Moral Defense Research Articles

At the Turning Point to Repression

The murder of Boris Nemtsov in February 2015 means that Russian activists know that they may be killed because their public activity is not to the liking of some powerful actor. As the Kremlin has increasingly painted Russia as a country at war, it has created an attitude of emergency state legitimacy in which criticism of the authorities has become a crime. The labeling of some NGOs as foreign agents is part of a continuing trend toward increasing restrictions on civil society. Defense of traditional values and morality has been part of this trend toward increasing repression, which may result in the loss of all protections for activism and free expression.

Deontological evidentialism, wide-scope, and privileged values

Deontological evidentialism (DE) is the claim that we ought to form and maintain our beliefs in accordance with our evidence. In this paper, I criticize two arguments in its defense. I begin by discussing Berit Broogard’s use of the distinction between narrow-scope and wide-scope requirements against W.K. Clifford’s moral defense of (DE). I then use this very distinction against a defense of (DE) inspired by Stephen Grimm’s more recent claims about the moral source of epistemic normativity. I use this distinction once again to argue that Hilary Kornblith’s criticism of Richard Feldman’s defense of (DE) is incomplete. Finally, I argue that Feldman’s defense is insensitive to the relation between normative requirements and privileged values: values that have normative authority over us.

Sweatshops: Economic Analysis and Exploitation as Unfairness

The economic and moral defense of sweatshops given by Powell and Zwolinski (J Bus Ethics 107:449–472, 2012) has been criticized in two recent papers. Coakley and Kates (J Bus Ethics 117:553–558, 2013) focus on putative weaknesses in the logic of Powell’s and Zwolinski’s argument. Preiss (Bus Ethics Quart 24(1):55–82, 2014) argues that, even granting the validity of their economic argument, Powell’s and Zwolinski’s defense is without force when viewed from a Kantian republican viewpoint. We are concerned that sweatshop critics have misinterpreted the economic literature and overstated the conclusions that follow from their ethical premises. We show that the best understanding of the current economic literature supports Powell’s and Zwolinski’s conclusions about the negative effects of sweatshop wage regulation, and that it is unreasonable to reject economic analysis in moral argument against sweatshops even from a Kantian perspective. Additionally, we defend the theory of exploitation as unfairness given by Wertheimer (Exploitation, 1996), and show how economic analysis can be applied to that theory to identify cases of sweatshop exploitation.

The moral defense of homosexuality: why every argument against gay rights fails

Preface 1. Introduction 2. What is Morality? 3. Moral Theory and Divine Command 4. Destiny or Choice? Biology, Sexual Orientation, and Responsibility 5. Homosexuality and Morality I: The Natural Law Argument 6. Homosexuality and Morality II: The Teleological Argument & Moral Intuitionistism 7. Debunking Psychological Explanations for Disapproval of Homosexuality 8. Homosexuality, Consequences, and Justice I: Slippery Slope Arguments 9. Homosexuality, Consequences, and Justice II: Alleged Bad Consequences of Gay Tolerant Public Policies 10. Arguments in Favor of Homosexuality and Gay Rights

Labor human rights and human dignity

The current legal and political practice of human rights invokes entitlements to freely chosen work, to decent working conditions, and to form and join labor unions. Despite the importance of these rights, they remain under-explored in the philosophical literature on human rights. This article offers a systematic and constructive discussion of them. First, it surveys the content and current relevance of the labor rights stated in the most important documents of the human rights practice. Second, it gives a moral defense of these rights arguing that their support involves an appropriate response to important human interests and to the human dignity of workers. Finally, it explores central normative issues about the relation between labor rights and human dignity. It responds to some objections about the importance of work, explains why labor human rights may not exhaust the demands of dignity regarding labor and arbitrates a common tension between independence and solidarity within our practical affirmation of human dignity.

