bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Spooner
Authors: Layman Daniel
Published: July 2020

More than any other thinker, Lysander Spooner has a plausible claim to the title of founder of libertarianism. In his mature works, he developed the conception of Lockean rights that began to emerge in Hodgskin into a nearly anarcho-capitalist vision that would later reemerge in the philosophy of twentieth-century libertarians like Robert Nozick. But Spooner did not begin his scholarly life in quite this vein. In his early works, Spooner defends a version of liberal republicanism that has room for collective rights and is by no means anarchistic. As his career wore on, however, he began to argue that political morality is a kind of a priori natural science—or, perhaps, mathematics—of individual rights, complete and determinate in all its details and innately knowable by all who reflect on it. This conception of justice left little room for legitimate political legislation (since there is no facet of human life it does not govern on its own), let alone collective political rights. So, in the end, Spooner, more clearly than his philosophical forbear Hodgskin, developed a right-libertarian solution to Locke’s property problem. According to this solution, there is no positive common right to the world, so there is no tension between a natural common right to the world and natural private property rights.
George
Authors: Layman Daniel
Published: July 2020

Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, published in 1879, did for left-Lockeanism what Spooner’s contemporaneous mature work did for right-Lockeanism: It took up and developed a line of thought that an earlier author pioneered and, in the process, established a conceptual framework that would survive into the twentieth century. Like Bray, George attempts to solve Locke’s property problem by arguing that people are required to form and maintain political arrangements that protect our common positive right to share the world as equals. But unlike Bray, he does not lean heavily on a labor theory of value. He argues instead that traditional landownership subjects the landless to landowners’ arbitrary power, even when labor exchanges between the two parties leave everyone richer than they were before. In order to respect our common right to the world and the freedom from domination it mandates, governments need not, as Bray argues, seize the means of production and subject them to direct collective control. Rather, they need only require landholders to rent their land from the community at competitive market rates. Once governments pool these rents into a public fund, citizens can enjoy their natural common right within an otherwise competitive market economy. This blueprint would inspire the left-libertarian property theory that has recently emerged to challenge right-libertarianism around turn of the twenty-first century.
Toward a New Left-Lockeanism
Authors: Layman Daniel
Published: July 2020

The Lockean radicals developed two internally consistent resolutions to Locke’s property problem. But what should we draw from the radicals as we seek to address that problem today? The chapter argues that we should reject the right-wing solution offered by Hodgskin and Spooner in favor of a version of the left-wing solution crafted by Bray and George. It begins by showing why Lockeans reject the Hobbesian interpretation of natural rights, according to which everyone has a liberty to everything but a claim to nothing: If Hobbes were right, we would not enjoy equal high status, but rather equal susceptibility to one another’s arbitrary impositions. The reasons that count against the Hobbesian conception of natural rights, however, also count against a right-wing interpretation of Lockean natural rights. For if we are not common world-owners, we are liable to be subject to the arbitrary impositions of those who do come to own the world. But does this mean we should follow contemporary left-libertarians in interpreting our common right to the world as a right to own privately an equal division of the world? Or should we follow Bray and George in interpreting our common right as a right to share equally in governing and using the world as a permanently public resource? The chapter argues that the left-libertarian picture cannot accommodate an adequate conception of equality, and that we must develop a left-Lockean political economy on the assumption that the world is a permanently public common resource.
Revealing New Reality
Authors: Borum Chattoo Caty
Published: July 2020

The introduction chapter presents the lens of the book, providing the author’s unique vantage point as documentary producer, strategist, and scholar. It opens with a first-person narrative reflection from 2005, launching the book from her experience co-producing the advocacy documentary film, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, with Brave New Films, which premiered alongside a national grassroots mobilization campaign. This chapter provides foundational definitions of documentary and an original articulation of shared characteristics of social-issue documentary storytelling in the networked era: editorial independence, commitment to truth, civic motivation, and entertainment value. This introductory chapter locates documentary within the contemporary networked media era, the backdrop of community-based activism and public engagement that happens in concert with many nonfiction stories. It culminates with a roadmap overview of the book, chapter by chapter.
Evolving Documentaries and Social Change
Authors: Borum Chattoo Caty
Published: July 2020

Opening with Barbara Kopple’s groundbreaking 1976 film, Harlan County, U.S.A., this chapter provides historical highlights to reveal how shifting cultural backdrops provided the fertile ground for documentary filmmakers, philanthropists, and new organizations to shape the practices, forms, values, marketplace, and audiences for present-day documentary storytelling and the ecology of professionals who enable and produce them. The bedrock values and practices of the contemporary social-issue documentary tradition evolved through individual organizations and people who laid the groundwork during the analog age, spurred by tumultuous demands for equity and a climate of social consciousness. Chapter 2 provides historical highlights organized by four core themes: enabling infrastructure developed out of movement culture and tension, civic motivation in documentary practice, representation of diverse voices and experiences, and shifting media platforms and technology that have aided documentary’s marketplace expansion. As other chapters illustrate, these themes underlie present-day documentary practice and public engagement.
Humanizing the Headlines
Authors: Borum Chattoo Caty
Published: July 2020

