We discuss the variety of sorts of sympathy Hume recognizes, the extent to which he thinks our sympathy with others’ feelings depends on inferences from the other’s expression, and from her perceived situation, and consider also whether he later changed his views about the nature and role of sympathy, in particular its role in morals.

David Hume's essay Of Moral Prejudices offers a spirited defense of "all the most endearing sentiments of the hearts, all the most useful biases and instincts, ...

What is it to deceive someone? And how is it possible to deceive oneself? Does self-deception require that people be taken in by a deceitful strategy that they know is deceitful? The literature is divided between those who argue that self-deception is intentional and those who argue that it is non-intentional. In this study, Annette Barnes offers a challenge to both the standard characterisation of other-deception and current characterizations of self-deception, examining the available explanations and exploring such questions as (...) the self-deceiver's false consciousness, bias, and the irrationality and objectionability of self-deception. She arrives at a non-intentional account of self-deception that is deeper and more complete than alternative non-intentional accounts and avoids the reduction of self-deceptive belief to wishful belief. (shrink)

David Hume has been invoked by those who want to found morality on human nature as well as by their critics. He is credited with showing us the fallacy of moving from premises about what is the case to conclusions about what ought to be the case; and yet, just a few pages after the famous is-ought remarks in A Treatise of Human Nature, he embarks on his equally famous derivation of the obligations of justice from facts about the cooperative (...) schemes accepted in human communities. Is he ambivalent on the relationship between facts about human nature and human evaluations? Does he contradict himself – and, if so, which part of his whole position is most valuable? Between the famous is-ought passage and the famous account of convention and the obligations arising from established cooperative schemes once they are morally endorsed, Hume discusses the various meanings of the term “natural.” “Shou'd it be ask'd, Whether we ought to search for these principles [upon which all our notions of morals are founded] in nature or whether we must look for them in some other origin? I wou'd reply, that our answer to this question depends upon the definition of the word, Nature, than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal.” The natural can be opposed to the miraculous, the unusual, or the artificial. It is the last contrast that Hume wants, for his contrast between the “artificial” culturally variant, convention-dependent obligations of justice and the more invariant “natural virtues,” and what he says about that contrast in this preparation for his account of the “artificial” virtues, makes it clear why he can later refer to justice as “natural” and to the general content of the rules of justice – that is, of basic human conventions of cooperation – as “Laws of Nature”. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie aktuellen Entwicklungen und Anforderungen in der pflegeberuflichen Bildung, das Ausbildungsziel im Pflegeberufegesetz vom 17. Juli 2017 und die Explikationen in der dazugehörigen Ausbildungs- und Prüfungsverordnung für die Pflegeberufe fordern eine stärkere Ausrichtung auf die Entwicklung ethischer Kompetenzen explizit ein. Bislang liegen tendenziell übergreifende Definitionen und Darlegungen zu ethischen Kompetenzen in der Pflege vor, deren Verdienst es ist, das Spezifische der Pflegeethik zu konturieren und erstmals ethische Kompetenzen für das Feld zu konkretisieren. In methodischer und didaktischer Hinsicht ist indes eine (...) spezifische Differenzierung gemäß unterschiedlicher Bildungsniveaus relevant. Lehrende werden ihre Lehre nicht mehr nur im Sinne einer allgemeinen Förderung ethischer Kompetenz entwickeln können, sondern müssen dabei den jeweiligen Verantwortungsbereich und das angezielte Qualifikationsniveau der Lernenden berücksichtigen. Ziel der Darlegungen ist es, konkrete Kompetenzniveaus für die Anbahnung professionsethischer Kompetenzen zu operationalisieren, die einerseits die Anforderungen aus dem zukünftigen Pflegeberufegesetz aufgreifen und andererseits anstehende curriculare Entwicklungsprozesse unterstützen. (shrink)

