Gendered practico-inert-objects: A defense of the vandalism of public restroom facilities

Within the present paper I aim to add to the discussion of how women are still by and large suffering from ideological oppression despite substantial progress in conceptually re-engineering notions of gender. I will be utilising both the work of Iris Marion Young in relation to Sartre’s practico-inert realities, coupled with Haslanger’s hierarchically defined gender analysis to argue the built environment, and more specifically, public restroom facilities, act as a practico-inert that persistently constrains aspects of action by perpetuating oppressive past-praxis and ideologies of gender. Due to the placement of baby-change apparatuses I will claim these facilities bear some responsibility for the current subordination of women, and ought to be disrupted, via political vandalism in order to offer a counter-speech to the problematic and normative embedded ideology in such material spaces.

A comment before I continue. The reader may be questioning why it is that I have committed to a blended approach of both Haslanger and Young in order to substantiate my claims. Whilst for Haslanger it is the gendered body (when bodily features are ideologically, and for the most part, essentially, associated with ‘biological roles’) that acts symbolically to distribute ‘appropriate’ hierarchical treatment[1], for Young, in conceiving ‘women’ as a serialised collective, the activity of ‘gendering’ reality, and material objects, does not start and finish with the physical body. It entails also, the embedding of past gender ideologies in other material ‘things.’ Borrowing from the work of John Paul Sartre and the notion of the practico-inert, Young is able to bridge the divide between our ideological and material worlds, and how oppression can traverse this intersection.

For the present paper, I utilise the practico-inert to refer to all activities and material structures (practico-) that in being inherited from past praxis (-inert) have the effect of limitation or nullification on current (potentially, differing) action or ideology.[2] As a consequence, along the dimension of gender, the social construction of woman(ness) is not merely via the ‘marked body;’ Haslanger’s “observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction,”[3] (which for Young, is just one practico-inert object) but is also via the relationship to the ‘already-there’ objects (and practices thereof) in our material structure of existence. Now, what this suggests (prima facie) is that even if we engage on a project of conceptually re-engineering unjust gender constructs, oppressive gendered realities may persist in our material lives via other objects. And indeed, they do; despite progressions in more equitable ways of thinking, ideology at an embedded and institutional level is maintaining material injustices for many individuals. I believe the following project may offer some insight into how individuals can push against systemic ideology, state-sponsored speech, and problematic constructs of gender.

How is it that the practico-inert realities, that structure gender, maintain women’s subordination?

(i) The practico-inert object for the most part is ideologically and practically related to a female’s biological role in reproduction

Within folk discussion on whether public restroom facilities are problematically gendered practico-inert objects, in that they maintain women’s subordination, often the debate is centred upon the exclusion problem in relation to the gender divide of facilities. Yet, I believe such actually masks the argument that current design is oppressive also to cisgendered women. In noting that transgendered and intersexed individuals would benefit from cisgendered allyship for their own liberatory projects, my discussion hopes to display how current practico-inert-objects are oppressive to all.[4]

And by no means is this self-evident. For the divide of gender in toilet facility design in itself does not necessarily suggest anything about a “female’s biological role in reproduction.”[5] What I do believe does indicate this, however, is in the placement of baby-change apparatus[6], of which are located solely within female toilets. Unfortunately, this is not only the case within Australia currently, but is also the default conditions of facilities within the majority of Westernised cultures.[7] Historically however, such considerations seems to be quite logical in relation to social patterns; prior to the civil rights act and women gaining legal inclusion into labour markets, primary care was ultimately, whether rightly so, associated with women. What use would such be in male toilets? Ergo, baby-change apparatuses were only socially necessary in female facilities.

Yet, the feminist project has progressed so that socially women are no longer subjected to legal forms of domestic subordination qua marginalisation from the workforce, exploitation with regard to unpaid domestic labour and powerlessness in patriarchal governance, such as marriage bars.[8] Why is it that the design of these facilities still remains largely unaltered?

Haslanger may suggest that the (practico-inert) objects (baby-change apparatuses) within the space (toilet facilities) are experienced passively as the discursive construction is covert to the individual. Whilst I agree with this notion, I believe that such discursive activity is by no means neutrally related to the context that brought about its existence. Conversely, in a much more Youngian manner, I suggest the historic reality, of which includes ideology and praxis, that was necessary for the construction of the object to begin with, is sustained alongside its materiality. This does not change the fact however that an individual must be conscious of the ideological embedment; in fact, it may not even occur to them that such objects or ideologies are oppressive.

Afterall, it was not just the policy constraints I listed above that were the sole mechanism for the practico-inert realities of public restroom design[9]. Indeed, it was prior to this; in ideology, at a structural level, that conditioned such social rules. On Haslanger’s account, if I am not mistaken, it is the legacy-attitudes of biological essentialism that are the perpetual engine behind the hierarchical social positioning of women; consistently positioning women in relation to her ‘reproductive role.’[10] Public restroom facilities, as practico-inert-objects that structure gender concepts, are no different. By including baby-change apparatus solely within female toilets, similar deterministic ‘roles’ for women are pedestalled, and presented as ‘just the way things are.’

(ii) The practico-inert object positions female(s) in relation to routine, habitual practico-inert realities that are in fact limiting and oppressive[11]

Having suggested how public restroom facilities have the element of -inertia, in that we do not experience the object with its’ history and ideology therein, I will now explain how such spaces also have a ‘limiting or nullifying’ effect. Despite having relevance for past- moreso than current- praxis, such spaces and objects indeed have potential in “conditioning contemporary possibilities for action.”[12] An objection here, however, may be formulated to suggest that by inclusion of these apparatus within female toilets, action is in fact enabled, and possibilities for women increased. Within this paper however it is no mere accident I have placed emphasis in that apparatuses are solely supplied for female facilities. In other words, there are no baby-change apparatuses within male toilets. Consequently, the design of male toilets forecloses and disables the potential of male-centred primary care. Juxta-positioned together, these practico-inert realities (female and male) pedestal one gendered ideology, that women are intrinsically linked to their reproductive role of childrearing. And by contrast, that men are not necessarily. Consequently, women are limited in their material existence and oppressed as such.

To suggest this is not to submit that men are not able to conduct child-rearing activities within male toilets. Conversely, a quick internet search suggests single- and same-sex- fathers have in fact found quite inventive manoeuvres so to successfully change a diaper in a cubicle without conventional apparatus.[13] Yet, such a revelation only goes to further represent the inertia behind these facilities; despite societal demand for change and more equitable facilities from multiple positions on the gender spectrum, ‘new’ facilities being erected still maintain this familiar design. Which, importantly, further purports “conceptualisation of group difference (genders) in terms of unalterable essential natures.”[14]

Further, such demand signals that the practico-inert realities available no longer match current, albeit only progressive, ideology or praxis. Within her more recent work on social practice, Haslanger suggests that if the “world does not substantiate such valuing,”[15] which in this case is baby-change apparatus in male toilets, “then the practice becomes harder to sustain on its own terms.”[16] Accordingly, without drastic intervention, the design of such facilities position women in relation to an essentialist reproductive telos, as well as to disproportionality high expectations on responsibilities of childrearing.

(iii) Both (i) and (ii) together condition a set of structurally unjust rule-bound pre-reflective possibilities of action

Important to my argument is to understand that such practico-inert objects or realities are not experienced in isolation. It is in the coalescence of various experiences in material reality[17], whereby all, or majority, of public facilities encountered have a similar design, that a ‘structure’ to the reality is created. Together, qua repetition and scope, this structure perpetuates women in a social position that is anchored to the primary care of children and consequently, also to the past ideologies of biological determinism (i). And it is in this manner, that the practico-inert has the potential to subordinate. (ii).

 As public facilities, these practico-inert-objects are both established and maintained by the state. Surely then, the embedded ideology (of which, can be theorised as a speech act) gains additive and substantial force in subordinating individuals. Indeed, within an argument of the derogatory nature of monuments, of which I believe has comparable significance, Lai asserts of state-sponsored speech that it “enjoy(s) considerably authority and publicity, (…) and purport(s) to speak in our name.”[18] In other words, and in relation to my practico-inert example, the embedded ideology is granted authority in virtue of speaking on behalf of everyone, albeit indirectly, as well as normativity in that it appears as though such speech is widely endorsed. As state-sponsored speech, public facilities do not merely “fail to coordinate us well”[19] or “presuppose something to be valuable that lacks value”[20] as Haslanger would posit, but more seriously, create normative limitations to women’s existence. Whilst it sits somewhat outside scope of this paper, if Young is correct in that “the self is a product of social processes, not their origin,”[21] such practico-inert-objects may be causing other structural injustices for women, say, ontological or epistemic, as well as contributing to sustaining the relationship between the marked body and ideological essentialism. And further, normalises ‘the inferior status of the target group,’ which I am sure helps to justify further subordination and injustices of women along other dimensions and in other areas of life.

Finally, it is pertinent to note that I am not suggesting public facilities are the only practico-inert-objects that establish such ends. Much like Marilyn Frye’s analogy of the bird cage, it is in coalescence that these practico-inert-objects become problematic, and oppressive ideology is able to be materially maintained. 

If indeed the above is correct, the question remains, how best can we disrupt such objects?

To answer such, I believe it must first be suggested why it is critical such facilities ought to be disrupted. Sartre’s notion of counter-finality[22] in relation to the practico-inert, suggests that “people pursuing their own ends create a structural system whose teleology runs counter to those individual ends.”[23] If we take this into consideration for public restroom facilities, whilst by no means are individuals blameworthy, we are able to see how individual’s actions do contribute to the stubbornness and sustainment of ideology within the structure. Ergo, a disruption is a necessary method.

To what disruptive counter speech would fulfil a challenge to the status quo, and the embedded ideology of public gendered practico-inert-objects I am not sure I am equipped to formulate within this paper. What I am willing to submit is in agreement with Lai, that such state-sponsored speech is best disrupted via political vandalism, or rather, ‘defacement, destruction or removal.’[24]

Firstly, such vandalism would act immediately as relief and counter-speech to other subordinated individuals, signalling that ‘they are not alone.’ Considering the publicity of placement of such facilities, this message also has a large potential reach. Secondly, within such a message, the potential force of the speech act (the embedded ideology of the practico-inert) is punctured and undermined in that another voice is offered, and thus the authority of the state-sponsorship fails to speak in everyone’s name. For Young, who believes that institutions are necessary for promoting broad scale justice, targeted political vandalism within public restroom facilities could create a situation whereby the institution is pushed to respond in some manner. Whilst the response may not be favourable, it does mean that the issue at hand is at a minimum registered with the state.

Thirdly, and potentially most importantly, such vandalism offers a contribution to the discussion that there are potential realities outside the paradigm. Of this, I believe Haslanger would be in agreement, considering that constructs of gender are structurally relational, if such political vandalism challenges the past-praxis  (gendered reproductive roles) of the objects, there is a nexus of potential to disrupt our belief structures, and further, our embodiments of ideology. Ipso Facto, political vandalism challenges the material maintenance of oppressive ideologies behind gender constructs, and subsequently also the property of normativity the ideology possesses.

To conclude, I have utilised the accounts of both Haslanger and Young in an explication of how material, practico-inert realities that structure gender can maintain women’s ideological oppression. This was conducted by suggesting first, the activity of ‘gendering’ sits beyond just the marked body and is related to objects that are also linked to presumed ‘biological roles of reproduction.’ Utilising the placement of baby-change apparatus in current public restroom design I have suggested such realities are embedded with essentialist ideologies of the past, and as such contribute to continually subordinating women. For the liberatory project, I have also suggested such facilities ought to be disrupted via targeted political vandalism.

[1] Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?” Nous 34, No. 1 (2000): 42.

[2] Iris Marion Young, “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective” Signs 19, no. 3 (1994): 725-728.

[3] Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race,” 42.

[4] And thus, also requires, disruption.

[5] Ibid., 42.

[6] The term ‘apparatus’ includes not only change tables but pram circulation space, dispensary units etc.

[7] Only a few cities, such as New York, have begun to alter this structure.

See: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/05/us/new-york-changing-tables-mens-bathrooms/

[8] See: Iris Marion Young, “Fives Faces of Oppression” in Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 1990): 36-65.

[9] As in this equation, policy itself could be said to be a past-praxis

[10] Haslanger, “Gender and Race,” 37-43.

[11] Young, “Gender as Seriality,” 729.

[12] Marion Iris Young, “Structure as the Subject of Justice” in Responsibility for Justice, Oxford University Press, (2011): 55.

[13] See: Footnote 7.

[14] Young, “Fives Faces of Oppression,” 47.

[15] Sally Haslanger, “What Is a Social Practice?” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, no. 82 (January 2018): 244.

[16] Ibid

[17] Which occurs in the context of a background of non-ideal structural injustice for women.

See: Young, “Structure as the Subject of Justice.”

[18] Ten-Herng Lai, “Political Vandalism as Counter-Speech: A Defense of Defacing and Destroying Tainted Monuments.” European Journal of Philosophy, no. 3 (2020): 608.

[19] Sally Haslanger, “What Is a Social Practice?,” 244.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Young, “Fives Faces of Oppression,” 45.

[22] Of which Young also utilises in argument. See: Young, “Structure as the Subject of Justice.”

[23] Young, “Gender as Seriality,” 726.

[24] See: Lai, “Political Vandalism as Counter-Speech”

The Issue of Transracialism: How ‘black-passing’ is an issue for Haslangerian race

Since 2018, folk discussion on racial justice has found itself occupied with the phenomena of ‘blackfishing,’ or rather, the conscious decision of women of European descent, to manipulate their bodily appearance so to ‘permanently pass’ as members of African, or Latino racialized groups.[1] Such lay conversation has aimed at revealing the ‘real’ race of accused perpetrators, effectively ‘revoking’ their artificial memberships, as is the case with entertainers Ariana Grande, Rita Ora, Emma Hallberg and the Kardashian family, but also more recently, with academics, Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug.[2] Unfortunately, within critical race theory, debate over whether transracialism is an issue for Haslangerian race metaphysics has centred entirely on permanent ‘white passing.’[3] Haslanger proposes that the bodily appearance of certain racialized groups, given context, takes on evaluative significance by “marking” the individual for ‘appropriate’ correlative hierarchical treatment. Yet, if the relationship of bodily appearance and hierarchical treatment is as straight forward as Haslanger proposes, in the above cases, the individuals would experience oppression along some dimension on the basis of their new ‘black’ bodily features. Yet, they do not.

In the present essay I will argue Haslanger’s account of race fails to accommodate the phenomena of permanent ‘black passing,’ and as such, not only is her hierarchical analysis questioned, but too, whether her negation of such phenomena is in itself an issue for her analysis of the subject of racial justice.

On Haslanger’s account, category membership to a particular racialized group is based on the perceived or imagined bodily features that have been believed to be evidence of such biology, or ancestral links to a certain geographical location.[4] In other words, our historically held beliefs that assumed correlation between biology (ancestry and geographical region) and phenotypical outcomes, qua biological determinism, established an embedded socio-political reality that now ‘marks’ certain racialized groups for either privilege or subordination. The ‘geographically marked body,’ or the amalgamation of physical features, including skin colour, hair type, eye, and lip shape as well as overall physique[5], usually thought of as evidence of ancestry, together create a symbol for appropriate social stratification. As to what precise physical markers are necessary or sufficient to “count” toward category membership is apparently, a matter of context. For example, the one drop policy in the US rendered anyone with any known Black ancestral history to be considered ‘black.’ Whilst this may have been legally sufficient for category membership, I highly doubt socially, such stark distinctions held true. Afterall, it is quite common for transracial individuals to be considered ‘white’ socially despite a known Black ancestry, due to a lighter skin complexion.

To stay true to the Haslangerian theory, however, even mention of transracialism or the notion that an individual’s ‘internal’ self-identification is at odds with their social presentation distorts such a constructivist ideology of race. In fact, for Haslanger, the notion of racial misclassification is a fallacy. Considering that race is emphatically a social reality, the ‘white passing’ individual belongs to the ‘white’ racialized group in virtue of presenting a bodily appearance that marks them for ‘appropriate’ privilege. However, on this point[6], Charles Mills would object, stating that “the phenomenological difference between the consciousness of the “real” white person and the “apparent” white person is alone sufficient”[7] to denounce that the individual is not really White. Moreover, he would suggest that Haslanger’s definition is not only at odds with folk understanding, but it more pertinently overlooks racialized classificatory complexity, such as the individuals’ ancestry, as well as culture, experience, and self-identification. Whilst Mill may have a point that the metaphysical status is not as simple as Haslanger suggests, his identified ‘problem cases’ are not necessarily at odds with Haslangerian conclusions that descriptively nominate how each individual is treated socially. I believe this is due to the fact that Mill is concerned solely with ‘white passing’ transracial accounts.

And yet, why is it that transracial accounts of ‘black passing’ are ill considered within critical race theory? Potentially, it has been assumed no one would knowingly endeavour to assimilate to a subordinated race. For on Haslanger’s hierarchical account such an individual would be utterly confused about the socio-political consequences of such an act. Not only would they be relinquishing all privilege associated with their ‘natural’ and ‘born’ race but be also accepting of the subordination and oppression that comes with recognition as belonging to a Black racialized group. Moreover, acting somewhat masochistic by consciously encouraging their own negative treatment and oppression.

Therefore, not only has ‘black passing’ been rendered a non-issue for critical race theory, but it has been assumed to be the mere metaphysical reverse of ‘white passing,’ and that the intimate and necessary relationship between race and hierarchy is maintained.

However, Consider the following case of ‘black passing’:

1)      An individual (S) had the bodily appearance  (including skin colour, hair type, eye, and lip shape as well as overall physique) and ancestry of a privileged racialized group (PRG).

2)      They have no ancestral, cultural, or past-experience linkage to a subordinated racialized group (SRG)

3)      However, S sets out to “permanently pass” as SRG ‘Latino’ by altering her bodily appearance (including skin colour, hair type, eye, and lip shape as well as overall physique) to look akin to members categorised as such.

Firstly, I need to rule out the objection that potentially S, despite action towards ‘passing’ is not actually taken as SRG ‘Latino.’ In agreement with Haslanger, I believe racialisation includes ascribing a social ancestral narrative to ‘observed or imagined bodily features.’ If, for the moment we assume S has successfully replicated the bodily features presumed to be evidence of ancestral links to Latin America, in the identity statement, ‘S is actually of ‘white’ PRG ancestry’, there is something of interest and additive value, we can assume that S is in fact currently taken as Latino. Of course, this would only hold true iff considering this is a case of artificial transformation, that the public was also not aware of (1) S’s initial bodily appearance, that would have been taken as evidence of European ancestry. And furthermore, that during the process of bodily transformation there was no public awareness of (2) S’s ancestry, that could offer ambiguity to her metaphysical status.

So, now that we have clarified S is in fact taken as SRG ‘Latino,’ albeit, only on folk standards, we must establish whether S is treated as Latino. Why? For Haslanger, racial justice ought not be concerned merely with individuals who register as ‘Latino,’ but who are consequently oppressed as Latino.[8] In fact, considering such, Haslanger would designate S as Latino, iff her bodily appearance, seen as ‘passing’ evidence of ancestral links to Latin America, plays a role in her systematically hierarchical treatment (of which, in most contexts, would be one of subordination). However, with reference to the phenomena of ‘blackfishing,’ and the individuals mentioned earlier, this is hardly ever the case.[9]

In fact, the issue surrounding ‘blackfishing,’ somewhat contra to the Haslangerian assumption, is that in these cases, being taken as a person of SRG ancestry, proves beneficial to the individual, both economically and socially, in virtue of such classification. Some may argue, it only appears as though individuals benefit from being categorised as SRG. Potentially, other socially constructed categories and the privileges therein, such as gender, sexuality and religion are creating an overall social position that is overshadowing how S is being subordinated ‘along some dimension’ due to perceived membership in SRG. Afterall, Haslanger’s social race categorisation does not yield an overall social positioning. Yet, this does not explain how S benefits “in virtue of such classification.”

And this, for me, is when it becomes clear that ‘black passing’ is in no means just the mere reverse of ‘white passing,’ either metaphysically or in the moral ramifications thereof. 

As, even though S successfully ‘passes’ as SRG ‘Latino,’ she is able to maintain her privilege, and is therefore according to Haslanger not really Latino. And rightfully so. Any quick Google Image search will remind us of the very recent ‘white’ bodily appearance of the individuals listed at the beginning of this paper. I am sure in seeing such images, one would hardly maintain that such individuals were really Black. But, if S is not Latino, what race is she? Surely Haslanger could not suggest that S were of PRG ‘white’. As to be counted as such on her analysis, S would need to be ‘observed or imagined’ to have the bodily appearance consistence with socially presumed features of members of European descent. As such, it follows that the only logical conclusion left for Haslanger is that these individuals are performing a contemporary version of ‘blackface.’ 

But, again, this does not seem correct either. Surely there is a qualifiable and ontological difference between someone who is temporarily donning black grease paint to depict a caricature of black culture and someone who is permanently altering their entire bodily appearance so to be adopted as a genuine member of an alternate racialized group.

And furthermore, I am not sure whether Haslanger would in fact agree S is partaking in ‘blackface.’ To claim such would be to admit to the complexity of S being of White race, pretending to be ‘Latino’ race. I believe that whilst Haslanger may admit her account of race does not neatly render an answer of the ‘true’ racial membership of S, she would suggest such an individual is not the intended subject of critical race theorising and meaningful political action.

However, I suggest such an individual, and furthermore, the phenomenon of ‘black passing’ ought to be considered seriously in such academic theorising. Coined ‘blackfishing’ within folk literature, surely sampling from the infamy of term, ‘catfishing,’ we can assume that there is a social issue of ‘bad faith’ or inauthenticity when people represent themselves as someone other than they ‘are’. However, for S to genuinely pass as ‘Latino,’ she has to both consciously and strategically highlight the bodily features of racial group SRG that she believes, if reproduced artificially will satisfy membership to this category. Now, whilst it may seem like an issue that such a process would rely necessarily on social norms of ‘blackness,’ and in virtue of such, is both narrow and stereotypical in scope, technically, all social construction has this essential feature. So, what is the problem? There are actually quite a few.