Opening with the story of Private Violence, an intimate documentary about domestic abuse, this chapter launches the book’s series of documentary film case studies and analyses positioned within specific titled themes. Each theme (as a chapter) spotlights documentary stories to illustrate a continuum of social change. Chapter 5 focuses on “humanizing the headlines,” showcasing social-issue documentaries that reveal—through creative interpretation and intimacy—the depth and complexity of human stories beneath hot-button, politically polarized social issues. The film teams profiled here are rooted in community, and several also facilitated community engagement efforts designed to help publics and decision makers see the issues in new ways. The documentaries include 13th, an indictment of American racial injustice from historical underpinnings to the present day; Heroine(e), the story of lifesavers and community members working to bring their neighborhoods back from the destruction of opioid addiction; and Charm City, a behind-the-scenes portrait of Baltimore coming together as a community after historic unrest.
Shaping Laws
Authors: Borum Chattoo Caty
Published: July 2020

Opening with The Invisible War, a majordocumentary that engaged the public and policymakers in the United States, this chapter argues that contemporary documentaries play a unique role in public policy due to their narrative approaches—human-centered narratives that expand beyond facts and statistics and ideological sides—and the collaborative, cultural nature of the policymaking process. Documentary films can also expose social problems relegated to obscurity, or new on the cultural horizon—documentary’s monitorial function. This chapter delves into the complexities of documentary films that successfully shaped US laws through filmmakers working with legislators, policy experts, and issue advocates, forming “policy subnetworks.” The film case studies here include Sin by Silence, which changed California state law focused on incarcerated survivors of domestic violence; Semper Fi, the environmental justice story that sparked a new federal law; and Playground, an investigation of child sex trafficking in the United States that helped to shape federal and state-based laws.
Imagining the Future
Authors: Borum Chattoo Caty
Published: July 2020

Documentary finds itself at a curious cultural moment marked by paradoxical opportunity and challenge. On the one hand, the participatory media era has helped to democratize access for a broad swath of storytellers through evolving technology and platforms. The transformative media ecology has welcomed documentary audiences across an expanding list of media outlets and content distributors. Commercial networks are pouring money into nonfiction storytelling production, distribution, and promotion. As the future marches forward, structural conditions need focus and attention to ensure social-issue nonfiction storytelling progresses in a meaningful way, retaining characteristics of creative freedom, artistic innovation, and civic value. Within this context, particular themes are imperative to probe and advance: representation and diversity, the changing marketplace, and the central role of the professional nonfiction community equipped to uphold civic values and practices. These themes are critical to contemplating why documentary matters as an essential part of storytelling culture and democratic practice.
Horace's Odes
Authors: Tarrant Richard
Published: July 2020

Horace’s body of lyric poetry, the Odes, is one of the greatest achievements of Latin literature and a foundational text for the Western poetic tradition. These 103 exquisitely crafted poems speak in a distinctive voice—usually detached, often ironic, always humane—reflecting on the changing Roman world that Horace lived in and also on more universal themes of friendship, love, and mortality. This book introduces readers to the Odes by situating them in the context of Horace’s career as a poet and by defining their relationship to earlier literature, Greek and Roman. Several poems have been freshly translated by the author; others appear in versions by Horace’s best modern translators. A number of poems are analyzed in detail, illustrating Horace’s range of subject matter and his characteristic techniques of form and structure. A substantial final chapter traces the reception of the Odes from Horace’s own time to the present. Readers of this book will gain an appreciation for the artistry of one of the finest lyric poets of all time.
Before the Odes
Authors: Tarrant Richard
Published: July 2020

After sketching the contours of the Roman literary scene at the start of Horace’s career, this chapter focuses on the two bodies of poetry that Horace produced before turning to the lyric poetry represented by the Odes: satires in two books and iambic poetry (also known as the Epodes). It is suggested that Horace’s relationship to the poetic personality required by those genres—the critic of society in the Satires and the poet of invective in the Epodes—was an ambivalent one. Several passages of Satires 1.1 are analyzed, highlighting this ambivalence and also revealing the early development of the poet’s style.
Three Odes
Authors: Tarrant Richard
Published: July 2020