A negociação da moralidade por meio da produção de justificativas na reconstrução da narrativa do abuso sexual de crianças e de adolescentes: um estudo situado

Esta pesquisa, ancorada nos preceitos teóricos da Etnometodologia (GARFINKEL, 1967) e da Análise da Conversa (SACKS, 1992) estuda qualitativamente interações entre um conselheiro tutelar e crianças e adolescentes vítimas de abuso sexual. O objetivo é observar como a experiência do abuso é significada e realinhada com as expectativas morais e sociais (BERGMANN, 1998). A análise das interações mostra que os adolescentes realizam um trabalho moral defensivo de forma mais ativa (DREW, 1988), enquanto as crianças se engajam menos neste tipo de atividade. Esse dado indica que os adolescentes possivelmente se orientam para o paradoxo da vitimização e da culpabilização das vítimas de abuso sexual (SANTOS, 2003), demonstrando maior socialização sobre como narrar histórias com implicações morais e sobre como performar a vítima "ideal" (TRINCH, 2013).

On Traumatic Narcissism: An Interview with Daniel Shaw

In this interview, Jan Niemira talks with Daniel Shaw, author of Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation. Together they discuss themes addressed in the book including the development of the relational constellation that Shaw terms “traumatic narcissism” and his extension of Fairbairn’s concept of the moral defense. Also explored are the ways in which authoritarianism and subjugation are endemic to traumatic narcissism and can be witnessed in parent–child relationships, psychoanalytic training settings, and popular culture.

The Ciceronian Case for Capitalism

Most contemporary moral defenses of capitalism rely on ideas drawn from the modern philosophic tradition that emerged in the 17th-18th centuries. Almost always, advocates of a free market society have either invoked the notion of a social contract, a theory of natural rights, the insistence that human beings ought to be treated as ends in themselves, the utilitarian logic famously championed by Jeremy Bentham, or, more recently, even the difference principle of John Rawls. Amid the post-modern currents of thought cascading through our culture, however, it is far from evident that modern philosophic foundations are sturdy enough to legitimize any politico-economic order. An alternative defense of capitalism not reliant upon modernist premises can be derived from Cicero, the 1st century BCE Roman orator, statesman, and author. Proceeding from a skepticism entailing a more cautious reliance upon reason than that bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment, Cicero emphasizes the importance of social co-operation to the satisfaction of human wants. On this basis, Cicero supports an economy grounded on the specialization of labour, trade, and most importantly, the protection of individual property rights. Cicero doubts that this mode of social co-operation can be assured by simply holding out the prospect of a more pleasurable and comfortable existence. Instead, it requires a moral context in which individuals treat justice -- understood to encompass the prohibition of violence, fraud and theft -- as an intrinsic good. The maintenance of social co-operation also requires that property rights be defended against state enforced redistribution. To prevent this from occurring, Cicero insists upon a mixed form of government combining monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements in such a way that the wealthier classes are able to check any legislation impinging on property. The Ciceronian case for capitalism both prioritizes social co-operation and limits democracy.

Image Repair Campaign Strategies Addressing Race: Paula Deen, Social Media, and Defiance

This multi-method study examines how the use of social media in a crisis campaign involving race-related issues may affect a public figure’s credibility and perceived response appropriateness. First, image repair theory is used to analyze Paula Deen’s image repair campaign in the wake of the National Enquirer’s revelation that she admitted to using the “N-word” during a lawsuit deposition. Our analysis shows her response strategies were unsuccessful because her apology did not center on the allegations, and she was contradictory in her bolstering, minimization, and mortification strategies. We build on the Deen case study results by exploring the effectiveness of tweeted message strategies in a race-related crisis via Twitter. We use a mixed-design experiment examining how public figure type (politician v. TV celebrity) and response strategy (moral defense, performance defense, defiance defense, no defense) affect perceptions of a female public figure’s credibility and perceptions of the appropriateness of the response. Results show that any of the three responses are better than no response when addressing charges of racial insensitivity. A defiance defense, as newly tested strategy, and moral defense worked better for the TV celebrity condition than the politician condition. Implications are discussed.

