"Three lenses through which Vallalar's philosophy, the Tamil philosopher Ramalinga Swamigal (1823–∞), can be considered epistemologically are: (1) as a distinctive non-Western epistemology grounded in direct luminous experience (Suddha Sanmarga), (2) as a provocation and critique of Western rationalist epistemology, whose exclusion of embodied, compassionate knowing constitutes a structural impoverishment of what counts as knowledge; or (3) as a generative frame for investigating perennial questions, the nature of consciousness, the relationship between knower and known, through the radical claim that light of absolute compassion is not merely metaphor but the fundamental substrate of both being and knowing.
This paper will argue that Vallalar's epistemological claim, that compassion (Jeevakarunyam) is not merely an ethical disposition but the very condition of possibility for direct knowing. The purification of the body, mind, soul and spirit through compassionate practice opens faculties of perception unavailable to the detached rational subject, constitutes a direct challenge to the Cartesian separation of knower from known that underwrites modern Western epistemology. Where Kant forecloses the noumenal, Vallalar proposes a phenomenology of light of absolute compassion in which the noumenal is progressively disclosed through transformed perception."
How can resistance to wrongful action be justified within ethical traditions that do not accept the intrinsic value of individual rights? This paper develops the concept of virtue-protective resistance: resistance justified, at least in part, by the aim of preventing the wrongdoer from suffering moral self-harm, damage to their own moral integrity through wrongdoing. I argue that this justificatory structure is conceptually distinct from rights-based and consequentialist alternatives. It operates on a different normative input (the wrongdoer’s moral integrity rather than the resister’s rights or aggregate consequences) and contains an irreducibly relational element grounded in the resister’s structural position within the wrong. Taking an initial cue from early Chinese philosophical texts but developing the argument independently, I defend the moral self-harm thesis and show that virtue-protective resistance scales from self-removal to power-restriction under graduated conditions of necessity and proportionality. Because the moral self-harm thesis is accepted across a wide range of independent ethical traditions, such as Aristotelian, Confucian, Stoic, Christian, Islamic, Buddhism, the framework supplies a justification for moral reform that is internal to traditions where rights-based critique lacks traction, addressing wrongdoers in a normative language they already speak.
Sextus Empiricus plainly states that the sceptics take the goal to be tranquillity. Commentators usually understand this to be a claim about the goal of life, and note, with some discomfort, that it is a little strange for sceptics to take any position on this at all. The goal of life is a hotly contested topic, and the sceptics believe we should suspend belief in the face of disagreement. Worse still, the sceptics believe we should live in accordance with convention and appearances. Other candidates, such as pleasure and wisdom, appear to be the goal to many people and are more conventional than tranquillity.
In this paper, I argue that commentators have been misled by Sextus’ point blank statement that tranquillity is the goal. Across PH I, Sextus makes multiple and mutually incompatible claims about the sceptics’ goal. Drawing on Bett’s analysis of Sextus’ use of “variation”, I argue that these contradictions constitute a deliberate strategy to induce suspension of belief about the sceptics’ take on the goal. Moreover, I show how Sextus uses “ersatz goals” to sell scepticism to readers no matter their life-orientation. The appeal of these goals depends on the success of the sceptics at balancing arguments.
The paper seeks to examine Spinoza’s theoretical relationship to slavery through a historical and political perspective. Early modern natural law tradition, in which (as Grotius argued) slavery was consistent with natural justice and the slave could freely sell their own liberty forces us to confront the paradoxical ways in which modern notions of freedom were articulated in relation to increasingly abstracted uses of slavery. I focus my attention on Spinoza’s paradoxical formulation of servitude. The source of Spinoza’s characterisation of slavery is found in Chapter 16 of the TTP, positing the foundations of the state in terms of mutual utility rather than a Hobbesian absolute transference of right to a sovereign authority. Yet Spinoza defines the figure of the slave as someone who fails to actively pursue their utility. Inscribed at the very heart of Spinoza’s political vision is an unsettling reality – the condition of slavery reveals itself to be a permanent condition and limit of the political, the ever-present possibility of a catastrophic collapse of social relations and the inability to form secure and durable relationships with others.
A number of philosophers analyse value in terms of fitting attitudes. On such views, very roughly, something is valuable just when it is a fitting object of certain favourable responses. However, these views face a problem about partiality. Suppose that either my friend or a stranger can be rescued from drowning, but not both, and that the two rescue outcomes are equal in intrinsic value. It still seems fitting for me to prefer my friend’s rescue. This creates a difficulty for fitting-attitude analyses: if the two outcomes are equal in value, why is it fitting for me to prefer one to the other?