This chapter offers detailed readings of three odes as examples of how a Horatian ode can be analyzed; the poems discussed are Odes 1.11 (the “carpe diem” ode), 2.7, and 2.13—a sample that embraces the quintessential Horatian themes: friendship, politics, nature, love, death, and poetry. Among the issues considered are the way in which an ode implies the situation in which it is delivered, the relationship between the speaker and the addressee, and the particular persona that the poem creates for its speaker. Attention is also devoted to characteristic Horatian structural patterns and to Horace’s subtle modulations of tone.
After the Odes 2
Authors: Tarrant Richard
Published: July 2020

This chapter focuses on the three long literary epistles that are Horace’s last works, addressed, respectively, to Augustus, to Julius Florus, and to the members of the Piso family (which, following Quintilian, has come to be known, somewhat misleadingly, as the Ars Poetica). These verse letters are discussed with a view to showing that several of Horace’s general statements about poetry constitute an implicit commentary on his own lyric compositions, as regards the importance of craft, the value of the poet to Roman society, and the ability of the best poetry to be useful as well as pleasurable.
Remodeling the Adolescent Brain
Authors: Sisk Cheryl L. , Romeo Russell D.
Published: July 2020

Chapter 4 focuses on research based primarily on imaging studies of the human adolescent brain. It highlights the extent of changes that occur, as well as the protracted nature of these changes, which take place over the second and third decades of life. Major themes of this chapter include (a) spatial and temporal differences in the adolescent development of particular brain regions; (b) puberty (i.e., gonadal hormones influence some, but not all, aspects of adolescent brain development); and (c) the timing and rate of developmental changes are critically important. Research on adolescent changes in white matter and connectivity is reviewed. The chapter also addresses aspects of adolescent development that are typical versus atypical, as well as the limitations of imaging approaches to understanding adolescent brain development.
Puberty, Hormones, and the Social Brain
Authors: Sisk Cheryl L. , Romeo Russell D.
Published: July 2020

This chapter begins with some history of the field of behavioral neuroendocrinology and traces the origins of the classic organizational-activational hypothesis to explain sexual differentiation of the brain and behavior and hormonal influences on sex-typical social behaviors. The classic hypothesis posits that testicular hormones masculinize and defeminize neural circuits during a perinatal sensitive period, programming sex-typical activational responses to gonadal hormones in adulthood. Research since the mid- to late 1980s shows that a second wave of hormone-dependent organization of the brain and behavior occurs during puberty and adolescence and that ovarian hormones are actively involved in feminization of the brain during the adolescent period of organization. Next, a conceptual framework is presented for studying adolescent development of social cognition (the mental processes by which an individual encodes, interprets, and responds to sensory information from an animal of the same species) in the context of social reorientation, when during adolescence the source of social reward shifts from family to peers. The chapter reviews the literature on what social behaviors and aspects of social cognition are organized by pubertal hormones in males, as well as the nonsocial behaviors that are organized by pubertal hormones in males and females.
The Patrician and the New Man
Authors: Berry D. H.
Published: July 2020

This chapter provides the historical information necessary for the reader to understand the rest of the book. It compares the surviving character sketches of Catiline by Cicero and Sallust, and then compares the careers of Catiline and Cicero down to 59 BC. It describes the causes of the Catilinarian conspiracy. It includes a discussion (continued in Appendix 3) of two bowls inscribed with the names of Catiline and Cato that are in the possession of the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome. It also includes a discussion of three series of coins from 62 BC commemorating the defeat of Catiline.
Leaping the Mark
Authors: Holden Reid Brian
Published: July 2020

This chapter discusses how, almost from the moment he graduated, William T. Sherman came under pressure to think about leaving the Army. When asked why he did not resign, he gave a forthright answer in 1842: “Why should I? It is the profession for which my education alone fits me, and as all the appearances indicate the rapid approach of action when the soldier will be required to do his proper labor, when a splendid field will be spread before him, every reason exists why I should remain.” The “action” Sherman referred to was the Second Seminole War (1835–42) in Florida. Sherman’s posting to Fort Pierce threw him into his first taste of warfare. He very quickly grasped the nature of this war and the Seminole tactics that had defied the best military minds in America. In June of 1842, the Regiment found itself on the move again, posted to Fort Moultrie, Charleston, South Carolina. Sherman’s main duty consisted of appearing in court martials, as his grasp of military law impressed all. While clinging to the profession he liked best, he developed two attitudes that underwrote his army life. The first concerned party politics, while the second matter involved religion. Both these qualities would be needed by a successful attorney. Yet he remained an army officer and these studies became an important part of his continuing military education.
Unfortunate Civilian, 1853–1861
Authors: Holden Reid Brian
Published: July 2020