Firstly, I believe there is something morally questionable in reproducing subordinated racialized ‘blackness’ without the metaphysical necessity of Black people. S, while exhibiting a bodily appearance of PRG, relied upon the associated hierarchical advantage from meeting traditional standards of privilege. It is only upon having such privilege, that S would ever be able to reproduce the “markers” of SRG. Let us not forget that cosmetic surgery is not cheap. And furthermore, it is in itself a position of privilege to be able to select which physical aspects of a differing race category you would like to emulate. In altering her appearance, S, now taken as SRG ‘Latino,’ not only reifies standards of ‘blackness,’ but in being socially recognised as such, is able to fulfil legitimised conditions for recipience of racial justice bursaries. And more importantly is able to do so without being burdened by the subordinated reality of really being Latino. Surely it is of issue if an individual, in altering their appearance, is able to look racially ambiguous enough to fill diversity quotas, bring resonance to concerns of justice, albeit from a privileged position, and more importantly, alter metaphysical conditions of ‘race’ membership.

Secondly, it must be noted that societal norms are rarely created or controlled by the subordinated. S, in her altered SRG ‘Latino’ appearance, masquerades a portrayal of a privileged white-gaze of ‘blackness’ as ‘blackness.’ It is hard to not contrast the altered bodily appearances of these ‘black-passing’ individuals to the cartoonish, sexualised, and exaggerated illustrations of Sara Baartman as Venus Hottentot by Europeans in the 19th Century. In all popularised cases of ‘blackfishing’ the individual has cosmetically exaggerated ‘sexualised’ areas of their bodies, sometimes actually, to quite a comical point. If there is indeed a common thread between these two conceptualisations of ‘blackness’ by ‘white’ PRG, these individuals are surely culpable of perpetrating the racist narrative that ‘black’ women are more sexualised than their ‘white’ counterparts? Such a narrative has become quite dangerous within some U.S. communities, for example, in seeing ‘black’ women as not in need of the same level of protection as White women. Furthermore, it would follow that, since S’s success of ‘passing’ is based on recycling known and conventional  tropes of ‘blackness,’ S is responsible for adding further weight to SRG racialized stereotypes.

Whether it be entertainment, or teaching, the individuals mentioned in this paper, as legitimised members of ‘Black’ or ‘Latino’ SRG, have all fiscally and professionally benefitted from being associated with the cultural products identified with such racialized groups. By no means do I believe I can immediately render such accounts as inherently immoral. Afterall, what if in some cases, these individuals increase representation and open possibilities for members of their assigned SRG? What I am arguing however, is clearly not only do such cases throw issue for Haslanger’s exclusively hierarchical metaphysics of race, especially in relation to the necessary link between taken as and treated as racialized groups, but also for whether critical race theory has distorted the notion of transracialism by not addressing ‘black passing.’ In entering more formal discourse, an intersectional analysis on why recent accounts of conscious transracialism have all taken the form of ‘white’ PRG artificially emulating the bodily appearance of ‘black’ or ‘Latino’ SRG’s, may help to better understand the metaphysics of race, and its social construction thereof.

[1] See: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/jessica-krug-rachel-dolezal-america-s-white-women-who-want-ncna1239418; https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/nepzyg/white-girls-instagram-blackface-blackfishing;

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/apr/14/blackfishing-black-is-cool-unless-youre-actually-black

[2] Ibid.

[3] Charles Mills, ““But What Are You, Really?” The Metaphysics of Race,”” Cornell University Press, 2015.

[4] Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?” Nous 34, No. 1 (2000):44.

[5] Ibid.

[6] See: Mills, ““But What Are You, Really?,” Problem Case II

[7] Ibid., 57.

[8] As well as other subordinated racialized groups

[9] See: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/jessica-krug-rachel-dolezal-america-s-white-women-who-want-ncna1239418; https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/nepzyg/white-girls-instagram-blackface-blackfishing;

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/apr/14/blackfishing-black-is-cool-unless-youre-actually-black

It’s Not Personal, It’s Just Business: Against Zwolinski’s Defense of Price Gouging

Hayekians argue the issue of economic distribution is dependent upon address of the knowledge problem.[1] In allocation of resources, the question is not necessarily whether or not assistance ought to be provided, but how and by whom. The tradition conceives of the market as exchanges by individuals engaged with one another for the end of their own self-interest. Accordingly, considering these ends “whose relative importance only these individuals know” [2] any effort to establish a centralised distributive plan would fail in virtue of incomplete knowledge. The price system, it is reasoned, is the solution to conveying the “knowledge of a particular circumstances of time and place” to all market players, with fluctuations in price conveying the quality, scarcity and urgency of need, of the particular good. Within the ‘The Ethics of Price Gouging’ Zwolinski utilises such rationale in an argument to establish that ‘we ought to consider price gouging as a morally praiseworthy act’, as it holds the essential function of information signalling. In this paper I claim Zwolinski has ill-considered the difference between emergency and normal market conditions and as such has not only mistaken the success of Hayekian price signals in such a context, but has also failed to explicate a positive argument[3] for the morality of price gouging.

Prior to this however, I note the focus of this paper will be limited to the Zwolinski’s Hayekian defence of price gouging, found in Section Two of Ethics[4], (c), (d) and (e), and will utilise a similar definition of ‘price gouging’- that it entails a seller who in the wake of emergency raises their prices “beyond the level needed to cover increased costs.”[5]

In an argument that positions price gouging as providing a “great benefit to those in desperate need,”[6] Zwolinski employs a case study example of price gouging in North Carolina during Hurricane Fran in 1996, whereby four individuals attempted to sell 500 bags of ice at an inflated rate of $12 each. With no refrigeration, nor generators in the town of Raleigh, and as such, no way of keeping life-saving medications cold, the ‘entrepreneurs’ saw an opportunity, so the story goes, to hire trucks and travel the 1hr distance from Goldsboro where they purchased the ice for $1.7 a bag.[7] Now, in virtue of the higher price, Zwolinski[8] would argue, this in itself provided the imperative function as an information signal in communicating to market actors the new supply and demand of the good. Furthermore, considering “relative to the baseline of no exchange at all, the gouger’s proposal stands (sic) to improve the lot of the buyer, not worsen it,”[9] price gouging is ipso facto rendered as a moral act.

I believe Zwolinski’s positive Hayekian argument for the moral permissibility of price gouging can be summarised as follows:

The high(er) prices of essential goods during emergency convey a signal of:

1.      Negative Information – to ration supplies so that those with a higher need for the resource have a higher potential of obtaining it.

2.      Positive Information – to direct resources to areas of higher demand, and to produce more and finally, increase competition

Yet, I am not entirely convinced that Zwolinski addresses whether the information signals during an emergency (or disaster) work in a similar fashion to during normal market conditions.

1.      Negative Information signal - Rationing Behaviour

Zwolinski argues that the higher price of a resource during emergency situations has two negative information functions; it indicates to those not using this resource for life-threatening circumstances to curtail their behaviour, as well as indicating to stop hoarding necessary-for-survival items. In regard to the situation of ice scarcity in Raleigh, Zwolinski argues that the ice, if artificially priced low during the emergency, or in other words, below the market-clearing equilibrium, people’s need for such that wasn’t urgent, say, beer drinking, would not be disincentivised to purchase. So, the argument follows, the diabetic, needing the ice to cool her life-sustaining insulin medication, would potentially miss the opportunity to secure the resource. As such, it is assumed that as the price rises, more people are excluded from the purchasing pool[10] who do not value the good for such ends.

Of course, such an argument rests on the assumption that those who purchase a product with a higher price tag value the good more than those who do not. Whilst Zwolinski concedes that need, value and “willingness to pay” do not often correlate, and thus distribution as such will be imperfect, he has in fact, created a false Archimedean point that assumes ability to pay correlates positively with value. He assumes, that if someone is purchasing the ice at the inflated price gouged rate, even if using for beer drinking, and not necessarily for an urgent need, they too must value the ice. Whilst this is a digression from my main thesis, I believe it pertinent to mention that whilst it may be true we bid for items in direct proportion to the value it holds for ourselves, it does not follow that if someone is willing to pay the $12 for ice, they necessarily value it at all.

Now, in returning to Zwolinski’s account of Hayekian signals, I ask, was it the price system itself and the signalling mechanism therein that was responsible for communicating the scarcity of ice in our case study?

Firstly, I find it highly improbable that there were any beer drinkers in Raleigh, leaving their houses in 120mph winds[11] to obtain ice. However, if I am mistaken, and there was indeed a rush by beer drinkers and the like during the hurricane to obtain ice for their non-emergency needs, I am not sure that having faced such dangers, the $12 price tag would persuade them to return home empty-handed. Secondly, and more pertinent to my argument, it is dubitable that it was the price system that curtailed the behaviour of residents of Raleigh, indicating to be conscientious of their ice intake. And this is where it is clear Zwolinski assumes price signals work essentially the same from normal market conditions to situations of disaster or emergency, an unfortunate oversight. In the case of Hurricane Fran, weather watch was issued six days prior, and an official warning one day before the worst of the storm in North Carolina.[12] These communications, which I assume where broadcast on news, radio, and media outlets, may not have, by themselves, curtailed behaviour. Afterall, surely some missed the weather warnings. Yet, when residents of Raleigh began to experience the storm physically, the wind, rain and mayhem that followed were surely the first signal to mitigate non-essential behaviour. However, still, this curtailment of behaviour might not necessarily have been directed towards ice intake. Afterall, at this point, it would not have been evident to residents’ ice was in scarce supply. But the weather wasn’t the only physical clue, the storm created a power outage, and it was this necessary physical phenomena that triggered a need for ice. There was no power nor generators in the town to maintain the physical state of ice (frozen water), and as such everyone in the town would have been alerted to the scarcity well prior to the entrepreneurs arriving. In fact, I argue even stronger, that considering price-gouging is always with regard to necessary-for-survival items, and a need for such will only be triggered by the specifics of the disaster or emergency in question, negative information exchanges about the scarcity of such will never originate from the price system itself. And yet, for Zwolinski it was the price of ice issued by the Goldsboro entrepreneurs that was responsible for these ‘negative information’ behavioural changes. Of this, I am highly doubtful.

2.      Positive Information signal – Distribution of Resources

In the above I have argued how the negative signal of the price system does not convincingly or necessarily function as communication in economising behaviour in the context of disaster.

Yet, according to Zwolinski the price system signalled an even more important, positive incentive to the entrepreneurs that profit could be made by distributing the good (ice) from an undervalued market (Goldsboro) to a more productive market (Raleigh) that given the circumstance, valued the resource more. But, again, was it necessarily the price system itself that was responsible for this signal?

Whilst the entrepreneurs noted the “brimming freezers” of ice at Circle P’s, and Stop Marts in Goldsboro[13], surely this price information alone would not have possibly incentivised their travel to Raleigh. I suggest if they were not privy to, and exploited the local knowledge of the emergency, as Goldsboro too was hit by Hurricane Fran, but did not experience the same power outage, how would have the individuals been signalled there was a potential profit advantage in the town of Raleigh? The simple answer: it is just not possible that the price system itself generated such market action.

Zwolinski may object however, claiming it is the signal from the gouged price that is more pertinent for distribution in emergency. But is this necessarily true? Can a gouged price in the context of emergency actually signal to others, outside of the emergency area to increase distribution to Raleigh? Afterall, the entrepreneurs sold the ice out of a back of the truck in suburban areas. Considering Zwolinski’s positive argument rests on the assumption that others would follow suit, as this is the only factor that would lower the high market-clearing price to a new fairer equilibrium, due to the presence of competition, I argue he needs to explicate this process further than “outsiders would hear of the potential profit to be made.”[14]

If I concede however, that others would follow suit, given the entrepreneurs hadn’t been arrested for their actions[15], and thus, the issue of ‘fair’ price becoming a nonissue, I still doubt again that such market action was driven by the gouged price itself. Most probably it was via telecommunication of the disaster situation, be it a news report, weather warning or from local first-hand knowledge of the emergency. In fact, Zwolinski in assuming the similarity of normal functioning and disaster markets, fails to mention the Hayekian positive information function of signalling to producers to make more. Yet, in the context of disasters and emergency, production signals surely become less relevant, there isn’t time nor opportunity, and resources are needed immediately, and hence depend more on the signal of distribution. This difference seems of little significance to Zwolinski. Following from Hayek who asserts “there can be no distributive justice where no one distributes,” the moral permissibility of the price gougers follows from the fact that if it were not for them, there wouldn’t have been any ice in Raleigh. Ipso facto, they are providing something, and therefore are moral in their actions. Whilst this may be true, I have established how such  action did not originate from the gouged price. And as such, it becomes unnecessary for prices to be raised to an amount over and above pre-disaster rates, plus increased costs[16], as neither the (1) negative or (2) positive information signalling functions operate similar in disaster as non-disaster contexts.

Stating “It does not matter for him why at the particular moment more screws of one size than of another are wanted” and “the causes which alter their relative importance are of no interest to him,” Hayekian economics strongly assert that the only signal needed is one that directs resources to the most productive use. However, I am not so certain such a statement holds truth in the case of emergency or disaster markets. Surely, in an emergency, in virtue of definition, the biggest concern becomes subsistence. Returning to our case study in Raleigh, the diabetic ice customer was not needing for ice per se but of something that would keep the insulin medication cold. I am certain that there were potential other goods available that would have generated a similar end, say for example, self-activating cooling gel. As such, in an emergency, theoretically the conceptual cause of the needs generated by those effected is of bigger concern. And unfortunately, Hayekian signals are inadequate in transferring such information. Questions of morality of distribution ought to take such into consideration. Afterall, there could have been a more efficient, economic, innovative, or immediate solve for the diabetic in Raleigh. Purely communicating the material end of a conceptual need in emergency seems more than fraught with problems.

In the above argument I have displayed that Zwolinski has failed to establish an argument in favour of the moral permissibility of price gouging in emergency situations. Neither the (1) negative or (2) positive Hayekian information signals proved essential in curtailing behaviour or increasing distribution, respectively. As such, Zwolinski’s moral defence of price gouging rests heavily on his explication of whether such acts are coercive or exploitative, of which is weakly conclusive.

[1] F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945): 520.

[2] Ibid., emphasis added.

[3] See: Section Two, c, d, e : (360-366)

[4] Matthew Zwolinski, “The Ethics of Price-Gouging.” Business Ethics Quarterly 18, no. 3 (2008): 347-378

[5] Ibid., 347.

[6] Ibid., 348.

[7] Michael Munger, “They Clapped: Can Price-Gouging Laws Prohibit Scarcity?” The Library of Economics and Liberty. Published January 8, 2007.

[8] As does Munger in his original piece. See Above.

[9] Zwolinski, “The Ethics of Price-Gouging,” 355.

[10] Afterall, Zwolinski concedes Raleigh was a zero-sum game.

[11] See: https://www.weather.gov/ilm/HurricaneFran

[12] Ibid.

[13] Munger, “They Clapped”

[14] Zwolinski, “The Ethics of Price-Gouging,” 363.

[15] Ibid., 372-376

[16] In the case of Raleigh’s ice, this would equate to $1.7 + increased costs (cost of travel, hire of truck etc.) + no more than 5% surcharge

Heideggerian Hermeneutics: Understanding as Thrown Projection

According to traditional hermeneutics, interpretation functions as a means to the end of Ideal understanding. Contra to this however, Heidegger posits understanding, and further, interpretation, as the “basic mode of Dasein’s Being,”[1] essentially arguing for an ontological hermeneutics. In regard to textual understanding, often the foci of hermeneutical investigation, if a passage was not comprehended, interpretation was resorted to in order to enable the telos of understanding. In a move against what can be referred to as the detached spectator position,[2] Heidegger asserts that understanding is existentially driven by Dasein’s thrown-projection. Put simply, understanding is thrown projection.[3] In his own terms, “Dasein, as essentially understanding, is proximally alongside what is understood.”[4]. In this essay I will argue that the initial understanding, if conceived of as ‘thrown projection,’ is inescapable, and in agreement with Heidegger, that in Dasein’s thrownness, an initial lens is created that colours all future interpretation. By concentrating on paragraphs 31 and 32 of Being and Time, often cited as the basis of Heidegger’s hermeneutics, I will first elucidate what Heidegger means when he suggests understanding is ‘thrown projection,’ in order to explicate the consequences for interpretation and hermeneutics in general.

However, prior to doing this, I believe it is pertinent to address the Heideggerian assertion that understanding is inseparable from the larger question of Being. The work of Gadamer and Habermas, and the tradition of German Hermeneutics in general was highly influenced by such a radical importance placed on individual consciousness in relation to meaning and interpretation. Responding to Dilthey, who would position understanding as a “category of life”[5], Heidegger would go further to suggest understanding is an existentiale, and thus, the conditions of possibility of being-in for Dasein.[6] As such, in order to discuss the principles governing the activity of interpretation, and the consequences therein within this framework, I must first attempt to analyse the notion of Dasein.

Within the Heideggerian corpus, the neologism Dasein is utilised in a manner to side-step common-use words such as ‘human’ that otherwise carry over traditional connotations of the world as static, stable or fixed.[7] Whilst Heidegger is interested in the study of Being in its generality, the subject Dasein is utilised within his methodology as it “is that entity in which as Being in the world is an issue for itself.”[8] Despite often being translation from German to be “existence,” the expression Dasein is to be understood as ‘Being-there.’[9] However, it does not follow that we are to think of Dasein then as a contingent combination of Being, in-ness and the world, or as Görner would say as “one thing being in another thing”[10] but rather as a coherent and unitary phenomenon.[11] Furthermore, Dasein, is defined by the joint dynamic activities of intentionality and disclosure. As Being-in-the-world, Dasein’s conscious experience always has a directional feature; an experience ‘of something’, and hence an intentionality or an ‘aboutness’ of the world.[12] This is evident, as Heidegger would suggest, when in everyday language we utilise the expression “understanding something.”[13]

Within Dasein attending to the world, the world additionally discloses itself within the experience; from Dasein’s ego-centric perspective it seems that the world itself is ‘shown’ to Dasein. What then becomes of interest to hermeneutics, is in Heidegger’s equation of ‘Being-there’ to ‘a non-reflective and practical ‘understanding’ of the world.’ 

Now, with the explication of the ontological inquiry into the nature of Dasein and its’ relevance to the present essay, and furthermore to hermeneutics in general, I will attempt to unpack what I believe Heidegger intended in Chapter 31 of Being and Time, in positioning “Being-there as understanding.”[14] As suggested earlier, traditional hermeneutics posited understanding as an ideal end goal. Antecedent theories to Heidegger, such as that of Schleiermacher, would suggest understanding, in reference to textual passages, is achieved in the activity of interpretation, and furthermore, that such achievement is only realised once the original meaning is comprehended in its entirety. And yet, for Heidegger, it seems that all knowledge is derivative from an initial, non-reflective thrown-projection. And, more radical still, that interpretation is not (at all, or ever) a forebearer to this projection. How can this be?

For Heidegger, the Being of the ‘there’ is to be considered as thrown into existence. Prima facie, it seems almost nigh impossible to refute such a claim. After all, we (as Dasein) do not seemingly have any control over the choice to be born, where that happens to be, who our parents are, or furthermore, how we are raised. He would then continue to claim, “and as thrown, Dasein is thrown into the kind of Being which we call “projecting.”[15] In other words, this ‘thrown projection,’ if my analysis has not led me astray, constructs the foundation for any (and all) cognitive awareness. Moreover, Dasein is posited as essentially understanding, albeit with a reconceptualisation of what ‘understanding’ really is[16]. How can it be that Dasein’s existence is understanding?

Thrownness (German: Geworfenhei) for Dasein is not just experienced at the inception of Being, for the reason that this past way of being ‘thrown’ subsequently echoes into every moment thereafter. It would follow that the notion of thrownness can be understood, to an extent, as a ‘past-for-the-present’ mood that contingently allows for, and shapes interpretation.[17] Subsequently, thrown-projection, or Entwurf, within the Heideggerian canon, is best placed by acknowledging the etymological translated of this term as ‘a sketched project, yet to be carried through’[18]. As such, it can be suggested that Dasein forms an intelligibility of the world within this thrownness by way of projecting “itself in terms of possibilities.”[19]

This everyday intelligibility however, according to Heidegger remains implicit, and acts rather as Dasein’s general mode of Being. Within this structure of Being, there exists both a presence-at-hand (German: Vorhandensein), and a readiness-to-hand (German: Zuhandensein), with the former entailing Being in its brute existence, and the latter a pre-linguistic intelligibility of a thing in connection to its practical application. As Grondin explicated within the Heideggerian corpus, “all ‘things’ have an anticipatory understanding “as” things destined for this or that use.”[20] It would follow from such a proposition, that I have an understanding of an entity such as a hammer in relation to the readiness-to-hand I have projected onto this item of equipment in regards to my Being-in-the-world.[21] Given what one would assume as ‘normal’ conditions, this would be the hammer’s potentiality in hammering, to make a shelter, or a table, or any possibility practically available to Dasein.  Yet, as previously stated, this ‘understanding’ is according to Heidegger both pre-linguistic and implicit. Hence, my previous statement that suggested Heidegger reconceptualised the term ‘understanding’; my everyday use of such a term seems to evoke an active task of comprehension. It would follow then that my intelligibility of the hammer, or rather my ‘understanding’ is primordial to the extent that only in its breakage or rather, an un-readiness-to-hand, that such disturbance would require explicit interpretation on the behalf of Dasein.[22] 

According to Heidegger, interpretation is to be thought of as the development of projected understanding.[23] Again however, I believe it easiest to return to the German etymology of the term, auslegung, chosen to represent the word ‘interpretation’ within Heideggerian hermeneutics to expound the relevant meaning behind this phenomenon. Whilst there are often several connotations to any prefix verb, I believe that auslegen has been chosen to express the idea of laying something “out” or further, putting something on display.[24] As such, it would follow that in interpretation, the implicit content of understanding comes to be “laid-out” in an explicit manner. And yet the question would inherently arise next, how can implicit understanding ever come to be explicit? I believe that ‘understanding’ especially in relation to the example of the hammer earlier is not to be thought of as a micro-instance of understanding directed towards something, much like in common conscious thought, but as a more general understanding of all existence.