Journey from hero to villain and enjoying television antihero narrative

The author examines how the former binary opposition between heroes and villains neutralizes and transforms inside the television fiction. While heroic and villainous characters in the past used to be based on the contrast between the absolute Good and Evil, today, their definitions are in continual transformation. This paper also attempts to provide insights and redefine aspects of anti-heroism. Popular TV series subvert the idea of heroism, as well as the idea of morality which is present in classical genres, based on duality of the world, the struggle between Good and Evil, temptation, a pact with the devil, suffering etc which culminates in redemption, catharsis and salvation. For the antihero, there is no rescue. In the second part of this paper, the author comprehensively discusses the theories that have appeared since the second half of the 20th century which have addressed developing emotions towards media content and media characters defined as anti-heroic, primarily affective disposition theory which explains how a viewer refocuses moral positions of the protagonists, as well as moral defense mechanisms, developed for the purpose of pleasure.

A critique of Samuel Shearn's moral critique of theodicies

AbstractIn ‘Moral critique and defence of theodicy’ (2013) Samuel Shearn argues that ambitious theodicies trivialize horrendous suffering in an unacceptable way by reinterpreting evils in a way sufferers do not accept. Against Shearn, the authors of this article will argue that sufferer acceptance should not be used as a criterion for the moral acceptability of what theodicies say about horrendous evils. Also, since theodicy is done in the public square, Shearn does not find it relevant to distinguish between contexts in which it is morally improper to communicate theodicies and those in which it is not. We disagree, and present some arguments as to why making such distinctions is morally relevant. Furthermore Shearn argues that theodicy is self-defeating if it aims to comfort sufferers of horrendous evils. We will critically re-examine the examples used to support his conclusion, and suggest that theodicies do have a comforting function. Finally, Shearn describes the difference between theodicy and anti-theodicy as an aesthetic impasse, rather than a moral issue. Against this, we find good reasons to affirm its predominant moral character.

La difesa della donna ebrea: Sara Copio Sullam e Debora Ascarelli

Sara Copio Sullam and Debora Ascarelli, the best-known Jewish women poets of the age of the Italian ghetto, have often been studied with a focus on the distinctive features of their writing: the former as a translator of sacred texts, the latter as the author of original verses, sometimes written as a risposta per le rime (reply through rhymes) or in defence of her orthodoxy. They share, however, a common theme, which has often been neglected: the defence of the Jewish woman, which is overt in some of Copio’s sonnets and prose, whereas it has not yet been properly pointed out in some of Ascarelli’s verses. This paper aims at bringing this theme to the fore not only in Copio, through a rereading of some passages of her Manifesto, but also in Debora Ascarelli, through an analysis of her few original verses. These hendecasyllables certainly reflect the Petrarchan and classicistic atmosphere of the late 16th century in Rome, but they are far from the mainstream modes of women’s poetry of the age. They allow us, therefore, to highlight, besides the differences, the similarities between the two poetesses; their commitment, in the late 16th and early 17th century, to the intellectual and moral defence of the Jewish woman, in a context of general depreciation of women, but also in the background of the claim to the “nobility and excellence of women”.

In Defence of Morality: A Response to a Moral Error Theory

This paper responds to Richard Joyce’s argument for a moral error theory. Joyce claims that our moral discourse purports to speak of something objective in that it presupposes the existence of non-institutional, categorical reasons for action. Given this, he argues that a proper vindication of our moral discourse would be one carried out from a point of view that is objective inasmuch as it is external to the ‘institution of morality’. And since our moral discourse cannot be vindicated from that external point vantage point, it follows that that discourse is fundamentally flawed. My critique of Joyce’s argument goes to his appeal to an external point of view from which to assess the legitimacy of our moral discourse. I argue that our moral talk is intelligible only in the context of the understanding we inhabit as moral agents. Hence, the external vantage point that Joyce identifies is a point of view from which moral claims are deprived of the conditions in which they make sense. I therefore reject Joyce’s claim that our moral discourse is conceptually non-institutional: whilst morality is committed to categorical reasons, these reasons are ‘institutional’ insofar they are intelligible only from within the institution of morality.