This chapter examines William T. Sherman’s experience as a banker in San Francisco, California. With his customary thoroughness, Sherman studied business practices carefully. He viewed the trust placed in him with an elevated sense of moral responsibility not widely shared by other San Francisco bankers. The system knew no regulation; laissez faire in its most extreme form prevailed. So, in the best military fashion, Sherman laid down a series of principles to determine his conduct. These reveal the workings of his mind and broader mental affinities. Sherman had really re-dedicated himself to the military code he had imbibed at West Point; rather than rejected it by entering the business world. However, a financial crisis put him off banking. Sherman entered into a law partnership with Tom Ewing Jr., and they opened an office in Leavenworth. He also ran a farm for Thomas Ewing Sr. that, he recalled, “passed the time but afforded little profit.” This phase of his career ended without success when he returned to Lancaster in July of 1859, oppressed by his inability to earn a living for his family. The chapter then looks at Sherman’s appointment as the superintendent and chair of engineering at the Louisiana State Seminary (later Louisiana State University). In Louisiana, he failed in his efforts to recreate a military life in an academic context.
Divisional Commander, January–July 1862
Authors: Holden Reid Brian
Published: July 2020

This chapter recounts how, in February of 1862, after a surfeit of disappointment and humiliation, William T. Sherman received the revivifying news that he would command a division. He threw himself into the task of bringing order, cohesion, and discipline to his division. His staff played an important role in his success, as it oversaw the commander’s orders, although some time would elapse before a cohesive team emerged. The chapter then describes the great Battle of Shiloh, which erupted on April 6. Sherman’s conduct at Shiloh earned much praise. He might appear quirky, even eccentric, nervous, and highly-strung in daily affairs, but under fire he became cool, calculating, forthright, and decisive. Indeed, Sherman’s determination to hold back the tide of the Confederate onslaught, tactical insight, overall appreciation of the battle, willingness to assume responsibility, and empathy with the problems of other divisional commanders made an enormous contribution to the Union success at Shiloh.
Corps Commander, July–December 1862
Authors: Holden Reid Brian
Published: July 2020

This chapter discusses the arrival on July 5, 1862, of orders for William T. Sherman to assume command of the Military District of Memphis, Tennessee—a job he preferred to any other. When Sherman took up the appointment, he embraced the conservative view of the war that upheld the importance of conciliating southerners. Unfortunately, the realities of fighting a great war kept breaking in and disturbing his repose. After four or five months, Sherman came to realize that the irreconcilable could not be reconciled. These months proved significant in laying the foundations for Sherman’s much harsher, increasingly punitive ideas about the conduct of the war. His sense of duty presented him with a personal dilemma. As he struggled to reconcile what he would have preferred to do with the way that the realities of the war were forcing him to act, three issues moved to the front of his mind: the conundrum posed by slavery, illicit trade with the rebels, and the increasingly audacious activities of guerrilla bands. The chapter then details the Battle of Chickasaw Bluffs.
From Corps Command to Army Command
Authors: Holden Reid Brian
Published: July 2020

This chapter examines William T. Sherman’s experience of being an army commander in 1863. Sherman had never formally been anything other than a corps commander, though a “wing” of the Army of the Tennessee had been temporarily entrusted to his care. He had gained experience at high command and he put this to good use. To Sherman, the triumph of Vicksburg, including all the successes notched up since Arkansas Post, represented “the first gleam of daylight in this war.” All of his biographers agree that it represents an important learning experience for this commander. But this experience must be set within the context of the disappointments of the First Vicksburg Campaign. They distorted Sherman’s judgment and account for the development of Sherman’s essentially cautious outlook, mainly a product of the great distances that need to be traversed in this theater.
Slogging on to Atlanta, July–September 1864
Authors: Holden Reid Brian
Published: July 2020

This chapter focuses on the Battle of Atlanta in 1864. Far from halting William T. Sherman’s progress, the Battle of Atlanta was in reality a series of tactical successes and in total an operational triumph. Sherman’s campaign demonstrated the value of an offensive strategy and operational plan combined with defensive tactics—notably in trench warfare. He had not set out to mount operations of this kind, but he had quickly grasped how such a combination aided his purpose. He exploited the tactical defensive so that he might take greater operational risks. What Sherman wanted to avoid were fruitless attacks on Atlanta’s defenses or being repulsed in the field; by this date, a setback of any order might not only endanger the integrity of his armies but would certainly seal the doom of the Lincoln administration. Ultimately, Sherman’s capture of the city was his single biggest success and illustrates the intersection of military and political events at this stage of the Civil War.
The Transition to Peacetime Soldiering, 1865–1869
Authors: Holden Reid Brian
Published: July 2020