Within interpretation then, Dasein is able to distinguish differing aspects (potentialities/possibilities) of understanding by appealing to structural categories. Heidegger states himself, “that which is explicitly understood – has the structure of something as something.”[25] As such, it would follow that in interpretation, I can explicitly understand a hammer as an object, as a tool, as a piece of wood, or even a doll. So far, despite ontological connections, it appears as though the departure from traditional hermeneutics comes in the reversal of order between ‘understanding’ and ‘interpretation.’ And yet, by no means is this true of Heideggerian hermeneutics. For he would continue by stating, “Any interpretation which is to contribute understanding must already have understood what is to be understood"[26]. Or rather, the entire thematic framework that covers a network of potentialities of an entity’s ‘as something’ in relation to Dasein’s thrownness, has already been understood primordially. By ‘laying out’ or making explicit a particular ‘as which’ of an entity during interpretation, Dasein is then able to highlight a different set of practical possibilities. Returning to the example of a hammer, once broken, and confronted with an un-readiness-to-hand, I am pulled to move away from an implicit and hidden understanding of such, and am forced to interpret the hammer to another ‘as-something’ end, for example, as an object. It would follow from such a theory however that all knowledge, derivative of this initial understanding of something as something, requires us to engage practically with the world. In other words, can a hammer ever be understood without the ‘there’ of Being?

Ultimately, not only do I believe that Heidegger would suggest ‘no’ in virtue of his conception of Dasein as Being-there, essentially the understanding or thrown projection thereof, but I also tend to agree with him on this point. It is often posited within hermeneutics that a collective ‘understanding’ can be arrived at; that there exists an ideal Truth of a text. I have always been skeptical of this aim, in virtue of our relation to our environment. Is it not true that my intelligibility of a hammer may differ from someone of a differing background, culture, race or gender?

I believe so, and to argue as such I will subsequently utilise a scene, albeit a fiction, from the childhood story ‘The Little Mermaid.’  The protagonist, Ariel, upon viewing the object, a fork, for the first time, does not understand the entity in relation to the textual name ‘fork’, for she calls the entity a ‘dinglehopper.’ Without any explicit instructions, she understands the fork as a tool, not to eat with, but to comb out tangles from her hair. It seems to follow commonsensically that this understanding is contingently related to her own thrown-projection.[27] In agreement with the corpus of Heideggerian ontological hermeneutics, Ariel’s intelligibility of this fork is not only due to the relation to her environment of the ocean, but to her existential situation. Ariel understands her own Being, a mermaid, in relation to human beings (Dasein and Mitsein[28]). It is only upon her engagement and in meeting a real human, who one could say has a vastly differing thrown-projection than our protagonist, that Ariel interprets explicitly the ‘as-something’ of the fork as a tool for eating. As such, it would appear that the Truth (or what traditional hermeneutics would position as Ideal understanding) of the fork was unconcealed to Ariel once the entity was allowed to appear as what it is. Such an example can also go to illustrate Heidegger’s claim that our inner world essentially becomes defined in terms of its relation to an outer world. Consequently, I agree with the Heideggerian claim that not only is our initial understanding inescapable but also that all interpretation will be grounded by this pre-condition for intelligibility.

Objections to such a view tend to be on the basis that such a circle seems to suggest we are trapped in our initial understandings. However, such an objection, I believe, is a misapprehension of Heidegger’s notion of understanding to be existentially related to our ‘thrownness,’ instead conceiving of ‘understanding’ as the telos of interpretation. As conversely, it is within this initial understanding that Dasein is able to form any intelligibility of the world, and and thus, we are not ‘trapped’ or ‘limited’ by this understanding, but rather just ‘bound’ to it in a hidden sense.

In summary, whilst Heidegger’s notion of thrown-projection seems to introduce a radically ontological realm to hermeneutics, against the Diltheyan idea of a ‘detached surveyor‘ I believe that he has successfully illustrated how interpretation is manipulated through Dasein’s own essence, that of Being-there. Whilst the scope of this paper did not allow for an explication of areas such as how mood or affectedness can play a role within understanding, and thus interpretation, I believe that I have argued, with the help of Ariel, how interpretation, or the ‘laying out’ of understanding’s projections, is intrinsically “always already” anchored by our thrownness of existence.

[1] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, in The Hermeneutics Reader, eds. K. Mueller-Vollmer, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 217.

[2] See: W. Dilthey, “The Hermeneutics of the Human Sciences”, in The Hermeneutics Reader, eds. K. Mueller-Vollmer, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1986), 148-64.

[3] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 216.

[4] Ibid., 237.

[5] Ibid., 214.

[6] Ibid., 216.

[7] Paul Görner, “Heidegger, fundamental ontology”, in Twentieth-Century German Philosophy, (Oxford, 2000), 71; Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 216.

[8] P215

[9] Ibid., 216.

[10] Paul Görner, “Heidegger, fundamental ontology”, 67.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 222.

[13] Ibid., 215.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid., 217.

[16] See: Page 05 of this paper.

[17] Of which I will expound later on.

[18] Paul Görner, “Heidegger, fundamental ontology”, 68.

[19] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 217.

[20] Jean Grondin, “Heidegger: Hermeneutics as the Interpretation of Existence.” In Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. by Joel Weinsheimer, (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1994), 94., italics added.

[21] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 216.

[22] Michael Wheeler, "Martin Heidegger", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/heidegger/

[23] Ibid., 221.

[24] Michael Wheeler, "Martin Heidegger."

[25] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 222.

[26] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 225.

[27] I am of course, within this example positioning Ariel as if she has Being as an issue for herself, like Dasein.

[28] Being-with of Dasein

Butlerian Hermeneutics & Injurious Speech: Combatting narrow instances of ‘hate speech’

Within her text, ‘Excitable Speech’, Butler addresses the connection between speech acts and injury, asking how is it that words have the potential to wound? By calling upon the theories of Althusser and Austin in order to answer such a complex question however, I believe Butler addresses an even larger, and more serious question of ‘how it is that language wounds?’ Consequently, I suggest Butler offers two notions of injurious speech: differing in scope of narrow and broad definitions of ‘injury,’ where the former is associated closely with acts of hate speech, and the later with the ontologically essential quality of interpellation. In the present essay I will argue such a distinction is necessary to understanding only narrow instances of injurious speech have potential for reestablishment. However, by introducing the notion of hermeneutical injustice, I will elucidate whether Butler is ever able to successfully establish a normative theory of how we ought to combat such utterances of hate speech.

Within the Introduction, On Linguistic Vulnerability, of which will be the main focus of this essay, in order to elucidate the relationship between speech act theory and injury, Butler heavily concentrates on how specifically hate speech has the potential to injure. When hate speech is uttered, and an ‘individual or group is disparaged against on account of a group characteristic or mere membership to such a group,’ Butler affirms we are not simply denoting or name calling in a Millian-esque tagging fashion, rendering one with a fixed reference, but additionally, we are causing this individual or group to feel “derogated and demeaned.”[1] How is this possible however, that a linguistic act can cause hurt in someone else? Were we not taught as children that ‘words can never hurt me?

Firstly, despite the mention of purely psychological hurt, as in the last passage, it is important to note that Butler believes that injury, especially in relation to the narrow definition thereof, is both ‘mental’ and ‘physical.’[2] Put another way, hate speech injury exceeds the linguistic domain, causing hurt felt also in the physical body of the interlocutor. Refencing the work of Shoshana Felman, Butler highlights that speech acts are themselves “a production of the speaking body,”[3] and therefore through the instrumentality of language and the bodily act of speech, have the power to potentially, but not always necessarily, cause a threat, and therefore an injury to the physical body.  

Secondly, it would seem prima facie from such a suggestion Butler is advocating for a connotative theory of language, however, this would be an incorrect interpretation of how Butler believes injury is created. When an act of hate speech occurs, the speaker is utilising terms they are rarely the originator of.[4] They are in fact relying upon a history of repeated utterances, that not only pre-dates the particular moment of speech act, but potentially, pre-dates the speaker themselves. This is, accordingly, how hate speech terminology establishes force,  through a “ritual chain of resignifications whore origin and end remain unfixed or unfixable.”[5] Whilst hate speech terminology does not carry a fixed meaning per se, it rather brings a historicity of citation and convention. Surely, it would follow that if there is no fixed meaning, or structure transferred to the interlocutor, then there is surely also no fixed effect (and as such, an injury may not be rendered). Rightly so, Butler would agree with such a notion, aligning with Austin in that speech acts are not always efficacious.[6] Just because a speaker intends to hurt someone with their words, does not necessarily follow that their interlocutor will be hurt. And yet, Butler proposes that hate speech, is always an illocutionary act; an act that in saying something is also at the very time also doing something.[7] Hate speech, in virtue of the political and social conventions linked to its historicity, always “constitutes its addressee”[8] and therefore renders the interlocutor, or more seriously, the subject, as socially subordinate. As such, we are to think of the act itself as the injury and not merely as a catalyst for the production of injury. Generally speaking, I believe that majority of people would assert that racial slurs are only inappropriate if in the company, or earshot of an individual who would identify as a subject of address. If Butler is correct however, that hate speech is always illocutionary, it would follow that it is also always an infelicitous act. However, in order to ascertain how this is possible without fixed meaning, I believe  it necessary to define injurious speech broadly within Butler’s work.

To reiterate the question, how is it possible that only some words have the power to injure? Butler herself notes that there exists no fixed library of terms with their essential effect as injury. Yet surely, we want to try and avoid injury in our speech acts, or, at least some of us do. However, if we are unable to identify what words wound, how are we to proceed?

If a narrow injurious speech, akin to hate speech, is suggestive of the wounding force of words, a broad definition would suggest the wounding force of language itself. Inspired by the Lacanian theory of language, Butler’s broader, and ostensibly stronger thesis is in the suggestion that we are born into language. As stated earlier, when a speaker utilises hate speech, they are performing a repetition of speech that pre-dates the utterance. But Butler would expand upon this idea, stating that the speaker is also “formed in the language that he or she uses.”[9] Butler claims, as essentially linguistic beings, our access to the world, as well as ourselves, and our ‘identities’ becomes dependent upon us being born into a system of language that may not ever encapsulate our experience, and furthermore, that there exists no understanding of ‘I’ outside of language. Butler would suggest that positioned as a subject in the subject/predicate conventional structure of linguistics, we internalise the otherness of language, including the socially constructed conventions carried with it. In fact, this process, so called interpellation, is where Butler inspiration from Althussian theory enters. Stating in regard to interpellation, that it “is an address that regularly misses its mark”[10] and further that the “possibility of the subject’s autogenesis”[11] is erased by such an impure system, Butler claims “an injury is performed by the very act of interpellation.”[12] In other words, one is injured by being positioned within an incomplete language as a subject, forced to recognise themselves in subjection. Hence, not only can words, in a narrow instance, injure aspects of our Self, but language itself is an injury to the autogenesis of identity.

Yet, if speaker and subject alike are similarly born into a system yielding injurious speech, how are we to ever combat such a phenomena? Especially when considering narrow instances of hate speech, this question becomes extremely pertinent. Whilst a convert to the aforementioned descriptive thesis of injurious speech, I find myself quite critical of Butler’s positive normative thesis of excitable agency. Borrowing terminology from the legal realm in which “'excitable' utterances are those made under duress,”[13] Butler suggests that in speech we are always under ‘force’. Considering we are born into a system of language and meaning, without self-creation, we are continuously struggling with the relationship between the Self and the Other. This much I tend to agree with. However, Butler would suggest, that considering such, we ought to afford speakers in speech acts an excitable agency, an affordance that they, themselves are born into convention, and may as such be ignorant to the norms and injury carried with the speech act. As such, culpability of injurious speech, according to Butler is not in the content of the speech act but “for the manner in which such speech is repeated, for reinvigorating such speech, for re-establishing contexts of hate and injury.”[14] In returning to my earlier suggestion that injurious speech must be broadly defined in order to grasp Butler’s hypothesis, ‘hate speech is in every instance infelicitous,’ we are now able to see the speaker, responsible for the repetition and reestablishment of the racial slur, and not the racial slur itself, in uttering such even outside of earshot of a concerned subject, still acts infelicitously.

Surely however, we are unable to combat the broad understanding of injurious speech. Afterall, Butler herself resigns that we are fundamentally interpellation beings; it is our very nature. Language based upon a grammatical structure of subject/predicate is surely bound to injure in virtue of maintain such composition. As such, a reversal of ‘injury’ potentially is only possible at the level of narrow definition, in words that wound. Therefore, the question becomes, how are we to combat hate speech?

In answering this question, I believe Butler’s theory becomes open to objection. According to Butler, the interlocutor as being addressed as a subject is given the possibility of retort, and therefore ‘recognises’ themselves within language, even if not exactly or in toto within the speech act. Ipso facto, the subject then becomes agent. Butler states, “I propose that agency begins where sovereignty wanes.”[15] If my understanding is correct, such a statement suggests we are able to conjure agency through an erasure of the sovereign subject. To utilise an example within Butler’s writing, there is no ‘gendered being’ that exists behind the culturally constructed expression of gender. And, it is in this acknowledgement that we are able to apparently find agency.

In this process, language becomes a living thing, constantly reaching towards fully explaining the ineffable. Whilst this may descriptively account for how language works, surely Butler does not advocate for a theory of language that autocorrects mistakes through injurious instances of hate speech, or, a guess-and-check approach? Potentially this would not be a very favourable account of Butler. She herself may rather just suggest that as we progress farther away from our Cartesian dualistic heritage, and subjects are able to recognise themselves within a larger spectrum of terminology, words may have higher potential to be “recontextualised in more affirmative modes.”[16] However, this ‘recontextualisation’ is surely dependent upon the subject of the speech act, and for that matter, dependent upon the ability of that subject to ‘talk-back’ to the speaker. Considering we noted earlier Butler claims within every instance of hate speech the subject is positioned as subordinate, the question for Butler becomes, how can one talk back to Power?

I have two major (and, interrelated) issues with Butler’s normative hypothesis that a ‘talking-back’ and “recontextualised in more affirmative modes.”[17] ought to be the answer in combatting hate speech. Firstly, this suggestion insinuates the onus is upon those injured by injurious speech to progress our social conventions of identity and language. Secondly, it assumes that the interlocutor, (once subject, now agent) has the societal power to talk back. On this issue, I believe Butler is a bit confused. She states that it is necessary to “speak in ways that have never been legitimated” and further that “hate speech does not destroy the agency required for a critical response.”[18] However, these statements seem to run counter to one another. How is it that a subject, subordinated to hate speech, and what Butler calls a redoubling[19]  of injury and trauma, is ever able to establish a confidence and assertiveness to ‘talk back?’ Furthermore, how would it ever be possible for them to speak in ways never legitimated before? On this point, Miranda Fricker, a more recent feminist scholar tends to agree with me. She would suggest that the subject in subordination experiences a marginalisation in society, and a hermeneutical injustice, an inability and prevention from creating the concepts and terms within cultural normativity, in virtue of exclusion from a ‘majority.’[20] Whether it is a matter of if the subject has the ability to create conceptual linguistic resources themselves or just lack “the power to introduce these meanings into the collective understanding”[21] is still debated. If for the sake of argument, we assume a subject can overcome such obstacles and recontextualise hate speech in new legitimate ways, we must also note that this re-establishment is also done by an agent constituted in language and convention. Surely, this term also is liable to be injurious in the future?

In conclusion, by delineating between narrow and broad definitions of injurious speech evident in the work of Butler, I have displayed how not only do words wound, but so too, does language itself. Yet, I remain unconvinced that any sort of agency afforded to the subject subjected within hate speech would be able to speak back to such power. By referencing the work of more recent scholars, such as Fricker and Mason, and the notion of hermeneutical injustice, the Butlerian method on injury-combat seems to never truly resolve the issue, creating instead, latent injury to future subjects.

[1] Judith Butler, "On Linguistic Vulnerability," In Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 2.

[2] Ibid., 5.

[3] Ibid., 11.

[4] Ibid., 13-15, 39.

[5] Ibid., 14.

[6] Ibid., 11.

[7] Ibid., 18.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 33.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 27.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., 15.

[14] Ibid., 19, 39.

[15] Ibid., 16.

[16] Ibid., 15.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid., 41.

[19] The trauma from the act alone as well as the past historicity of acts.

[20] See: Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

[21] Rebecca Mason, “Two Kinds of Unknowing,” Hypatia, 26, no. 2 (2011): 294–307; Jennifer Saul and Esa Diaz-Leon, "Feminist Philosophy of Language", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), eds. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/feminism-language/.

Mill’s Quality of Happiness: Is the delineation of ‘low’ & ‘high’ useful?

Within Hedonism, Mill argues that within the utilitarian doctrine, in which morally right action is positioned as the action that produces the most utility (good), the concept of utility ought to be considered in relation to the Greatest Happiness Principle. Or rather, in Mill’s own words, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness.”[1] And moreover, “By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain.”[2] In this essay I will argue that in the delineation of ‘low’ and ‘high’ pleasures and the introduction of quality, in addition to quantity of such, Mill runs into three main issues, the impossibility of interpersonal utility calculations, the issue of conservative bias and lastly, the issue of contingency and exposure to experience, subsequently doing more harm than use for his hedonistic doctrine. Firstly, prior to analysing Mill’s moral hedonism and the issues therein, I believe it pertinent to address why it was necessary for Mill to find the need for such a distinction.

According to Mill, pleasure is the only thing pursued by humans as an end, with all other goods, pursued only in relation to being desirable as a means towards pleasure.[3] However, of course, such a stance becomes clearly open to the objection that if morality is grounded upon “pleasure, and freedom from pain”[4] what is to save us from becoming say, a happiness monster?, who, in path to happiness, is able to justify pain towards others. It goes without saying, such a creature intuitively appears quite immoral. Further conceptions position this monster as an “experience machine”; an “indeterminate blob”[5] fed pleasure stimulation, in a larger thesis by Robert Nozick that asked, as humans, is it really just the sensation of pleasure we desire as an end, or the real experience thereof? However, such a question, albeit contemporary in content[6], appears somewhat similar to the swine objection levelled against Epicureanism, which rejected the doctrine on the basis of likening human objections to that of a pig.

In fact, Mill decidedly prefaced his positive moral thesis within Hedonism by stating his response to such objections. His response, of which I will later argue seems somewhat contra to the core of his thesis, in trying to reason that human pleasures differ from those of an animal, and thus rendering it unreasonable and ‘degrading’ in suggestion that humans would degrade into happiness monsters, he introduces the parameter of quality in relation to pleasure. 

Mill argues that a utilitarian should not only take into account quantity of pleasure, but also quality of pleasure. He suggests, that if indeed it were true that the pleasures of humans and animals were equal, humans would indubitably swap their life for that of an animal, if of course, it were to increase their pleasure. And yet, as Mill suggests, and on this I tend to agree with him, it is “better to be a human being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied.”[7] As a result of such facts, albeit brazenly generalised in nature, Mill concludes it is clear humans have a preference for ‘existence with higher pleasures.’[8] And furthermore, that “some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others.”[9] Ipso facto, pleasures can be categorised as either ‘low’ or ‘high’ in quality.

The question remains however, how is one to qualify a high or low pleasure? Surely, considering the hedonistic nature of Mill’s utilitarianism, this enquiry seems only possible in privation? Afterall, he is equating utility in reference to a state of mind (pleasure or pain). It would follow then, that I must be able to differentiate between my own low and high pleasures. In other words, what is a high-quality pleasure? At first it would appear Mill offers us an answer, suggesting amongst the higher pleasures “of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments.”[10] However again, this offers us little distinction. Only upon a comparison to a man pursuing “sensual indulgences to the injury of health”[11] does a structure behind these categories begin to emerge. Mill states, “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference (…) that is the more desirable pleasure.”[12] As such, it would follow that the categorisation of a higher pleasure is a public and collective affair.

However, I argue that in the formulation of high and low categories of pleasures in response to The Utilitarian Swine Objection, he has subsequently created issues for his own Hedonistic theory, of which I believe there to be three main interrelated predicaments.[13] Firstly, as suggested earlier, grounding a moral theory upon subjective states-of-mind consequently produces an issue with the calculating of such interpersonal data. As Goodin would say, “every mind is inscrutable to every other mind.”[14] If, according to Mill we are to calculate pleasure, which, in having higher value one would assume as more worthy of our pursuit than those of lower pleasure, as of high quality, we do so in virtue of others categorising it similarly. And yet, as Goodin highlights, how are we to know the value of pleasure someone else derives from ‘something’? Not only would this assume firstly, that one is able to make a comparison of pleasure across goods, but that furthermore, we can then compare this data in relation to others’ hedonistic relation with goods. Utilising Goodin’s example, within calculations of sensory pleasures, we can quickly see how one could conclude that a broken arm is clearly worse than a pinprick, and hence should be avoided. In Goodin’s words, “everyone can compare (…) the utility that they derive from apples versus oranges.”[15] However, there exists no Archimedean Point upon which we can compare the broken arm of someone to the pinprick of another; pleasures and pains are by nature, idiosyncratic. Or furthermore, beyond bodily sensations, how a job loss could compare to a divorce? And impossible still, how to weigh a job loss of someone against the divorce of another? This is what objectors refer to as the “impossibility of interpersonal utility calculations.”[16]

Such an objection also seems to trace the boundaries of objections aimed against general utilitarianism that suggests such a theory is too demanding in practice.

Stronger still, I do not believe there is enough clarification by Mill within either Hedonism or Utilitarianism in establishing how the nuances of such comparisons are ever possible in refute of the above issue.

