{"title":"\"At Least I Am Different\": Disability, Authenticity, and Understanding in Rousseau's Life and Works.","authors":"Steph Ban","doi":"10.1353/ken.2024.a958999","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2024.a958999","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this paper, I examine the life and works of Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) through the lenses of madness, neurodivergence, and disability. While many scholars readily think of Rousseau as eccentric, overly emotional, and \"melancholic,\" they do not attempt to situate him as explicitly disabled, or to interpret his work as informed by madness.Using my own disabled, autistic, and mad identity as a point of potential reparative reading and kinship (although not as a direct diagnostic analogue or an uncritical approach), I argue that reading Rousseau explicitly as disabled, and further as experiencing traits consistent with modern descriptions of mental disability, opens up a new way of looking at his philosophical and musical works. By applying disabled, neurodivergent, and mad lenses to Rousseau. I provide a framework to understand the tensions between authenticity and falsehood, belief in mankind and misanthropy, and understanding and misunderstanding in his work.</p>","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"34 2","pages":"365-385"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144045695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Polly Mitchell, Alan Cribb, Vikki Entwistle, Sonya Crowe, Martin Utley
{"title":"Making Ends Meet: A Conceptual and Ethical Analysis of Efficiency.","authors":"Polly Mitchell, Alan Cribb, Vikki Entwistle, Sonya Crowe, Martin Utley","doi":"10.1353/ken.2024.a943428","DOIUrl":"10.1353/ken.2024.a943428","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Efficiency is often overlooked as an ethical value and seen as ethically relevant chiefly when it conflicts with other values, such as equality. This article argues that efficiency is a rich and philosophically interesting concept deserving of independent normative examination. Drawing on a detailed healthcare case study, we argue that making assessments of efficiency involves value-laden, deliberative judgments about how to characterize the functioning of human systems. Personal and emotional resources and ends are crucial to system functioning but are often discounted in favor of a relatively narrow set of financial inputs and institutional or procedural outputs. Judgments about efficiency tend to advantage (or disadvantage) different parties, depending on the resources and ends considered. Different constructions of efficiency can therefore promote or neglect the perspectives and interests of differently placed actors. Models of efficiency do not merely embody contestable ethical standpoints but-put to use-can unwittingly reify and reproduce them.</p>","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"1-26"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142711493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Borderline Personality Disorder And Ethico-Epistemic Justice: Trauma In Participatory Sense-Making.","authors":"Shay Welch","doi":"10.1353/ken.2024.a958993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2024.a958993","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Generally speaking, BPD is a cognitive-affective disposition that shapes one's conception and experience of herself, and also her experiences of interrelationality. Many BPD symptoms relating to affect regulation are spurred by psychosocial complications that can then exacerbate psychosocial complications in future relationships. One consequence of affective dysregulation due to abuse-induced trauma can be persistent interpersonal breakdowns. Such breakdowns can be caused by the inability of two differently affectively disposed persons to harmonize according to what person each needs based on a set of supposedly shared norms and expectations. Attempting to identify specific ethical issues related to affective disruptions in interrelational harmonizing requires that one pull together the embodied experiences of BPD and the effects of those experiences on interpersonal relationships and then position that distinctive dynamic within an ethico-epistemological framework. I believe that one critical trigger for BPD affective dysregulation comes from the role of abuse-induced trauma in the cultivation of the BPDer's body memory. I offer a description of this phenomenology, which I ground in the philosophy of embodied cognition. The relationship between trauma and the embodied memory matters to ethical conversations about BPD because it is crucial to see how trauma that manifests as a specific kind of affective disposition can influence the ethical harmonizing of interpersonal interactions.I write this analysis from my own first-person experience of someone diagnosed with severe BPD.</p>","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"34 2","pages":"191-222"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144015036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Learning About Identity Through Bipolar Disorder and Learning about Bipolar Disorder Through Identity.","authors":"Sophie Arase","doi":"10.1353/ken.2024.a958994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2024.a958994","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this paper, I discuss bipolar disorder (BD) and identity. My general goal is to argue that working on BD and identity from a philosophical, interdisciplinary perspective has promise to be beneficial for empirical research on the topic, for people with BD, and for philosophical treatment of identity. I first argue that both people with BD and empirical researchers on the topic of BD and identity implicitly understand \"identity\" as it is understood in (some areas of) philosophy. Namely, as identity in the characterization sense and, often, specifically as practical identity. I call this conception of identity \"characterization-identity\". If this is the case, then empirical researchers have more data to work with when trying to understand why people with BD experience particular difficulties with identity: they can appeal to the extant work on characterization-identity. Having argued that the researchers and people with BD understand \"identity\" in this way, I move to making the case that, insofar as we have a sound account of characterization-identity, this method of research has the potential to be mutually beneficial: (1) Work on characterization-identity can explicate the empirical work on, and first-hand experience of, BD and difficulty with identity. (2) The empirical work and first-hand accounts suggest a desideratum for a good account of identity. And (3) the interdisciplinary treatment of the topic could generate therapeutic interventions for people with BD.</p>","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"34 2","pages":"223-253"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144015038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Smallest Cut: The Ethics and (Surprising) Implications of <i>Hatafat Dam Brit</i> for the Ongoing Genital Cutting Debate.","authors":"Max Buckler","doi":"10.1353/ken.2024.a943429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2024.a943429","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This essay applies an ethical analysis of the Jewish religious rite of hatafat dam brit to the ongoing debate on child genital cutting. Recent scholarship on the ethical and legal status of \"de minimis\" or \"symbolic\" involuntary genital cutting practices features disagreement over what, if anything, grounds their wrongfulness given that they are (relatively) physically superficial. Hatafat dam brit (\"the drawing of covenantal blood\") is even less physically intrusive than the most minor of the other practices commonly debated (e.g., \"ritual nicking\" of the vulva) yet still, as I will show, elicits moral concern-including from within the practicing religious community. As a type of genital cutting ritual that does not, in fact, modify the body, hatafat dam brit challenges those on both sides of the debate to clarify the basis for their moral objection or approval. I argue that debates about involuntary genital cutting of minors should focus on the ethics of these practices considered as (sexually) embodied interpersonal interactions, rather than as body modifications.