This chapter highlights William T. Sherman’s return to Washington. The arrival of “the Vandal Sherman,” as he described himself, plus his troops loud in threats that his Washington critics would have them “to reckon with,” had led to significant developments even before his return. There had also been some wild talk, probably exaggerated in the re-telling, of overthrowing the government. Edwin M. Stanton, perhaps sensing a matter he could exploit to his disadvantage, ordered both Ulysses S. Grant and Sherman to testify before the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War on the issues surrounding the ill-fated Memorandum of Understanding reached between Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston. In retrospect, the Committee’s failure to embarrass Sherman serves to underline the complete failure of Congress at this date to make any mark on Reconstruction policy. The ensuing great battle over this issue in 1866–67 would emerge as the defining, momentous political contest of these years, and Sherman would be dragged unwittingly into its margins.
Retirement of a Kind, 1884–1891
Authors: Holden Reid Brian
Published: July 2020

This chapter looks at the efforts of the Republican Party to nominate William T. Sherman as its candidate for presidency in 1884. Sherman found many of these requests for him to run, especially from his old soldiers, tantamount to moral blackmail. They exploited ties of affection forged during the Civil War. Sherman rejected these efforts on two grounds. First, “that it would be the height of folly to allow any false ambition to allow the use of my name for any political office.” Second, that it was not for others to take a decision for him that would so disrupt his private life. Even before retiring, he realized that the years of achievement had passed. Sherman’s life had often been led amid controversy and tumult, and this did not ebb as death approached. Contrary to his wishes, his body lay in state at his home and received two grand funerals.
Inaugural Dissertation on the Impassivity of the Human Mind (1734) (Latin and English)
Authors: Menn Stephen , Smith Justin E. H.
Published: July 2020

This section presents, in Latin and English, the entirety of Anton Wilhelm Amo’s 1734 Inaugural Dissertation on the Impassivity of the Human Mind, as well as letters commending Amo by his teacher Martin Löscher and by the rector of the university, Johann Kraus. In this work Amo argues that the mind cannot be acted on, that sensation is a being-acted-on by the sensed object, and therefore that sensation does not belong to the mind, and must belong instead to the body. Amo tries to expose and resolve self-contradictions in earlier philosophers, including Descartes and Sennert, on whether it is the mind or the body that senses.
Introduction
Authors: Banchetti-Robino Marina Paola
Published: July 2020

The Introduction explains how the author came to write on the topic of Robert Boyle’s chemical philosophy, specifically emphasizing the relevance of Boyle’s philosophical contributions, particularly as they anticipate current debates in the philosophy of chemistry regarding emergence, reductionism, and the autonomy of chemistry and of chemical explanations. The Introduction discusses the main thesis of the book and gives a short description of each chapter, explaining both the main topic addressed by each chapter, how the chapter addresses the topic, and how the topic ties in to the main thesis of the book.
Conclusion
Authors: Banchetti-Robino Marina Paola
Published: July 2020

The conclusion recapitulates the thesis that has been defended in the book, reiterating the relevance of Boyle’s chemical philosophy for current debates in the philosophy of chemistry. The concluding remarks proceed to articulate the way in which Boyle’s emergentist conception of chemical qualities anticipates many of the positions currently taken by philosophers of chemistry, particularly with regard to the emergence and supervenience of chemical properties, epistemic and explanatory reductionism, and the autonomy of chemical explanations and of chemistry as a scientific discipline.
How Bees “Paint” Their Local Environments
Authors: Page Robert E.
Published: July 2020

Bees are able to exploit their environments temporally as well as geographically. The results are like brushstrokes on the landscape. The effects of foraging activities of honey bees can be seen by the distribution of flowers. Honey bees have evolved mechanisms to forage optimally both as individuals and as colonies, expending their energy and short lives to maximally provision their nest. Their communication system directs foragers to different floral patches at different times of day, reflected in the changing kaleidoscope of color on the legs of returning pollen foragers. Their pollination transforms the landscape in the spring into splashes of color resembling a painter’s pallet.
The Superorganism
Authors: Page Robert E.
Published: July 2020

Insect societies have been likened to superorganisms since the early 20th century because they are organized around defense, nutrition, and reproduction, like our own bodies. Like individual organisms, they undergo development and separate the germ line (eggs and sperm in our case) from the body cells, the soma. In social insects, the germ line is sequestered in the reproductive individuals, while the body cells are the non-reproductive workers. The superorganism was proposed by William Morton Wheeler as a real entity but instead was used primarily as a metaphor, a structure for hanging analogies with human organisms and societies. Throughout the 20th century there were many twists and turns in the definition and use of the superorganism concept and many questions regarding its usefulness.
How a Superorganism Evolves
Authors: Page Robert E.
Published: July 2020