Secondly, I believe via the distinction of high and low pleasures, a “deeply conservative bias into our decision rule”[17] is created. If high pleasures are categorised as such only in virtue of unanimity, our morality becomes anchored by mere consensus. But more importantly, difference would become neglected in favour of majority. And, in my conception of the field is to be believed, is not the purpose of morality inquiry to challenge the majority? To suggest that human beings gravitate towards high pleasure is one thing, but for this to be the foundation of morality, is something completely separate. I will now return to a previous passage and Goodin’s example, the comparison of the pinprick and broken arm. It is quite intuitive to suggest that it is wrong action to break someone’s arm. However, what is the moral delineation between low and high quantities of pleasure and pain? Would it be morally wrong to pinprick someone? I ask, because when considering aggregation as the foundation to morality it very much matters if ‘low’ quantity has differing moral weight. I suggest that it was not long ago that consensus would have suggested the pleasure derived from the perpetrators of sexual harassment within workplaces was of ‘higher’ quality than the pain of the victims of such acts. Afterall, would not these victims have less consensus review of their pleasure or pain. Furthermore, why must a consensus matter to the value of the pleasure or pain at all. Ought we not to have a stronger and more stable structure to our morality than a consensus in a certain space and time? Whilst this example is bleak, it has revealed, as has history revealed, within certain events themselves but also the general concept in toto, that majority and morality are not necessarily related. Furthermore, as is suggested in Goodin’s above quote, anchoring morality in consensus first establishes a need for consensus, which as we know, brings with it the first issue discussed in this essay, and secondly, establishes a limitation on the growth of a society’s moral system. Marginalised pleasures and pains, of which, I indubitably suggest would have a correlation to other socio-political inequalities such as race and gender, would surely be rendered ‘low,’ and as thus go against the supposed ‘egalitarian’ nature of the doctrine. Moral progress would be slow.

Thirdly, in a somewhat follow-on from my second issue, I suggest that in Mill’s distinction of ‘low’ and ‘high’ pleasure the issue of contingency arises. If at first, one is to preform their own private comparisons of ‘low’ and ‘high’ pleasures, it would follow that the result is surely in virtue of experience, with the cause of such states-of-mind. Indeed, Mill seems to concede this point stating, “and the society into which it has thrown them.”[18] And furthermore, “capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant.”[19] Whilst taking out of context I know; these propositions seem to suggest that Mill acknowledges the contingent nature of qualifying higher pleasures. This is, of course if we read ‘nobler feelings’ to insinuate those of high quality. To expand on this point more, let me return to the comparison of a job loss to a divorce. Is not the pain and quality felt thereof in relation to someone’s job loss contingent not only upon the quality of pain they have ever felt before, but also, whether or not they had lost a job prior, whether they were financially secure and whether they had a support network of family and friends, or not? And, are not similar contingent factors also relevant to a divorce? And that particular someone.

To show another correlation of these three factors, I readdress my issue of the moral weight assigned to ‘low’ and ‘high’ pleasures. If my assumption is correct that ‘higher’ pleasures have more moral weight[20], which also align with consensus views, it would follow that marginalised pains and pleasures do not even receive a seat at the table of moral inquiry. As such, not only is the privation of pleasure and pain a factor in the impossibility of interpersonal utility calculations but so too is the notion of consensus itself. So, I offer a rejoinder for Mill against my own issues with the how the qualification of low and high pleasures is conceived in the only way I imagine the distinction as ‘useful’. I suggest, that instead of differentiating value based on consensus, it ought to be based on time. Within Mill’s textual comparisons of qualities exists already a relation of time, as in the comparison of sensual pleasures now and future long-term health concerns. Furthermore, within the utilitarian doctrine, time is not a new concept; the notion of ‘diminishing marginal utility’[21] offering a suggestion to why goods yield lower pleasure over time. Whilst this conception notes the relation of time and quality as a moment-by-moment data output, taken from a backward-looking perspective, I suggest there is also a presence of a forward-looking relation of time and quality of pleasure. And, it is both backward-looking and forward-looking perspective on pleasure and pain that are essential to our categorization of such. Afterall, utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory, which in-itself is forward-looking. In our categorization of quality of pain and pleasure, and in addressing the notion of ‘how one ought to live’ surely, we are cognizant of potential pain and pleasure within our calculations of ‘quality.’ However, such a rejoinder sounds more welfarist in nature than hedonistic, in the abstraction from felt pleasure and pain to imagined ‘best interest.’ Yet whilst it is clear such an idea needs much further analysis, I bring it up to purely in the suggestion that there is potential avenues in Mill’s delineation of ‘low’ and ‘high’ pleasures that move beyond mere association with aggregates.   

In summary, whilst Mill does well to rebuff Swine Objections to hedonistic utilitarianism, in distinction of quality of pleasure as ‘high’ or ‘low’ based on aggregate opinion, he introduces further objections such as those mentioned previously, the impossibility of interpersonal utility calculations, the issue of conservative bias and lastly, the issue of contingency and exposure to experience. As a potential rejoinder I offered a rereading of ‘low’ and ‘high’ values of pleasure and pain in relation to a forward-looking perspective on time. However, such an experiment was merely to illustrate in the delineation of quality of pleasure, Mill’s mistake was not in the categorisation of ‘low’ and ‘high’ but rather his anchoring of such to a majority. Subsequently, doing little to also position his propositions of human nature, as intrinsically hedonistic, as the foundation of his morality.

[1] John Stuart Mill, “Hedonism”, in Ethical Theory: An Anthology, eds. Russ Schafer-Landau, (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 258.

[2] John Stuart Mill, “Utilitarianism”, in Ethical Theory: An Anthology, eds. Russ Schafer-Landau, (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

[3] Or, of course, freedom from pain.

[4] Mill, “Hedonism”, 258.

[5] Robert Nozick, “The Experience Machine”, in Ethical Theory: An Anthology, eds. Russ Schafer-Landau, (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 264.

[6] Of similarity in the suggestion that the experience machine is pre-programmed towards only desirable experiences

[7] Mill, “Hedonism”, 259.

[8] Whilst, personally, I believe this merely shows we pursue something other than pleasure.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., 258.

[11] Ibid., 260.

[12] Ibid., 259.

[13] Of which I largely owe to the writings of Robert E. Goodin.

[14] Robert Goodin, “Utility and the Good”, in A Companion to Ethics, eds. Peter Singer, (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy: Blackwell Reference, 1993), 245.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid., 246.

[18] Mill, “Hedonism”, 260.

[19] Ibid.

[20] I cannot understand the relevance of delineating between the two categories if this is not the case, as otherwise it reads as an empty rejoinder.

[21] Goodin, “Utility and the Good”, 247.

Kantian Moral Worth: The cheerful philanthropist, & self-interest

Within the present essay I will be discussing Kant’s famous passage within the Groundwork concerning a depressed philanthropist and the moral worth of his beneficence. I argue in agreement with Kant that actions involving amiability are not morally worthy.

The main contention within this passage is in the claim that only upon the philanthropist losing inclination to be charitable that his action “first has its genuine moral worth.”[1] Such an assertion prima facie immediately suggests that beneficent acts are not, all things considered, always moral. And yet, in our daily lives we seem to constantly praise acts of kindness and gratitude. However, importantly I do not believe that Kant here is suggesting the ‘cheerful’ philanthropist was immoral in his actions, but rather, that his action lacked moral content. And yet, how it is possible that the morality of the philanthropist’s act changed despite no change in the act itself? The only notable difference is that upon the agent falling depressed he no longer held an inclination towards giving. But he gives, nonetheless. Why? Kant suggests the depressed philanthropist was motivated “simply from duty.” [2] Thusly, the ‘goodness’, and ‘morally worthiness’ of an action does not lie externally in the act itself, nor upon the consequences of said act, but upon the motivation of the agent to act from duty. But, what of ‘duty’? In alignment with Baron’s interpretation of Kantian morality, I suggest ‘from duty’ not to be thought of as an unreflective and dogmatic adherence to what one has to do, but rather an acknowledgement of what one ought to do as morality requires.

And so, considering the philanthropist initially held a motivation to help others, this amiability, in Kant’s view, appears to have somewhat corrupted the morality of said act. In fact, for Kant, any alternative motivation (other than duty) distorts the goodwill of the agent, and thus the moral status of the forthcoming act. The philanthropist, when cheerful, was motivated to give out of “sympathy with the fate of others.”[3] We seem to assume in our everyday lives that if we are able to cultivate sympathy, thereby gaining a differing perspective about another individual or group of peoples, that our actions towards them would become more favourable. However, in agreement with Kant, I do not believe that the motive of sympathy, as well as many other pro-social emotions are as virtuous or ‘good’ as we grant them. We know that the philanthropist was initially moved by, was amiable with, and subsequently sympathetic toward the distress of a group of people. He also had the means to benefit these people. Surely then, the philanthropist in giving to these people relished the outcome that saw a relief in their troubles. And furthermore, experienced some form of happiness in virtue of being motivated from amiability; to say otherwise would be absurd. Therefore, the cheerful philanthropist also gained, and potentially more than an enjoyment in the peoples’ fortune. He may have also gained by contrasting his life with those less fortune, focusing on their suffering in stead of his own. Possibly he also enjoyed the reputation that came with, bragging to his friends about his charity work.

Additionally, in considering the beneficiaries, how did the philanthropist decide on the particular individual or group deserved of his aid? During the time he was motivated by feelings of amiability toward ‘a’, there very much could have been a greater cause or group ‘b’, more in need of his support that would not receive such as they did not hold a social relation with the philanthropist. Moreover still, in his amiability towards the beneficiaries, their distress itself would become quite personal for the agent, and thus, the ‘distress’ potentially exaggerated. What if you were to learn the philanthropist’s beneficence was directed towards out-of-work billionaires? If this were the case, surely you would agree with me, and in alignment with Kant, that this act, whilst somewhat admirable and in accordance with duty, “deserves praise and encouragement, but not esteem.”[4] Consequently, I argue, similar to Kant, that the actions of the philanthropist are only morally worthy once he no longer holds amiability towards the beneficiaries as it is only then that he is not acting in a self-interested, morally-nepotistic manner.

For, if amiability has a role in motivating moral acts, surely it would also motivate immoral acts. Recent social movements such as #MeToo and BlackLivesMatter has very much called attention to the ‘go-along-with’ herd mentality of friendship groups in concealing the immoral acts of those who have close relations to us. And yet, the apparent consequence of this view, which suggests an action has moral worth only if performed via a sort of ‘disinterest’ has been highly criticised. Stocker would claim in objection to Kant, that in the case of visiting a friend in hospital, it would not be morally praiseworthy if the agent did so because it was the ‘right thing to do’ and not out of care and concern for their friend. Further objections levelled by Schiller, in a mockery of Kant suggests moral agents should aim to feel hatred towards friends so to render their actions towards them morally worthy. On the objection by Stocker, I suggest the example does not display a moral quandary but rather just a decision of preference. If there were extra content to make it worthy of moral debate however, much like the cheerful philanthropist, I would suggest this agent is again motivated by self-interest. Afterall, even if we afforded morality to the act of the agent visiting his friend from a motivation of concern, this concern is in no means ‘selfless;’ the agent’s vested interest in the health and wellbeing of their friend is inseparable from their self-interests of happiness. Ipso, facto, not morally worthy. In response to Schiller, I do not believe that the contention of Kant’s claims has been appropriately reconceptualised. For, if my understanding is correct, the agent still desires to favour his friendship group. However, does it follow, that we never act morally worthy if our action is directed towards those whom we are amiable with?

Kant’s critics would claim his account of morality reveals not only a deficiency in his understanding of affections but renders the system also only relevant to issues between strangers. However, I believe this to be an unfortunate misreading of Kant. What is crucial in his distinction from the cheerful to depressed philanthropist is that in the latter act the agent treats duty as a sufficient reason to act.

[1] Immanuel Kant, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”, in Ethical Theory: An Anthology, eds by Russ Schafer-Landau (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 487.; emphasis added

[2] Ibid., emphasis added

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Socio-Spatial Disadvantage within Melbourne: An argument against housing as a market commodity

Housing has long been thought a basic need for survival. When discussed in relation to rights, it is believed that without access to adequate shelter, other subsequent fundamental basic rights become compromised, including the right to life, liberty and personal security and the right to an adequate living standard as well as the right to freedom of movement and to participate in the cultural life of community. However, within a capitalist economy housing is treated merely as a commodity to be traded or sold in order to engender wealth.

The present essay has been organised into four components. I will begin first with a discussion on the conception of housing as a good to form a foundation to later discuss the contention of housing traded within the commodity market. I will then discuss Rawlsian ideals of distributive justice; firstly, as it is commonly discussed as the benchmark for egalitarian distribution of goods, but also in regard to the difference principle in an argument that highlights the importance of branching away from theories reliant upon market economics. In the next part of the present study, I briefly attempt to dispel myths of government interventions that support claims of housing affordability and rental support. In the final section I will undertake an analysis of disadvantaged suburbs in the context of Melbourne, Australia with the help of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, in an attempt to answer, ‘to what extent are market forces responsible for the generation of socio-spatial division?’ Ultimately, it will be argued that housing ought not to be treated as a market commodity if we are to avoid the formation of neighbourhoods of grave disadvantage that subsequently begin to ghettoise Greater Melbourne.

Housing as a right, good or market commodity?

Indeed, housing is the stable foundation from which social life is formed; essentially relied upon as a base where we can operate and sustain education, employment and health as well as the formation of family and retirement.[1] In fact, in 1994 the Australian Government acknowledged that “an adequate standard of living with particular reference to housing”[2] is a human rights issue. And yet, one could hypothesis that such a statement, coming from a federal government, would appear to suggest they are adopting a normative responsibility for providing the object of the claim right, namely, housing, to the individual. Indeed, Welfare State Theory advocates for a targeted intervention by government to provide an appropriate ‘social minimum’ to citizens in order to promote economic and social well-being.[3] For it is true that each citizen of a community establishes their own conception of the good, that includes an arrangement of aims and ends that embody what a person values in life. Whilst it is rather uncontroversial to suggest that each citizen ought to be allowed the right to pursue their conception of the good life, how exactly such theoretical claims translate into practice appears to be an area of high academic contention.

Welfarists would suggest that of primary importance in the distribution of goods is the level of welfare experienced by all people.[4] However, in measuring welfare, or rather, ‘health, happiness, or fortune,’ this argument appears to collapse into similar concerns produced by utilitarian and consequentialist theory, especially regarding how theoretical calculations can traverse into practice. In objection, I believe welfare-based theories would encourage an equitable distribution of goods in considering that economic standing is often resultant from factors of luck. Whether luck is delivered to a person in the form of either bad or good, the question remains, is it moral for the government to ‘balance the scales’ and ensure both fortune and burdens are distributed more equally? However, in order to answer such a question, it is germane to first understand the notion of housing as a good.

The most basic private goods offered to us through housing are shelter, amenity and location.[5] Indeed, housing can be thought of as an excludable and pure private good in that in owning property, we can enact the right to control who does and does not enter the premise. This not only affords privacy, but also safety and security of further private goods stored within. And yet, housing can also be thought of as a personal good in that it can extend, embody or aid in the development of individuals’ personalities. However, in what seems a contrary move, the Government considers housing as a commodity that individuals’ have a right to purchase within the forces of the market economy.

Indeed, much of recent popular debate on housing affordability within the Australian context has centred upon the inability of young potential homeowners from entering the market.[6] However, the response from Government suggests the underlying issue is the disparity between supply and demand, that would see, in assuming median growth, the market reach a deficit nationally of 640,000 dwellings by 2029.[7] Apparently, housing stock has not kept pace with demand due to the factors of: 1) the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) forcing financial institutions to become more stringent in lending practices and availability of credit and 2) increased trends in immigration and population growth.[8] However, absent from common discourse is the idea that in the treatment of ‘housing’ as a market commodity, such an entity will always be subjected to concerns of supply and demand, in that such phenomena are the intrinsic essence of any commodity market. However, in utilising both supply and demand as a method of controlling market forces, it is assumed that all people in need of a house are also in a position of demand. And yet this is clearly not the case. Sally, who is unemployed and at risk of homelessness as she is being ‘kicked-out’ of her parental residence, is definitely in need of a house. However, it does not follow that Sally has a demand for housing, as she is currently not in a position where she can afford such an endeavour. Consequently, the government’s estimate of housing demand falls dramatically short in considering those with a need for housing. However, whether housing is supported as a claim right, good or market commodity, questions of how best to distribute such entities remain. 

How ought we to distribute housing goods?

John Rawls, within his 1971 seminal work, A Theory of Justice, proposes the most explicit and developed theory of distributive justice to date.[9] Within Rawls’ notion of justice as fairness, the concept of housing can be viewed in connection with society’s Basic Structure (BS),[10] or in other words, the foundational legal institutions that have decisive authority over the distribution of primary goods.[11] Within Rawls’ distributive account he advocates for the following principles:[12]

1. Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all;

2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions. First, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

Further to this, Rawls would suggest that such a system is working efficiency only when, the arrangement of the basic structure is unable to be redefined so that goods and burdens distributed to one individual cannot be increased in a manner that does not adversely affect another.[13] Whilst such a tenet seems impossible to empirically test, I am more interested in the latter component of the Second Principle, namely, the difference principle. This holds that inequalities experienced in the distribution of goods are permissible under the proviso that such distribution will still benefit the least advantaged members of society.[14] Such a notion, underpinned by the moral campaign to weigh each citizen of society equally, if applied to the distribution of housing, prima facie, would appear to potentially raise the living standards of the bottom quintile[15]. However, in doing so, it also expects the worst-off people in society to accept conditions of inequality justified by such a system, whether or not they necessarily benefit from them.

However, I argue that the very presence of inequality is sufficient in indicating the system of distribution is not working effectively. More importantly, if inequalities are mostly directed towards the least advantaged members of society, social stability can become endangered by an increased vulnerability of such people to subordination or oppression. For if housing is treated purely as a market commodity that can generate financial freedom, that negates and overrides its otherwise unique standing as also both a private and personal good, it can be argued that everyone still has a right to benefit from such a system. And yet, I do not believe that the framework of Rawlsian distribution necessarily allows for such equal opportunity.

As, for Rawls the difference principle is concerned with the absolute position of the least advantaged people of society over and above their relative position.[16] If considering the Australian context, 2016 data suggests that for singles reliant upon either Newstart of Youth Allowance payments, less than 2% of property listings are both affordable and appropriate at a national scale.[17] So, if we were to only increase government payments to these individuals that would allow for a larger subsidy contribution to rental agreements, would the difference principle necessarily be satisfied? In other words, to what degree do the conditions of the worst-off need to increase, before inequality is essentially tolerated?[18] As, if my understanding is correct the principle advocates for a decrease in inequality only up to the point that the absolute position of the least advantaged can no longer be increased. If correct it would appear that such a notion runs counter to the very function of distributive equality; it is not fair to suggest an individual’s concerns of wealth disparity, bias or injustice are only valid if their own wealth falls short of a minimum standard. Additionally, on a more structural level, the idea of inequality can only be understood in relation to multiple entities so that a difference of degree of circumstance can be perceived; for it is a relative term. As such, I argue that the difference principle tenet is fallacious in treatment of the notion of inequality.

For if an individual or group’s absolute position has increased, it does not necessarily follow that their relative position has also. Indeed, wealth distribution within Australia sits on the Gini Index at 62.50,[19] suggesting that the nation experiences wealth inequality at a higher rate than the OECD average,[20] and additionally, that more wealth is controlled by less hands. With over 39% of Australia’s wealth held in owner-occupied housing, of which the lowest quintile has almost no stock[21], with assets limited to vehicles or home contents, the richest 20% of the nation more than quadruples the standings of the lowest 20%.[22] Whilst I do not advocate for strict equality, due to impingements upon individuals’ desert rights, even if the difference principle were to adjust the absolute position of the least advantaged, if wealth disparity was still evident at such a level as just described, distribution could hardly be rendered fair or just.

In fact, Queralt (see: footnote), within his examination of the role of the market within Rawlsian theory, suggests that whilst Rawls does not explicitly endorse a market-based economy, it plays a major role within his envisioned just society.[23] If so, it appears that potentially Rawls did not intend for the difference principle to be applied to individual concerns of equality but to the system as a whole itself.

Indeed, Rawls himself confirms this, suggesting the difference principle is applied by calculating “how well off the least advantaged are under each scheme and then select the scheme under which the least advantaged are better off than they are under any other scheme.”[24] However, if a property-owning market were to yield greater benefits to the worse off than any other alternative, it would seem that Rawls would justify such conditions, and further, advocate for market-based economics. Moreover, what if the proposed system in satisfying the difference principle also inherently generates more inequalities experienced by the more prosperous in society? Such a Robin-Hood Tax system would surely produce not only justified claims of desert, but further, potentially produce more inequality (between all levels of advantage) than an alternative system. In other words, Rawlsian distribution is not concerned with inequality per se, but only inequality reference to the least advantaged, which for me, is rather morally objectionable.

And yet, I strongly believe that under any market conditions, if housing is treated as a commodity, there is bound to be inequality and injustices that are unacceptable (at every level of advantage), but further, are unable to be rectified by purely altering the absolute position of the lowest quintile. Indeed, the remainder of this paper will argue that market forces are responsible for driving socio-spatial patterns, and further housing inequality, in virtue of the very nature of commodity markets.

The issue with housing as a commodity

Marketplace trends, or rather, the supply and demand of goods, is often discussed as operating autonomously and separate from government expenditure. Whilst direct investment from the government at federal level, including the provision of public housing as well as arrangements such as Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) and the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement (NHHA), is commonly discussed as a positive targeted intervention on the market, these disbursements together only accounted for 16.9% of the total housing expenditure for Melbourne during the fiscal year 2011-2012.[25] This spending was unquestionably eclipsed by indirect provisions through the tax system that saw nearly $861 million allocated to negative gearing and over $3.5 billion on capital gain tax exemptions (together accounting for the remainder of the budget).[26]

Firstly, tax exemptions on negative gearing, or rather, those properties that cost more to own and manage than the gross income generated by the investment, appear prima facie as a positive form of financial leverage that can open opportunities for middle-income earners to enter the market. Yet, with almost 1.3 million Australians owning a negatively geared property, it is only the top quintile of investors who see any concentrated benefits of utilising such a system.[27] Furthermore, the notion of negative gearing naturally incentivises investors to move towards the higher echelon of the housing market. Subsequently, there are is less invested at the low end of the market, increasing competition between properties both within rental and home ownership markets.[28]

Secondly, the idea of tax exemptions on capital gains runs parallel to the concept of housing as a commodity. It seems erroneous to suggest that one can not only profit, but be exempt from tax on that profit, if housing has been utilised as a means to generate income. As, for many people, and especially both the roughly 70,000 homeless[29] as well as the 228,000 the National Housing Supply Council (NHSC) registered as in demand of dwellings,[30] during 2011, housing is most definitely an end. In fact, recent research confirms my intuitive judgements that capital gains are distributed unevenly throughout Melbourne[31], with higher gains attributed to mainly inner and middle areas of Melbourne, or i.e. suburbs of more advantage. If we consider these findings alongside negative gearing, it is evident that indirect government spending plays a significant role in the spatial distribution of wealth in a city. And yet, as I will subsequently argue, even if such tax exemptions or interventions are removed, the market itself is also responsible for the generation of socio-spatial inequality.

