•  181
    Contemporary Environmental Aesthetics and the Neglect of the Sublime
    British Journal of Aesthetics 53 (2): 181-198. 2013.
    Discussion of sublime response to natural environments is largely absent from contemporary environmental aesthetics. This is due to the fact that the sublime seems inextricably linked to extravagant metaphysical ideas. In this paper, I seek to rehabilitate a conception of sublime response that is secular, metaphysically modest and compatible with the most influential theory of environmental aesthetics, Allen Carlson’s scientific cognitivism. First, I offer some grounds for seeing the environment…Read more
  •  119
    Schopenhauer’s Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
    Philosophy Compass 7 (1): 11-22. 2012.
    This essay focuses on Schopenhauer’s aesthetics and philosophy of art, areas of his philosophy which have attracted the most philosophical attention in recent years. After discussing the subjective and objective aspects of aesthetic experience on his account, I shall offer interpretations of Schopenhauer’s theory of the sublime and solution to the problem of tragedy. In addition, I shall touch upon the liveliest interpretive debates concerning his aesthetic theory: the intelligibility of the “Pl…Read more
  •  112
    A Two-Tiered Theory of the Sublime
    British Journal of Aesthetics 61 (2): 123-143. 2021.
    By the start of the twenty-first century, the notion of ‘the sublime’ had come to seem incoherent. In the last ten years or so considerable light has been shed by empirical psychologists on a related notion of ‘awe’, and a fruitful dialogue between aestheticians and empirical psychologists has ensued. It is the aim of this paper to synthesize these advances and to offer what I call a ‘two-tiered’ theory of the sublime that shows it to be a coherent aesthetic category. On this theory, sublime exp…Read more
  •  78
    The aim of this paper is to scrutinize a contemporary standoff in the American debate over the moral permissibility of human reproductive cloning in its prospective use as a eugenic enhancement technology. I shall argue that there is some significant and under-appreciated common ground between the defenders and opponents of human cloning. Champions of the moral and legal permissibility of cloning support the technology based on the right to procreative liberty provided it were to become as safe …Read more
  •  77
    The Problem with the Problem of Tragedy: Schopenhauer's Solution Revisited
    British Journal of Aesthetics 52 (1): 17-32. 2012.
    If one holds that an engagement with tragedy is to some extent pleasurable, then one ought to recognize two distinct problems of tragedy. First, given the grim subject matter, what is the source of the pleasure in engaging with works of this genre? Second, is there some sort of affective irrationality involved in the experience? In this paper I reconsider Schopenhauer's theory of tragedy and offer a fuller reconstruction of his complex solution to these problems than has hitherto been given by c…Read more
  •  77
    Did Schopenhauer neglect the 'neglected alternative' objection?
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 93 (3): 321-348. 2011.
    For well over a hundred years, commentators have examined the importance of the famous ‘neglected alternative’ (NA) objection to transcendental idealism. By contrast, very little attention has been paid to what the NA objection means for a later philosophical system of the 19th century that was highly indebted to Kant, namely, that of Arthur Schopenhauer. I seek to redress this lacuna in Schopenhauer scholarship and argue first that Schopenhauer acknowledged NA ( avant la lettre ) and took it se…Read more
  •  76
    Schopenhauer's Transformation of the Kantian Sublime
    Kantian Review 17 (3): 479-511. 2012.
    Schopenhauer singles out Kant's theory of the sublime for high praise, calling it ‘by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement’, yet, in his main discussion of the sublime, he ridicules Kant's explanation as being in the grip of scholastic metaphysics. My first aim in this paper is to sort out Schopenhauer's apparently conflicted appraisal of Kant's theory of the sublime. Next, based on hisNachlaß,close readings of published texts and especially of his account of the e…Read more
  •  69
    Bioethics at the movies (edited book)
    Johns Hopkins University Press. 2009.
    Bioethics at the Movies explores the ways in which popular films engage basic bioethical concepts and concerns. Twenty philosophically grounded essays use cinematic tools such as character and plot development, scene-setting, and narrative-framing to demonstrate a range of principles and topics in contemporary medical ethics. The first section plumbs popular and bioethical thought on birth, abortion, genetic selection, and personhood through several films, including The Cider House Rules, Citize…Read more
  •  61
  •  60
    The Human Being in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
    Journal of Philosophical Research 30 (9999): 119-133. 2005.
  •  53
    What Is the Monumental?
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79 (2): 145-160. 2021.
    The aesthetic category of the sublime has been theorized (especially in the Kantian tradition) as integrally intertwined with the moral. Paradigmatic experiences of the sublime, such as gazing up at the starry night sky, or out at a storm-whipped sea, lead in a moral or religious direction depending on the cognitive stock brought to the experience, since they typically involve a feeling of awe and reflection on the peculiar situation of the human being in nature. The monumental is a similar aest…Read more
  •  50
    The bleakness of Schopenhauer’s notoriously pessimistic take on the human condition is mitigated to some extent by his recognition of the possibilities of aesthetic experience and of denial of the will-to-live. However, as Schopenhauer himself acknowledges, his account of the latter appears inconsistent with his determinism, and we argue that this is no less the case with regard to his account of the former. After outlining what we take to be the basis and extent of Schopenhauer’s deterministic …Read more
  •  35
    Contemporary Cinematic Tragedy and the 'Silver-Lining' Genre
    with Steven Wagschal
    British Journal of Aesthetics 54 (2): 161-174. 2014.