Many countries have adopted new triage recommendations for use in the event that intensive care beds become scarce during the COVID‐19 pandemic. In addition to establishing the exact criteria regarding whether treatment for a newly arriving patient shows a sufficient likelihood of success, it is also necessary to ask whether patients already undergoing treatment whose prospects are low should be moved into palliative care if new patients with better prospects arrive. This question has led to divergent ethical guidelines. This paper (...) explores the distinction between withholding and withdrawing medical treatment during times of scarcity. As a first central point, the paper argues that a revival of the ethical distinction between doing and allowing would have a revisionary impact on cases of voluntary treatment withdrawal. A second systematic focus lies in the concern that withdrawal due to scarcity might be considered a physical transgression and therefore more problematic than not treating someone in the first place. In light of the persistent disagreement, especially concerning the second issue, the paper concludes with two pragmatic proposals for how to handle the ethical uncertainty: (1) triage protocols should explicitly require that intensive care attempts are designed as time‐limited trials based on specified treatment goals, and this intent should be documented very clearly at the beginning of each treatment; and (2) lower survival prospects can be accepted for treatments that have already begun, compared with the respective triage rules for the initial access of patients to intensive care. (shrink)

This essay critically examines a suggestion proposed by some Confucianists that Confucianism and Care Ethics share striking similarities and that feminism in Confucian societies might take “a new form of Confucianism.” Aspects of Confucianism and Care Ethics that allegedly converge are examined, including the emphasis on human relationships, and it is argued that while these two perspectives share certain surface similarities, moral injunctions entailed by their respective ideals of ren and caring are not merely distinctive but in fact incompatible.

In these Carus Lectures, Annette Baier looks at the relation between individual and shared reasoning, intending, and moral reflection. In each case she emphasizes the interdependence of minds and the role of social practices in setting the norms governing these activities.

Nurse practitioners (NPs) are increasingly called on to provide high‐quality health‐care particularly for people who face significant barriers to accessing services. Although discourses of social justice have become relatively common in nursing and health services literature, critical analyses of how NP roles articulate with social justice issues have received less attention. In this study, we examine the role of NPs from a critical social justice perspective. A critical social justice lens raises morally significant questions, for example, why certain individuals and (...) groups bear a disproportionate burden of illness and suffering; what social conditions contribute to disparities in health and social status; and what social mandate NPs ought to develop in response to these realities. In our analysis, we draw on lessons learned from the initial Canadian experience with the introduction of NPs in the 1970s to consider the renewed and burgeoning interest in NPs in Canada, Australia and elsewhere. As we argue, a critical social justice perspective (in addition to the biomedical foci of NP practice) will be essential to sustaining long‐term, socially responsive NP roles and achieving greater equity in health and health‐care. (shrink)

This new edition contextualizes Lareau's original ethnography in a discussion of the most pressing issues facing educators at the beginning of the new millennium.

Disagreement persists about when, if at all, disenfranchisement is a fitting response to criminal wrongdoing of type X. Positive retributivists endorse a permissive view of fittingness: on this view, disenfranchising a remarkably wide range of morally serious criminal wrongdoers is justified. But defining fittingness in the context of criminal disenfranchisement in such broad terms is implausible, since many crimes sanctioned via disenfranchisement have little to do with democratic participation in the first place: the link between the nature of a criminal (...) act X (the ‘desert basis’) and a fitting sanction Y is insufficiently direct in such cases. I define a new, much narrower account of the kind of criminal wrongdoing which is a more plausible desert basis for disenfranchisement: ‘political wrongdoing’, such as electioneering, corruption, or conspiracy with foreign powers. I conclude that widespread blanket and post-incarceration disenfranchisement policies are overinclusive, because they disenfranchise persons guilty of serious, but non-political, criminal wrongdoing. While such overinclusiveness is objectionable in any context, it is particularly objectionable in circumstances in which it has additional large-scale collateral consequences, for instance by perpetuating existing structures of racial injustice. At the same time, current policies are underinclusive, thus hindering the aim of holding political wrongdoers accountable. (shrink)

In controlled human infection (CHI) studies, investigators deliberately infect healthy individuals with pathogens in order to study mechanisms of disease or obtain preliminary efficacy data on investigational vaccines and medicines. CHI studies offer a fast and cost‐effective way of generating new scientific insights, prioritizing investigational products for clinical testing, and reducing the risk that large numbers of people are exposed to ineffective or harmful substances in research or in practice. Yet depending on the pathogen, CHI studies can involve significant risks (...) or burdens for participants, pose risks to individuals or communities not involved in the research, and lead to public controversy. It is therefore essential to ensure that the risks of CHI studies are justified by their social value—that is, their potential to generate benefits for society—and that public trust can be maintained. In this paper, we aim to clarify how research sponsors, research ethics committees and other reviewers should judge the social value of CHI studies. We develop a list of relevant considerations for making social value judgments based on the standard view of social value. We then use this list to discuss the example of potentially conducting dengue virus CHI studies in endemic settings. We argue that dengue virus CHI studies in endemic settings would fall on the higher end of the spectrum of social value, mostly because of their potential to redirect all fields of future dengue research. Drawing on this discussion, we derive several general recommendations for how reviewers should judge the social value of CHI studies. (shrink)