Superorganisms are reverse-engineered by natural selection. The totality of the organizational structure of a colony, its colony-level phenotype, is exposed to natural selection. Those colonies with phenotypes that are best adapted to their environment survive best and reproduce the most reproductive offspring. The heritable features of those colony phenotypes increase in frequency in the next generation, and the population evolves a social organization. Natural selection doesn’t “see,” doesn’t act on, the individual components of organization, only the gross product. Therefore, the intricacies of the design, such as reduced fertility of workers, nest design and maintenance, and defensive behavior, are reverse-engineered. They evolve as a consequence of their effects on the whole colony.
The Song of the Queen
Authors: Page Robert E.
Published: July 2020

The mating flight of a honey bee queen is orchestrated by events that occur days before she actually flies from her nest in pursuit of a gathering of drones, 20 or so of which will get lucky and mate with her. Her mating song begins within the nest while she’s still held captive in her royal cell by her worker sisters, piping and tooting audible sounds to her rival queens and her captors. The song changes pitch and intensity after she’s released from captivity and seeks out and destroys her rivals. The orchestra is joined by the workers running through the nest buzzing their wings, exciting the colony and the new virgin, pushing her toward the entrance, where she takes flight. When she finds the congregation of drones, they join in with the buzzing of their wings and popping sounds of their genitalia as they find and mate with her. The queen returns to the nest, the heir of the nest and colony; and a new superorganism is born.
Introduction
Authors: Kekes John
Published: July 2020

This is an introductory account of the personal attitude that makes the humanistic conception of wisdom what it is. It briefly explains its pluralistic, evaluative, fallible, and personal components by contrasting them with the classical conception of wisdom that is absolutist, aims at an impersonal and universal ideal of The Good that is the same for everyone, always, everywhere, and claims that reason and morality require everyone to aim at it. It introduces and gives a brief account of three necessary components that jointly form human wisdom: basic assumptions, reflective understanding, and depth.
Two Assumptions
Authors: Kekes John
Published: July 2020

The account of human wisdom is developed further by giving reasons against the widely held assumption that wisdom is knowledge of the ideal of The Good that reason requires everyone, always, in all circumstances to aim at. The contrary assumption of human wisdom is that all goods are plural and context-dependent. Human nature is varied, and human aims are many, ambivalent, and varied depending on changing psychological and social circumstances. Human nature is not basically good or bad, but basically complicated and ambivalent. Human wisdom is needed to form a reasonable view of our context, guide how we want to live, and enable us to cope as well as we can with adverse circumstances that prevent us from living as we think we should.
Basic Assumptions
Authors: Kekes John
Published: July 2020

Basic assumptions are those we cannot help holding. Some of them are factual, such as that we have a body; other people exist; we need nutrition, rest, contact with others; we have and use language, and so forth. Others are evaluative, like health is better than sickness, happiness better than misery, appreciation better than humiliation, peace better than war, and so on. Such assumptions are about the fundamental conditions of our lives and presupposed by how we respond to the world. Some of them may be mistaken, but if many of them were mistaken, human life would be endangered. We can then test our beliefs, emotions, desires, and evaluations by asking whether they conform to basic assumptions. Part of human wisdom is to know which of the many assumptions we make are basic, which are not, and how to avoid confusing strongly held assumptions, especially evaluative ones, with basic ones.
The Human Right to Health and Access to Essential Medicines
Authors: Hassoun Nicole
Published: July 2020

Living with untreated AIDS is devastating. Patients often suffer from terrible lesions, pneumonia, and nausea; become emaciated; have seizures; and eventually die. The first chapter argues that there should be an enforceable legal human right to health that includes a right to access essential medicines to treat diseases like AIDS. The chapter does not provide a complete account of the right’s basis; the right may also have to protect our basic equality and dignity, for instance. Nevertheless, it argues that health is necessary for, and partly constitutive of, a minimally good life. Lack of access to essential medicines characteristically undermines individuals’ ability to live such lives. So people should have a human right to health that grounds rights to access essential medicines.
The Human Right to Health and the Virtue of Creative Resolve
Authors: Hassoun Nicole
Published: July 2020

Some maintain that people lack a human right to health because this right cannot provide guidance for distributing scarce resources. Even if the skeptics are right on this point, the second chapter suggests that is not a reason to reject the right; the role of the human right to health is to provide a kind of hope that can foster the virtue of creative resolve. This resolve is a fundamental commitment to finding creative solutions to what appear to be tragic dilemmas. Rather than helping one decide how to ration scarce resources, the human right to health provides reason to find ways to fulfill everyone’s claims. The hope this right provides gives us a response to apparent tragedy in motivating us to search for ways of avoiding it—rather than an account of distributive justice.
Promoting Global Health
Authors: Hassoun Nicole
Published: July 2020