The socio-spatial inequality of the housing market

Prior to doing this however, it is important to consider that there are two very different kinds of consumers within the housing market; owner-occupiers and tenants.[32] As such, immediately a class system is formed between the division of tenure securement. Whilst I believe that it is possible to argue such tenure-related-division is the keystone issue surrounding housing inequality and the formation of a subordinate underclass, as Wheeler notes it is unfortunately outside the scope of this paper.[33] And yet, I implore you to remember such a notion whilst I discuss impacts upon socio-spatial patterns, as it helps to highlight how inequality is both entrenched and systemic within the market structure.

The reality of our current situation is that more people than ever find themselves within the private rental sector (PRS), which has grown upwards of 38% nationally over the years 2006-2016.[34] In fact, the Andrews government remarked on the increase in the PRS in October of last year when announcing a set of reforms to the Residential Tenancies Act that would see renters gain increased rights during occupation. Coming into effect in Victoria as of July 2020, new amendments to the Act will see a capping of bond, a ban on rental bidding and limits to rental increases as well as raises to basic standards of operation.[35] And yet, such provisions hardly seem to level the playing field between the differing consumers. Rather, it serves purely as evidence that the government acknowledges the inherent inequality within tenure-related-division.

In order to elucidate how market forces perpetuate socio-spatial disadvantage, I will utilise several current studies by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), an Australian based independent, not-for-profit research network that is leading the field in the thematic areas of affordable housing and homelessness. Firstly however, I believe it pertinent for the remainder of this paper to expound exactly what is meant when utilising the term ‘disadvantaged area,’ which itself can be understood via three distinct ways:[36]

1. A people-based approach that refers to a concentration of people “experiencing poverty, deprivation or exclusion”;

2. A place-based approach that refers to an area which inherently disadvantages residents from poor access to “employment opportunities, public services and other amenities”;

3. A socially-based approach that refers to an area that has a high rate of social problems “such as “teenage pregnancy, domestic violence or other crime or substance abuse.”

For this paper, I have chosen to adopt a people-based understanding of ‘disadvantaged area’ so that I am able to further link issues across (2) and (3) to being resultant from the market itself. Latest collection of data suggests that during 2006, of 492 suburbs of Melbourne, 50 were identified as ‘disadvantaged,’ of which 90% were located contiguously to the west, north and south east of Melbourne, forming spatial clusters and corridors of concentrated socio-economic background.[37] Indeed, over half of the population of disadvantaged suburbs are born overseas.[38] And, whilst only 10% of suburbs within Greater Melbourne have been recognised as ‘disadvantaged,’ the people housed within such areas represent over 17% of the population, and thus also a great proportion of Australia’s émigré community.[39] 

As AHURI has noted, the inner area of Melbourne has been increasingly gentrified over the past 25 years[40] due to changes of locational preference in the housing market that has developed in effort of the local government trying to combat urban sprawl and associated costs of infrastructure of a growing population.[41] In response, developers created a new typology of building; an infill multi-unit dwelling, that initially provided an affordable housing solution for lower income households, closer to the Central Business District (CBD).[42]

However, since 2001, as AHURI notes, such suburbs, began attracting more investments, especially from first-home owners.[43] Noting growth of population density of such areas (generated by multi-residential infill units), the government responded through improvements to amenities, services and infrastructure that then catalysed further exponential growth of average stock prices. So essentially, what began as a metropolitan planning strategy of government and developers to increase stock of affordable housing, created the very opposite effect, raising prices of both rental and home-owning markets within the areas. 

For example, the city of Boroondara, the amalgamation of the suburbs Kew, Camberwell and Hawthorn, displayed a dramatic increase in house sale prices in relation to Melbourne-wide medians, jumping from 57% above in 1986 to 131% above by 2006.[44] However, such a process by any means is not new; since the 1970s higher-income households have progressively gentrified lower-income working class suburbs.[45]

And yet such an occurrence is diametrically opposed to the findings of the area of Greater Dandenong, located approximately 35km from Melbourne CBD, that displayed both a dramatic increase in low and low-moderate income households (24% in 1986 to 40% in 2006) as well as a decrease in the proportion of high income households relative to the parent-city average.[46] Noting these figures, one may assume that prices of stock in both the rental and home-owner markets would decrease, and yet, they grew despite such income adjustments. And whilst the city of Greater Dandenong in relation to Boroondara represents the “sharpest degree of polarisation in Melbourne,”[47] it is by no means an anomaly. In virtue of the definition I have adopted all suburbs of disadvantage have a proportionally high percentage of low-income or unemployed citizens relative to the parent-city average. However, this does not explain AHURI’s findings that suggests:[48]

1. House prices of disadvantaged suburbs not only increased between 2001-2011 (alongside a decrease in income of households) but outpaced parent-city average percentages;

2. Entry rents in disadvantaged suburbs were comparable to city medians by 2011.

Unobjectionably, such findings quickly dispel common myths that suggest rent is lower within areas of disadvantage, and additionally, that rental prices decrease in spatial relation to Melbourne’s CBD. And yet, whilst AHURI suggest such obscure fluctuations may be an amalgamation of several causes, it is attractive to argue via deductive reasoning such findings are the result of basic market forces. For, if the number of properties in the private rental sector have increased relative to the amount of housing stock in an area, it would follow that rental investment within disadvantaged suburbs has increased. Furthermore, in viewing (1) and (2) together in a somewhat vicious cycle, one could argue investors over the period 2001-2011, were attracted to such areas due to initial lower capital costs that forecasted longer term increases in rental yields as well as higher capital gains relative to the parent-city average. Or in other words, by intensifying the competition at the lower end of the market, vacancy rates are effectively reduced, as tenants fear the availability of alternatives, and so therefore, landlords are able to increase rent over the course of occupation. To further compound this issue, although such line of inquiry sits outside the scope of this paper, I assume that in reference to housing stock within disadvantaged areas, that has been explicated to be both limited and relatively costly, low-to-medium income households would now be forced to compete for tenure against higher income households. If so, this would suggest that in treatment of housing as a commodity, investors are directly utilising margins of inequality as well as the despondence of the disadvantaged in order to generate wealth. Whilst such a conception is without a doubt unethical, I ask why are citizens of these suburbs accepting such conditions without moving to alternative areas offering more affordable rent comparative to income?

According to AHURI, income has a direct and positive relationship to population mobility, divided into in-movers and out-movers.[49] If we return to the comparison between Boroondara and Dandenong between 1986-2006, as examples of advantaged and disadvantaged suburbs respectively, we can identify the necessary link between income and mobility. In the example of Boroondara, the area experienced a disproportionate number of high-income in-movers than out-movers.[50] Comparatively, Dandenong’s in-movers have much lower household incomes than those moving out of the area. In fact, over this period, almost all high-moderate income households moved out of the region.[51] Wulff et al., (see: footnote) summarises Melbourne’s current mobility phenomenon as “either a rapid move toward socioeconomic advantage (Boroondara) or a rapid move toward socio-economic disadvantage (Dandenong).”[52] Not only are these patterns of mobility polarising the socio-spatial divisions of Melbourne, but are more importantly, compounding issues of low-income distribution in areas of disadvantage. And potentially, also creating the issue of ‘locking-in’ certain poorer households to geographical locations, restricted by a negative ability to move across the metropolitan region. And yet, so far within my argument I have assumed that socio-spatial divisions of Melbourne are an unwanted effect of the housing market. Is this necessarily true?

AHURI[53] suggests, for those citizens living within disadvantaged areas, such as Dandenong, the standard of living may be further compounded via ‘neighbourhood effects’ that suggest “living in a neighbourhood which is predominantly poor is itself a source of disadvantage.”[54] Further to this, Cass (see: footnotes) notes a positive correlation between the level of urban amenity and the price of housing that would suggest disadvantaged areas are prejudiced by governing bodies in relation to access to public services.[55]

Such hypotheses not only highlight concern for policy makers to be wary of spatially concentrated disadvantage, and the multiplying effects thereof, but potentially more importantly, display how diversity in both income and demography help to regulate the conditions of a given area. If understood correctly, such a notion would suggest that a disadvantaged household would have increased quality of life purely by relocating to a more mixed and diverse neighbourhood.[56] Yet, unfortunately, as we have already expounded, such households experience mobility constraints that prove false any opportunity of moving out of such neighbourhoods, and closer to either social or economic advantages, such as education or employment.

It is important to note within this argument however, that the location in itself is not the cause of the disadvantage but is instead generated via “market processes and government policies that deliver services, programs and economic benefits unevenly across metropolitan regions.”[57] Unfortunately, over and above such findings, it has been suggested the quality of housing stock, alongside these public provisions, is also disproportionate in relation not only to other metropolitan suburbs, but to the rental price associated.[58]

In fact, more material considerations such as physical dwelling structure play a determinate role in where particular family structures locate themselves in relation to the city, suggesting that price is not necessarily the only geographical sorting device. Research by AHURI confirms that within all disadvantaged suburbs of Melbourne not only do three and four-bedroom detached dwellings predominate, but as a percentage (76.2% in 2011) of dwelling type relative to the parent-city average, it appears that such suburbs offer domiciles designed for larger family structures.[59] In fact, the concentration of three-bedroom dwellings within disadvantaged areas even surpasses the that of one and two-bedroom dwellings across the entire metropolitan region.[60] Consequently, it would appear that low-income households are trading concerns of quality of stock, affordable rent and access to public services and infrastructure for an appropriate housing typology. Essentially, this suggests that market forces are pushing both minorities (or, émigrés) and nuclear families to the periphery of the greater city, subsequently ghettoising such associated areas.

The above discussion has been in effort to elucidate whether market forces, in virtue of their very nature, are responsible for the increase in inequality between socio-spatial neighbourhoods of a city. Whilst the intent of this paper was never to offer an alternative proposal, I hope that it serves as a gesture to how the agency of the housing market inherently produces geographical discrimination. Through utilising research by AHURI the spatial polarisation between the City of Boroondara and Greater Dandenong has been evidence to suggest that in the consolidation of uniform income brackets, disadvantaged areas become even worse off. Whilst it was outside the scope of this paper, during such analysis, it was suggested housing-as-shelter remains a concern for a large portion of individuals, and as such we should consider whether it should be treated as a commodity at all, especially in relation to how in the generation of wealth we are reliant upon the despondence of the lowest quintile of society. As if we continue to do so, it has been concluded, we risk further ghettoising areas of disadvantage.

[1] “Housing Support,” Department of Social Services, Australian Government, published October 2019, https://www.dss.gov.au/housing-support/programmes-services/housing

[2] “Australia’s National Human Rights Action Plan (1994),” Australian Human Rights Commission, published June 2013, https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/australias-1st-national-human-rights-action-plan-1994

[3] Julian Lamont and Christi Favor, "Distributive Justice", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/justice-distributive

[4] Ibid.

[5] I owe this understanding to Andrew Alexander.

[6]  “The Challenge of Housing the Nation,” Parliament of Australia, published October 2010, https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook43p/housing

[7] Ibid.

[8] “Housing Support,” Department of Social Services, Australian Government, published October 2019, https://www.dss.gov.au/housing-support/programmes-services/housing

[9] Otfried Höffe and Joost den Haan, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Boston: Brill, 2013), 2.

[10] It is pertinent to note however, that Rawls himself never directly included housing as part of the BS.

[11] Höffe and den Haan, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 13.

[12] Ibid., 7.; Leif Wenar, "John Rawls", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/rawls

[13] Höffe and den Haan, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 32.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Hereafter, every mention of quintile brackets is to be understood in relation to wealth.

[16] Leif Wenar "John Rawls", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/rawls

[17] Anglicare Australia. Rental Affordability Snapshot 2016: Report by Anglicare Australia. (Canberra, 2016.), 11, https://www.anglicare.asn.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/rental-affordability-snapshot-2016.pdf?sfvrsn=7

[18] Höffe and den Haan, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 32.

[19] “Affordable Housing Database,” OECD, published December 2016, https://www.oecd.org/social/affordable-housing-database.htm

[20] Acronym: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

[21] The average net value of owner-occupied housing held by the lowest quintile is roughly $2,000; (“Inequality in Australia 2018,” Australian Council of Social Service, published February 2019, https://www.acoss.org.au/inequality-in-australia-2018-html/)

[22] Ibid.

[23] Jahel Queralt, “The Place of the Market in a Rawlsian Economy” Analyse & Kritik, no. 1, 35 (2013): 127.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Lucy Groenhart, “Understanding the spatial impacts of direct and indirect government housing expenditure” Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited Final Report, no. 234 (November 2014), 1.

[26] Ibid.

[27] “Negative Gearing Changes ‘could tip Australia into recession’ warns John Symond,” ABC News, published December 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-12/housing-industry-insiders-issue-negative-gearing-warning/10602484

[28] Lucy Groenhart and Terry Burke, “Thirty years of public housing supply and consumption: 1981–2011” Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited Final Report, no. 231 (October 2014), 10.

[29] Anglicare Australia. Rental Affordability Snapshot 2016: Report by Anglicare Australia. (Canberra, 2016.), 11, https://www.anglicare.asn.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/rental-affordability-snapshot-2016.pdf?sfvrsn=7

[30] “Affordable Housing Database,” OECD, published December 2016, https://www.oecd.org/social/affordable-housing-database.htm

[31] C. Maher, “Residential mobility, locational disadvantage and spatial inequality in Australian cities” Urban Policy and Research no. 3, 12 (1994): 187; B. Cass, “Reshaping Housing Policy and the Benefits of Urban/Regional Location: why Gender Matters,” Gender and Institutions: Welfare, Work and Citizenship (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 63.

[32] I owe this understanding again to Andrew Alexander.

[33] Wheeler, Karen, “Gimme Shelter: Toward Housing as a Right, Not a Commodity” Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cashiers De La Femme, 11 (1997): 64.

[34] “Inequality in Australia 2018”

[35] “Renting Laws are Changing: Safer and fairer laws for Victorian tenants and landlords,” Consumer Affairs Victoria, published June 2019, https://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/housing/renting/changes-to-renting-laws

[36] K. Hulse, H. Pawson, M. Reynolds and S. Herath, “Disadvantaged places in urban Australia: Analysing socioeconomic diversity and housing market performance” Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited Final Report, no. 225 (July 2014), 2.

[37] K. Hulse et al., “Disadvantaged places in urban Australia,” 17.

[38] Ibid., 4.

[39] As this figure has been collected as of 2006, I believe ex ante calculations would reveal this percentage to now be much greater; (Ibid.)

[40] K. Hulse et al., “Disadvantaged places in urban Australia,” 11.; Kath Hulse and Simon Pinnegar, “Housing markets and socio-spatial disadvantage: an Australian perspective” Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited, (January 2015), 7.

[41] Lucy Groenhart and Terry Burke, “Thirty years of public housing supply and consumption,” 10.

[42] K. Hulse et al., “Disadvantaged places in urban Australia,” 39.

[43] Due to the national First Home Owners Grant (FHOG) scheme introduced in July of 2000; (Lucy Groenhart, “Understanding the spatial impacts of direct and indirect government housing expenditure,” 1.)

[44] Maryann Wulff and Margaret Reynolds, “Housing, inequality and the role of population mobility.” Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited Final Report, no. 158 (November 2010), 20.

[45] Ibid., 23.

[46] Ibid., 24.

[47] Ibid., 25.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Maryann Wulff and Margaret Reynolds, “Housing, inequality and the role of population mobility,” 13.

[50] Ibid., 25.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Hulse et al., “Disadvantaged places in urban Australia,” 9.; Hulse and Pinnegar, “Housing markets and socio-spatial disadvantage: an Australian perspective,” 7.

[54] Hulse et al., “Disadvantaged places in urban Australia,” 9.

[55] Cass, “Reshaping Housing Policy,” 63.

[56] Hulse et al., “Disadvantaged places in urban Australia,” 9.

[57] Cass, “Reshaping Housing Policy,” 63.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Hulse et al., “Disadvantaged places in urban Australia,” 38.

[60] Ibid.

Just War Theory: to what extent does immovable Cultural Property need to be discussed within proportionality calculations

Whilst the destruction of Cultural Property (CP) during warfare is by no means a new phenomenon, evident throughout history as far back as the concept of war itself, from the Persians, Greeks, Vandals and Romans,[1] in times past, such devastation was owed to either collateral effects or military negligence. However, since the twenty-first century there has been a clear paradigm shift in the modus operandi of how CP is treated during warfare. Indeed, since 2015 we have witnessed the Islamic State utilise ancient sites and monuments across Iraq and Syria as a ‘weapon of war’ in an even larger wanton attack against culture, religion, identity and freedom.[2] Unfortunately, currently accepted international law in the preference of the protection of antiquities and artwork over immovable architectural buildings and ancient monuments, has inadequately responded to such threats. Moreover, the concept of property has been but a footnote in the discussion of both traditional and revisionist Just War Theory. This essay has been organised into two components. I will begin first with a discussion and adoption of the definition of Cultural Property by the Hague Convention in argument that we have a normative responsibility to protect CP during armed conflict. I then examine current legal provisions to display how, in reliance upon the ‘principle of military necessity’ The 1954 Hague Convention is ineffective in the protection of immovable CP. The second component of this paper will attempt to intercept CP into Just War Theory, answering the more philosophical question, ‘to what extent does immovable CP need to be discussed within proportionality calculations?’ Ultimately it will be argued, JWT concepts of wide and narrow proportionality help begin to resolve the ethical dilemmas involved in the protection of CP during armed conflict.

Often cited as the “largest displacement of artwork the world has ever witnessed”[3], with the hope of raising funds to continue their campaign, the Nazi regime persuaded collectors to buy stolen antiquities by setting alight over 4800 paintings in an unprecedented ransom situation.[4] With the knowledge the German Army was harbouring captive over 16,000 paintings and sculptures, the threat was rendered successful with the Basel Museum in Switzerland purchasing a great deal of the hostage CP, essentially funding the perpetration of Nazi armed forces.[5]

In the wake of World War II, with the knowledge of the German Army’s involvement in the looting, illegal trafficking, and sale of antiquities, it became apparent the importance of CP was more than localised and relativistic, and was instead the concern, property, and heritage, of all human kind.[6] As such, The Hague Convention of 1954 sought to codify international law ‘on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.’ Whilst I will discuss both the guiding principles, as well as the inefficiencies of this legal framework within this paper, I find it pertinent to first answer the questions of ‘why is CP important?’, and furthermore, ‘why must it be protected?

What is Cultural Property, and why is this important?

The Hague Convention 1954 defines CP as inclusive of, irrespective of the origin or ownership: [7]

a)  movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people, such as monuments of architecture, art or history, whether religious or secular; archaeological sites; groups of buildings which, as a whole, are of historical or artistic interest; works of art; manuscripts, books and other objects of artistic, historical or archaeological interest; as well as scientific collections and important collections of books or archives or of reproductions of the property defined above;

b) buildings whose main and effective purpose is to preserve or exhibit the movable cultural property defined in sub-paragraph (a) such as museums, large libraries and depositories of archives, and refuges intended to shelter, in the event of armed conflict, the movable cultural property defined in sub-paragraph (a);

c)  centers (sic) containing a large amount of cultural property as defined in sub-paragraphs (a) and (b), to be known as `centers (sic) containing monuments'.

As per the above definition, it follows that CP essentially encompasses the tangible and material civic and civilian objects that along with the intangible, such as tradition and oral history, form a society’s ‘cultural heritage’. In an unprecedented and revolutionary move, the convention positions CP with importance not only to the custodian of property but to the international community as a whole, through the inclusivity of items ‘irrespective of the origin or ownership.’ In addition to the phrase ‘… of every people’, it appears that the convention is not only interested in the preservation of individual cultures, but the convergent cultural heritage of the world itself. In the protection of world heritage via CP deemed important at such a scale, discourse between cultural groups can reveal connections and interdependences between communities, that would be impossible given the loss of such heritage. What the definition does not provide us however, is why this is important?

The Human Rights Council notes, “cultural heritage is important not only in itself, but also in relation to its human dimension, in particular its significance for individuals and communities and their identity and development processes.”[8] In a statement that shadows the theories of 20th Century social theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault, ‘personal identity’ is posited here as a dynamic construct formed spatially and temporally through a collective discourse of both ‘self’ and ‘other.’[9] Accordingly, it follows that in order to facilitate the development of both personal and societal identity, and to more importantly ensure a cultural continuum between ages, cultural heritage must be passed between generations. In fact, Jeff McMahan, whom I will later discuss in relation to revisionist Just War Theory, would agree with such sentiment, stating that we have a moral obligation to respect the rights and interests of future generations[10]. Does it follow then that we all have a normative duty to protect the cultural heritage of humanity for future generations to access? Assuming the difficulty in the preservation of intangible culture, such as tradition, memory, and oral history, it would seem as though, in order to ensure the pass over of cultural heritage[11] it is of utmost importance that we protect tangible heritage to create the foundations of both inter- and intra-generational knowledge transfer. However, this generates the ethical quandary of, to what degree must we constrain our behaviour to ensure such futures?

Why current legal framework is ineffective in the protection of CP

The Hague Convention of 1954 along with the two additional Protocols of 1954 and 1999, despite development very late in regard to war theory, is the core international legislation regulating the treatment of CP during armed conflict, that seeks to provide a framework by committing States Parties to refrain “from any act of hostility directed against such property.”[12] Essentially the legislation has three main tenets;

1. Recommendations for the identification and registration of ‘general’, ‘special’ and ‘enhanced’ protection for CP as defined above, as well as the marking of such with a distinctive emblem of the Convention;

2. Advice for peacetime safeguarding measures including inventory creation, emergency measures, designation of special units for protection and localised sanctions for breaches of the convention;

3.  Information regarding the promotion of respect for CP situated within own territory as well as other State Parties within the military and law-enforcement agencies.