Most Third World feminists consider nationalism as detrimental to feminism. Against this general trend, I argue that “polycentric” nationalism has potentials for advocating feminist causes in the Third World. “Polycentric” nationalism, whose proper goal is the attainment and maintenance of national self-determination, is still relevant in this neocolonial age of capitalist globalization and may serve feminist purposes of promoting the well-being of the majority of Third World women who suffer disproportionately under this system.

_Postures of the Mind _was first published in 1985. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Annette Baier develops, in these essays, a posture in philosophy of mind and in ethics that grows out of her reading of Hume and the later Wittgenstein, and that challenges several Kantian or analytic articles of faith. She questions the assumption that intellect has authority over (...) all human feelings and traditions; that to recognize order we must recognize universal laws—descriptive or prescriptive; that the essential mental activity is representing; and that mental acts can be analyzed into discrete basic elements, combined according to statable rules of synthesis. In the first group of essays—"Varieties of Mental Postures"—Baier evaluates the positions taken by philosophers ranging from Descartes to Dennett and Davidson. Among her topics are remembering, intending, realizing, caring, representing, changing one's mind, justifying one's actions and feelings, and having conflicting reasons for them. The second group of essays—"Varieties of Moral Postures" - explores the sort of morality we get when all of these capacities become reflective and self-corrective. Some deal with particular moral issues—our treatment of animals, our policies regarding risk to human life, our contractual obligations; others, with more general questions on the role of moral philosophers and the place of moral theory. These essays respond to the theories of Hobbes, Kant, Rawls, and MacIntyre, but Baier's most positive reaction is to David Hume; _Postures of the Mind _ affirms and cultivates his version of a moral reflection that employs feeling and tradition as well as reason. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young’s politics of difference promotes equality among socially and culturally different groups within multicultural states and advocates group autonomy to empower such groups to develop their own voice. Extending the politics of difference to the international sphere, Young advocates “decentered diverse democratic federalism” that combines local self-determination and cosmopolitanism, while adamantly rejecting nationalism. Herr argues that nationalism, charitably interpreted, is not only consistent with Young’s politics of difference but also necessary for realizing Young’s ideal in the global (...) arena. (shrink)

“Confucian democracy” is considered oxymoronic because Confucianism is viewed as lacking an idea of equality among persons necessary for democracy. Against this widespread opinion, this article argues that Confucianism presupposes a uniquely Confucian idea of equality and that therefore a Confucian conception of democracy distinct from liberal democracy is not only conceptually possible but also morally justifiable. This article engages philosophical traditions of East and West by, first, reconstructing the prevailing position based on Joshua Cohen’s political liberalism; second, articulating a (...) plausible conception of Confucian democracy predicated on Confucian conceptions of persons and political participation from the Mencian tradition; and third, exposing the implausibility of the prevailing position in light of the articulation. (shrink)