The third chapter presents the book’s new proposal for addressing the access to medicines problem. It suggests that by collecting and analyzing data on global health, people can come up with new ways to improve poor people’s access to essential drugs and technologies. It suggests utilizing information about medicines’ global health impact (organized by drug, disease, country, and company) to create incentives for positive change. One possibility is to give pharmaceutical companies with the most impactful drugs a Global Health Impact label to use on all their products. Highly rated companies will have an incentive to use the label to get a larger share of the market. Further, socially responsible investment companies could include Global Health Impact companies in their portfolios. Finally, having a Global Health Impact certification system for pharmaceutical companies would open the door to all kinds of fruitful social activism. One possibility is a Global Health Impact licensing campaign. Pharmaceutical companies rely, to a large extent, on university research and development. So, if universities allow only certified companies to benefit from their technology, companies will have an incentive to abide by Global Health Impact standards.
Individual Responsibility for Promoting Global Health
Authors: Hassoun Nicole
Published: July 2020

If Global Health Impact labeling is successful, it will give companies a reason to produce drugs that will save millions of lives. One might wonder, however, whether consumers have any moral obligation to purchase goods from Global Health Impact–certified companies or whether purchasing these goods is even morally permissible. The fourth chapter suggests that, if the proposal is implemented, there is reason to purchase goods from Global Health Impact–certified companies. It defends something along the lines of this argument: (1) pharmaceutical companies violate rights and (2) do not do enough to address the access to medicines issue, so (3) if the Global Health Impact initiative helps rectify these problems, people should generally purchase goods from certified companies.
Consumption and Social Change
Authors: Hassoun Nicole
Published: July 2020

How should consumers think about their basic economic powers? The fifth chapter defends positive change consumption: under just institutions people should be free to consume as they like as long as they respect the institutions’ rules. In the absence of such institutions, there are significant moral constraints on consumption. Against recent critics, the fifth chapter argues that it is legitimate to aim at democratic change but that doing so is not always required. It argues that if democracy is too central, it can prevent truly positive change; but, at the same time, we must recognize the importance of democracy for bringing about such change.
Beyond Experimental Political Philosophy
Authors: Hassoun Nicole
Published: July 2020

The sixth chapter suggests that examining the prospects for a Global Health Impact labeling and certification campaign might expand the domain of traditional philosophical inquiry in an important way. It presents a proposal for testing consumers’ willingness to make decisions based on a Global Health Impact label. The basic idea is to put a Global Health Impact label on a few over-the-counter products and to collect data on changes in consumers’ willingness to purchase these products compared to otherwise similar generic versions of the products from sales. The chapter explains how carrying out this test might provide an example of a new kind of experimental philosophy. Although most experimental philosophy has focused on individuals’ intuitions and is modeled on the psychological literature, there is a lot of empirical work in other disciplines, and many useful methods are available for answering important questions experimental philosophers might want to address.
In Defense of Politicization of Human Rights
Authors: Domínguez-Redondo Elvira
Published: July 2020

International human rights mechanisms’ efficiency is normally linked to the work of independent experts keen to push the boundaries of accountability, against recalcitrant states determined to defend their sovereignty. As a corollary, progress in this field is associated with the creation and maintenance of political free spaces. Another common presumption, rather than fact, is a belief in a differentiated “North” versus “South” approach to the promotion and protection of human rights, that finds solid ground within the prevalent human rights discourses repeated by governmental and non-governmental actors. Through the lenses of the UN Special Procedures, In Defense of Politicization of Human Rights: The UN Special Procedures challenges these and other presumptions informing doctrinal studies, policies, and strategies to advance international human rights. In seeking to debunk commonly held views about the role of politics in human rights at the international level, this book constitutes the first comprehensive study of the Special Procedures as a system covering their history, methods of work, institutional status, and relationship with other politically driven organs and processes affecting their development. The perspective chosen to analyze the human rights mechanisms most vulnerable to political decisions determining their creation, renewal, and operationalization casts a new light on the extent to which these remain the cornerstone of global accountability in protecting the inherent dignity and worth of individuals as well as groups.
Creation, Institutionalization, and Development of Public and Confidential Special Procedures
Authors: Domínguez-Redondo Elvira
Published: July 2020

