity and civic solidarity, aims to bring about social change by uniting individuals in their response to particular situations of injustice, oppression, or tyranny. The book explores the moral relation of political solidarity in detail, with chapters on the nature of the solidary group, obligations within solidarity, the “paradox of the privileged,” the goals of solidarity movements, and the prospects for global solidarity.

This article examines the particular moral obligations of solidarity focusing on the solidary commitment against injustice or oppression. I argue that political solidarity entails three relationships—to other participants in action, to a cause or goal, and to those outside the unity of political solidarity. These relationships inform certain obligations. Activism is one of those obligations and I argue that violent activism is incompatible with the other relations and duties of solidarity. Activists may find themselves confronted with a difficult choice between respecting the relationships of political solidarity or employing physical violence in resistant self-defense against oppressive practices.

In this article I define civil disobedience and classify it into four forms based on motive and extent of dissent. I then present Thomas Aquinas's account for justified civil disobedience. After first determining how a law or system of laws is unjust, the duty (virtue) of obedience to just and unjust laws is discussed. Finally, I argue that of the four possible forms of civil disobedience, Aquinas's natural Law Theory only clearly allows the fourth, i.e., altruistic disobedience of an unjust system of rule, while at times also apparently allowing the third, i.e., altruistic disobedience of an unjust law

: We criticize a view of maternity that equates the natural with the genetic and biological and show how such a practice overdetermines the maternal body and the maternal experience for women who are mothers through adoption and ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies). As an alternative, we propose a new framework designed to rethink maternal bodies through the lens of feminist embodiment. Feminist embodied maternity, as we call it, stresses the particularity of experience through subjective embodiment. A feminist embodied maternity emphasizes the physical relations of the subjective lived-body rather than the genetic or biological connections. Instead of universalizing claims about the maternal body, embodied maternity looks to communicable experiences and empathetic understanding

Catholic Social Teaching of late has a lot more in common with feminist moral theory than might be evident at first glance. After a brief explanation of Catholic Social Teaching’s duty of solidarity, and a look at some of the feminist critiques of this solidarity, I point out some of the significant similarities between feminist ethics and the duty of solidarity. The last section focuses on community and care, the epistemological role of experience and the world view of the other, the centrality of self-determination, and the final goal of both the duty of solidarity and feminist ethics: liberation from oppression.

Recent decades have witnessed rape and sexual violence used on such a massive scale and often in a widespread and systematic program that the international community has had to recognize that rape and sexual violence are not just war crimes but might be crimes against humanity or even genocide. I suggest that just war theory, while limited in its applicability to mass rape, might nevertheless offer some framework for making the determination of when sexual violence and rape constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. In addition, just war theory can provide the normative justification individual soldiers need to resist orders and actions that demonstrate egregious moral breakdown as found in instances of mass rape and systematic use of sexual violence, and just war criteria demonstrate that the use of rape and sexual violence in war time can never be legitimated, especially in the case of prisoner interrogation.

Simone de Beauvoir offers one of the most interesting philosophical accounts of childhood, and, as numerous scholars have argued, it is one of the most important contributions that she made to existentialism. Beauvoir stressed the importance of childhood on one's ability to assume one's freedom. This radically changed how freedom was construed for existentialism. Rather than positing an adult subjectivity that tries to flee freedom through bad faith, Beauvoir's account forces a recognition of a situated freedom that itself is also developmentally achieved. In this article, I explore the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Beauvoir's discussion of childhood. By reading Beauvoir through Rousseau — who was one of her favorite authors — we see not just one but two accounts of childhood in Beauvoir's philosophical work. On the one hand is the idealistic childhood wherein the child is an apprentice to freedom. On the other is the constrained childhood whose product is apprenticed to the serious. I begin with a brief summary of Rousseau's Emile. Next, I offer some justification for reading Beauvoir alongside Rousseau before offering an account of Beauvoir's discussion of childhood. I end by exploring some of the implications of my reading for freedom