However, in such efforts, as I will subsequently argue, the framework itself runs counter to the moral underpinnings utilised to define CP. Firstly, as the onus is placed on each States Party to register what they themselves consider CP relevant to ‘every people’, without guidance, States must address the major philosophical dilemma of ‘what to safeguard?’. Essentially any decision to protect Property A and designate military resources to this effort, is a decision to not protect Property B, Property C and so forth, potentially sentencing the negated CP to armed force destruction. Furthermore, within this process there is an inherent distinction between ‘cultural property’ and mere ‘property’. Whilst we understand from the above definition of CP that it is of importance to the wide international community, I believe most items of property are understood only within the context that was responsible for the generation of the item. From this, a position of impossibility is created for the delegated authority who, in coming from the territory of the CP in question, is expected to be able to remove their personal bias and subjective opinion so to judge the relative merits that appeal to value for all humanity[13]. Moreover, I believe such a judgement can only be conducted retrospectively, in that to deserve the position of ‘cultural significance,’ time must have traversed from the period of creation. For immovable CP, including sacred sites, buildings, infrastructure and so forth, to reach the status of protection under justifications of intrinsic value,[14] arguing that the CP has worth in and of itself, the convention presupposes a tie to intangible culture. It follows then, CP afforded protection under the convention is a protection of cultures of the past, not cultures of the present.

A compounding issue on top of this is that rarely do political and cultural boundaries seamlessly overlap. With war increasingly unconfined to nation-states, the Hague Convention seems inadequate in protecting CP from non-international warfare, especially under oppressive governments that fail to recognise insurgent ethnic or sectarian groups, and their subsequent cultural heritage. In fact, researchers[15] have been very wary of this issue, questioning whether the identification of immovable CP worthy of protection is providing militaries with a potential list of targets. Or, vice versa, nation-states may wrongfully utilise the registration of CP in order to conceal and protect military operatives and resources by evading attacks on the property. Indeed, during the 1991 Gulf War the United States Air Force (USAF) was faced with the issue of whether to attack Iraqi aircraft that were intentionally located within the ruins of a 3,000-year-old Sumerian Temple.[16],[17] Having received training in the Hague Convention, the USAF understood they were only permitted to attack the Iraqi aircraft if they believed the act to be of “unavoidable military necessity.”[18] Sadly, as I will expand upon momentarily, the doctrine of ‘military necessity’ would have revoked the immunity and legal protection of the temple, and permitted collateral risk to the monument.

Even though it was a clear violation of the convention for Iraqi forces to utilise CP in order to shield their aircraft, if my understanding is correct, the convention would have also lawfully permitted the attack by the USAF, and the subsequent expense of CP if the USAF’s objective was unable to be carried out via other methods. Fortunately, the Coalition decided not to target the site, not due to finding alternative means to do so, but rather because they assessed the “aircraft as difficult to service, launch and maintain,”[19] and therefore posed only a low priority risk. Consequently, despite advocating respect for CP through a broad definition, it appears as though the framework of the convention works in direct opposition to the protection of such values, especially noting how frequently the principle of necessity is relied upon. Essentially, the convention is written in a manner that defers interpretation of ‘military necessity’, and resolutions of humanitarian, moral and legal inconsistencies to all individual State Parties.

Within war theory, the principle of military necessity, along with distinction and proportionality, are the three governing tenets of the use of legal force during armed conflict.[20] The principle of necessity runs counter to humanitarian exigencies, in virtue of its very definition. The doctrine permits actions that are deemed relevant to military objectives in offering a definite military advantage. Indeed, Australia’s Law of Armed Conflict manual permits “the destruction of property if that destruction is imperatively demanded by the necessities of war.”[21] Whilst this principle is not a carte blanche for attacks against property, it does raise the question of how to determine whether CP destruction occurred pursuant to military objectives? I believe it fallacious for the Hague Convention to offer CP legal protection against armed conflict, contingent to the principle of necessity that would evade this protection due to the conditions (armed conflict) that were the very reason for protection in the first instance.

However, if we are to consider that the era in which the Hague Convention was conceived, including the subsequent Protocols,[22] CP was utilised exclusively as a means to an end via two main channels:

1. Looting, trafficking and sale on the black market of movable CP (artefacts and antiquities) to fund further military objectives[23];

2. Destruction of immovable CP (buildings and monuments) via collateral damage during armed conflict.

As such, not only does the framework of the convention prioritise the protection of movable CP, of which was the main issue of the time[24], but limits the value of immovable CP for extrinsic justifications in either the housing, refuge, or transport of movable CP. This is also evident in passage (b) and (c) of the definition of CP by the convention.[25] However, as I will outline below, recent extremist behaviour has exposed new approaches to the use of CP in warfare, demanding a response in how to weigh the humanitarian value of protecting CP against the conditions of war, that extends beyond the principle of necessity.

From 2014, the world has witnessed the deliberate destruction of CP by the Islamic State (IS). With the goal of creating a caliphate over the regions of Iraq, Syria and beyond, and abolish modern national boundaries, IS began eradicating polytheism and intentionally destroying idols or ‘infidels’ from opposing ideologies within occupied territory. After capturing the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra in 2015, IS declared “The historic buildings will not be touched and we will not bring bulldozers to destroy them like some people think.”[26] The architecture of the city, of which was an important colony along The Silk Road linking trade from The Eastern Mediterranean to Asia, dates back to the Neolithic period, and is reflective of multiple cultures that shaped its history including Aramaic, Arabic and Greco-Roman, as well as Indigenous.[27]

Since IS took occupation of the city, as the majority of immovable CP under duress was of secular heritage, it was believed by both UNESCO and the international community,[28] the group would limit their activity in the region to the looting and sale of antiquities. Yet, within just one month of occupation, IS began the systemised destruction of Palmyra’s 1st Century CE Temple of Baalshamin, followed by the Temple of Bel, 2nd Century CE Tower of Elahbel, The Roman Triumphal Arch, Palmyra Castle, several ancient tower tombs, monuments and statues until almost nothing remained in the ancient town.[29] Yet, the destruction of Palmyra did not begin with IS. In fact, the city experienced widespread ‘collateral damage’ as a result of armed conflict in the Syrian Civil War between government and insurgent forces years prior, with both parties positioning themselves within archaeologically important areas.[30] However, destruction by IS was anything but a ‘collateral’ effect of fighting and represented instead potentially the first display of immovable CP being utilised as an end in itself. The damage and destruction of Palmyra, as well as subsequent sites that followed, including Nimrud, Hatra, Damascus as well as various other towns of Northern Syria, was not caused via crossfire between IS and other forces, but was carried out via a planned and documented series of attacks utilising bulldozers and sledgehammers.[31] For IS, the destruction of Palmyra was an attempt to remove any trace of culture, civilisation or history that denoted an identity or group in opposition to the organisation. Unlike the assumption made by the Hague Convention, in that immovable CP is collaterally destroyed unintentionally as a result of military necessity, these recent displays by IS demonstrate how CP can be the direct target of military objectives.

I hope through this small discussion it is evident how the Hague Convention, the current legal framework regulating the protection of CP during armed conflict, is inadequate in the protection of immovable CP. Firstly, the convention fails to address issues of ‘what to safeguard’ and ‘how to recognise cultural significance of the present day.’ Secondly, the convention creates complex provisions that have unsuccessfully moved beyond the principle of ‘military necessity’ to suggest under what circumstances immovable CP loses immunity. Lastly, the convention presupposes the destruction of immovable CP is limited to ‘collateral’ effects of armed force, and as such, does little to offer protection or guidance in alternative circumstances. Noting this, it is of no wonder why since 1954 there have been only 17 immovable CP sites registered worldwide[32] (between 10 nation-states) that have been selected for enhanced protection during armed conflict, with the Vatican City the only site listed with special protection[33]. As this is clearly not a representation of the cultural heritage of the international community, I will utilise the remainder of this article to broaden the discourse of immovable cultural property protection (CPP) within Just War Theory by addressing the principle of proportionality.

Just War Theory and the Principle of Proportionality

Research into the protection of CP in war has only recently received support on an international level, prompted by the destruction of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq.[34] The most developed and explicit research undertaken in this topic to date[35], by Thomas G. Weiss and Nina Connelly advocates for military intervention on the basis that “attacks on cultural heritage – for itself and as a precursor for the mass atrocities that almost certainly will follow.”[36] Unfortunately, such a statement illustrates that the authors conflate extrinsic and intrinsic justifications for the protection of CP, likening the destruction thereof to ‘cultural cleansing’ and ‘cultural genocide.’ Further to this, as other researches have noted,[37] Weiss and Connelly misapprehend familiar components of war theory, confusing attributes of the proportionality constraint to the necessity constraint of jus in bello. As such, I believe it to be more beneficial to return to the original literature of Just War Theory (JWT) in an attempt to answer the question of whether, and under what circumstances, the destruction of immovable CP can be justified.

Just War Theory (JWT), dominated predominantly by two schools of thought, traditional and revisionist views, broadly speaking aims to answer a very similar question, albeit in regard to killing. Traditional JWT, most notably expounded by Michael Walzer’s 1977 ‘Just and Unjust War,’ details two sets of prohibitions governing jus ad bellum (or, the ‘resort to war’; just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, reasonable prospects, proportionality and necessity) and jus in bello (or, the ‘conduct of war’; discrimination, proportionality, necessity).[38] With the discourse between the two camps primarily centred around the independence of jus in bello to jus ad bellum, and thus the permissibility of acts of war without just cause, ethical studies of war have become extremely narrow-minded, with debates of proportionality centred purely on direct comparisons of physical harms to combatants and civilian casualties. As such, the literature has become somewhat divorced from the totality of war (especially in relation to the aftermath, or jus post bellum conditions), rendering the legal policies that have followed, diluted.

If the principle of proportionality, a comparison between the military objectives and the damage caused by such operations, is to ensure the means and methods of warfare are not disproportionate to the result, calculations ought to be a lot more comprehensive and inclusive than revisionist theory suggests. The bombing of Dresden, notorious alongside Hiroshima as an example of the effects of indiscriminate conflict, is evidence that there is much more to the cost of war than the total sum of lives lost. The city centre, comparable to Sydney in scale, was all but annihilated, damaged first by explosives and then incendiaries that left “only the fragile lacework remnants of some buildings.”[39] Prior to the attack, the city was described as:

“Filled with beautiful churches, elegant Baroque apartment blocks, a magnificent opera house (…) Dresden had been a center (sic) of art and culture and a showcase for striking architecture since the beginning of the 18th century.”[40]

Indeed, Walzer in his traditionalist view suggests that we should be weighing “not only the immediate harm to individuals but also any injury to the permanent interest of mankind.”[41] Such injury surely should encompass any loss or damage to immovable CP, noting the value identified in the first part of this paper. Yet, how are we to calculate and compare harm to CP against lives and liberty?

Jeff McMahan, a major theorist within the revisionist discourse, takes a much more moral stance to the legalist views of traditionalist theories. Moving further than purely the distinction between combatants and non-combatants (or, innocent bystanders) for liability to be killed, McMahan distinguishes between combatants with a just cause and those without, in an attempt to argue the impermissibility of unjust combatants’ acts of war.[42] Carrying forth traditional reasons for resorting to war, McMahan suggests the only morally just cause is in the defence of ‘self’ or ‘other.’[43] However, within this argument, to his detriment, McMahan excludes all aggressions that are not directly linked to the protection or loss of human life, and consequently rejects that other goods, such as CP and heritage can ever be relevant in the justification of defensive war. In fact, McMahan categorises the loss or destruction of property as a “lesser aggression”, alongside “certain lesser harms or losses (…) such as wealth, employment (…) or political liberty or self-determination,”[44] due to the presupposition that violence against such goods is utilised as a means only, and therefore conditional and subordinate[45]. This is evident by McMahan labelling the “paradigm instance of lesser aggression” to be that of the Falklands War.[46] Whilst an example of a war fought over sovereignty, it is more so an example of McMahan’s limited and narrow definition of the term ‘property’ to be an area of land.

Whilst I do not want to assume that I can simply mirror either Walzer or McMahan’s accounts of proportionality to weigh destruction of CP, I believe that McMahan’s categorisation of wide and narrow proportionality fits neatly into the idea of CP registration in the Hague Convention. It is untenable to expect that everything valued within a society can be protected from armed conflict, and as such, an element of distinction or discrimination is necessary to ensure the protection of the most valued CP of an area. Consequently, proportionality calculations must begin with whether the CP in question was liable to be harmed. In an extension of McMahan’s terminology, I propose that property that is not liable to be harmed, or rather, considered CP by the Hague Convention would attract proportionality in the wide sense in comparison to property liable to be harmed, or not considered of ‘cultural significance’ and therefore considered narrow in virtue of its’ non-importance. 

If discrimination between cultural property and non-cultural property, and language of ‘liability to target’ is carried forth from the Hague Convention, it would follow, how are we to identify CP during combat? On face value a combatant may judge a building to be worthy of protection due to its scale, location or street presence despite it having little heritage value. In efforts to protect this building during armed conflict the combatant mistakenly causes damage to the neighbouring building, austere in presentation, which has listed enhanced protection under the Hague Convention. In calculations of proportionality, without a lesser-evil justification of military necessity that could excuse the destruction of the CP in question, the goodwill of avoiding damage to the first building, assessed narrowly, would not balance-out the destruction of the second, considered widely due to its CP status. As such, this would suggest the combatant, just or unjust, is morally responsible for the distinction between liability-to-harm concerns of property. Yet, as the legal framework currently stands, despite the recommendation to distinguish immovable CP with an emblem of the Convention, and thus legitimate military targets from culturally significant buildings, the practice of marking property by States Parties is not uniform by any means. Even if it were, are we to expect that a combatant stop fighting in a plight to find an identifying emblem to qualify the status of the building? Even if the emblem was in the combatant’s field of vision, in the fog of war and situations of ‘deep epistemic uncertainty[47]’ it becomes dubious that considerations over which property to protect are prioritised.[48]

If we assume that this issue can been resolved[49], and immovable CP can be easily recognised from liable targets, the question remains what is the proportionate response to a combatant who is threatening damage or destruction of CP? In the defence of CP, as per the Hague Convention, military personnel will be allocated for the protection of said property. Whilst I understand that it is a controversial view, I believe that such personnel ought to be offered a social contract similar to physicians in armed conflict à la neutrality for two reasons:

1. CP is defined as items that hold ‘great importance to the cultural heritage of every people’ and as such has a unique position of impartiality to both sides of conflict ‘irrespective of the origin or ownership’

2. If CPP personnel are liable to be killed, and are as such, then the military must either backfill the role by removing combatants from the frontline into a position of CPP or leave the CP unprotected. Both options come at too weighty a cost that speaks to the benefit of CPP personnel neutrality. 

However, whether the above argument is accepted or not, it does not follow that the CPP personnel are permitted to lethally defend the property in question. If they were, we would assume that the destruction of CP is equal to or more than the loss of a human life. Whilst the comparison of a human life against the loss of CP is not grasped easily by our intuitive faculties, it is clear if we continue to speak of proportionality calculations, we must broach the topic of how to equate relevant goods against life and liberty. Maybe such an equation is in a matter of degrees, in the sense that CPP personnel are not permitted to kill an aggressor to protect one or two cultural properties, but potentially under an aggregate of destruction, lethal force could be made proportionate. McMahan would staunchly disagree with the permissibility of CPP personnel utilising lethal force by suggesting if a state responds to lesser aggressions via defensive force, that state is responsible for the provocation of further military force and all resultant casualties in proportionality calculations.

Potentially an answer to this debate and how to defend CP can be found in the first tenet of jus in bello; discrimination. If we extend JWT calculations to include non-lethal entities such as CP as the traditional theory calls for, it would follow that just combatants in the attack or threat thereof, are guilty of violating discrimination between cultural property and non-cultural, legitimate military targets, and therefore forfeit their immunity to intentional attack. If we are to assume that the destruction (or, threat thereof) of CP can reach a level that will permit defensive lethal force, in doing so we create justificatory conditions for both intentionally killing someone who is destroying CP as well as collaterally harming innocent bystanders in the course of. I believe however, considerations of ‘harm to innocent bystanders’ have already been exhausted by the literature, that would suggest such actions would render the CPP personnel/combatant liable to be attacked and contribute heavily to proportionality calculations.

If this is so, however, then the neutrality of the CPP personnel would need to be revisited. These personnel would surely be considered with combatant status by virtue of being armed and prepared to use force. However, such claims would fall victim to McMahan’s criticism of the ‘presumed permissibility of defensive force’.[50] Here, McMahan illustrates the ludicrousness of the notion of ‘initial aggression’ that justifies defensive force only after an attack has mobilised. What if the only possible way to defend a city’s imminent loss of CP is to defensively attack first? Potentially such questions, however, are better left answered by supreme emergency theorists than within the discourse of JWT.

Lastly, I believe it pertinent to comment on the objection made by Weiss and Connelly, that in order to defend a particular site one must be able to justify the risks to the specific civilians close-by.[51] By utilising the example of a Christian building, Weiss and Connelly suggest risks to innocent bystanders become disparate if you consider whether or not the civilian values the building under attack.[52] They note that since the value of the CP is attributed arbitrarily by ‘others’, those who are endangered purely due to proximity ought to be weighed differently to those bystanders who would see value in the forceful protection of the CP. Whilst I cannot even begin to imagine how such considerations could transfer into practice, or how one could ascertain retrospectively whether the CP in question held value and importance to the harmed civilians, there is a bigger consequence to such a suggestion. Essentially, we would be judging a human life to be of more or less worth given their individual preferences. This is not only considerably morally objectionable; it is also in direct conflict with the Hague Convention’s definition of CP being of interest to “all peoples.” Further, it seems counter to the very efforts of Weiss and Connelly, in their advocation for CP protection, with collateral harm to innocents weighing heavier if bystanders do not value the protection of said building.

The above discussion has been in effort to elucidate whether defensive lethal force can ever be proportionate to CP destruction or threat thereof, and as such aims to strike a balance between the humanitarian concerns of CPP and the humanitarian exigencies of war. To weigh the protection of immovable CP against life and liberty within war theory has proven extremely morally complex. Whilst the intent of the paper was never to arrive at a precise tariff, I hope that it serves as a gesture to why current legal provisions are inadequate in the protection of CP during warfare. It is pertinent that research and philosophical efforts move away from the reliance on the concept of ‘military necessity’ when speaking of the destruction of immovable CP in order to expand and extend this relatively new phenomenon of war. If not, we risk further loss to world heritage, and devastating jus post bellum conditions that jeopardise the rebuilding of community, the re-establishment of identity, and links between a community’s past, present and future. It is in virtue of the relationship between cultural property and identity of the ‘self’ and ‘other’ that CP becomes fundamental in the survival of a people jus post bellum.

[1] Helga Turka, The Destruction of Cultural Property as a Weapon of War: ISIS in Syria and Iraq (Washington DC: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), 52.

[2] Ibid., 2.

[3] Ibid., 35.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Helen Frowe and Derek Matravers, “Conflict and Cultural Heritage: A Moral Analysis of the Challenges of Heritage Protection,” J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy, no. 3 (2019): 6

[6] Joshua Kastenberg, “The Legal Regime for Protecting Cultural Property During Armed Conflict,” Air Force Law Review, 277 (1997): 297.

[7] UNESCO. Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. The Hague (May 14, 1954), http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13637&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (hereinafter the Hague Convention)

[8] Francie Diep, “There’s More to Syrian Archaeology Than Palmyra,” Pacific Standard (August 26, 2016), https://psmag.com/theres-more-to-syrian-archaeology-than-palmyra33650c86f7b1#.tv97lucq9

[9] Michael Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, Kate Soper (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 117.

[10] Jeff McMahan, “Future Generations” in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Ted Honderich (Oxford University Press, 2005).

[11] Understood to be a broader term incorporative of both tangible and intangible heritage.

[12] See UNESCO. Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

[13] Peter G. Stone, Cultural Heritage, Ethics, and the Military (Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), 12.

[14] Rather than protection based on extrinsic justifications that aim to protect against a different valuable goal – i.e. terrorism

[15] Ibid.

[16] See Department of Defense, United States of America. Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress 0-2 (April 1992) https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a249270.pdf

[17] Joshua Kastenberg, “The Legal Regime for Protecting Cultural Property,” 277.

[18] Ibid.

[19] See Department of Defense, United States of America. Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress, 133.

[20] Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 41.

[21] See Department of Defense, Australia. Law of Armed Conflict: Australian Defence Doctrine Publication, Chapter 2.

[22] I.e. between the years 1954 and 1999

[23] Based on my intuitive judgements I do not believe an argument on the morality of such actions is necessary

[24] See Page 2-3

[25] See Page 3

[26] Turka, The Destruction of Cultural Property as a Weapon of War, 2.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid., 5.

[29] Ibid., 2.

[30] Joshua Kastenberg, “The Legal Regime for Protecting Cultural Property,” 277.

[31] Ibid.

[32] I realise that there may be many factors that prevent the registration of CP with UNESCO and the Hague Convention, namely that the freedom of use of the immovable CP is curtailed due to control regulations stipulated in the Convention.

[33] The difference being that special protection cannot be converted for military objectives during armed conflict

[34] There are only two major projects currently in operation, by The Stockholm Centre and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, both funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust

[35] Helen Frowe and Derek Matravers, “Conflict and Cultural Heritage: A Moral Analysis of the Challenges of Heritage Protection,” J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy, no. 3 (2019): 6.

[36] Thomas G. Weiss and Nina Connelly, “Cultural Cleansing and Mass Atrocities: Protecting Cultural Heritage in Armed Conflict Zones,” J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy, no. 1 (2017): 12, emphasis added.

[37] Frowe and Matravers, “Conflict and Cultural Heritage,” 18

[38] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 41.

[39] Tami Davis Biddle, “Sifting Dresden’s Ashes,” The Wilson Quarterly, 29 (2005): 60.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 129.

[42] Jeff McMahan, “The Ethics of Killing in War” Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy, no. 114 (2004): 693.

[43] Ibid., 694.

[44] McMahan, Jeff. What Rights May Be Defended by Means of War, 2013. http://jeffersonmcmahan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/WRMBDBMW-corrected-proofs.pdf

[45] Given that McMahan’s body of work commented upon in this paper was constructed pre-IS attacks on Syria, I wonder if the author would reconsider his position?

[46] McMahan, Jeff. What Rights May Be Defended by Means of War, 121.