The main aim of this paper is to offer a Brentanian solution to this problem. I argue that the difficulty arises because we fail to distinguish two different roles that preference can play. In one role, preference is a way of assessing which object is better. In another, it is a practical response involved in deciding what to do. Once this distinction is made, we can say that my friend’s rescue and the stranger’s rescue are equal in value, while also allowing that it is fitting for me to choose my friend’s rescue. This preserves the intuition that partiality can be fitting without implying that my friend’s rescue is intrinsically better.
This paper examines the Māori stewardship framework of kaitiakitanga as a philosophical basis for climate activism. Based on current work carried out with Indigenous philosopher Krushil Watene, funded by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga and Waipapa Taumata Rau, I explore whether kaitiakitanga generates normative obligations that extend beyond permitting climate action to requiring it.
The talk discusses how contemporary institutional frameworks in Aotearoa and beyond engage with Indigenous stewardship concepts whilst simultaneously constraining Indigenous authority in environmental governance. This tension reveals a fundamental problem: the translocation of relational obligations into administrative and consultative mechanisms often fails to protect the socioenvironmental relationships those mechanisms purport to serve.
The paper investigates three dimensions: what kaitiakitanga means as an ontological and relational framework; what forms of activism this framework demands; and how we might philosophically justify more confrontational approaches to environmental protection.
By grounding the analysis in Indigenous thought rather than Western environmental ethics, the talk demonstrates how kaitiakitanga offers resources for rethinking the relationship between activism, obligation, and environmental protection. The framework challenges assumptions embedded in dominant approaches to climate action and reveals what is at stake when Indigenous concepts are institutionalised without substantive transformation of the power relations they critique.
I extend Kate Manne’s account of misogyny by theorizing the rewards and forms of valorization offered to women who accept patriarchal social arrangements as a sustaining branch of patriarchal social order. Manne briefly notes that such rewards warrant critical attention, but she does not theorize their structural function. Contemporary discourse increasingly frames the pursuit of these rewards as a feminist choice or a lower‑cost form of empowerment compared to resisting patriarchal norms. I argue that this empowerment is illusory. Although such rewards may temporarily improve women’s material conditions, they reinforce economic dependence and narrow the range of opportunities meaningfully available to women. By presenting patriarchal arrangements as desirable and empowering, these reward‑based mechanisms attract women’s participation and thereby sustain the patriarchal order. I also address the concern that women may accept patriarchal arrangements out of adaptive preference or under conditions of survival. Following Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model, I stress that my argument concerns structural processes, not individual liability. This account shows that patriarchal order is upheld not only through punishment and justification but also through reward‑based mechanisms that draw women into its reproduction.
This paper develops a revised account of political responsibility for structural injustice. Building on and revising Iris Marion Young’s influential theory of “political responsibility,” it argues that responsibilities regarding structural injustice are best understood as duties of superintendence: duties to monitor, evaluate, and manage the functioning of social systems in light of the demands of justice. The paper contends that this framework better explains the distinctive moral character of political responsibility than Young’s contrast between “forward-looking” political responsibility and “backward-looking” liability. Duties of superintendence are presented as second-order responsibilities borne by citizens and institutions alike, especially states and other powerful actors charged with regulating social life. On this account, failures of political responsibility can ground warranted grievance and blame even where no individual agent is culpable for directly causing unjust outcomes. The paper also addresses objections concerning demandingness, excuse, and the limits of moral culpability in cases of structural injustice.
Transitional justice is traditionally associated with democratic consolidation, yet this relationship is empirically contingent rather than guaranteed. Canada consolidated democracy without transitional justice, while Chad failed to democratize despite it. Moreover, transitional mechanisms can be double-edged, sometimes reinforcing illiberal regimes rather than dismantling them. These vulnerabilities raise a prior question: how should democracy itself be conceptualized to effectively support transitional justice? This paper compares two interpretations of liberal democracy. The first, grounded in Isaiah Berlin's "freedom as non-interference," proves inadequate because it ignores structural power asymmetries and remains indifferent to regime type, leaving it unable to robustly reject authoritarianism. The second, grounded in Philip Pettit's "freedom as non-domination," offers a more defensible framework. Republican democracy targets arbitrary power and builds institutional safeguards for citizens. Through Pettit's model of contestatory democracy, citizens acquire meaningful capacity to challenge unjust policies and hold power accountable. Nevertheless, overcoming entrenched domination may demand more than formal legalism alone. Institutional rules must be complemented by civic virtue and sustained social dialogue. This republican framework, attentive to both structural inequality and participatory agency, offers a normatively superior path for genuinely advancing transitional justice.
