Damian Cox

Integrity and the fragile self

Views of integrity: integrated-self identity clean-hands. Integrity as a virtue: should we strive for integrity? integrity and commitment emotional integrity integrity and morality integrity and moral limits the virtue of integrity. Integrity and utilitarian moral theory: Williams against the utilitarian the argument from integrity what is the problem with utilitarianism? is utilitarianism really incompatible with integrity?. Types of integrity: professional integrity political integrity what defeats political integrity? intellectual integrity artistic integrity artistic integrity and moral integrity the many roles of integrity. Striving for integrity: is the pursuit of integrity self-indulgent? too much integrity? can political and social structures undermine integrity?.

Politics most unusual: Violence, sovereignty and democracy in the 'war on terror'

How has September 11 and the declaration of the ‘global war on terror’ changed our conceptions of politics? How has it affected our understanding of democracy, human rights, personal freedom and government accountability? How should we respond in the face of growing violence and authoritarianism? In answering these questions, the authors engage in a comprehensive and critical analysis of politics in the age of terrorism. They explore different dimensions of a new political paradigm that has started to emerge in our societies, one characterized by an obsession with security, a loss of civil liberties and democratic transparency, government lies and cover-ups, the intrusion of religion into the public sphere, and an increasingly violent and militaristic foreign policy. In attempting to make sense of these developments, Politics Most Unusual examines a series of political, moral and psychological questions which are central to explaining politics in the age of terror.

The Trouble with Truth-Makers

This paper argues that theories of truth which seek to specify the ontological ground of true statements by appealing to an ontology of truth-makers face a severe and possibly insurmountable obstacle in the form of logically complex statements. I argue that there is no apparent way to develop an account of logically complex truth within the confines of a modest and plausible ontology of truth-makers and to this end criticize independent attempts by Armstrong and Pendlebury to develop such an account.

GOODMAN AND PUTNAM ON THE MAKING OF WORLDS

Hilary Putnam and Nelson Goodman are two of the twentieth centurys most persuasive critics of metaphysical realism, however they disagree about the consequences of rejecting metaphysical realism. Goodman defended a view he called “irrealism” in which minds literally make worlds, and Putnam has sought to find a middle path between metaphysical realism and irrealism. I argue that Putnams middle path turns out to be very elusive and defend a dichotomy between metaphysical realism and irrealism.

Teaching war and violence to the like-minded

According to the earliest line of objection, there was no need for Peace Studies to be introduced as a separate area of the curriculum because what Peace Studies courses would cover could be better accomplished within the well-established humanities disciplines, such as history, philosophy, and English literature. This objection was rooted in a rather narrow view of the disciplines—sometimes pumped up with claims of the specialized methodological grounding of traditional disciplines—and perhaps also in a territorial and self-protective mentality. Funds to universities were being cut and the introduction of new disciplines or fields of study was often financially threatening to established disciplines. This battle over the exclusivity of traditional disciplines has now been lost with the widespread introduction of fields such as cultural studies, and with the establishment of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies. The change has come primarily from within, with humanities disciplines re-conceiving and reinventing themselves. Studying English literature, philosophy, or anthropology is now very different from what it was in the 1980s. A second objection, or series of objections, to the introduction of Peace Studies was directed at the nature of the field itself. According to Caroline Cox, Roger Scruton, and John Marks, teaching in such a field could not

American Empire and its Discontents

In the last chapter we explored the state of exception in terms of its implications for domestic politics. The moment of exception referred to the way that the sovereign defines a state of emergency and decides unilaterally on how to respond to it, suspending the legal framework which would otherwise limit it. The state of exception is therefore a crystallization of the power of the state, a strange no-man’s-land beyond the law in which the sovereign can act with violent impunity. We found that this situation applies increasingly to political life in contemporary Western societies, societies which define themselves as formally liberal and democratic but which implement ‘security’ measures that are more akin to those of authoritarian police states.

Welcome to Su: The spectral university

Abstract While some may argue that universities are in a state of crisis, others claim that we are living in a post-university era; a time after universities. If there was a battle for the survival of the institution it is over and done with. The buildings still stand. Students enrol and may attend lectures, though most do not. But virtually nothing real remains. What some mistakenly take to be a university is, in actuality, an “uncanny” spectral presence. The encompassing ethico-philosophical question is this: what is it about spectral space and the feeling of absence with regard to the university that is important to understand? The Spectral University is characterized by the absence of what used to give the university its constitutive form and structure; of what is essential to the university as an important place of learning and growth. What is gone is the ability to pursue the academic virtues.

Diagnosis without treatment: responding to the War on Terror

The War on Terror has exposed deep problems within contemporary political practice. It has demonstrated the moral fragility of liberal democracy. Much critical literature on the topic is devoted to uncovering the sources of this fragility. In this paper, we accept the general thrust of much of this literature, but turn our attention to the practical upshot of the criticism. A common feature of the literature is that, when it comes to offering remedies of the problems it identifies, what is offered is ‘diagnosis without treatment’. The negation of a problem is regarded as a solution. For example, if the problem is that the USA is not acting as a good international citizen, the solution is that it begins to act as such. This is like a doctor diagnosing gout and recommending to the patient that they reduce the level of uric acid in their big toe. We argue that diagnosis without treatment is endemic in literature on the War on Terror and the ills of liberal democracy. We divide this literature into five categories and examine representative works in each. At the end of the paper, we describe what is required to avoid offering yet more diagnosis without treatment.

Religion, Prejudice, Violence and Politics

When it comes to everyday discourse about political agency, there is a disturbing asymmetry between the kinds of explanation that tend to be offered of one’s own group and those offered of foreign or enemy groups. The actions and motivations of political actors in one’s own camp, say Western politicians, tend to be rationalized and understood in terms of straightforward, even if not always wholly lucid or laudable, cognitive goals. Beliefs and principles are generally assumed to be the chief motivating features here, and so explanations of actions, including acts of horrendous violence, have to refer to these. The underlying supposition of Western popular discourse on US policy in Iraq, for example, seems to be that no matter how ill-planned it has been, there could be no reason for the invasion of Iraq other than destroying weapons allegedly already present, or forestalling the development of weapons of mass destruction by an unwholesome and dangerous dictator or helping the Iraqis to free themselves of a tyrannical regime. These are often taken as laudable — or at least perfectly understandable — goals and as central to explaining, if not justifying, US action. Even if the strategy for achieving them is seen as misguided, the intention of the strategy at least makes sense.

Lying in the War on Terrorism

This chapter deals with an issue not much dealt with in the literature on terror — that of lying. It may at first seem a background or preliminary problem. It proves, however, to be very much at the centre of what has happened to politics as it responds to terrorism. It underpins a subversion of discourses on terror, tolerance and democracy, as well as means/ends thinking and a distortion of moral judgment. Lying and other forms of mendacity undermine freedom and democratic politics.1 More than violence and terrorism itself (though deception and lying are directly related to these) it threatens the future viability of liberal democracy — not just as a polity but also as a way of thinking. It raises the question of whether so-called Western democracies, formally or substantively considered, can properly be regarded as democracies at all.2 The overly insistent idea — used like some school motto — that it is terrorism and violence that threaten Western democracies rather than lies and deceit, is best seen as a subterfuge and projective form of defence. This kind of lying, like excessive self-deception and hypocrisy, is self-propagating and proliferate. Here on a local level at least, Kant’s notion that the practice of lying as a matter of course is self-defeating in that it undermines the possibility of any meaningful discourse whatsoever seems to hold.