    Although much recent work in Anglo-American aesthetics on tragedy has focused exclusively on the ‘problems’ of tragic pleasure, in the long tradition of reflection on tragedy philosophers have focused more on tragedy as a genre of particular moral and political-philosophical significance. In this paper, we investigate the tragedy of our day in light of these latter concerns in order to determine what works of this genre reveal about the sense of the terrible necessities or near-necessities with …Read more
  •  33
    Was Schopenhauer a Kantian Ethicist?
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 28 (2): 168-187. 2020.
    ABSTRACTCommentators have generally seen the compassionate person as a second-rate character vis-à-vis the ascetic ‘saint’ who denies the will-to-life and resigns from willing altogether in Schopen...
  •  33
    Introduction to “The Good, the Beautiful, the Green: Environmentalism and Aesthetics”
    with Levi Tenen
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76 (4): 391-397. 2018.
    In most circles today, it is taken to be an uncontroversial fact that human beings are having an impact on Earth's climate, and one that is exceedingly worrisom.
  •  31
    Schopenhauer and the Trendelenburg Objection
    In Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca & Margit Ruffing (eds.), Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 615-626. 2013.
  •  28
    Participation in biomedical research is an imperfect moral duty: a response to John Harris
    with K. D. Pimple
    Journal of Medical Ethics 33 (7): 414-417. 2007.
    In his paper “Scientific research is a moral duty”, John Harris argues that individuals have a moral duty to participate in biomedical research by volunteering as research subjects. He supports his claim with reference to what he calls the principle of beneficence as embodied in the “rule of rescue” , and the principle of fairness embodied in the prohibition on “free riding” . His view that biomedical research is an important social good is agreed upon, but it is argued that Harris succeeds only…Read more
  •  28
    (No abstract is available for this citation)
  •  27
    Lifting the Genetic Veil of Ignorance
    In Bioethics at the Movies, Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 87. 2009.
  •  26
    Danto as Educator
    Philosophy Today 61 (2). 2017.
    This essay offers a discussion of how Arthur Danto educated me philosophically both through his personal example and through his work. Along the way, I detail what I take to be his most important lesson: to engage deeply and seriously with the subject of one’s philosophy, in his case predominantly art, and thus always to retain contact with the world outside of philosophy. Danto modeled a truly engaged philosopher of art, attending to history, actual practices and contemporary currents, without …Read more
  •  25
    This book articulates and defends an interpretation of Schopenhauer's ethics as an original and credible contribution to the history of ethics. It presents Schopenhauer's ethics of compassion in direct tension with his resignationism and aims to show surprising continuities with Kant's ethics.
  •  22
    Call for Papers The Good, the Beautiful, the Green: Environmentalism and Aesthetics
    with Levi Tenen
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (2): 113-113. 2017.
  •  21
    Children's rights and children's health
    Journal of Social Philosophy 39 (4): 583-605. 2008.
    No Abstract
  •  15
    Compassió o renúncia? «Aquesta» és la qüestió de l’ètica de Schopenhauer
    with Tristan Ferrell
    Enrahonar: Quaderns de Filosofía 55 51-69. 2015.
    https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar/article/view/v55-shapshay-ferrell.
  •  14
    False images: Reframing the end‐of‐life portrayal of disability in the film Million Dollar Baby
    with Zana Marie Lutfiyya, K. Schwartz, and N. Hansen
    Bioethics Through Film. forthcoming.
  •  12
    For the past several decades, popular culture, especially feature films and television, has been utilized with increasing frequency in bioethics teaching and reflection. This seems quite fitting, for, in the words of cultural historian and film critic Leo Braudy, even more than standard newspaper articles and other analytical texts, popular culture constitutes a “sounding board or lightning rod for deep-rooted audience concerns” Refiguring American film genres. University of California Press, Be…Read more
  •  12
    Zoltán Somhegyi’s Reviewing the Past: The Presence of Ruins takes the reader on a captivating journey through the phenomenon of ruins. It is a remarkable achievement that, I believe, only someone like Somhegyi--a philosophical aesthetician as well as an art historian, and one who has studied ruins on a global scale--could pull off so brilliantly.What I focus on in this essay, however, is on the side of ruins that I believe gets shorter shrift in this book, namely, the environmental side. First, …Read more
  •  12
    Danto as Educator
    Philosophy Today 61 (2): 339-349. 2017.
    This essay offers a discussion of how Arthur Danto educated me philosophically both through his personal example and through his work. Along the way, I detail what I take to be his most important lesson: to engage deeply and seriously with the subject of one’s philosophy, in his case predominantly art, and thus always to retain contact with the world outside of philosophy. Danto modeled a truly engaged philosopher of art, attending to history, actual practices and contemporary currents, without …Read more
  •  12
    Kant, Celmins and Art after the End of Art
    Con-Textos Kantianos 1 (12): 209-225. 2020.
    One typically thinks of the relevance of Kant’s aesthetic theory to Western art in terms of Modernism, thanks in large part to the work of eminent critic and art historian Clement Greenberg. Yet, thinking of Kant’s legacy for contemporary art as inhering exclusively in “Kantian formalism” obscures a great deal of Kant’s aesthetic theory. In his last book, Arthur Danto suggested just this point, urging us to enlarge our appreciation of Kant’s aesthetic theory and its relevance to contemporary art…Read more