Annette Baier's aim is to make sense of David Hume's Treatise as a whole. Hume's family motto, which appears on his bookplate, was True to the End. Baier argues that it is not until the end of the Treatise that we get his full story about truth and falsehood, reason and folly. By the end, we can see the cause to which Hume has been true throughout the work. Baier finds Hume's Treatise of Human Nature to be a carefully (...) crafted literary and philosophical work which itself displays a philosophical progress of sentiments. His starting place is an overly abstract intellectualism that deliberately thrusts passions and social concerns into the background. In the three interrelated books of the Treatise, his self-understander proceeds through partial successes and dramatic failures to emerge with new-found optimism, expecting that the exact knowledge the morally self-conscious anatomist of human nature can acquire will itself improve and correct our vision of morality. Baier describes how, by turning philosophy toward human nature instead of toward God and the universe, Hume initiated a new philosophy, a broader discipline of reflection that can embrace Charles Darwin and Michel Foucault as well as William James and Sigmund Freud. Hume belongs both to our present and to our past. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 32, Number 1, April 2006, pp. 113-117 How Wide Is Hume's Circle? (A question raised by the exchange between Erin I. Kelly and Louis E. Loeb, Hume Studies, November 2004) ANNETTE C. BAIER Hume's version, in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, section 9,2 of the viewpoint from which moral assessments are made, and from which traits are recognized as virtues or vices, is (...) that it is one which activates a "universal principle of the human frame," the "principle of humanity." It displays "the force of many sympathies," and depends upon our possession of "some propensity to the good of mankind" (EPM 5.39; SBN 226). Does this represent a revision, on Hume's part, of his Treatise claim that sympathy with a person's "narrow circle" is what enables us to judge that person's moral goodness? A humanity-wide circle is scarcely "narrow," even if it is not wide enough for those who see our treatment of animals as relevant to our moral merit or demerit. The claim about sympathy with the narrow circle is made in the Treatise section "Of goodness and benevolence."3 It has recently been assuming the status of a definition of the Humean moral point of view, in some commentators' writings.4 If it had been so intended, then there would indeed be a revision in EPM, where there is no mention of narrow circles, merely two footnotes, 22 and 25, to the section "Why utility pleases," concerning the wisdom of confining our efforts to do good to those close to us, lest our efforts be "dissipated or lost for want of a properly limited object." But in fact Hume never claimed that sympathy with a Annette Baier formerly taught in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and is now retired. Email: [email protected]. 114 Annette C. Baier person's narrow circle was enough to enable us to recognize her bravery, her proper pride, her prudence, her good judgement, her wit, her integrity, her "justice" or her allegiance to lawful magistrates. It is needed only to judge her "goodness and benevolence. " (I take it that the title, "Of goodness and benevolence," is pleonastic, that the varieties of benevolence exhaust "goodness.") Just as benevolence is not the whole of virtue, for Hume, nor is "goodness." The section in which he uses the phrase, "narrow circle," begins with an explicit limitation of what is there to be discussed: "Having thus explained that praise and approbation for everything we call great in human affections, we now proceed to give an account of their goodness..." (T 3.3.3.1; SBN 602). "Good" is not, for Hume, the most general term of moral approbation. Just as we can judge some to be "too intrepid" (an ingredient in "greatness of mind"), so we can judge some to be "too good" (EPM 7.22; SBN 259). Hume's most general terms of approbation are "meritorious" and "estimable." He uses "good" in a restricted sense, for a person's possession of the group of virtues that come under "benevolence." In the Treatise 3.3.3.15 (SBN 581-82), he speaks not of one moral point of view, but of "steady and generalpoinrs of view" (my emphasis), and it is possible, indeed plausible, that sympathy with circles of different widths will be needed to recognize different virtues and groups of virtues. For some, such as justice, "extensive sympathy" (T 3.3.1.23; SBN 586) is needed. For others, such as affability, and other aspects of "goodness," we sympathize with the effects of the person's character on a less extensive circle. A good person is affable, generous, and kind, does well as friend, as parent, as neighbor, as colleague, as employer. She does considerate and helpful things to those she encounters, both those close to her, friends, family, and work-mates, and also to those to whom she is not so close, such as the needy in her own community, to whom she may give employment, or charity. Hume uses other phrases in Treatise 3.3 which are sometimes taken to refer to the same... (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Designing Academic Conferences in the Light of Second-Order Cybernetics” by Laurence D. Richards. Upshot: Richards’s article presents a well-argued discussion of conversational conferences, with a particular focus on the design of such conferences. Richards bases his discussion on many years of personal experience with conversational conferences, primarily those organized by and for the American Society for Cybernetics. I particularly appreciate that Richards writes not only on cybernetics, but also in a cybernetic manner. As I (...) find the article comprehensive and thorough, I mainly add further depth and discussion to some aspects of Richards’s article in the following sections, such as Richards’s distinction between conventional academic conferences and conversational conferences, conversation theory in relation to design, and the question of how conversational conferences can be designed. (shrink)

In this contribution, I investigate the way in which our understanding of a dementia patient’s self holds relevance to issues of punishment and respon- sibility. This topic is motivated by the fact that some countries with particularly large prison populations—such as the United States—are starting to build special- ized prison tracts for inmates with dementia. In other countries that do not have such specialized facilities, authorities are trying to find the least badly-equipped facility for such patients, and they are turning (...) to ordinary retirement homes, forensic hospitals as well as ordinary psychiatric and geriatric hospital wards. The problem is expected to become increasingly urgent as the population ages and the number of dementia patients increases. I analyse the way in which justifications of legal (or private) punishment for offenders with dementia can depend on an account of relevant psychological features of the self. I argue that especially retributivist and expressivist justifications of punishment require the offender’s ability to comprehend that he or she is being punished for a particular action in the past and that it was him or herself who committed this action. In the second part of my paper, I distinguish between different accounts of responsibility and argue that accounts of relevant features of the self are also needed here to answer the question of whether offenders with dementia are still responsible for past or current inappropriate behavior. In the final part of the paper, I argue that potentially existing private punishment intuitions among care- takers as well as certain puzzles of responsibility interpretation can make it plausible to relieve certain caretakers from primary responsibility for offenders with dementia, especially caretakers who belong to a relevant former victim group of the offender. (shrink)

