I See Not Only a Madonna,but Also a Hole,in the Picture

According to an intuitive claim, in saying that one sees a picture's subject, i.e., what a picture presents, in the picture's vehicle, i.e., the picture's physical basis, by ‘in’ one does not mean the spatial relation of being in, as holding between such items in the real space. For the picture's subject is knowingly not in the real space where one veridically sees the picture's vehicle. Some theories of pictorial experience have actually agreed with this intuition by claiming that the picture's subject lies in a pictorial space of its own, disconnected from the real space that includes the picture's vehicle. Yet, not only linguistic evidence suggests that when used as above, ‘in’ means precisely that very relation, but an appropriate theory of pictorial experience can justify the above claim.     

The moral development in Stoic oikeiôsis and Wang Yang-ming’s ‘wan wu yi ti’

The Neo-Confucian notion of wan wu yi ti 万物一体 (‘form one body’) and Stoic oikeiôsis (‘appropriation’) both come up with a motivational basis for the expansion of concern, but one of the toughest problems in them is how to elaborate on selfhood and self–other relation in moral development. This paper takes a comparative view of Hierocles’ fragments and a few other relevant Stoic texts and Wang Yang-ming’s Inquiry on the Great Learning, and argues that doing so helps eliminate some confusions concerning selfhood and self–other relation. My claim is that the concept of the Stoic oikeiôsis and the concept of Wang’s ‘wan wu yi ti’ have different ideas on selfhood and the self–other relation while showing similarities in basing the ideal of self-development on the original unity between self and world.     

Respecting Autonomy Through the Use of Force: the Case of Civil Disobedience

Acts of civil disobedience, which imply the open violation of a legal directive, often result in the forceful imposition of a choice upon others (e.g. blockades). This is sometimes justifiable, within a democracy, in cases of ‘democratic deficit’, namely, when fundamental rights of an oppressed minority are at stake. In this article, I claim that the use of physical force, in a democracy, may also be justified by the rights of (at least some of) the very people upon whom force is applied. Focusing on the nature of civil disobedience as a ‘form of address’, I argue: (1) using physical force to address others in the democratic arena does not entail infringing upon their status as autonomous agents; (2) using physical force to address others in the democratic arena may contribute to the fulfilment of a positive duty to promote the autonomy of (at least some of) those very people upon whom force is applied. This is not a defence of paternalism: I claim that using force against others, in the democratic arena, may be constitutive of a behaviour that treats others with the respect due to their status as autonomous agents.     

The provisionality of property rights in Kant’s Doctrine of Right

I criticize two ways of interpreting Kant’s claim that property rights are merely ‘provisional’ in the state of nature. Weak provisionality holds that in the state of nature agents can make rightful claims to property. What is lacking is the institutional context necessary to render their claims secure. By contrast, strong provisionality holds that making property claims in the state of nature wrongs others. I argue for a third view, anticipatory provisionality, according to which state of nature property claims do not wrong others, but anticipate a condition in which the authority to make such claims can no longer be unilaterally determined.     

Giving Up the Goods: Rethinking the Human Right to Subsistence,Institutional Justice,and Imperfect Duties

Either a person's claim to subsistence goods is held against institutions equipped to distribute social benefits and burdens fairly or it is made regardless of such a social scheme. If the former, then one's claim is not best understood as based on principles setting out a subsistence goods entitlement, but rather on principles of equitable social distribution — a fair share. If, however, the claim is not against a given social scheme, no plausible principle exists defining what counts as a reasonable burden for any of the available agents to secure subsistence. No justifiable principle exists implying generalised perfect duties any agent could clearly follow or clearly breach that secure subsistence conditions for others. At best we can justify rescue duties under very specific conditions, or general but imperfect duties to improve arrangements. Neither of these obviously correlates with human rights standards. Attempts in the literature to overcome the dilemma by claiming basic rights can correlate with imperfect duties or can generate duties to work towards institutions that ‘perfect’ our imperfect duties, are faulty. I then show how the dilemma can be avoided by accounts of human rights focusing on minimum respectful treatment rather than goods or interests.     

