The Human Status of Frances Kamm

What if you could have a thirty-minute conversation with each of eleven distinguished people about their views on a subject in which you were keenly interested?  What would you think?  If you are like me -- and if that subject was, say, moral philosophy -- you would be a little giddy.  So you can imagine my excitement when I ran across and began to read a recent book by Alex Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics (2009).

As a way of processing these conversations, I intend to post some reflections on each, starting now with the conversation that Frances Kamm has with Alex Voorhoeve.  Professor Kamm points to what she believes is the deep structure of morality.  The impetus for this in her life as a philosopher was a graduate seminar taught by Robert Nozick, who earlier in Anarchy, State, and Utopia had introduced the so-called "paradox of deontology."

The paradox of deontology involves this tension.  Assume that, on the one hand, you believe that everyone possesses the same rights against being harmed in a certain way, but then ask, on the other hand, how would you answer this question:  "If you could save Abby and Betty from being harmed in that way by instead harming Calvin, why would you not harm the one to save the two?"

The Transformation of Sir Gawain’s Greenness

As a narrative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight imaginatively creates moral suspense -- real suspense around the strength of bravery, integrity, and virtue.  It does so for a community and individuals who might often seem exemplars of honor:  King Arthur and the knights and ladies of his Round Table.  I find this of interest now years after I first read works like Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, White’s The Once and Future King, and Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, because of the personal and communal transformation that occurs in Sir Gawain.

When I was a lad, I was most impressed by the ability of Arthur and Lancelot and Galahad and the like to defeat their enemies and achieve success.  Sure, I was aware of some shortcomings in the characters.  But it was their larger-than-lifeness that then captured my readerly fancy.  Now as an adult, I appreciate most the depiction of Arthur and Gawain and the like as simultaneously virtuous and flawed characters who, nevertheless, press on with a sense of duty and fidelity to themselves and to their communities.  At least this is my reaction after recently reading Merwin’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and after reflecting on the symbolic transformation of the green belt at its ending.

On the Finer Points of "Fine"

The word fine is one of those lexical units whose meaning, or meaning potential, is frustratingly multiple. It spans the range from signifying satisfaction to reflecting dissatisfaction.  It is a little bit like, as I noted previously, "fuhgeddaboudit" in the fine film Donnie Brasco.  In an effort to clear up my own thinking about it, which stems in part from personal communication failure, I want to look at the finer points of what we mean by fine.

DFW and the Fundamental Attribution Error

A couple of weeks ago I decided to revisit David Foster Wallace's famous Kenyon College commencement address from May 21, 2005.  It was subsequently revised and published as "This Is Water."  (The audio and various text editions, including a transcription of the original speech and one cleaned up, are easily available on the web.)  Among many things that struck me upon both rereading and listening to the address, one thing jumped out in particular.  And I think it is one key reason that DFW's address went viral back then and is still discussed now.