</p>","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"27-59"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142711494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nothing About Us Without Us: Identifying Principles of Justice For Emancipatory Participatory Research in the Context of Neurodiversity.","authors":"Amandine Catala","doi":"10.1353/ken.2024.a958997","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2024.a958997","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The neurodiversity movement has long advocated for \"Nothing about us without us\" or the necessity of including neurominoritized people, such as Autistics, in the production of public policies, social discourses, academic knowledge, and scientific research about neurominoritized profiles, including autism. Similarly, the scientific and academic communities are increasingly recognizing the importance for participatory research to be not only ethical but also emancipatory. Yet the call for \"Nothing about us without us\" is still too often ignored, inaccurately understood, or imperfectly applied, in ways that can be jarring and disrespectful at best, and violent and traumatic at worst. Drawing on my experience as an Autistic woman, academic, and self-advocate who has participated in studies on autism, I develop a proposal for how the principle of \"Nothing about us without us,\" understood as reclaiming epistemic authority and agency, might best be implemented in emancipatory research with Autistic adults. Specifically, I turn to two frameworks that have so far been developed independently of each other, yet that prove to be particularly fruitful when used together in this context: namely, the frameworks of design justice and of epistemic injustice. Drawing on both frameworks, I identify four principles of justice so that participatory autism research can be conducted in both an ethical and an emancipatory manner that heeds the neurodiversity movement's call for \"Nothing about us without us\" - namely, the principles of thorough involvement, of nonnormative communication, of trust-building, and of accountability.</p>","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"34 2","pages":"311-331"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144040378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Normal and the Neurodivergent: Moving Past the Pathology Paradigm.","authors":"Annemarie Munn","doi":"10.1353/ken.2024.a958995","DOIUrl":"10.1353/ken.2024.a958995","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Theories of neurodivergence which describe divergent neurotypes as pathological, that is, as stemming from a dysfunction, represent the status quo for many institutions and caregivers. I seek to disrupt the \"pathology paradigm\" through a critique of the relevant notions of \"function\" and \"dysfunction\" and an examination of some oppressive therapeutic interventions promoted by the pathology paradigm. I advance an alternative analysis of neurodivergence, the \"lack of fit\" analysis, which aims to examine the particular ways that neurodivergent people experience a lack of fit with their environments. The \"lack of fit\" analysis is intended to promote self-determination through the development of adaptive relationships and collaborative interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"34 2","pages":"255-282"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143990980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editor's Note.","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/ken.2024.a943427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2024.a943427","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"ix-xi"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142711488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Re-Citing the Origins of <i>Neuroqueer</i>.","authors":"Perry Zurn","doi":"10.1353/ken.2024.a958998","DOIUrl":"10.1353/ken.2024.a958998","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recently, neurodiversity scholars published a letter to the editor of Autism arguing that Judy Singer should not be cited as coiner of neurodiversity; rather, the term should be attributed to earlier neurodiverse forums online. I make a similar argument for neuroqueer. Neuroqueer is typically attributed to one of the letter's authors: Nick Walker (2015). Archival information, however, demonstrates that the term was developed in neuroqueer community conversations on the NeuroQueer blog (2013-2016) and, even earlier, on the alt.support. autism Usenet forum (2003). Walker's claim to coinage, then, obscures the collective origins of the concept and erases neuroqueer people from their own story. In retracing these historiographical steps, I pursue two theoretical questions. First, what can this broader history illuminate about the concept, theory, and practice of neuroqueer? Second, what might an explicitly neuroqueer citation politics look like? If not a single-origin story, then what?</p>","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"34 2","pages":"333-364"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144062660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contributor","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/ken.2023.a904078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2023.a904078","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:COVID-19 elicited a rapid emergence of new mutual aid networks in the US, but the practices of these networks are understudied. Using qualitative methods, we explored the empirical ethics guiding US-based mutual aid networks' activities, and assessed the alignment between principles and practices as networks mobilized to meet community needs during 2020–21. We conducted in-depth interviews with 15 mutual aid group organizers and supplemented these with secondary source materials on mutual aid activities and participant observation of mutual aid organizing efforts. We analyzed participants' practices in relation to key mutual aid principles as defined in the literature: 1) solidarity not charity; 2) non-hierarchical organizational structures; 3) equity in decision-making; and 4) political engagement. Our data also yielded a fifth principle, \"mutuality,\" essential to networks' approaches but distinct from anarchist conceptions of mutualism. While mutual aid networks were heavily invested in these ethical principles, they struggled to achieve them in practice. These findings underscore the importance of mutual aid praxis as an intersection between ethical principles and practices, and the challenges that contemporary, and often new, mutual aid networks responding to COVID-19 face in developing praxis during a period of prolonged crisis. We develop a theory-of-change model that illuminates both the opportunities and the potential pitfalls of mutual aid work in the context of structural inequities, and shows how communities can achieve justice-oriented mutual aid praxis in current and future crises.","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135046176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}