Rethinking Accountability in the Context of Human Rights

Within liberal democratic theory, ‘democratic accountability’ denotes an aggregative method for linking political decisions to citizens’ preferences through representative institutions. Could such a notion be transferred to the global context of human rights? Various obstacles seem to block such a transfer: there are no ‘world citizens’ as such; many people in need of human rights are not citizens of constitutional democratic states; and the aggregative methods that are supposed to sustain the link are often used in favour of nation-state strategic action rather than human rights. So what could accountability mean in relation to human rights? This article argues that discourse theory offers resources for approaching these problems and for rethinking a normative notion of accountability in relation to human rights. It is suggested that accountability should link political decisions to universal agreements through global rights institutions and that the link should be sustained by deliberative rather than aggregative procedures.     

The Normative Legitimacy Gap: International Sports Associations,Human Rights and Stakeholder Democracy

ABSTRACT

This conceptual paper explores whether the normative legitimacy of International Sports Associations (ISAs) such as Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) requires an active promotion of human rights conventions. The contention is that ISAs, which are founded on principles of neutrality and autonomy, can no longer rely merely on their internal stakeholders to make legitimate decisions when it comes to episodes where sport and human rights clash. Two situations where this claim applies are the FIA’s funding of Syrian motorsport activities and the FIFA’s involvement in the Israel/Palestine conflict, which have created considerable debate outside the ISAs. These examples are therefore used as basis for a discussion of the ISAs’ philosophical stance on human rights as much as their legal duties as non-governmental organizations.     

Kant on Acting from Juridical Duty

ABSTRACT

A much debated passage in the Metaphysics of Morals often leads commentators to believe that it is not possible to act from juridical duty. On the one hand, Kant says that all lawgiving includes an incentive ‘which connects a ground to determining choice to this action subjectively with the representation of the law’ (MM: 218). On the other hand, he claims that juridical lawgiving ‘does not include the incentive of duty in the law’ (MM: 219). The first claim seems to entail that agents can perform a juridical duty for the sake of that duty; the second seems to entail that agents cannot perform a juridical duty for the sake of that duty. This paper shows that it is possible to reconcile both passages and to claim that one can act from juridical duty in Kant’s terms. First, it gives an account of what can be called the paradox of juridical duties. Second, it discusses briefly how responses to the paradox remain somewhat unsatisfactory. Finally, it clarifies how agents can act with no other incentive but the actual juridical duty without endangering the Kantian morality-law divide.     

A common whore and her relations

This paper engages in a critical discussion of Wouter Hanegraaff's book Western Esotericism and the Academy (2012), acknowledging its importance but also focusing on some points that appear problematic. Particular attention is given to the concept of ‘Platonic Orientalism,’ the concept of ‘form of thought,’ and the theoretical basis for a satisfactory etic definition of ‘Western esotericism.’ Hanegraaff claims that his book offers a solid argument for understanding Western esotericism ‘ultimately’ as a ‘historiographical concept,’ rather than as a ‘form of thought.’ This claim is questioned in the paper.     

Mourning the dead,mourning the disappeared: The enigma of the absent–presence

Freud's interest in the impact of death on the living goes back further than Mourning and Melancholia (1917e, [1915]). In Totem and Taboo (1912–13) Freud noted the ambivalence of the emotions we experience in relation to the dead. In this paper, I focus on Mourning and Melancholia as a landmark in the understanding of both the normal and psychopathological aspects of mourning and depressive processes in human beings. Mourning and Melancholia bridges Freud's first and second topographic theories of the psychic apparatus and constitutes for many authors the foundation of his theory of internal object relations. With this psychoanalytic understanding of mourning as a framework, I discuss ‘special mourning processes,’ such as the those confronted by psychoanalysts in Argentina when treating the relatives of thousands of people who were ‘disappeared’ by the military dictatorship in the 1970s; they are ‘special’ in the sense that the external reality [which] constitutes the starting point of the psychic mourning process, as described by Freud, is absent. I argue that the ‘absent–presence’ of the body as an enigmatic message initiates a special mourning process that bears certain characteristics of, and is isomorphic to, Laplanche's seduction theory.     