[47] I owe this wording to Dr. Garry Young.

[48] And, potentially, rightfully so.

[49] Unfortunately, it is outside the scope of this article to weigh alternative proposals of how best to identify CP against non-culturally significant immovable property

[50] Jeff McMahan, “The Ethics of Killing in War,” 695.

[51] Weiss and Connelly, “Cultural Cleansing and Mass Atrocities,” 25.

[52] Ibid.

Simone de Beauvoir: What is ‘Woman’ ?

In “The Second Sex” de Beauvoir states the dilemma of ‘woman’ is that she finds herself in a world where value and meaning have been ascribed by men. In the present essay I shall argue, firstly through an analysis of the dualistic concepts, immanence (in-itself) and transcendence (for-itself), and subsequently through a critical reflection on how we ought to consider the gender-construct, ‘woman,’ that, in agreement with de Beauvoir, authentic projects are essential in the emancipation of women.

By calling upon her own lived experience, de Beauvoir suggests there is no universal metaphysical essence that can ever define ‘woman.’ Rather, it is social construct fashioned through woman’s subordinate and circumscribed role in society. De Beauvoir argues that women have been relegated to a life of ‘immanence’; a concept that suggests women are passive, static, and ‘within themselves.’ This is in stark opposition to the male-dominated notion of ‘transcendence’, understood as an extension outward, a becoming, and an entity ‘for itself.’

As I comprehend it, since women have been excluded from equal participation in society, ranging from education, politics and career opportunities, de Beauvoir’s ability to grow, achieve and essentially obtain freedom, has been stifled. Additionally, as she is subservient to her reproductive body, woman has been locked into domestic labour and child-rearing responsibilities that suggest nature has mapped her future. In other words, woman has been imprisoned within immanence. But why? One would assume that if historically man has defined what it means to be human, then it is of no wonder why woman has been “defined and differentiated with reference to man.”[1] Women’s bodies, through male gaze have become nothing more than a sexualised object. Consequently, not only does woman become the Other, and the object of possession, but she is alienated from her very own body.

Conversely, men, historically with more open opportunities, move towards an indeterminate ‘becoming,’ and are therefore able to transcend the present. In a somewhat contingent and temporal happening, man utilises the woman as a medium for his own transcendence. Woman, complicit in the system of oppression, internalises the expectations of her ‘gender’ and becomes the muse in the creative exploits and projects of a man’s evolvement. I can’t help but think of Kiki de Montparnasse, Dora Maar and Edie Sedgwick amongst many, many other women. You are most probably unaware of these artists, or their work within literature, art, photography and fashion, as I was also. They were the ‘muses’ for Man Ray, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol respectively. Yet we hardly know of them as individuals, with their own passions, interests and direction. De Beauvoir would argue these women were unknowing of their own transcendent capabilities, remaining instead within an immanent existence. 

I find myself in agreement with de Beauvoir in that history has belonged to the domain of the man, and we are only just now beginning to critically rewrite versions of her-story[2], in an attempt to broaden the field of opportunities for women that allow for more transcendent paths. However, it is also of my opinion that de Beauvoir relies too heavily upon Cartesian language, such as man/woman, immanence/transcendence and subject/other, that further propagates gender as a binary condition.[3] Indeed, she begins her novel by questioning, “Are there even women?,”[4] and further on, “one is not born, but rather becomes woman.”[5] Such statements are suggestive that de Beauvoir is sympathetic to the distinction between sex and gender, in that gender is contingent and does not necessarily follow directly from sexual anatomy. Whilst the reproductive systems we are born with are a biological given, we are apparently able to either mute, disagree or recreate our gender identities.

If so however, how are we to understand sexual difference? If woman is not a metaphysical essence, and is also not purely dependent upon sex organs or hormones, then what is it? De Beauvoir admits herself that she does not have the answer. In fact, the answer lies in ‘woman’ emancipating herself from being a willing participant in patriarchal standards, and instead accepting her own radical freedom. Just because women have not been free in the past, it does not follow that she cannot be free. However, for de Beauvoir, women obtain freedom, like men, via projective transcendence, and engaging in the concept of life as a project. My objection to such an argument is that it follows that the female body becomes an intrinsic obstacle, and negative factor that must be overcome in order to obtain such freedom.

What if say, as a ‘women,’ I decide that my ‘project’ in life is to get married and take on the role as primary caregiver for my children, and thus also take on the majority of responsibility for domestic labour. Would this mean my life is reduced to mere immanence, and I would never truly be able to obtain freedom? Would I, in de Beauvoir’s account, be living either inauthentically or in ‘bad faith,’ subscribing to a stereotypical role in society? Is there no middle zone between either an immanent or transcendent life? However, de Beauvoir would refute this objection, and would in fact support my ‘project’ on the proviso my choice was made authentically and not by deferring responsibility to another.

Potentially, as suggested earlier, de Beauvoir’s work is still restricted by the male cogito, an objection that can be found in the work of Genevieve Lloyd.[6] Whilst this may be true, it is more so evidence of woman’s current condition. Women have grown up from an early age in a world made by and for men. They have read books, watched movies, listened to music and gone to school to inherit how to be a woman. And yet, in her projective transcendence she is expected to be beyond this; want more than this. If she marries, has children and leaves work she is ridiculed and condemned as being anti-feminist.

In order to ensure that the future of woman is permitted relationships with both immanence and transcendence, we must as a society, as de Beauvoir suggests, stop creating a paradigm of what we expect woman to be. In this respect, women can begin to have conceptions of themselves without the distortion of the male perspective that has positioned her as inessential, and the Other.

[1] Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 6.

[2] A feminist metaphorical take on the term ‘history’ that excludes the masculine pronoun his and replaces it with her

[3] And as such, excludes non-cisgender individuals

[4] Ibid., 2.

[5] Ibid., 301.

[6] Genevieve Lloyd, “Masters, Slaves, and Others.” Radical Philosophy, no. 34 (Spring, 1983).

Cartesian Metaphysics; A refutation of the cosmological & ontological argument of the existence of God

Often cited as the father of modern philosophy, René Descartes repudiated against his Aristotelian inheritance, grounding metaphysics in analytic geometry and mathematical reasoning, to offer alternative arguments to the existence of God. Descartes’ ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ argues two proofs of God’s existence: Meditation Three on ‘Concerning God’, and Meditation Five on ‘Concerning the Essence of Material Things, and Again Concerning God, That He Exists.’ I will argue through first an analysis of both meditations, and subsequently through the objections raised by Immanuel Kant, Pierre Gassendi and A. J. Ayer, Cartesian metaphysics is fraught with linguistic misapplications and tautologies. 

Rejecting Aristotle and the primary reliability on sense perception, due to the often erroneous and deceptive nature of our experiences, Descartes begins the meditations by establishing a Tabula Rasa; discarding all previous beliefs not held with certainty that may potentially have arisen from prejudicial causes. Through such a suspension of judgement, or what the Ancient Greeks termed ataraxia, Descartes relies upon a priori reasoning to establish, allegedly beyond doubt, that he himself is nothing substantially more than “a thinking thing; a thing that thinks.”[1]

Having arrived at what Descartes believed to be an objective vantage point, “I am, I exist”[2], at the end of Meditation Two, he furthers the subject of metaphysical inquiry to investigate whether “there may be other things”[3] that exist and can be known with certainty of both the incorporeal and corporeal worlds. Presenting first a cosmological argument, the Third Meditation begins with an introduction of Descartes’ innate idea of God. Underpinned by the context of the New Sciences as well as the doctrine of cause-and-effect, Descartes posits that he himself cannot possibly be the source of such an idea[4], as his own finitude, or rather, the imperfection of such, which contains in itself less reality than any true perfection either formally or eminently, could not possibly have generated the concept of the infinite.[5]. Consequently, and considering that “something cannot come into being out of nothing”[6], Descartes argues that someone else, a more perfect and infinite being must have been the cause of such an idea. The conclusory leap Descartes then performs states that any cause of an idea[7] must have as much formal reality as the idea has objectively. Ergo, God exists. 

Accordingly, since it remains indistinct at the end of Meditation Three how Descartes links the existent causality of an infinite being to the conception of a monotheistic God, I believe he digresses within Meditation Four to inquire where falsity resides so to establish a credibility to his self-assertions and innate ideas.[8] After concluding “that erything (sic) I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true”[9] Descartes continues his proof of God’s existence, yet this time from an ontological perspective, potentially foreshadowing objections to Meditation Three which did little to clarify how the formal reality of a perfect being follows from an imagined objective reality of such a being. With his cosmological argument hinging on the cogency of Meditation Five, Descartes necessitates the ascription of “all perfections to him[10]” incorporative of “eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, and creator of all things.”[11] Again, relying upon a preconceived definition and the axiom of clear and distinct perceptions of God to serve as premise for further reasoning.

And so, the Ontological argument[12] asserts we are able to attain knowledge of the existence of God if we clearly and distinctly understand that nothing “beside from God alone… whose essence existence belongs.”[13] In a comparison to how the essence of a triangle, “namely, that its three angles are equal to two right angles”[14], is inseparable from a triangle itself, equating geometry and mathematics to foundational truths, so too is existence contained within the metaphysical essence of a supremely perfect being, one that does not lack anything, existence included. Yet such a proclamation was anything but ‘modern’, with Anselm of Canterbury centuries prior similarly forcing God into existence by engineering the conception of God to include the property of existence. Yet, is existence a property? And moreover, can it be a divine perfection?

Kant vehemently rejected the notion existence could be a predicate, noting we already regard everything we think of as existing, to aid in the copula of a judgement. It was Gassendi however who presaged this Kantian objection by replying to Descartes’ discourse, noting that “what does not exist has no perfections or imperfections.”[15] Whilst this seems quite commonsensical, Descartes would discredit such rebuttals on the distinction between contingent and necessary existence, with God a necessary, independent existent over and above the finite and dependent. Albeit an important metaphysical distinction, the conception of a being that has necessary existence, or aseity, suggests nothing of significance, as it is but a slightly modified grammatical arrangement of the term ‘God’. Whilst logical positivists such as A. J. Ayer would purport Cartesian metaphysics as entirely “meaningless”, rendering it a truth-inapt task[16], calling into question whether metaphysics can ever offer philosophical knowledge, I believe the more relevant statement by Ayer is the continuation of the Kantian criticism in the suggestion that Descartes is “guilty of following grammar beyond the boundaries of sense”[17]. The existential proposition God Exists, can only ever be true in virtue of the terminology used to express the statement; it is but a tautology. By relying on the term God in order to argue the existence of an omnipotent creator, Descartes falls into the trap of his own purported “confused and obscure manner”[18] of reasoning.

Furthermore, by aiming to venture beyond the phenomenal, Descartes becomes lost in a multitude of linguistic contradictions. After asserting in both the Third and Forth Meditations that falsity “is to be found only in judgements”[19],  he then makes the crucial error of utilising the conjugation of the verb “judge” in the statement “I judge God to be infinite.”[20] As such, it could be argued that not only is Descartes ontological argument a methodological tautology, but the very conception of ‘God’ he utilises could be falsified. And moreover, the putative premise of both Meditation Three and Five to be fallacious. 

In summary, Descartes’ deductive reasoning concerning the proof of God’s existence has been found to be burdened with linguistic contradictions and tautologies. And as such, his own clear and distinct conclusions have not successfully ventured beyond the realm of self-assertion. Yet whilst it is outside the scope of this paper, I believe that even in the reduction of both arguments to the logical structure, so to eliminate such surface grammar misapprehensions and incongruous statements, Descartes would still fall short of substantiating a persuasive proof of the existence of God.[21]

[1] R. Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy,” in Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources, eds. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009), 44.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 47.

[4] Idea: An Infinite Being

[5] Descartes himself apparently only comprehending the conception of ‘infinite’ through the negation of the finite.

[6] Ibid., 49.

[7] The idea: the infinite; the cause of the idea: an infinite being

[8] And, prevent counterarguments asserting Descartes perception of God may be due to Catholic indoctrination or collective fabrications

[9] Ibid., 57.

[10] I.e. God

[11] Ibid., 49.

[12] Yet, Descartes states such a meditation is self-evident formal proof more than an argument in itself

[13] Ibid., 60.

[14] Ibid., 58.

[15] R. Descartes and P. Gassendi, “Objections and Replies: On the Fifth Meditation” in Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies, eds. J. Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 96.

[16] A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (Gollancz Publishing, 1946), 50.

[17] Ibid., 57.

[18] Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 50.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid., 52.

[21] See: Antoine Arnauld’s Objection noting the circularity of reasoning between Meditation Three and Five based on the doctrine of clear and distinct perception ( Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 69-82)

Tṛ́ṣṇā: Buddhist Philosophy & the Solution to Mental Health

Buddhist Philosophy has long posited the universal truth of life is suffering.[1] I will argue, through first an analysis of tṛ́ṣṇā, and a subsequent critical reflection on its application in modern context, that despite the obscurity of many Buddhist philosophical texts, the notion of tṛ́ṣṇā, is paramount to the reduction of mental health disorders.

Tṛ́ṣṇā (Sanskrit, Taṇhā: Pāli), literally translated as “thirst”, however more commonly referenced as ‘craving’[2], is one of the four central and interrelated claims made by Gautama Buddha via oral discourses in the 6th Century BCE[3], and later developed by both Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna Buddhist Philosophers alike. Asserting the universal truth of human existence is duhkha (Sanskrit: ‘suffering’), tṛ́ṣṇā is believed to be dualistically both the cause and answer to unhappiness[4]. Whilst there is much debate around the translation of such terminology within Western discourse[5], the Buddha himself clarifies in his first sermon, tṛ́ṣṇā not only embodies “craving for sense pleasures” aligning with English conceptions of the term, but also “for becoming and for not becoming.”[6] As such, less reductive accounts of tṛ́ṣṇā detail both positive (craving) and negative (aversion) reactions of sensory and psychological phenomena.

The pervasiveness of duhkha (incorporative of both brute physical and existential frustration) is thought to originate from the misapprehension of reality to be both personal and permanent.[7] In our ignorance (Sanskrit: avidyā) of the transitoriness of both external phenomena and our own metaphysical and empirical selves[8], it is argued that we create attachments; fooled by the presumption that in achieving our desires or avoidances we can attain pleasure and avoid displeasure respectively. Yet, such pursuits only further multiply and strengthen tṛ́ṣṇā, creating a causal chain and repeated rebirth (Sanskrit: Saṃsāra)[9]. Furthermore, the insatiable hunger that longs for ‘this’ or ‘that’, or even for ‘not this’ or ‘not that’ enacts an irremediable rejection and departure of unconditioned reality and what actually ‘is.’

In accepting the doctrine of tṛ́ṣṇā, I believe Buddhist Philosophy can offer a pragmatic approach in dealing with the trials and tribulations of modern-day society. Today, we are overloaded with commercial advertisements and subliminal messaging encouraging a grasp for yesterday’s nostalgia or the fantasising of tomorrow’s ‘maybe’s’. In addition to this constant removal from the present moment, we find ourselves endlessly comparing ourselves with our peers via social media platforms. To maintain avidyā in this manner would be to subscribe to a life constantly discontented with one’s current situation, potentially forfeiting a genuine edification for self and community. How can we learn to be satisfied with where we are in life, or what we have?

Whilst some critics have suggested the cessation of suffering entails but cognitive reasoning not dissimilar to the a priori methodology of Greek Rationalists, I believe the Noble Eightfold Path offers a practical utility of how one ought to live. Mahāyāna Philosopher Nagarjuna asserted “without a foundation in the convention truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught.”[10] Whilst such translations may seem recondite to the layperson, it is within the practice of yoga or meditation that the value in awareness of tṛ́ṣṇā can become reified. It is also of utmost importance to note the attainment of such wisdom is not restricted to merely philosophy kings[11], but rather is accessible to all, religious and non-religious alike.

Further contrasting Buddhist and Greek philosophies, I also note that unlike Plato, who assimilated and substituted ‘pleasant’ for ‘good’ and ‘unpleasant’ with ‘bad’[12], I believe tṛ́ṣṇā offers a more mature relationship with these supposedly binary emotions, suggesting instead they are two sides of the same coin, with subjective suffering essential for happiness. Could such notions even potentially reduce social stigmatism around mental health ailments?

By remaining detached from our mental inclinations (tṛ́ṣṇā), I believe we can begin to feel liberated from the agitation experienced from life’s vicissitudes, gaining psychological agency over our physical and metaphysical being. However, for tṛ́ṣṇā to be understood in this manner throughout the Western world, for the purpose of alleviating mental health issues, I strongly believe a naturalistic reinterpretation excluding Hindu doctrines of karma and rebirth is necessary.  

[1] Radhakrishnan and Moore, A Source Book in Indian Philosophy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957), 272.

[2] William Hart, The Art of Living (Singapore: Vipassana Publications, 1990), 49, 163.

[3] Carpenter, “The Buddha’s Suffering,” 1.

[4] Radhakrishnan and Moore, A Source Book, 272-6.

[5] Carpenter, “The Buddha’s Suffering,” 8.

[6] Thich Nhat Hahn. The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching (Great Britain: Ebury Publishing, 1999), 258.

[7] Carpenter, “The Buddha’s Suffering,” 14-5.

[8] Radhakrishnan and Moore, A Source Book, 273.

[9] S. N. Goenka, The Discourse Summaries (Igatpuri: Vipassana Research Institute, 1987), 40.

[10] Jay Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 69.

[11] Plato. The Collected Dialogues (Princeton University Press, 1963), 696.

[12] Plato. Complete Works (Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 781.

Immanuel Kant: Beauty, The Sublime & The Subjective Universal

Immanuel Kant famously states within his ‘Critique of Judgment,’ “Beautiful is what, without concept, is liked universally.”[1] His claim is that judgments of taste, especially those of the beautiful or sublime, can be differentiated from judgments of cognition or the agreeable, through notions of disinterest, and subjective universality. I will argue, whilst critically assessing both The First and Second Moments, three objections to Kant’s aesthetics; that his account of beauty separate from interest is unconvincing, that beauty can never be known to be universal, and finally, that his account of beauty focuses exclusively on positive judgments. 

Within his third critique, the ‘Critique of Judgment,’ Kant explicates, through a priori justification, three kinds of aesthetic judgments; the agreeable, the beautiful and the sublime. Firstly, Kant makes it known that our judgments take the form of quantity, quality, relation and modality. Secondly, within the First Moment (§1–§5), Kant assures that when assessing the beautiful, we base this judgment upon feelings of pleasure. However, for Kant, this judgment must be devoid of interest in the sense that the subject does not depend upon the existence of the object. For if the subject were either to have a desire for, or to depend upon whether or not they could possess, or own the object, their judgment would not necessarily correlate with the beautiful, but rather just with the agreeable. He states, the “agreeable is what the senses like in sensation.”[2] So, if I were to visit an art gallery and suggest that the sculpture is ‘beautiful,’ however, think to myself, “that it would look amazing in my living room,” I am merely expressing my preference for the item. For Kant, my suggestion that the sculpture was ‘beautiful’ was intermingled with a judgment of the agreeable, and as such, was not a judgment of beauty. This is evident in “for he must not call it beautiful if [he means] only [that] he likes it.”[3]

My main objection to Kant’s reasoning within The First Moment is that he is unable to assure our perceptions can ever be divorced from our sense faculties. For, if judgments of beauty must “subject the object to our own eyes,”[4] it follows that we are reliant upon our sense faculties to some degree. So, if judgments of taste do not reside in our sense, or our cognition,[5] where do they come from? Potentially Kant is suggesting ‘beauty’ belongs to the ‘object,’ and through our senses, we are merely recognising this. However, if we are to adopt Kant’s account of disinterested beauty, what are we really judging? If I am not mistaken, devoid of interest, desire, and passion, the beautiful object merely becomes an abstract manifestation in the external world, pattern-like, almost mathematical in nature; an aesthetic algorithm. To this point, is it not actually in our best interest to see the preservation of the beautiful? And, why is it that the comingling of beauty and interest is understood as a negative? I believe such questions are evaded in detriment to the argument.   

Within the Second Moment (§6–§9), Kant posits beauty as a universal. When making a judgment of beauty, albeit a correct one, we can assume that everyone else who encounters the singular object ought also to judge it to be of beauty. And additionally, feel a similar pleasure. In what seems like an oxymoronic statement, Kant suggests that the beautiful makes a claim of subjective universality. In this, Kant is suggesting that whilst beauty is ‘objective’ in that it is not influenced by personal preference, feelings or concepts, it is only conceived (wholly) through subjective experience. It is within these few passages that Kant also distances judgments of beauty from judgments requiring cognition, or those reliant upon concepts, or the good. Apparently, aesthetic judgments are made without understanding, or otherwise our faculties would give rise to cognition. Beauty is not logical, so therefore is not dependent upon cogito. And yet, in a somewhat contradictory move, Kant explains that in the communication of this ‘subjective universal’, “imagination and understanding are in free play.”[6]

Whilst this move appears counterintuitive and confused, my main objection of The Second Moment lies in the assertion that both ‘beauty’ and ‘the sublime’ are universals. Kant’s argument seems to rest on the idea that if we are to experience difference of opinion, one of the subjects is not making a pure judgment of beauty. If they were, everyone would surely be in agreement. It follows that just because someone suggests something is beautiful, it does not mean they are making a judgment of beauty. In fact, for Kant, they are utilising the word incorrectly. So, I suggest, Kant isn’t necessarily making a metaphysical claim of beauty, but rather is asserting a philosophy or language; redefining the noun ‘beauty’ in contrast to our layman use of the term.

Furthermore, the sublime is yet another example of contradictory language in virtue of Kant suggesting the definition of such to be ‘ineffable.’ To state that an entity is so beautiful one is rendered speechless, and yet, describe such as ‘sublime’ and ‘ineffable’, is directly putting words to the very thing that is apparently ‘beyond words.’ If, the sublime is also rendered a universal, and everyone in experience of this entity ought to feel the exact same ‘indescribable’ feeling, how are we to ever support such a claim if we are unable to speak of its properties? And even if it were just that in the face of the sublime everyone ought to be speechless, how are we to differentiate speechlessness due to the sublime and speechlessness due to an inability to speak?