A "Kantian" Shakespeare the Defense of Morality in Shestov's First Work

A "Kantian" Shakespeare the Defense of Morality in Shestov's First Work

Virtuous Meat Consumption: A Virtue Ethics Defense of an Omnivorous Way of Life

Virtuous Meat Consumption:A Virtue Ethics Defense of an Omnivorous Way of Life Beth K. Haile (bio) Contemporary Christian ethicists and moral theologians have not, for the most part, attempted a serious ethical defense of an omnivorous way of life. Those who take the question of eating meat seriously from both an ethical and theological perspective usually do so in order to either oppose eating meat as totally unethical or to defend a vegetarian way of life as more morally sound than an omnivorous way of life. Stephen Kaufman and Nathan Braun's book Good News for all Creation: Vegetarianism as Christian Stewardship argues that Christians should adopt a vegetarian way of life as not only an embodiment of the love and compassion of Jesus Christ, but also the ideal way of practicing Christian stewardship.1 In a similar approach Stephen Webb, co-founder of the Christian Vegetarian Association, argues in his book Good Eating that a vegetarian diet is a biblical ideal, advocating it "not as a prerequisite for Christian faith, but [as] a consequence of the Christian hope for a peaceable kingdom, where God will be all in all and all violence will come to an end."2 In The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory, Carol Adams argues that there is an underlying affinity between feminism and vegetarianism in that historically, women have [End Page 83] been treated as "pieces of meat" by men who objectify, commodify, and eventually consume them. According to Adams, the oppression of animals and the oppression of women are both byproducts of a patriarchal system that can be challenged by adopting a vegetarian lifestyle.3 In an article in America Magazine, Thomas Witherell writes about his own moral struggle with adopting a vegetarian life and concludes that on an ideal level, "both the Jewish and the Christian moral imaginations move towards vegetarianism and cosmic non-violence."4 Though he notes that vegetarianism is not an absolute moral requirement, he offers no moral defense of a meat-eating way of life besides the fallenness of the world, in which sometimes, humans need to kill in order to survive. Recently, John Berkman published an article in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture entitled "The Consumption of Animals in the Catholic Tradition." This article, rather than presenting a moral argument either for or against the consumption of meat, rather presents a survey of the complex history of Catholics on the topic, exploring the ascetical, medicinal, and eschatological reasons Catholics have chosen to abstain from flesh. Berkman concludes that Catholicism is a religion most certainly compatible with, if not encouraging of, vegetarianism.5 What does not exist in the literature, however, are any moral theologians offering a moral defense of eating meat, despite the fact that most do. The question of eating meat is an important issue for moral theologians to address, not just in order to defend a vegetarian way of life, but in order to defend an omnivorous one, especially in light of all the moral arguments against eating meat. Working within the Roman Catholic tradition, this paper will attempt to provide a moral defense of an omnivorous way of life by following the principles of virtue ethics. This tradition, as Romano Guardini writes, "seeks to do justice to the living majesty, nobility, and beauty of the good."6 [End Page 84] The Questionable Ethics of Eating Meat Many people realize the questionable ethics of eating meat when they learn about modern husbandry and slaughtering techniques.7 In 2008, 17,328,000 cattle, 4,590,314,000 chickens, and 57,542,000 hogs were slaughtered for food. The factory farm industry uses selective breeding and growth-promoting antibiotics to unnaturally and painfully produce animals ready for slaughter as quickly as possible. Most factory farms house their animals in small, overcrowded confinements, prohibiting the animals from engaging in their natural habits like foraging, nesting, roaming, and running. The slaughtering processes themselves are also quite atrocious, with practices like cutting the beaks off of chickens and the tails off of cows pre-slaughter commonly utilized. As slaughter lines run at rapid speeds, mistakes are recurrent, with many animals left suffering for...