Faith is often defended not as blind belief, but as trust in God after belief that God exists has already been formed. On this view, trusting God is analogous to trusting a spouse, friend, doctor, or pilot. This paper challenges that analogy. I argue that even if God’s existence is granted, trust in God’s present guidance differs from ordinary interpersonal trust in three respects. First, interpersonal trust presupposes reasonable confidence in authorship. Before I decide whether to trust a message, I must first determine who sent it. Alleged divine guidance however, often arrives through thoughts, impressions, circumstances, and interpretations that are equally compatible with ordinary psychological explanations. Second, interpersonal trust is corrigible. Trust grows because experience can confirm or challenge our assessment of another person’s reliability. By contrast, trust in God is often insulated from disconfirmation by explanations such as “yes, no, or wait.” Third, trust in God is often rationalised retrospectively through selected memories and reconstructed narratives. Human relationships are also vulnerable to such bias, but they are constrained by observable behaviour, direct feedback, and third-party correction. Retrospective trust in God often lacks these constraints. Together, these asymmetries challenge the God/Spouse analogy.
My aim in this paper is to reframe, by appeal to specificity, just what we are talking about when we talk of children as public goods: the possibility of some future option set size. This framing highlights a distinction between (a) that which parents produce via their children and (b) that which children produce, which is a distinction critical to any account of justice in which responsibility plays a role. This framing also highlights a crucial truth about liberal theories of justice (or perhaps any theory in which option sets play a role): if a theory remains indifferent about the size of future option sets, that theory has no resources to say parents produce anything of either value or disvalue. What this all entails is vital to any argument about ‘how much’ compensation parents ought to receive (or even, in reverse, non-parents ought to receive) for having and raising children: only when we know the target option set size or range of option set sizes that are permissible within a theory of justice can we derive ‘how much’ compensation is owed.
Peace is a nebulous concept in political discourse. The Global Peace Index offers a solution by providing an empirically led measurement of peace informed by Johan Galtung’s (1930-2024) typology of violence. This typology is structured around personal and structural violence. The paper presents that this expansion of the concept of violence is philosophically unwarranted and leads to conceptual inflation that undermines clarity in both normative and empirical contexts. Specifically, I argue that violence should be restricted to personal violence, where so-called structural violence does not meet the conceptual criteria for violence. This claim shall be substantiated through a critical evaluation of the Global Peace Index, exploring the philosophical concepts behind violence such as intent and moral luck. I offer the view that the structures supporting violence ought to be deinstitutionalised, while critiquing the coherence of treating such societal structures as instances of violence themselves. Narrowing the scope of the typology of violence preserves the moral urgency of addressing structural influence without distorting the concept of violence. This view accommodates empirical tools for assessing peacefulness like the Global Peace Index, while also drawing stricter epistemological boundaries around how we can measure peace.
Thinkers in the political extremism literature, most notably Steve Clarke (2019), David Coady (2024), and Morgan Luck (2025), have recently argued there is nothing wrong with extremism qua extremism. I advance two connected lines of argument against this view. First, that these arguments rely on a fundamentally flawed conceptualisation of extremism that conflates it with the concept of extremeness. The concepts of extremism and extremeness can be separated at the semantic, personal, and ideological level, and insisting on their connection generates deeply counterintuitive extremism-categorisations. Second, I put forth a necessary feature of extremism that can ground the wrongness of extremism qua extremism. I call this feature (Morally) Unjustified Political Violence (UPV): extremist ideologies and their believers- extremists- consider successful purported moral justifications for political violence which actually fail. After clarifying political violence and the nature of the justification-failure, I argue that UPV is extensionally adequate and identifies wrongs with extremism qua extremism.
This paper develops a conception of gaslighting that is absent from popular accounts in the literature, namely, political gaslighting. This conception explains an epistemic injustice inflicted upon an audience by a politician, focusing on value assessments. I will argue that gaslighting is an apt description of the political manipulation that tactfully undermines an audience's epistemic self-trust, in the face of arguments that such manipulation could be explained through other already developed notions, like bald-faced lying or brainwashing. I suggest that a politician’s position of power hands them the capacity to disconcert the audience by repeatedly instilling doubt into the psyches of citizens that their values are expressed in policies they support, until epistemic autonomy is diminished. Political gaslighting is increasingly popular in the post-truth era, and understanding how its effective will help clarify what resistance to gaslighting could look like.