This article examines some of the conceptual history of collective political action within feminist movements beginning with sisterhood and moving to feminist political solidarity. I argue that feminist political solidarity is built on a commitment by individuals to form a unity in opposition to injustice or oppression. Three moral relations emerge from this understanding of feminist political solidarity: the relation to the cause, the relation among members of the solidary group, and the relation between the solidary group and the larger society. These relations evoke certain obligations and responsibilities which I present and defend. Feminist political solidarity is informed by the particularities of the cause and thus any theoretical account of the moral obligations is necessarily limited, but by looking at these three relations together with a sociological account of transnational feminist political solidarity drawn from Clare Weber’s sociological description of the Women’s Empowerment Project, a clearer picture of some of the moral requirements of a commitment to feminist political solidarity emerges.

This article seeks to shine some light on the teaching demonstration from the perspective of observers using three guiding attributes of effective teaching: connection, commitment, and coachability. Discussing what observers are looking for and how observers interpret what is seen, the article presents the basic forms, common myths, and practical wisdom for teaching demonstrations. By reframing the goals of the teaching demonstration, the article demystifies a key part of the campus interview for the academic job market.

Iris Marion Young took a strong stance against humanitarian intervention and other so-called legitimate instances of what she calls ‘official violence’. Nevertheless, she was also aware that there may be some situations for which military humanitarian intervention should at least be considered. Young was concerned that some states will use their obligation to defend against human rights violations as a mechanism in securing or maintaining global dominance. In addition, she recognized that what counts as a violation of human rights is not uncontroversial; human rights norms and conventions are interpreted, negotiated, and otherwise contested. In this article, I build on Young’s arguments for a social connection model of responsibility by applying it to a situation where a forceful response to violence might be justified. I juxtapose Young’s position with the emerging international standard called ‘the responsibility to protect’ in order to suggest an account of intervention for global governance relations.

This paper attends to the question of how to effectively teach ethics in universities. The author challenges the accepted skepticism amongst other disciplines that philosophers are no longer equipped to teach ethics courses to accommodate the moral demands of the contemporary world. Philosophers are believed to merely focus on abstract issues concerning moral attitudes and behavior. Currently, ethics courses in universities have replaced abstract moral issues of moral theory with concrete issues such as, homosexuality, the green house effect, pornography, and gender and race issues. This paper seeks to offer an alternative way to think about the abstractness of moral theories that focus on moral attitudes, which will alleviate concerns about their validity and application to concrete ethical concerns.

What is at stake when students sell the highly sought-after basketball tickets they receive for free through a university’s lottery system? This article discusses a case in applied ethics taken from the experience of college students and extrapolates from that to the distribution of other scarce resources using lotteries. By examining an event relevant to the actual experience of students, we challenge them to see how normative moral theory may be used and what values are central to moral decision-making. The case includes four analyses from different perspectives and a teaching note.

In Stephen Nathanson’s important new book, he offers and defends a definition of terrorism that relies on a conception of innocence that blends both moral innocence and status innocence. I argue that this understanding of innocence needs to be modified in two ways. First, status innocence ought to incorporate the notion of opposition. It is not just in becoming a soldier that one sacrifices status innocence; it is in the context of war or opposition. Second, I argue that moral innocence understood according to a liability-based notion of responsibility is insufficient. It does not address the various relational elements of responsibility. To remedy that gap, I suggest that we add a vulnerability-based notion of responsibility together with the liability-based model for a more complete account of moral innocence.

In Political Solidarity, I argue that political solidarity is a relation between humans against an injustice that is human in origin. I further argue that political solidarity requires a decision-making model that acknowledges differences in social and epistemological privilege while also seeking to understand the situation of oppression or injustice and acknowledging “multiple, overlapping, and at times contradictory knowledge claims.” However, because of unequal commitments to solidaristic aims and because of a variety of methods for enacting solidaristic commitments, I argue that political solidarity is not necessarily democratic in its decision-making.In this paper I ask whether these arguments stand up ..