On the Connection between Normative Reasons and the Possibility of Acting for those Reasons

According to Bernard Williams, if it is true that A has a normative reason to Φ then it must be possible that A should Φ for that reason. This claim is important both because it restricts the range of reasons which agents can have and because it has been used as a premise in an argument for so-called ‘internalist’ theories of reasons. In this paper I rebut an apparent counterexamples to Williams’ claim: Schroeder’s (2007) example of Nate. I argue that this counterexample fails since it underestimates the range of cases where agents can act for their normative reasons. Moreover, I argue that a key motivation behind Williams’ claim is compatible with this ‘expansive’ account of what it is to act for a normative reason.     

Paralympics and the Fabrication of ‘Freak Shows’: On Aesthetics and Abjection in Sport

Two years before the opening of the Paralympic Games in London in 2012, the British TV network Channel 4 launched a campaign called Freaks of Nature. As part of the campaign they produced the short film Meet the Superhumans by director Tom Tagholm. The film became an immediate success, but was also criticised for portraying the Paralympians as ‘freaks’ and for reducing the Paralympics to a ‘freak show’. But was it wrong to describe the Paralympics as a ‘freak show’? Is there even a point of using the term ‘freak show’ in relation to sports? There might be, and that is what I am discussing in this paper. To be more specific, I am proposing that the term ‘freak show’ can challenge and destabilise common aesthetic views in sport, simply by the adding of abject dimensions to the athletic performances. From this one can claim that the Paralympics reconnects to the freak show-tradition of the past. And that, in itself, can have a moral and political impact.     

The Lazy Person's Approach to Depiction

It has been argued (for example, by Nelson Goodman and John Hyman) that ‘depicts’ and similar terms such as ‘is a picture of’ and ‘represents’ are semantically ambiguous: sometimes they are two‐place predicates expressing a relation, and sometimes they are not. This article takes issue with this claim and develops an alternative theory according to which the ambiguity in question is pragmatic rather than semantic.     

VIOLENCE,MEMORY, AND THE DYNAMICS OF TRANSNATIONAL YOUTH FORMATIONS

This editorial introduces and contextualizes five scholarly papers on ‘Violence, Memory, and the Dynamics of Transnational Youth Formations.’ The topic of this special issue is conceptually organized around theories of postcolonial and diasporic citizenship and probes the extent to which these theories have shaped the discursive field of ‘youth formations’. We outline how an emerging scholarly field on youth cultures, youth activism and youth political organizations has responded to the new challenges of globalization and transnational mobilization. As experiences and memories of violence give shape to these mobilizations as well as the social imaginations characterizing youth movements, this special issue takes an interest in drawing connections between different youth formations. In establishing such a comparative lens, we contribute to ongoing discussions in Sikh Studies on youth issues in relation to violence, discrimination and transnational mobilization.     

Logic,Rules and Intention: The Principal Aim Argument

Stephen Mumford develops his view of sport spectatorship partly through a rejection of an argument he attributes to Best, which distinguishes between two categories of sports, the ‘purposive’ and the ‘aesthetic’, on the basis of the claim that they have different principal aims. This paper considers the principal aim argument and one feature of Mumford’s rejection of that argument, namely, Best’s observation that the distinctions to which he draws attention are based on logical differences. The paper argues that Mumford misconstrues Best’s argument by taking it to be about the intentions of players and athletes, while it is actually about a specific feature of the rules of each sport.     

The Facts and Practices of Moral Responsibility

Strawsonians about moral responsibility often claim that our practices of holding morally responsible fix the facts of moral responsibility, rather than the other way round. Many have argued that such ‘reversal’ claims have an unwelcome consequence: If our practices of holding morally responsible fix the facts of moral responsibility, does this not imply, absurdly, that if we held severely mentally ill people responsible, they would be responsible? We provide a new Strawsonian answer to this question, and we explore the relation between reversal claims and (in)compatibilism.