Several influential ethical guidelines and frameworks endorse the view that research with human participants is ethically acceptable only when it has “social value,” meaning that it generates knowledge which can be used to benefit society. For example, the Nuremberg Code requires that medical experiments on human beings “yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study”. The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences guidelines hold that “health-related research with humans... must have social (...) value” or the “prospect of generating the knowledge and the means necessary to protect and promote people’s health” (CIOMS... (shrink)

It is becoming more common that the decision-makers in private and public institutions are predictive algorithmic systems, not humans. This article argues that relying on algorithmic systems is procedurally unjust in contexts involving background conditions of structural injustice. Under such nonideal conditions, algorithmic systems, if left to their own devices, cannot meet a necessary condition of procedural justice, because they fail to provide a sufficiently nuanced model of which cases count as relevantly similar. Resolving this problem requires deliberative capacities uniquely (...) available to human agents. After exploring the limitations of existing formal algorithmic fairness strategies, the article argues that procedural justice requires that human agents relying wholly or in part on algorithmic systems proceed with caution: by avoiding doxastic negligence about algorithmic outputs, by exercising deliberative capacities when making similarity judgments, and by suspending belief and gathering additional information in light of higher-order uncertainty. (shrink)

Cultural safety is a relatively new concept that has emerged in the New Zealand nursing context and is being taken up in various ways in Canadian health care discourses. Our research team has been exploring the relevance of cultural safety in the Canadian context, most recently in relation to a knowledge-translation study conducted with nurses practising in a large tertiary hospital. We were drawn to using cultural safety because we conceptualized it as being compatible with critical theoretical perspectives that foster (...) a focus on power imbalances and inequitable social relationships in health care; the interrelated problems of culturalism and racialization; and a commitment to social justice as central to the social mandate of nursing. Engaging in this knowledge-translation study has provided new perspectives on the complexities, ambiguities and tensions that need to be considered when using the concept of cultural safety to draw attention to racialization, culturalism, and health and health care inequities. The philosophic analysis discussed in this paper represents an epistemological grounding for the concept of cultural safety that links directly to particular moral ends with social justice implications. Although cultural safety is a concept that we have firmly positioned within the paradigm of critical inquiry, ambiguities associated with the notions of 'culture', 'safety', and 'cultural safety' need to be anticipated and addressed if they are to be effectively used to draw attention to critical social justice issues in practice settings. Using cultural safety in practice settings to draw attention to and prompt critical reflection on politicized knowledge, therefore, brings an added layer of complexity. To address these complexities, we propose that what may be required to effectively use cultural safety in the knowledge-translation process is a 'social justice curriculum for practice' that would foster a philosophical stance of critical inquiry at both the individual and institutional levels. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a theoretical and political role for ‘white ignorance’, present three alternative accounts of white ignorance, and assess how well each fulfils this role. On the Willful Ignorance View, white ignorance refers to white individuals’ willful ignorance about racial injustice. On the Cognitivist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources. On the Structuralist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance that (1) results as part of a social process that (...) systematically gives rise to racial injustice, and (2) is an active player in the process. I argue that, because of its greater power and flexibility, the Structuralist View better explains the patterns of ignorance that we observe, better illuminates the connection to white racial domination, and is overall better suited to the project of ameliorating racial injustice. As such, the Structuralist View should be preferred. (shrink)

Western democracy theorists accept the "liberal democracy thesis" and claim that the only morally justifiable conception of democracy is liberal democracy regulated by substantive liberal values. According to this thesis, democracy not regulated by liberal values in nonliberal nations, if at all feasible, necessarily leads to the oppression of minorities and is therefore morally unjustifiable. This article aims to refute the liberal democracy thesis by arguing that democracy in "decent" nonliberal nations is not only feasible but also morally justifiable.

