The sexual abuse of women and girls, such as sexual harassment, battery, varieties of rape, prostitution, and pornography, is statistically pervasive in late modern society. Yet this fact does not register adequate ethical concern. I explore this gap in moral perception. I argue that sexual abuse is conceptually supported by an ontology of women that considers a lack of bodily integrity as natural and by a sex-specific idea of freedom that considers sexual violations as liberating. This conceptual framework is pernicious because it supports abuse and interferes with our moral perception of harm, encouraging us to see harms as normal and as positive. I argue that Heidegger’s idea of philosophy and the resources of his epistemological and ontological project in Being and Time can help show the pernicious function of this conceptual framework and thus help us better understand this abuse.

Desert is a notion ubiquitous in our moral discourse, and the importance of its dictates is perhaps clearest when dealing with the distribution of material resources. George Sher has provided one account of desert in wages, answering the question, “How do workers deserve their wage?” Sher relies on the violation of preexisting “independent standards” that dictate how much of a certain good we think people are entitled to in general. When these standards are violated, they call for an offsetting response at a later point in time in order to restore the moral equilibrium. I argue that this formalization of desert is flawed at the theoretical level and that it has further difficulties when applied to wages in particular. Lastly, I offer some brief remarks about what I think are the criteria for establishing desert in wages.

In a fictional conversation designed to appeal to both working teachers and social philosophers, three educators take up the question of whether critical thinking itself can, or should, be taught independently of an explicit consideration of issues related to social justice. One, a thoughtful but somewhat traditional Enlightenment rationalist, sees critical thinking as a neutral set of skills and dispositions, essentially unrelated to the conclusions of morality, problems of social organization, or the content of any particular academic discipline. A second interlocutor, steeped in “critical” pedagogy of Paulo Freire, insists that the problem is the pose of neutrality itself. On this view, all honest and effective approaches to teaching must confront the hegemony of unjust relationships, institutions, and conceptual schemes. The third character attempts to resolve the tension between these two opposed camps.

Contrary to what we might initially think, domestic violence is not simply a violation of respect. This characterization of domestic violence misses two key points. First, the issue of respect in connection with domestic violence is not as straightforward as it appears. Second, domestic violence is also a violation of care. These key points explain how domestic violence negatively affects a victim’s autonomy and agency—the ability to choose and pursue her own goals and life plan.We have a moral responsibility to respond to the problem of domestic violence as individuals. But the state also has a responsibility to respond. According to Kant in the Doctrine of Right, one of the purposes of the state is to secure just treatment for everyone. I argue that this includes an obligation to put in place policies and services that will promote the autonomy and agency of victims of domestic violence.

Political impasse largely turns on convictions that one’s own position is right while one’s opponent’s position is wrong. When we examine how partisans defend their views, it’s clear that political divisions are not merely due to differences in strategies or priorities but to more fundamental differences in how persons perceive the world and what they think is true.In fact, the very nature of how we view “the truth” is such that most of the time we are inclined not to acknowledge our views as contingent, relative, or fallible. At least, that’s how Heidegger understands us. According to Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis, particularly in his early works, the nature of how we reveal facts and events simultaneously conceals other interpretations. Moreover, the very means of revealing a particular truth makes it difficult to notice that it is our act of revealing it which makes it true in the first place. That is, our natural tendency is to be in “error” about the very fact that it is through us that particular things obtain their character. However, Heidegger’s notion of authenticity, whereby we do acknowledge the role we play in revealing what we find true, suggests a way forward.

Robert Talisse’s recent attempt to justify liberal democracy in epistemic terms is in many ways a breath of fresh air. However, in the present paper we argue that his defense faces two inter-related problems. The first problem pertains to his defense of liberalism, and owes to the fact that a commitment to the folk-epistemological norms in terms of which he makes his case does not commit one to partaking in liberal institutions. Consequently, our (alleged) commitment to the relevant epistemic norms does not justify liberal democracy. The second problem pertains to his defense of democracy. The problem is that, if Talisse provides what we take to be the most plausible response to the first problem, framed in terms of his acceptance of a form of epistemic perfectionism, he is able to maintain his commitment to liberal institutions, but at the price of leaving democracy behind in favor of what we will refer to as a liberal epistocracy.

Ben Berger seeks to provide a number of “modest proposals” intended to prevent widespread and radical political disengagement among citizens. This is the most adverse manifestation of citizens’ invariable “attention deficit,” or their incapacity to maintain the focus and energy necessary to remain deeply and perpetually politically engaged. While attention deficit cannot be overcome, its worst effects can be kept enduringly in check, Berger argues. This is a necessary condition for the maintenance of a functional democracy. Yet I argue that democracy in America, which is Berger’s particular focus, has not endured and for reasons that relate only indirectly to attention deficit. While certain of his prescriptions are worthy of endorsement, how to implement them must be put into a context that more accurately reflects the current character of the political landscape.

Understanding within the western tradition of civic virtue can be supplemented in important ways by giving attention to the civic tradition as it developed in classical Chinese philosophy. The western tradition of civic virtue originates in the context of the small city-state political dynamics of Athens and Florence. As a result of this developmental context, the traditional civic virtues themselves are geared to the ends associated with small states. Established wisdom before the foundation of the United States suggested that any republic, of necessity, would have to remain small. With the expansion of modern democratic states, failure to sustain citizen participation has been recognized as a threat to continued sustainability of the large-scale republic. As a result of this realization, the revivalist civic theory has emphasized participatory virtues. The development of these virtues, however, is hindered by political alienation resulting from the bureaucratic structure of the large-scale state. The suggestion here is that civic theory in the modern world can be advanced by learning from the classical Chinese civic theorists what civic virtues they associated with large state dynamics, and it is suggested that these virtues can act as antecedents to the participatory virtues necessary for democracy.