The history of how Special Procedures were first envisaged, considered, mooted, negotiated, and created impacted the evolution of the internationalization of human rights under the auspices of the UN Commission on Human Rights. The trajectory of these mechanisms provides key insights into both the overall direction and the conduct of politics concerning not only human rights but also development and issues concerned with peace and security at the United Nations. They correspondingly serve as a backdrop to many contemporary global concerns in how they are articulated, defended, and responded to by multilateral organizations. This chapter outlines the key events leading to the birth of the first public and confidential Special Procedures as a positive outcome of what was a highly politicized process. The first section explains the rationale underpinning the polar change of direction of the Commission on Human Rights, from a position where it initially denied its own competence to address human rights violations, to its decision to create subsidiary fact-finding bodies with exactly such purpose. The ad hoc nature of their establishment—from which their derive their denomination as “Special”—against political realities of the time led to a non-linear history that explains many of their current features.
Shuttling between Diplomacy and Expertise in Developing Methods of Work
Authors: Domínguez-Redondo Elvira
Published: July 2020

This chapter analyzes the influence of political factors in providing both freedom for diverse approaches to implementation of methods of work and explicit or implicit limits determining the operationalization of mandates. The chapter focuses on the challenges associated with the public nature of the activities of Special Procedures and the tendency of mandate holders to perform different roles, which may not be always compatible. Mandate holders have developed methods of work that have consolidated the Special Procedures as direct interlocutors with governments, intergovernmental, and non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders. Contemporary Special Procedures constitute a regular system of monitoring state behavior through the treatment of alleged cases of human rights violations under their competence; visits on the grounds; analytical studies of specific issues influencing the situation of human rights in a concerned territory or worldwide; and the generation of an enormous volume of data on recorded violations over time. They have shed light, clarified, and at times contributed to the applicable international and national legal frameworks. They have played an activist role beyond the realm of individual cases, using their expertise to mediate or intervene in legal and political disagreements within and outside formal mechanisms of dispute settlement. They raise awareness of, highlight, and promote best practices to improve the situation of human rights around the globe, as well as the circumstances that propitiate human rights violations, including their link with the development and security agenda.
Final Remarks
Authors: Domínguez-Redondo Elvira
Published: July 2020

This final chapter situates the analysis of the role of politics in the development of the Special Procedures within the heated debate over the future of the international human rights agenda as articulated by a growing number of scholars. It suggests that the alleged failures of international human rights may be a reflection of the rigidity of the Westphalian edifice in accommodating the struggles of individuals and communities beyond the human rights framework. Only human rights mechanisms have demonstrated enough flexibility, accompanied by political will, to open access for non-state actors to the transnational space. This accessibility has not been accompanied by an acknowledgment of the conceptual, normative, institutional, and practical problems inherent in the attempt to combine agendas that are not always compatible, as illustrated in the relationship between development, security, and human rights issues. This important gap is compounded by the myth this book seeks to discredit, namely, the presumption that politicization of human rights should be eliminated and that some groups of states are rigidly associated with preconceived political alignments.
Taming Sino-American Rivalry
Authors: Lebow Richard Ned , Zhang Feng
Published: July 2020

Competition between America and China has intensified since 2009, creating even greater risks of conflict. Why is this so, and what can be done about it? Feng Zhang and Ned Lebow identify the mistakes China and America made in their mutual relations and explain their causes and consequences. Drawing on international relations theory and historical lessons they develop a holistic approach to conflict management and resolution based on a sophisticated staging of deterrence, reassurance, and diplomacy. Minimal deterrence combined with multiple forms of reassurance and sustained diplomatic efforts to reduce or finesse key areas of conflict offer a promising pathway for America and China to enhance their security and buttress their self-esteem.
Thinking Differently about Conflict Management
Authors: Zhang Feng , Lebow Richard Ned
Published: July 2020

Competition between America and China has intensified since 2009. The authors contend that there are two underlying causes of conflict: Sino-American competition is more a clash of egos than of interests, and the faulty conceptions leaders and intellectuals in both countries use to understand one another’s motives and foreign policies ratchet up tensions. The authors challenge many of the principal strategies the two countries have pursued, not only the way in which they have been applied. Some of these strategies are based on superficial learning and false historical lessons. This chapter lays the foundation for an alternative set of conceptions that are more appropriate to Sino-American relations and whose application would make it possible for both nations to buttress their self-esteem in less confrontational ways.
Diplomacy
Authors: Zhang Feng , Lebow Richard Ned
Published: July 2020

Diplomacy is the third leg of a holistic strategy we propose for managing conflict between America and China. Some general conditions help to make it effective, although its specific operation is always context-dependent. Leadership commitment is often necessary for launching major diplomatic initiatives. Leadership commitment is often the result of internal or external incentives, reinforced by catalysts that highlight pressing challenges and the imperative of diplomacy. Effective diplomacy also requires sound strategic conceptions. A smooth decision-making process capable of coordinating disparate policy preferences and implementing supportive policies is also critical to effective diplomacy. Diplomacy has had major successes and regrettable failures in managing the Sino-American relationship in the past. Looking ahead, it faces both opportunities and constraints in managing competition between the two countries.