ABSTRACTIs Confucian democracy philosophically justifiable? In recent decades, prominent Confucian theorists have answered this question in the negative, arguing that the political system that is c...

It has recently been proposed to incorporate the use of a “Patient Preference Predictor” (PPP) into the process of making treatment decisions for incapacitated patients. A PPP would predict which treatment option a given incapacitated patient would most likely prefer, based on the individual’s characteristics and information on what treatment preferences are correlated with these characteristics. Including a PPP in the shared decision-making process between clinicians and surrogates has the potential to better realize important ethical goals for making treatment decisions (...) for incapacitated patients. However, developing and implementing a PPP poses significant practical challenges. The present paper discusses these practical challenges and considers ways to address them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:133. HUME ON RESENTMENT In his Enquiry version of the conditions of justice, Hume adds a third modified Hobbesian condition to the two, moderate scarcity and moderate selfishness, which he had listed in the Treatise. The new condition is a certain measure of equality, or limit ±o inequality—justice is owed, he says, only if there is a society of more-or-less equals; and only to those who are members of (...) it. The equality in question concerns the ability of candidate societymembers to make us feel the effects of their resentment (E190). If such ability is lacking, then, Hume says, the relationships between "us" and "them" will be those of absolute command on the one side and servile obedience on the other. Whatever we covet, they must instantly resign: Our permission is the only tenure, by which they hold their possessions : Our compassion and kindness the only check, by which they curb our lawless will (Ibid. ). This passage is interesting because Hume describes the position of such powerless creatures intermingled with men in terms which appear to be social —command, obedience, possession, tenure, the act of "resigning" coveted goods. But he says that our intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality (Ibid. ). True society is, then, restricted to those who are roughly equal, whose interests help to determine the conventions which give rise to duties of justice. But intermingled with the members of such a real society there might be, were or are, a species of creatures, who, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest provocation, make us feel the effects of their resentment (Ibid. ). They are "rational", so can obey, can resign possessions, and can resent their inferior status. They have quasi-social relations with their masters, but not fully social ones, since they are neither parties to nor bene- 134. ficiaries of the social conventions which create rights and duties. Hume seems to assume that because they are not parties to the artifice-creating conventions, those conventions will not cover relations with them, so that the conveners' "laws" are limited, and allow them a sphere of "lawless will" in their dealings with the inferior creatures. But children, for example, while not legislators, may be both right holders and beneficiaries of the laws which adults agree on. Hume is most charitably read here to mean that the conventions which serve the interests of the superior creatures might not, cannot be depended on, to regulate in any way the dealings of the superiors with the inferiors. They are left at the mercy of their superiors, resent that fact, and yet may be powerless to alter the situation. It is very clear from what follows that Hume has in mind in this passage the relations of males to females, and that it is his thoughts about male-female relationships which led to his emendation of his Treatise account of the conditions of justice. The Treatise had not mentioned equality of power as a condition for justice, but had devoted a chapter to the extra obligations, of chastity and modesty, which social conventions imposed on the female sex. It was therefore a natural question to arise for Hume whether women really could be parties to conventions which imposed these obligations on them. Were their interests served, or did these obligations arise from "the voluntary conventions of men, " (T510, emphasis added) who asked themselves What restraint, therefore, shall we impose upon women, in order to counter-balance so strong a temptation as they have to infidelity? (T571). Hume had argued that female fidelity was needed for male paternal obligations to be properly assigned, so that it was in the interests of children, of fathers, and of society in general, that fatherhood be determinable, and so that wives be chaste. Now, in the Enquiry, he considers the possibility of a class of slaves whose interests, like those of animals, need not be considered 135, in the conventions which generate duties of justice. The great superiority of civilized Europeans above barbarous Indians, tempted us to imagine ourselves on... (shrink)

I propose a conception of Confucian feminism faithful to the original vision of the Confucian masters centered on the moral ideal of the junzi. Although the junzi 君子 has traditionally been conceived as male-gendered, my proposal for Confucian feminism is predicated on reclaiming the junzi as a gender-transcending feminist ideal. It follows in the footsteps of two premodern Korean female Confucian scholars, Yun-ji-dang and Chōng-il-dang, who deserve to be considered the first Confucian feminists. Recognizing their Confucian feminism’s limitations, however, I (...) explore necessary conditions for reimagining the ideal of the junzi as a feminist ideal in contemporary Confucian East Asia. (shrink)