Lastly, I find objection in the fact that Kant only ever speaks of positive judgments of beauty. Unfortunately, he has little to nothing to say about objects that are not beautiful, and more importantly, objects that are oppositely beautiful, or rather, ugly. Is ugly also a subjective universal? I think it pertinent to the conversation of judgments of taste to also speak of judgments against taste. Unfortunately, along with the other two objections noted above, I do not believe that Kant gives a convincing argument of why ‘beauty’ has been purported as disinterested and universal, above reasoning and resolving concerns he has self-created.

[1] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett 1987),64.

[2] Ibid., 47.

[3] Ibid., 55.

[4] Ibid., 59.

[5] As I will momentarily argue.

[6] Ibid., 62.

Hegelian Metaphilosophy: A discussion on the implications of Absolute Truth

Since ancient Greek philosophy the dialectical method, popularised by Plato and further adopted by medieval and modern philosophers alike, including Aristotle, Hegel and Marx, has been utilised as a process to either verify or falsify a priori theses. Yet, in a departure from the Socratic Method, Hegel asserted that contradictions and points of difference are vital in the reconciliation of aporia. Through a unification of both ideas and tensions, Hegel claims his absolute idealist conception of philosophy is able to move beyond relativistic views and subjective weltanschauungs to arrive at a final Truth. Furthermore, by adopting a ‘teleological account of history’ and a dynamic ‘coming-to-be’ of human thought, Hegel essentially shifts the goalposts of his predecessors, asserting that philosophy ought, and as such can, arrive with certainty at one single universal that underpins Being. In this essay I will analyse the Hegelian corpus regarding metaphilosophical claims to garner whether such conceptions are tenable. This will be conducted first through an assessment of the methodology of the Hegelian dialectic, with focus on both the philosopher’s theory of Truth and the centrality of historicism.

Prior to doing this, however, I believe it important to note this paper will concentrate primarily on a post-Kantian view of Hegel[1] due to issues of scope that limit the analysis of theologian terminology.

Positing that “philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality,”[2] albeit without any foundation to how this inference was made, Hegel assumes the position philosophy ought to drive towards is convergent Knowledge[3]. Arguing that philosophies of the past yield only “acceptance or rejection”[4] from a system that postulates theses and antitheses, Hegel believed we mischaracterised points of difference as ‘contradictions’, creating inarticulate misapprehensions that halt our progress towards holistic understanding.

This theory becomes most visible in Hegel’s use of the Bildung metaphor of growth, with the development of a flower between the stages of bud, blossom and fruit. Stating the “blossom is shown up in its turn as a false manifestation of the plant,”[5] Hegel suggests, that if we were to base our knowledge of a plant on the blossom alone, we would consequently inherit ‘negative insight’ and a partial, atomistic grasp of what a plant is; creating understanding that is deficit and incomplete. Moreover, rendering this moment as a philosophical ‘dead end,’ we fail in generating new conditions or concepts, halting the progress towards an objective Truth.

It is of no wonder then why Hegel criticised philosophers as generating errors and one-sided theories owing to their inability to transcend attachment to space and time. According to Hegel, within empiricism the ‘aims and results’ are substituted not for the “beginning of cognition” but for “actual cognition” itself and as such “the real issue” is evaded.[6]

The reconciliation of this conflict between bud, blossom and fruit, would see an integration of all reciprocally necessary “moments of organic unity”[7] to form a concrete whole; a totality of experience of the plant. Accordingly, the philosopher is placed somewhere between idealism and historicism. Witness to the course of history progressively ‘unfolding,’ much like the bud to the fruit, the philosopher is responsible for realising truth not as an isolated hypothesis or resultant theory but within the context of space and time, resolving past barricades towards Absolute Truth.

This process, most importantly, reworks the ancient dialectic to include a triadic third stage post -thesis, and -antithesis, commonly references as ‘synthesis’. Beginning with unreflected general principles, a system of deductive reasoning is employed so to ascertain the comprehensive, coherent conception traversing space or time Hegel assures we can reach. There has been much effort here by recent scholars to rescue the philosopher from a simplified reading of his posited dialectic, as the term ‘synthesis’ hardly encapsulates the complexity of Hegel’s logic. Whilst sometimes referenced as ‘sublation,’ the third triadic form is best understood per the original term ‘aufheben’. Literally translated as either “to cancel”, “to keep” or “to pick up”[8], we can begin to reify how concerns about subjective truths are considered.

Whilst we may experience subjective intuitions or conditioned realities, these are but particular truths, “from different perspectives,”[9] that should “not remain in the recesses of what is inner”[10] but come forth to contribute to the Whole. What philosophy ought to deal with then, as suggested earlier, is general principles and later, conceptions that lead us to an objective summary of ‘the real issue.’ Stating “the True is the whole,”[11] much like aufheben conserving the discourse between the thesis and antithesis, the Truth can maintain particular subjective experiences, and preserve the essential content that has come before. As such, contradictions are the catalyst for reconciliation and transcendence, elevating and ‘lifting up’ our original theses by arriving at das absolute Wissen.  

It is of importance here to understand that Truth, of which Hegel asserts is the aim of philosophical inquiry, is the static, stable, and non-relativistic Absolute underpinning all reality; the sum cause and effect of all Being. Potentially bridging the metaphysical debate between subject and substance; subject and object, for Hegel, Being-in-itself and for-other are intrinsically identical. Unlike his predecessor Kant, Hegel claims the idea of the thing-in-itself does not exist, supporting instead a monistic ontology, suggesting “for there all is one.”[12] If the ‘way the world is’ is equal to the way the ‘world is for beings,’ it could follow that Hegel reinstates our access to knowledge-of-the-world by removing Kant’s ultimately unreachable 'Ding an sich.'[13] Is then philosophy an open domain which laypersons can help advance?

In short: no. Resurrecting a similar hierarchy to Plato’s Philosopher Kings, Hegel believes that only the philosopher is capable of transcending “the common road… taken in casual dress,”[14]  to realise the inter-connectedness and convergence of content. Advocating that “the true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system,”[15] for Hegel the philosopher “ideas are only deserving of the ‘name of ‘truth’ when philosophy has had a hand in its production.”[16] She progresses the ultimate conclusion of Being through a scientific exposition and Hegelian Dialectic, accounting for errors in past philosophies to generate new comprehensive conceptions of the world. Essentially a mixture of a priori and a posteriori knowledge, she blends both ‘judgement and comprehension’ to reach a Whole, with results understood through “combining the result together with the process through which it came about.”[17] Resultantly, the philosopher takes on the role of syndicate; quasi-scientist, metahistorian, metaphilosopher and metaphysician.

Prior to the discussion of the philosopher’s metaphilosophy, I believe it necessary to contextualise my own place in history as a sympathetic gesture to the Hegelian canon. It can be said that the pervasiveness of the internet and digital information in everyday life of the 21st Century catalysed a paradigm shift that has redefined global thought. More recently, AI[18] algorithmic features of social media platforms and online news feeds aimed at increasing personal experiences has instead supercharged our confirmation biases. Whilst the layperson believes they are thinking ‘globally’, they are potentially becoming more segregated in their modes of thought. As such, it could follow, similar to the views of Hegel, that the contemporary or ‘new philosopher’ is becoming more entrenched within their own one-sidedness, failing to grasp how her individual view fits into the greater countryside of the philosophical system. Living in what one could argue is the wake of Cartesian Dualism, any point of conflict is generally taken to either extremity so to overcompensate for previous errors. This can be witnessed within political, social, ethical and legal philosophy alike.

To utilise the Hegelian conception of philosophy would be to favourably placate the disparity in these polarities of thought to embrace the diversities that exist between such assertions. Yet, whilst the convergence of atomistic ideals seems attractive, I am not entirely convinced it is necessary for philosophy to march towards one Absolute universal. And, furthermore is this even tractable?

Despite stating “the aim by itself is a lifeless universal” [19] I would like to temporarily isolate the Hegelian metaphilosophical aim, stated previously, to elucidate and assess the resulting consequences. First off, to quote his predecessor, Kant, ‘ought implies can,’ and as such, it is optimistically assumed we can arrive at the unification of the Truth of Being. So, I ask, how is it that the particularity of existence can be preserved in this final Idea?

Is not the reason for this dynamic transgression of thought, from conditioned principles to general universals, to achieve rationality and freedom of and for the self-consciousness? Accordingly, it could be argued that unless I can subjectively relate to the purported whole Truth then it becomes of no use to me and has no bearing on my reality. In fact, this quandary is not dissimilar to the claims posited by both Karl Marx and William James in response to the Hegelian dialect arguing philosophy should initiate change, not just deal in representations. As for conclusions to be active or effective there is much more required from philosophy than just the rational assertion that an Idea is correct. I recall the adage, ‘history is written by the victors’ in the suggestion that Hegel has not broached how underrepresented minorities would ever be included in either reflective or philosophical inquiry into the history of thought. With both history and philosophy thus far governed by gender and race schemas[20], I doubt such a task will ever be able to achieve the ‘wholeness’ Hegel speaks of. It is through an examination of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History the Eurocentrism of his thesis becomes apparent, discussing the ‘static nature’ of Indian and Chinese culture. Consequently, not only are such groups neglected in Hegel’s objective history but are themselves moreover not able to achieve freedom through the realisation of this Idea.

So, I ask, is the historical philosopher ever able to remove their own era’s cultural conceptions and prejudices from the reflective reading? And, ought they to? Potentially Hegel’s religious preconceptions led him to ponder questions of theodicy, and hence, desire one all-encompassing Truth? Whilst such a statement is just conjecture, it follows that Hegel himself, especially in his rationale of Eastern culture falls victim to his very own disparagements. However, Hegel himself would surely argue his assertions of the East are but partial truths yet to be realised as a Whole. As such, the question reorientates as, when can we arrive at the Absolute Truth?

Stating, “only in the end is it truly what it is,”[21] one could assume that the totality of human thought and Truth cannot be reached until the end of humanity. Is it not fallacious to assert that Being can be resolved through the Absolute that can only be known through the end of Being? In fact, illustrative language used throughout Phenomenology of Spirit would suggest just this, likening the aim and result; start and finish, to  “lifeless” entities  and “corpse(s)” respectively. Why should philosophy inexorably journey toward a perfect Understanding if we are unable to ever reach such a goal? Furthermore, insisting truth only appears “when its time has come,”[22] and “never prematurely,”[23] it positions any future philosophical inquiry not only as deterministic but creates a latent condition that suggests such work can only be performed retroactively. Consequently, and even without the traditional metaphysical reading of Hegel, he himself creates a one-sided argument that argues against one-sidedness due to the presupposition of the metaphysical existence of God.

Whilst James, much like Hegel aims at a comprehensive perspective, he adopts a subjective and pluralistic view of truth due to his assertion of the “complexity of fact.”[24] Further, his conception of philosophy is but the expression of differing and diverse personal worldviews or weltanschauung. What is ‘true’ within this weltanschauung is merely what is useful or expedient to the individual’s flourishing. Whilst Hegel asserts, “human nature only really exists in an achieved community,”[25] he would refute James’ objections by arguing it is the very fragmentation and compartmentalisation of thought he is moving against. To return to the earlier topic of digital information, which has made obtainable the awareness of the extreme vastness of thought, I tend to agree with James that such a system potentially negates the ‘tangled’, ‘painful’ and ‘dark’[26] aspects of life for the sake of maintaining a “noble, simple and perfect”[27] conception of Being. If Hegel were to assure that Truth was obtainable, and assuredly all-encompassing, within the context of Being, it remains elusive how philosophy could reach such sublation.

In summary, Hegel’s metaphilosophy concerning aspects of his theory of Truth and centrality of history has been found to be fraught with his own prejudices that assume the existence of God. Whilst his positioning of contradictions as catalysts for philosophical inquiry seems to benefit the extremity of thought in the digital age, his aim towards Absolute Truth has not successfully answered how underrepresented minorities and subjective experience can ever be preserved within such an end, and furthermore how the histories of such groups can ever be expounded in an objective Whole.

[1] Rather than the traditional metaphysical reading.

[2] Georg W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans A. V. Miller (Oxford University Press, 1977), 37.

[3] Or rather, ‘True comprehension’, as opposed to unreflective understanding.

[4] Ibid., 38.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Robert Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel, ( Oxford University Press, 1983), 271.

[9] Ibid., 285.

[10] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 58.

[11] Ibid., 20.

[12] Ibid.

[13] German: thing-in-itself

[14] Ibid., 43.

[15] Ibid., 38.

[16] Ibid., 57.

[17] Ibid., 38.

[18] Artificial Intelligence

[19] Ibid.

[20]Sally Haslanger, “Changing the Culture and Ideology of Philosophy” Hypathia, 23 (2008): 217.

[21] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 42.

[22] Ibid., 59.

[23] Ibid.

[24] William James, Some Problems with Philosophy, (Harvard University Press, 1979), 65.

[25] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 58.

[26] James, Some Problems with Philosophy, 65.

[27] Ibid.

What is Philosophy? Transcendental extension of thought & toward conscious unknowing

One of the aims of philosophy, despite differences in approach or methodology, has long been to arrive at foundational ‘truths’ or ‘givens’ about the universe. Gifted the name philosophia (philo- ‘loving’ and -sophia ‘knowledge’) by the Ancient Greeks, the discipline has been synonymous with the pursuit of knowledge ever since.

Yet, despite efforts, the question of ‘what is philosophy?’ has hardly found resolve. In formulating an answer to this question, boundaries and limitations are set, not just on the descriptive dimension of what philosophy has been or is, but also to what philosophy ought to be. Though, by virtue of design, normative claims also intrinsically suggest a negative element of what philosophy ought not to be. And so, if philosophy avoids certain particulars or conditions, can it really be called philosophy? As, in the formulation of ‘truths,’ if metaphilosophy remains limited, so will the results be partial and narrow. For is not philosophy the willingness to critically explore all perspectives.

Thus, it would follow philosophy intrinsically resists definition.

Despite this, within this essay I will attempt to answer the age-old question, ‘What is Philosophy?’ Firstly, I will argue that philosophy cannot be divorced from either subject or context, in a broader secondary claim that suggests differing species of philosophy are merely results of personally-significant ontological quandaries. Lastly, I propose the essence of philosophy is an extension outward of thought, and the moving toward a conscious unknowing, that provides an experience of transcendence for the philosopher.  

Philosophy carries subject and context.

And yet, whilst many philosophers have attempted the very task to define philosophy, despite notorious difficulties, I argue they have merely arrived at their conception of philosophy. In fact, I question the integrity of metaphilosophical claims in the sense that historically, metaphilosophy appears restricted to the cross promotion of one’s own philosophy-proper. As such, instead of analysing what has been said in the past, I aim to find commonalities in the nature, and quality of inquiry.

At the very base level, philosophy is thinking. If I were to theorise it were a way of ‘thinking,’ it would necessarily follow that I would be advocating for a certain methodology (over-and-above another). Indeed, the history of the discipline has been clouded with dispute over the cogency of a priori and a posteriori reasoning and whether empirical verification is imperative, alongside theoretical deduction, to yield genuine knowledge of the world. And yet, whilst Socrates and Hume sit diametrically opposed on this debate, I doubt anyone would theorise either are undeserving of the term philosopher purely due to their methodological asymmetry. Consequently, it is clear philosophy does not have a distinct modus operandi.

In fact, I suggest that variations of philosophical methodology occur purely in relation to their context in space and time. And theoretically, so does the focus of investigation. Could not the metaphysical concerns of Descartes relating to the existence of God be a product of tension, during the Age of Enlightenment, between religion and the sciences? In a similar vein to the work of Hegel, I suggest that if we were to view the work of Descartes divorced from the social, political, and historic context of the time, (that one could argue is responsible for the posited thesis), we would be choosing to read only a partial, incomplete and abstracted account of the philosophy by essentially stripping it of purpose. And if one thing can be agreed upon by all theorists alike, philosophy is not an accidental quest; it is one of intention.

Whilst this intention may be to arrive at objective Truth, the philosophical inquiry itself can never be independent from the subject. And nor should it. Further to this, context and subject cannot be posited independently from one another, as it would be absurd and impossible to think of context without existence.

To use an analogy, albeit quite abstract in formulation, it would be similar to a comparison between synthetic laminate and solid hardwood flooring; whilst both products may appear identical in aesthetics (i.e. end presentation), they have clearly been produced through different manufacturing and engineering means (i.e. context). Therefore, there would be something lost to my understanding if I were to simple render the laminate as ‘timber flooring.’

Philosophy is a positing of thesis true to the philosopher’s world.

Possibly, the very act of trying to resolve questions about the world in which we live suggests that the discipline has an inherent therapeutic function. Common ground is found between differing species of philosophy in that each are attempting to resolve unknowns of our existence. But, why? What is this offering us beyond the acquisition of further knowledge? Whilst James suggests it may offer us correction and resolution of the pseudo-problems philosophy first created, I believe it corrects the pseudo-problems of life (that the subject has created). And as such, amongst its ends, is a tool to cope with the world in which we find ourselves.

Different branches of philosophy are merely disparities in personal quandaries.

‘How ought one to live?’ This is but a discussion for those who have found tension and contradiction within their own moral code. If a subject were to view themselves as ‘good,’ would they not need to find reason to why they then still commit ‘bad’ acts? ‘What is real?’ Is this not a discussion for those interested in resolving how life came about? Philosophy is an asking of questions of life that, whilst may not provide an answer, may render the question no longer necessary. What philosophers sometimes forget within this task, however, is that they are not entirely concerned or committed to the outcome. Philosophy after all, is an act, not a result. It is the process of criticising prima facie reasoning, that will lead to either a confirmation of the original hypothesis, or a challenge to preconceptions and a change in thought. The moralist in the above equation, in study of metaethics, no longer views ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in such a rudimentary, black-and-white manner. Or, maybe they have found solace in deontological ethics of Kant. Or, consequentialism. Potentially they even posit a new thesis.

Either way, the philosopher takes on an active position. The subject is expanding themselves. Consequently, the essence of philosophy becomes a reaching out; an extension. 

Yes, there exist different philosophies. Some of these contradict one another. Some focus on generalities, others on particulars. And yet, the discipline allows for this; it begs for it. The very act of philosophising is found in the principle task of distrusting and being sceptical of one’s conditioning of life. For this is the act of weighing prejudice.

We begin with personal philosophies, or what James would call weltanschauung, inclusive of commonsensical propositions or beliefs, folk philosophies, hearsay, or even opinions and traditions of the past. We then, via the critical reflection of ourselves or our peers, begin to question whether such a hypothesis is completely incoherent, incorrect, relative or conclusive. In this process, we both add and subtract. Furthermore, we revise. And then, we revise again.  

‘But, wait,’ I hear you say, ‘I thought you said there is no one fixed methodology?’ Correct, there isn’t. However, we are unable to begin with a tabula rasa. It would not only be foolish to expect this, but I cannot even begin to imagine how one would go about this process. Our prejudices are the very reason for the line of inquiry in the first place. For remember, philosophy and subject are intimately comingled. By its very nature, discussed earlier, in that philosophy refuses to be bound by exclusions or limitations, and instead, is willing to go ‘anywhere,’ it must permit the social activity of ‘discourse.’ Philosophers, with inherent difference in subjective and contextual experience evolve philosophies by the addition of perspective. Prejudices become seen in other light, and a more comprehensive account is formed. As such, philosophy is radically social by nature.

So, should these individual philosophies converge? No, in that they do not necessarily have to. But yes, if it is of importance to the philosopher to see harmony, balance and unity within the world (arguably, their world). As suggested earlier, differing philosophies, in approach or focus, are merely resultant from differing personal quandaries. We are unable to intercept divergent temperaments from going toward certain philosophies. If we were, it would be due to the quandary no longer being of concern to the subject.

With a link to both context and subject, it would appear then that not only is historicism an important tenet to the discipline, but there is something fundamentally ontological in respect to philosophical inquiry.

Philosophy as extension

It has been suggested that there is no one fixed definition of philosophy, over and above that ‘philosophy is resistant to definition.’ And yet, we have found that the essence of philosophy is extension. Why is it that some are drawn to philosophy for extension in life over say, spirituality or sports? Could it be similar to the suggestion before that we go toward preferences, in that those drawn to philosophy as a discipline are more head-centred than others? As such, I suggest philosophy is therapy for thinkers.

Philosophy is a moving-beyond, transcendence of thought.

There is no one size fits all. There is no one philosophy. There is only the philosophy and way thereof relative to the subject-context of the philosopher.

I hear the objection, is this stance aphilosophical? In short, no. this conception of philosophy is by no means unconcerned. The very opposite actually. It is merely considerate and compassion towards all philosophies, viewing each as a product of their time and location, and subject-context. 

In fact, taking nothing as given and questioning all prejudice, it gifts an extension not only to the philosopher themselves but to others, catalysing future philosopher’s transcendental path, whether for the positive or negative.

It does not necessarily need to arrive at answers. In fact, I suggest historically the discipline has raised as many questions as it has answered. Potentially, more. Furthermore, if we understand philosophy as boundless, surely, we accept the temporal nature of any answers we arrive at. So then, does it follow that there are no Absolute Truths? Potentially, no. However, such an answer is surely proposing a normative claim on the discipline. And so, I rather suggest, potentially an Absolute can only be arrived at under the resolve of the subject-context relation, or in other words, the end of existence. If times’ arrow remains marching forward, subject and context evolve, and as such, so too does philosophy continue to reach out. As furthermore, the task of philosophy is never complete.

Essentially, taken givens at the beginning of the act of thinking are developed within the broader countryside that converses with other known philosophies, as well as the subject-context and space and time responsible for generating the thesis. 

As such, the task of philosophy, becomes an acknowledgement of the difficulty of knowing anything for certain and an act of thinking toward a conscious unknowing.

In the present essay, I have argued that the very nature of philosophy is resistant to definition. However, in pursuit of a descriptive claim about the discipline I have been able to expound the essence of philosophy to be one of extension. It is within this extension, philosophy creates a transcendental path for the subject to ask personally-imperative, and context driven questions about the universe. Whether or not an answer is arrived at, albeit either relative or conclusive in nature, the task of thinking allows the subject to critically assess the importance of inquiry in relation to their own life and find solace in either the resolve or refutation of life’s pseudo-problems.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Freiedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1977.

James, William. Some Problems with Philosophy. Harvard University Press, 1979.