O Estado de bem-estar em Hayek e Luhman

Social systems theory has been the target of critiques that identify a supposedly neoliberal political content in its premises: setting out from a stereotyped view of the concept of autopoiesis, according to which the functionally differentiated economy cannot be determined by politics, they infer a preference for the free market. The objective of this article is to compare the views of Hayek and Luhmann, taking as a guiding thread their different ideas concerning the welfare state. While the neoliberal critique automatically converts into a moral defence of the free market, systems theory allows (via structural couplings) a more fine-tuned discussion of the relations between politics and economics and a coherent diagnosis of the welfare state.

The politics of sexual morality and evangelical activism in Hong Kong

This paper aims to review the discourse of sexual morality as recently staged by Christian evangelical groups in Hong Kong and the effects of this new round of evangelical activism on the shaping of recent political culture in Hong Kong. Unlike the moral campaign against decriminalization of homosexuality in the 1980s, which eventually lost to the reasoning of British rule of law implicit in Hong Kong legislature, this new Christian movement for the defense of sexual morality in Hong Kong is situated at the juncture of political contestation between the local democratic movement and the pro-establishment political forces, including pro-Beijing businessmen, political organizations and personnel. With a high degree of ideological and strategic affinity with the Christian Right movement, which collaborates with conservative Republican groups in the United States, the evangelical campaigners of Hong Kong, whether consciously or not, have gained much political currency in collaborating with the pro-establishment forces of Hong Kong. As a result, sexual morality articulated in the name of the preservation of traditions, whether they are Christian or Chinese, has fed an autocratic political movement of Hong Kong that partakes the dangerously divisive politics of the fundamentalist religious movements around the globe.

Moral critique and defence of theodicy

AbstractIn this essay, moral anti-theodicy is characterized as opposition to the trivialization of suffering, defined as the reinterpretation of horrendous evils in a way the sufferer cannot accept. Ambitious theodicy (which claim goods emerge from specific evils) is deemed always to trivialize horrendous evils and, because there is no specific theoretical context, also harm sufferers. Moral anti-theodicy is susceptible to two main criticisms. First, it is over-demanding as a moral position. Second, anti-theodicist opposition to least ambitious theodicies, which portray God's decision to create as an ‘all-or-nothing’ scenario, requires a moral commitment to philosophical pessimism. Thus anti-theodicists should not be quick to take the moral high ground. However, this should not encourage theodicists, since theodicies may well be self-defeating in so far as they attempt to provide comfort.

The Politics of Isolation: Refused Relation as an Emerging Regime of Indigenous Biolegitimacy

AbstractThis essay describes the politics of voluntary isolation, an emerging category of indigeneity predicated on a form of human life that exists outside of history, the market, and wider networks of social connection. It traces a recent controversy around one such “isolated” population—Ayoreo-speaking people in the Paraguayan Gran Chaco—to suggest how these politics of isolation may represent a new regime of what Didier Fassin has called “biolegitimacy,” or the uneven political parsing and authorization of valid human life, within global formations of indigeneity. Here, I identify how international human rights law, multiculturalist state policies, humanitarian NGO programs, and genetic science all share an investment in the moral defense of isolated life. I explore how this investment may divide the kind of humanity authorized or claimed as “indigenous” into opposing legitimacies that are set against one another and vertically ranked. The essay argues that what is at stake in this process is not merely a new technique of the self or the enduring romance of the primitive, but the redistribution of the meaning and value assigned to those domains of human life imagined in opposition to social relation itself.

Failures of the ‘moral defence’ in the films Shutter Island, Inception and Memento: Narcissism or schizoid personality disorder?

Each of the films, Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010), Inception (Nolan, 2010) and Memento (Nolan, 2000), is influenced by psychoanalytic thinking. Each involves, to some degree or another, matters of...