One major approach to religious fictionalism is to highlight the moral benefits of religious practices, i.e., to argue that even non-doxastic acceptance of the content of religious claims may help practitioners with their moral growth, moral sensibility, moral motivation, and so on (cf. Eshleman 2005; Le Poidevin 2019, 2023; Jay 2014, Leng 2023). In this paper, I argue that this approach fails. Since our worldviews, value systems, and belief systems form an integrated whole in religious practice, it is difficult to isolate moral values (within which moral growth, moral sensibility, and moral motivation are all deeply involved) from this whole. Accordingly, moral benefits seem to be intimately connected with moral and religious belief and cannot be gained separately in religious practices. Instead, I suggest a ritualistic approach. I argue that religious rituals can be beneficial for attaining the meaningfulness of life. As Nozick (1981) argues, meaning consists in transcending limits: being part of God’s plan could be a way of pursuing the meaning of life. While the meaning of life may collapse with the rejection of religious belief, meaningfulness may nevertheless survive through non-doxastic acceptance alone. In this paper, I propose such a novel approach to religious fictionalism.
Religious fictionalism is roughly the view that our engagement with religious discourse, ritual and practise involves pretense. According to the fictionalist, religious talk does not involve assertion and religious thought does not involve belief. When we say things like ‘God is good’, we are merely expressing something like a make-belief that God is good (and perhaps inviting others to do the same). In this paper, I defend a version of hermeneutic religious fictionalism, suggesting that religious fictionalism is not just a practise we should adopt, it is a practise that many (if not most) religious practitioners currently adopt. If I am correct, religious practitioners are not in error; but many philosophers and athiests are.
Jason Thibodeau has recently developed a revised version of the Horrendous Deeds Objection against Modified Divine Command Theory (MDCT). On his formulation, if God has “moral grounding power”—the capacity for a being’s commands to constitute moral obligations—then any omnipotent being would possess the same power. This purportedly allows for a possible world in which a non‑omnibenevolent deity renders horrendous acts morally obligatory. I argue that this objection fails once the nature of moral grounding power is correctly understood. On standard versions of MDCT, moral obligation is identical to being commanded by God. When grounding is construed as identity rather than causal production, Thibodeau’s key premise collapses: identity is not transferable, and it is therefore logically impossible for the property of being morally required to be identical to the commands of any distinct agent, regardless of omnipotence. I further respond to two recent attempts to rehabilitate the objection, concerning alleged cases of type‑identical commands constituting the same normative phenomenon and the purported arbitrariness of restricting moral grounding power to God alone. I conclude that the revised Horrendous Deeds Objection does not undermine MDCT.
Metaphysical freedom, experienced as a state of lucidity, can allow for balanced change in our understanding of ecology as it creates opportunities for individuals to develop a dynamic moral mindset in line with our ever-changing relationship with nature and empower them to enact intentional change. Entering a state of lucidity, a state where we recognise our responsibility in creating our own meaning, will give us a position from which to birth creative solutions in the face of loss. Processing eco-grief and moral injury, in our current state of global climate-crisis, provides opportunities to reflect on our appeals to futility or authority, and other approaches to nature that are frequented as means to exonerate us from our responsibility to nature. I argue that environmental disseminators and organisations have the more difficult job of empowering individuals to reflect on their moral injury, than corporations and institutions who wish to offer exoneration to the individual from their moral injury for continued capital gain. How we act in response to our moral injury and eco-grief comes to shape our world.
Why are we moral equals, given how different we are? In Section I, I review what it means to reject fundamental moral equality and endorse moral hierarchy. I argue that the hierarchical challenge is more pressing than egalitarians concede, and that merited hierarchy is more attractive than egalitarians admit. In Section II, I consider the solution of proposing a 'range property' or threshold degree of some morally relevant capacity (generally moral agency, personal autonomy, or something similar). I argue that existing accounts cannot motivate the relevance of the threshold, and are thus driven to accept scalar moral status in proportion to one's possession of the relevant capacity. In Section III, I consider the ‘decisionistic’ defence of basic equality, which argues that moral equality is a fundamental commitment, motivated by the evils of denying it. This approach has two flaws. First, it offers a contingent, non-ideal objection to moral hierarchy, which concedes crucial ground that egalitarians generally want to defend. Second, that it is fatally vague: it fails to sufficiently specify what we thereby commit to. In Section IV I propose an alternative approach, locating the basis of equality in the badness of social alienation. I consider a series of objections.
